Disclaimer: I own nothing connected to As the World Turns. Lyrics from "Stay (Faraway, So Close)" are copyrighted to U2; I do not own anything of them.

Notes: This is my slightly AU take on Luke and Noah's story from part 221 (on LukeVanFan's Youtube channel), before all the Brian stuff takes place. I adore Luke's drunken scenes because even though he's kinda jerky in part 221, he's also absolutely ridiculously entertaining ("I can see much clearler now"). Luke and Noah always have the best bench scenes, don't they? :-) Hope you enjoy!

Far Away, So Close

If I could stay, then the night would give you up…
Stay, and the day would keep its trust…
Stay, and the night would be enough…

Faraway, so close…

There's a part of my brain, even in its most drunken state, that recognizes how utterly and undeniably drunk I am. This fraction of me begs and pleads for the alcohol to pass through my system as quickly as it can, so I can lift this hazy fog out of my head. And yet somehow, that bottle, or that glass, or that simple plastic cup always seems to find its way back into my hand. And it's as if I have no willpower anymore.

Because, it seems, when it comes to Noah, I'm at my most defenseless.

*

I've had this dream before.

I'm sitting at the kitchen table, and he's there with me. I can hear his voice, that deep resonance that emanates from his throat, and I can smell his scent, that light musky aroma that stirs the adrenaline through my veins, and I want so badly to see him clearly, to have his image before my eyes in high-definition. His touch is strong but gentle, deliberate but careful, and every time he leaves I feel like tossing myself to the floor and spending the night with my cheek pressed against the hard wood.

And tonight was no different. The dream always starts the same.

He found me on the bench in Old Town. My mouth and my brain couldn't seem to connect, and I heard myself in digital delay, saying things my mouth was proud of, but my brain would cringe at. I couldn't read the exact expression on his face, but the phrase "Would you shut up?" registered loud and clear in my head. Before I knew it, his hands were on me, wrestling for control. And a second later, his presence bowled me over. Complete submission on my behalf, no permission required. Noah had a hold on me that I couldn't even begin to explain.

And then we're back at the table. The water bottle crunches underneath my fingers, and Noah straightens to leave. I feel as though there are strings attaching me to every curve of his body, so that when he pulls away, he rips a layer of my soul off, and drags it slowly towards the door, towards a long and painful death. And when I stand up to stop him, to ask him to stay, all I can register is how close his lips are to mine, and how long it's been since I've experienced him in that close a proximity.

And I know that he leaves anyway. The door slams shut and it reverberates through my skull, pounding into it with the strength of a thousand hammers. The chair is so hard underneath me, so unwelcoming and unforgiving, that I can't stay in it for long. The door beckons deviously, and I steel myself towards it, determined to prove myself. The words that stream angrily from my mouth aren't the truth, as my mouth would like them to be. Noah can very well walk on out me. He's already done it, and I am powerless to stop it from happening.

And I don't know what time it is, or what day I've managed to drink myself into a stupor, but eons later, it seems, those strong but gentle, deliberate but careful hands are snaking around my torso, pulling my chest away from the cold hardness of the kitchen table.

My legs are rubber, and my brain still Jell-O, and the nausea is rising from the bottom of my stomach, but I can still recognize Noah when his dark hair and blue eyes swim into my view. The softness of his denim jacket brushes my nose with a familiarity that makes me wish I could crawl inside it and sleep away my fears.

The stairs are a painstaking task, but he takes every one of them with me, his voice a soft vocal coach in my ears. His strong arms are wrapped around my waist, holding with a tenacity that leads me to believe he's afraid I'll slip away from him and tumble down the steps to my death. The door to my room slides open with ease, and as he steadies me with one hand and closes the door with the other, the inevitable happens. I feel the bile rising into the back of my throat.

I don't know how he does it, but every time I have this dream, Noah manages to get me to the bathroom in time. The porcelain of the toilet is too cool and too calming to distract me from the reality that I'm kneeling on the floor in front of it, heaving my guts out, while Noah steadies me over the bowl. After four or five – I usually lose count at this point – repeat performances, my stomach is calm enough to accept the water that Noah offers me, those long smooth fingers of his ever-so-steady hand against the paper cup.

Then comes my favorite part. I'm back on my feet again, and Noah is standing before me, steadying me against his chest. For the life of me I can't figure out what he's doing, because his arms are not around me and he's twisting at an awkward angle behind himself, but after a few seconds, I could care less what the reasons are. All I know is, mere moments later, the soft cotton towel sweeps over my forehead, across my nose and cheeks, and drifts to the back of my neck. I am overcome with a contented smile at the soft, comforting touch, and soon the cotton is replaced with his warm hands. First my forehead, palm resting flat against it, and then my left cheek, his hand fitting so nicely against the shape of my face. His touch is what my body has been sorely missing, and my body does not hesitate to rub my nose in this fact. The problem is, I'm too inebriated to realize the pain behind those fingers, and the sadness that shines in Noah's eyes. Everything except my inner relief goes unnoticed.

And that's when the struggle begins. I don't know why the mattress is coming at me so fast, and I can't tell where my feet are or what they're doing, but just before my head hits the bed, his arm is around my torso and I don't crash into the mattress even though for all intents and purposes I should have. And then he's pushing at me, pushing hard, till the mattress is beneath me. I don't want to take my shoes off, but they're gone before I can protest, and the struggle escalates. Layers of my clothes are being torn away, shirt wrenched over my head, the button of my jeans undone, denim sliding unceremoniously down over my hips. Why is he subjecting me to this cold? Why can't I stay as I am, warm and comforted in his presence?

Only when I feel the elastic under my hands, the soft flannel sifting through my fingers does the struggle end. His voice calms me even though the words make no sense, and I find myself helping him pull the material over my legs, my hands grasping the backs of his as the waistband comes to rest around my hips. Noah took away the warmth and then replaced it without my even having to ask.

As my head hits the pillow, the room spins in unadulterated joy. I can hear my own voice breaking through the dizziness, but the words don't compute in my foggy brain. The tumultuous activity of the room does not stop until his heat is underneath my cheek. Noah Mayer, the human hot-water bottle.

And then the dampness comes. I can't say where it starts, but someplace between my cheek and Noah's shirt is where it materializes. My voice vibrates in my throat, and I wish I knew what I was saying, but the desperation and heartache I feel masks the words from my hazy brain. The only thing I can fully realize and appreciate in this state are his arms when they wrap around me. His heartbeat breaks through my cloudy subconciousness, its steady thumping surrounding me after what seems like years of silence, and I'm able to breathe. I can breathe now because the one thing I've been wishing, wanting, hoping for has finally come to fruition, and I didn't even have to work for it. I was a cheat. Shame on me for not putting the effort in; he deserved that much, at least.

So I continue to try to tell him in whispers, but I realize, in that small part of my brain that is not intoxicated, that I might as well be speaking Swahili to him, because my speech is nothing but stupid drunken gibberish. On a daily basis I had been humiliating myself with my actions, so much so that when I tried to right all of my wrongs with my words, it only ended up being more humiliating.

And then the dream ends.

*

When I woke up the next morning, my head was pounding with each pump of my heart, as if the blood flow went directly to my brain. The words in my mind shouted at me, mocking me with each pulsation. How many times was I going to have this pathetic dream before I owned up and accepted the fact that Noah was gone from my life because I'd driven him from it?

I figured this dream had a long shelf life and the best I could do was endure it, as it brought me temporary sanctuary from my hellish reality. I shuffled to the bathroom, rubbing sleep from my eyes, intent on trying to redeem today from yesterday's events. I made my way to the toilet and was surprised to find that both the lid and seat were already up.

There was no way I'd already used the toilet this morning, not even in a drunken haze. I'd been passed out solid as a rock since I'd dragged myself away from the table last night and hoisted myself up the stairs. And no one else in the house would use my bathroom without permission, especially with me still in the bedroom.

I quickly surveyed the four walls around me, searching for more abnormalities. The shower curtain was fine, still pulled back from the previous afternoon's shower. The sink looked the same, my toothbrush still in its holder, the mirrored door of the cabinet above it still shut. My towel rack was no different, one large white towel still folded over the silver bar, and one small hand towel…missing. What had I done with that hand towel?

I took a step towards the rack and something crunched hard under my foot. I cried out in pain and looked towards the floor, where my vision established that I had stepped barefoot on a child-sized Dixie cup. It was smushed halfway underneath my toes. And right in front of it, underneath the lip of the sink, was my small hand towel, crumpled in a heap on the tile of the floor.

I bent to my knees and picked up the Dixie cup, crushing it between my hands and shooting a three-pointer to the wastebasket in the corner in front of me. I reached for the hand towel, intending to shake it out and re-hang it, when the softness of the cotton on my skin jarred something inside me, and I took a hard swallow as the memories rumbled back into existence.

The room spun and I shook my head against it, trying to get the walls to settle. After a few moments of concentration, the bathroom was still and I was able to reopen my eyes. I held the hand towel up to focus on.

That damn hand towel. Why did I have to find it here, on the floor? Why did it have to bring back those memories of him, of his kindness, his generosity, his commitment, and his love? Why couldn't I bring myself to find peace over this situation; why couldn't I just face the fact that it had been my choice to have my life turn out this way? And why, in the midst of all of this, did he come through for me, exactly at the moment I needed him most? I deserved to rot, that much I knew.

I stood quickly, ignoring the wave of nausea that swept through me, and headed back to my bedroom, the towel clenched angrily in my fingers. The one night the damn dream had not been a dream, and I had been too drunk to fully realize and embrace it. I had blown my only shot at making things right.

I tossed the towel towards the hamper and turned away before it even landed. It didn't matter if it hit the clothes receptacle or the carpet of the floor. My life was in shambles either way, and the towel couldn't change that fact. Noah had only come to me when I was plastered, and the irony was that he had been forced from my life by the very same alcohol that had brought him back to me last night.

I steadied myself against the doorframe with one hand, my head taking on a whole new variety of headache. I forced myself to walk out to the stairs, intent on finding something in the kitchen to take the throbbing away. When my feet hit the wood beyond the landing of the stairs, I mentally patted myself on the back for successfully warding off the nausea, then immediately chastised myself for such a moronic accomplishment. Another day and night of blackout stupidity and how simple my life had become. How awfully pitiable it was.

And I don't know how long it took me to notice it, but I'd had two Advil and a cup of orange juice in my hand before I realized that he was standing just behind the front door, to my left. He was motionless behind the screen, those blue eyes staring at me intently, in that gaze of his that I knew so well. The I'm disappointed in you gaze.

Noah entered the house without invitation, and I stood rooted in the middle of the floor, the cold condensation from my glass running over my fingers. We faced each other, and I took him in, my heart thundering against my ribcage at the glory of him: his worn denim jacket, his dark disheveled hair, those light Prussian eyes seizing me through the sunlight in the kitchen. He didn't move, I didn't move, and instantly I felt as though if I didn't take some kind of action, my insides were going to erupt like a volcano, and everything that I hated about my life was going to spew at him with such force that he would have no choice but to flee in horror. I had to do this right; I had to close the floodgates of the dam that I had burst between us, put pressure on the puncture wound to which I had so carelessly subjected our relationship.

I took a shaking, lung-expanding breath to steady the words that were building behind my lips, and then opened my mouth to speak. I could only hope that my offer of contrition would flow as evenly and serenely as molten lava; that my heartfelt apology could melt quietly over the lines of sorrow, anger, and betrayal that ran etched throughout our broken relationship.