Kradam Big Bang Fic: A Subtle Fire (2/2)

[butterfly]

Part One

Five: the only thing this stubborn heart knows how to do is fight



Kris didn’t answer the phone for any of that long first day afterward, curling back up in the bed and trying to feel Adam’s heat again, only getting up when he needed to use the toilet. His eyes were dry now, but he was pretty sure that if he actually tried to talk to anyone, they wouldn’t stay that way for long.

The next morning, his stomach was complaining enough that he dressed and went to the grocery, stocking up for a few days, then he went over to his friends’ place to get Zorro. After that, he should have gone back to his apartment, but instead he found himself outside the house again. He was pretty sure Hannah would call his behavior ‘counterproductive’ and he was equally sure he didn’t care.

That afternoon, he picked up Hannah’s call and let her talk at him. He’d missed a phone interview yesterday-she’d had to make excuses for him. He had to work with her or she couldn’t be effective. He made the right noises in response and let her tell him his new schedule.

He didn’t have to be anywhere except LA for a while, so he let himself slip into a rut-going where Hannah told him to go, talking to the people she told him to talk to, and going back to the house and letting himself just...exist.

Zorro would creep into his lap whenever Kris was feeling especially down, and the little guy had probably never gotten brushed as often as he did that first week after Adam walked out again.

Maybe the worst part was how silent the house was-Kris couldn’t manage a single word, couldn’t put a note down on paper or play a chord. The other times when he and Adam had been apart, he’d still been able to write-to channel his feelings into his music, like Zooey had said. This time...

This time, there was nothing.

We both know it isn’t going to happen, Adam had said, like it was a fact. Because Kris had let him down enough times that it felt like a fact to Adam, just part of reality. The sky is blue, birds fly, grass is green, and Kris will never come out of the closet.

He and Zooey met again that Friday and she seemed to easily pick up on his mood. She talked logistics and Kris nodded, not outright agreeing to anything but not saying ‘no’ either and...and it seemed so ridiculous that anyone could live if their life was based on lies. He wasn’t sure how he’d ever thought it was possible. Living like this...he wasn’t even sure if it counted as living.

Another half-week passed in something of a blur, and then, during one of their phone calls, Kris said to Hannah, “I need to go to Arkansas.”

He hadn’t planned to say it but once the words were out, he could feel the rightness of them.

He heard her murmur and then the soft humming that she lapsed into whenever she was checking his schedule before she cleared her throat and said, “You’ve got Sunday and Monday clear-if you leave Saturday night after your meeting with Jennifer, will you have enough time to do whatever it is you need to do?”

“I’ll make it work,” Kris said. He’d need to call and make sure that his parents would actually be around, but he thought they would be. If not, he’d have to figure something else out.

He called his dad after he got off the phone with Hannah. His dad wouldn’t be in town that weekend, but his mom would be. That would be enough, he figured. His father asked if he wanted to speak to Kim now-she was just outside-and Kris hesitated for a moment and then said it would be better to talk to her in person.

That Friday, he and Zooey met up again at the offices and he warmed his hands on a cup of coffee as he watched her pick the berries out of a blueberry muffin and eat them one by one. She tore the muffin to pieces to get every last one, then she mashed the bits of muffin together with a fork and ate them too.

“You’re right,” Kris said. He debated about whether to get a muffin-there were four left in the basket in the middle of the table-but he hadn’t been hungry all that much lately. “I am used to lying. When I say that I’m not, that’s a lie, too.”

“You shouldn’t think of it as lying,” she said with her mouth half-full of muffin; then she swallowed and took a drink of water. “It’s a lot easier if you think of it as acting.”

“I’m not really a good actor,” Kris said.

“Well, we’ll work on it. Only seven days until our big public debut,” Zooey said, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “I’m thinking that I’ll reach out and lightly touch your hand during the lunch; that’s enough PDA for the first date. You need to smile more out there than you do in here, though, otherwise everyone will think I’m just a rebound girl.”

“Which would be bad?”

“Which would be terrible,” she said. “I’m not going to be your fake rebound girlfriend. That’s not what I signed up for at all. I’m going to be your fake real girlfriend.”

She grabbed another muffin out of the basket and began to pick it apart.

“‘Fake real’,” Kris muttered under his breath.

Ridiculous.

He dropped Zorro off with his friends before he went to his meeting with Jennifer. After the meeting, he headed to the airport and his flight. When he arrived in Arkansas, he crashed in a hotel near the airport.

He could have headed straight over to his folks’ place. It hadn’t been that late; his mom still would have been awake. But he hadn’t been back in four months and he didn’t want to talk to her while he was feeling so tired. He slept until noon the next day and then spent another hour staring up at the ceiling before he got around to getting out of bed and getting dressed. Hannah had arranged a rental car for him, so that made things easier.

He texted his mom before he left the rental place to let her know how long he’d be and when he got to the house, he could see a movement through the kitchen window. He rang the doorbell and waited for her to answer.

“Baby, you know you can come right on in,” she fussed at him after she opened the door, shooing him inside with quick movements. “I’m doing up a pie; thought you could use something solid. You never eat enough in that city.”

He let her herd him into the kitchen and he sat at the table and watched as she went back to the stove, opening the oven door and checking on the progress of the pie. She’d already made one earlier, he noticed. He wasn’t the only one who was nervous.

“You’re only staying one night?” she asked disapprovingly, but she shook her head a little and smiled. “If you’d come by earlier, we could have gone to church together.”

“Was it a good service?” Kris asked.

She beamed at him. “Lovely, simply lovely. And I had lunch with a wonderful couple afterwards.” She turned away to pull the pie out of the oven and set it on top to cool. Still facing the stove, she added, “Their daughter, Shannon, was with them. She’s twenty-two. Such a nice girl, Kristopher. And she sings. If you have time, we could have lunch with them tomorrow before you leave.”

Kris traced his fingers along the grain of the table, polished smooth but with the slightest hint remaining of the roughness underneath. Five years. Five years since he’d first told her about himself but his mom hadn’t budged an inch.

His management. His mother. They wanted the same thing, really, when it was boiled down to the basics. They wanted him to be the person he’d pretended to be for years and years, not the person that he really was underneath.

“Was there ever any chance I would come home and you’d say you have a nice boy for me to meet?” he asked.

“If you’d only talk to her, I promise you’d like her,” she said, turning around. She didn’t look at him, though, her eyes focused on her hands as she wiped them clean on a kitchen towel. “Just because things didn’t work out with Katy...well, I told you years ago you could do better than her. Shannon is better.”

“There wasn’t anything wrong with Katy,” Kris said and that night of sleep hadn’t done any good after all, not when his mom was bringing up arguments that Kris had thought they’d buried years ago. “I like guys. It wasn’t that she was Katy; it was that she was a girl.”

“But if you’d just meet Shannon-”

“Look, I’m not saying she isn’t nice. I’m sure she’s a great person. But I don’t want to date her, Mom, and I’m not gonna want to marry her. I’m not going to make that mistake twice,” Kris said. “It wasn’t Katy that was the problem. It was me.”

“You won’t even give her a chance?” she asked. “Kristopher, I hate thinking of you all alone out there. You-” She hesitated for a moment. “I want you to be happy.”

“I’m happy enough,” Kris said, mouth twisting a little. “Look, I wanted to tell you-I came out here to tell you that my management set up a fake relationship for me, but I’m not really dating her. I just wanted you to know the truth.”

She looked at him for a long moment, making him feel all of thirteen again and like he’d just gotten in trouble for toilet-papering a neighbor’s tree.

“I don’t understand why you’d play along with something pretend but you won’t give yourself a chance to have a genuine relationship with someone. A nice girl who shares your interests,” she said.

“I had someone nice who shared my interests,” Kris said. “He dumped me because I wouldn’t come out, remember?”

“Well, I see,” she said. “This is all about Adam, isn’t it? I don’t know why I thought it was about anything else. Ever since you met that boy, you’ve changed.”

“You liked him well enough before,” Kris said. And she would know exactly what he meant by ‘before’-before Kris came out to her, before she suspected that it was because he was attracted to Adam, before he’d finally confessed to her that he and Adam were in a relationship. Before he’d told her that he was divorcing Katy and had made plans to come out to be with Adam publicly. “You say you want me to be happy? Adam made me happy, Mom.”

“Did he? How can you be happy in a world that will treat you so horribly, baby?” She was slightly teary-eyed now. “Adam’s tough. He’s had to handle people saying mean things for years. But you-baby, the words that people use-it’s awful.”

“So pretending is better? Lying is?” Kris paused, trying to think of some way to get through to her. “Is bearing false witness better than being honest?”

His mom took a sharp, surprised breath. For a second, he thought that he’d made her understand, but then she shook her head.

“It doesn’t have to be that way. I don’t want you to lie,” she said. “I want you to honestly find a nice young lady-”

“I can’t,” Kris said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I can’t. I won’t. It’s never gonna happen, Mom.”

“Well, you just told me that you’re willing to pretend to date some girl I’ve never even met in order to make your management happy. How can that be better?” she asked. “Some part of you wants to think you could...could come out and everything would be wonderful and you and Adam would be happy...but you know better than that. You know what the world is like, how people judge without ever asking any questions. I’ve had people asking me, you know, when you’re going to start seeing someone new-if she’ll be from the church or if you’ve just abandoned us.”

“I guess they can keep on asking,” Kris said.

He’d thought-against all evidence-that if he could only figure out the right balance, he could manage to satisfy everyone. Even after Adam had walked out two years ago, he’d convinced himself that Adam would change his mind any day and come home. That all Kris had to do was work out a plan slow enough for Arkansas but fast enough for Adam, and it would fall into place.

But maybe there wasn’t a plan that would work for both sides. Trying to find that middle road had cost him Adam. It might lose him his mom. And it hadn’t done much good for his career, either.

“Don’t you use your sass on me; I’m the one who taught it to you,” she said, tartly. “Kristopher, if you are pretending to date someone-is she at least a believer?”

“I didn’t ask,” Kris said. His mom’s mouth twisted unhappily. That had been part of her objection to Adam too, when he’d finally told her. “She’s a good person, though. Talks a lot.”

“You probably give her plenty of silence to fill up,” she said. “Oh, baby, let’s not fight about this, okay? Just...have some pie and we’ll talk about something else.”

The first pie was a spiced-apple and the second a lush mixed-berry, and Kris took small servings from each. His mom tried to push seconds on him, but gave up when he told her he couldn’t eat any more. They talked about Daniel for a while, until the topic exhausted itself, then Kris mentioned Zorro and talking about him was good for some time, too. When they were done with that, it was late enough that Kris excused himself to go to bed. His mom had long ago turned his old room into something more useful, but the guest room was comfortable and familiar enough.

When he woke up the next morning, he went to the kitchen and examined the shelves before starting on pancakes for the two of them. The morning conversation was lighter than last night’s, empty pleasantries about the weather and local news.

Before he left, his mom said, softly, “This pretending business...Kristopher, you say it wouldn’t help to date a girl, so how can pretending to date one help? It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Kris just gave her a wry little smile and kissed her on the cheek goodbye.

It wasn’t like he could explain it, after all.

When he got back to LA, there was a voicemail from Hannah on his phone, telling him that she needed to talk to him immediately. He touched the call-back button and waited for her to pick up.

“How can there be news?” Kris asked. “You talked to me this morning and there wasn’t any news then.”

“I got you on Ellen,” Hannah said. “Well, technically, Zooey got you on Ellen; you’ll definitely need to say thank you to that girl when you have lunch with her this Friday. I can’t believe the big first date is less than a week away!”

“It’s definitely hard to believe that,” Kris said. “When am I supposed to go on the show?”

“So, the story is-you want to hear the story, right? Of course,” she said, barreling ahead without waiting for an answer. “Originally, Ellen was going to have that Jack Peters guy on-do you know him? He’s a comedian, but that’s not important-anyway, he had to cancel. Some sort of family-related problems. Ellen was talking to Portia and then Portia was talking to Zooey, and Zooey mentioned how much you love Ellen. Well, Portia went home and mentioned you to Ellen and Ellen remembered you-‘such a nice boy’-that’s what Zooey told me that Portia told her that Ellen said to her. So you’re going to be on the show the Tuesday after your date with Zooey, and the episode should air the next day. Isn’t that the best news ever? What a wonderful way for us to introduce your new relationship. I thought we were going to have to settle for you mentioning it in a radio or internet interview. This is so much better. Aren’t you already in love with Zooey? What a woman. And you get to date her!”

“You do remember that it’s not real, right?” Kris asked when Hannah finally paused to breathe.

“Oh, you say the cutest things. Anyway, be up bright and early tomorrow. I’ll pick you up at nine. See you then!”

Kris sighed and put his phone back in his pocket. He spent the rest of the day hanging out with his friends and playing with Zorro, who was as thrilled to see him as if he’d been gone a month.

The next day, Cale called to complain that Kris had been in Arkansas and hadn’t visited.

“I keep telling you to move out here,” Kris said. “Plenty of room. You could stay with the guys or you could come stay in my apartment and look after Zorro.”

“Ah, you just want me there for the free dog-sitting,” Cale said. “You know, it’s not that bad an idea. It’s just...you know, I’d miss all the people here. Don’t know how you can stand it, being away from home for so long.”

“Planes work in both directions,” Kris said. “And it gets easier the more you do it. Come out for a visit, at least.”

“Maybe I will.”

“Come next week; you can sit in the audience when I’m taping Ellen,” Kris said. “I’ll get Hannah to set it up. If you want me to, I mean.”

There was a brief silence and Kris could almost picture the way Cale’s forehead would be wrinkling up slightly as he considered the offer.

“You’re gonna be on Ellen?” Cale asked. “Okay, I might be able to swing it. When are you going to be on?”

“Next Tuesday.”

“I might only be there for Tuesday, but I’ll make it work,” Cale said.

Hannah grumbled about it when he called her, but said that she was sure she could get Cale a seat. He was pretty sure that she wanted to complain about the short notice, but since she’d only been able to tell him about the show yesterday, she didn’t have much room to argue.

That Friday, instead of meeting inside a conference room, Kris and Zooey met at a restaurant. They got an outdoor table and Zooey chatted lightly while they were looking over their menus and then, after they’d ordered, Kris said, “Thank you. For getting me on Ellen.”

“I listened to your album last week,” she said. “It’s good. I didn’t mind mentioning you to Portia. I’ve been thinking about your music a lot the last few days.”

“Thanks,” Kris said. Zooey half-glanced out of the corner of her eye and then she smiled, bright and happy, reaching out to gently stroke his hand where it rested on the table. Kris smiled back, pretty sure he was going to look queasy rather than like he was having fun. “Thank you, but this is so-I’m still not sure I can do this.”

“You can,” she said, slowly pulling her hand back and making it look natural and not like she was giving him space again. “You definitely can, Kris.”

“I’m not sure I want to be the guy who can,” he said, more quietly. “You’ve been nothing but kind to me and I appreciate that so much, I do. I know I haven’t been great company, so you’ve been doing all the work. The thing is-I don’t want to be someone who spends his whole life lying. I thought I could do it, back when I thought my life would just be in Arkansas. And I could do it here as long as I knew it would end someday. But I can’t just keeping doing it, day after day.”

She sat back and studied him carefully, though she kept her mouth curved into a friendly smile. “You know, Ellen is a great platform for all kinds of different topics.”

It took Kris a moment to realize what she was suggesting.

“You wouldn’t mind?” Kris asked. Her smile widened.

“I didn’t want a new boyfriend anyway,” she said. “So, I’m willing to be your fake girl, if you want. That option is still on the table. But I also wouldn’t mind being a genuine friend. And that’s why I got you the gig on Ellen.” She spread out her hands. “Do what you want with it.”

“Thank you,” Kris said.

Hannah had a lot of suggestions for him on how exactly he should break the news that he was dating someone new. Kris made a lot of vague noises in response and thought about what he should do.

Cale arrived on Monday night and Kris took him back to the apartment, where Cale spent some time petting Zorro while Kris made dinner.

“On Ellen tomorrow. I’m not sure what I’m going to say,” Kris said, after they’d eaten.

“It’s not about the album?” Cale asked.

“Not really,” Kris said. He sat down on his couch, reaching to grab Zorro and pull him up to sit next to him. “I’m kinda having a disagreement with my management.”

“And that gets you a spot on Ellen?” Cale raised his eyebrows dubiously. “What kind of disagreement?”

“Well, they want me to say that I’m dating someone,” Kris said. “And I don’t want to say that.”

“They expect you to say it on the show,” Cale said, rolling his eyes a little. “And they’ll be pissed off if you don’t. Yeah, that sucks.”

“It does,” Kris said. “Anyway, I just thought it’d be nice to have someone in the audience who...I don’t know.”

“Sure,” Cale said, sitting down next to Kris and slinging an arm around his shoulders. “Why me, though? Why not one of your friends here?”

“You know things about me and Adam that they don’t know,” Kris said, letting himself lean sideways against Cale. He was warm and strong, and if he were at all inclined toward men, Kris probably would have let himself try something back when they’d first met. Probably for the best that he never had. “You know things that barely anyone knows.” Kris breathed out, slowly, thinking of long nights on tour and midnight confessions. “I really do wish you’d move out here.”

“Obligations back home,” Cale said, softly. “You know how it is. But as soon as you need me for performances, I’ll be there in a second.”

“Yeah,” Kris said. “I know. Thanks.”

“About you and Adam-”

Kris shook his head. “We’re not...we’re not anything right now.”

“The two of you are always something,” Cale said. “But that’s probably another reason you wanted me to come to California.”

Kris couldn’t argue with that. And it was comforting that night to be sleeping in his bed and know Cale was just a room away on the couch. It was true that out of all of the people in his life, Cale probably knew the most-maybe even more than Adam, because Cale knew what it was like for Kris when he and Adam weren’t together.

Hannah came over to his apartment the next day to make sure he was ready for Ellen, and she drove him and Cale to the studios in Burbank. She was in the best mood he’d ever seen her, bubbly and talking about how wonderful this partnership was going to be for both him and Zooey. She floated the idea of putting a duet between the two of them out there-“because she does sing, you know”-and how Zooey and Zorro needed to meet, which set her off on a tangent about how cute it was that their names were so similar.

Cale hadn’t spent much time with Hannah before, and seemed pretty stunned by the whole experience. It had taken Kris a few weeks to get used to her, too.

When he was finally out there, on stage with the cameras rolling, he took a second to look at Cale before he could start chatting with Ellen. She was welcoming and warm, though, and it was easy to relax for her this time. He tensed up a little as she mentioned that his divorce had been announced a little while back. That was his signal to bring up Zooey and their first date, according to what Hannah had told him twenty times over the weekend.

“Katy wanted to live in Arkansas and I needed to be in LA for my music,” Kris said.

He couldn’t let this be the rest of his life.

Kris took a deep breath and he didn’t say the words that Hannah had fed him. Instead, he said, “No, that’s not why. That’s the easy answer. It’s not the real one.”

He let himself forget all the consequences, just for now, and he told the truth. He kept expecting someone to stop the cameras and yell, ‘cut’ but he couldn’t hear anything over the sound of his own heartbeat anyway. He just talked and talked and he couldn’t have repeated any of it back to someone for the world. Everything inside him, everything that had been building up for years and years-finally, it all just came out.

And that was it. He was done.

He didn’t need to look to the side to know that Hannah’s good mood would be gone now.

After the cameras stopped rolling, Ellen came over to sit next to him on the couch, wrapping her arm around his shoulders, and she gently pried his fingers up from the armrest.

“That was very brave,” she told him softly. “There’s no going back now, you know. Even if we don’t air this, the audience will be getting on their phones the second they leave the studio. It’ll be everywhere soon. We can’t stop people from talking about something this big, not unless you want to go on record as having been lying and even if you do, people won’t believe you. Not after this.”

Kris nodded. He’d known that when he started talking.

“I gotta...I gotta...” he pulled out his own phone and stared down at it. Adam had maybe blocked his number but this was something that he deserved to hear from Kris, not from the internet or his management. Kris typed something quickly and sent it off to twitter before he could second guess himself.

His hands were shaking.

“Were you this scared?” he asked Ellen. She brushed his hair back from his forehead and he could see her nod out of the corner of his eye. Kris continued, “But you’re happy now.”

“Happier than I ever was before. Honesty does that for us. It helps, even when things get a little rough because of it.”

“I hope so,” Kris said.

Six: give me more than your touch



“Tequila is not my friend,” Adam said, barely lifting his head from the couch. He blinked at the room, still feeling blurry even with the sharp hammering in his head. Tommy, damn him, managed to look fresh as a fucking daisy while sitting on the floor. And was he...he was. He was humming as he flipped through one of Adam’s magazines. “You aren’t my friend either. I hate you. How can you not have a hangover, you asshole?”

Tommy stopped humming and looked up at Adam, flipping his hair out of his eyes. “Because, boss, I know when to stop drinking.”

“I know when to stop,” Adam said. He sounded sulky, even to his own ears. He should have known better than to drink that much last night. And it was especially stupid to get drunk just because Kris had been spotted on a flight back to Arkansas.

Kris could have a million different valid reasons to go to Arkansas.

Also, Adam had permanently broken up with him.

Really, it made no sense for him to be concerned.

He wished he could call, though, just to see if everything was okay with Kris and his family.

“So, I didn’t get the whole story last night, because of all the booze and shit,” Tommy said. “But I got enough to know that this is about Kris Allen. Seriously, you know I like the guy, but I’m starting to think being in love with him is not good for your health.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Adam grumbled, turning back towards the couch. Tommy took that about as seriously as Adam expected him to, and proceeded to sit on Adam’s legs.

“I guess I can’t blame you,” Tommy said. “I mean, if I did guys, I would do him-”

“You would not,” Adam said, lifting his head up to glare at Tommy, who just laughed.

“-but I don’t think I’d drink myself to sleep over him. Again. I’m just saying that there’s a bad habit going on here.” Tommy patted Adam’s knee in an approximation of comfort. “Maybe we should look into it?”

“I broke up with him,” Adam said. “Problem solved.”

“See, I feel like we went back in time last night,” Tommy said. “Didn’t this happen, like, two years ago? I remember having this conversation. You were all ‘hey, Tommy Joe, don’t talk to Kris Allen for a while, because we’re over forever’ and I was all ‘sure, no problem’ but then I ran into him at a studio, like, a week later, so I kinda had to talk to him there and then I had to call him afterwards because I’d forgotten to ask him something but by the time I got around mentioning it to you, the two of you were talking again anyway.” He paused for a moment, shifting his weight off Adam’s legs and sliding further down the couch. “So, yeah, if I dreamed the two years in between then and now, I’m gonna be pissed that I didn’t look up the lotto numbers.”

“We hooked up a few days ago,” Adam said. Tommy faked a shocked gasp and Adam rolled his eyes. “And then I told him we needed to stop pretending we could be friends and I walked out on him.”

“Ouch,” Tommy said. “That’s kinda harsh. What brought that on?”

“He’s going to start publicly dating,” Adam said. Even just saying it made his stomach feel like it was twisting into knots. “A girl, obviously. Just the same shit, different day. And I...shit, you know what it’s like when Kris and I are together. It’s stupid and crazy and...and-” He bit down on his lip and stared up at the ceiling. “-and the best feeling in the world. Fuck.”

He was absolutely determined not to cry. Crying while hungover always made him feel pathetic. He wasn’t going to do it.

“You sound like a man who could use breakfast,” Tommy said, hopping off of Adam and leaning over to give him a hand. “How’s that sound?”

“Fantastic, actually.” Adam got up from the couch.

In the interest of not calling Kris to ask him if something was wrong, Adam kept as busy as he could on a vacation day. Monday, at least, he actually was busy, and he threw himself into the work of rehearsals. He tried to keep himself away from the internet, mostly succeeding. Friday, there was a flurry of speculation about Kris having been seen out to lunch with someone. He did his best to ignore it. That weekend, he invited some friends over for an impromptu listening party. On Monday of the next week, rehearsals started up again-breaking in a new band member always did take some time-but he’d managed to go almost an entire week without checking up on Kris.

That Tuesday, he was already on his phone when the message came in-Kris was in his @ replies. He had a second’s worth of time to be mad at Kris before worry took over and he read the tweet: So people might want to check me out on Ellen tomorrow. @adamlambert I hope you get a chance to see it.

He blinked, then he called Patricia, his manager.

“Is Kris Allen on Ellen tomorrow?” he asked.

She coughed and there were a few moments of silence and then she said, cautiously, “Seems like he’s on as a last-minute replacement, yes.”

“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked.

“Check online,” she said. “Or just go on twitter. People have started tweeting about the show.”

“That’s not helpful,” Adam said. Kris wouldn’t ask him to watch the show if he was announcing that he were dating that new public girlfriend of his-would he? Kris had never been vindictive, even when things were at their worst. “I can’t...I don’t want to see audience distortions of whatever he said. I want to know what really happened.”

“In that case, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow,” she said. “I can’t exactly ask for you to be forwarded an advance copy of the episode. I don’t have that much pull, and as much as Ellen loves you, neither do you.”

He put his phone away after that and concentrated on rehearsals. They didn’t finish up until so late at night that it was morning already, so it was easy for Adam to convince himself that he needed to rest before facing whatever Kris had said on Ellen.

He knew what he wanted Kris to have said, but believing that it had actually happened was something that he was having a hard time wrapping his brain around.

He had to see it for himself. That was all. No vague reports from whoever happened to be at the show that day. He needed to see the words coming out of Kris’s mouth.

At quarter to one on Wednesday, he found a live feed of the East coast viewing and put it on. Kris was finally on toward the end of the show.

Ellen asked Kris a little about his album, but it was obvious that it wasn’t where her focus was. Only a minute or so later, she brought up the divorce.

“Katy wanted to live in Arkansas and I needed to be in LA for my music,” Kris said, and Adam could see the moment when things changed-could see Kris straighten up a little and shake his head slightly. “No, that’s not why. That’s the easy answer. It’s not the real one.”

“What is the real one?” Ellen asked, leaning in, startled but only barely showing it. Kris was off-script, then, and realizing that made Adam smile, just a little.

“I got married because I was running away from myself,” Kris said, looking past Ellen, stuck somewhere in his own head, the words coming out slowly and Ellen waiting patiently, not interrupting. “It’s...it’s hard in Arkansas sometimes. You watch kids-other kids like you-get teased and sometimes they get hurt or worse and it’s...and it’s scary. You don’t want to be one of those kids that gets teased. That gets bullied.” Kris’s lower lip trembled but after a moment, it firmed again and he nodded, as if he were just thinking out loud, getting things straight in his head. Some of these things were things that Adam remembered-secrets that Kris had whispered to him during their hours together. “So you play sports, and you figure out who other guys think is the prettiest girl in school, and you ask her out and the whole time, that fear is just...just pounding at the back of your head. What if people realize? What if they know? So you write that girl song after song, hoping that if you just make the song good enough, you can make yourself be good enough for her, too. Maybe you can convince yourself that it’s all true.”

Kris shook himself all over, like a dog coming in from the rain. “Me,” he said, and for the first time since this topic had come up, he looked right at Ellen. “Not you, me. I married her because I was trying to make myself not be gay anymore.”

Adam could hear the murmur of the studio audience, some soft gasps when Kris finally reached the end of his confession.

“And it didn’t work,” Ellen said, softly.

“No,” Kris said. “It didn’t.”

“Oh, fuck, baby, you did it,” Adam said. “You really did it.”

He just sat there for a while, even after the credits had rolled and the next show had started. Back at the beginning, he’d expected this moment. He’d planned for it. Finally getting it was was...nothing like he’d expected. He wanted to throw up, wanted to dance, wanted to scream in the streets, wanted to grab Kris and put him up against a wall and kiss him until he couldn’t breathe.

He grabbed for his phone to call Kris, but then he stopped and thought for a second. Kris had made things public. Plus, he’d made it so that even if the episode hadn’t aired, everyone would associate the confession with Adam, but in a way that could leave Adam in the clear-Kris wanting Adam to know that he’d been hiding was something that could leave Adam spotless, if that’s what he wanted. Kris had given Adam a place to stand and it was Adam’s turn to decide what path for them to take. Kris had made the offer public, but he hadn’t committed Adam to anything.

Patricia would tell him to deflect. That he should say in interviews that he was flattered and then-sometime in the future, sometime when people would stop thinking about the fact that Kris and Adam had shared a room for months, on that magical future day that might never come-they could start to be seen in public.

Danielle and Tommy would tell him to be careful. His mom...well, his mom had promised to stay out of things. His dad would tell him to go after Kris full-throttle. Alisan would...

Well, he could play that game all day.

Adam thought about his options-he could just call Kris privately. Obviously, Kris wasn’t going to call him, but he was sure Kris would pick up if he chose to call. Or he could text Kris and ease into talking to him. Or he could...he could be as brave as Kris had been yesterday. He could be honest.

He set the recipient to twitter and carefully typed out his message, hitting ‘send’ without letting himself overthink it.

Just watched @theellenshow. So proud of you @krisallen!!! Wanna meet up for dinner sometime?

He waited for an hour or so, spending the time surfing the web and checking out the reaction to Kris’s announcement. It was...mostly not at all calming, though there were enough positive reactions to roughly balance out the negative.

And some places were downright ecstatic, though Adam could have predicted that. Kris was going to make a high showing on the AfterElton Hot 100 this time around, no doubt.

Adam’s feed was pretty active, too-lots of responses to his tweet-so he finally had to shift over to watching Kris’s twitter page to get away from the noise. His phone buzzed but it was just Patricia calling. He figured that he could guess what she’d want to talk about, so he made the strategic decision to ignore her call.

Kris’s twitter page finally showed a new tweet. Adam clicked to refresh.

Is that dinner or dinner? RT @adamlambert: Wanna meet up for dinner sometime?

Adam smiled and hit reply: @KrisAllen lemme call you. we’ll talk.

He dialed Kris’s number and Kris picked up almost the moment it rang.

“I guess you liked the interview,” Kris said. He sounded a little breathless. “At least, I hope that’s what you were saying.”

“I loved it,” Adam said, leaning against the wall. “How angry are they at you?”

“Take as mad as you’d think they’d be and then double it,” Kris said. “So, dinner, huh?”

“Name the place,” Adam said. “I’ll treat you.”

“How about tonight we just meet up at the house and then we can go out to eat tomorrow-or are you busy?” Kris asked.

“I have rehearsal, but if I wrap up on time I’ll be free after ten,” Adam said. “You?”

“I suspect my calendar is going to be pretty open for a while,” Kris said. “I’ll have something in the oven when you come home.” Kris said the words carefully, without pretending they were casual. This was another offer, if Adam wanted it.

“I’d like that,” Adam said.

Neither one of them wanted to be the one to say goodbye, but finally Adam had to go to his rehearsal.

When he got there, Tommy gave him a tight hug and Isaac saluted him with his drum stick.

“Knock off the silly stuff and get to work,” Adam said, but it was hard to be stern when all he wanted to do was smile.

This time, when he got to the house, he unlocked it with his own key. Zorro was right there in the hallway, giving him a dubious look. Adam reached down and scooped him up and Zorro grumbled a little but then settled down in Adam’s arms. “Hey, there, little guy. Wasn’t expecting to see you.”

He carried Zorro into the kitchen where Kris was, as promised, just finishing up making dinner. Salad and tofu burgers, looked like. Kris looked more delicious than the food, in skin-tight jeans and a light grey shirt. Adam set Zorro down and he immediately went over and rubbed his head against Kris’s legs. Kris waved a finger down in Zorro’s general direction and said, “You are getting none of this, mister.” Then he looked up and caught Adam’s eye. The smile that spread across his face was warm and open. “How’d rehearsals go?”

“Dreadful,” Adam said, walking over and tugging Kris away from the stove. “All I could think about was you. My concentration was shot. Really, it’s a miracle the guys didn’t throw things at me. That’s how off I was.”

“Sorry to ruin your day,” Kris said, and the light caught his eyes, making them sparkle. Adam pressed Kris up against the counter and leaned in for a long kiss. When he pulled away, he tugged at Kris’s lower lip with his teeth for just a second. Kris smiled up at him and said, “Hungry? It should be almost ready.” Kris was resting his hand on Adam’s waist and his thumb was stroking underneath Adam’s shirt, a constant tiny little temptation.

Adam was distracted the entire meal, gaze focusing on Kris’s mouth and throat, on his hands, on his eyes as he tossed flirty looks Adam’s way. When they were done, Adam washed the few dishes off and set them to dry, while Kris, cap pulled down low on his forehead, took Zorro out for a walk. Kris wasn’t back by the time Adam was done, so he spent some time getting to know the house again. He went through the drawers in the kitchen, looked inside the cabinets-broke out a bottle of wine and checked to see if there was enough ice in the freezer to set it to chill. There wasn’t, so he put the bottle in the fridge instead. He and Kris could have a glass later tonight.

Adam went to the hallway and, once there, he carefully straightened a picture that he noticed was just slightly off. He rubbed his hand over the post at the bottom of the stairway. Kris had really kept renting it all these years? A month ago-or a week ago-finding that out would have been nothing but frustration for Adam. More proof that Kris was willing to put his effort into hiding but not in being open. Now, though, it was another fact that got painted over with happiness.

He knew it would fade, this sunshiny glow of being content with the world and everyone in it, but when this new giddy feeling had gone, he would still have Kris. He would have Kris in all the ways he’d always wanted to-it would be honest and free.

His phone buzzed again-his mom, this time.

“You still haven’t picked up your watch,” he told her. She laughed, bright and relieved.

“I never really use it these days anyway,” she said. “I wanted to call and see how you were doing. I was just online and I saw the excitement going around about a certain set of tweets.”

“Yeah, things are...Kris is out walking Zorro right now,” Adam said. “He’ll be back any minute.”

“Well, I figured he wasn’t with you right now or you probably wouldn’t have answered your phone,” she said.

“Mom.”

“Am I wrong?” she asked. “Anyway, honey, I wanted to say how glad I am that it worked out.”

“So am I,” Adam said. “And, you know, thanks for interfering. Not that I want you to do it again but I think...I think it actually helped this time.”

“It’s good to hear that. I was a bit worried, I have to admit,” she said. “All right, you and Kris have a nice night and I hope that I’ll see you both for dinner soon.”

“You can count on it,” Adam said. There was some noise at the front door. “Okay, I think he’s back now. Love you, talk to you later, g’night.”

He was just slipping his phone back into his pocket when the door opened. Zorro came in first and Kris followed, leaning over to unhook Zorro’s leash and set it up on the hall table. He shut the door and looked up to meet Adam’s eyes with a smile.

“You planning on meeting me at the door every night?” Kris asked.

“Sounds like fun,” Adam said. He held out his hand toward Kris and, when Kris took it, he tugged Kris toward him, pulling him into a hug. He pressed a hand against Kris’s back, needing to be closer still. After a long moment, he stepped away from the hug, letting his gaze wander over Kris. He plucked at the bottom of Kris’s shirt. “You know, it’s kinda hot outside right now. You’re probably overdressed.”

“You’re not very subtle, you know,” Kris said. “Let me just feed Zorro and I’ll be right upstairs.” He smiled, with a hint of a smirk about it. “You should check out the night stand.”

Kris moved up for a brief kiss and then he went off to take care of Zorro. Adam went upstairs. This time, instead of throwing his clothes all over the hallway, he took them off and carefully folded what should be folded, hanging up the rest. He took off all his jewelry and put it in the mostly-empty box on the dresser. Then he went over and explored the night stand. Ah, condoms and lube. He rested on the bed, crossing his ankles over each other and his shoulders propped up on a pillow, hiding nothing.

When Kris came in, Adam said, “You aren’t subtle either.”

Kris started a little when he saw that Adam was already naked, but he shut the door behind himself with a grin. “I wasn’t really trying for subtle.”

“Neither was I,” said Adam. “How about you get over here?”

Kris took off his shoes and then climbed onto the bed, straddling Adam and kissing him, with a steadying hand on the middle of Adam’s chest. Adam stretched up to meet him as best he could, but the angle meant that Kris could tease, keeping the kiss light. After a while, Adam just couldn’t take it anymore, and he put his hand on Kris’s hip and pushed him over into the center of the bed, rolling on top of him. Kris laughed and squirmed underneath Adam.

Adam reached down and opened up Kris’s jeans, palming his cock through his briefs. “You didn’t keep any of the sexy boxer-briefs that I gave you?”

“Those things are not comfortable,” Kris said. “And it’s not like there’s any point to wearing them. Either I’ve got clothes on or I’m about to not have clothes on. It’s not like I ever wander around in just briefs.”

“But if they were sexy ones, you could,” Adam pointed out.

“Or you could just concentrate on getting them off,” Kris said, wiggling again, and, yes, point taken. Later, Adam would take his time, but right now, he really did just want Kris to be naked.

He tugged Kris’s jeans down over his hips, and skin-tight was great for looks and not quite so great for getting someone naked quickly, but soon Kris was as bare as Adam. He pressed a kiss to Kris’s hip, and reached over for the lube, which he’d moved to the top of the night stand. Adam covered his fingers with a thin coat, and he reached down and gave Kris’s cock a few strokes before he moved his fingers down lower.

It had been two years since Kris had done this-that wasn’t long enough ago that his body would have forgotten. He just needed to be reminded.

Adam teased his fingers against Kris, carefully watching Kris’s face for his reaction. Kris was staring down at Adam’s hand. From the angle he was at, he might not be able to see exactly what Adam was doing, but Adam understood why he wanted to look. Adam slid the tip of a finger inside and it went in easy-Kris was expecting it, this time, and that helped. Kris closed his eyes and sighed, with something that sounded close to contentment.

As Adam continued to open Kris up, he couldn’t stop watching Kris’s face-the hints of pleasure and surprise that would flicker across his features, the way his lips parted when Adam put a second finger inside, how his breathing got less and less steady, how his hips moved against Adam’s hand. This could have been five years ago, but Adam could see the changes that maturity had brought to Kris-his face was more angular now and less soft, and the muscles he’d spent the last few years building up were all on display as he twisted and flexed into Adam’s touches. This could have been five years ago, but it was so much better.

When he pulled his fingers out, Kris frowned a little, which was the best sign that he was ready. Adam rolled the condom over his cock, lined himself up and slid in with a whole-body shiver of delight. Kris opened his eyes with a gasp, but he was pushing back against Adam, bringing Adam deeper into him. When Adam was in as far as he could go, he took a moment just to breathe. He hadn’t been a monk in the time since he and Kris had been together, and the sex generally had still always been good, but it hadn’t been the same. It hadn’t been...Adam reached up and stroked his thumb along the curve of Kris’s face. Kris smiled up at him, satisfaction radiating from him so clearly that Adam felt like he could almost trace the curves of that feeling.

Adam reached down and wrapped his hand around Kris’s cock, bringing him off in only a handful of firm strokes, watching as Kris fell apart under his hands. He wiped his hand off on the bed covers and braced himself as he rolled his hips against Kris’s.

Adam came while Kris was still shaking, and he reached down to hold the condom in place as he slid out again. He tied it off and tossed it onto the night stand and Kris made a face.

“You know we’re going to have to clean that, right?” Kris asked.

“Well, if we’re going to be a public couple, we might actually be able to hire someone to clean,” Adam said.

“I’m not sure I want someone else cleaning up my spunk,” Kris said. Adam slid off the bed and grabbed a washcloth from the bathroom, dampening it and cleaning himself off and then going back to the bed and doing the same for Kris. Then he took the blanket off the bed, leaving just the sheet. He patted his hand over where the wet spot had been on the blanket, and the sheet was only mildly damp.

“It’s fine for now,” Adam said. “We can toss the blanket in the wash.”

“We can do that later,” Kris said. He slipped back into the bed, then lifted the sheet up in invitation.

The wine could wait until another night. Adam went over and flipped the light off, then got in next to Kris, pulling him close enough to kiss. Kris was settled in Adam’s arms, warm and close. Adam’s eyes had adjusted enough that he could make out the expression on Kris’s face, thoughtful and reflective.

“I’m sorry that I took so long,” Kris said at last. Adam shook his head a little, resting his hand on Kris’s waist.

“I’m sorry that I was so impatient,” he said. “I...I knew how bad things were for you, but I still kept pushing. I just...I just didn’t want not to be with you, but the way things were...it was killing me. It was.”

“Do you wish we’d waited? That you’d said ‘no’ when I asked you to-” Kris paused, licking his lips. “-how did I put it?”

“What I remember best is the part where you wanted to have sex,” Adam said dryly. “But I...I’m not sure regretting it would even matter. I couldn’t...fuck, Kris, you were one of the cutest guys I’d ever seen, and you said you thought I was beautiful-”

“You are,” Kris said, draping his leg over Adam’s hip, pressing their bodies closer together, skin to skin. He reached up and touched Adam’s face, fingers gently skating over Adam’s features. “So beautiful.”

“-and you wanted to jerk me off. I didn’t stand a chance,” Adam said. He’d felt like a stranger to himself the next morning, had felt horrible and amazing and certain that he was about to keep making what might end up being the biggest mistake of his life.

Kris kissed the curve of Adam’s neck and Adam resettled his hand onto Kris’s hip, letting out a content sigh. “I still want to jerk you off,” Kris said, tracing his fingers down Adam until he was just barely touching the tip of Adam’s cock. Adam shivered, but it was too soon for him to get hard again. Kris didn’t seem bothered though, and he gently touched Adam for a little while longer before pulling his hand away. “Tomorrow morning, maybe,” he said.

“Tomorrow,” Adam whispered back, like a promise.

Tomorrow and, hopefully, the rest of their lives.



The End

end notes:
The story title is from fragment 31 of Sappho’s poetry.

Excerpt from Thomas McEvilley’s translation:
for as soon as I look at you,
I can no longer speak,
my tongue is broken to silence
and already a subtle fire has run under my skin;
in my eyes is no vision,
my ears are humming,
a cold sweat pours down me, and trembling
seizes all (my body); I am paler than grass
and seem to be
almost dying...

The title of section one is from Kris Allen’s “I Need To Know” (Kris Allen), section two Adam Lambert’s “Runnin’ ” (Trespassing, deluxe edition), section three Kris Allen’s “Love Too Much” (not officially released), section four Adam Lambert’s “Take Back” (Trespassing, deluxe edition), section five Kris Allen’s “Leave You Alone” (Thank You Camellia), and section six Adam Lambert’s “Nirvana” (Trespassing, deluxe edition).