Wake at dawn - Chapter 10
Title:Wake at dawn (with a winged heart)
Author: jamie2109
Pairing: Adam/Tommy
Rating: R
Word count: 2291
Warnings: None. RPF if that needs warning for.
Genre: Romance with some angst. What good is a romance without the pain of getting there? Definitely HEA fic.
Summary: There is an unseen life that dreams us. It knows our true direction and destiny. We can trust ourselves more than we realize and we need have no fear of change. ~John O'Donohue
Disclaimer: Fantasy. Not real.
Notes: My first real RPF. I've succumbed to the dark side. I'm blaming the plot bunny with the machine gun threatening dire consequences if I don't give in and write it. There are some parallels with canon, not an awful lot; mostly I've just played with things. The title is a quote from Kahlil Gibran. Big huge thank you to montmorency for her support and beta work. You are awesome and I am extremely grateful for your time and expertise. <3333
Chapter 9
Chapter 10.
‘Well, that’s sorted that out, then.’ Sutan grinned as he slid his phone back into his pocket. ‘Come on, time to hit the town. There’s still a crowd at Mr. Blacks, how about we head there?’
Adam thought about it for a few seconds, torn between wanting the security of people he knew and the anonymity of somewhere no one knew him and no one would wonder why he looked like he just lost his best friend. In the end he chose friends. Who better to jerk him out of the doldrums than the people who knew him best?
‘Sure. Just let me pass on where we’ll be.’
Adam opened his phone again and scrolled through to his DMs. As he did so, something caught his eye in his @s, and then caught his breath as he stopped and looked closely at it.
TommyJoe Ratliff
@TommyJoeRatliff: @adamlambert I’m on my way, babyboy, be there soon.
Certain he must be seeing things, he rubbed his eyes and read it again. He wanted to believe there was a real Tommy Joe in the world but if there was, the world made no sense. People you’ve never met before aren’t supposed to turn up in your dreams like Tommy had been in his.
But then who was it? Who else knew that the Tommy in his dreams called him babyboy?
He must have made a sound - maybe he’d gasped or groaned - but Sutan was suddenly beside him, hand on his arm, looking at him in alarm.
‘What’s wrong?’
Adam could only stare at him.
‘Ad?’ Sutan tried again, and Adam felt the pressure of Sutan’s hand squeezing his arm.
‘Why?’ Adam croaked out, voice barely audible, because of course the only person he’d told about the dreams at all was Sutan. He must have mentioned Tommy’s nickname at some point and Sutan had set this up as a joke. Perhaps it was meant to remind him how ridiculous he was being, or to snap him out of the funk he’d sunk into or something. But it wasn’t funny.
‘Why what?’
‘Why would you make up a Tommy Joe and mock me with it?’
Sutan looked confused. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
Adam shoved his phone at him and pointed to the screen where he still had the reply showing. He watched as Sutan read the tweet, looked even more confused for a moment and then grinned widely.
‘Oh, Ad, this means he’s real? You can find…’
Adam cut him off. ‘Of course he’s not real. You’re the only one I told about the dreams, the only one that could possibly know his nickname for me is baby boy. You set that all up,’ Adam accused, wounded.
‘Why would I do that?’ the look on Sutan’s face was confused and it gave Adam cause to stop and think for a moment, to try and think rationally about all this. But nothing of these dreams made sense, nothing about any of this made sense - the only thing that did make some sort of convoluted sense was that someone was playing a massively unfunny joke on him. And the only person that could have done that was Sutan, unless he’d told other people about Adam’s weird dreams. But Adam didn’t think he’d go that far.
‘I don’t know,’ Adam answered finally, ‘but it’s the only thing that makes any sense in all this. He’s not real, Sutan,’ Adam insisted. ‘I dreamed him, dreamed him! Don’t you get it? He’s completely a figment of my imagination, how can he possibly be real? And as you are the only other person in the world that knows about this, then you must have set this up!’ Adam’s finger jabbed at the phone.
‘If you think I would ever do something like this, you don’t know me very well, and you’re not the person I thought you were,’ Sutan almost growled and his eyes flashed angrily, before softening slightly, shoulders dropping. ‘And if I had no idea what you’ve been going through with these dreams, I’d be insulted by your accusation and walk out to leave you to deal with this by yourself.’
Adam glared at Sutan for several moments before deflating. Sutan was right and, really, he’d known deep down that his best friend would not have played such a cruel joke on him. Although, where that left Adam trying to figure out what the hell was going on, he had no idea.
‘I’m sorry,’ he started. ‘But if you didn’t, then I…I just…he might be real? Oh, god…’ Adam sat down heavily and looked at Sutan pleading silently for him to help.
The last of the anger disappeared from of Sutan’s eyes. He sighed and poked around on Adam’s phone for a few moments, before handing the phone back to Adam. ‘See? He’s real. According to his bio he even lives in Burbank, plays guitar and it’s a pity there’s no picture of him because he’s even the same age as you said he was.’
‘But he can’t be really my Tommy Joe, can he? I dreamed him up.’ Adam kept trying to tell himself that this wasn’t happening, that surely someone was playing the worst possible joke on him, but deep in his heart he desperately wanted this Tommy Joe to be his dream Tommy Joe. He needed it to be true.
‘I think you’re missing the point here, Ad, he must be your Tommy Joe.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because he called you babyboy. Who else knows that nickname?’
Adam sighed, still too shocked to be thinking straight about this whole situation.
‘And that leads me on to the next logical conclusion,’ Sutan said slowly as if waiting for Adam to catch up, but his brain felt like it had gone on an extended vacation and was slowly wrinkling like a dried prune in the sun.
‘What?’
‘If he knows your nickname then he must be having the same dreams you are.’
Adam’s eyes snapped up to Sutan’s. ‘That’s impossible…isn’t it?’ He shook his head. ‘It must be. There is no logical explanation for two people having the same dreams at the same time. Two people who’ve never met and know nothing about each other.’
Sutan’s voice softened. ‘The universe is trying to tell you something.’ Adam looked at him. ‘You’ve always believed in astrology, you read your horoscope every day. You firmly believe in karma and the universe making things right somehow.’ Sutan sat beside him and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. ‘This is the universe making things right, perhaps. For him, too. Perhaps he needs someone like you as much as you need someone like him and the Fates decided to step in and make sure you found each other.’
Adam leaned into the comfort Sutan was offering. He’d done a lot of shit in his time; seen a lot of strange things happen under the influence of some mind altering drugs, but he’d never envisioned something like this. For all his belief in the cosmic power of the universe and all the times he’d used it to explain things that no one else had an explanation for, he still found it hard to believe that this was happening the way Sutan thought. But, oh how he wanted it to be…
‘This might be the one, Ad,’ Sutan continued. ‘In your dreams you love each other to distraction, right?’ Adam nodded. ‘He’s dreamed that too. Odds are he’s going to be at least curious about you. Tweet him back, see what happens.’
This whole dream thing was really doing Adam’s head in and, while Sutan made some sense, Adam had to wonder about Tommy, and if he was like the Tommy in his dreams after all. Adam knew that there was nothing different about himself in his dreams, other than he was happier and in love. What if Tommy just ignored the dreams, didn’t remember them, or worse, thought them disgusting and nightmarish? He realized, belatedly, that he was already accepting that Tommy had the same dreams.
If that was the case, and Tommy had been having these dreams the whole time, too, then why wait until now to tweet him something? Adam huffed softly. How would Tommy know Adam had been having the same dreams? There would be no reason to tweet Adam at all. After all, a ‘Hi, I’m Tommy and I’ve been having these weird dreams about you,’ would only have made him look like an obsessed fan.
‘Ad?’
‘Yeah, ok,’ he replied. ‘What should I say?’ He couldn’t think of a damned thing.
‘Did you have a special nickname for him?’ Sutan prompted.
Adam smiled and opened up a DM screen.
@adamlambert
@TommyJoeRatliff Glitterbaby?
He hit send and then followed Tommy’s account so he could DM back.
‘What do we do now?’ Adam asked, still too shaken to even think properly. His Tommy could be real after all! What he really wanted to do was test the phone numbers he had in his head for his dream Tommy, see if those were real too and talk to him, hear his voice… Adam’s heart ached to hear Tommy’s voice again. Or more…maybe his dream Tommy’s address was the same in real life and he could do there and hold his Tommy close once more…
‘We wait for him to reply.’
‘What if he doesn’t?’
‘He will. Trust me.’
~~~~~
When Tommy woke up, he yawned and stretched, feeling oddly rested despite the frustrations of his dreams and the emotionally taxing day he’d had the day before. There was a weird feeling in his stomach…like something had changed and he was waiting for something. He smiled and recognised that he had this newfound freedom thrumming through his veins and he felt lighter than he had in months. His life was going to be different from now on, he could just feel it. Not that he didn’t like Beth, even maybe love her a little, and perhaps feel a little sad and guilty that she’d been hurt, but he undoubtedly felt liberated now she was gone.
He rolled over, picked up his phone and turned it on. The light had been flashing, indicating a message, and he realised he must have slept better even than he thought, because normally his ring tone would wake him. The message was from Mia.
Hey, TJ, you keeping secrets or what? Baby boy? LOL. Ring me!
Baby boy? Fuck, baby boy? How did she know about that? Tommy thought frantically how she could possibly know about the nickname he called Adam in his dreams. There was nothing, he was sure of it! He hadn’t told her; he hadn’t told anyone!
He quickly sent her a text message: WTF r u talking about? He wasn’t going to ring her; she’d know in an instant something was up.
No more than a minute later came the reply; Check twitter, dude, and then call me! I’m serious.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ Tommy chanted as he opened his twitter account, dread sitting heavy on him now, removing all traces of the awesome mood he’d been in when he woke. Somehow he must have tweeted Adam and used the nickname. Somehow… in his sleep? At least Adam probably got thousands of tweets every day and his would hopefully go unnoticed in the pile. Hopefully.
The first thing Tommy noticed was he had about 500 replies. He exhaled heavily, resigned to being made to feel like a fool. Sure enough, when he flicked through his own tweets, there it was staring him in the face:
TommyJoe Ratliff
@TommyJoeRatliff: @adamlambert I’m on my way, babyboy, be there soon.
How could he have been such an idiot? As he checked Adam’s tweets, he vaguely remembered sending Adam a text in his dream - obviously he’d done it for real. He gave a short laugh when he saw what tweet of Adam’s he’d replied to. Soulmate…
So much for going unnoticed. It was obvious that someone had noticed. A huge part of him wanted to just wipe the replies, clear them out so he’d not have to suffer the humiliation of Adam’s fans laughing at him. But it was like a train wreck and he couldn’t not look.
The comments started off innocuously enough, with people asking who the fuck he thought he was calling Adam baby boy and laughing at him for responding to a soul mate tweet like that. Some thought he was a cute fanboy.
Then the tone of the comments changed. Tommy frowned, because people were asking who he was, how he knew Adam and where they’d met and did he like that he was the 550th person Adam had followed. ‘What the…’ Tommy breathed, stunned and rather sick to the stomach. Fair enough, he’d made a dumb mistake by tweeting Adam, thinking he was texting him in his dream, but why in hell would Adam be following him? It just didn’t make sense, Adam didn’t know him from a bar of soap and they’d certainly never met anywhere. Except in his dreams, and those were just dreams.
He was just about to put the phone down, ignore it all and stop thinking about what a fool he’d made of himself, when the light signifying a DM caught his eye. He sighed and assumed it was from Mia asking him why he was tweeting Adam Lambert such an intimate sounding tweet.
When he opened the message though, he almost dropped the phone in shock.
adamlambert
@TommyJoeRatliff Glitterbaby?
‘Holy fucking shit,’ Tommy said, voice shaking as much as his hands, the phone screen blurring he was shaking that much.
What the fuck was he supposed to do now?
Chapter 11
Author: jamie2109
Pairing: Adam/Tommy
Rating: R
Word count: 2291
Warnings: None. RPF if that needs warning for.
Genre: Romance with some angst. What good is a romance without the pain of getting there? Definitely HEA fic.
Summary: There is an unseen life that dreams us. It knows our true direction and destiny. We can trust ourselves more than we realize and we need have no fear of change. ~John O'Donohue
Disclaimer: Fantasy. Not real.
Notes: My first real RPF. I've succumbed to the dark side. I'm blaming the plot bunny with the machine gun threatening dire consequences if I don't give in and write it. There are some parallels with canon, not an awful lot; mostly I've just played with things. The title is a quote from Kahlil Gibran. Big huge thank you to montmorency for her support and beta work. You are awesome and I am extremely grateful for your time and expertise. <3333
Chapter 9
Chapter 10.
‘Well, that’s sorted that out, then.’ Sutan grinned as he slid his phone back into his pocket. ‘Come on, time to hit the town. There’s still a crowd at Mr. Blacks, how about we head there?’
Adam thought about it for a few seconds, torn between wanting the security of people he knew and the anonymity of somewhere no one knew him and no one would wonder why he looked like he just lost his best friend. In the end he chose friends. Who better to jerk him out of the doldrums than the people who knew him best?
‘Sure. Just let me pass on where we’ll be.’
Adam opened his phone again and scrolled through to his DMs. As he did so, something caught his eye in his @s, and then caught his breath as he stopped and looked closely at it.
TommyJoe Ratliff
@TommyJoeRatliff: @adamlambert I’m on my way, babyboy, be there soon.
Certain he must be seeing things, he rubbed his eyes and read it again. He wanted to believe there was a real Tommy Joe in the world but if there was, the world made no sense. People you’ve never met before aren’t supposed to turn up in your dreams like Tommy had been in his.
But then who was it? Who else knew that the Tommy in his dreams called him babyboy?
He must have made a sound - maybe he’d gasped or groaned - but Sutan was suddenly beside him, hand on his arm, looking at him in alarm.
‘What’s wrong?’
Adam could only stare at him.
‘Ad?’ Sutan tried again, and Adam felt the pressure of Sutan’s hand squeezing his arm.
‘Why?’ Adam croaked out, voice barely audible, because of course the only person he’d told about the dreams at all was Sutan. He must have mentioned Tommy’s nickname at some point and Sutan had set this up as a joke. Perhaps it was meant to remind him how ridiculous he was being, or to snap him out of the funk he’d sunk into or something. But it wasn’t funny.
‘Why what?’
‘Why would you make up a Tommy Joe and mock me with it?’
Sutan looked confused. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
Adam shoved his phone at him and pointed to the screen where he still had the reply showing. He watched as Sutan read the tweet, looked even more confused for a moment and then grinned widely.
‘Oh, Ad, this means he’s real? You can find…’
Adam cut him off. ‘Of course he’s not real. You’re the only one I told about the dreams, the only one that could possibly know his nickname for me is baby boy. You set that all up,’ Adam accused, wounded.
‘Why would I do that?’ the look on Sutan’s face was confused and it gave Adam cause to stop and think for a moment, to try and think rationally about all this. But nothing of these dreams made sense, nothing about any of this made sense - the only thing that did make some sort of convoluted sense was that someone was playing a massively unfunny joke on him. And the only person that could have done that was Sutan, unless he’d told other people about Adam’s weird dreams. But Adam didn’t think he’d go that far.
‘I don’t know,’ Adam answered finally, ‘but it’s the only thing that makes any sense in all this. He’s not real, Sutan,’ Adam insisted. ‘I dreamed him, dreamed him! Don’t you get it? He’s completely a figment of my imagination, how can he possibly be real? And as you are the only other person in the world that knows about this, then you must have set this up!’ Adam’s finger jabbed at the phone.
‘If you think I would ever do something like this, you don’t know me very well, and you’re not the person I thought you were,’ Sutan almost growled and his eyes flashed angrily, before softening slightly, shoulders dropping. ‘And if I had no idea what you’ve been going through with these dreams, I’d be insulted by your accusation and walk out to leave you to deal with this by yourself.’
Adam glared at Sutan for several moments before deflating. Sutan was right and, really, he’d known deep down that his best friend would not have played such a cruel joke on him. Although, where that left Adam trying to figure out what the hell was going on, he had no idea.
‘I’m sorry,’ he started. ‘But if you didn’t, then I…I just…he might be real? Oh, god…’ Adam sat down heavily and looked at Sutan pleading silently for him to help.
The last of the anger disappeared from of Sutan’s eyes. He sighed and poked around on Adam’s phone for a few moments, before handing the phone back to Adam. ‘See? He’s real. According to his bio he even lives in Burbank, plays guitar and it’s a pity there’s no picture of him because he’s even the same age as you said he was.’
‘But he can’t be really my Tommy Joe, can he? I dreamed him up.’ Adam kept trying to tell himself that this wasn’t happening, that surely someone was playing the worst possible joke on him, but deep in his heart he desperately wanted this Tommy Joe to be his dream Tommy Joe. He needed it to be true.
‘I think you’re missing the point here, Ad, he must be your Tommy Joe.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because he called you babyboy. Who else knows that nickname?’
Adam sighed, still too shocked to be thinking straight about this whole situation.
‘And that leads me on to the next logical conclusion,’ Sutan said slowly as if waiting for Adam to catch up, but his brain felt like it had gone on an extended vacation and was slowly wrinkling like a dried prune in the sun.
‘What?’
‘If he knows your nickname then he must be having the same dreams you are.’
Adam’s eyes snapped up to Sutan’s. ‘That’s impossible…isn’t it?’ He shook his head. ‘It must be. There is no logical explanation for two people having the same dreams at the same time. Two people who’ve never met and know nothing about each other.’
Sutan’s voice softened. ‘The universe is trying to tell you something.’ Adam looked at him. ‘You’ve always believed in astrology, you read your horoscope every day. You firmly believe in karma and the universe making things right somehow.’ Sutan sat beside him and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. ‘This is the universe making things right, perhaps. For him, too. Perhaps he needs someone like you as much as you need someone like him and the Fates decided to step in and make sure you found each other.’
Adam leaned into the comfort Sutan was offering. He’d done a lot of shit in his time; seen a lot of strange things happen under the influence of some mind altering drugs, but he’d never envisioned something like this. For all his belief in the cosmic power of the universe and all the times he’d used it to explain things that no one else had an explanation for, he still found it hard to believe that this was happening the way Sutan thought. But, oh how he wanted it to be…
‘This might be the one, Ad,’ Sutan continued. ‘In your dreams you love each other to distraction, right?’ Adam nodded. ‘He’s dreamed that too. Odds are he’s going to be at least curious about you. Tweet him back, see what happens.’
This whole dream thing was really doing Adam’s head in and, while Sutan made some sense, Adam had to wonder about Tommy, and if he was like the Tommy in his dreams after all. Adam knew that there was nothing different about himself in his dreams, other than he was happier and in love. What if Tommy just ignored the dreams, didn’t remember them, or worse, thought them disgusting and nightmarish? He realized, belatedly, that he was already accepting that Tommy had the same dreams.
If that was the case, and Tommy had been having these dreams the whole time, too, then why wait until now to tweet him something? Adam huffed softly. How would Tommy know Adam had been having the same dreams? There would be no reason to tweet Adam at all. After all, a ‘Hi, I’m Tommy and I’ve been having these weird dreams about you,’ would only have made him look like an obsessed fan.
‘Ad?’
‘Yeah, ok,’ he replied. ‘What should I say?’ He couldn’t think of a damned thing.
‘Did you have a special nickname for him?’ Sutan prompted.
Adam smiled and opened up a DM screen.
@adamlambert
@TommyJoeRatliff Glitterbaby?
He hit send and then followed Tommy’s account so he could DM back.
‘What do we do now?’ Adam asked, still too shaken to even think properly. His Tommy could be real after all! What he really wanted to do was test the phone numbers he had in his head for his dream Tommy, see if those were real too and talk to him, hear his voice… Adam’s heart ached to hear Tommy’s voice again. Or more…maybe his dream Tommy’s address was the same in real life and he could do there and hold his Tommy close once more…
‘We wait for him to reply.’
‘What if he doesn’t?’
‘He will. Trust me.’
~~~~~
When Tommy woke up, he yawned and stretched, feeling oddly rested despite the frustrations of his dreams and the emotionally taxing day he’d had the day before. There was a weird feeling in his stomach…like something had changed and he was waiting for something. He smiled and recognised that he had this newfound freedom thrumming through his veins and he felt lighter than he had in months. His life was going to be different from now on, he could just feel it. Not that he didn’t like Beth, even maybe love her a little, and perhaps feel a little sad and guilty that she’d been hurt, but he undoubtedly felt liberated now she was gone.
He rolled over, picked up his phone and turned it on. The light had been flashing, indicating a message, and he realised he must have slept better even than he thought, because normally his ring tone would wake him. The message was from Mia.
Hey, TJ, you keeping secrets or what? Baby boy? LOL. Ring me!
Baby boy? Fuck, baby boy? How did she know about that? Tommy thought frantically how she could possibly know about the nickname he called Adam in his dreams. There was nothing, he was sure of it! He hadn’t told her; he hadn’t told anyone!
He quickly sent her a text message: WTF r u talking about? He wasn’t going to ring her; she’d know in an instant something was up.
No more than a minute later came the reply; Check twitter, dude, and then call me! I’m serious.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ Tommy chanted as he opened his twitter account, dread sitting heavy on him now, removing all traces of the awesome mood he’d been in when he woke. Somehow he must have tweeted Adam and used the nickname. Somehow… in his sleep? At least Adam probably got thousands of tweets every day and his would hopefully go unnoticed in the pile. Hopefully.
The first thing Tommy noticed was he had about 500 replies. He exhaled heavily, resigned to being made to feel like a fool. Sure enough, when he flicked through his own tweets, there it was staring him in the face:
TommyJoe Ratliff
@TommyJoeRatliff: @adamlambert I’m on my way, babyboy, be there soon.
How could he have been such an idiot? As he checked Adam’s tweets, he vaguely remembered sending Adam a text in his dream - obviously he’d done it for real. He gave a short laugh when he saw what tweet of Adam’s he’d replied to. Soulmate…
So much for going unnoticed. It was obvious that someone had noticed. A huge part of him wanted to just wipe the replies, clear them out so he’d not have to suffer the humiliation of Adam’s fans laughing at him. But it was like a train wreck and he couldn’t not look.
The comments started off innocuously enough, with people asking who the fuck he thought he was calling Adam baby boy and laughing at him for responding to a soul mate tweet like that. Some thought he was a cute fanboy.
Then the tone of the comments changed. Tommy frowned, because people were asking who he was, how he knew Adam and where they’d met and did he like that he was the 550th person Adam had followed. ‘What the…’ Tommy breathed, stunned and rather sick to the stomach. Fair enough, he’d made a dumb mistake by tweeting Adam, thinking he was texting him in his dream, but why in hell would Adam be following him? It just didn’t make sense, Adam didn’t know him from a bar of soap and they’d certainly never met anywhere. Except in his dreams, and those were just dreams.
He was just about to put the phone down, ignore it all and stop thinking about what a fool he’d made of himself, when the light signifying a DM caught his eye. He sighed and assumed it was from Mia asking him why he was tweeting Adam Lambert such an intimate sounding tweet.
When he opened the message though, he almost dropped the phone in shock.
adamlambert
@TommyJoeRatliff Glitterbaby?
‘Holy fucking shit,’ Tommy said, voice shaking as much as his hands, the phone screen blurring he was shaking that much.
What the fuck was he supposed to do now?
Chapter 11