[ai] Next Time (Won't You Sing With Me?) {P and Q}
Title: Next Time (Won't You Sing With Me?) {P and Q}
Pairing/Characters: Adam/Kris, Kris/Katy, Kradison friendship
Wordcount: ~2,500
Rating: PG-13, this part, NC-17 overall.
Disclaimer: Everyone mentioned belongs only to themselves, and none of this ever happened. Except the bits they showed on TV.
Summary/Notes: Original author's note, and first nine letters, are here. K through M are here, and N and O are here.
Only two again, and Q is shorter. I don't know, yet, whether this is a trend - whether as some have suggested in my whiny post of yesterday I should start slimming it back down so it's sort of symmetrical, length-wise, ending with a sentence like I started with one. I do kind of like the idea, but it all depends on how much a word inspires me, really.
P is for Promise
Kris goes back to Arkansas before the tour. They talk about it, Adam and him, and Adam makes it clear that though Kris is always welcome at his apartment, he doesn't think it's a good idea for him to spend two weeks there...or at least, not these two weeks. And Katy, too, sounding world-weary and worn, says that she wants him home - wants to hold off on the all nasty legal nonsense until the tour is over and it won't be read as a publicity stunt. And Kris agrees with them, he really does, he understands their reasoning and he really, really appreciates Katy's willingness to wait, but when he thinks about his cluttered, unfamiliar house in Arkansas and the strangeness that will be his marriage bed he can't help but dread it.
It's not as bad as he imagines.
The house is pretty much the same - Katy's things in Katy's places - but now that he doesn't feel like it's supposed to be his he can appreciate it as hers. It's a beautiful house, and her presence fills it with a sort of airy sunshine, Arkansas dust and good perfume. It feels like the home of a very good friend - he has jokes with her about some of the things in it, knows the stories behind others. He knows where some of her things are better than she does and the dishes have scratches from his mistakes. It's not coming home but it is coming back from what feels like an impossibly long time away.
For the most part she feels like a very good friend, too. They watch television together, talk about the neighbors that Kris hasn't seen in months, the neighbors that stammer and laugh awkwardly when he talk to them, like he's a stranger now that he's famous. They make home-made pizza and drink local beer and Kris thinks, maybe I was right, maybe we'll be okay.
Katy breaks down on the third night. "I can't do this," she grates, standing in her dim kitchen. "I can't live under the same roof as you, sleep under the same sheets, and know that you're not...not mine. I just...it's driving me mad, Kris."
Kris nods, folding his lips into his mouth, slow and sorry. "I'll go stay with my parents." He says, softly. "They'll be glad to have me."
Katy searches his face. "What will you tell them?"
"The truth." He says "I was...I was going to wait, do it with Adam - "
"Christ, Kris, what is he, your crutch?" Katy interrupts suddenly, her voice tinged with bitterness. "You drag him everywhere that looks even a little bit difficult, like you wouldn't be able to stand up and talk about anything important without him!"
Kris blinks at her. "That's not fair." He says. "He wasn't there when I went to tell you - "
"He wasn't there when you mumbled and faltered through half of a confession, no. But when you actually got up the nerve and told me what the hell was happening?" She sighs, running a hand through her golden hair. "We both know that phonecall was more for him than it was for me, regardless of the fact that I on the other end of the line."
"It wasn't - "
"It was." Katy's half illuminated by the lights from the living room, half in darkness. "Or, what, you think if I hadn't let you go, if I hadn't taken your words at face value and believed you, if I'd been a stubborn bitch, would you have stayed on the phone with me? Would you have fought with me for hours, talked out what needed to be talked out, cried out what needed to be cried out, while he sat there and trembled with surprise and love and you wouldn't have even looked up to see his fucking reaction?" She shakes her head. "No, that was just a convenient vehicle for your confession of undying love. After all, if you'll say it to your wife, the fuck wouldn't you say it to the world?"
Kris stares at her for a long moment, silent.
"Out, Kris." Katy turns away from him. "Give me some fucking time, alright? This isn't what I need."
Kris gets out.
His parents are happy to have him, and their faces are surprisingly resigned when he tells them that Katy's kicked him out, that they're considering divorce. He finds himself giving them all the reasons except Adam. Not because he's afraid of what they'll think - they've met Adam and they love him, and they're the ones that taught him what he knows about the freedom of love - but because he wants to see if he can, if it makes...sense for it to end, even without what pushed him to end it.
He wants to make sure Adam's not the only reason, because he knows that Adam would want to make sure.
And as he describes how his house felt to him, coming back after the Top Three, as he describes the disconnect between himself and Katy, as he describes the life he once wanted and the life he wants now, as he describes what his future will be after the tour, as he describes the world of opportunity that he's open to, now, he finds that it makes perfect sense. He finds his parents nodding at him, eyes wet with sympathy and pride, and he finds himself thinking, this would have happened anyway. Maybe not so quickly...but it would have happened.
He stays in his old room, now the guest room, and lays himself out on the sheets. He breathes the familiar air of childhood and stares at his ceiling.
Taking out his phone he dials without looking and brings it to his ear. "Do I use you as a crutch?" He asks without introduction, and Adam laughs, warm and surprised, in his ear.
"Only when you're really, really drunk," He grins, and Kris grins back from a thousand miles away. "What's up?"
"Katy kicked me out. Staying with my parents." Kris says distantly. He runs a hand through his hair.
"Oh, baby, I'm sorry." Adam's instantly concerned, and when his "Are you okay?" is immediately followed by "Is she?" Kris wants to beam at him like a ridiculous, lovesick fool.
"She will be, I think," he says, schooling his expression into something more appropriate. "It wasn't a good idea, for me to try to live with her so soon."
He can hear Adam make a decision, a long pause and then a quick breath. "Kris, if you want to come back early - "
Kris shakes his head. "No," he says, and then sighs, as well. "I mean...I miss you. And normally I'd leap at the chance, but...I need to be here, in case she needs me."
"If you're always there when she needs you she's never going to stop needing you, baby," Adam says, tone careful.
"I know," Kris says, and he does. "But..."
"But it's Katy," says Adam, and Kris hears him swallow. He closes his eyes. "Kris..." Adam starts, and then stops. "You still love her."
"No," Kris says, and then, "Yes," because he does but not the way Adam means, not the way he's afraid of. "I love her but I'm not...we're not in love, anymore. It's like..." He thinks a moment, hears the sadness in Adam's silence. "It's like there was a thread between us, spun out of our shared experiences, our shared opinions, our shared joys. And it tied us together until..."
"Until I came along and snapped it," Adam says, a guilty, fierce note in his voice. "Kris - "
"Stop," Kris says, opening his eyes. "I wasn't finished." He can hear Adam snap his jaw shut, imagines his blue eyes hard, and wants nothing more than to pull him in and push what he's trying to say into those eyes, into those lips, into that heart. "It tied us together, and we could be far away from each other and it would stretch, because it was strong, it was thick, it was woven well. But we stretched it and we stretched it and we stretched it, Adam. And it was like... one by one its fibers began to snap and I started to get lost."
Kris smiles, his cheek pushing against the plastic of his phone, warm where it lay on his cheek. "And then you came, and it was like...you hooked me in. A lasso."
Adam laughs. "Never thought of myself as a cowboy." His voice grew intrigued. "I do have the boots for it."
Kris rolls his eyes. "You have the boots for anything."
Adam hums, self-satisfied. "True." He sobers. "But...what now? Do you try to remake that thread?"
Kris shakes his head. "No. We...we didn't have to try, the first time, and I can't really even think about how to do something like that on purpose. Besides, I don't want...I don't want that thread, anymore. I want your lasso."
"Oh, baby," Adam laughs, half relieved, half lascivious, and Kris can see his raised eyebrow from Arkansas.
He chuckles. "I'm telling the truth, Adam. Katy and I will be whatever Katy and I will be. Maybe we'll be best friends again. Maybe we'll be distant. Maybe...maybe after this week I'll never see her again. It's her choice. If I leave early I'm taking that away from her." He pauses, and then, even softer, "If I leave early I might not be able to say goodbye."
"Then stay." Adam says, certain, and Kris wants to badly to kiss him that he literally aches for it. Adam continues, "Were you telling the truth about the lasso thing, too? Because now my mind is full of delightfully naked, trussed-up Kris Allen and a certain trite saying..."
Kris blushes, but has to ask. "Saying?"
Adam's voice is coy. Kris can almost see him, stretched out so long, so perfect, on his couch in his apartment, boots kicked off under the table, one arm under his head. He watches, in his mind's eye, as a slow, sideways smirk slides onto his face, as he cocks his hips just slightly to one side. "What, you haven't heard it?" He asks, and slides his tongue over his lips. "Save a horse, ride a cowboy."
Kris laughs softly, his hand tracing circles across his stomach. "When I come back," He says, "I'll bring the hat."
He laughs harder at imaginary!Adam's startled face. But while imaginary!Adam is still sort of staring, real!Adam's voice comes filtering in over his mirth. "...Promise?"
Q is for Quiet.
He's sent back off for the tour with, if possible, even more cheers than he came home to. The noise pounds against his head, making him distracted and irritable. He can barely hear Katy as she hugs him, probably a show for the cameras, and presses a kiss to his cheek. "I'll call you." She murmurs, and he turns to look at her as he's beckoned away by momentum and cameras and bodyguards. "About the divorce," she mouths, and he swallows, and nods.
His music is too loud in his headphones, the plane's engine is too loud without them. He tries to sleep and even if dreams are too loud, garish, bizarre images flashing by too fast to see, Katy's words from Adam's mouth, somebody crying. He wakes up as they're taxiing in to LAX and looks around at the rest of first class. Some of them are eyeing him, with that curious, guilty look of someone staring at a celebrity. He gives them a brittle smile and hopes they won't ask him anything.
The Top Ten Idols meet at a restaurant that night, and Kris had forgotten how much noise ten musicians make. When those ten musicians are excited...
Allison literally screams and throws herself at him, and he has to grin, even today, even as her normally incredible voice sets his teeth on edge. He catches her and holds her close, murmuring nonsense into her hair and she pulls away, giggling at him.
Matt shoulders her out of the way, pulling Kris is for a one-armed manly hug and Kris rolls his eyes and hugs him for real. He'd never been good at the whole men-don't-hug thing, and Matt had been his first friend in the mansion.
Beyond Matt is Anoop and beyond Anoop is Megan and beyond Megan is Lil and they're all full of laughter, full of gossip, full of pride and joy and maybe a little bit of jealousy, their voice rushing over one another, and Kris loves them, he really does, but right now he kind of wants to punch someone in the face.
And then there's a strong arm slung around his shoulders and a familiar warmth pressed into his side and Adam's saying, speaking at a normal volume but being heard because he's Adam, "C'mon, guys, give Pocket Idol a chance to breathe, guys. He's barely off the plane!"
The others quiet down and grin, apologizing or just shrugging. They take their seats, Anoop calling, "You're just calm 'cause you got to see him two weeks ago. The rest of us missed our Krissopher!"
"No." Adam pulls back, his hand lingering on Kris' neck, and meets his eyes. "I missed him, too."
Someday, Kris thinks, I'll be allowed to kiss him for things like that.
The restaurant is still too loud and the other Idols are still too excited but Kris slides into a seat between Adam and Allison and feels himself relax a bit. Adam looks at him, eyes worried. "Katy?" He whispers, as he leans over to grab bread, his outstretched arm hiding his face from the others. Kris just shakes his head, throat tight, and Adam's lips purse. He takes Kris' hand under the table, and Kris thinks, crutch or not, you make me stronger.
Allison elbows him. "So, Kris, what's you first single gonna be, huh? C'mon, you can tell us."
Kris flushes. "I actually...I hadn't thought about it, really. I've kinda been in shock." Adam chuckles beside him and Kris shoots him a look. Adam schools his expression into something more serious, and Kris rolls his eyes.
"You guys," Allison whines, looking back and forth between them. "No fair getting closer without me. We were a trio!"
Kris looks at Adam, and Adam looks at Kris, and they nod. "Right!" Adam says. "Well then, let's catch you up."
They spend the rest of the meal with Allison, laughing with her, telling her stories about the days before Kris won. They talk about the nail-polish thing (leaving out Adam's freak out). Adam tells her about meeting Kris' family, about Kris' mother's cake, about how Conway Arkansas had reacted to his glittering presence. Neither of them mention Katy.
Afterwards, they're all shoved onto the tour bus to begin their chaotic journey. Adam immediately claims a top bunk, Kris right below, and Allison and Megan are next to them. Kris slides his guitar under his bunk and climbs in immediately, shoving his curtains closed. He feels better but he's still so...tight, like the skin of a drum, and every little noise is a slap, a beat.
Adam slides into his bunk on white-socked feet, wearing silence like a cloak. Kris curls into him, pressing his face into Adam's chest. Adam just holds him close, folding him in strength and warmth and quiet, and eventually even the shuffling noises of the other Idols fade, leaving only Kris' breathing, Adam's breathing, slotted in unison, and the slow, steady beating of their hearts.
Pairing/Characters: Adam/Kris, Kris/Katy, Kradison friendship
Wordcount: ~2,500
Rating: PG-13, this part, NC-17 overall.
Disclaimer: Everyone mentioned belongs only to themselves, and none of this ever happened. Except the bits they showed on TV.
Summary/Notes: Original author's note, and first nine letters, are here. K through M are here, and N and O are here.
Only two again, and Q is shorter. I don't know, yet, whether this is a trend - whether as some have suggested in my whiny post of yesterday I should start slimming it back down so it's sort of symmetrical, length-wise, ending with a sentence like I started with one. I do kind of like the idea, but it all depends on how much a word inspires me, really.
P is for Promise
Kris goes back to Arkansas before the tour. They talk about it, Adam and him, and Adam makes it clear that though Kris is always welcome at his apartment, he doesn't think it's a good idea for him to spend two weeks there...or at least, not these two weeks. And Katy, too, sounding world-weary and worn, says that she wants him home - wants to hold off on the all nasty legal nonsense until the tour is over and it won't be read as a publicity stunt. And Kris agrees with them, he really does, he understands their reasoning and he really, really appreciates Katy's willingness to wait, but when he thinks about his cluttered, unfamiliar house in Arkansas and the strangeness that will be his marriage bed he can't help but dread it.
It's not as bad as he imagines.
The house is pretty much the same - Katy's things in Katy's places - but now that he doesn't feel like it's supposed to be his he can appreciate it as hers. It's a beautiful house, and her presence fills it with a sort of airy sunshine, Arkansas dust and good perfume. It feels like the home of a very good friend - he has jokes with her about some of the things in it, knows the stories behind others. He knows where some of her things are better than she does and the dishes have scratches from his mistakes. It's not coming home but it is coming back from what feels like an impossibly long time away.
For the most part she feels like a very good friend, too. They watch television together, talk about the neighbors that Kris hasn't seen in months, the neighbors that stammer and laugh awkwardly when he talk to them, like he's a stranger now that he's famous. They make home-made pizza and drink local beer and Kris thinks, maybe I was right, maybe we'll be okay.
Katy breaks down on the third night. "I can't do this," she grates, standing in her dim kitchen. "I can't live under the same roof as you, sleep under the same sheets, and know that you're not...not mine. I just...it's driving me mad, Kris."
Kris nods, folding his lips into his mouth, slow and sorry. "I'll go stay with my parents." He says, softly. "They'll be glad to have me."
Katy searches his face. "What will you tell them?"
"The truth." He says "I was...I was going to wait, do it with Adam - "
"Christ, Kris, what is he, your crutch?" Katy interrupts suddenly, her voice tinged with bitterness. "You drag him everywhere that looks even a little bit difficult, like you wouldn't be able to stand up and talk about anything important without him!"
Kris blinks at her. "That's not fair." He says. "He wasn't there when I went to tell you - "
"He wasn't there when you mumbled and faltered through half of a confession, no. But when you actually got up the nerve and told me what the hell was happening?" She sighs, running a hand through her golden hair. "We both know that phonecall was more for him than it was for me, regardless of the fact that I on the other end of the line."
"It wasn't - "
"It was." Katy's half illuminated by the lights from the living room, half in darkness. "Or, what, you think if I hadn't let you go, if I hadn't taken your words at face value and believed you, if I'd been a stubborn bitch, would you have stayed on the phone with me? Would you have fought with me for hours, talked out what needed to be talked out, cried out what needed to be cried out, while he sat there and trembled with surprise and love and you wouldn't have even looked up to see his fucking reaction?" She shakes her head. "No, that was just a convenient vehicle for your confession of undying love. After all, if you'll say it to your wife, the fuck wouldn't you say it to the world?"
Kris stares at her for a long moment, silent.
"Out, Kris." Katy turns away from him. "Give me some fucking time, alright? This isn't what I need."
Kris gets out.
His parents are happy to have him, and their faces are surprisingly resigned when he tells them that Katy's kicked him out, that they're considering divorce. He finds himself giving them all the reasons except Adam. Not because he's afraid of what they'll think - they've met Adam and they love him, and they're the ones that taught him what he knows about the freedom of love - but because he wants to see if he can, if it makes...sense for it to end, even without what pushed him to end it.
He wants to make sure Adam's not the only reason, because he knows that Adam would want to make sure.
And as he describes how his house felt to him, coming back after the Top Three, as he describes the disconnect between himself and Katy, as he describes the life he once wanted and the life he wants now, as he describes what his future will be after the tour, as he describes the world of opportunity that he's open to, now, he finds that it makes perfect sense. He finds his parents nodding at him, eyes wet with sympathy and pride, and he finds himself thinking, this would have happened anyway. Maybe not so quickly...but it would have happened.
He stays in his old room, now the guest room, and lays himself out on the sheets. He breathes the familiar air of childhood and stares at his ceiling.
Taking out his phone he dials without looking and brings it to his ear. "Do I use you as a crutch?" He asks without introduction, and Adam laughs, warm and surprised, in his ear.
"Only when you're really, really drunk," He grins, and Kris grins back from a thousand miles away. "What's up?"
"Katy kicked me out. Staying with my parents." Kris says distantly. He runs a hand through his hair.
"Oh, baby, I'm sorry." Adam's instantly concerned, and when his "Are you okay?" is immediately followed by "Is she?" Kris wants to beam at him like a ridiculous, lovesick fool.
"She will be, I think," he says, schooling his expression into something more appropriate. "It wasn't a good idea, for me to try to live with her so soon."
He can hear Adam make a decision, a long pause and then a quick breath. "Kris, if you want to come back early - "
Kris shakes his head. "No," he says, and then sighs, as well. "I mean...I miss you. And normally I'd leap at the chance, but...I need to be here, in case she needs me."
"If you're always there when she needs you she's never going to stop needing you, baby," Adam says, tone careful.
"I know," Kris says, and he does. "But..."
"But it's Katy," says Adam, and Kris hears him swallow. He closes his eyes. "Kris..." Adam starts, and then stops. "You still love her."
"No," Kris says, and then, "Yes," because he does but not the way Adam means, not the way he's afraid of. "I love her but I'm not...we're not in love, anymore. It's like..." He thinks a moment, hears the sadness in Adam's silence. "It's like there was a thread between us, spun out of our shared experiences, our shared opinions, our shared joys. And it tied us together until..."
"Until I came along and snapped it," Adam says, a guilty, fierce note in his voice. "Kris - "
"Stop," Kris says, opening his eyes. "I wasn't finished." He can hear Adam snap his jaw shut, imagines his blue eyes hard, and wants nothing more than to pull him in and push what he's trying to say into those eyes, into those lips, into that heart. "It tied us together, and we could be far away from each other and it would stretch, because it was strong, it was thick, it was woven well. But we stretched it and we stretched it and we stretched it, Adam. And it was like... one by one its fibers began to snap and I started to get lost."
Kris smiles, his cheek pushing against the plastic of his phone, warm where it lay on his cheek. "And then you came, and it was like...you hooked me in. A lasso."
Adam laughs. "Never thought of myself as a cowboy." His voice grew intrigued. "I do have the boots for it."
Kris rolls his eyes. "You have the boots for anything."
Adam hums, self-satisfied. "True." He sobers. "But...what now? Do you try to remake that thread?"
Kris shakes his head. "No. We...we didn't have to try, the first time, and I can't really even think about how to do something like that on purpose. Besides, I don't want...I don't want that thread, anymore. I want your lasso."
"Oh, baby," Adam laughs, half relieved, half lascivious, and Kris can see his raised eyebrow from Arkansas.
He chuckles. "I'm telling the truth, Adam. Katy and I will be whatever Katy and I will be. Maybe we'll be best friends again. Maybe we'll be distant. Maybe...maybe after this week I'll never see her again. It's her choice. If I leave early I'm taking that away from her." He pauses, and then, even softer, "If I leave early I might not be able to say goodbye."
"Then stay." Adam says, certain, and Kris wants to badly to kiss him that he literally aches for it. Adam continues, "Were you telling the truth about the lasso thing, too? Because now my mind is full of delightfully naked, trussed-up Kris Allen and a certain trite saying..."
Kris blushes, but has to ask. "Saying?"
Adam's voice is coy. Kris can almost see him, stretched out so long, so perfect, on his couch in his apartment, boots kicked off under the table, one arm under his head. He watches, in his mind's eye, as a slow, sideways smirk slides onto his face, as he cocks his hips just slightly to one side. "What, you haven't heard it?" He asks, and slides his tongue over his lips. "Save a horse, ride a cowboy."
Kris laughs softly, his hand tracing circles across his stomach. "When I come back," He says, "I'll bring the hat."
He laughs harder at imaginary!Adam's startled face. But while imaginary!Adam is still sort of staring, real!Adam's voice comes filtering in over his mirth. "...Promise?"
Q is for Quiet.
He's sent back off for the tour with, if possible, even more cheers than he came home to. The noise pounds against his head, making him distracted and irritable. He can barely hear Katy as she hugs him, probably a show for the cameras, and presses a kiss to his cheek. "I'll call you." She murmurs, and he turns to look at her as he's beckoned away by momentum and cameras and bodyguards. "About the divorce," she mouths, and he swallows, and nods.
His music is too loud in his headphones, the plane's engine is too loud without them. He tries to sleep and even if dreams are too loud, garish, bizarre images flashing by too fast to see, Katy's words from Adam's mouth, somebody crying. He wakes up as they're taxiing in to LAX and looks around at the rest of first class. Some of them are eyeing him, with that curious, guilty look of someone staring at a celebrity. He gives them a brittle smile and hopes they won't ask him anything.
The Top Ten Idols meet at a restaurant that night, and Kris had forgotten how much noise ten musicians make. When those ten musicians are excited...
Allison literally screams and throws herself at him, and he has to grin, even today, even as her normally incredible voice sets his teeth on edge. He catches her and holds her close, murmuring nonsense into her hair and she pulls away, giggling at him.
Matt shoulders her out of the way, pulling Kris is for a one-armed manly hug and Kris rolls his eyes and hugs him for real. He'd never been good at the whole men-don't-hug thing, and Matt had been his first friend in the mansion.
Beyond Matt is Anoop and beyond Anoop is Megan and beyond Megan is Lil and they're all full of laughter, full of gossip, full of pride and joy and maybe a little bit of jealousy, their voice rushing over one another, and Kris loves them, he really does, but right now he kind of wants to punch someone in the face.
And then there's a strong arm slung around his shoulders and a familiar warmth pressed into his side and Adam's saying, speaking at a normal volume but being heard because he's Adam, "C'mon, guys, give Pocket Idol a chance to breathe, guys. He's barely off the plane!"
The others quiet down and grin, apologizing or just shrugging. They take their seats, Anoop calling, "You're just calm 'cause you got to see him two weeks ago. The rest of us missed our Krissopher!"
"No." Adam pulls back, his hand lingering on Kris' neck, and meets his eyes. "I missed him, too."
Someday, Kris thinks, I'll be allowed to kiss him for things like that.
The restaurant is still too loud and the other Idols are still too excited but Kris slides into a seat between Adam and Allison and feels himself relax a bit. Adam looks at him, eyes worried. "Katy?" He whispers, as he leans over to grab bread, his outstretched arm hiding his face from the others. Kris just shakes his head, throat tight, and Adam's lips purse. He takes Kris' hand under the table, and Kris thinks, crutch or not, you make me stronger.
Allison elbows him. "So, Kris, what's you first single gonna be, huh? C'mon, you can tell us."
Kris flushes. "I actually...I hadn't thought about it, really. I've kinda been in shock." Adam chuckles beside him and Kris shoots him a look. Adam schools his expression into something more serious, and Kris rolls his eyes.
"You guys," Allison whines, looking back and forth between them. "No fair getting closer without me. We were a trio!"
Kris looks at Adam, and Adam looks at Kris, and they nod. "Right!" Adam says. "Well then, let's catch you up."
They spend the rest of the meal with Allison, laughing with her, telling her stories about the days before Kris won. They talk about the nail-polish thing (leaving out Adam's freak out). Adam tells her about meeting Kris' family, about Kris' mother's cake, about how Conway Arkansas had reacted to his glittering presence. Neither of them mention Katy.
Afterwards, they're all shoved onto the tour bus to begin their chaotic journey. Adam immediately claims a top bunk, Kris right below, and Allison and Megan are next to them. Kris slides his guitar under his bunk and climbs in immediately, shoving his curtains closed. He feels better but he's still so...tight, like the skin of a drum, and every little noise is a slap, a beat.
Adam slides into his bunk on white-socked feet, wearing silence like a cloak. Kris curls into him, pressing his face into Adam's chest. Adam just holds him close, folding him in strength and warmth and quiet, and eventually even the shuffling noises of the other Idols fade, leaving only Kris' breathing, Adam's breathing, slotted in unison, and the slow, steady beating of their hearts.