OOO

Chapter 4: Nicotine

OOO

Murdoc didn't know when Noodle started smoking.

Then again, there were a lot of things that he didn't know about her now that he had missed out on a huge gap of her life spanning four years. He supposed in a way it was his fault. He ignored her distress signal. Waited too long. Didn't bother searching further and merely booted up Cyborg as a last fix to his deteriorating band instead of just ditching the damn music and getting her back in one piece. There was no telling what Noodle had been up to. It wasn't like the girl was forthcoming with much information about her travels. He only knew little snippets. She was in Hell. He heard her. She got out. She followed the pirates straight to him.

Everything else in between was fair game. Apparently that included her penchant for Marlboro's.

At first, it was a bittersweet process of learning the things about Noodle that changed since she was fifteen. She knew how to drive, although who she learned from was beyond him. She was legal enough to drink, and he sometimes saw her mixing sweet drinks with vodka and lychee liqueur late at night when she couldn't sleep. She had taken over the cooking of their meals now that Russel was too big to even fit his damn head through the door, and was pretty damn good at it. She'd grown a couple of inches, her hair had gotten longer, and her Japanese accent had lessened to a point where he could actually pick up on a lovely English lilt.

But Murdoc had woken up early one morning, craving a cig like he usually did first thing, and wandered into the kitchen, hoping to find one of the boxes that he had left lying around near the toaster. But when he passed the living room, he saw Noodle sitting on the couch, strumming her Telecaster, and cradling a cigarette loosely between her lips.

If she had noticed him come in, she didn't acknowledge him and simply continued to play. Murdoc stared out the window, saw that the sun was barely up, and muttered, "Your sleeping schedule is pretty shit, dollface."

Noodle laughed and stopped strumming, reaching up to pull her cigarette away and tap the ash over the ashtray on the coffee table. "That's rather funny coming from you."

Murdoc rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well, ain't no surprise that I'm fucked up. That's sorta my status quo. Band image and all that."

The guitarist nodded sagely. "Ah, yes. We wouldn't want to sully that, now would we?"

Noodle wasn't usually one for sarcasm — that was usually more his style — but now, the sarcasm was practically suffocating. Murdoc was slowly starting to realize that it was her passive aggressive way of dealing with Murdoc without blowing up at him like he suspected she really wanted to do sometimes.

Deciding that sitting next to her on the couch was probably not going to be received well, Murdoc walked around and sat in the edge of the coffee table so that he was directly diagonal of her. Murdoc dug around his pockets for a lighter or a book of matches. He jutted his chin towards the half full pack that Noodle had on the arm of the couch next to her. "Mind if I bum one?"

Noodle raised a brow and inhaled deeply before expelling the smoke in her lungs out through her nostrils, then out her mouth. Murdoc's face took on a similar look of bewilderment. Ever since he was a teenager, he had always thought that birds doing smoking tricks was some of the coolest shit he'd ever seen. Didn't know why, but it was a right sexy thing to watch. Just one of those things.

But there was a difference between some made-up, tight looking groupie with a gorgeous rack blowing smoke rings outside the club he had just finished playing at, and watching Noodle — little Noodle — sitting in the living room all by herself handling smoke like she'd been doing it for years. That bothered him. Noodle wasn't some run of the mill bird. Noodle was...well, Noodle. The rules were different for her. They always had been.

Still, she reached over and pulled out one cigarette from the box, holding it out to him. He reached out, grabbed the end of it between his teeth, and pulled it out of the box. Noodle was already there, clicking her lighter and holding the flame over the end of his stick for him. The familiar, comforting rush of a cig first thing in the morning immediately rushed to his head, filled his lungs, and calmed him right down.

Noodle had gone right back to strumming a few notes on her guitar — maybe some Led Zeppelin circa 1971, but he wasn't quite sure. They both took a couple of hits before Murdoc wrinkled his nose. "You know...never liked Marlboro's. I'm a Benson & Hedges man, myself."

The guitarist snorted and shook her head. "Old man," she teased. "I've never seen anyone under forty smoking those."

Murdoc scowled. "That's a load of shite and you know it, you tart." The girl did nothing but laugh and reach over to ash her spent cigarette before plucking another one right out of the box and lighting it up, returning to her guitar again as if she were only bothering to give Murdoc only the barest fraction of her attention, as if that's all she had the energy for. He eyed the butt of her cigarette, still lying in the ash tray without about four others that Murdoc knew he hadn't put there.

The bassist frowned. "'Sides," he continued gruffly. "How would you know? When the the fuck did this start up?"

The strumming finally stopped and Noodle looked down at her toes that were curling into the carpet. She shrugged and answered without looking at him. "I don't know," she admitted. "Just sort of...picked it up, I guess."

"Nah, love," Murdoc said, reaching to ash his spent cigarette as well. "You 'sort of pick up' a coin off the ground. You don't 'sort of pick up' smoking. Haven't you learned anything from growing up with sacks of shit like me and 'D?"

Noodle rolled her eyes and set her guitar aside on the couch next to her. "You know, it's funny, but it almost sounds like you care," she replied bitterly. "But, it must be my imagination. Murdoc only cares about himself."

The insult made Murdoc chuckle. Alright, fine. He deserved that. But that didn't mean he was done. "That shit makes you rot from the inside, love," he tried to tell her. "Not the kind of thing a sweet girl like you should be doing."

"Well, in case you haven't noticed, this sweet girl has gone through her fair share of rot," Noodle grumbled.

"I don't give a shit, Noodle," Murdoc argued as he leaned towards her, using her full name to try and get her full attention. "I don't want to see you with this fuckin' crap anymore. You were ten years old and hiding my packs all the damn time 'cause you hated the stench. Now you're suckin' on these things like they're candy! Gimme a fuckin' break!"

"You smoke them too!" she argued back, raising her voice. "You're telling me you and 'D are allowed to do whatever you want, but the minute I do something you don't like, it's a bad thing?"

"I'm different, Noods," Murdoc growled. "I'm a piece of shit, if I wanna fuck up my lungs and sell my soul and be right arse, that's my damn prerogative. But you're not doing this shit."

Noodle threw her head back and laughed — a bitter laugh that was reminiscent of all those horrid fights the two of them seemed to get into all the time. "Oh, here we go! Murdoc is such a bad person. Murdoc is such a low life. Murdoc is such a screw up. Murdoc has an excuse for everything. Don't be surprised if Murdoc can't do anything decent. He can't help it!"

Murdoc winced and tried to calm his temper, suddenly feeling like he was dealing with a teenager instead of a twenty-something year old woman who should know better than to start things that she knew could kill her. He huffed out his nose and stared at her pointedly. "I'm not kidding. Put that damn thing out!"

Lord, he didn't think he'd ever seen that girl to angry and downright bitter. And if that wasn't an even stranger sight than seeing her not sleeping or seeing her blackening her lungs with things she used to spit at in Japanese when she was still little. Suddenly, it wasn't so much that he was pissed about the smoking, but suddenly he was pissed about all the changes — the ones that he didn't like, the ones that weren't fun to learn about, the ones that made him cringe and feel like he'd failed at something else.

Before she could even open her mouth to protest, Murdoc immediately plucked the fag out from between her lips and snatched up the pack that was still resting on the arm of the couch. He felt Noodle's fingers reach out to grab back her stash, but he was already climbing over the piles of clutter that were by the window. She was reaching around him while he flew open the window and flung her pack and her lit cigarette out the window and down two stories before slamming it shut.

"Kono yarou!" Noodle shouted, following Murdoc as he bursted out of the living room and started stomping up the stairs. "Ittai nani wo yatten da?"

But Murdoc wasn't bothered by the noise she was making. Let her wake up the whole house. He didn't give a flying fuck. "Can't understand you when you talk like that, Noods," he shouted over his shoulder. "You know that."

He made a sharp left on the next landing and felt Noodle shove him on the back of his shoulder. "What was that all about? Throwing it out the window? Really? Are you crazy?"

Murdoc scoffed. "Oh, you ain't seen nothing yet," he warned. "I wasn't kidding. You're cutting this shit out."

Noodle made a few frustrated noises and nearly stopped dead in the hallway as if she had never seen him act irrational or out of his head before. "What are you even — what are you doing!? Get out of my room!"

But Murdoc wasn't listening to her screams or her curses. He walked over to her bedside table and plucked up another pack that he found there, stuffing it into his pockets. He opened the drawers to the table one by one until he found another pack hidden underneath a pile of guitar picks and sheet music. He slammed the drawer shut and stuffed that pack into his pocket as well. He made his way over to her clothing drawers and flung them all open. He pointed one finger menacingly into the overflowing drawers and growled, "I'm confiscating your stash. Hand them over."

"What are you, my father?" Noodle spat out. "You're not confiscating anything. They're mine!"

"You don't get it, love," Murdoc stated. "I don't care if they're yours, 'D's, or mine. I don't want you having them, so hand them the fuck over!"

"Why do you care so much?" Noodle finally shouted out, bringing her hands up to rake roughly through her hair. "It's my business what I'm doing, and I have no idea why you're trying to get involved. It doesn't concern you."

Murdoc slammed one of the drawers shut and bounded towards Noodle until he was standing right in front of her, staring down at her and shouting louder than he had meant to. "It does concern me! I already fucked up looking out for you once and I ain't doing that again. So if I have to rip this house apart and find every goddamn pack you're hiding just to make sure you don't put yourself in an early grave, I damn well fucking will!"

His voice was still reverberating through the thin walls of Noodle's room, and his last curse was still hanging heavy in the air. Noodle was speechless, staring at him wide-eyed as if Murdoc had just said something so fantastic that she hadn't expected to hear it out loud, especially not directed at her. Murdoc closed his eyes and sighed, suddenly realizing that was probably exactly why she was staring at him so strangely.

He and Noodle had been strange since they'd gotten to this place. Some days they got along and some days they were like this — screaming and shouting because they kept saying things at each other that brought up bad tastes and horrible memories and neither of them felt like talking to the other about it. If anything, this was the first time something constructive had come out of his mouth and the first time that Noodle had heard it. He was trying to put off a conversation between the two of them, but this wasn't how he had wanted to initiate it.

Suddenly feeling drained and annoyed, he turned and sat on the floor and leaned his back against the edge of Noodle's bed, the fight and anger already leaving him. He placed his feet flat on the ground and propped his arms up on his knees. His hands wiped down his face tiredly and he suddenly felt the early hour in his bones. He stayed there for a while, staring at the open door until Noodle finally quietly walked across her room and sat down next to Murdoc, mirroring his position and not bothering to say anything.

They sat like that for a while and let the silence between them simmer. For a moment, Murdoc remembered those days after he had gotten out of that Mexican prison and had made it back to Kong where Noodle was bunkering down and dealing with the zombie infestation that had plagued their studio. It was just the two of them for a while before 2D and Russel eventually got back, and it was then that he realized what a bright girl that Kyuzo bloke had sent him. They used to sit on the floor of her bedroom, sitting just like this, listening through the demos she'd recorded on her Tascam four-track and giving her notes and comments on what was a pretty decent start to what would be one of their best albums.

What the fuck happened to the two of them?

Murdoc lost track of how much time went by, but the ringing silence was interrupted by Noodle softly muttering next to him. "Did you mean it?"

He turned to her and looked down at the top of her head. He smiled to himself. She was still as small as ever. "Mean what?"

"The other day...when you said you stopped looking for me...that there was no point." She swallowed audibly and looked up at him. "Did you mean it?"

It was very rare that Murdoc ever regretted the things he did, and even rarer the things he said. But seeing that imploring look in her eyes — like he was holding her heart in his hands — made him wish he could go back to that ridiculous fight they had and take back every single word of what he had said to her. She didn't deserve this shite. She was far too good for it.

He swallowed and spoke gruffly. "Not in the way you think, love," Murdoc muttered. "I looked, I did. Called up demons that had no good business with me. Looked up every illegal contact, ever scum of the Earth that would want me dead...but nothing," he sighed. He stared down at his knuckles — rough, scabbed over, and uneven from multiple breaks. "For a while, I thought they'd want you dead too," he admitted quietly. "And I didn't want to look for something and be scared shitless of what I might find."

He straightened his legs and let them fall open. "So yeah...I stopped looking. But not because there wasn't any point. But because I didn't want to find you dead somewhere because of something I did. I figured if you were really okay...well, you're a clever girl. You would have found your way back."

Noodle tucked her knees to her chest and rested her chin on top of them, making her look about five years younger than she actually was. "I could have been alive," she muttered into her jeans. "I was alive."

Murdoc nodded and couldn't bear to look at her. "Yeah, I'd thought of that. Guess I was bein' selfish."

Noodle didn't say anything in response, and Murdoc didn't really blame her. There wasn't much you could really say that. Murdoc was scared of what he'd find, so he just didn't bother looking. He should have tried harder. He promised her when she was a little girl that he'd look after her. Of course, his excuse was always because it'd be a bitch to find another guitarist with a quarter of her talent, but he knew in his heart of hearts that wasn't totally true. He'd grown fond of the girl — the only bird he could be around for an extended period of time that didn't want to make him take a drink. He owed her a lot more than he was giving her, and he'd been wondering how to make things right with her again.

Right when he thought she was going to go ahead and give him the silent treatment for the rest of the night, Noodle stood up and walked across her room to one of the drawers that Murdoc had flung open earlier. She shuffled around her tank tops until she pulled out two more packs of cigarettes. She grabbed Murdoc's hand and slapped them into his palm. She bit on her lip and looked up at him. "That's all of it. I promise."

He stared down at the packs, and mumbled. "You don't have to quit if you don't want to, love."

"I know," she smiled back. "But keep them anyway."

Murdoc curled his fingers around them and stuffed them into his back pockets. He'd probably give them to 2D — god knows that idiot blew through two packs of these a day. He nodded to himself and grinned back at Noodle. "Thanks love."

He wasn't sure what possessed her to do it, but she dropped down to her knees, crawled into Murdoc's lap, and wrapped her arms around his neck like she was ten years old again. He immediately wrapped his arm around her waist and let his other hand rest on the top of her head, smoothing down her choppy strands of hair that never knew how to sit flat on top of her head.

He heard her sniff and bury her face into the crook of his neck. "I'm sorry for yelling at you," she mumbled quietly.

Murdoc pulled her tighter and kept patting her head, trying to make everything alright. "You don't have to apologize, doll. You didn't do anything wrong."

The one who had a lot of apologizing left to do was him.

OOO

-Headcanon that Noodle slips back into Japanese when she's really pissed.

-Kono yarou = roughly translates to "You shit" or "You blighter." Basically just an expression of anger that's usually aimed at men.

-Ittai nani wo yatten da? = What the heck are you doing?