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whatamessz · 6 years

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Fic “A Song about Breakfast”

I asked for prompts and @dreaming-powder was as lovely to send me one <3 So here are Murdoc and 2D creating music, a mysterious commercial occupying the only TV on Plastic Beach, discussions about jellyfishes and a relatively smooth sea.

Cleaned up and edited version on AO3.

A Song about Breakfast

It’s around six A.M. and 2D sits in front of the huge TV in the living room.The same ancient looking and awfully frantic commercial flares over the flat screen for approximately the thirtieth time since he had opted on residing here this morning. It doesn’t matter. Zapping is pointless. There was only this specific ad on every channel every morning around this time over and over and over.

His brain is pretty much offline anyway and he has stopped questioning occurrences like this a long time ago. He just knows the thing with the endless commercial loop because watching it had happened to become one of his sleeplessness routines here on Plastic Beach and he doubted that Murdoc would care to fix the issue if he would ever tell him.

Sometimes 2D manages to nod off with the telly running, sometimes he just reaches some kind of meditative state which he always considers as the only fitting kind of meditation on a pink island entirely made out of trash.

He snaps out of whatever condition he had reached today when the commercial clock rings again and he is remembered that it’s still an advertisement for an instant breakfast.

His stomach gives a painful growl at that and he realizes just then that he’s hungry. 2D drags himself up and in the kitchen when the obnoxiously cheerful bespectacled TV man asks the off voice if it’s kidding when it promises a full breakfast in only three microwave minutes.

The decision on what to eat quickly becomes overwhelming when he opens the fridge, so he just tiredly reaches for the milk. He looks for the Cheerios and reinserts himself back on his old spot with a full bowl of cereals. Eventually it strikes the magic hour in which the usual program flickers back on and 2D just watches Cartoon Network while he tries very hard not think of long past Sunday mornings with little Noodle.

*** *** ***

It’s noon and he still hasn’t slept, that’s why he sits in the studio now, entirely unprompted, and toys with ideas his sleep deprived brain produces seemingly out of nowhere. The studio is also one of the few places with internet access on this island (though Murdoc had ensured child safety locks in every browser and all of 2D’s or the bands accounts on platforms he’s still allowed to use are thoroughly disabled or have new passwords, however that was possible).

Today’s morning obviously had left its impression. He couldn’t kill the pesky earworm of the jingle from the commercial and thanks to Murdoc’s precautions and the unstable internet connection, it takes him much longer than he would like to admit to sift through a string of 80’s TV spots on YouTube until he finally finds it. He cuts out an audio sample.

By this time, his head is a hellhole of commercial voices, intrusive melodies and his own unconnected thoughts racing.

He starts to work a song around it as a coping mechanism.

Next act. Murdoc himself emerges in the studio’s door. He looks awful.

Like he didn’t sleep in days, too, and that was probably the case, but when he takes in the image of 2D sitting barefoot and straddle-legged on the thick carpet, hunched over his synthesizer, MacBook and notepad scattered around in an apparent working mood, an uncanny huge grin slides across his face, exposing his shark like rotten teeth.

So far, 2D is unenthusiastic about this encounter. He keeps on tinkering with beats from the drum machine and the commercial sample.

“I’m honestly delighted to see you are willing to work even without my gentle requests from time to time,” Murdoc greets him and puts an unnerving emphasis on the word ‘delighted’. 2D only pulls a sardonic expression in answer. He also hasn’t decided yet if he finds Murdoc’s sensible lighter moods more bearable then the… other ones. They’re probably drug-induced anyway.

Not that he was one to talk, he mentally scolds himself. Well, at least he wasn’t like Murdoc, yet. That was his only solace.

2D decides he is too tired and too busy to pick a fight today. Murdoc obviously decides to challenge this resolution and snickers.

“Not quite the Chatty Cathy today hu, sunshine? Well, my night was great, GREAT I tell ya. Threw a party with Cyborg and the pirates. When I’m thinking about it this would be a great name for a band. No wait, scratch that, we already have a great name. And a great band. The GREATEST, if I may say so hun hun hun.” He stops to catch his breath. “Anyway, what are you working on? Doesn’t sound like one of the songs I gave you.”

2D has stopped listening at the very first sentence and scribbles something on his notepad. “’M sorry, what?”

Murdoc sighs, impatient. “The sooong. What are you doing right now? I’m curious.”

“It’s… a new thing. A song… about breakfast,” 2D hears himself saying despite of himself. The truth is, that he wasn’t entirely sure what this was supposed to become.

“About what,” Murdoc snaps incredulous.

“About breakfast,” 2D answers promptly and, to his own surprise, advances a defensive bottom lip. “It’s a song… like a commercial. Catchy, fast living, colorful, you know? Seemingly disposable and about something short lived. Just trying to sell… sss-something for breakfast. Something you can just swallow down when you’re in a hurry.”

Ok, his thoughts are really just running loose right now. He hopes he can remember that later because in this moment the stuff he just bullshat at the same time made miraculous and perfect sense in his poor, tortured head.

Murdoc’s interest suddenly seems piqued. He snatches the notepad from 2D’s thigh and skims over the lines and sentences that may or may not constitute a first attempt on lyrics, nodding appreciatively while he reads. 2D looks up, his face scrunched up insecurely.

Murdoc strides around him, still staring at the notepad and clearly thinking. “Hmmm you know what, this could really work as a concept,” he mutters and lowers himself to the floor with a groan, back to back with 2D.

2D stiffs up at that and considers leaning away.

“Any ideas on how to call it already?” The question hits him offhand and he blinks, unsure.

“Uhn… Little…Pink…stink…fish?” he comes up with, very response delayed.

Suddenly, Murdoc just cracks up and laughs harshly and genuinely until he chokes on his own spit and the laughter turns into a coughing fit.

2D can feel the vibration of it rocking his own body. As if it was contagious, 2D can’t help the smile that spreads over his face then, partly over his own stupid answer, partly because he hears and feels Murdoc laughing and he hadn’t had that in a very long time.

“You know, I also had a new idea for a song last night,” Murdoc pipes up excited when his coughing finally has subsided. “Just wait!”

With that, he takes the pencil lying next to 2D and scribbles something on the notepad. Curious, 2D leans to the side to try and spy what the bassist was doing, but just in that moment Murdoc so much as thrusts the pad back into his face, brandishing it so close in front of his nose that at first, he can’t make out anything. 2D cautiously takes the pad and stares at it, baffled.

“Murdoc, that’s just a shitty sketch of one of these sodding jellyfishes,” 2D states irritated. Murdoc had drawn the silly grinning thing just over his “lyrics”.

“RIGHT??? These are just bloody everywhere!”

“But... that’s not a song,” 2D answers again, but he sounds interested now. He thinks his overtired brain is just about to produce another idea.

“But we need a song about them on the album! They embody the experience of this place!!!” Murdoc sounds frantic now and 2D can feel him gesturing wildly.

“They even look more like candy wrappers than real animals,” he agrees and nods along, even if the likeliness of Murdoc’s drawing with the actual strange animals he remembers seeing sometimes in front of his underwater prison or in the Stylo (submarine mode) is only minimal.

“They are a plague, I swear! There was a bunch – “, Murdoc interrupts himself. “A gang? A posse? A pack? – nah whatever! There were a whole lot of them almost clogging the seawater suction pipes for the cooling system of the engine room last week! Had to get on my good ol’ wetsuit and get rid of ‘em myself…”, he mumbles and 2D giggles at the image. He himself hadn’t noticed any of that last week.

“I… can show you what I thought so far for the music,” he offers.

“Yeah yeah, go on”, Murdoc encourages him and snivels, so 2D shows him the gruesome commercial sample and that he intends on putting it at the beginning of the song.

“Disturbing. I like it,” Murdoc states with a palpable shiver down his spine.

“Did you know this commercial is the only thing that runs on every channel for at least an hour every morning around six,” 2D suddenly admits and Murdoc half turns around.

“No… what in the seven hells? Why?”

“I thought you might know.” He shrugs and goes on with his demonstration.

Murdoc taps his foot to the beat of the drum machine and chimes in with comments here and there on what he might like or would change. He only stands up one time to pick up his bass, strumming along some very simple base lines in time with the drums and piano snippets the singer had patched together so far. Somewhere along, 2D had reached his dead point where he no longer felt drop dead tired and Murdoc had seemed to come down from whatever height he was in when he first entered. Surprisingly, the companionable workflow lasts.

That really was a rarity, since many other songs before had been a true fight.

At some point, he can feel Murdoc’s little finger creep over to rest on his own. 2D, who was lazily pushing some keys on his synth with one hand, bites his lip. He takes a deep breath.

“Muds?”

“Yeah?”

“We are having a good time right now for once, right,” he starts flat out. Murdoc pauses.

“I… think so.”

“Then don’t ruin it,” 2D says coolly and can feel how Murdoc’s retreats his hand instantly.

“2D I-“

“We can maybe work the jellyfish in you know,” he cuts Murdoc off and tries changing the subject.

“The jellyfish could be the theme together with the breakfast. The jellyfish could be the brand. Don’t you wish to stab those stupid smiles sometimes”, he goes on, even when animal cruelty really is the last thing he would like to promote and the jellyfishes for sure weren’t the ones that did anything to him. Sometimes he’s just so angry.

Murdoc huffs and chuckles lowly. “Actually…. That’s crazy but brilliant. I’m a genius for coming up with these things.”

2D sighs in dramatized exasperation. “Yes, Murdoc, you really are.”

#gorillaz #2doc #niccalpot #studoc #plastic beach #2doc only implied #fan fiction #gorillaz fan fiction #my fic

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