𝙄𝙍𝙄𝙎

Foo Fighters

Barrett was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the basement, a cigarette tucked behind his ear and a stack of blank cassette cases beside him. Iris leaned over the table, pulling another tape from a cardboard box, squinting at the words scribbled in black Sharpie on the label.

"Foo Fighters?" she read aloud, raising an eyebrow. "What the hell does that mean?"

Dave grinned, crouched beside the two of them as he sealed another copy into its plastic case. "It's a World War II term. The military used it to describe unidentified flying objects before the term 'UFO' was a thing."

Barrett chuckled. "Nerd."

"I am a nerd," Dave said proudly. "But that's not the point."

He gestured to the tapes. "I put that name on there so it doesn't sound like me. Not like some 'Dave Grohl solo record' or whatever. I want people to hear it like it's a band. Anonymous. No baggage."

"You are the band, though," Iris said, flipping one of the tapes over in her hand. "You played everything."

"Yeah," Dave said with a small shrug. "But I want it to feel bigger than just me. Like something new. Not just 'the drummer from Nirvana made a tape in his basement.' I don't want people listening with those expectations."

Barrett nodded slowly. "Well, the music's good, man. Like... really good. People are gonna talk."

Dave didn't respond to that—just smiled a little and went back to stacking tapes. There were a hundred of them, carefully dubbed over the last week. Each one had twelve tracks: a mix of the old demo ideas he'd refined with Iris and Barrett, and new songs he'd recorded late at night when the grief, energy, and creativity collided all at once.

They weren't perfect. But they were his.

Over the following weeks, Dave started quietly passing them around. Friends in town. Old crew members. Other musicians he trusted. One copy went to a label guy he knew. Another found its way to a college radio DJ in Olympia.

Most times, he just smiled, handed someone a copy, and said, "Check this out if you get a minute."

And almost every time, they came back to him wide-eyed, floored.

"This is you?"
"You gotta release this."
"Man, these songs breathe. You have to do something with this."

Dave would shrug, always a little bashful, always a little overwhelmed. "I will," he'd say. "I'm figuring it out."

But inside, he was beginning to believe it; maybe for the first time in his life.

One afternoon, back at Barrett's, Dave sat on the back steps with Iris, a pile of empty tape cases beside them, drinking soda from glass bottles in the last rays of October sun.

"You really think people are going to care about this stuff?" he asked her quietly.

She looked at him, serious. "I think they already do."

He was quiet for a long moment, then he looked out at the sky, watching a plane trail cut a clean line through the blue.

"Foo Fighters," he murmured.

"What?"

He smiled. "Just thinking about the name. It's weird."

"Weird's good," she said.

He nodded. "Yeah. Weird. It might actually work."

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A/N 

super short chapter hope you guys don't mind

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