Make Me Over | Ness Gordon (Running Point)
Summary: Down a half-time act with just days before the season opener, the Gordon's turn to Ness' wife, a former grunge singer who's excited to get back into the spotlight
Pairing: Ness Gordon x Grunge!Reader
Warnings: Totally not inspired by a picture of Gwen Stefani and David Spade at a Hole concert hahahaha. Two idiots in love, Ness being my favourite Middle Aged himbo husband. Brief mention of underage drinking, and references to a latex allergy and birth control leading to an unplanned (but loved!) pregnancy.
She was sitting in the back patio, framed by the midday sun and looking as beautiful as she was on the day that he married her. She had her electric guitar in her hands, singing an old grunge song under her breath. Ness leaned against the open patio doorway, a bottle of Heineken in his hand as he watched her in awe.
“It’s been a long year, since you’ve been gone. Feeling lonely, and growing old.” She sang softly, hands sliding along her Fender.
“Please don’t tell me that you’re gonna fall apart when we drop America off at Berkeley tomorrow. Only one of us can sob, the other has to make sure the Audi gets home in one peice, and it’s going to have to be you because my baby’s all grown up, and soon she won’t need her dad any more.” Ness joked, coming to sit next to his wife on the lounger.
She laughed, putting her guitar down. “You know, I almost had the chance to join Velvet Revolver. Scott Weiland thought there should be two vocalists. I said no. We had two kids at home, and I’d been out of the game too long.”
He put his arm around her, his calloused fingers sliding up and down the small tattoos on her arm. Two names. America and Shane. Their two beautiful children.
“Do you ever miss it?”
“Sometimes.” It was only a partial truth. She didn’t miss the sweaty tour buses, or the masses of people swarming the entrances to every stadium. But she missed the performance, the energy of the crowd. Screaming her heart out on stage.
But a hobby that was sustainable when she was in her twenties was no longer the same in her late forties.
She liked her life. Not being known as the lead singer of Celebrity Skin, a band that crashed a burned in the early twenty-tens, ending with a shattered friendship and horrific court battle for songwriting rights. She liked her weekly boxing classes and being able to take her kids to Disney without being followed by the paparazzi.
“Would you have done it differently? Let me be the stay at home parent while you travelled the world?” Ness wondered aloud, kissing her cheek softly.
She snorted. “Please. If you had been the one to raise America, she’d probably be buying first class tickets to Monaco right now to blow granddaddy’s money instead of going to a respectable university and making her parents proud.”
“Yeah.” Ness nodded. “Sounds about right. She’s a good kid. I can’t say the same about Shane though. I don’t know what’s going on with that boy sometimes.”
“Let’s hope he gets good at sports, because it’s the only way he’s going to college.”
“Fuck, I’ll drink to that.”
“Touring was too unpredictable. With you working for the Waves, I knew there would always be money coming in, and we’d be able to give the kids a stable childhood, which you can barely say that either of us had.” She said honestly, returning to Ness’ original question.
“We could have made it work.” Ness nodded along, taking another sip of his beer. “I always loved watching you on stage. You looked so happy. So carefree.”
The night they met she had played a sold out show in some dirty club in Seattle. Ness was smitten with the girl on stage, dressed in camo pants and a baggy Manchester United jersey. No accounting for taste, he had thought, being a City fan himself. He had fallen in love with her that night in 1996 and had never stopped.
She was about to say something when a slammed door and a shout from inside the house grabbed their attention
“Amy, you’ve been in the bathroom for hours!”
“We have three bathrooms, asshole! Use a different one.”
They both groaned. Parenting never got easier, even when your kids were almost adults. America was almost twenty, and Shane was an immature seventeen.
“Remind me again why we decided to have kids?”
“Because you’re allergic to latex and I left my birth control on a bathroom sink in the Shanghai airport.”
Ness chuckled. Yes, the first had been an accident, but they had tried desperately for a second and wouldn’t have it any other way.
“You wanna take this one, or should I?”
“I got this.” She put her guitar aside, getting to her feet and using the voice she had once used to command stadiums. “America Ophelia and Shane Russell!”
There was quiet in the house, and then a shout from their son.
“Oh fuck!”
——
Three days later, YN walked into the Waves’ head office, kitten heels clacking against the floor and nails freshly painted a deep burgundy that matched her Audi. America was out with her new college friends and Shane was god knows where.
She heard arguing coming from Isla’s office. She’d already tried Ness’ office, as well as the practice gym and found both to be empty.
Isla’s office was all cream coloured paint and clear glass. It had once been Cam’s, but Yn thought her sister-in-law had done a great job with making the space her own.
“So not only are we in a fucking losing streak this season, but now we have no half time act?” Sandy gawked. “This is not how you run a team.”
“It’s not my fault!” Isla shot back. “How was I supposed to know that Travis was going to start a fight with Dua Lipa on twitter?”
She slipped into the office, wordlessly coming to stand next to her husband, who greeted her with a soft kiss and a warm embrace.
“What’s going on?”
Ness sighed, his twitchy fingers playing with her hair. He hated being pulled in between Sandy and Isla. He was perfectly content to let his sister be in charge. Unlike Sandy, he thought Isla was making progress. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless.
“Dua Lipa cancelled on us. She’s got some major Twitter beef with Travis right now.”
“Fuck me, why is it always Travis when something goes wrong here?”
Sandy was still persistent, arguing with Isla at the top of his lungs. “Tell me where we are going to find another half time act in two days? Cam never should have left you in charge. I wouldn’t have let this happ-“
“I’ll do it.”
Everybody stopped, turning to look at her as if only just realizing that she had entered the office. She wasn’t used to being the center of attention any more, and fought the urge to hide behind Ness.
Her court battle with Celebrity Skin’s co-founder had made her grow uncomfortable with the spotlight.
Sandy was the first to speak. “What about Stephanie? She could still sue you.”
“Fuck Stephanie. She can take her cheap bus stop lawyer and her signed contracts and shove them up her ass. I won the performance and ownership rights fair and square. It’s not my fault she chose to burn her royalties on cocaine and two divorces.”
“If I recall the trial correctly,” Ness chuckled lowly “Stephanie did take the lawyer up her ass.”
YN bit back a smile, shaking her head at her husband. “Fucking Stephanie. It’s a miracle our friendship lasted as long as it did.”
Stephanie and YN had founded the band together, playing one of their first shows in the back room of the dingy Waffle House where Stephanie had worked. While Stephanie had taken to the hustle of the spotlight, YN was content to fall back.
When YN suggested they switch up their sound, recording a big arena rock album similar to Bon Jovi’s ‘New Jersey’, Stephanie had called her a poser and threatened to quit the band. In 2010, Stephanie had sued YN for both songwriting and performing rights and lost on both counts. Because YN had done most of the songwriting, and most of the ideas had been hers, the court had ultimately sided with her. Stephanie had been holding onto the grudge ever since.
“Get me a backing band that knows Celebrity Skin songs, and I can be ready morning of. It will be tight, and I haven’t performed in years, but I think we can pull this off.”
Isla beamed, sending her sister-in-law a silent thank you. “So it’s settled. I think it’s a great idea, YN.”
Ness wrapped an arm around her waist, a look in his eyes that she couldn’t quite read. “You’re going to be fantastic. Let’s bring the kids. They’ve never seen one of your shows before.”
Sandy was still weary. She could see it in his eyes, the way he though trading one of the most popular singers of the decade for a grunge has-been that nobody under the age of forty had ever heard of.
"I'll do it for free."
Sandy's eyes lit up. "Sold. All our money is going to this trade deal anyways, assuming that Isla doesn't bottle it like always."
"Piss off, Sandy!"
_____
The day of the show arrived, and she was a ball of nerves. She was pacing her green room, shaking out her sore wrists. Her very non-mom-like outfit consisted of leather cargo pants and a tub top that she was surprised that she fit it. Her hands were shaking, but she couldn't figure out if it was from nerves or air conditioning.
"Come on, YN." She grumbled, staring at her makeup-caked face in the mirror. "You've smoked weed with Alanis Morrisette and before you met your husband, you trashed a hotel room with one of those fuckers from the Beastie Boys. Three songs in front of basketball fans should be chump change."
There was a knock on the dressing rooms heavy metal door, and she opened it to find Ness on the other side, a massive bouquet of wild flowers in his arms.
“Hey, sexy. You look absolutely incredible.”
She flushed, laughing as she took the flowers from him and set them on the countertop.
“Where are the kids?”
“Shane is with Jackie, and America is probably hustling some poor yutz into buying her a Smirnoff Ice at concession.”
“Well,” she grinned “our daughter had to get something from you.”
“Come here.” His voice was soft as he pulled her in by the belt loops, kissing her slow and passionately. “If I didn’t know it would throw you off your game, I would suggest a quickie on that leather couch.”
Laughing, she slapped his chest. “Nestor Gordon!”
“You are going to do great. I believe in you. Our kids believe in you.”
“They have to believe in me. They’re my kids and they know they’re grounded if they don’t.”
There was another knock on the door, and Isla stuck her head in. “Babes, are you ready to get mic’d up? We’re almost at half time.”
She kissed Ness again, asking him to wrangle the children into one place before she headed over to Isla.
“They’re going to love you.” The blonde encouraged.
Ness followed her most of the way to where the walkout to the court was. America and Shane were waiting in the half light, Ali and Jackie standing next to the two kids. Sure enough, America had a can of peach Smirnoff with her.
“Kick some ass, Mom.” She encouraged, opening her leather jacket to reveal the black Celebrity Skin shirt she wore underneath. She had her father’s eyes, but that was as far as the Gordon genetics went with her.
“Don’t choke.” Shane agreed. The boy was a carbon copy of his dad, right down to the ginger hair that curled around his ears, and the flush in his rosy cheeks that never quite seemed to go away.
“Family huddle!” Ness shouted, waving them over. “You too, Jackie.”
“What about me?” Ali whined, watching the Gordon’s settle in for a group hug.
They spoke lowly, trading encouragements before YN hugged her kids individually, and kissed her husband one final time before taking to the court, the opening bars of ‘Volcano Girls’ playing as she ran out into the stadium.
The crowd loved it, and she was a hit with both the older and younger crowd. Of course, the crowd might be less impressed when they realized that she had a knee brace on underneath her cargo pants.
“Mom is awesome.” America laughed, leaning against her father as she took a sip of her vodka drink. “Makes me wonder why she married you.”
“Hey, watch your mouth.” Ness joked, squeezing his daughter’s shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Shane slip down the hallway. “Shane Gordon, where do you think you’re going?”
“Bathroom break?” He floundered, trying to slip a joint back up the sleeve of his sweater.
“Nuh uh. Hand the pot over.”
With a grumble under his breath, Shane handed his dad the joint, and was absolutely shocked to watch his father proceed to put it between his teeth and light up in the middle of Microsoft Arena.
“Who are you and what have you done with my dad?” Shane gaped.
“Did your mom ever tell you about the time that the two of us and your Uncle Cam got stoned out of our minds with the lead singer of the Stone Temple Pilots at Live Aid?”
“Isn’t Uncle Cam in rehab?”
“Yeah, he probably did a little more than pot that day.”
As his kids bickered with each other in the background, and Ness tried his best to hide the joint from Sandy, he watched in awe at the expression of joy on his wife’s face as she moved with the teams dancers, reminded of when he fell in love her at the first place.
He was taken back to her show in Manchester the day that she told him she was pregnant with America. She had come running off the stage, sweat soaking through her acid washes Black Sabbath shirt, socked feet scraping against the vinyl floor. Out of breath from singing, she had gripped his arms and blurted the words out, shaky hands fumbling with the plastic test that had been in her back pocket for the entire show. The crowd was demanding an encore, and even though she had felt under the weather all week, she ran right back out there and gave them another song, laving him standing there and staring at the two pink lines he held.
As the song ended and the stadium erupted into whoops and cheers, he found himself shouting: “Thats my wife! That’s my wife!”