[AI] While My Guitar Gently Weeps (1/2)
Title: While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Wordcount: ~3000
Pairing: Kris/Adam
Note: So, um. I had to write this, so I could get it out of my head so that I can write other things that i have to write. And it was going to be a ficlet, just to clear my head, and then my head refused to be cleared, and, um. This is half of it.
Blame forbiddenromanc and blue_icy_rose. Also, this is kind of a thank-you to them for being such good fandom-guides. ♥
Adam slid through the door silently, out of habit. He was used to finding Kris asleep at odd hours or lying in bed, fingers idly twitching over the strings of his guitar, filling the quiet room with floating, simple music. But obviously Kris wasn't there, his side of the room already cleaned out, his bed made. Adam has a sudden urge to pick up his pillow, hug it to him, see if it smells like Kris, all clean sweat and sweet cologne, but he doesn't, because he is not the pining girl in a romance novel, and besides, he has to get his ass moving.
The Idol Mansion was the last stop on their tour, a sort of final farewell to the whirlwind that had been their lives. They'd performed one last time on the stage it all began on, sung their hearts out to the familiar skies. And it's over, and it feels as if things should have slowed down, time should have slowed down, when Kris said goodbye that morning, that Adam should have had some time to..to do something. But he didn't, because he hadn't, and nothing was slowing down, and he was getting an apartment and he was signing a record deal and he was moving, up, up, up. He'd been contacted about a fashion line, even about a modeling gig, and everything was fame and fortune and glamor and perfect.
He'll get over Kris, and he'll move on.
He starts slowing packing up his things, the empty side of the room kind of glaring at him from across the divide between the beds. He folds his jackets, slides his boots into their boxes, grabbing things from their haphazard piles on the floor when he notices something under his bed.
He pulls it out. "Oh my god, fuck!" He shouts, and scrambles for his phone. Because sitting on the floor in front of his bed, in its worn leather case, is Kris' guitar. He sends a quick, fumbled text, 'omg ur guitar!!! On plane yet?' and then paces the room. He can see Kris, in his mind, on the plane, realizing what he's done. He's nervous, worried, his fingers playing with his wedding ring, his eyes darting around because what will happen to it? He imagines Kris imagining the bumbling hotel staff slamming it into doorways and tossing it down stairs to each other, their big, brutish hands crushing it in the process. He imagines Kris imagining it destroyed when they try to ship it to him, a beat-up leather case full of splinter arriving at his front door. He imagines Kris running his hands through his hair and despairing.
Kris must be on the plane, because he doesn't text Adam back and it goes straight to voicemail when he tries calling. Adam worries a thumbnail, managing to scrape off all the black paint. He resists the urge to leave it that way for nostalgia's sake and digs out his black nail polish to fix it, and then promptly chews it right off again when it's dry. Finally he finishes packing up, and, with check-out ending and the armies of cleaning staff threatening, takes Kris' guitar with him to his new apartment.
He doesn't bother unpacking yet, and sets Kris' guitar in the corner before flopping back on his sleek leather couch. He clutches his phone in his hand as if that'll make it buzz sooner, and falls asleep, there, waiting.
He's woken by the arrival of a text message and he hurries to check it. 'Idiot', the text reads, 'Look inside.'
Curious at the obvious lack of panic, Adam picks himself blearily up from the couch and makes his way over to where the guitar case sits. Night's fallen, by now, and Kris is obviously home, off the plane, if he's able to answer Adam's text. He undoes the catches and flips up the lid of the case.
There's Kris' guitar, worn and glinting a little in the dim light. Adam can see where Kris' fingers have pushed into the wood so many times they've left little impressions, little grooves. And there, taped to the lid, is a note, written in Kris' scrawling hand. He has the handwriting of a rockstar, Adam notices as he reads it, someone who's signed so many things, so many times, that all the letters start to look the same.
But this note is clear.
Adam -
Take care of this for me.
~Kris
Adam stared at it for a long moment. He sat back on his heels, trailing a hand across the wood of the guitar. He swallowed, once, twice, and then sent Kris, 'why'
The answer was immediate. 'Like a promise.' It said, and Adam passed a hand over his face, heart hammering even though he knew this was just one of those Kris things, where he comes so utterly close to confirming all of Adam's hopes and then meaning something else entirely. Careful, he sends back, 'a promise?'
'That we'll see each other again.' followed quickly by 'soon'.
Oh. Adam curls his fist around his phone and brings it to his lips. Well, fuck, so much for getting over him.
********
He tries, he really does. He lets himself get lost in the insanity of fame, he goes out drinking, he flirts with the cute sound guy at the recording studio. Things are great. Things are awesome, really. He's a famous fucking musician, a pop idol, a fashion icon. He's got everything he ever wanted.
But every night he comes home and there's Kris' guitar, a silent reminder of what he really wants, and it grounds him and reminds him that Adam Fucking Lambert is just a side of him, a kick-ass beautiful side but also a shallow sort of side that is not the child his mother raised. And inside Adam Fucking Lambert, plain, simple (well, comparatively) Adam is miserable. Because while he likes the fame, and the fortune, and the cute sound guy, he's missing some things. He's missing being loved. He's missing having friends. He's missing home, though he's not really sure what that means because he hasn't been back to San Diego since Idol started, and he never felt like this, then.
He stares at Kris' guitar and remembers the first time he saw it, the first time he saw Kris. He remembers sitting down next to him, away from the noise, and watching his fingers slide up and down the neck of the guitar. He remembers joining in on the chorus of whatever it was, and then the verse, twining his voice around Kris' chords. He remembers the respect, in Kris' eyes, when he'd looked up at him, and he remembers his own smirk. Because yeah, he'd been showing off, a little. But then Kris had joined in and Adam had faltered a little because he hadn't been expecting Kris' voice, soft and beautiful, and then he's not showing off but enjoying himself, and Kris speeds up and then they're chuckling as they're singing and Adam screeches out the last note, leaping to his feet and screaming into a waterbottle as if it were a microphone. Kris' fingers fumble on the strings, he's laughing so hard, and Adam's already a little too fascinated with the way his nose scrunches up in his face, the light dancing in his brown eyes.
He licks his lips, and wants more than anything to see Kris smile.
There are thousands of clips of Kris on youtube, about half of them Kris and him together. He skips past those resolutely, looking for recent shows, things since Idol ended. He finds them, Kris small under the lights, a new guitar cradled in his arms. It looks too new, too awkward, it doesn't quite fit him.
In Adam's worst moments, he thinks the same about Katy.
But mostly he grins, because Kris looks great, really good and happy and his voice is...well, Kris' voice, and that's all it really takes to make Adam grin. And he finds himself watching Kris' fingers on the strings, and wondering.
"I suck," he'd told Kris once (well, a lot of times, half of which had been accompanied by lascivious eyebrows and knowing smirks, but this time he'd really meant it in a sort of rueful, truthful way that wasn't very Adam Fucking Lambert but was Adam, the Adam that Kris - and if he's honest maybe really only Kris - knew). "You're a musician. You stand up there and you make music, all the music, you play guitar and piano and you play the whole - the whole song, you know? You don't need anyone else. Whereas, like, I'm just good at standing up there screaming and looking pretty. The hell am I doing here with you?"
It'd been right after they'd been chosen for the final two, right before they'd been catapulted into the madness that was prep for the finale. They were out getting trashed, because hell, one of them was going to be the next fucking American Idol and they both were going to be in the public eye and this might be they're last chance to get drunk while no one cared. Katy was there, and Allison had flown up to visit and congratulate them. The two of them were on the dance floor, living Kris and Adam stuffed into a booth.
Kris had chuckled, all warm affection, and sipped his beer. "You know why."
Adam had raised his eyebrows . Kris bumped shoulders with him and then stayed close, such a cuddly drunk that it drove Adam insane. He was caught between wishing that Katy would come back right now so that he could shove Kris off on her and go dance with Alli and wishing that she never would, ever, and that Kris would stay pressed up against him like this. Kris continued, "Because you're so good at lookin' pretty."
It was one of those moments, and they became more and more regular, that Adam couldn't breathe for wishing that things could be different. Not a lot different - just two things changed, just two. This right here, the closeness of them, the friendship, that would be the same. All he wanted was for Kris to be wearing one less gold band and be a few notches higher on the Kinsey scale.
He was pretty sure he could even change the second, if it weren't for the first. Because Kris wasn't wrong, and if he can see it even through the hearts that appear in his eyes every time he looks at Katy...
But he was married, and it wasn't fair of the stupid married bitch to look at him like that, tongue tucked behind his teeth as he grins, it wasn't fair for him to say, southern, his voice (even his speaking voice, god, Adam's so fucking screwed) all low and drawling, like sex and honey and love songs, "I could teach you."
Adam had nearly snarked, "Isn't that my line?" but his sarcasm had gotten stuck somewhere along the way when all of the blood left his head, so he just sipped his drink until Kris finished, "to play guitar."
Adam had made a noncommittal noise and kept his eyes on the dance floor, pretending to frown at Allison as she handily showed up the guy she'd been flirting with on the dance floor. Kris chuckled at him and made some comment about overprotective older brothers and everything was banter and sarcasm again.
And now Adam sits on his couch in his empty apartment with Kris' guitar in his lap and tries to be happy that those days are over, the days of longing and constant self-denial, of too-little sleep and esteem-crushing criticism and screaming, terrifying fans. He tries to be happy that he doesn't have to deal with Kris being right there, so affectionate and adorable and gorgeous. He tries to think about Cute Sound Guy and how easy it was to go from flirting to making out to quick, hot sex. He tries to think about the hickey on his neck and the way CSG's hands had curled in his hair.
But he holds Kris' guitar in his lap and realizes he'd rather run his hands over its curves than the smooth tan sides of CSG.
Plus, he's still referring to him as CSG, in his head, which is probably a bad sign.
He slides the pad of his thumb across the lowest string, more a caress than a pluck. The note comes out soft and mournful, and Adam makes a face and decides he's being ridiculous. He sets the guitar back in its case and closes it, resisting the urge to re-read the note still taped to the lid. Soon, the text message had said. A promise.
Didn't quite work out that way.
He's sliding his phone from his pocket before he really knows what he's doing, his fingers spelling out 'ur definition of soon is different than mine' like the unruly bastards they are. He sends it, and then flops down on his couch to wait.
His phone rings, ten minutes later. He picks up, mouth dry, and announces, "Lambert's House of Glam, how may I direct your call?" He inspects his fingernails like a bored receptionist (he still hasn't repainted that thumbnail, shit) and can hear Kris smiling on the other end. "Hey." Kris says, soft, and Adam lets out a long breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "Hey." He says back. "So, uh...I still have this guitar, you know, gently weeping."
Kris chuckled. "I know." He said, sounding apologetic. "I know. It's just...I've been really busy, and - "
"No shit." Adam interrupts. "We both have." He thinks of his own upcoming album, a disturbing percentage of which is angsty love songs. "Difference is, you've been happy."
...Shit. That...Shit. He hadn't meant to say that. "I, um."
They're silent for a moment, and then Kris sighs. "How do you know I've been happy?"
Adam crosses his ankles on the arm of the chair, counting on his fingers even though Kris can't see him. "One, you're back with your wife, who you missed like a missing limb the whole competition. Two, you're in your hometown, making music for people you love. Three, your one-year anniversary is coming up. Four, you're all over youtube and you radiate happy."
Kris laughs. "Stalker," he accuses fondly, and Adam grins. "Hell yeah, boy. That's what it means to be second best. I get to stalk you, and be jealous of you, and secretly try to ruin your happiness."
"Thanks for, um.' Kris says, and then pauses for a long moment. "Not doing that, I guess."
Adam frowns. "What do you mean?"
"I mean...during the competition. There were so many chances...like, crossroads. And every time, if you hadn't chosen correctly, if you hadn't been, well, you, I..." Kris trails off. "I don't think I'd be where I am now."
Adam is confused, really fucking confused. "Um, I'm pretty sure you won by yourself, Kris. Though if you mean, like, thanks for not sabotaging you? Then - "
"I don't mean winning." Kris interrupts in a rush of breath. "I mean Katy and I."
Oh, this is not at all what Adam wanted to talk about, not when things had been good and laughter and banter again. Shit. "Kris," Adam says slowly, not really sure where this is going, "You know I'd never - "
"Yeah. That's - that's what I'm trying to say, actually. You had so many chances, hell, once or twice I practically asked you to, but you wouldn't, because you're Adam. And there was the whole stupid deal with the crush and I was fine with it, I was fine because you're Adam and you're the most impossibly honorable person I know and even though it must've been, God, Adam. It must have been hell with me for a roommate."
Adam's fingers are shaking. "Don't be an idiot," his mouth says, but his mind is stuck on once or twice I practically asked you to. There's a familiar slowness to Kris' voice, and suddenly things make a little more sense. Not a whole lot, but fuck, Adam'll take what he can get. "Are you drunk?"
Kris laughs. "Maybe." Adam can hear him swallowing. "You were right, by the way, about my anniversary. It's today."
"Oh my god!" Adam's hand stills in his hair. "I didn't know! The hell are you doing talking to me, when you've got a gorgeous wife waiting on you?"
"Your fans knew," Kris says, ignoring Adam's question, and there's so much bitterness in his voice that Adam wonders how he could have ever thought this conversation was going to be okay. "They sent me a gift. Some pictures of us."
Adam groans, though his heart is pretty much stopped in his chest. "Oh god, don't tell me it was porn. Please don't."
"No," Kris says, huffing a little with humorless laughter. "No, they weren't even 'shopped. Just you and me, being, well...us." There's a ragged note of loneliness in Kris' voice and for a second Adam's almost gratified that Kris misses him, too, even from his perfect life.
But then he remembers that if Kris' life were perfect he wouldn't be on the phone, ragged and bitter, and he swallows. He can see where this is going and he doesn't, he really doesn't want to have this conversation, and certainly not while Kris is drunk. "Um, Kris," He says gently, "We can talk about this later. Talk to your wife, sober up, okay?"
Kris seems to think about that for a while. "Yeah." He says, after a bit, and then he laughs. "See? You're doing it again. Bein' the best person I've ever met."
Adam's throat tightens, because he's not, not really, because he's doing this less for Kris and more because he's fucking terrified of this conversation and what it could - no, would - lead to. Adam likes Katy, he really does, but someday she's going to make Kris choose, and that...
Maybe it's good that he hasn't seen Kris is a long time. Maybe this is the best way for it to end. "Bye, Kris," he says firmly, and Kris, says, softly, "Bye, Adam." There's a pause, and then, impossibly soft, "Love you."
They've said it before, casually, in interviews. "Oh, yeah, I love the guy," Adam would shrug, or Kris would roll his eyes at the warmongers, saying, "We love each other." But this was different, a hell of a lot different, and Adam just stands stunned until the line goes dead. He squeezes his eyes shut, and then says to his empty kitchen, "I love you too."
Wordcount: ~3000
Pairing: Kris/Adam
Note: So, um. I had to write this, so I could get it out of my head so that I can write other things that i have to write. And it was going to be a ficlet, just to clear my head, and then my head refused to be cleared, and, um. This is half of it.
Blame forbiddenromanc and blue_icy_rose. Also, this is kind of a thank-you to them for being such good fandom-guides. ♥
Adam slid through the door silently, out of habit. He was used to finding Kris asleep at odd hours or lying in bed, fingers idly twitching over the strings of his guitar, filling the quiet room with floating, simple music. But obviously Kris wasn't there, his side of the room already cleaned out, his bed made. Adam has a sudden urge to pick up his pillow, hug it to him, see if it smells like Kris, all clean sweat and sweet cologne, but he doesn't, because he is not the pining girl in a romance novel, and besides, he has to get his ass moving.
The Idol Mansion was the last stop on their tour, a sort of final farewell to the whirlwind that had been their lives. They'd performed one last time on the stage it all began on, sung their hearts out to the familiar skies. And it's over, and it feels as if things should have slowed down, time should have slowed down, when Kris said goodbye that morning, that Adam should have had some time to..to do something. But he didn't, because he hadn't, and nothing was slowing down, and he was getting an apartment and he was signing a record deal and he was moving, up, up, up. He'd been contacted about a fashion line, even about a modeling gig, and everything was fame and fortune and glamor and perfect.
He'll get over Kris, and he'll move on.
He starts slowing packing up his things, the empty side of the room kind of glaring at him from across the divide between the beds. He folds his jackets, slides his boots into their boxes, grabbing things from their haphazard piles on the floor when he notices something under his bed.
He pulls it out. "Oh my god, fuck!" He shouts, and scrambles for his phone. Because sitting on the floor in front of his bed, in its worn leather case, is Kris' guitar. He sends a quick, fumbled text, 'omg ur guitar!!! On plane yet?' and then paces the room. He can see Kris, in his mind, on the plane, realizing what he's done. He's nervous, worried, his fingers playing with his wedding ring, his eyes darting around because what will happen to it? He imagines Kris imagining the bumbling hotel staff slamming it into doorways and tossing it down stairs to each other, their big, brutish hands crushing it in the process. He imagines Kris imagining it destroyed when they try to ship it to him, a beat-up leather case full of splinter arriving at his front door. He imagines Kris running his hands through his hair and despairing.
Kris must be on the plane, because he doesn't text Adam back and it goes straight to voicemail when he tries calling. Adam worries a thumbnail, managing to scrape off all the black paint. He resists the urge to leave it that way for nostalgia's sake and digs out his black nail polish to fix it, and then promptly chews it right off again when it's dry. Finally he finishes packing up, and, with check-out ending and the armies of cleaning staff threatening, takes Kris' guitar with him to his new apartment.
He doesn't bother unpacking yet, and sets Kris' guitar in the corner before flopping back on his sleek leather couch. He clutches his phone in his hand as if that'll make it buzz sooner, and falls asleep, there, waiting.
He's woken by the arrival of a text message and he hurries to check it. 'Idiot', the text reads, 'Look inside.'
Curious at the obvious lack of panic, Adam picks himself blearily up from the couch and makes his way over to where the guitar case sits. Night's fallen, by now, and Kris is obviously home, off the plane, if he's able to answer Adam's text. He undoes the catches and flips up the lid of the case.
There's Kris' guitar, worn and glinting a little in the dim light. Adam can see where Kris' fingers have pushed into the wood so many times they've left little impressions, little grooves. And there, taped to the lid, is a note, written in Kris' scrawling hand. He has the handwriting of a rockstar, Adam notices as he reads it, someone who's signed so many things, so many times, that all the letters start to look the same.
But this note is clear.
Adam -
Take care of this for me.
~Kris
Adam stared at it for a long moment. He sat back on his heels, trailing a hand across the wood of the guitar. He swallowed, once, twice, and then sent Kris, 'why'
The answer was immediate. 'Like a promise.' It said, and Adam passed a hand over his face, heart hammering even though he knew this was just one of those Kris things, where he comes so utterly close to confirming all of Adam's hopes and then meaning something else entirely. Careful, he sends back, 'a promise?'
'That we'll see each other again.' followed quickly by 'soon'.
Oh. Adam curls his fist around his phone and brings it to his lips. Well, fuck, so much for getting over him.
********
He tries, he really does. He lets himself get lost in the insanity of fame, he goes out drinking, he flirts with the cute sound guy at the recording studio. Things are great. Things are awesome, really. He's a famous fucking musician, a pop idol, a fashion icon. He's got everything he ever wanted.
But every night he comes home and there's Kris' guitar, a silent reminder of what he really wants, and it grounds him and reminds him that Adam Fucking Lambert is just a side of him, a kick-ass beautiful side but also a shallow sort of side that is not the child his mother raised. And inside Adam Fucking Lambert, plain, simple (well, comparatively) Adam is miserable. Because while he likes the fame, and the fortune, and the cute sound guy, he's missing some things. He's missing being loved. He's missing having friends. He's missing home, though he's not really sure what that means because he hasn't been back to San Diego since Idol started, and he never felt like this, then.
He stares at Kris' guitar and remembers the first time he saw it, the first time he saw Kris. He remembers sitting down next to him, away from the noise, and watching his fingers slide up and down the neck of the guitar. He remembers joining in on the chorus of whatever it was, and then the verse, twining his voice around Kris' chords. He remembers the respect, in Kris' eyes, when he'd looked up at him, and he remembers his own smirk. Because yeah, he'd been showing off, a little. But then Kris had joined in and Adam had faltered a little because he hadn't been expecting Kris' voice, soft and beautiful, and then he's not showing off but enjoying himself, and Kris speeds up and then they're chuckling as they're singing and Adam screeches out the last note, leaping to his feet and screaming into a waterbottle as if it were a microphone. Kris' fingers fumble on the strings, he's laughing so hard, and Adam's already a little too fascinated with the way his nose scrunches up in his face, the light dancing in his brown eyes.
He licks his lips, and wants more than anything to see Kris smile.
There are thousands of clips of Kris on youtube, about half of them Kris and him together. He skips past those resolutely, looking for recent shows, things since Idol ended. He finds them, Kris small under the lights, a new guitar cradled in his arms. It looks too new, too awkward, it doesn't quite fit him.
In Adam's worst moments, he thinks the same about Katy.
But mostly he grins, because Kris looks great, really good and happy and his voice is...well, Kris' voice, and that's all it really takes to make Adam grin. And he finds himself watching Kris' fingers on the strings, and wondering.
"I suck," he'd told Kris once (well, a lot of times, half of which had been accompanied by lascivious eyebrows and knowing smirks, but this time he'd really meant it in a sort of rueful, truthful way that wasn't very Adam Fucking Lambert but was Adam, the Adam that Kris - and if he's honest maybe really only Kris - knew). "You're a musician. You stand up there and you make music, all the music, you play guitar and piano and you play the whole - the whole song, you know? You don't need anyone else. Whereas, like, I'm just good at standing up there screaming and looking pretty. The hell am I doing here with you?"
It'd been right after they'd been chosen for the final two, right before they'd been catapulted into the madness that was prep for the finale. They were out getting trashed, because hell, one of them was going to be the next fucking American Idol and they both were going to be in the public eye and this might be they're last chance to get drunk while no one cared. Katy was there, and Allison had flown up to visit and congratulate them. The two of them were on the dance floor, living Kris and Adam stuffed into a booth.
Kris had chuckled, all warm affection, and sipped his beer. "You know why."
Adam had raised his eyebrows . Kris bumped shoulders with him and then stayed close, such a cuddly drunk that it drove Adam insane. He was caught between wishing that Katy would come back right now so that he could shove Kris off on her and go dance with Alli and wishing that she never would, ever, and that Kris would stay pressed up against him like this. Kris continued, "Because you're so good at lookin' pretty."
It was one of those moments, and they became more and more regular, that Adam couldn't breathe for wishing that things could be different. Not a lot different - just two things changed, just two. This right here, the closeness of them, the friendship, that would be the same. All he wanted was for Kris to be wearing one less gold band and be a few notches higher on the Kinsey scale.
He was pretty sure he could even change the second, if it weren't for the first. Because Kris wasn't wrong, and if he can see it even through the hearts that appear in his eyes every time he looks at Katy...
But he was married, and it wasn't fair of the stupid married bitch to look at him like that, tongue tucked behind his teeth as he grins, it wasn't fair for him to say, southern, his voice (even his speaking voice, god, Adam's so fucking screwed) all low and drawling, like sex and honey and love songs, "I could teach you."
Adam had nearly snarked, "Isn't that my line?" but his sarcasm had gotten stuck somewhere along the way when all of the blood left his head, so he just sipped his drink until Kris finished, "to play guitar."
Adam had made a noncommittal noise and kept his eyes on the dance floor, pretending to frown at Allison as she handily showed up the guy she'd been flirting with on the dance floor. Kris chuckled at him and made some comment about overprotective older brothers and everything was banter and sarcasm again.
And now Adam sits on his couch in his empty apartment with Kris' guitar in his lap and tries to be happy that those days are over, the days of longing and constant self-denial, of too-little sleep and esteem-crushing criticism and screaming, terrifying fans. He tries to be happy that he doesn't have to deal with Kris being right there, so affectionate and adorable and gorgeous. He tries to think about Cute Sound Guy and how easy it was to go from flirting to making out to quick, hot sex. He tries to think about the hickey on his neck and the way CSG's hands had curled in his hair.
But he holds Kris' guitar in his lap and realizes he'd rather run his hands over its curves than the smooth tan sides of CSG.
Plus, he's still referring to him as CSG, in his head, which is probably a bad sign.
He slides the pad of his thumb across the lowest string, more a caress than a pluck. The note comes out soft and mournful, and Adam makes a face and decides he's being ridiculous. He sets the guitar back in its case and closes it, resisting the urge to re-read the note still taped to the lid. Soon, the text message had said. A promise.
Didn't quite work out that way.
He's sliding his phone from his pocket before he really knows what he's doing, his fingers spelling out 'ur definition of soon is different than mine' like the unruly bastards they are. He sends it, and then flops down on his couch to wait.
His phone rings, ten minutes later. He picks up, mouth dry, and announces, "Lambert's House of Glam, how may I direct your call?" He inspects his fingernails like a bored receptionist (he still hasn't repainted that thumbnail, shit) and can hear Kris smiling on the other end. "Hey." Kris says, soft, and Adam lets out a long breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "Hey." He says back. "So, uh...I still have this guitar, you know, gently weeping."
Kris chuckled. "I know." He said, sounding apologetic. "I know. It's just...I've been really busy, and - "
"No shit." Adam interrupts. "We both have." He thinks of his own upcoming album, a disturbing percentage of which is angsty love songs. "Difference is, you've been happy."
...Shit. That...Shit. He hadn't meant to say that. "I, um."
They're silent for a moment, and then Kris sighs. "How do you know I've been happy?"
Adam crosses his ankles on the arm of the chair, counting on his fingers even though Kris can't see him. "One, you're back with your wife, who you missed like a missing limb the whole competition. Two, you're in your hometown, making music for people you love. Three, your one-year anniversary is coming up. Four, you're all over youtube and you radiate happy."
Kris laughs. "Stalker," he accuses fondly, and Adam grins. "Hell yeah, boy. That's what it means to be second best. I get to stalk you, and be jealous of you, and secretly try to ruin your happiness."
"Thanks for, um.' Kris says, and then pauses for a long moment. "Not doing that, I guess."
Adam frowns. "What do you mean?"
"I mean...during the competition. There were so many chances...like, crossroads. And every time, if you hadn't chosen correctly, if you hadn't been, well, you, I..." Kris trails off. "I don't think I'd be where I am now."
Adam is confused, really fucking confused. "Um, I'm pretty sure you won by yourself, Kris. Though if you mean, like, thanks for not sabotaging you? Then - "
"I don't mean winning." Kris interrupts in a rush of breath. "I mean Katy and I."
Oh, this is not at all what Adam wanted to talk about, not when things had been good and laughter and banter again. Shit. "Kris," Adam says slowly, not really sure where this is going, "You know I'd never - "
"Yeah. That's - that's what I'm trying to say, actually. You had so many chances, hell, once or twice I practically asked you to, but you wouldn't, because you're Adam. And there was the whole stupid deal with the crush and I was fine with it, I was fine because you're Adam and you're the most impossibly honorable person I know and even though it must've been, God, Adam. It must have been hell with me for a roommate."
Adam's fingers are shaking. "Don't be an idiot," his mouth says, but his mind is stuck on once or twice I practically asked you to. There's a familiar slowness to Kris' voice, and suddenly things make a little more sense. Not a whole lot, but fuck, Adam'll take what he can get. "Are you drunk?"
Kris laughs. "Maybe." Adam can hear him swallowing. "You were right, by the way, about my anniversary. It's today."
"Oh my god!" Adam's hand stills in his hair. "I didn't know! The hell are you doing talking to me, when you've got a gorgeous wife waiting on you?"
"Your fans knew," Kris says, ignoring Adam's question, and there's so much bitterness in his voice that Adam wonders how he could have ever thought this conversation was going to be okay. "They sent me a gift. Some pictures of us."
Adam groans, though his heart is pretty much stopped in his chest. "Oh god, don't tell me it was porn. Please don't."
"No," Kris says, huffing a little with humorless laughter. "No, they weren't even 'shopped. Just you and me, being, well...us." There's a ragged note of loneliness in Kris' voice and for a second Adam's almost gratified that Kris misses him, too, even from his perfect life.
But then he remembers that if Kris' life were perfect he wouldn't be on the phone, ragged and bitter, and he swallows. He can see where this is going and he doesn't, he really doesn't want to have this conversation, and certainly not while Kris is drunk. "Um, Kris," He says gently, "We can talk about this later. Talk to your wife, sober up, okay?"
Kris seems to think about that for a while. "Yeah." He says, after a bit, and then he laughs. "See? You're doing it again. Bein' the best person I've ever met."
Adam's throat tightens, because he's not, not really, because he's doing this less for Kris and more because he's fucking terrified of this conversation and what it could - no, would - lead to. Adam likes Katy, he really does, but someday she's going to make Kris choose, and that...
Maybe it's good that he hasn't seen Kris is a long time. Maybe this is the best way for it to end. "Bye, Kris," he says firmly, and Kris, says, softly, "Bye, Adam." There's a pause, and then, impossibly soft, "Love you."
They've said it before, casually, in interviews. "Oh, yeah, I love the guy," Adam would shrug, or Kris would roll his eyes at the warmongers, saying, "We love each other." But this was different, a hell of a lot different, and Adam just stands stunned until the line goes dead. He squeezes his eyes shut, and then says to his empty kitchen, "I love you too."