Title: What he's doing now Chapter: 2 - Someone's calling my name Rating: G Summary: Luke sleepless Characters: Luke, Faith Genre: Warnings: English is not my native language Disclaimer: This site is no way associated with "As the World Turns", CBS, P&G, or Van Hansis and Jake Silbermann. This is not for profit. No copyright infringement is intended. Authors submit and write their own work.

Luke woke up with a start and sat up in bed. “Damn”, he looked at his watch, “it’s only 3:50, what’s wrong with me…?”

He turned the lights on, he knew that going back to sleep was out of the question, this wasn’t the first time he found himself awake like this in the middle of the night. It had been happening a lot lately and he couldn’t understand why.

He stood up and went into the kitchen to have some tea, it had always helped him at the farm so he was hoping it would hep him tonight as well.

He looked out through the window after putting some water in a cup. Everything seemed so calm, so quiet…. And yet something had awaken him again, like so many other nights before. He couln’t help but feel that there was something wrong, he just had this feeling, this weight in his heart.

He tried to remember what he was dreaming, what could leave him feeling so sad and lonely?

“Luke?”

Luke turned around and found Faith looking at him.

“Hey, there, you scared me”

“What are you doing up at this time? Are you alright?”

Luke smiled at her, when did she become the big sister? He kept smiling… he had to keep smiling even if he didn’t feel like it at all.

“look who’s talking”

She sat down on a chair and smiled at him

“I had to feed the baby”

Luke smiled, of course, feed the baby, she seemed to do that quite a lot, but little Emma was just a few weeks old, that’s all they do, right?

“So, why are you up?”

Luke didn’t want to lie to her, and he couldn’t, not at this time of the night when he was so tired and alone… he sat with her at the kitchen table. Faith was getting worried, Luke wasn’t the same, something had changed since the last time she saw him at Oakdale

“What is it, Luke?”

Luke rested his head in his hands and answered, his voice sounding as tired as he felt

“I am not sure… I haven’t been sleeping very well lately”

“Why? Is there something wrong?”

Luke felt guilty for worrying her, but he needed to talk to someone about it, it was driving him crazy.

“I have been having this nightmares… well, not nightmares exactly, I don’t know, I just wake up suddenly in the middle of the night with this weird feeling…

“You mean that the dreams wake you up?”

Luke rubbed the back of his head “No… I don’t know…”

“Try to focus on the moment when you wake up. What’s on your mind?”

Luke closed his eyes for a second and he heard it loud and clear

“Someone’s calling my name…”

Faith looked confused “What? Now? You hear someone…?”

“No, not now. In my dreams… I can hear a voice calling my name again and again, and it sounds real, and every time I wake up looking around feeling like there’s someone there, somewhere around me, inside of me… shit, that doesn’t make any sense, right?”

“Who? Do you recognise the voice?”

“Well… now you are going to think that I am crazy… “

“Aaron?”

Luke smiled “No… it’s Noah’s voice”

“I haven’t heard that name in a while”

Luke couldn’t help but chuckle.

“10 years more or less”

“And you still miss him…?”

“Everyday… I am stupid, right? He is probably living with someone with more patience than me…”

“He left you, Luke”

Luke remembered that day like it was yesterday, when he told Noah about Reg, when he pushed for answers… didn’t Noah said that he wanted some space? That’s all he’d wanted, space, some room to breath, and think, and feel…

“I pushed him away, I kept following him and going to the cottage looking for him”

“He was always taking you for granted”

“I was always pushing, Faith, for him to admit that he was gay, that he wanted to be with me, that he loved me, that he didn’t want Ameera… damn, I kept asking about the break he wanted, what kind of break, for how long… I even told him I might see other guys… I actually implied that I was going to go out with a guy we knew”

He could still hear himself throwing the false marriage at him, asking him if he was the love of his life.

“I didn’t know that you went out with another guy right after Noah”

“I didn’t…. I couldn’t”

Faith looked at him and for a moment she thought that she could feel his loneliness, his sadness

“And 10 years later here you are, thinking of him…”

Chapter 3