Fic: Collapsible Plans [2/?]
Title: Collapsible Plans [2/?]
Summary: AU. Kris leaves small town life behind to attend college in New York City. Who does he meet along the way that flips his world upside down?
Author: griggharris
Beta: gargoyles42
Pairing: Kris/Adam
Rating: Chapter is G. Fic is PG-13.
Word Count: 2,302
Disclaimer: The happenings are faker than Zaza in La Cage aux Folles.
Author’s Notes: Thanks again for the awesome feedback on this fic! Here is chapter two. The sparks are developing... but that's all I'll say. Also, I've fudged the ages of the characters a little bit, just to make it work. Can I also request an author tag from the mod gods?
Prologue
Chapter One
= = =
The class cleared at exactly fifteen-past-nine, and no surprise to the novices of Algebra 1, the pop quiz went ahead just as scheduled. Kris would have to remember to thank Brad for allowing him a few spare moments to study, but then again, he couldn’t help but wonder if Brad had told him out of good etiquette or flirtatious tom foolery.
Thanks in part to a short class session and twenty extra minutes, Kris had just enough time to swing by the school café three blocks away and charge a bagel to his student expenditures card.
He leaned over to grab his bag and swing it over his shoulder; pencils, erasers, and textbook in all the right places. But before he could even make it out of his chair, let alone out the door, Brad’s hand was creeping up his shoulder. It seemed as though Kris had not only made a new friend on his first day - but a not-so-secret admirer, too.
Kris gave Brad a wordless look of bemusement, noticing then that Adam, Drake, and Allison were a few paces ahead and lost in their own conversation. Brad poked Kris in the shoulder and Kris began to stand up, pulling the man beside him as he walked from the table.
If Kris had any real plight, he wasn’t letting it show. To his own surprise, he was starting to warm to the companionship. He hadn’t felt real human contact since the moment he kissed Katy goodbye and boarded that plane. His roommates were cool, sure, but he’d only known them for two weeks. It was surface companionship. They had their business, he had his.
And sure, so did this motley crew. For all Kris knew, they’d fall off the face of the planet and disappear like a pack of vampires. But in the mean time, he was starting to feel like a human, like he was part of a team again, like more than the “new roommate,” the fifth wheel, the “redneck from Arkansas” - which couldn’t have been further from who he really was.
He began to smile to himself and fidget less and less under the draping arm of Brad. Adam had told him to just roll with it, and that was precisely what he was trying to do.
“And what obligations do you have next, Kris?” Brad asked.
Their pace caught up with the rest of the clique. Kris glanced back at Adam, meeting his eyes for just a blip in time. He spoke up then, glancing down at his red converse blemished in permanent marker before looking back up. “Well, I have this music theory class-“
“With Professor Deckles?” Drake asked, looking over his shoulder at Kris, his hand slid in Adam’s back pocket.
Kris made a wordless sound and pulled out a piece of paper, a color coded spreadsheet of his class itinerary. Soft giggles abounded. Adam’s lips pursed into a delicate smile, but he brushed it away with his finger.
“Professor Deckles,” he confirmed, nodding once and looking up. He noticed Adam and Drake still smirking, and Kris’ brow shot toward the ceiling before he gave the two an inquisitive look. “You’ve had him?”
Adam nodded only once and held up one finger to Kris, momentarily distracted as he pulled Allison to his chest. Her class was going to start in naught-point-five minutes, but it was practically a finger painting class, so scoring a seat was no plight.
Before she could take off, she leaned in and gave Kris a surprising bear hug, just his size. Kris’ brow creased slightly, but he patted her on the back, exchanging goodbyes.
A few seconds had to pass for the palette to clear, so to speak. Adam shrugged then and braced Drake’s arm as the men turned toward Kris, standing in the hall.
“I’ve had him. He’s cool, but if you don’t know much about music theory to start, he’s kind of intense. He just expects a lot. He’s not an easy A.”
Kris certainly knew his music theory. After all, he had played in his first piano concerto at seven. He could tune a guitar before he could even read or write.
His parents had instilled a love of music in him from an early age. If he squinted and thought back hard enough, he could still remember the stacks of Beatles records that played in constant rotation. There wasn’t a memory that didn’t revolve around music - not even a trip to Disneyland. Why else would he watch all those films to begin with? Sure, it was kind of girly, but so was opting out track and football to be in the church choir. Missing your junior year formal to support Lea Salonga on viola in Manila? Not so normal, either.
And then there were words. Oh, words. It was tickling - at least to him - that he could write music in the same language as Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, and Freddie Mercury. Those same words that could bend and mold to whatever you were trying to convey, raw on the page and exposed for anyone to read.
Music was his body. The scat percussion was his pulse. The melody was his breath. The lyrics were his heart, his sleeve, his mind, his soul.
Yeah, Kris Allen knew a thing or two about music theory.
His head bobbed up and down, and he wore that semi-trademark smirk, shrugging his shoulders back modestly.
“I think I’ll be all right. I’m kind of a music major anyway. I’ve been playing the piano since I was like, five, and I’ve done a little composing. So I think I’ve still got some of it in me.”
Adam’s magnetic stare zeroed in on Kris, those charcoal-lined eyes as intense as fire. Damn, that was something Kris really had to get used to, if ever. Kris just stared for a minute, ignoring the faint stroke of Brad’s hand over his shoulder that would have put him on pins and needles only minutes before.
“Shut up, wow, composing! So you, like, write music? That’s amazing,” Adam said with an extra lilt in his voice.
Kris smiled and nodded a little, his shoulders shrugging back. He looked back at Brad, who rolled his eyes and shared a look with Adam. Kris looked nothing short of confused, but he rolled with the punches.
“Cute and modest,” Brad added, pursing his lips as he gave Kris a full body scan. Kris’ mouth dropped before a flood of laughter erupted from his body.
“I don’t know guys.”
“Listen to him,” Brad sputtered out, pointing back to Kris and laughing. “No, you are so cute. You don’t even know it, do you?”
Kris gave him that same squinty-eyed, slightly disturbed, bemused smile. His Southern drawl was out in full throttle and he was turning more and more crimson. “That’s…” And he laughed again, embarrassed as hell. Sometimes, it was a hell of a lot harder to just roll with it.
Brad’s hand stroked back through Kris’ hair as he let out an emphatic sigh. “You guys, leave this one up to me, I think he’s my new project.”
Kris’ eyes scrunched as he laughed again, and he shook his head back and forth emphatically. “No, no, I don’t think so-you really don’t have to- “
“Oh, don’t worry about it, baby, just let Cheeks do the same for you that he did for Ginger Bottom here.” Brad shot his thumb toward Adam and popped his leg as he kissed Kris on the cheek.
Kris’ eyes widened slightly, a particular habit that occurred when someone approached him quickly or sprang a fast question on him. For a brief moment, Kris kind of started to wonder if this is how a rhino felt with a tick bird on its head. And he wasn’t even going to begin to wonder how Adam developed that nickname. Or what it meant to be Brad’s “project.” Or if Brad actually thought that Kris was…
Once again, Kris’ eyes locked with Adam’s just as Adam’s tight knit smirk burst into an overwhelming smile. Adam’s fingers danced in front of his face before he let out an emphatic sigh. His voice was laced in sarcasm and charm and, if at all possible, tears from a unicorn. “You don’t get to this level of perfection over night. And it’s Ginger Top.”
Drake rolled his eyes and slipped his hand from Adam’s back pocket, sliding it around his lanky, slender waist. They were both so tall and gorgeous-it was as if they came from another planet. “Everyone knows you’re a big, power bottom poofter, baby.”
Adam let out a squeak and looked back at Kris, growing a little flustered and, most unlike his own character, annoyed. “You guys are picking on me. Shut up. Don’t listen to them, Kris.”
Kris seemed to like to take orders from Adam. His head was nodding up and down before his mind was even beginning to process what he was about to say. With a wave of his hand, he spoke up again, his brain momentarily dislodged from his skull.
“You look good, really good,” Kris stated, placing his foot directly into his mouth then and lodging it back. Whatever chance he had of diffusing any suggestive eyebrow raises and flirtatious nudges was, more or less… extinguished.
Then a funny thing happened. Adam winked back at Kris without a word. His smirk said it all.
Kris was quite sure that if he went that way, he would have melted into a pile of goo long ago.
And all of this felt so awkward in light of the fact that going that way had never even occurred to Kris, not once. He had all of his friends back home. He was a Christian. He had Katy. He felt pinker than ever, and he rubbed his shoulder tightly between his fingers, flashing a soft blaze of gold on his right ring finger: a promise ring.
This small group of nomadic pack animals did not fit into the equation whatsoever, let alone any fleeting, unorthodox thoughts.
Brad shifted to rest his elbow against Kris’ shoulder and peer down into his watch. He even went so far as to pick up Kris wrist, letting out a dramatic sigh. “Well, you should probably get going, Kris, you don’t want to be late.”
Kris glanced down at his watch quickly and his breath hitched in his throat. Had he really wasted his entire bagel break? Was this technically a waste? He was now someone’s project and probably looked like the new, shy country kid with a dramatic, gay twist. And he was still hungry.
“Darn it, thanks.” Kris began to shrug his bag over his shoulder and shifted slightly, backing away from Brad. He wiggled his fingers in a slight wave and began to take a step back. “I’ll see you guys around.”
He turned his back and started down the long, crowded hall. It looked just like high school sans the wall-to-wall lockers. For a minute, he could pretend that’s exactly where he was, walking that well worn floor back-and-forth, headed toward second period, all of his old friends waiting for him to stroll in and plant down into his desk.
And just as that feeling of warmth went to his head, clouded over his senses, and nearly teleported him to a different place, he heard the call of Brad’s voice behind him.
“Hey! Kris!”
He had the choice then to turn around or… not. He could keep walking. He could avoid them in class. He could choose not to make friends with the nomads, the pack animals, the artsy clique, and the taboo sluts. He could make a great group of friends in music theory class, people who liked to chill in a small room and strum guitars and write music.
He could make the choice.
And just like that, he swiveled his shoe and turned around, at least two yards away from the trio of men. He raised his brow and lifted his chin, indicative of a man listening. His thumb traced over the strap of his bag as he waited. God knows what Brad would tell him next. At that point, he was ready for just about anything.
Brad couldn’t help but smile. “You like cabaret?”
Okay, he hadn't completely expected that.
He’d played a few cabaret shows - background pianist, obviously. They had mostly been for local fundraising groups and Toys 4 Tots. It was always a fun experience - interactive, off-the-wall, spontaneous, intimate… or as intimate as it could be behind a piano. Obviously, he was never really the headliner, but he knew his efforts were appreciated, because he knew that the neurologic energy between the audience member and the background pianist had sound merit. And he knew this by experience, because every time he’d play a mean piano solo or wink at an audience member, he got the loudest cheer.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like cabaret, but he’d never actually been to one. As a spectator, that is.
But hey, it was music. And if this was an invitation, at least he had a pretty good idea what he was getting into.
“Yeah, I love it.” And he actually found himself beaming as he said that, because the concept of music fit around him like a warm sweater.
Brad and his fellow comrades shared a knowing look, and Adam spoke up then, his arm draped over Drake’s shoulder. “There’s this open mike cabaret show this weekend at this place in the East Village. You want to come?”
Kris didn’t need to give it a second thought. His foot scudded against the floor. His smile threatened to grow wider against his own better judgment. He didn’t even know why.
“Sure, count me in.”
Summary: AU. Kris leaves small town life behind to attend college in New York City. Who does he meet along the way that flips his world upside down?
Author: griggharris
Beta: gargoyles42
Pairing: Kris/Adam
Rating: Chapter is G. Fic is PG-13.
Word Count: 2,302
Disclaimer: The happenings are faker than Zaza in La Cage aux Folles.
Author’s Notes: Thanks again for the awesome feedback on this fic! Here is chapter two. The sparks are developing... but that's all I'll say. Also, I've fudged the ages of the characters a little bit, just to make it work. Can I also request an author tag from the mod gods?
Prologue
Chapter One
= = =
The class cleared at exactly fifteen-past-nine, and no surprise to the novices of Algebra 1, the pop quiz went ahead just as scheduled. Kris would have to remember to thank Brad for allowing him a few spare moments to study, but then again, he couldn’t help but wonder if Brad had told him out of good etiquette or flirtatious tom foolery.
Thanks in part to a short class session and twenty extra minutes, Kris had just enough time to swing by the school café three blocks away and charge a bagel to his student expenditures card.
He leaned over to grab his bag and swing it over his shoulder; pencils, erasers, and textbook in all the right places. But before he could even make it out of his chair, let alone out the door, Brad’s hand was creeping up his shoulder. It seemed as though Kris had not only made a new friend on his first day - but a not-so-secret admirer, too.
Kris gave Brad a wordless look of bemusement, noticing then that Adam, Drake, and Allison were a few paces ahead and lost in their own conversation. Brad poked Kris in the shoulder and Kris began to stand up, pulling the man beside him as he walked from the table.
If Kris had any real plight, he wasn’t letting it show. To his own surprise, he was starting to warm to the companionship. He hadn’t felt real human contact since the moment he kissed Katy goodbye and boarded that plane. His roommates were cool, sure, but he’d only known them for two weeks. It was surface companionship. They had their business, he had his.
And sure, so did this motley crew. For all Kris knew, they’d fall off the face of the planet and disappear like a pack of vampires. But in the mean time, he was starting to feel like a human, like he was part of a team again, like more than the “new roommate,” the fifth wheel, the “redneck from Arkansas” - which couldn’t have been further from who he really was.
He began to smile to himself and fidget less and less under the draping arm of Brad. Adam had told him to just roll with it, and that was precisely what he was trying to do.
“And what obligations do you have next, Kris?” Brad asked.
Their pace caught up with the rest of the clique. Kris glanced back at Adam, meeting his eyes for just a blip in time. He spoke up then, glancing down at his red converse blemished in permanent marker before looking back up. “Well, I have this music theory class-“
“With Professor Deckles?” Drake asked, looking over his shoulder at Kris, his hand slid in Adam’s back pocket.
Kris made a wordless sound and pulled out a piece of paper, a color coded spreadsheet of his class itinerary. Soft giggles abounded. Adam’s lips pursed into a delicate smile, but he brushed it away with his finger.
“Professor Deckles,” he confirmed, nodding once and looking up. He noticed Adam and Drake still smirking, and Kris’ brow shot toward the ceiling before he gave the two an inquisitive look. “You’ve had him?”
Adam nodded only once and held up one finger to Kris, momentarily distracted as he pulled Allison to his chest. Her class was going to start in naught-point-five minutes, but it was practically a finger painting class, so scoring a seat was no plight.
Before she could take off, she leaned in and gave Kris a surprising bear hug, just his size. Kris’ brow creased slightly, but he patted her on the back, exchanging goodbyes.
A few seconds had to pass for the palette to clear, so to speak. Adam shrugged then and braced Drake’s arm as the men turned toward Kris, standing in the hall.
“I’ve had him. He’s cool, but if you don’t know much about music theory to start, he’s kind of intense. He just expects a lot. He’s not an easy A.”
Kris certainly knew his music theory. After all, he had played in his first piano concerto at seven. He could tune a guitar before he could even read or write.
His parents had instilled a love of music in him from an early age. If he squinted and thought back hard enough, he could still remember the stacks of Beatles records that played in constant rotation. There wasn’t a memory that didn’t revolve around music - not even a trip to Disneyland. Why else would he watch all those films to begin with? Sure, it was kind of girly, but so was opting out track and football to be in the church choir. Missing your junior year formal to support Lea Salonga on viola in Manila? Not so normal, either.
And then there were words. Oh, words. It was tickling - at least to him - that he could write music in the same language as Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, and Freddie Mercury. Those same words that could bend and mold to whatever you were trying to convey, raw on the page and exposed for anyone to read.
Music was his body. The scat percussion was his pulse. The melody was his breath. The lyrics were his heart, his sleeve, his mind, his soul.
Yeah, Kris Allen knew a thing or two about music theory.
His head bobbed up and down, and he wore that semi-trademark smirk, shrugging his shoulders back modestly.
“I think I’ll be all right. I’m kind of a music major anyway. I’ve been playing the piano since I was like, five, and I’ve done a little composing. So I think I’ve still got some of it in me.”
Adam’s magnetic stare zeroed in on Kris, those charcoal-lined eyes as intense as fire. Damn, that was something Kris really had to get used to, if ever. Kris just stared for a minute, ignoring the faint stroke of Brad’s hand over his shoulder that would have put him on pins and needles only minutes before.
“Shut up, wow, composing! So you, like, write music? That’s amazing,” Adam said with an extra lilt in his voice.
Kris smiled and nodded a little, his shoulders shrugging back. He looked back at Brad, who rolled his eyes and shared a look with Adam. Kris looked nothing short of confused, but he rolled with the punches.
“Cute and modest,” Brad added, pursing his lips as he gave Kris a full body scan. Kris’ mouth dropped before a flood of laughter erupted from his body.
“I don’t know guys.”
“Listen to him,” Brad sputtered out, pointing back to Kris and laughing. “No, you are so cute. You don’t even know it, do you?”
Kris gave him that same squinty-eyed, slightly disturbed, bemused smile. His Southern drawl was out in full throttle and he was turning more and more crimson. “That’s…” And he laughed again, embarrassed as hell. Sometimes, it was a hell of a lot harder to just roll with it.
Brad’s hand stroked back through Kris’ hair as he let out an emphatic sigh. “You guys, leave this one up to me, I think he’s my new project.”
Kris’ eyes scrunched as he laughed again, and he shook his head back and forth emphatically. “No, no, I don’t think so-you really don’t have to- “
“Oh, don’t worry about it, baby, just let Cheeks do the same for you that he did for Ginger Bottom here.” Brad shot his thumb toward Adam and popped his leg as he kissed Kris on the cheek.
Kris’ eyes widened slightly, a particular habit that occurred when someone approached him quickly or sprang a fast question on him. For a brief moment, Kris kind of started to wonder if this is how a rhino felt with a tick bird on its head. And he wasn’t even going to begin to wonder how Adam developed that nickname. Or what it meant to be Brad’s “project.” Or if Brad actually thought that Kris was…
Once again, Kris’ eyes locked with Adam’s just as Adam’s tight knit smirk burst into an overwhelming smile. Adam’s fingers danced in front of his face before he let out an emphatic sigh. His voice was laced in sarcasm and charm and, if at all possible, tears from a unicorn. “You don’t get to this level of perfection over night. And it’s Ginger Top.”
Drake rolled his eyes and slipped his hand from Adam’s back pocket, sliding it around his lanky, slender waist. They were both so tall and gorgeous-it was as if they came from another planet. “Everyone knows you’re a big, power bottom poofter, baby.”
Adam let out a squeak and looked back at Kris, growing a little flustered and, most unlike his own character, annoyed. “You guys are picking on me. Shut up. Don’t listen to them, Kris.”
Kris seemed to like to take orders from Adam. His head was nodding up and down before his mind was even beginning to process what he was about to say. With a wave of his hand, he spoke up again, his brain momentarily dislodged from his skull.
“You look good, really good,” Kris stated, placing his foot directly into his mouth then and lodging it back. Whatever chance he had of diffusing any suggestive eyebrow raises and flirtatious nudges was, more or less… extinguished.
Then a funny thing happened. Adam winked back at Kris without a word. His smirk said it all.
Kris was quite sure that if he went that way, he would have melted into a pile of goo long ago.
And all of this felt so awkward in light of the fact that going that way had never even occurred to Kris, not once. He had all of his friends back home. He was a Christian. He had Katy. He felt pinker than ever, and he rubbed his shoulder tightly between his fingers, flashing a soft blaze of gold on his right ring finger: a promise ring.
This small group of nomadic pack animals did not fit into the equation whatsoever, let alone any fleeting, unorthodox thoughts.
Brad shifted to rest his elbow against Kris’ shoulder and peer down into his watch. He even went so far as to pick up Kris wrist, letting out a dramatic sigh. “Well, you should probably get going, Kris, you don’t want to be late.”
Kris glanced down at his watch quickly and his breath hitched in his throat. Had he really wasted his entire bagel break? Was this technically a waste? He was now someone’s project and probably looked like the new, shy country kid with a dramatic, gay twist. And he was still hungry.
“Darn it, thanks.” Kris began to shrug his bag over his shoulder and shifted slightly, backing away from Brad. He wiggled his fingers in a slight wave and began to take a step back. “I’ll see you guys around.”
He turned his back and started down the long, crowded hall. It looked just like high school sans the wall-to-wall lockers. For a minute, he could pretend that’s exactly where he was, walking that well worn floor back-and-forth, headed toward second period, all of his old friends waiting for him to stroll in and plant down into his desk.
And just as that feeling of warmth went to his head, clouded over his senses, and nearly teleported him to a different place, he heard the call of Brad’s voice behind him.
“Hey! Kris!”
He had the choice then to turn around or… not. He could keep walking. He could avoid them in class. He could choose not to make friends with the nomads, the pack animals, the artsy clique, and the taboo sluts. He could make a great group of friends in music theory class, people who liked to chill in a small room and strum guitars and write music.
He could make the choice.
And just like that, he swiveled his shoe and turned around, at least two yards away from the trio of men. He raised his brow and lifted his chin, indicative of a man listening. His thumb traced over the strap of his bag as he waited. God knows what Brad would tell him next. At that point, he was ready for just about anything.
Brad couldn’t help but smile. “You like cabaret?”
Okay, he hadn't completely expected that.
He’d played a few cabaret shows - background pianist, obviously. They had mostly been for local fundraising groups and Toys 4 Tots. It was always a fun experience - interactive, off-the-wall, spontaneous, intimate… or as intimate as it could be behind a piano. Obviously, he was never really the headliner, but he knew his efforts were appreciated, because he knew that the neurologic energy between the audience member and the background pianist had sound merit. And he knew this by experience, because every time he’d play a mean piano solo or wink at an audience member, he got the loudest cheer.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like cabaret, but he’d never actually been to one. As a spectator, that is.
But hey, it was music. And if this was an invitation, at least he had a pretty good idea what he was getting into.
“Yeah, I love it.” And he actually found himself beaming as he said that, because the concept of music fit around him like a warm sweater.
Brad and his fellow comrades shared a knowing look, and Adam spoke up then, his arm draped over Drake’s shoulder. “There’s this open mike cabaret show this weekend at this place in the East Village. You want to come?”
Kris didn’t need to give it a second thought. His foot scudded against the floor. His smile threatened to grow wider against his own better judgment. He didn’t even know why.
“Sure, count me in.”