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Sleepwalker

 

 

“I taste it all, I taste it all
The tears again…”

He wipes them off with the back of his hand frustrated. He knows it’s stupid and he shouldn’t, but those damned salty drops just don’t want to stop springing free from his tired eyes. The circles are black under them for not sleeping more than a couple of hours since days. Luckily those circles could be hidden under a thick layer of make up. But now there was no make up, just him. Alone in yet another nameless hotel room – to be more exact on the balcony of said room. His back was against the wall as he was sitting on the tiles that were still warm from the sun although it was already past 3 a.m., a bottle of Jack nearly empty in his hand.

“Shit!” he gritted through his teeth as if reacting on an inner monologue. You knew this’d happen the moment you said yes to his request. You knew you – we – would come off badly. Yet you did it anyway…

“You wanted it too…” he sighed frustrated “More than anything…” he wiped at his eyes again and lifted the bottle to his lips with some difficulty, but he finally managed to find his mouth and took a long sip, the burning feeling as it went down his throat and warmed his stomach felt good now. Though it didn’t help to forget or ease the pain he was harboring inside. You mean self-pity, right?

“Oh just shut up already…” he mumbled tilting his head up to watch the starry sky. It was a clear and warm night. It’s funny how we complicate things for ourselves knowing exactly that things like this could – and usually do – happen. And yet we do it anyway, walk into the trap, offer our neck and heart and end up falling flat on our face. Like Adam did.

He was in love with his guitarist and best friend, who was supposedly straight but yet he slept with Adam to experiment… or whatever his reason was. Adam knew it’d end badly, but hope is a bitch. Being a romantic deep down didn’t help either. He was hoping that maybe… maybe this could become more… that this’d change things for Tommy too and Adam would be able to finally love him openly, not just adoring him from the distance. Well, it did change things but into the opposite direction.

It’s been a little over two weeks since that night when they made love. Had sex. Whatever… and since then Tommy distanced himself from Adam. It was something Adam never thought he’d do. He was starting to blame himself for letting this happen when he knew, when he should’ve known better. And yet he couldn’t say no to those big brown eyes. But he was disappointed and not really because of Tommy’s reaction as he tried to avoid and stop Adam’s every try of pulling him aside and talk about that night. No, he didn’t really blame Tommy. It was his fault. He must’ve done something wrong, although he so tried to make everything good for Tommy. And yet he woke up alone in his bed that morning with only a note that was torn out from the notepad next to the phone. ‘Thanks for everything. T.’ That’s what the note said. Nothing more and it just confused Adam more. Still it was evidence that it happened and it wasn’t just a very vivid dream. He was still carrying that piece of paper around in his wallet like a lovesick fool. Well, he was one apparently. And a pathetic one to that too.

“Yeah” he snorted and drank again. What really hurt him was the way Tommy acted afterwards. Adam bumped into fucking high walls every time he tried to get closer to him and in two days Tommy already had some chick on his arm, kissing and parading her around, and disappearing with her to god knows where. Adam had some ideas about what they might’ve been doing in Tommy’s free time and it was as if a knife was being twisted in his heart over and over and over again.

“Fuck him!” he cursed running a hand through his hair. You did, remember? Of course he did. He remembered every fucking second of it. It was burned into his mind and he couldn’t get rid of the pictures. Oh he tried. He so fucking tried going out, getting wasted in the actual city’s gay bars which were recommended to him by friends. He wanted to fuck the first twink who’d come his way and resemble Tommy in the slightest way. Oh and there were boys who’d have dropped on their knees on the middle of the dance floor to suck off the big Adam Lambert… But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t touch them. Or look at them, for that matter. He went back to the hotel alone that night, smoked pot, drank some more and let Pink Floyd blast through the speakers as he danced and sang along, running to music which was always his shelter. The only problem was that music reminded him of Tommy too.

“It's like I can't even feel
After the way you touched me
I'm not asleep but I'm not awake
After the way you loved me…”

And then he went numb for days and couldn’t sleep. He still can’t really sleep or rest, but he doesn’t care even if putting on his mask and singing and dancing through the shows became harder this way. Especially because he felt the tension between him and Tommy on stage. Something that’s never been there like this before. All those fake smiles he had to make there and outside his hotel rooms ate him away bit by bit. But Tommy didn’t seem to care too much… and after a while… after a while Adam gave up on trying to talk to him. He knew refusal when he saw one. And oh god, he had his fair share of refusals… He might have looked strong and confident and at peace with himself on the outside, but when there was no one around then he was more of that insecure teenage boy with all the complexes and low self-esteem all over again. Scared, alone, feeling small and hurting. You reek of self-pity. You should get up and drag him out of bed to speak your mind!

“I said shut up! What if I want to pity myself for a change? Why is that such a sin?! Why do I always have to be the strong one?! And who are you to tell me how to feel and what to think?! Last time I checked you were just a parasite tagging along and making my life miserable!” he shouted into the quiet night then quickly closed his mouth. He was seriously starting to think he was going crazy. Talking to the voice in his head like this!

I am you.

“Just shut up… just shut up and leave me alone…” Adam whispered pressing his eyes shut, one hand gripping his own hair as if he was about to pull it out while fresh hot tears were sliding down on his flushed face. He finished off the bottle nearly defiantly and put it down next to him.

I don’t know how.

“Shit…” Adam pulled his legs up and hugged them to his chest, hiding his face behind his knees. Yes, he knew all too well that he didn’t know how. After all, his other self’s been with him for a very long time. Not leaving him for a minute. Not that he’d always be active, but Adam could always feel him to some extent. The first time it “talked” to him he nearly shit his pants. It wasn’t enough that his body was going through all kinds of changes as a teen, that he realized he was gay, but he had to deal with this… something inside of him too. This something raw, primal and at times animalistic being that filled him with urges he didn’t know before. He was old enough to understand that it wasn’t really normal and he was terrified from the thought that he might get drugged and tucked away in some mental institute. He did some research over the years, reading about possession, spirits, demons and all kinds of things, but he couldn’t really find anything that’d quite fit what he was going through. Sometimes he wondered if there were others like him out there, but since he never talked about this side of him to anyone he couldn’t know. So he kept his mouth shut and tried to learn how to live with this other side. It wasn’t always a struggle though. As he got to know himself and the Other a bit better, their relationship improved. But at times like these he wished he could have some space and privacy. But that remained only another dream that would never come true.

“Suck it up, Lambert. This is your ‘glamorous’ life…” he mumbled to himself sarcastically. All the flashing and the lights and the fame. Always pretending to be strong and happy and confident… If they knew. If they would dare to look deeper and forget to always take and take and take until Adam feels himself paper-thin, empty and at the end unable to feel… But that’s not how the world, how people work. For a brief second he let himself go to a thought he tried to dismiss nearly immediately. Namely that Tommy wasn’t better either. He came to him to ask for something too… and Adam gave it to him, because that’s just how he was wired. Helping others, putting everyone in front of his own needs – even if sometimes people saw him selfish. They couldn’t see why he was doing that. They couldn’t see the bigger picture that if he reached his own goals then everyone around him would have the opportunity to pursue their own dreams further. He and his talent made it possible for a lot of people to live their dreams, to get famous, to earn money, to do what they loved to do. And Adam never held that against them, not even when it was so hard sometimes to bite his tongue and let them have their ways. It wasn’t a life for everyone and it wasn’t an easy life either. But he was still living his dream, doing what he always wanted to do, working hard not to lose this privilege in a world which would chew him up and spit him out in a second if it could. And he wouldn’t be able to live according to its restricting rules anymore. He never could. He never wanted.

This was still the best escape from that and he’d gladly give all of himself away bit by bit if he could – just like he did with Tommy since the first time he saw him. Tommy took more and more of him without him knowing about it. The smiles, the touches, the kisses on stage, the long late-night conversations, the hugs, the fooling around, the good and the bad times, their friendship… all those chipped off pieces from his heart and soul and Adam just watched it helplessly. Maybe he could’ve stopped it, but he didn’t want to. He gave himself over to the guitarist gladly, because he was one of the very few people whom he let really close, who maybe knew him better than himself. And finally on the night that they’d spent together Adam silently handed the rest of his heart over to the small blond even if he knew he probably wouldn’t get what he really wanted in return. It was a silly move, but at that point way beyond his control. And now you are miserable.

“Right.”

You could’ve spared yourself this heartache.

“I know.”

Yet you walked right into it. Hurting us both. Why?

“I don’t know. I had no choice.”

There’s always a choice.

“Not this time.”

What do you mean?

“Can’t you feel it when he’s near? You’re the mystical creature. You tell me what’s that feeling we feel around him” Adam whispered resting his flushed chin on his knees, feeling hollow and broken, the silence stretching in his head until he thought he wouldn’t get any response.

Home.

“Yeah…” he sighed bitterly and held his legs tighter, hands fisting in the fabric of his jeans as the pain and longing in his chest returned, throbbing with each heartbeat, pushing him deeper into depression.

 

“Everywhere that I go
I see another memory
And all the places we used to know
They're always there to haunt me
I walk around and I feel so lost and lonely
You're everything that I want
But you don't want me…”

 

He was losing Tommy. He was losing himself.

 

 

 

By: Useless-girl
31/03/2014

Chapter 5