Coming on

Author's Note:

I'm sure some of you could guess, but this one's based on a song I really like by The National. Here's a live video, and here's the lyrics, with break-downs on their meanings. Everytime I heard this song, I thought of... Well fuck, let's call him a Friend. This one's for him, and the shitty situation he's going through.

Like Spike, I hope he figures out how to live with the memory of her. She'll never be forgotten, but maybe she'll soon be celebrated, instead of mourned.

Spike stumbled heavily through the front door, reaching back and pulling his keys from the knob before pushing it closed. He didn't bother locking it; he never did while he was here. He hiccuped, sighing at the taste of stale hops and barley, at the bile that didn't rise so much as bob in place.

"It's so easy to set off," he started singing absently. It was an old song at this point, one whose words he knew by heart but wouldn't allow himself to remember during the long waking hours.

"The molecules and the caplets," he slurred, moving through the bare room to the low coffee table. Despite the alcohol, his voice was steady, if a little muted, and much deeper than it had been when he'd first sang this song—one of his heart-songs.

Knocking over a tall glass baung he'd picked up years ago, he picked up a couple of bottles and uncorked them, ignoring a plastic bag full of green and brown clumps for now. Righting the glass before it could start spilling onto the wooden table, he moved aside a small metal box he'd had to pick up around the same time.

"They all have something against me," he murmured, placing one pill before him and corking the bottle again before setting it aside. "Nothing I do makes me feel different." He placed the second one beside the first before placing the bottle with its sister.

"This one's like your sister's best friend's in a bath, calling you to join them," he sung, picking up the first pill and looking at it. "Can't avoid them," he whispered before tossing it back into his mouth and swallowing it.

Picking up the other one, he smiled as he sang, "This one's like your mother's hugs when she was young and sunburned in the eighties; it lasts forever." He then tossed back that one.

He paused there, his claw tracing through the thin layer of dust that coated the table.

"The more level they have me," he said, monotone now, "the more I cannot stand me. I have helpless friendships," he said, looking over to the singular picture on the wall, before burping quietly and continuing, "And bad taste in liquids."

He stood shakily, walking over to the bare wall and staring deeply at the picture for a long time.

Shuddering, he walked back to the table and sat down in front of it. He grabbed another packet of pills, but these weren't the bright colors with print that the others were. Pulling one out of the thin plastic bag, he looked at it before gently shaking it, listening to the susurration of the powder inside it before tossing it back as well.

"This one's like the wilderness without the world," he sang again, hiccuping and standing to walk over to the window. He reached out and placed his paws against the latch, every intention on unlocking it and opening his small apartment to the world once again.

"I'm gonna miss those long nights with the windows open," he sang as his claws dropped from the metal.

He looked around the empty room again before shuddering and wiping at his eyes. He turned and ran from it slowly, long paces taking him past the bathroom and into his almost equally bare bedroom.

The third pill was acting already, and his vision swam as he sat heavily on the bed.

He glanced at the bedside table, a lamp standing tall over a red box, an ashtray that was starting to overflow, and a bundle of small, rectangular yellowed paper. Reaching out, he stopped himself from picking up the letters there.

"I keep rereading the same lines, always up at five a.m. every morning. Like a baby."

He looked at the empty wall directly across from him and sniffed as he ignored the tears streaming down his snout now. Again.

"I have no possessions," he sang, slightly monotone but with feeling starting to creep in. "No point of view or vision." He reached a paw over to the letters and just let it rest on them, lightly. "I'm just trying to stay in touch with anything that I'm still in touch with." Sighing, he reached over the red paper box and pulled a slim tube out.

He glanced over at the window, heavily curtained to keep the light out while he tried to sleep, while he ran his paw over the bedside table.

"The sky's getting white; I can't find a lighter anywhere, I'm going crazy." He bit his lip as his digits failed to find the small metal box under the letters, and after a moment, he ripped the tube from his lips and threw it across the room.

"But I'm not crazy," he told himself, softly, even as the worst part of the singing began.

Her part.

"Put your heels against the wall," she murmured into his head as he jammed his paws against his ears, trying to drown out her crystalline tones as she sang into them regardless.

"I swear you got a little bit taller since I saw you," she cooed, before fading from his reaching paws, straining to pull her closer, to hear some more of her voice, anything at all. Even just a breathe, just a heartbeat.

And then he did catch the last sentence, a voice that was almost hers, but much fainter.

"I'll still destroy you," she had wept back in the hospital. Even as he felt that last little bit of warmth from her warning, her voice, her presence, they both knew she was slipping away.

He reached over to the lamp, switching it on and standing as he looked around the room, looked for the source of that last line. He even tossed over the bed to look at the dust-caked carpet beneath it, and his two pieces of clothing were thrown from the tiny closet.

Finding nothing, he gripped the door and put a paw on his heart, feeling it race under his digits before rage flashed through his mind, and he tore the thin door away from the jamb and into the pile that made up his clothes and bed.

Pressing his back again the wall, he slid down slowly, his paws coming out to brace him against the floor. Feeling something beneath his left paw, he grabbed the paper tube and placed it between his lips again.

"It's just the lights, coming on," he sang faintly, looking around the trashed, empty room. "It's just the lights coming on."

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