A Snowflake Fell (And It Felt Like a Kiss)
Title: A Snowflake Fell (And It Felt Like a Kiss)
Author: pennilesspoet17
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Kris/Adam, Adam/Brad (mostly off page)
Word count: 4,436
Summary: AU in which Adam owns a bar, and has...rules about (not) dating his employees.
Notes: Written for pensnest for the kradam_holidays challenge.
Many, many thanks to bubby_wubby for the beta, notes, and encouragement! Love you, bb.
The ringing from the bells keeps screaming out love
As snow fell from heavens above
Directionless no more
Emptiness no more
Now I don’t feel so all alone in the cold wondering where I’m going to-day
Then a snowflake fell and it felt like a kiss now I'm okay
It doesn’t snow in Los Angeles.
Everyone knows this; even people who have never set foot here. So when Adam walks out of the bar on that cold December night, and sees glittering white flakes dancing in the sky, he briefly imagines that the sky is falling, and the stars are drifting down. As he gazes skyward, the flakes bounce off his cheek, and melt onto his shoulder, and he wonders what kind of miracle brought snow to his city tonight.
A miracle. Adam could use a few of those right now. But after everything that’s happened, after all that he’s done, he’s not sure he deserves one. As the snow flutters down, catching on his lashes and sliding down his cheeks, he thinks about Kris, and the many regrets that tug at him. He just needs...he just needs a second chance, to prove that he can be the man Kris wants him to be.
But this is Los Angeles; and second chances are as rare as snowstorms.
Adam looks down to find Kris leaned against his beat up Honda, like an answer to his question (prayer).
Miracles don’t happen, second chances aren’t given, and it never snows in Los Angeles.
Adam smiles.
One Year Earlier
Kris Allen has big dreams.
Maybe it’s cliche to bring hopes and dreams (and a beat up acoustic guitar) to Los Angeles (via Greyhound), but Kris knows that if he really wants to make something of himself, if he really wants to become someone, he can’t stay in Arkansas.
Unfortunately for Kris, reality is a lot heavier than dreams, and he has to be able to pay rent and buy food, so he takes a job at the small coffee shop that sits on the first floor of the building next to his. But he spends most of his nights playing in any seedy club or bar that will have him, so he misses too many morning shifts at the coffee shop (no one should have to be at work at six a.m.; it’s inhumane) and gets fired three weeks after he starts.
Kris has only ever played at Vanka’s once, and didn’t get called to come back, which sucks, but they just happen to be hiring a barback, which is something Kris thinks he can handle, especially if it means he doesn’t have to be anywhere at six in the morning.
It’s four in the afternoon now, so the bar is mostly empty. It’s a long, narrow room, with a dark wooden bench lining one wall, and the bar lining the other. Small round tables dot the room, framed by red vinyl chairs. A short stage sits at the back of the room, next to a rickety-looking pool table. There is a thin, old man seated at the far end of the bar, nursing what looks to be his third or fourth whiskey. A thin, pretty blonde woman is behind the bar, stocking pint glasses into a glass-doored cooler. She glances at Kris when he walks in, but doesn’t turn toward him until he crosses the room and sits on a bar stool.
“What can I get ya?” the woman smiles, her grey eyes warm and bright. Kris orders a whiskey and soda, and watches the woman mix the drink neatly and efficiently. She places the drink in front of Kris, and takes his ten dollar bill.
“You guys still hiring a barback?” Kris asks when the bartender returns with his change.
“We are. You’ll need to talk to my manager about it; he gets here at around 5:30 or 6.”
Kris nods and sips his drink. The bartender returns to her task of stocking glasses, so Kris scans the room again. The old man looks about ready to fall asleep, and Kris wonders what has happened in the man’s life to drive him to drink so heavily so early in the day. Is he a drunk? Is he lonely? Heartbroken? Half-formed song lyrics dance in his head; the story unfolding before he can stop it.
“Could you - do you have a pen I can borrow?” Kris asks the bartender. She turns and tosses a pen onto the bar wordlessly, and Kris snags a cocktail napkin, and begins to write. He knows better than to let words sit in his brain for too long.
“I hope that’s not your resume,” Kris looks up to see the bartender looking down at him, and amused smile on her glossy pink lips.
“Nah, I just...had some words in my head I needed to get down,” Kris shrugs and shoves the napkin in his shirt pocket. He slides the pen across the bar. “Thanks.”
“Keep it,” the woman replies, “in case you get...inspired again,” she winks and stacks the green glass rack she’s holding on top of another empty rack on the floor, “are you a writer?”
“Songwriter. Aspiring musician,” Kris replies, and takes another long sip of whiskey.
“Of course,” the woman laughs, “I was too, once upon a time.”
“You’re...not, anymore?” Kris asks. The woman is pretty; long blonde hair and small, delicate features. Her voice is lower, raspy, and Kris thinks maybe she has a really cool, smokey singing voice.
“Nah,” the woman shrugs, “too many other responsibilities now. I’m Alice, by the way.”
“Kris,” he replies, and shakes Alice’s extended hand.
“So Kris, you’re a singer/songwriter/musician, new to LA from some small town, looking for a big break, and until then, you need a real life job?”
“I know I’m a walking cliche, thank you,” Kris smirks, and Alice laughs, her eyes crinkling at the corners, mouth turned up and showing her large, impossibly white teeth.
Their conversation is interrupted when the old man at the bar makes a noise that sounds something like a cough, a sigh and a sneeze combined, and Alice rolls her eyes and fills a tall pint glass with ice and still water from her gun. She slides the drink in front of the old man, and takes his glass of whiskey away.
“You’re all done for the day, Frank,” Alice says loudly, and Frank makes another indecipherable noise, but drinks the water in front of him. Alice shoots Kris a sad smile, then moves to the coffee machine to put on a fresh pot.
Kris drinks a couple more whiskey sodas, and chats with Alice about music and drinks and bartending, and is vaguely aware that other people are starting to come into the bar, probably from their monotonous office jobs. He’s watching Alice mix a lemon drop for a thin girl in a cheap suit, when he notices a tall, dark-haired man slide behind the bar.
The man moves around the bar behind Alice with practiced ease, and Kris wonders if he is here to relieve Alice for the night. He finds himself watching as the man moves across the bar, swiftly taking a few orders and pouring a couple of beers. His hands are large, and his pale, freckled arms are long and gangly, yet the man moves with the grace of a dancer.
“You doing okay?” Kris blinks when he realizes the man is standing in front of him, blue eyes bright and wide, jet black hair hanging stylishly over one side of his face. Kris failed to notice how...pretty the man is when he’d first walked in. Kris finds himself staring, and can’t seem to do anything about it. He has an overwhelming urge to reach out and run his fingers over the freckles that dot the man’s lower lip.
“Kris, this is my manager, Adam,” Alice announces, and Kris blinks and looks at her, his face flushing hotly. He sees Adam turn to look at Alice, and vaguely hears her explain to Adam that Kris is looking for a job.
Adam turns back toward Kris, quirks up a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, and smirks knowingly.
Kris swallows hard and stares down at the ice cubes in his empty cocktail glass.
~::~
Slip inside the eye of your mind
Don’t you know you might find
A better place to play
You said that you’ve never been
But all the things that you’ve seen
They slowly fade away
Kris thinks that maybe he should have reconsidered taking this job the moment he realized he was attracted to Adam.
Because the thing is, Adam is really distracting. He’s stupid hot, he’s ridiculously sweet, and, while he patiently tolerates Kris’s clumsy flirting, he is clearly not interested in him.
Kris is pretty sure that Adam has a boyfriend. Every once in a while, a thin, wide-eyed brunette comes into the bar, and he and Adam disappear into Adam’s office for an hour or so. The first time it happened, Kris spent a good portion of his shift staring at the closed office door. The second time it happened, Kris stared longingly at the door, until he accidentally dropped a martini glass in the ice bin, forcing him to turn away long enough to burn the ice and clean the glass out. (After that, Kris stopped staring at the office door, because a) it wasn’t any of his business what his boss did in his own office, and b) burning ice totally sucks; he totally strained his shoulder by picking up buckets and buckets of hot water.)
He supposes his crush on Adam is pretty obvious, because he gets called out on it, by a guy sitting at the bar one night, nursing a pint of a dark amber microbrew.
“Crushing on the boss man is dangerous business,” the man says flatly. Kris flushes and looks up to see the guy smirking at him, a glint in his brown eyes.
“Huh?”
“Oh come on; you’ve been staring at my brother all night. In fact, you might want to work on being less obvious about it,” the guy laughs and Kris tilts his head slightly.
“Brother?”
“Are you slow or something?”
“Um,” Kris blinks. Now that the guy mentions it, he does sort of look like Adam.
“I’m Neil. You must be Kris,” Neil extends his hand and Kris takes it, shaking himself out of his stupor as he shakes his hand.
“How...how’d you know--”
“Adam mentioned you. A few times, actually,” Neil raises an eyebrow at this, and Kris wonders if the whole eyebrow arching-thing is a family trait.
“He...mentioned me?”
“Said you were cute. Said it was too bad you took the job,” Neil shrugs.
“He said...wait, what?”
“Adam has a strict rule about...messing around with his staff. It happened once; it ended in a lawsuit.”
“He...but he has a boyfriend, right? That guy--”
“Oh, Brad,” Neil rolls his eyes, “Brad is his ex. They broke up like, a year ago.”
“But they still--”
“Spend time together? Yeah. Adam’s fucked up like that,” Neil says it casually, and Kris is taken aback by his tone. He wonders if Adam would appreciate the way his brother is talking about him.
“What are you doing here, asshole?” Adam appears behind Kris, and Kris stiffens, and wonders how much Adam heard.
“I came by for a drink, obviously. Dipshit,” Neil grins over Kris’s shoulder, and Kris turns to see an equally vicious smile on Adam’s face. Their tone suggests playful aggression, though Kris wonders just how precarious the playfulness is.
“Yeah, I think you need to stay away from my brother,” Adam is looking down at Kris now, and Kris’s eyes slide back over to Neil. Neil just shrugs and sips on his beer, so Kris takes it as his cue to leave. He picks up the ice bucket and slides past Adam to get to the back. He’s halfway to the ice machine when he hears Adam’s voice.
“What the fuck did you tell him?”
The ice machine dumps a cycle of ice into the bin, so Kris misses Neil’s reply.
~::~
Leaves are falling, just like embers
In colors red and gold
They set us on fire
Burning just like moonbeams in our eyes
Somebody said they saw me
Swinging the world by the tail
Bouncing over a white cloud
Killing the Blues.
It’s three am, and Kris, Alice, Neil, and Adam are well into their third round at the pool table. It’s Kris and Neil versus Adam and Alice, and each team has won one game. The third game breaks the tie, and winners get bragging rights. (Kris and Alice could care less about bragging rights, but for the Lambert brothers, this may as well be a fight to the death.)
Adam is chalking his stick, and discussing strategy with Alice, so Neil grabs Kris’s arm and pulls him away from the table slightly.
“What?”
“Kris. Do you know why I chose you as a pool partner-in-crime tonight?”
“Because I’m a good pool player?” Kris grins.
“Because you have a nice ass. According to my brother. Who has, by the way, been staring at it all night,” Neil smirks and Kris laughs.
“You said he won’t date--”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t use your ass...ets to get us the win, Arkansas,” Neil slaps Kris on the arm and moves back to the table. Kris shakes his head and turns to see Adam lining up his shot. Kris barks out a short laugh and saunters toward the table. He snags a square of chalk from the edge of the pool table and slowly chalks his stick, his eyes focused intently on Adam. Adam glances up, then back down at the table quickly, and re-aligns his shot. Kris shoots a look at Neil, drops the chalk and bends to pick it up as Adam takes his shot.
Adam sinks the 8 ball, and curses profusely.
“I hate you both,” Adam seethes, but Neil is too busy gloating to notice. Kris shoots Adam a sheepish look, and Adam rolls his eyes.
“Don’t think I don’t know what you were doing, Kristopher,” Adam smiles, “that is the oldest trick in the book. I thought your momma taught you better.”
“My momma taught me right; it’s not my fault that I have a great ass,” Kris winks at Adam and brushes past him as he moves to put away the pool cues. He hears Alice hoot in approval and feels a flush color his cheeks.
When Kris turns around again, Adam and Alice are carrying stacks of empty pint glasses to the bar, and Neil is zipping up his jacket. Sighing, he slips on his own jacket, and he and Neil wait silently for Adam and Alice to re-appear. When they do, they both look flushed and happy, their eyes filled with mischief, like two people who have just shared a secret joke. Adam’s eyes fall onto Kris, his gaze steady as he and Alice cross the room. Kris watches Adam watch him, and feels something warm coil low in his belly.
“You need a ride home?” Adam asks, and Kris opens his mouth to say that Neil offered him a ride earlier, but the words get stuck in his throat, and peripherally, he can see Neil and Alice off to the side, subtly pulling away from them. Kris grins and nods, and Adam’s face lights up when he smiles in return, and Kris tries not to think about how totally cheesy they look right now, standing here, smiling at each other like a couple of loons.
The four of them walk out together, then split off in the parking lot. Kris fights the urge to grab Adam’s hand on the way to the car, because if he is misinterpreting things, it could make for a very awkward workplace tomorrow.
Kris sees Brad about a second before Adam does, but both stop abruptly a couple of yards away from the car.
“Baby, there you are! I’ve been calling you,” Brad purrs, and Kris feels his stomach harden and drop. Brad slinks up to Adam, and wraps his thin arms around Adam’s neck. Adam stiffens slightly, but wraps his arms loosely around Brad’s waist.
“I thought you weren’t coming out tonight,” Adam replies softly, before pressing a short kiss to Brad’s temple.
“Oh, you know,” Brad sighs, as though that explains his sudden appearance, “who is this?”
“Oh...this is Kris. He’s my new barback. We’re gonna drop him off on our way home,” Adam says it all in a rush, and doesn’t look directly at Kris.
Kris nods a hello to Brad, who smiles warmly in return. Brad seems like a nice guy, and he’s really pretty, but he has a tiny, bony hand down the back of Adam’s pants, and Kris really wishes he didn’t exist.
~::~
Circumstance, clapping hands
Driving winds, happenstance
Off the track, in the mud
That's the moss in the aforementioned verse
Just a little time, before we leave...
Stop light, plays its part
So I would say you've got a part
What's your part? Who you are
You are who, who you are
If the scene last night was awkward for Adam, he doesn’t show it the next day.
He’s as warm and flirtatious as ever with Kris, and it’s both frustrating and flattering. Kris figures this is just Adam being Adam, and maybe he’s just reading too much into their relationship. Adam is his boss; nothing more, nothing less.
Still, it is really, really hard to keep that line clear, when your boss starts feeling you up in the middle of inventory a week later.
It’s possible that Adam is just trying to be helpful. Kris had been trying to pull a box off a tall shelf, and was already standing precariously on a rickety ladder, so the chances of him falling off said ladder are pretty high. The fact that Adam’s hand lingered on his ass after he tumbled off the ladder was probably something Kris could have overlooked.
It was a lot harder to overlook the nose buried in his hair. The tongue running up his neck. The teeth nibbling on his ear.
They were the only people in the bar, and the jukebox had shut off a while ago, so Kris’s long moan bounces off the walls of the supply room; a jarring sound.
Adam doesn’t seem to notice; he has Kris shoved up against a shelf, wooden slats and crates of bottled beer pressing uncomfortably into his back. Adam’s mouth is latched onto Kris’s throat, his large hands running up and down Kris’s back and ass. Kris presses forward, and hears Adam groan when their erections meet. He moves his head, runs a hand through Adam’s hair, while the other moves to Adam’s ass. Adam starts thrusting then, and Kris feels the shelves shake behind him, feels Adam shake in front of him, and feels the sharp sting of teeth on his neck.
It’s only later, after Adam wordlessly drops him off at home, that Kris realizes that they never once kissed.
~::~
Adam’s demeanor at work never changes.
Kris isn’t sure what to think about that. He is treated the same, for the most part, even when he starts taking more bartending shifts, and fewer barback shifts. If Alice and Neil notice the shift, they don’t say anything.
Brad still visits, though not as regularly as he used to, and Kris feels a little weird about that. He wonders if Brad knows what Adam does when he’s not here. He wonders if he cares.
Neil insists that Adam and Brad are not together, but the whole thing doesn’t at all sit well with Kris. Still, he doesn’t push Adam away on those late nights when Adam reaches for him, gropes him, leaves little marks on his neck and shoulder. Adam never kisses him, rarely looks at him, and even though Kris knows he’s being used, he can’t stop it, because he wants it too. He’ll take Adam any way he can get him, even if that means he ends up spending too many nights alone on his bed, after Adam drops him off, jacking off to images of Adam’s tongue in his mouth.
~::~
Smoke is rising in the shadows overhead
My glass is almost empty
I read again between the lines upon each page
The words of love you send me
If I could know within my heart
That you were lonely too
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love
On this Winter’s night with you
Kris likes to pretend that he is the type of guy who can mess around with someone, without it meaning anything.
The truth is, Kris is not that guy. Kris has never been that guy. He had one girlfriend all the way through high school, and they didn’t even do anything until the night before graduation, and well, it probably wasn’t great for her, since Kris couldn’t make it last longer than the valedictorian’s speech.
Still, he had tried to make it work, long after she had given up on them.
Kris had to keep reminding himself that not everyone thinks like this. For some people, sex is just...sex, and there is no deeper meaning behind it, and there aren’t necessarily feelings involved at all.
Adam is attracted to Kris’s body. Kris is kind of in love with Adam. This is not Adam’s fault. For Adam, it’s just sex.
Kris chants this to himself a hundred and fifty times after he accidentally walks in on Adam and Brad in the supply room (not Adam’s office) lips locked in a vicious kiss (it would have hurt less if it had been blow jobs).
He quits the next day.
~::~
So scared of breaking it
But you won't let it bend
And I wrote two hundred letters
I won't ever send
Somehow it is cut so much
Deeper then they seem
You'd rather cover up
I'd rather let them be
So let me be
And I'll set you free
Kris’s songbook is a perfect representation of his life.
The folder is old and worn, reliable but falling apart a bit at the seams. Words and music are scribbled across the inside pages, front and back, in blue ink and black ink and pencil lead. There are more lyrics, jotted on napkins and take out menus and scraps of paper, shoved haphazardly between the attached pages, no rhyme or reason to their order; hundreds of songs begun, few complete.
Kris has a tendency to get stuck before he reaches the bridge. He starts with the best of intentions, the song flowing smoothly and easily, but somewhere in the middle, he loses himself, loses the words, and the song becomes nothing more than a dream unfulfilled, a task incomplete.
Sometimes the melody gets stuck in his head for days; he can’t find the words to accompany the melody though, so he just lets it bounce around, wordless, unfinished, like a story without an ending.
His songbook is laying open when someone knocks on his door, a week after he left his job at the bar (left Adam). When the door opens, the breeze scatters the loose pages of his songbook, scattering lyrics (chapters) throughout the room.
“Hi,” is all Adam says. He looks tired, and worn out, and sad, but Kris knows better than to project his own feelings onto someone else now. He steps back, and Adam walks into the apartment, but stays in the entryway, his hands shoved in his pockets (heart on his sleeve).
“I’m sorry,” Adam sighs. He tells Kris he never meant to hurt him, tells him that he and Brad are finished this time for good, for good, and that he was so busy protecting his own heart that he couldn’t (didn’t) see what he was doing to Kris’s. He broke his own rules, let himself cross lines he was never supposed to cross, and he asks Kris to come back, because they both know he needs the job, but Kris has pride, and has enough sense to know that it isn’t the job Kris needs, and if that is all Adam is offering tonight, he needs to go.
Adam looks like he wants to offer more, but he doesn’t, so he leaves, and Kris decides he doesn’t like the bridge to this song at all.
~::~
I’ve got a different ending to our story
I know it’s hard for you to hear it through
But listen as I read
Kris is tired of waiting for things to happen to him.
He’s tired of waiting for a break that may never come; he’s tired of waiting for inspiration to tell him how the song is supposed to end. He’s strummed the strings of his guitar until his fingers bled, and nothing has changed.
He finished a song tonight.
Standing in the parking lot of the bar, Kris sees the snowflakes flutter from the sky before he feels them. They tickle his face and melt in his hair. He holds out his hand, and watches the glittery specks dance along his skin before melting away.
He didn’t think it ever snowed in LA.
Song lyrics: “A Snowflake Fell (And It Felt Like a Kiss)” by Glasvegas; “Don’t Look Back In Anger” by Oasis; “Killing The Blues” by Rowland Salley; “Who You Are” by Pearl Jam; “Song For A Winter’s Night” by Sarah McLachlan; “Misery” by Maroon 5; “Bring It Back” by Kris Allen
Author: pennilesspoet17
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Kris/Adam, Adam/Brad (mostly off page)
Word count: 4,436
Summary: AU in which Adam owns a bar, and has...rules about (not) dating his employees.
Notes: Written for pensnest for the kradam_holidays challenge.
Many, many thanks to bubby_wubby for the beta, notes, and encouragement! Love you, bb.
The ringing from the bells keeps screaming out love
As snow fell from heavens above
Directionless no more
Emptiness no more
Now I don’t feel so all alone in the cold wondering where I’m going to-day
Then a snowflake fell and it felt like a kiss now I'm okay
It doesn’t snow in Los Angeles.
Everyone knows this; even people who have never set foot here. So when Adam walks out of the bar on that cold December night, and sees glittering white flakes dancing in the sky, he briefly imagines that the sky is falling, and the stars are drifting down. As he gazes skyward, the flakes bounce off his cheek, and melt onto his shoulder, and he wonders what kind of miracle brought snow to his city tonight.
A miracle. Adam could use a few of those right now. But after everything that’s happened, after all that he’s done, he’s not sure he deserves one. As the snow flutters down, catching on his lashes and sliding down his cheeks, he thinks about Kris, and the many regrets that tug at him. He just needs...he just needs a second chance, to prove that he can be the man Kris wants him to be.
But this is Los Angeles; and second chances are as rare as snowstorms.
Adam looks down to find Kris leaned against his beat up Honda, like an answer to his question (prayer).
Miracles don’t happen, second chances aren’t given, and it never snows in Los Angeles.
Adam smiles.
One Year Earlier
Kris Allen has big dreams.
Maybe it’s cliche to bring hopes and dreams (and a beat up acoustic guitar) to Los Angeles (via Greyhound), but Kris knows that if he really wants to make something of himself, if he really wants to become someone, he can’t stay in Arkansas.
Unfortunately for Kris, reality is a lot heavier than dreams, and he has to be able to pay rent and buy food, so he takes a job at the small coffee shop that sits on the first floor of the building next to his. But he spends most of his nights playing in any seedy club or bar that will have him, so he misses too many morning shifts at the coffee shop (no one should have to be at work at six a.m.; it’s inhumane) and gets fired three weeks after he starts.
Kris has only ever played at Vanka’s once, and didn’t get called to come back, which sucks, but they just happen to be hiring a barback, which is something Kris thinks he can handle, especially if it means he doesn’t have to be anywhere at six in the morning.
It’s four in the afternoon now, so the bar is mostly empty. It’s a long, narrow room, with a dark wooden bench lining one wall, and the bar lining the other. Small round tables dot the room, framed by red vinyl chairs. A short stage sits at the back of the room, next to a rickety-looking pool table. There is a thin, old man seated at the far end of the bar, nursing what looks to be his third or fourth whiskey. A thin, pretty blonde woman is behind the bar, stocking pint glasses into a glass-doored cooler. She glances at Kris when he walks in, but doesn’t turn toward him until he crosses the room and sits on a bar stool.
“What can I get ya?” the woman smiles, her grey eyes warm and bright. Kris orders a whiskey and soda, and watches the woman mix the drink neatly and efficiently. She places the drink in front of Kris, and takes his ten dollar bill.
“You guys still hiring a barback?” Kris asks when the bartender returns with his change.
“We are. You’ll need to talk to my manager about it; he gets here at around 5:30 or 6.”
Kris nods and sips his drink. The bartender returns to her task of stocking glasses, so Kris scans the room again. The old man looks about ready to fall asleep, and Kris wonders what has happened in the man’s life to drive him to drink so heavily so early in the day. Is he a drunk? Is he lonely? Heartbroken? Half-formed song lyrics dance in his head; the story unfolding before he can stop it.
“Could you - do you have a pen I can borrow?” Kris asks the bartender. She turns and tosses a pen onto the bar wordlessly, and Kris snags a cocktail napkin, and begins to write. He knows better than to let words sit in his brain for too long.
“I hope that’s not your resume,” Kris looks up to see the bartender looking down at him, and amused smile on her glossy pink lips.
“Nah, I just...had some words in my head I needed to get down,” Kris shrugs and shoves the napkin in his shirt pocket. He slides the pen across the bar. “Thanks.”
“Keep it,” the woman replies, “in case you get...inspired again,” she winks and stacks the green glass rack she’s holding on top of another empty rack on the floor, “are you a writer?”
“Songwriter. Aspiring musician,” Kris replies, and takes another long sip of whiskey.
“Of course,” the woman laughs, “I was too, once upon a time.”
“You’re...not, anymore?” Kris asks. The woman is pretty; long blonde hair and small, delicate features. Her voice is lower, raspy, and Kris thinks maybe she has a really cool, smokey singing voice.
“Nah,” the woman shrugs, “too many other responsibilities now. I’m Alice, by the way.”
“Kris,” he replies, and shakes Alice’s extended hand.
“So Kris, you’re a singer/songwriter/musician, new to LA from some small town, looking for a big break, and until then, you need a real life job?”
“I know I’m a walking cliche, thank you,” Kris smirks, and Alice laughs, her eyes crinkling at the corners, mouth turned up and showing her large, impossibly white teeth.
Their conversation is interrupted when the old man at the bar makes a noise that sounds something like a cough, a sigh and a sneeze combined, and Alice rolls her eyes and fills a tall pint glass with ice and still water from her gun. She slides the drink in front of the old man, and takes his glass of whiskey away.
“You’re all done for the day, Frank,” Alice says loudly, and Frank makes another indecipherable noise, but drinks the water in front of him. Alice shoots Kris a sad smile, then moves to the coffee machine to put on a fresh pot.
Kris drinks a couple more whiskey sodas, and chats with Alice about music and drinks and bartending, and is vaguely aware that other people are starting to come into the bar, probably from their monotonous office jobs. He’s watching Alice mix a lemon drop for a thin girl in a cheap suit, when he notices a tall, dark-haired man slide behind the bar.
The man moves around the bar behind Alice with practiced ease, and Kris wonders if he is here to relieve Alice for the night. He finds himself watching as the man moves across the bar, swiftly taking a few orders and pouring a couple of beers. His hands are large, and his pale, freckled arms are long and gangly, yet the man moves with the grace of a dancer.
“You doing okay?” Kris blinks when he realizes the man is standing in front of him, blue eyes bright and wide, jet black hair hanging stylishly over one side of his face. Kris failed to notice how...pretty the man is when he’d first walked in. Kris finds himself staring, and can’t seem to do anything about it. He has an overwhelming urge to reach out and run his fingers over the freckles that dot the man’s lower lip.
“Kris, this is my manager, Adam,” Alice announces, and Kris blinks and looks at her, his face flushing hotly. He sees Adam turn to look at Alice, and vaguely hears her explain to Adam that Kris is looking for a job.
Adam turns back toward Kris, quirks up a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, and smirks knowingly.
Kris swallows hard and stares down at the ice cubes in his empty cocktail glass.
~::~
Slip inside the eye of your mind
Don’t you know you might find
A better place to play
You said that you’ve never been
But all the things that you’ve seen
They slowly fade away
Kris thinks that maybe he should have reconsidered taking this job the moment he realized he was attracted to Adam.
Because the thing is, Adam is really distracting. He’s stupid hot, he’s ridiculously sweet, and, while he patiently tolerates Kris’s clumsy flirting, he is clearly not interested in him.
Kris is pretty sure that Adam has a boyfriend. Every once in a while, a thin, wide-eyed brunette comes into the bar, and he and Adam disappear into Adam’s office for an hour or so. The first time it happened, Kris spent a good portion of his shift staring at the closed office door. The second time it happened, Kris stared longingly at the door, until he accidentally dropped a martini glass in the ice bin, forcing him to turn away long enough to burn the ice and clean the glass out. (After that, Kris stopped staring at the office door, because a) it wasn’t any of his business what his boss did in his own office, and b) burning ice totally sucks; he totally strained his shoulder by picking up buckets and buckets of hot water.)
He supposes his crush on Adam is pretty obvious, because he gets called out on it, by a guy sitting at the bar one night, nursing a pint of a dark amber microbrew.
“Crushing on the boss man is dangerous business,” the man says flatly. Kris flushes and looks up to see the guy smirking at him, a glint in his brown eyes.
“Huh?”
“Oh come on; you’ve been staring at my brother all night. In fact, you might want to work on being less obvious about it,” the guy laughs and Kris tilts his head slightly.
“Brother?”
“Are you slow or something?”
“Um,” Kris blinks. Now that the guy mentions it, he does sort of look like Adam.
“I’m Neil. You must be Kris,” Neil extends his hand and Kris takes it, shaking himself out of his stupor as he shakes his hand.
“How...how’d you know--”
“Adam mentioned you. A few times, actually,” Neil raises an eyebrow at this, and Kris wonders if the whole eyebrow arching-thing is a family trait.
“He...mentioned me?”
“Said you were cute. Said it was too bad you took the job,” Neil shrugs.
“He said...wait, what?”
“Adam has a strict rule about...messing around with his staff. It happened once; it ended in a lawsuit.”
“He...but he has a boyfriend, right? That guy--”
“Oh, Brad,” Neil rolls his eyes, “Brad is his ex. They broke up like, a year ago.”
“But they still--”
“Spend time together? Yeah. Adam’s fucked up like that,” Neil says it casually, and Kris is taken aback by his tone. He wonders if Adam would appreciate the way his brother is talking about him.
“What are you doing here, asshole?” Adam appears behind Kris, and Kris stiffens, and wonders how much Adam heard.
“I came by for a drink, obviously. Dipshit,” Neil grins over Kris’s shoulder, and Kris turns to see an equally vicious smile on Adam’s face. Their tone suggests playful aggression, though Kris wonders just how precarious the playfulness is.
“Yeah, I think you need to stay away from my brother,” Adam is looking down at Kris now, and Kris’s eyes slide back over to Neil. Neil just shrugs and sips on his beer, so Kris takes it as his cue to leave. He picks up the ice bucket and slides past Adam to get to the back. He’s halfway to the ice machine when he hears Adam’s voice.
“What the fuck did you tell him?”
The ice machine dumps a cycle of ice into the bin, so Kris misses Neil’s reply.
~::~
Leaves are falling, just like embers
In colors red and gold
They set us on fire
Burning just like moonbeams in our eyes
Somebody said they saw me
Swinging the world by the tail
Bouncing over a white cloud
Killing the Blues.
It’s three am, and Kris, Alice, Neil, and Adam are well into their third round at the pool table. It’s Kris and Neil versus Adam and Alice, and each team has won one game. The third game breaks the tie, and winners get bragging rights. (Kris and Alice could care less about bragging rights, but for the Lambert brothers, this may as well be a fight to the death.)
Adam is chalking his stick, and discussing strategy with Alice, so Neil grabs Kris’s arm and pulls him away from the table slightly.
“What?”
“Kris. Do you know why I chose you as a pool partner-in-crime tonight?”
“Because I’m a good pool player?” Kris grins.
“Because you have a nice ass. According to my brother. Who has, by the way, been staring at it all night,” Neil smirks and Kris laughs.
“You said he won’t date--”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t use your ass...ets to get us the win, Arkansas,” Neil slaps Kris on the arm and moves back to the table. Kris shakes his head and turns to see Adam lining up his shot. Kris barks out a short laugh and saunters toward the table. He snags a square of chalk from the edge of the pool table and slowly chalks his stick, his eyes focused intently on Adam. Adam glances up, then back down at the table quickly, and re-aligns his shot. Kris shoots a look at Neil, drops the chalk and bends to pick it up as Adam takes his shot.
Adam sinks the 8 ball, and curses profusely.
“I hate you both,” Adam seethes, but Neil is too busy gloating to notice. Kris shoots Adam a sheepish look, and Adam rolls his eyes.
“Don’t think I don’t know what you were doing, Kristopher,” Adam smiles, “that is the oldest trick in the book. I thought your momma taught you better.”
“My momma taught me right; it’s not my fault that I have a great ass,” Kris winks at Adam and brushes past him as he moves to put away the pool cues. He hears Alice hoot in approval and feels a flush color his cheeks.
When Kris turns around again, Adam and Alice are carrying stacks of empty pint glasses to the bar, and Neil is zipping up his jacket. Sighing, he slips on his own jacket, and he and Neil wait silently for Adam and Alice to re-appear. When they do, they both look flushed and happy, their eyes filled with mischief, like two people who have just shared a secret joke. Adam’s eyes fall onto Kris, his gaze steady as he and Alice cross the room. Kris watches Adam watch him, and feels something warm coil low in his belly.
“You need a ride home?” Adam asks, and Kris opens his mouth to say that Neil offered him a ride earlier, but the words get stuck in his throat, and peripherally, he can see Neil and Alice off to the side, subtly pulling away from them. Kris grins and nods, and Adam’s face lights up when he smiles in return, and Kris tries not to think about how totally cheesy they look right now, standing here, smiling at each other like a couple of loons.
The four of them walk out together, then split off in the parking lot. Kris fights the urge to grab Adam’s hand on the way to the car, because if he is misinterpreting things, it could make for a very awkward workplace tomorrow.
Kris sees Brad about a second before Adam does, but both stop abruptly a couple of yards away from the car.
“Baby, there you are! I’ve been calling you,” Brad purrs, and Kris feels his stomach harden and drop. Brad slinks up to Adam, and wraps his thin arms around Adam’s neck. Adam stiffens slightly, but wraps his arms loosely around Brad’s waist.
“I thought you weren’t coming out tonight,” Adam replies softly, before pressing a short kiss to Brad’s temple.
“Oh, you know,” Brad sighs, as though that explains his sudden appearance, “who is this?”
“Oh...this is Kris. He’s my new barback. We’re gonna drop him off on our way home,” Adam says it all in a rush, and doesn’t look directly at Kris.
Kris nods a hello to Brad, who smiles warmly in return. Brad seems like a nice guy, and he’s really pretty, but he has a tiny, bony hand down the back of Adam’s pants, and Kris really wishes he didn’t exist.
~::~
Circumstance, clapping hands
Driving winds, happenstance
Off the track, in the mud
That's the moss in the aforementioned verse
Just a little time, before we leave...
Stop light, plays its part
So I would say you've got a part
What's your part? Who you are
You are who, who you are
If the scene last night was awkward for Adam, he doesn’t show it the next day.
He’s as warm and flirtatious as ever with Kris, and it’s both frustrating and flattering. Kris figures this is just Adam being Adam, and maybe he’s just reading too much into their relationship. Adam is his boss; nothing more, nothing less.
Still, it is really, really hard to keep that line clear, when your boss starts feeling you up in the middle of inventory a week later.
It’s possible that Adam is just trying to be helpful. Kris had been trying to pull a box off a tall shelf, and was already standing precariously on a rickety ladder, so the chances of him falling off said ladder are pretty high. The fact that Adam’s hand lingered on his ass after he tumbled off the ladder was probably something Kris could have overlooked.
It was a lot harder to overlook the nose buried in his hair. The tongue running up his neck. The teeth nibbling on his ear.
They were the only people in the bar, and the jukebox had shut off a while ago, so Kris’s long moan bounces off the walls of the supply room; a jarring sound.
Adam doesn’t seem to notice; he has Kris shoved up against a shelf, wooden slats and crates of bottled beer pressing uncomfortably into his back. Adam’s mouth is latched onto Kris’s throat, his large hands running up and down Kris’s back and ass. Kris presses forward, and hears Adam groan when their erections meet. He moves his head, runs a hand through Adam’s hair, while the other moves to Adam’s ass. Adam starts thrusting then, and Kris feels the shelves shake behind him, feels Adam shake in front of him, and feels the sharp sting of teeth on his neck.
It’s only later, after Adam wordlessly drops him off at home, that Kris realizes that they never once kissed.
~::~
Adam’s demeanor at work never changes.
Kris isn’t sure what to think about that. He is treated the same, for the most part, even when he starts taking more bartending shifts, and fewer barback shifts. If Alice and Neil notice the shift, they don’t say anything.
Brad still visits, though not as regularly as he used to, and Kris feels a little weird about that. He wonders if Brad knows what Adam does when he’s not here. He wonders if he cares.
Neil insists that Adam and Brad are not together, but the whole thing doesn’t at all sit well with Kris. Still, he doesn’t push Adam away on those late nights when Adam reaches for him, gropes him, leaves little marks on his neck and shoulder. Adam never kisses him, rarely looks at him, and even though Kris knows he’s being used, he can’t stop it, because he wants it too. He’ll take Adam any way he can get him, even if that means he ends up spending too many nights alone on his bed, after Adam drops him off, jacking off to images of Adam’s tongue in his mouth.
~::~
Smoke is rising in the shadows overhead
My glass is almost empty
I read again between the lines upon each page
The words of love you send me
If I could know within my heart
That you were lonely too
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love
On this Winter’s night with you
Kris likes to pretend that he is the type of guy who can mess around with someone, without it meaning anything.
The truth is, Kris is not that guy. Kris has never been that guy. He had one girlfriend all the way through high school, and they didn’t even do anything until the night before graduation, and well, it probably wasn’t great for her, since Kris couldn’t make it last longer than the valedictorian’s speech.
Still, he had tried to make it work, long after she had given up on them.
Kris had to keep reminding himself that not everyone thinks like this. For some people, sex is just...sex, and there is no deeper meaning behind it, and there aren’t necessarily feelings involved at all.
Adam is attracted to Kris’s body. Kris is kind of in love with Adam. This is not Adam’s fault. For Adam, it’s just sex.
Kris chants this to himself a hundred and fifty times after he accidentally walks in on Adam and Brad in the supply room (not Adam’s office) lips locked in a vicious kiss (it would have hurt less if it had been blow jobs).
He quits the next day.
~::~
So scared of breaking it
But you won't let it bend
And I wrote two hundred letters
I won't ever send
Somehow it is cut so much
Deeper then they seem
You'd rather cover up
I'd rather let them be
So let me be
And I'll set you free
Kris’s songbook is a perfect representation of his life.
The folder is old and worn, reliable but falling apart a bit at the seams. Words and music are scribbled across the inside pages, front and back, in blue ink and black ink and pencil lead. There are more lyrics, jotted on napkins and take out menus and scraps of paper, shoved haphazardly between the attached pages, no rhyme or reason to their order; hundreds of songs begun, few complete.
Kris has a tendency to get stuck before he reaches the bridge. He starts with the best of intentions, the song flowing smoothly and easily, but somewhere in the middle, he loses himself, loses the words, and the song becomes nothing more than a dream unfulfilled, a task incomplete.
Sometimes the melody gets stuck in his head for days; he can’t find the words to accompany the melody though, so he just lets it bounce around, wordless, unfinished, like a story without an ending.
His songbook is laying open when someone knocks on his door, a week after he left his job at the bar (left Adam). When the door opens, the breeze scatters the loose pages of his songbook, scattering lyrics (chapters) throughout the room.
“Hi,” is all Adam says. He looks tired, and worn out, and sad, but Kris knows better than to project his own feelings onto someone else now. He steps back, and Adam walks into the apartment, but stays in the entryway, his hands shoved in his pockets (heart on his sleeve).
“I’m sorry,” Adam sighs. He tells Kris he never meant to hurt him, tells him that he and Brad are finished this time for good, for good, and that he was so busy protecting his own heart that he couldn’t (didn’t) see what he was doing to Kris’s. He broke his own rules, let himself cross lines he was never supposed to cross, and he asks Kris to come back, because they both know he needs the job, but Kris has pride, and has enough sense to know that it isn’t the job Kris needs, and if that is all Adam is offering tonight, he needs to go.
Adam looks like he wants to offer more, but he doesn’t, so he leaves, and Kris decides he doesn’t like the bridge to this song at all.
~::~
I’ve got a different ending to our story
I know it’s hard for you to hear it through
But listen as I read
Kris is tired of waiting for things to happen to him.
He’s tired of waiting for a break that may never come; he’s tired of waiting for inspiration to tell him how the song is supposed to end. He’s strummed the strings of his guitar until his fingers bled, and nothing has changed.
He finished a song tonight.
Standing in the parking lot of the bar, Kris sees the snowflakes flutter from the sky before he feels them. They tickle his face and melt in his hair. He holds out his hand, and watches the glittery specks dance along his skin before melting away.
He didn’t think it ever snowed in LA.
Song lyrics: “A Snowflake Fell (And It Felt Like a Kiss)” by Glasvegas; “Don’t Look Back In Anger” by Oasis; “Killing The Blues” by Rowland Salley; “Who You Are” by Pearl Jam; “Song For A Winter’s Night” by Sarah McLachlan; “Misery” by Maroon 5; “Bring It Back” by Kris Allen