Chapter Text
Murdoc Niccals was not right in the head.
It was a simple fact of life: grass is green, the sky is blue, and Murdoc has problems out the wazoo. He’d wear that last part like a badge of honor if it didn’t feel so much like a brand burned into his skin.
Kong Studios groaned around him that night. The building had a way of doing that—settling into itself, sighing through cracked pipes and rusting beams. Murdoc swore it was haunted, though most days he knew it was just his imagination filling in the blanks between creaks. Still, he liked to believe there were ghosts rattling about the place. Better company than the living, some days.
He sat in the lounge with his bass sprawled across his lap like an oversized pet. His fingers dragged over the strings, careless, coaxing out a droning hum that vibrated through his chest. The amp buzzed faintly, the sound bleeding into the emptiness of Kong’s halls. He was drinking, naturally. Half a bottle of something cheap perched on the coffee table, sweating condensation onto wood that had already seen worse stains.
The first sip had gone down sharp and bitter, like battery acid. By the third, it was almost smooth. Now the burn was more of a background hum, a familiar companion crawling through his veins.
Drink. Strum. Hum. Repeat.
The cycle was easy. The cycle was safe. The cycle drowned things out.
But the thing about drowning is, if you stop swimming, you sink.
An empty bottle tipped over with a hollow clatter. Murdoc flinched. It wasn’t loud, but in the stillness of Kong it sounded like a gunshot. His hand jerked on the strings, and the note wailed ugly, dissonant, like a scream. He winced, muttered something filthy under his breath, and shoved the bottle aside with his boot.
The sound should’ve meant nothing. Just glass rolling. Just gravity doing its job. But his brain was quicker than his booze, and suddenly he wasn’t in Kong anymore. He was back in Stoke-on-Trent, twelve years old, sitting at the kitchen table with his father’s empty pint glass rattling down on the wood—clatter—right before the shouting started. Right before the back of his head met the wall.
Murdoc swore again, louder this time, but the words shook. He turned the volume on his amp up too high, trying to smother the echo. Bass thundered in the room, rattling the picture frames, making the floorboards tremble. Louder. Louder. If he could make enough noise, maybe he could drown the past out.
But noise didn’t erase memory. It only sharpened it.
His father’s voice slithered out from the cracks in his mind. “Useless little sod. Waste of bloody air. You think you’re clever? Think you’re something special? You’re nothing. You’ll always be nothing.”
Murdoc’s grip on the neck of his bass tightened until his knuckles went white. He pressed the strings down too hard, distorting the note into a metallic shriek. His stomach lurched, equal parts nausea and rage.
“Shut up,” he muttered. His throat was dry. He reached for the bottle again and found it empty. Of course it was.
The echo in the hall answered him. Just empty space feeding him back his own words: Shut up… shut up… shut up…
He wanted to smash the bass into the wall. He wanted to smash his head into the wall. He wanted silence, real silence, not this looping of his own voice tangled with the bastard’s.
Instead, he stumbled to his feet, nearly tripping over the blanket he’d kicked aside earlier. An old, ratty thing, frayed edges, cigarette burns marking the fabric like constellations. He scooped it up without thinking, dragging it with him as he staggered down the corridor toward his room. His door creaked shut behind him with the finality of a coffin lid.
Inside, the air was stale. The curtains were drawn, though it was night anyway. Posters peeled from the walls, corners curled like they were trying to escape. A few tapes sat stacked on the dresser, relics from years past. Murdoc dropped the blanket on the bed, then dropped himself after it, curling around the bass still clutched in his hands.
He muttered, words spilling out unchecked. Most were curses, some were half-formed insults aimed at a father who wasn’t there. A few were pleas, whispered so low they barely existed. “Leave me alone. Don’t look at me. Don’t touch me.”
His chest heaved. His breath came shallow, stuttering. Every creak of the studio walls sounded like a footstep in the hall. Every shift of shadow was a hand reaching. He pulled the blanket tighter, wrapping it around his shoulders like armor. The fabric smelled faintly of mildew and cigarettes, but it was familiar, grounding.
Regression wasn’t sweet for him. It wasn’t toys and crayons and giggles. It was the crawl back into the skin of a cornered child, the one who learned silence as survival. It was shame curdling in his gut, panic clawing at his throat, self-loathing dripping from every thought. He hated it, hated how his body folded in on itself without his permission, how he shook like he was waiting for blows that wouldn’t come.
He pressed his forehead to the bass, the strings imprinting lines into his skin. He whispered nonsense, half lullabies he didn’t remember learning, half muttered insults at himself. His voice cracked. He wished he could disappear into the floor, sink right through the boards and vanish where no one could see him like this.
But no one was looking. That was the curse and the mercy both.
Alone in Kong. Alone with ghosts and echoes. Alone with a blanket and a tape he didn’t even bother to put in the player. He clutched the cassette in one hand anyway, the plastic case digging into his palm. It grounded him, sharp edges against soft skin. He clung like it might keep him from floating away.
Minutes bled into hours. His muttering slowed. His body slumped against the mattress. The panic simmered into exhaustion. His grip on the tape loosened, and it slid to the sheets. The bass slipped from his arms, resting against his knees. His breath steadied, though it still hitched on the inhale.
Finally, his eyes dragged shut. Not peaceful. Not safe. Just heavy with the kind of fatigue that comes after a storm. The blanket cocooned him, and he let it.
Murdoc Niccals was not right in the head.
But for tonight, he could sleep.