𝙄𝙍𝙄𝙎

The Tapes

The following afternoon, the sky hung low and silver, the kind of overcast that only Seattle could wear with pride. Iris arrived at Dave's new place just after noon, standing at the edge of the cracked driveway, studying the house with a curious, half-smile on her lips. It matched his description perfectly, it was so him. When Dave opened the door, she greeted him with a quick hug, her warmth melting some of the leftover nerves sitting in his stomach.

"Welcome to our palace," he joked as he led her inside, motioning toward the living room with its stacked records, old amps, and a weirdly comforting smell of tape dust and secondhand furniture.

Barrett popped his head around the corner, a mug of coffee in one hand, a freshly-lit cigarette in the other.

"Iris, right?" he said with an easy grin. "Finally nice to meet you. Dave's said, like, almost nothing about you, which I assume means you matter."

She laughed, shaking his hand. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"I meant it as one," Barrett said, already turning toward the hallway. "C'mon. Studio's in the basement. Might still smell like mold, but it's not too shabby."

The three of them headed down the narrow stairs, ducking beneath the low ceiling beams. The basement had the half-finished charm of a place made more for music than people— though it had a very fresh feeling compared to the rest of the place. You could tell where the two's priorities were, that was for sure. The chipboard walls you could find in any commercial recording studio, wires taped to the floor, and both old and new equipment pushed into corners like sleeping dogs. In the center, a new pleather couch sat beneath a poster of Black Flag,  it was already peeling at the edges.

Barrett moved to a metal shelf near the back, rummaging for a minute before pulling down a cardboard shoebox. It was stained with time, two pieces of tape on the lid; one labeled 1992-1993, the other read Nirvana sessions.

"Should be in here," he said, placing it on the table in front of them.

Dave knelt beside it, peeling open the flaps like it was a time capsule. Inside were a dozen or more cassette tapes. Barrett reached his hand inside and dug past the ones in Kurt's familiar illegible handwriting, and found the ones labeled in Dave's—some neat, some rushed, some crossed out and relabeled. Iris leaned in, eyes scanning the titles.

"'Watershed'... 'Winnebago'..." she murmured, lifting one of the tapes. "'Oh, George'? These are all yours?"

"Yeah," Dave said, shrugging a little. "Well—most of them. Some are just covers. But a few are originals I made when no one was around. Just me and whatever instrument I could grab first."

Barrett reached for the tape deck against the wall and slid one of the cassettes in. A short hiss of tape, then the raw clang of guitars filled the room—lo-fi, a little distorted, but alive in a way that made the space feel warmer.

Over the next hour, the three of them sat and listened. The tapes bled from one song to another—half-formed ideas, reverb-heavy riffs, covers of Hüsker Dü and The Germs, and in between, something entirely Dave.

About halfway through, Alone + Easy Target  came on—loud, jagged, and insistent. Iris sat up straighter, head beginning to nod. Barrett gave a low whistle.

"Dude," he said, grinning. "That's a whole song. Like, a real one."

Iris turned toward Dave. "This one feels like you. That energy? The chaos, but also the melody buried underneath. It's insane."

Dave chuckled, looking a little sheepish. "I was messing around. Didn't think it was anything special."

Next came "Big Me," and the contrast was immediate; clean, sweet, almost poppy. Dave seemed almost embarrassed when it started playing, but Iris gave a delighted laugh and lightly nudged his shoulder.

"I love this," she said. "It's totally different, but it still sounds like you. Just... softer. Like a breath between all the noise."

Barrett was already nodding. "You've got a range, man. You're a whole band by yourself."

The last track of the tape played out slowly, drawn out and melancholy. "Exhausted." Guitars stretched across the mix like a sigh, the vocals buried deep, almost like Dave didn't want to be heard.

When it ended, none of them spoke for a moment. Some of the lyrics, the ones that Iris could make out, really stood out to her in a way the others didn't. 

"That's the one I always came back to," Dave said finally. "That and the other two. Most of the rest are just experiments, or covers I did when I was trying not to think."

Iris leaned back, her eyes still on the now-silent tape deck. "Well, there's a chunk more than worth coming back to."

Dave looked over at her, something warm and unspoken in his gaze. The basement air was thick with nostalgia and potential—memories of grief, yes, but also threads of something new pulling through.

Barrett stood and stretched. "I'll leave you two to obsess over the tapes. I've got laundry upstairs and a sandwich that won't make itself."

Once he was gone, the room got quiet again—except for the hum of the amp and the soft squeak of Dave rewinding a tape with his thumbnail.

"You really think there's something here?" he asked her quietly.

She didn't hesitate. "Absolutely. You've got songs, Dave. Not just demos. You've got something worth building on."

Dave gave a small nod, thoughtful, as the tape clicked softly in his hands.

"Then maybe," he said, "it's time I stop hiding behind the drums and start figuring out what that something actually sounds like."

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A/N

Yay Foo Fighters stuff

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