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It started with something as simple as a carton of milk in his hands. 2D had come into the kitchen to make tea. And like a black cloud Murdoc appeared and began rummaging through the fridge. 2D kept his back turned, humming mindlessly, until Murdoc turned his attention to 2D and demanded why he hadn't bought more milk when he was at the shops a few days ago.
"I didn't know we needed any," 2D admitted with a shrug as he unscrewed the plastic cap of the carton. "I'll get some next time."
"Will you?" Murdoc asked, his voice hardening. "Or will you forget, like you usually do?"
There was a beat of absolute silence save for the clink of the spoon as 2D stirred sugar into his tea.
"Usually?" 2D mused in a low voice, keeping his eyes focused on the tea he was making and not the bassist beside him folding his arms with a smug look in his peripheral. 2D had a poor memory, sure, but he remembered lots of things: to check if the milk was running low, to turn his shirts inside out before folding them, the sound of glass breaking right beside his head.
"Always," Murdoc corrected in a decisive tone of voice like he was the one to decide anything about 2D anymore.
"I don't see the issue, Muds." 2D put down the carton of milk, his posture defensive as he stood at the counter. He didn't understand what Murdoc was getting at. "S'just milk, innit? I'll get some tomorrow, like I said."
"It’s the milk you forgot this time, but tomorrow who knows?" There was a gleam in Murdoc's eyes, borderline sadistic. "The burning stove, perhaps...?”
2D looked at Murdoc, his white eyes narrowed in genuine offense.
“I ain’t that forgetful, Muds,” he scoffed, but he felt something begin to curdle in the back of his throat. “You’re makin' me out to sound like some sort of invalid, or somethin'.”
“More like a dog, perhaps?" Murdoc offered with a chuckle. There it was. That rotten, Niccals meanness.
"Dogs are loyal, aren't they?" 2D’s throat clicked as it worked, an awful heat climbing up from his collar. He hated being compared to a dog. Murdoc knew that.
"It's hardly loyalty when you couldn’t have left if you tried."
The air in the room dropped several degrees, and the room tilted on its axis. 2D stared blankly, but he wasn’t seeing Murdoc or carton of milk on the counter that started all of this nonsense. He was seeing every instance where he’d forgot to remember how awful their relationship had always been.
Reality then shifted into place with the sickening swiftness of a jaw snapping. Jarring. Sudden. Murdoc had called him a dog, because 2D behaved like a dog-- loyal to someone content on kicking him for wanting to sit by their legs. An animal punished for craving proximity.
“You couldn’t have left if you tried.”
That was the kick that broke the ribs. And you needed ribs to run away.
“God, you're such— such a bastard, Murdoc!” 2D spat, wheeling on the bassist to glare daggers through him. He was angry now— something he never was, something he always hated being— because yes, sometimes he forgot how Murdoc made him feel, but every day he woke up and forgave that stupid bassist, even when he didn’t know anything else.
“Every day you've been awful to me, and what do I do?" 2D asked rhetorically, his arm swinging out like it might grab onto something he could make sense of. "Nothing!"
"That's exactly my fuckin' point, you idiot!” Murodc snapped, an incredulous laugh building in his chest. “You come back like a damn mutt every time!”
2D felt a hot, stabbing pain in the back of his throat and bit the inside of his cheek to keep his eyes from tearing up. How many years had he wasted on this irredeemable person, on someone who would never try to get better despite 2D's most honest and genuine belief in them?
But it wasn't 2003 anymore, and he wasn't twenty-five. 2D was a stronger man than he was back then when he was younger. So, with his jaw set, he shoved Murdoc back, hard, and stormed out of the kitchen before he did anything else he'd end up regretting, like letting it go.
Murdoc stumbled back from the force of 2D's shove, his arm jarring the carton of milk, which toppled over on the counter and began glugging out onto the floor like an oil spill.
Now, hours later in the same day, Murdoc found 2D sitting in the studio alone. His shoulders were hunched, his posture folded in on himself. He didn’t look small. He looked tired.
Murdoc pulled out a pack of Lucky Lungs and offered him one without a word, an olive branch in a war 2D had always insisted they never needed to have. 2D looked at the pack in Murdoc’s hand, then looked up at the bassist with the eyes of a dog that knew the treat in his hand was poison. With a resigned sigh, he took one anyways and tucked it into his mouth.
"Got a light?" he mumbled. Murdoc produced a flame and sat beside him, leaving enough space for 2D to push him away again. But he knew he wouldn't.
The silence between them was horrendous. It was heavy and tangible and metallic. You could taste it. You could feel it.
“Why’d you write that song, Murdoc?”
It was spoken like a sigh— weary, tired, deflated. For a second, Murdoc debated on replying. What use was this conversation, anyways? But he was curious. Morbidly so.
“Come again?” he mused, cupping his lighter for a flame.
"To Binge," 2D muttered, taking a deeper drag of his cigarette, perhaps bracing himself. The silence in between was chilling.
“From what album? Plastic Beach?” Murdoc asked, honestly trying to recall memories that just wouldn’t come to the surface.
“Mhm.” The answer was stiff, brittle enough to shatter under a boot.
"Well, what’s it about?”
"You tell me,” 2D chuckled weakly, a humorless, tired sound. His finger lazily followed the rim of an empty ash tray. “You’re the one who wrote the whole album. You made a point to tell me so.”
"Right." It was Muroc's turn to reply rigidly. “To Binge?”
And then it all came rolling into him like a tidal wave.
I'll wait to be forgiven
My star has left me
I just have to tell you that I love you so much these days
"Right, well," Murdoc cleared his throat. The smoke wasn't helping. He could go for a drink. "It was dark time. Like... Picasso's blue period, one might say,” he added, lighting another cigarette. He didn’t even finish the first.
2D snorted and blew smoke into his own lap, his head bowed.
"Definitely not a love song, then?"
Murdoc looked at him, searching for 2D’s eyes, but the singer wasn’t looking at him.
I’m caught again in the mystery
You're by my side, but are you still with me?
And suddenly 2D didn’t look his age. He looked twenty-three, with eyes once hopeful that would only ever be brutally disappointed. A dog that didn't understand why it was being kicked.
Murdoc swallowed thickly like his mouth was full of tree sap.
“Definitely not.”
Guilty wasn't the word. It was a form of resentment, but for what exactly? Wasted time?
“You’re one to talk about love songs, you know," Murdoc said after a while.
2D’s eyes narrowed on his own shoes. The laces were knotted but close to coming undone.
"Hmm?"
"I will always think about you,” Murdoc replied matter-of-factly, and 2D’s obedient heart wrenched horribly in his chest. But Murdoc didn’t stop there.
"I'm love drunk, I'm sorry, am I losing you," the bassist listed the lyrics like bullet points on his grocery list. It was textbook Murdocian carelessness.
“At least I meant mine,” the singer retorted, but he didn’t sound as angry as he wanted to be. He kept his head down, like he used to always do, unable to meet the bassist’s eyes. Had he looked, however, he would have seen the flicker of what resembled guilt in the other's gaze.
"Of course you did,” Murdoc chided, suppressing the instinctual urge to argue that he had meant it, too. But he would be lying. He never meant his love songs. Because that's not what this was.
2D sighed once more, a defeated sound heavy with decades of unspoken things. He should have known Murdoc would lie and lie again. He’d hoped, foolishly, that after so many years now, Murdoc would shrug and admit that yes, he did once love him. That would have been enough.
Doesn’t matter anyways, 2D brooded, stubbing his cigarette and fumbling for another. 2D didn’t love him anymore.
This time, the silence grinded its molars. It groaned. It begged to be put out of its misery.
“Wishful thinking, I suppose that song was,” Murdoc admitted after a while, his voice low in a mutter like he couldn’t risk anyone hearing him.
"Yep," 2D agreed, popping the 'p'. He kept his head down. His cigarette trembled between his fingers. "Wishful."