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Again, I highly recommend listening and or downloading these songs.

Music Reference:

“Wake up” – Coheed and Cambria. (*)
“The City Lights” – Umbrellas. (**)
“Damn Regret” – The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. (***)

( ** are meant for your reference)


Chapter Eleven

Spike couldn’t quite remember how to move. He didn’t even completely register that Buffy wasn’t standing in front of him anymore. What the hell happened? Bewildered, he quickly went through every word he had said to her after he had spoken to Drusilla up to the point where she had run out.

Nothing in particular came up. Did he say something?

Suddenly, a stranger bumped into him, snapping him back to reality. Buffy had left him in the middle of the store without so much as a goodbye. There was only one thing he could do at this point.

“Sorry,” the stranger mumbled, but Spike was already sprinting for the door. The cool night air of the city blasted him in the face as he swung the door open with too much force and skidded to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk.

It was such a beautiful night and he looked up at the sky for a split second, wondering if the tiny speck of white amidst the black blue sky was a star. Spike didn’t wait to give himself enough time to ponder that thought. He squinted his eyes and swiftly scanned the people-infested sidewalk and the busy street for a flash of her blonde hair.

There she was, a dozen yards down the street, getting into a yellow taxicab. Frantically, he started running towards her, but she had already slammed the door shut and the taxi was rolling away.

“Buffy!” He shouted, pushing people out of the way trying to get to her. “Buffy! Stop!”

But it wasn’t any use. The cab had pulled back into traffic and was quickly speeding out of sight. Spike slowed down and finally stopped, leaning forward to rest his hands on his knees, feeling like the wind was just violently knocked out of him. Whether or not the feeling was because he had one too many cigarettes to smoke, he wasn’t certain.

But, something else also seemed to be knocked out of him as he stared off after the taxi that she was riding in. Stomach dropping and heart breaking, he looked back up at the sky.

It wasn’t a star. It was just an airplane.

………………
………………
………………

Buffy only let the tears fall down when she was safely tucked away in the backseat of the taxi. I was supposed to show him a good time, she sniffed, looking out of the window at the tall buildings next to her.

“Where going, miss?” the driver’s heavy Indian accent asked her. She wiped her eyes on her jacket-sleeve and tried to think of a destination. Any destination.

“Just… drive,” she mumbled. She didn’t want to go home, because if she did, she’d be forced to wallow in her misery.

“Drive where?” he persisted, tapping his thumbs against the wheels. She saw his eyes flutter up to the rear-view mirror before he added, “Is that your boyfr-“

“No, just drive!”

The sharpness in her voice must have shocked him into action as he jerked his wheel to the left, veering back into traffic. She could have sworn she heard him mutter “Your money, lady,” under his breath, but decided to ignored it.

The cab was warm, but she didn’t want to take the jacket off. It still smelled like him and though that made her want to sob all over the black leather seats, it also comforted her. Buffy wistfully gazed outside at people on the sidewalks that they were zooming past. Couples were holding hands, walking together, laughing together. She sighed and squeezed her hands together, already missing the feeling of his hand in hers. He had held her with a sort of loose grasp, yet it was tight enough to communicate “whatever you do, don’t let go.”

Except he was probably holding Drusilla’s hand by now. The thought of that made her face darken immensely. She winced as she listened to the cheerful Indian music coming from the front. It was starting to bother her.

“I need destination, miss,” the driver asked again, exasperated.

Buffy snapped, “Shut up and let me think.”

The rear-view mirror showed his face crunching up in an annoyed glare. “Look, I drive you, I have job. You tell me where I go!”

“My money, right?” Her head was starting to hurt. Without thinking, she said, “Little Italy. And change the music, it’s driving me fucking crazy.”

Without answering her, he flipped his turn signal and swerved to the right, making Buffy tumble across the backseat. The pain in her arm as she hit the door made her feel like crying all over again.

So did the music that came on when he turned the radio dial.

(*)
I'm going to ride this plane out of your life again
I wish that I could stay, but you argue
more than this, I wish you could have seen my face
in backseats staring out of the window

Usually, Coheed and Cambria made her smile. But today, hearing Sanchez sing this ballad made her tremble and the tears fell all over again. Hard, raw sobs shook her body and the sound of her crying almost overpowered the song, itself.

“Sorry,” the cab-driver said, misinterpreting the reason for her distress. “I drive slower, yes?”

“No… It -It’s not you,” she choked and buried her face the jacket that she never returned. “I just…”

The taxi slowed down a little bit and if she had looked up into the rear-view mirror, she would have met the sympathetic eyes of her driver. He leaned forward and dug out a box of Kleenex, passing it through the divider to her.

Surprised, Buffy accepted it and blew her nose.

“Is it your man?” he asked her and she just sniffled, looking back out the window, trying to ignore the heart-wrenching song.

I'll do anything for you
kill anyone for you
so leave yourself intact,
because I will be coming back
in the phrase to cut these lips:
I love you

She couldn’t help thinking about Spike and wishing that he had run after her. Everything seemed so imbalanced without him. Everything seemed so cold. He affected her more than anybody ever had… and she had only spent a few hours with him. How was that possible?

“My eldest daughter, she much like you,” the driver started and for the first time, Buffy noticed his weathered face and tired features as he focused on the road. “Every night seem like I see her cry. She always call me in middle of my rounds, she tell me I have to pick her up. I say ‘okay, aap kahan ho? Where are you?’. I ask her why she want to go and she say ‘Chale joe! Go away!’”

Buffy cracked a smile as he spoke.

“You little girls! Don’t understand see pyar when it stare you straight in the eyeballs. You always run! He do anything wrong, you say ‘mein use kabhi muaf nahii karuungaa’ and turn around. How will you ever find love that way, huh?” his voice had grown louder and louder throughout his speech and Buffy found herself entranced with his seemingly wise accent and his wildly gesturing hands. He shook his head, “That boy on sidewalk back there… he was yours, was he not?”

“Who?” Buffy furrowed her eyebrows, confused.

“You not see? The lost boy with white hair calling out something like ‘Bully! Bully!’?”

His words finally dawned on her and she sat up straight. Spike went after me? She wasn’t sure if she was understanding correctly.

“He look at you with the love in his eye,” her driver looked at her from the rear-view. “I can tell. I’ve seen it many time.”

The rest of the ride was made in a comfortable silence until Buffy got out at Mott Street, deeply pondering the Indian man’s words.

………………
………………
………………

Spike was sitting on the curb, thinking about everything and thinking about nothing. When he had given up trying to figure out ways to reach her, he had sat down, stared at the looming city in front of him, and wrote her a song.

His voice was low as he formed words in his head and sang them out loud, “It’s Friday night and I’m sitting here, waiting for a girl named Buffy. Thought I could love her, thought I could crack her, but boy, this girl’s a tough-y.”

When that didn’t work out, he leaned against the newspaper dispenser and sighed, trying to pinpoint the exact point in time when his night had done a 180. When she kissed you…

He smiled as he remembered the pleasant way she had introduced herself. Pleasant and… wicked, hot, alluring, smothering in a suffocate-me-any-time-you’d-like way, steamy, heart tickling, the list went on. That was when his night had done a complete turn. If she hadn’t kissed him, he would probably have gotten pissed as hell and done something stupid or gone home, alone and moping.

But he had ended up going for an adventure that felt like interestingly similar to a roller-coaster.

So how had he ended up like this… Slouched down at a curb in the middle of 42nd, tired and miserable? He couldn’t pinpoint a reason. Had he said something? Did he smell? Was she afraid of Drusilla? He didn’t even know why this was happening.

Again, he thought up a new scenario.

He would find her, run up to her, kiss her until she couldn’t move her mouth, and things would take off wonderfully from there.

Oh yeah. Except for the part where he had no clue where she was, no idea how to get a hold of her, nothing.

An ambiguous looking car pulled to the side of the road in front of him and Spike looked up, raising a tired eyebrow. At this point, he wouldn’t have cared if somebody mugged him to death or dragged him off to brutally maim and kill. He was so tired of everything…

“Dude, Spike!” Devon’s head popped out through the passenger seat window. “You lost, man?”

“Yeah,” Spike muttered, getting to his feet. “You could put it that way.”

“What the fuck are you doing here? It’s Midtown, man. Boring as shit!” his friend grinned at him and held out a bottle of liquor. “I hear there’s a crazy scene down by Soho, you game?”

“As ever.”

Spike shrugged and got into the back seat.

………

Five minutes into the ride, he was wondering what evil had possessed him to go with Devon. Nothing good ever came out of going somewhere with Devon. And now, he was stuck in the back, listening to him and a few other guys crack drunken jokes and cackling like mad hyenas. Bloody brilliant.

Closing his eyes, he drowned out their voices and focused on the music. Always focus on the music. Music overpowered everything. After all, it was the best remedy.

(**)
If you see me at midnight
Walking the streets
You'll know it was me for I cannot sleep
I've pushed away the dreams
And spoiled the quiet
I'm propelled by fear
And not the righteous

He imagined he was walking alone somewhere. A sidewalk, a harbor, the seaport. It put him at peace and he nearly smiled at the appropriateness.

So have you been to a place like this?
To see your breath as it paints against the sky
The fever is near
I wish you were here

His music was cut off suddenly as the boys cranked up some rap garbage and exploded into shouts and laughter.

What he would give to be with Buffy right now.

………

It didn’t hit him until he was standing alone on Canal Street, having ditched his mates telling them he had to go buy some smokes. He was patting down his pockets, looking for money, when he remembered that he didn’t have his leather jacket.

Buffy had it.

And he vaguely remembered that in that particular jacket, there had once been a cell phone.

A little dazed and unsure, he walked up to a phone booth and dialed.

It rang once and his heart started pounding. It rang twice and his closed eyes were seeing the red pumping of blood in his eyelids. It rang three times and he heard a click…

“Uh… Spike’s unreachable right now due to reasons I will not go into, do you need something?”

God, it was her voice. Her husky, it’s-late-at-night-and-I’ve-been-having-fun voice that he had started to train his ears to very early in the night. Spike found himself grinning uncontrollably.

“Buffy?”

There was a short silence.

“Spike?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” he slowly let out a breath and chuckled. “You took off.”

“Yeah, well,” her voice trailed off and he waited. “I thought you were going to get back with Drusilla, you know? I didn’t want to get in the way.”

His head spun. “You thought what?”

“That you were –“

“Can you be any more daft?” he felt like shouting. She put him through all that because she thought he’d be getting back together with Drusilla? Was she insane?

She didn’t respond, so he softened his tone before continuing. “You know when you told me that I had to make a choice?”

“Yeah,” she replied, her voice weak. Spike could almost see her biting her lower lip and lowering those green eyes to the floor, like she did whenever she was uncertain.

“Well, I did. Where are you, Buffy?”

“You… what?”

“Where are you?”

“Um. At The Espresso Pump on Mott street.”

Spike grinned, “I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”

“Wait – What was your deci-“

He hung up on her before she could finish her sentence and was sprinting down Canal St. towards Mott, his feet running to the beat in his head.

(***)
The moon is shining bright,
The mood is feeling right.
I’ll kiss you on your neck,
People’ll stare but we won’t care.
We’re high above the ground,
We’re nowhere to be found.




A/N: The next chapter's gonna be fun, fun, fun!
(I foresee... 3-4 more chapters before this story wraps up. I'm contemplating whether or not to do a sequel, but chances of that are pretty slim as I'm pretty set on finishing my other WIP's)





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