Chapter Text
They were back.
Back in the house. Back together as a band. Back walking around like nothing had changed.
But things were not the same.
2D was a ghost of a person.
He was skinnier than Russel remembered. He looked dangerously thin. Every vein was visible though the paper-white skin of his forearms and hands. His jeans hung even lower, often slipping from the jagged edges of his hipbones. In a tank top, the knobs of his spine were visible.
His hair was longer, too, a blue mop sitting on his thin shoulders.
2D didn’t walk around the house on Wobble Street as much as he roamed. He could be found in the afternoons with headphones on in the living room or silently playing a video game with Noodle in the evening.
Aside from the drastic weight loss, 2D seemed fine. Maybe.
But his eyes were different. And he didn’t smile the same or much at all. He was carved out and stuffed with wires that occasionally lit a spark strong enough to elicit a nod or murmur.
“Did you eat?” Russel would ask, cleaning up plates from dinner 2D hadn’t been present for with a slowness that was an open invitation to say “no”.
But 2D would shake his head, a denial of the conversation.
Murdoc was in a similar way. Gaunt, restless, twitchy.
He lingered around the house like a bad smell. Like a ghost that forgot how to haunt. His dark hair was unkempt every time Russel saw him, and he was almost always in the same clothes. His fingers trembled constantly, like his body was coursing with energy that had nowhere to go.
Or a high that had nowhere to go.
When Murdoc did manage to venture downstairs, he reeked of cigarettes and alcohol, like usual, mixed with sweat and accompanied by that fine tremor.
"You gotta clear out by five," Russel said to him in the living room where Murdoc was slumped on the couch watching reruns of something from the eighties. His leg was bouncing rapidly against the floor. "Noodle and I are watching her show and you ain't gonna ruin that for her."
Murdoc just waved him away as if Russel were a buzzing gnat.
"No one tells me what to do in this bloody house," he snarled.
"We all live here," Russel countered, folding his arms. It felt like a lie.
"You do," Murdoc retorted, but without venom. Russel chose to ignore it.
"Be gone," he said as he left, "or I'll make you gone." But something told him that was already the case.
The band was back together. Four bodies. But two members were missing.
It would only be a mattered of time before the band unraveled completely.