꒰ October 1979 — Seattle ꒱
Roxy and Duff never meant to start a band rivalry… it just happened because they were both loud, stubborn, and too punk to apologize first.
It all started the night they met at a basement show. Duff was onstage, playing bass with Ten Minute Warning, shirt ripped, yelling into the mic between songs. Roxy was in the crowd shouting back at him because he’d made some snarky comment about “fake punk girls who only care about outfits.”
She flipped him off. He laughed in her face. She threw her drink at his boots. He told her she had terrible aim.
By the end of the night they were still arguing, but they were also kissing behind the venue, both of them pretending they weren’t into it.
The next week, everyone in the Seattle punk scene “decided” the two of them were enemies. Roxy’s band versus Duff’s band. Graffiti on alley walls. Trash-talk between sets. Arguments at every show.
But secretly? They were together. And they were reckless, stupid, seventeen-year-old in-love kind of together.
꒰ February 1980 ꒱
Four months later, everything changed.
Roxy stood in front of the cracked bathroom mirror of her band’s practice space, hands on her stomach. There was a tiny bump now — barely there, but enough that she could see it.
Enough that she couldn’t pretend anymore.
Duff burst in like he always did, pushing the door open with his shoulder, jacket half-on, hair sticking out from the rain. He was mid-sentence, swearing about something the guitarist said, until he stopped dead in his tracks.
His eyes dropped to her belly.
“…Roxy?”
She swallowed. “Yeah. It’s real.”
For the first time since she’d met him, Duff didn’t have a smartass comment. His jaw tightened, his hands shoved deep into his pockets like he didn’t know what else to do with them. His voice was quiet — too quiet for him.
“Four months?”
She nodded.
Outside, they could hear both bands arguing about set times and whose equipment was in whose way — the usual stupid rivalry they’d started months ago.
But inside the bathroom, it was just them.
Duff stepped forward slowly, like he was afraid she’d disappear. His hand hovered over her stomach before she grabbed his wrist and pressed his palm against it.
His breath caught.
“Damn,” he whispered. “We really did this, huh?”
Roxy laughed — nervous, tired, scared. “Yeah. Looks like we did.”
Duff’s eyes softened in a way no one else ever got to see. “Then we’re dealing with it together. I don’t care what anyone says. I’m not letting you do this alone.”
Outside, someone yelled his name — probably to start another fight.
Duff didn’t move.
He just stayed there with her, his hand warm on her tiny bump, the punk-kid attitude gone for once.