Still Believe In Magic? (A Buckin Fanfic)

Chapter 3 - In The Swirling Of The Storm

2 weeks later

Chris' POV

Today my mood surprisingly wasn't as low. I woke up to the sun shining into my room, with a day with the guys at the studio ahead of me. After I got over my little breakdown at The Bakery we have been making a little progress with sorting out which songs to put onto the album.

I took a shower and quickly had two slices of toast for breakfast. This time I didn't want to be late again, so I got on my way to the studio.

Today we were set to do the probably final recording of a song we had been changing and re-editing for at least three months now.

I still remember writing down the first few lines that had come to my mind on a small piece of paper. It was one of those songs that had arrived in the middle of one of my sleepless nights shortly after my split with Gwyneth.

In the darkness,
Before the dawn,
Leave a light,
A light on

It wasn't really a whole song at all, and I didn't know where it was coming from or what it actually meant. It was just like it had been with Yellow for example, it came out of my mind or whatever without any comprehensible sense to it.

I wasn't actually going to tell the others about it because I thought it wasn't significant, but for some reason I did show them.

Good thing I did, because Guy somehow managed together with a few producers to turn my few piano-accompanied lines into something special.
We even considered using that song as a single now. To be honest I still didn't think it had qualities to be a single though.

But at least the last two weeks had been extraordinarily successful concerning the process of putting together an album. We even were pretty sure about the name of the album now. It would probably be called Ghost Stories, after the song I'd started writing a while ago.

And that's all it was. Just a collection of depressing, dark stories. We actually got quite a lot together about the album already, but we were still missing the crucial part: good hit songs.

I could already imagine what the critics would be saying about it... They always loved to hate on us and putting out an album that seems boring and insignificant to the mainstream wouldn't make it any better.

I just wish I could have told the rest of the band the truth about why I'm feeling like this, but I couldn't. I had to go on hiding my feelings and hoping I would get over them one day.

But this sometimes turned out to be quite a hard thing to do, it could just tear me apart, like right now.

Trying to be inconspicuous I glanced over to the handsome man as he was sitting on the sofa with his guitar. He looked so perfect when he was gently swaying his head to the music, his beautiful eyes looking down at his guitar. He seemed so lost in quietly playing his notes.
On his head he was wearing a hat, as usual, it made him look even better.
I tried to avert my gaze before he noticed me staring at him, but my eyes wouldn't turn away from his perfection.

It was so hard to try to behave normal around him now that my feelings about him had changed. Or maybe they never changed and had always been like that and it was just me who hadn't really been aware of it.
Probably the fact that I had really been in love with Gwyneth at that time had overshadowed the strange type of affection I was feeling towards Jonny.

It didn't even make any sense at all. How could I have been around someone for so long and after 16 years suddenly realise I loved him? It was out of question if I really did, I couldn't stop thinking about him for an hour.
But I still just couldn't understand it, and if I didn't, how could I ever have explained it to someone else?

My phone ringing suddenly awoke me from my daydream.

With a glance at the display I saw it was Gwyneth.

I was a little confused.
Gwyneth? What did she want from me in the middle of the day? She should know that I'm probably busy right now.
It's not that we had a real fight when I broke up with her or something, actually we were both trying to remain friends, mainly for the sake of the kids. But it still felt kind of... awkward between us sometimes.

She of course didn't know the real reason why I had suddenly decided to break up with her either. Probably she had been able to tell that our relationship was slowly going down though as well, and I sure wasn't the only reason for it. Maybe we both were in some kind of midlife-crisis.
I didn't even want to imagine what she would say if she found out that in truth I was in love with a certain other person. Not to mention the huge buzz the media would make around it.

Breaking: Chris Martin left his wife for his bandmate!

In short, I really wasn't in the mood for talking to her right now, but at the same time I was hurried to get on the phone because I realised something awful might have happened causing her to call me while I was working.

I got outside so I could privately talk to her.

"Hi Gwen. What's the matter?"

"Hello Chris. I hope I'm not interrupting you during something important but I thought you'd probably want me to tell you right away."

"Why? What's the matter?"

I could hear in her voice that she was worried herself, which caused me to panic a little.

"We don't know what exactly is wrong either, but Apple suddenly felt bad after she had breakfast. She was really dizzy and had stomach cramps. At first we thought she might just have a little infection, but then she started to feel really sick. We're at the hospital right now and the doctors are figuring out what's wrong with her."

I stared into empty space for a few seconds. I had always hated being so far away from my children when we were recording in London. Now all my worries about it proofed to be reasonable. I couldn't believe my little girl was really sick and I was so far away from her. I loved my children with all my heart, but sadly my job and divorce from my wife made it difficult to always be there for them.

After I unfroze from my state of shock I managed to reply to Gwyneth on the phone.

"Oh my God! Is she going to be OK? Should I come over? I will go to the airport right away."

"Wait Chris! You don't need to travel all the way to California. I'm pretty sure it's nothing too bad. I can keep you up with the news every few hours over the phone."

"Are you sure? I don't want to leave poor Apple alone while she's really ill."

"Don't worry, I'm right here with her after all."

"...OK, I'll talk to you later."

I considered really doing how Gwen told me for a moment, but then I decided that I wouldn't be able to stay one more hour here not knowing if Apple is alright.
Call me overprotective daddy, but I had to be there for my little girl and I wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't.

Without rethinking my decision for another second I grabbed my most important stuff, dropped Will a message explaining myself and got off to the airport.