Driving to Distraction - Chapter 3

Buffy slipped her magazine back into her bag and looked over at Spike. He was staring at the road and humming. She wondered how he’d managed to get any sleep last night. After their dinner, he’d insisted on staying in the car and sleeping on the back seat. No matter what she’d tried, he’d kept telling her the same thing—it wasn’t personal, he just felt it was better if he stayed in the car.

Spike could feel her watching him. She’d been so pushy last night about him sharing the room with her that he’d almost lost his temper. The last thing he needed right now was someone like her thinking he needed her charity. He told himself didn’t need anyone, especially a girl.

“Hungry.” Buffy groused as she rubbed her stomach, Spike’s eyes were drawn there and he stared at the tiny strip of skin that was exposed to him. “Can we stop soon?”

“Fifty.” Came his gruff reply.

“Fifty what? Seconds, minutes, miles?” Buffy pouted and stared at him. He was watching the traffic shifting lanes in front of them.

He pointed to a passing sign as confirmation of what he was talking about.

She sighed as she read it—fifty miles to the nearest rest stop.

“But I’m starving.”

Frowning at her supposedly being starving, he leaned over and scrambled about in the glove box.

Buffy pulled her knees up as he reached towards her. She didn’t know what he was up to at first but when she saw that he was only after something in the glove compartment, she felt stupid. Her eyes settled on a pack of photographs just before he slammed the box shut.

He held the lollipop up and grinned. She heaved a long sigh before swiping it from him, her fingers touching his in the process.

Pulling his hand away from hers, Spike put it back on the steering wheel and stared at it. It felt warm and tingly where she’d touched. Gripping the wheel tighter, he ignored the feeling and put his foot down on the gas.

Buffy sniffed the lollipop as she unwrapped it and smiled at the chemical strawberry smell. She licked it as she watched them zoom past the cars in the slow lane and decided that she couldn’t go a few thousand miles without talking after all.

“If we’re going to travel together, we should at least try and be civil and talk to each other.”

“Fine by me.” Spike kept his reply short, reminding himself that she didn’t care about him really. She was just entertaining herself.

“So, I told you about why I’m going to LA, how about you? You don’t look like you’re going there for the sunshine.” She popped the lollipop into her mouth and twirled it around.

“Nope.” He grasped the steering wheel tighter as he watched her sucking on the lollipop. Temptress.

“Girl?” She smiled breezily at him.

“She’s the reason I’m going.”

“Oh, how sweet, going cross country to see your girl.”

“Going cross country to get away from her.” He didn’t know how she did it. Something about her made him talk. It was the way she looked at him with her big round green eyes all soulful and understanding.

“You’re running away?” She directed his earlier statement back at him, letting him know that she hadn’t forgotten what he’d said to her.

“No, but I can’t stay in New York. It reminds me of her.”

“Bad break up?” She rolled the lollipop around her tongue again and he tensed. “Sorry, forget I asked.”

“Cheated.” It was all he could manage to say.

“Bet she was pretty, guys like you always have pretty girlfriends.” She felt like she should justify her statement, clear up that she just meant that bad boys always had cute girls running after them, but as she opened her mouth, he nodded.

“She was beautiful.” Leaning over again, he reached into the glove compartment and handed her the photographs. “I took them when I first arrived. She’d already moved here. I remember her telling me what a great job she had, secretary to some big shot. He was a great boss apparently. Little did I realise she was fucking him.”

Buffy listened to him sigh and opened up the photograph wallet. The first picture was of him. He was standing in a garden and he looked brighter. She figured he must have been happy when it was taken because the guy next to her now looked worn down compared to this.

“Me. Drusilla took it a few months before she moved to New York.” He watched her flick to the next picture. “That’s her, my Dru.”

She stared hard at the picture, Spike had been right about her—she was beautiful. Raven hair framed her pale face, her full lips were painted red and Buffy felt a little jealous of her as she stared at her dark eyes. She realised Spike went for the bad girl look to match his bad boy one.

She moved to the next picture, trying to erase the feelings this woman had inspired in her. What’s it to me what kinda girl he likes? It’s not like he’s my type either, and we’re only travelling together. So he wouldn’t find you attractive. In a few thousand miles, you’ll never see him again and it won’t matter. It won’t.

She focused back on the photographs. It was an apartment building. She recognised it as New York. It must have been the first picture he’d taken on arriving. The next picture was of a surprised looking Drusilla stood holding a door open. She was wearing a bathrobe and when She stared at the room in the background, she could see a man. In the next picture, the man was clearer and she felt her insides lurch.

This couldn’t be happening. It was impossible. It was insane. She stared harder at the photograph, willing there to be some mistake but only finding the truth becoming clearer. Swallowing her heartbeat, she bit her lower lip and wondered what the hell she was going to do.

How do you tell a guy that it was your father who was responsible for their broken heart?

“Yeah, hell of a greeting. Welcome to America, land of wankers.” Spike made a growling noise as he sneered at the passing cars.

She couldn’t argue with him on that one, she was too busy wallowing in guilt. Her own father had done this to him, had caused him so much hurt. That was her daddy dearest, taking what he wanted without giving a thought to how it wrecked peoples lives.

She remembered what he’d always said to her. Since she was a child, his motto had been ‘you have to be first, best or different’ and he’d decided that the first two were the only ones that counted. Buffy was starting to think that ‘different’ was the only way for her. The thought of following in her father’s footsteps was something that made her stomach turn.

“I’m sorry.” She mumbled and put the pictures back in the glove box.

“Not your fault, love.” Spike muttered at her.

She felt like she’d been stabbed in the chest. If she told him, would he be so flippant about it or would he kick her out of the car? She decided that he’d probably kick her out the car without even slowing down first.

This was all she needed, over half the journey to go and all she was going to think about was how her father had ruined Spike’s life. She tried to be cheery again so he wouldn’t notice her sudden change of mood and pick her up on it.

“You have a job to go to?” She knew it sounded lame but he looked like he needed to get away from thoughts of his ex.

“No. I’m going to stay with my mate Xander. We’re reforming our band.”

“You play that thing?” She nodded toward the guitar laying on the back seat and was thankful for a subject that would allow her to get him talking a little more.

“Yeah. Sing, too.”

“Heard you humming. You hum good.” She gave him a wide smile as she met his eyes.

Spike felt his knees weaken slightly. He’d never seen anything so sunny in his life. If she kept smiling at him like that, he might cave and like her.

“I sing better than I hum.”

“Can I hear you?” She sucked on the lollipop again and smiled with it still in her mouth.

“Don’t know, can you?” Spike grinned. He could tell she was trying to cheer him up.

“Seriously.” She frowned at him.

“Seriously?” He arched a brow.

“Yeah.” Buffy said softly.

A beat.

“No.” Spike’s tone was harsh as he switched lanes. He watched her shuffle away from him and pick up her magazine again. He had meant to say ‘some other time’ but his brain had flashed up the reasons why he shouldn’t care, ending with Drusilla. Disconnect. She’s a ride across country. That’s all. You don’t need her. She’s just using you to entertain herself, that’s all. She only needs you so she can get to college. You don’t need her, don’t need anyone.

Flicking through the magazine and staring blankly at the pages, Buffy felt for a moment that she’d seen how he could be, how vivacious he used to be. She wished that side of him would come out again because the cold edge his voice had gained made her chilled to the bone.


After a few miles of silence, Spike looked over at Buffy. She was flicking through her magazine while sucking on her second lollipop. The lollipop twirled against her tongue and her red shiny lips were parted ever so slightly, letting him see the candy roll against the back of her teeth. He felt his temperature rising at the sight of it and wondered if she knew what she was doing, if she knew she was making his blood burn for her.

He pulled the car into a gas station and parked it up. His attention returning to Buffy, he watched her as she continued to read. He couldn’t blame her for being mad at him. He’d let himself slip and shown her the real him for a while before shutting down again. As he sat there watching her, he realised he was mad at himself, too. He had talked about his tattered relationship with Dru when he should have just cut Buffy off. Something inside him lurched and told him that Buffy hadn’t done anything wrong. She didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of his mood swings. He sighed—sometimes he wished he’d ended it all back in New York.

Stepping out of the car, he watched her slip from the passenger seat with her magazine and lollipop in tow. He could see she was using them as a cover, a shield that she could hide behind so she didn’t have to deal with him.

He couldn’t blame her. He was starting to wish he could avoid himself, too.

Buffy folded her magazine up and stuffed it into the bag, forcing it past the various beauty accessories and her phone. Walking into the shop, she rifled through the candy stands and grabbed a coke from refrigerator cabinet. Cordelia would have killed her for it--buying chocolate and full fat coke.

Staring at the coke and the sweets as she walked over to the counter, she frowned. It reminded her of those times she’d felt low back at home, her favourite comfort food when she’d been depressed. She felt lower than low. She was still mad at him for a reason she was unsure of. It wasn’t like he’d done anything wrong. Yeah, he just showed you the kind of guy he could be and then stole it away.

Keeping her sunglasses firmly fixed to her face, partly to protect her eyes from the glaring sun and partly to hide her mixed up emotions from Spike, she sat down opposite him at the little picnic bench. He was sitting sideways on the seat and smoking as he stared at the road.

Pulling a coke out of the paper bag, she pressed two fingers against it and slid it slowly across the table to him. He frowned for a moment before opening it with one hand.

“You didn’t have to.” Spike mumbled as he kept his eyes fixed on the road, his fingers tapping the top of the coke can.

Buffy sighed into her drink and realised it was all the thanks she was going to get from him.

Sitting in silence wasn’t easy for her. She wanted to talk, wanted to get out in the open what had happened in the car and get past it. She had been starting to relax, was beginning to enjoy the journey and his company on some level and he’d swiped that away from her and left her with a deafening silence.

Watching him continue to smoke his cigarette, she opened up her bag of Hershey’s kisses and unwrapped one, popping it into her mouth and savouring the sweet taste.

Spike’s eyes moved to settle on the bag as she plucked another of the candies out for her to devour.

She looked down at the small silver foil wrapped chocolate and then up at Spike, noticing how his eyes had followed it. Placing it down on the table, she pushed it over to him and felt like it was a peace treaty he was going to sign—or at least eat.

Spike caught her fingers rather than the chocolate, causing him to sigh and her eyes to widen.

She couldn’t help wanting to know what he was thinking.

“You ever think about death?” His voice was laced with curiosity, the tone low and gruff.

Pulling his sunglasses off, he squinted as his eyes adjusted to the light.

Buffy paused—he seemed to have a real fascination with death. She regretted wondering what he was thinking. A feeling in her said someone really needed to show him how to live, or at least live again.

“Probably no…” Spike started, desperate to backtrack and wishing he hadn’t put a voice to his thoughts.

“Yes.” Buffy interposed, leaning on the table and pulling her own sunglasses off as though it levelled the playing field—neither of them able to hide the feelings that were playing out in their expressions and their eyes. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“Do you think…never mind.” Spike cut himself off. If he talked about this then she’d really think he was going to kill her. Besides, he wasn’t meant to be feeling anything—was meant to be disconnected.

“Think what, Spike?”

He perked up at that—hearing his name spoken so lightly on her lips, caressing his ear like she’d breathed right into it. His fingers tightened slightly around her hand.

“Think…suicide is the easy way out.”

“Sometimes. Life is hard, but the cliché line of ‘life is what you make it’ is so true.” Buffy ran her finger around the chilled rim of her coke can, gathering the tiny beads of condensation on her fingertip and looked down at her other hand where his grasped it gently. “I don’t believe that it’s the right thing to do. Everyone is happy in the world at some point, even if it’s a fleeting moment. Everyone goes through pain and misery. Life isn’t easy, but then no one ever said it was. We all have our ups and downs. We all need to try harder to get out of life what we want from it and we always remember the bad things easier than the good.”

Raising her eyes tentatively to meet his, she blinked slowly as she found his clear blue eyes swimming with pain.

“What…” Spike’s voice cracked as her eyes narrowed softly on his, concern showing through them and hitting him hard in the chest as it tightened under the weight of his emotions. “What if the bad times far out weighed the good ones? What if, as far back as you could remember…they were bad?”

Buffy swallowed, her throat suddenly parched as she wrapped her fingers around her drink and brought it to her lips, drinking half of the can down in one go and trying to find something to say. He was clearly offering her a chance to talk reason into him. He was baring something to her and she believed it was his soul. Never in her years of girly chats with friends and family had she been in such an intense and eye opening conversation. She was unsure of whether to take him totally seriously or not. He looked so small right now, so full of hurt and so self-conscious, that he had to be telling her the truth—no one could fake that much pain. She swore she could feel his fingers trembling against hers.

“Then…you have to look forward, move on and leave the bad times behind you…” She offered him and leaned forward a little, her brows furrowing into a concerned look.

Spike looked down at his hand, his fingers still grazing hers.

“What if you can’t?” He said resignedly.

“You have to at least try. Death isn’t the answer.” Buffy took a deep breath and let her thumb brush against his.

Spike stood sharply, letting go of her hand and snatching his sunglasses off the table before walking back towards the car.

“Sometimes, it is.”

Buffy heaved a long deep sigh over his words. Whether he’d meant her to hear them or not didn’t matter. The weight of pain with which he’d said them had completely erased her previous anger with him. Now all she felt was sympathy. Sympathy for the devil.

Piling all of her belongings back into her bag, she was starting to get the feeling that his life had been a series of bad things with little good in it to help him survive. Everyone had their share of hurt, but from the look in Spike’s eyes, he’d had several lifetimes worth rolled up into one.

Slipping back into the passenger seat of his car, she found him staring at his hands as they rested on the steering wheel. He was motionless, everything blank except for his eyes. They were soft for a moment before becoming cold and hard again.

As he switched the engine on, Buffy pulled out her magazine and stared at it. She cursed herself for trying to hide behind it once more and steadying herself, she looked up at him.

“Do you remember a time when you could say you were truly happy, Buffy?”

She felt a strange thrill run through her, hearing him finally speak her name and in such a gruff tone that it stirred her soul into life, her compassion coming forward.

“Yes. I was seven. It was thanksgiving. My whole family was there. Everyone laughing and playing around. I remember wishing it would never end, that my family would always be like this.”

Spike remembered her talking about her parents split. He felt a little sorry for her as he stared at his hands, now lax on the bottom of the steering wheel and feeling the low purr of the car reverberating through it.

“I remember being happy.” His tone was subdued and he felt Buffy’s eyes immediately settle on his profile. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see how large and beautiful they were as she looked curious. “Dru had just walked into my life. She was my whole world, my salvation. We were only together for a year, six months of which she was in New York. Loved her so much I thought my heart would explode.”

Buffy found she was suddenly frowning. He’d led a life that was God only knows how bad and yet he’d loved deeper than she’d ever allowed herself to.

“I never really felt that way about anyone. I don’t let them get close enough to me.” She shifted her gaze to stare at her hands as she said the words, each of them causing a weight to press down harder on her chest and each of them bringing some kind of realisation to dawn on her. Her mother had always said that journeys were about discovery, she hadn’t realised how true that was until this moment—sitting in a car, pouring her heart and innermost fears and feelings out to a guy she barely knew, as though he was a psychiatrist. She’d never opened up to her own psychiatrist the way that she had opened up to him. She reasoned that it was because they were destined to part. She could tell him anything and it didn’t matter if he thought she was wrong or bad or beautiful because in a few days she’d never see him again.

Spike glanced over at her, noting how hard she was staring at her hands, her eyes blank as she sat motionless next to him. Cocking his head to one side, he wondered if she talked like this to everyone. He almost laughed at himself for that, for caring in the slightest what she did or what she thought. His time with her was just one of those moments. You meet someone, talk and part. You both remember each other sometimes, things they said pop into your head at the queerest moments and you smile, but you don’t tell anyone about them. Locked up inside you is where they belong. Just something you hold onto that your subconscious uses to cheer you up when it needs to. Spike felt like that was every waking minute these days. His brain had grown weary of trying to find a way to break the spell he was under.

Raising his eyes to her face again, he couldn’t quite believe how sad she looked. It was wrong for such a pretty little girl to look so down about something. He choked on that thought and frowned, trying to think of something to say and feeling like they were using each other as their own personal quacks—or were they trying to find a level on which to connect?

“You don’t come across as unloving.” His voice was sure and steady as he frowned at her, gauging her reaction to his words to see if she was telling him the truth, if she really was a girl with the defences of Fort Knox around her heart.

“I love them, but I won’t let them in, at least not all the way. I see it happening and it’s like I’m powerless to stop it. I’m just watching myself from a distance—a bystander. I always keep people at arms length. Mom says I’m afraid to let someone touch my soul because they might break my heart.” Buffy spoke to her hands rather than him. Even when she’d been going to sessions with her doctor she had felt uncomfortable about talking about herself—more so than she felt when she talked to Spike. Maybe it’s because I know he’s been through bad stuff. The doctors never seemed to have any pain of their own. How could they relate to me, to anyone? We’re not all textbook cases.

Spike considered how he was her total opposite. He would give his all in love and open up everything for the person he was with. He wasn’t guarded with his emotions. Now he wished he had been, wished he could’ve put up the barriers around his inner sanctum that would have protected him from the full force of finding his love in the arms of another.

“Is that what happened to the quarterback?”

“Riley?” Buffy felt the sudden need to get off her chest the way she felt about Riley now, after everything that had happened between them and everything she’d put up with. “He said I was disconnected, I didn’t love him. I think I did, at first.”

“What happened?” Spike slowly eased the car back onto the interstate, wanting to get moving on their journey but not wanting to disturb her while he had her talking.

Buffy recognised that he was using her talking to distract him from his own thoughts. She’d seen enough pain in his eyes over the past few hours to make her want to continue talking to him, to help him get control over himself again by filling his head with her words and pushing out all the ones of his own that lingered there.

“He bored me.” She said flatly, feeling freed by being able to finally say that out loud to someone. “Something was missing.”

“Missing? Physically or emotionally? Because I’m getting a word picture here and it isn’t pretty to be missing that appendage.” He grinned.

Buffy giggled. There it was again, a tantalising glimpse of what he could be like.

“He was…” She pondered what she was about to say. Something about it screamed to her that he might get the idea she liked his type, when of course she didn’t. “…Too safe.”

Spike raised his brows.

“I see. Boring, huh? No dangerous thrills for little Buffy.”

Her heart hammered against her chest over his words and the seductive tone his voice had gained, so low and sultry that she decided it should have been illegal.

“I don’t go in for dangerous.” She stated in a matter of fact tone that was devoid of emotion. “But safe is well, like you said, it’s dull.”

Spike pursed his lips as he mused what she’d said. She was starting to appear a little more complex than he’d had her pinned down as. Not so airhead and more secretly interesting.

“So Captain Cardboard wasn’t wicked enough for little miss Summers?”

Buffy denied the burning inferno that exploded in her stomach. His words still said with the same tone he’d adopted during his last observation.

“I guess he wasn’t. He showed up one day with Harmony. That was the first I knew about them. Apparently, the rest of the school had known for weeks. She was a cheerleader, too. Her brain was totally up there.” Buffy intimated the sky.

“Probably lack of oxygen fuelling her stupidity then?” Spike smirked as he caused her to giggle quietly again. There was something all too enthralling about her laugh. It tickled his ears in a way that he actually liked—light and happy, carefree.

“Probably. He said I was too conceited and too shallow for him, I needed an attitude adjustment. Kinda hurt to think that people thought that about me. What’s worse is I think he’s right. I’m shallow.”

“Shallow is a good thing sometimes, protects you, helps you survive. Sometimes being deep can have severe repercussions, fucks you over.” Spike swung the car into the middle lane and pressed his foot down on the accelerator, satisfied that he wasn’t going to scare her out of talking because she was so engrossed with himself. It seemed strange to get so much sweetness and attention from someone, especially an almost stranger. Usually people took one look at him and ran for the hills, not wanting to hear what he had to say, wanting to avoid him at all costs.

This girl was so different to everyone. She was someone.

“How?” Buffy let a small frown wrinkle her nose, her eyes watching him like a hawk for any sign that he was starting to fall back onto his earlier thoughts.

“You think you’re a better person because you’re deep, when in reality it just means that you’re more likely to get hurt.”

“Shallow is still a bad thing.” Curling up on the seat, she pulled her knees up and awaited his answer.

Spike looked down at her little feet where they rested on the beaten leather of the seat and he noticed she’d slipped her shoes off—probably more out of comfort than courtesy. Her small feminine toes were tipped with candy pink nails that reminded him of his lollipops and it took all he had to keep control of his thoughts and stop them from running along the lines of sucking one of them into his mouth.

Following her feet up, he smiled over how she was somehow managing to keep her legs together enough to hide her panties from him.

“Let’s just agree that shallow and deep both have their place in life, save deep for the tender moments and shallow for the bad times, use indifference for the rest.”

“We agreeing now?” Buffy teased him as he stared blankly at the road ahead, weaving smoothly in and out between the cars.

“Guess we are, love.”

Buffy smiled at the same time he did.

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