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Glenn begged off from the other dads as soon as they stopped to make camp. He picked a direction at random and walked until he couldn’t hear them quietly discussing their pity and concern for him. Fuck that noise. He’d gotten this far without discussing his feelings with Henry, he sure as hell wasn’t gonna start now, without anything around to take the edge off.
He walked another few hundred yards after that, just for good measure. Or maybe it was a few miles. It was still hard for him to tell if time was moving at the right speed, whatever that meant here. He eventually laid down with his back to the trees that surrounded a small clearing and closed his eyes, hoping that exhaustion would take over his mind before he could think too long about everything that had happened.
Of course, he wasn’t gonna to be that lucky. He could only replay that moment over and over again, when Nick had nodded at him after stopping Jodie from wasting his ass. The memory was already cemented in his mind, but his brain seemed hell-bent on making sure Glenn could remember every single detail. He could see Nick’s stoic, disappointed face, newly wreathed in flames and staring down at him. He could hear Nick telling Jodie he wanted to go home, to the infernal plane. He could feel the heat on his face from the portal, and then the cold seeping into his bones as he sat, dumbstruck, after they left. And then it was time to remember again. Rinse and repeat.
At some point in his brooding, the memory of the infernal warmth on his face spread to… his back. Glenn took a moment to ponder if this hallucination was the first sign that his mind was finally ready to give up after everything he had experienced, or if the warmth creeping across his back was just another fun, new symptom of being 54 fucking years old. He let out a weary sigh when his mind gave no further indication of completely losing it and began shifting his weight to investigate the source of the warmth. Just as soon as he started to move, he froze when a small voice called out, a voice he didn’t think he’d be hearing again outside of his memories.
“Hey, Glenn.”
Glenn shot upright and swung his head around to find Nick, who sat cross-legged at the edge of the tree line, looking down at a small flame dancing in the palm of his hand. He hesitated for a moment before answering, not quite letting himself believe what he was seeing. Maybe his mind had actually given up, and whatever god watched over bards was giving him one final mercy before he bit the dust.
“Hey, kid. What’s up? Are you okay?”
Nick shrugged.
Before coming to Faerun, Glenn had learned from experience that it was best to let Nick cool off on his own at this point. He usually just made things worse if they tried to talk about whatever had upset him. But after watching Darryl “We’ll Talk About It Later” Wilson break Grant out of a similar mood first-hand, Glenn decided to risk wading further into the bad vibes and try prodding Nick for more information. No harm done if this was just a hallucination anyway.
“…where’s, uh, Jodie?”
“Busy with Dee Snyder for a while, I think. He said I could do whatever I wanted while he was gone”.
“Huh.”
“Yeah.”
They sat like that for a minute, or it could have been an hour, Glenn didn’t know. He just kept staring at Nick, who was still staring at the flame in his hand. He figured Darryl would probably try prodding again.
“Neat trick ya got there, bud.”
A small smile flashed across Nick’s face before he answered, “Thanks. Flying is pretty cool too, I guess.”
Back home, Glenn would’ve taken that ghost of a smile as a sign of job well done and gone back to whatever he had been doing before talking to Nick. But now, he felt emboldened by the apparent improvement in his ability to talk to his kid. He wanted to see Nick smile for real.
“Looked more than pretty cool to me. You looked like a badass up there, dude!”
Nick huffed out a small laugh before asking, “You think so?”
Glenn almost laughed himself at that. How could Nick not think he would be impressed by the flying guitar? He decided to go for the gold on this convo and remind Nick how proud he was of him.
“Hell yeah! It’s like I told ya, I’m so proud of you, bud.”
The smile on Nick’s face fell away. Glenn’s brain instantly panicked and told him to bounce before things got worse, but he held his breath and waited on pins and needles for Nick to respond. Nick’s other hand slowly flexed and unflexed several times before he spoke again, a tight fist to fingers splayed out wide.
“I thought… you might be mad at me. For leaving.”
Oh, Glenn realized. Nick had just gone through the most traumatic experience of his life (twice?) and he was still worried about what Glenn thought. This probably wasn’t a hallucination then, Glenn’s subconscious could never have achieved this level of emotional perception by itself. They would’ve been discussing whether Faerun had the same aliens as Earth by now if his brain was actually in charge. Another beat passed while Glenn ruminated on his new realization, but Nick never looked up from his flame. Glenn wished, selfishly, that Nick would look up so he could see his face again.
“I would never be mad at you for goin’ your own way, Nick.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah! I love you more than life, kid.”
The flame in Nick’s hand raged into a small fireball before suddenly extinguishing. Now Nick was just staring at his empty hands as he hollowly responded, “You sure had a funny way of showing it, old man.”
Glenn silently cursed himself for trying to play it cool and detached while he scrambled to form an apology. “I know. I know, Nick. And I’m… sorry, ya know, for being such a screw-up. You always deserved a better dad than I could be.”
Nick’s head snapped up.
“Oh yeah? Then why the fuck didn’t you just try harder? If you knew I deserved so much better?”
Oh fuck, definitely not a hallucination, Glenn was not prepared for the direction this conversation was taking. The stream of curses of his brain picked up in speed and intensity and he could only stammer out, “I, uh, I, I-“
An hour ago, Glenn had assumed he had gotten to avoid this particular conversation and his brain had promptly deleted any lingering ides for how he might explain himself to Nick. But Nick wasn’t waiting around for him to figure it out and cut him off before he could give any lame excuses.
“I thought you hated being around me. I thought it was my fault whenever you dipped out or got stoned or-, or drunk off your ass after I dared to ask you something about Mom!”
The flame in Nick’s hand was back and burning much more erratically than before. It garishly highlighted his features from below, so that Glenn had a clear view of his face, twisted in anger, as he continued, ”So I stopped fucking asking about her! And I tried to just be cool about it like you! I tried so hard to be cool enough for you!”
A look of horror crossed over Glenn’s face as he slowly dragged himself to sit fully upright and face Nick, whose chest was still heaving after his outburst. He slowly shook his head in disbelief while he stammered, “Christ, Nick… no, no that’s not... shit, I didn’t know you felt like that, man.”
Nick didn’t respond and only continued to glare at Glenn. Glenn scrambled to think of something he could say, to let Nick know he was already cooler than Glenn would ever be, that following Glenn’s example was a huge mistake.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be… better for you, Nick. You’re the best kid a guy like me could ever hope for. But you don’t gotta worry about me anymore, man. You can just worry about bein’ a kid.”
Nick threw his head the side while he rolled his eyes and let out a wordless, exasperated groan that morphed into an acidic snarl, “Oh, fuck off, Glenn!” His wings exploded out from his back as he began to scream in earnest.
“I’m not a fucking kid anymore!”
Nick searched Glenn’s face, incredulous, for just a moment before he jumped up into the air with a frustrated, “GOD!”. Both of his fists burst into bright blue flames and his eyes flared open, wild with rage, as he continued to yell.
“I paid all the goddamn bills while you were on tour last year, asshole! I practiced the drums until my hands bled, just to impress you! I pretended I thought it was funny every time you came stumbling home at 4 in the morning!” Embers rained down around Glenn as Nick gesticulated wildly, punctuating his last accusation with a finger pointed directly at Glenn.
“Don’t fucking tell me to be a kid, you son of a bitch, because I never got to be one around you!”
Another eternity passed while Nick tried to get his breathing under control, gaze unwavering. The flames around his fists only grew larger and more volatile while he waited to see if Glenn would react.
“Fucking say something, coward!”
Glenn sat, as still as a stone, even though his mind was racing. He breathed in and out slowly, once, twice; trying to figure out what to say without anything to help him drown out the panicked voice in his head that was begging him to leave until Nick had calmed down. He clenched his fists and used the pressure from his fingernails digging into his palms to center himself before he spoke.
“Nick, um…, nothing I say or do now can… make up for what I put you through. I can’t take it back.”
He blinked a few times and realized that at some point, he had let himself gaze off into the middle-distance. He forced himself to turn back and look at Nick before continuing, “And I know you know that, ‘cause you were brave enough to walk away from me and my bullshit.”
The anger on Nick’s face melted into disappointment as Glenn spoke, and he began drifting back down to the ground. “But I… I didn’t want to walk away from you! I wanted to wait for you to figure out all your bullshit, so we could have fun again. I- I did all that work and I still don’t get to be with you? God, I just wanted to wait until I was old enough to hang.”
His shoulders slumped forward when he landed, seemingly exhausted from the outburst, but Nick still must have noticed the way Glenn furrowed his brow at that, because he asked, “Don’t you remember all the stuff you promised me we’d do when I was old enough?”
Before Glenn could even respond, Nick rushed to explain, imploringly, “We were supposed to get into a car chase with the cops on Lower Wacker Drive, and-, and steal a copy of the Declaration of Independence from the gift shop at the Smithsonian, and, uh, we were gonna camp out at Devil’s Tower and blast the tones all night! Y-you promised me, man!”
Glenn’s face fell as he remembered how many times he’d told Nick they’d do all the crazy shit in their favorite movies when he was old enough to really hang. He had never really bothered to make any plans for how he was going to make good on those promises, always assuming he’d be able to take more time off work later down the road. He definitely hadn’t considered that Nick would be the one who wasn’t around whenever Glenn was ready to go.
Nick couldn’t hear his inner turmoil though, and he immediately changed gears when he saw Glenn’s crestfallen expression.
“Dad, I-, I’m sorry for yelling, I don’t care what you were like before! It doesn’t even matter ‘cause I handled everything fine! And- and, you can be better now, you don’t have to go on tour anymore, you can be home and we can hangout all the time! Or, at least now I’ll know where you are whenever you have to leave again to go… work a wedding or whatever.”
Glenn’s face only fell further while Nick desperately tried to convince (Glenn? Himself?) that Glenn could still be a better father, the kind of dad Nick needed.
“Nick… number one, you don’t have to be sorry for yellin’ at me, I deserve it, but number two… what are you sayin’ bud? You want to come back with me? You don’t wanna stay with Jodie?”
“Augh!” Nick threw up his hands in frustration. “I don’t fucking know! I have no idea who, or what I even am anymore! I just… I stuck it out for so long while you were barely around, and now I can’t even hang out with you anymore?”
Glenn shook his head in utter disbelief. He had no idea how he ended up with a son like Nick, who forgave every fuck-up and still wanted to give him another chance even now, but he knew he didn’t deserve him. It was only a matter of time before the memories dragged him down again, and who knows what would happen when Nick got old enough to join him in his attempts to forget the bad times.
“I know it sucks dude, but come on, you know better than anyone what I’m like to be around, and you don’t need me setting anymore shitty examples for ya. You’re better off here, with Jodie.”
Nick’s eyes narrowed as he took in Glenn’s ashamed expression.
“So why don’t you just fucking quit getting wasted all the time, Glenn, how about that? Why can’t you get sober instead of making me leave?”
Glenn puffed out a huge, defeated breath. Sure, he was technically ten years sober now, but he knew how easy it would be to slip up once they were home again.
“Because that’s not how it works, bud. Not when you spent your whole life usin’ just so you can ignore how you’re really feelin’. I tried to quit. A lot. Even before your Mom di-,” he caught himself, not quite sure how to refer to his version of Morgan anymore, “…uhhh, before… the accident. Never stuck.”
Nick didn’t look impressed with his explanation. Glenn squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fingers to his temples as he struggled to articulate exactly why he couldn’t be the kind of dad Nick needed. “Look, man, I could try as hard as I can, every day, to stay clean and still fuck up.”
He opened his eyes to look back up at Nick. “And I can’t let myself take any more chances around you. I’ve already fucked up your life enough as it is.”
This was more honest emotion than he had expressed in the last 5 years combined, so his next few thoughts came out more agitated than he intended as he fought against the voice in his head telling him, Shut up already, dumbass, no one wants to hear it, just take something and chill the fuck out!
“Hell, even if I could stay clean for as long as you needed me, I still don’t know how to be a good dad. I don’t know how to deal with my own feelings, man, and I’m a grown-ass adult! I sure as shit can’t help you figure out yours!”
Glenn was struggling to keep his voice from exploding into full-on hysteria now, so he in took in a long, shaky breath, held it for 4 counts like Henry had taught him, and rushed to continue, “Whenever I got dealt a shit hand, I ignored it, and if that didn’t work, I did whatever it took to make me forget it happened. And you can fuckin’ see for yourself where it got me.”
Glenn’s shoulders slumped down, utterly exhausted.
“You deserve a dad who can actually support you through the hard shit, man. I-, I love you so much, Nick, and I wish I could be there for you… but I know you’ll be way better off growin’ up without me around. I’m the worst example a kid could have.”
Nick rolled his eyes at that.
“Yeah, fucking tell me something I don’t know, Glennjamin,” he muttered darkly.
Nick snapped his fingers in agitation and a small flame appeared at tip of his pointer finger. He began to pace in a circle as he spoke again, snapping the flame in and out of existence.
“So what? Is this it? I’m just supposed to pretend that you were never my dad? Guess I can go ask Willy fuckin’ Stampler to wipe my memories again if you really want me outta your life that bad.”
Glenn couldn’t control how he grimaced at that. He knew he deserved Nick’s anger, but it still stung like hell.
“Don’t get it twisted, dude. I love hanging out with you, more than anything, but you just can’t be around me all the time anymore. It’s not safe for you.”
Nick stopped his pacing abruptly and swung around to face Glenn and point a flaming finger at him again.
“Oh, so now you get to tell me what I can and can’t do, now you care about my safety. After you already made me learn how to take care of myself and your sorry ass. Cool. Cool cool cool cool cool.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Nick. I know it’s not fair.”
Nick glared at him for another long moment until he plopped down into the same position Glenn found him in, looking down to pick at his cuticles (a bad habit he had picked up from Glenn) while he spoke.
“Well, you’re fucking stuck with me until Jodie comes looking for me, ‘cause I already forgot how to get back to his castle in the infernal plane and I don’t feel like wandering around down there like a dumbass.”
He looked back up to glare at Glenn again, waiting a moment for some kind of protest, before he continued.
“And I wanna hear some stories about Mom. From before all this shit. I have my… other memories of her now, but…,” A look of confusion briefly passed across Nick’s face, but he quickly shook his head and replaced the expression with another glare as he looked back to Glenn.
“Least you can do is finally tell me somethin’ about how she ended up with your sorry ass in the first place.”
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right, kid.”
Nick let himself flop onto his back to look up at the stars.
“’course I am, old man.”