For this Chapter:

Character(s), Pairing(s): Noodle, 2D, Russel, Murdoc

Rating: K+

Warnings: Murdoc is loud and proud and that's a problem. Language, minor violence (mugs are thrown and tables are punched)

Chapter Summary: Noodle needs to learn more than just great music, and naturally the boys can't take responsibility. [Phase 1]

A/N: Here i am back at it again. Enjoy, my lovelies~!

Learn it Good

There are only a few occasions in Noodle's admittedly rather lacking memory that she wakes to find an argument going on downstairs. It's not unusual that she overhears arguments – they try, bless them, to not argue around her, because it's a "bad environment" for a child or some other such bollocks, but they are four very different personalities living under one roof, of course they'll fight; one of them is Murdoc, for heaven's sake! – but it's rare they happen before she's even fully awake.

Granted, this is usually because it's rare anyone's awake before her. 2D tries, sets his alarm for seven-fifteen, but either sleeps through it or hits snooze until he jams the button and has to crawl out of bed to turn it off manually. Russel is good at getting up, but he doesn't often surface until he has to. Murdoc is an enigma. If he sleeps at all, which Noodle is not entirely certain he does, he does it at odd hours when none of them can catch him. With the way he clatters and bangs and makes ladies shout, it's certainly not when the rest of them are in bed.

So waking up to find all three of the boys shouting at each other is a sign something has been building for days, and has finally boiled over. Sneaking as quietly as she can – and she's the best sneak in the house, ask 2D – she creeps downstairs until the voices are clear. She only understands some of the words at best, but she tries nonetheless. It's what Russel always tells her to do.

'Look,' Murdoc is snarling, and she can imagine him, hunched shoulders, fists on the kitchen table like one of those silverbacks she sees on the TV, trying to throw his weight around even though he doesn't weigh anything at all, and she should know, she managed to pick him up last week. Sure, it was only a couple of inches, and his toes were brushing the carpet, but she still got him off the floor. 'Listen to me, for once in your miserable fucking pothole of an existence, and understand that this is not happening. I refuse to allow it. My band is not being pulled apart for something so stupid.'

'For heaven's sake!' Russel is snapping back, and Noodle sees him leaning against the kitchen counter, arms folded, scowl deep. He's not intimidated by Murdoc's attempted alpha male horseshit in the least, doesn't let the older man bully him. Murdoc is scared of Russel, though, just a little. He knows the strength behind those warm, soft hands of his. 'You're being stupid! Just because you don't have any qualifications doesn't mean the rest of us have to fucking suffer!'

2D is saying nothing, and Noodle decides he'll be by the door, furthest away from Murdoc, but out of arm's reach of Russel too. He'll have his hands up by his face, fingers weaving in and out of each other, his hair, his mouth. He keeps biting his fingers, and he should stop doing that.

'I have qualifications,' Murdoc spits, and then hesitates. 'Well, one. But even so. She doesn't need any. She just needs to play.'

'She's not a fucking robot!' Russel roars. Something smashes; a mug. The kitchen is silent for several long moments, and she worries she's been seen.

But that's silly, she's a full room and a shut door away from them. Perhaps they're waiting to hear her moving. She stays mouse-quiet, pressed against a wall to minimise visibility and potential for falling over.

Eventually 2D suggests, in his awkward, squawking voice, 'why don't we get a tutor? I had one when I was her age. After I fell out the tree, I mean.'

She can feel Murdoc's glare from here, and inches out of its way.

'That's,' Russel starts, quieter now, calmer. The mug must have been one of Murdoc's. Hopefully, Noodle thinks, a little spiteful, it was that one with Kate Bush on it. 'That's actually a really good idea. I mean, we can cover the basics, have been covering the basics, but giving her a tutor could be good. She'd get to know more people.'

'No,' Murdoc says, loud. 'No, I refuse. You are not bringing strangers into my home.'

'Your home?' Russel snorts.

2D starts to chuckle, but it gets cut off by a loud thump of wood. Murdoc's punched the table, and she laments the dent his stupid ugly-as-all-hell skull ring will have made in the wood.

'I pay the fucking bills,' Murdoc spits, and Russel guffaws.

'You don't pay shit,' he laughs, and Noodle imagines he's waving his hand, dismissive, the way he does when someone says something ridiculous. 'You got this place rent-free, you ass.'

Murdoc must be pouting, because Murdoc always pouts. 'I still have to pay bills.'

But Russel is ignoring him. 'I think 'D's onto something. There must be a few tutors in London who can speak Japanese, right? Maybe we can get one to come over a couple of days a week. We need to get her English up before we can teach her the rest.'

Noodle frowns at her toes for a few long moments as silence reigns in the kitchen. A tutor for her? Does she need a tutor? Murdoc's right, she just needs to know how to play her guitar, and she's the best guitarist in the world. That's all she wants to do, and it's not like she'll be alone or anything, right? The boys will always be there to look after her, and she's learning English really well, so Russel says.

She doesn't need a tutor, she doesn't, she doesn't, she doesn't.

Caught up in her thinking as she is, she completely misses the pop of the kitchen door opening, and 2D makes an "oh!" sort of noise when he finds her crouched around the corner.

'Hello,' he says, and flops onto the floor next to her.

She immediately crawls into his lap, pressing her face into his collar and refusing to move. He stays where he is, hand on her back, and if he thinks she's heard them, he doesn't say it.

'Did you have a nightmare?' he asks, and if it was anyone but 2D, she'd think he was offering her an escape route, a way to avoid them talking about what happened.

So she nods, and sniffles, and she doesn't remember when she started tearing up, but tear up she has.

'Poor girl,' 2D hums, and they sit there for another few minutes before Russel comes across them.

'Hey,' he says, and crouches to run a hand over Noodle's hair. 'You alright?'

'I think she's ill,' 2D says, quiet, and Noodle pretends to be asleep.

'Alright,' Russel agrees, just as quiet, and carefully gets his hands in between them to lift her.

2D is quite capable of carrying her, and she knots her fingers into his T-shirt, refusing to let go. Laughing, 2D tells Russel it's alright, she can stay, and somehow manages to get her up onto his hip so he can carry her to the nearest couch. The floor is nice and all, but it's pretty hard. And it's no good for 2D's back, being all bony and thin and sticky-out as it is.

So to the couch they go, and she wriggles as close as she can get before 2D eventually realises she's awake, and he laughs, that breathless, baffled little laugh he does when he's not sure what his reaction should be, and he only has laughter to fall back on. Laughter diffuses a situation. Makes people stop, makes people think.

She peeks up at him from under her hair shoved into her lashline by her helmet, and he carefully brushes it to the sides so that she doesn't ruffle it with every blink.

'You were never asleep,' he accuses, gentle, because bless him, Stuart Pot doesn't know how to be mean if he got a million pounds for it. He'd try and emulate Murdoc, but Murdoc doesn't much know how to be mean either.

Violent and aggressive and angry, yes. Rude and immature and hyper-aware of his own ugliness, true. But mean, no, no, he doesn't do mean very well. He has a knee-jerk reaction to things, spits insults as a shield, throws fists and palms and bottles as a retaliation for his own lack of understanding.

And 2D copying that is like a child copying their father without having an understanding or context for their father's actions. It's sweet, in that roundabout way that requires a fisheye lens and several strong bevs to be able to call it something as saccharine and inappropriate as "sweet."

'No,' she agrees, because she needs to say something. 'Don't tell.'

'I won't,' he promises, and he won't.

2D is bad at keeping secrets. But he's good at not telling. He forgets easily; secrets are something to remember. Not telling is something completely different.

See, she thinks. See. She knows them, she understands people. She has learnt many things. She doesn't need a tutor. She does not need to learn, she is learning just fine on her own.

'Tutor,' she mumbles into his shirt, sounding the word out.

She had a tutor. A teacher. She had one back – back – she had one. She thinks.

'Yeah,' 2D nods, 'yeah, to help with your – with your English, 'cause we don't know what you say, yeah? And if we get someone who knows what we say and you say, then we don't gotta do that picture game where you gotta draw things not words.'

Noodle knows all about the picture game where you draw things instead of words, and she knows all about how awful an artist Murdoc Niccals is, especially when he's had a few too many and can't think of the word he's trying to draw. Jesus wept.

She hums, and frowns into the faded Tazar scrawled across 2D's T-shirt, and then lifts her head again.

'Words are good,' she says, and 2D nods.

'Words are real good! You'll like words a lot, Noods, I promise. You'll be able to – to – you get to make jokes about Murdoc, and we get to laugh at 'em, 'cause we get them.'

Noodle has tried for many moons to get the boys to understand her jokes, going as far as drawing (incredibly shitty) pictures to explain the concept, but once you have to explain a joke, it stops being funny, so she gave up, and she makes herself laugh, and Russell says that's the important thing. As long as she makes herself laugh, no one can stop her.

She's the best guitarist in the world, anyway, so Murdoc says, and if Murdoc knows anything, he knows music, especially guitars, and he wouldn't lie to her.

See, knows him.

She doesn't need a tutor.

But words are nice, 2D's right.

'I will see this tutor,' she says, and 2D looks baffled for a second.

'You will?' he asks, when it's sunk in.

She nods, and moves to sit next to him, rather than in his lap, because if she's going to have a tutor, she's going to have to look like a grown-up, and behave better than not at all.

'Yes. I will see this tutor. He will be good, yes?'

'I should think so,' 2D nods, 'Russ won't get a shit – a bad one! He knows how to talk to people.'

Noodle considers this.

'We'll see,' she says.

Alan is a fucking idiot, and she hates him on sight. But he speaks fluent Japanese and uses slang she'd forgotten about, and she likes that enough to not kick him in the shins every time he tries to correct her pronunciation of 2D.

NOTES:

- GUESS WHO'S BACK SORTA KINDA PROBABLY NOT REALLY

- I got a really nice anon on tumblr who was really nice, shout out, friend!

- its weird writing these guys again, we'll see how long it lasts, don't get your hopes up lol

- hope you enjoyed, lovelies~!