Chain and Feather, 3/3
Title: Chain and Feather
Pairing: Adam/Kris
Word count: 24,300
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Sex without love is a compromise that’s rarely cost Adam more than fleeting regret. Love without sex, no surprise, isn’t in his nature at all.
Warnings: Angst, weed
Disclaimer: Pure imagination. No disrespect intended.
Author's note: anya7lee, if the title rings a bell, that's no coincidence, bb. <3
Additional notes at the end of the story.
Chain and Feather, Part Three
Monte is the only one who calls him on it. “Not the brightest idea you’ve ever had. Fucking Texas in August, and you have them turn off the a/c? You trying to start a riot?”
Can it be coincidence, Adam wonders, that everyone brings him their issues when he’s got something pointy or adhesive within an inch of his eye? He returns Jeni’s commiserating smile and holds himself still for the sweep of the mascara wand. “Scratchy throat. Got to protect the pipes.”
“So drink some of that tea.” Monte leans across the makeup chair to poke at his lopsided pineapple tuft of hair. He gives Adam a skeptical eye in the mirror. “You’re not turning diva on us, are you?”
“It’s just one of those things, I guess,” Adam says vaguely. The powder brush is a blur, setting the foundation that will likely melt off before the fifteen-minute mark regardless.
“Whatever, Mariah. Security had to break up a couple of fights on the floor. Not just pushing and shoving, but punches thrown.”
“Shit.” Not Adam’s brightest idea for sure, but his conscience will have to meet him after the show. He has to make the next hour count. “Just a few minutes to showtime, OK?”
Monte persists, “Dude, what’s going on with you lately? You hide in back all day, you barely talk--how is that even possible--you never want to go out with us anymore-- ”
Deliverance appears in the form of Neil, wandering in for a round of genial shit-talking. Oblivious to the tension, he launches into a story about a couple of older female fans--“seriously, grandmas”--who cajoled Monte into signing their cleavage. Somewhere between “Fuck you, they were hot grandmas” and “Shouldn’t you be yelling ‘Wake up, sheeple’ on a street corner somewhere?”, Monte forgets about Adam and his erratic behavior.
Jeni touches Adam’s shoulder lightly. “All done, beautiful.” Thanking her, he gets up to go to wardrobe, and to stage a conquest.
It starts with a demand. The answering energy is spiked with something unwholesome, the nasty surprise in the tempting cocktail. He knocks it back in full knowledge, an invigorating defiance rising him to meet that edge, one blade clashing with another in the strobed darkness.
They fall back under the power of his voice. He disarms them with honesty, I can’t turn this around, I keep running into walls that I can’t break down, subdues them with the tears rolling down his face. And then he falls back, voluntarily, to win them with his own surrender. Falls back literally, reclining on the stairs, shifting, wanting, his lower register weaving a moody seduction, a lullaby from a siren’s mouth. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, aluminum risers digging into his spine, but he doesn’t care, he submits and makes it look graceful. His legs part as though he needs to say it more explicitly: Fuck me. Their fervor is lust, Oh God yes; they’re screaming his name as he takes it in and comes fully alive.
It’s benign. An invitation to desire, not darkness.
It’s just sex. Hell, it’s not even that.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
--
“Kris, I need-- ”
This time it’s really too late too call. Adam is a selfish asshole of a boyfriend-in-waiting, getting harder in his jeans at Kris’s sleep-thick murmured hello. But Kris only says, low and gratified, “Take it out for me.”
Adam pulls clumsily at his zipper. Kris can’t possibly hear the soft swish, but he says, “Gorgeous,” savoring and proprietary, so assured with it that Adam nearly comes untouched. Then, considerately, he goes straight for Adam’s weaknesses. “My hand, under yours. Move it all the way up and down. Show me how you want it.”
“Hard, really hard-- ”
“If I do it hard, you’re going to come so fast. Kneeling over me like this. Do you want to come on my chest and watch me rub it in? Do you want to come on my face?”
For a blind minute, Adam can only pant into Kris’s patient silence, too spent to even open his eyes and see what kind of mess he’s made, sticky fingers curling loosely. When the slamming pulse at his temples subsides, it leaves behind a dull headache. “Sorry, sorry, let me-- ”
“I’m good. Let’s-- ” Kris interrupts himself with a yawn. “Let’s talk for a while. Or spoon, or something.”
“No, go back to sleep. You knocked me out. I’m sorry, baby,” Adam says again, hushed, apologizing for all the things he can’t fix by himself.
--
After the second round of costume alterations, no one teases him about literally dancing his ass off. Instead, his friends demonstrate once again that they’ve got his back to an annoying degree, asking with studied nonchalance if he’s had lunch yet, returning from coffee runs with an extra muffin or cookie. “You eat that, you hear?” Sasha will say, a miniature version of his mom in full nurture mode.
Tommy, wily, knocks on his door one night holding something better. The weed does make Adam hungry, and expansive. He invites the others over and orders up a Roman-orgy spread from room service. “We’d like one of everything except the lobster,” he says giggling into the phone, reluctantly persuaded that testing his coordination on food is a bad rather than hilarious idea. Later, he sinks into a warm and voluptuous sort of melancholy, reliving the nights he breathed smoke from Kris’s mouth, slowly, because he needed the kiss more than the high, or the air.
Neil weighs in Neil-style. “Manorexia is not a good look on anyone,” he says, though he delivers a blistering commentary, liberally sprinkled with fucktards, when the gossip sites start whispering the same thing.
Kris’s approach is the most direct of all: “Do you think you might be depressed?”
“What? No.” Adam’s denial is automatic. Counting his blessings is part of his emotional discipline, an inoculation against celebrity entitlement. I’m living my dream. Everything I've ever wished for has come true. Through constant repetition, he’s trained himself not to put an asterisk next to this mantra.
“I looked it up. The symptoms include sleeping a lot, sudden weight loss, and mood changes.” Kris relays this information in his most inoffensive tone.
Now that Adam has the nurturing relationship he’s always wanted, he knows that finding the right person is only half of the equation. You have to be willing to relax into those enfolding arms. Relinquishing the caretaking side is surprisingly hard. “It fits, but it doesn’t feel like me, if you know what I mean. Wouldn’t I know if I was depressed?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. Maybe it’s hard to tell when you’re in the middle of something like that.”
Adam pictures himself edging across a high narrow bridge, steadfastly not looking down. “I have been feeling . . . off. All the things you mentioned. But touring’s not exactly a part-time job, or even a full-time job. Anyone would get tired.”
“I’ve seen you tired, Adam. Last summer we used to stay up half the night talking and then grab a nap wherever we could. We never really got caught up. But you were happy.”
“Of course I was. It was our summer together.” A whole summer of living in the moment and knowing that there was no better place to be. Adam wants to say a dozen things, all starting with Remember . . . ? But nostalgia is a slippery slope. If he indulges, he’ll start thinking of their shared life as something he’s lost.
“It is harder now,” he admits. “But I think it’s just the schedule getting to me. The responsibility.” He’s not going to mention their situation, as Kris put it.
“Why don’t you go see a doctor? It can’t hurt.”
“I went in for a physical right before the tour started. Very thorough, several needles. Although it was almost worth it to see the look on the doctor’s face when I told her I wasn’t sexually active.”
Kris knows better than to counter with arguments for Adam to shoot down. “Please, Adam,” he says simply, and there’s no answer to that but yes.
Besides the usual routine with the stethoscope and blood-pressure cuff, the exam consists of the expected questions about weight fluctuation, sleep patterns, and stress. Under the last heading, Adam conscientiously volunteers, “I haven’t had sex in over a year, and-- ” And what? He’s detoxing? Using the lust of strangers as methadone? With his perfectly healthy sense of the ridiculous, he’s aware that he’s complaining about a case of blue balls to someone who treats pain and disease. His laugh is shorthand for Fuck my life.
“You need to start taking better care of yourself,” is the unsurprising verdict. “And that includes going out and making new friends.” Adam produces a polite smile, and the doctor concludes, “You could stand to gain ten pounds, but as far as everything else goes, it looks like you’re in good shape. Pending lab results, of course.”
The lab results make it official. Whatever’s draining him, it’s not the kind of anemia that shows up on a blood panel.
--
Kris, I need more than your voice on the phone. I need to see your face when you make one of your smartass remarks and look so pleased with yourself. I need to watch you frown over the perfect arrangement of your guitars while we’re setting up our music room. I need to hold hands with you in public and introduce you as my boyfriend. I need to stop hiding what matters most to me. I need you in bed with me, telling me how much you love all those things you were so curious about. I need you under me, around me, for hours at a time, until we’ve forgotten what need feels like.
If he makes that call, Kris will say yes, divorced or not. Maybe the world won’t end. Unlikely, when even Adam’s stage kisses cause an uproar. Adam can predict the blog headline: American Idols In Gay Affair. Of course they’ll use the word gay, redundant as it is in context, because their definition of gay is scandalous.
Which doesn’t mean their careers will crash along with TMZ’s servers. They might even benefit in the long run. And then there’s the worst-case scenario: that his career will survive the tabloid apocalypse and Kris’s won’t.
You don’t always have to be the one who gives more. Adam concedes that. He can learn to take gracefully. He’s not willing to take everything.
--
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
A situation that seems beyond your control features prominently today. You might find fatalistic thinking undermining your Aquarian common sense. Remember the ancient maxim, Astra inclinant, non necessitant--the stars incline; they do not determine.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
Another message, another new picture. The droop of his head belies the brave glint of rhinestones around his eyes. A wash of glitter on his chest and a resigned set to his shoulders. The picture has a blue tint, a blue mood, electro lounge, way downtempo, brooding. Is this her victory dance?
There’s no symmetry here, no karma or poetic justice. His heart is . . . not pure, he won’t claim that much, but sound. He’s put enough miles on it in the past year to know what it’s made of.
She doesn’t understand what it means to ache. No one’s emptiness has a stranger’s name on it. You ache when it’s real, when your lips can’t imprint I want you directly on his skin, when you have to make do with your voice until it’s like not having a voice at all.
Johnnie Walker Black is not Adam’s friend. Good old J.W. is an enabler, as it turns out, convincing him first that he’s perfectly justified in feeling sorry for himself, and then, after he’s wallowed for a while, that it’s a fine idea to inflict his emo on Kris.
It pours out as though he can exorcise it in a torrent of words: the need, the temptation, his faltering grip on both. When he confesses the Ben incident, there’s a moment of stricken silence. “You were right,” Kris says, shaky. “I couldn’t have handled it. But never mind that now.”
The words keep flowing, unstoppable. “It’s such a shit excuse cheaters give, that it didn’t mean anything, but he was nothing to me, would’ve been nothing more than a fucking tranquilizer, basically. I would’ve hurt you, when all I want is to be with you, to be inside you, it fucking hurts, Kris, but that’s no excuse-- ”
“Look, maybe I’ll get around to kicking your ass for this at some point.” Kris sounds almost as agitated as he is, but it’s not hurt or anger. Desperation, rather, to put him back together. “But nothing happened, you didn’t do anything. I forgive you, if that’s what you need to hear. You can stop beating yourself up for it.”
“I know I’m rambling,” Adam says remorsefully, and rambles on. Promises of fidelity, babble about curses that’s sure to be a mortifying highlight of the morning-after replay. Kris, amazing Kris, stands firm under the onslaught, even humoring him with make-believe logic. “Curses don’t stand a chance against true love. Everybody knows that.”
From there, it’s an easy segue into the maudlin portion of the evening. “Sometimes I can’t believe you, Kris. That you’re real, that you’re mine. Not really mine yet, though,” he remembers, bereft--and disgusted. Even drunk, there’s only so much of his own pathos he can take.
“As soon as I get that goddamn piece of paper,” Kris says, suddenly fierce. “Screw waiting another six months after that. I don’t care if Simon Fuller calls personally to tell me to keep my pants on. We just have to hang on until the first of the year, that’s all, and then we’re damn well going to spend that six months making up for lost time.”
Adam can’t find the words for a selfless refusal. The reprieve nearly brings him to his knees. “I’m going to make it up to you, Kris. I’m-- ”
“Don’t say sorry again. This is how it’s supposed to work. For better or for worse, and all that,” Kris says with finality, and with sublime disregard for that missing piece of paper.
“Oh, God.” Adam's laughter wavers precariously. He’s going to wake up with a hangover for sure, more from the excess of self-pity than from the alcohol. “So romantic and fucked up. Perfect.”
--
“I don’t mind paying for it,” said Kris, earnest and young, all those months ago. “To have this . . . If there’s no place for this in your life, we can go back, pretend I kept it to myself. But if you feel it as much as I do . . . Adam. I hope you feel it as much as I do.”
“Kris,” Adam answered, faint reproach and bursting emotion, Kris rising up to meet him, Kris’s cheek soft beneath his stroking thumb. He got around to the yes eventually, superfluous as it was, for the sheer joy of saying it.
“I can’t imagine turning my back on this, ” Kris said then, on the threshold. This, to know and be known, with an intimacy that made sex seem commonplace. And as for sex, it was their smug secret that they were going to reinvent it together.
Adam couldn’t imagine turning his back on all that either. He can’t imagine it now, as he navigates the strange borderland, still pushing the limit of his capacity to feel.
--
It starts with a message. He waits until the last minute, until he’s put on his gloriously preposterous top hat and purple coat, because that’s part of it. Adam dripping fringe and attitude, Adam in flip-flops, Adam in mid-transformation: They’re all the same where Kris is concerned. And then he sends the text that says the rest: Tonight is for you.
“If you’ve ever stood up for yourself,” he begins. The audience is still jacked from the libidinous engine rev of “Whole Lotta Love,” but there’s a new stirring, a recognition of something unexpected and special, phones appearing in upraised hands from floor to balcony. “If you’ve ever stood up for a cause,” louder now, covering the stage in long strides, ten feet tall in his boots, “if you’ve ever stood up for love-- ” They’re cheering wildly, fired with his evangelical ardor, eager to follow wherever he leads. “Don’t let anybody tear you down. Raise your voice and fucking own it if they say you’re-- ” He lets the anticipation draw taut, and they’re shouting it out for him before he snaps that vibrating cord. “Crazy.”
It’s his message, his voice. The words don’t matter, except the ones he changes to fit, Does that make us crazy, Maybe we’re crazy, and the audience is throwing themselves into it, singing along at the top of their lungs, rallying. But he’s claiming it for the two of them alone. The anthem, and the legitimacy.
--
“I guess we both know what day it is,” Kris says, after he’s run out of ways to tell Adam to break a leg, melt faces, and blow the roof off the joint.
September 17. A day of endings, Adam would answer, if that didn’t sound so pathetic. He’s sworn off emotional binges along with phone numbers and too many cocktails. “A day of transition. A cusp day. That’s how I’m trying to think of it.”
“I thought maybe you scheduled your last show for today on purpose. A full circle thing.”
“No, it was pure coincidence. If there is such a thing. I don’t know about commemorating it. I don’t want to treat it like our anniversary.”
“When is our anniversary, anyway? I don’t want to get in trouble.” The mischievous tone is the one Kris reserves for yanking Adam’s chain.
“Don’t even joke about that shit. We don’t need the rulebook. We’re bigger than that.” If it’s an indirect slam at the life Kris had been on his way to leading with Katy, Adam blames September 17.
Kris reverts to meditativeness. “A year ago . . . right up until the night before, I never really believed the day would come. Or maybe I believed there’d be some miraculous intervention, and we’d go on being together.”
“I believed,” Adam says, wistful in spite of himself. “I tried to live each day without looking ahead to the next, let alone the last. No way to prepare for that.” No grasping the pain of a tearing where there was no perforation, or the numbness that would follow.
“In the back of my mind, I’ll always question myself for not getting on the plane to L.A. with you,” Kris says low. “Running to your gate, like a scene from a movie, and kissing you in front of everyone.”
Adam hadn’t expected that scene to play out. He hadn’t even wanted it to--not with the better part of himself, the part that put Kris’s welfare above his own need to hold on. But it played in his mind as he walked through the terminal with his largest pair of sunglasses substituting for composure. “I kept reminding myself that we already had our miracle. In any logical world, we would’ve missed each other. The way it happened was too far-out even for a movie.” Adam affects a sonorous announcer’s voice. “Two singers from different worlds meet as contestants on the country’s biggest reality show . . . Doesn’t that sound like the most contrived plot ever?”
“I’d go see it. Just to make out with you in the back of the theater.” Adam purrs appreciatively, and Kris says, serious again, “What I really, totally regret is not going to one of your shows. I know how much the tour meant to you, how much you put into it. Maybe even too much--but that’s why we do what we do, because we have that passion that makes it hard to hold back. And I never got to see it up close. Just once, you should’ve been able to look over and see me watching, going, That’s my boyfriend out there, being so amazing I don't even have the words for it.”
“I’d be lying if I said I never thought about that, Kris. Or about doing the same for you.”
“I know we did what we thought was right, and I don’t believe in regrets any more than you do-- ”
“But you needed to get this out. That’s good, that’s important.”
Unexpectedly, Kris laughs. “I just realized that I’ve been talking about my feelings.” Adam can guess the source of the quote. “For the past year and a half, actually. It’s not that hard. And writing about them is easier than it’s ever been.”
This time, Adam restrains himself. Just the smallest of complacent smiles as Kris adds, “But get this, pretty soon we can concentrate on, you know, living them.”
Foolishly, maybe even superstitiously, Adam doesn’t let himself count on soon yet. Dodging a little, he says, “Tomorrow morning, when I get on another plane to L.A., I’ll be moving toward you rather than away. That’ll be my full-circle moment.”
“But first you’re going to bedazzle another two thousand unsuspecting people.” Feelings disposed of, Kris returns to the subject of Adam’s final show, and Adam answers his questions until they’re just postponing goodbye.
Postponing it a few seconds more, Adam says, “You know, you’d have to play yourself in the movie. No one else is cute enough.”
“You’d have too play yourself too. No one else is you enough.”
--
His last show. Last fix. Adam ignores the twinge of anxiety. Tonight is an earned victory lap. Sold-out dates, hot-blooded crowds, his voice delivering every night. His chosen companions meshed not only into a highly functional unit, but a highly functional family.
He’s fulfilled his vision for his first solo tour. Onstage, sound and spectacle and yes, shock, a bit more than he’d planned on. Offstage, the stuff of the most boring Behind The Music episode ever. Not quite as boring as he would’ve liked, but still, no backstage catfights, no Spinal Tap moments, no STDs--at least he hopes Tommy used protection every time. He’s even proved that he can live with his brother in a prickly sort of harmony.
To mark his arrival, he takes a final look around the bus. Already it’s less familiar. Unnaturally quiet, for one thing, the perpetual background noise of the TV noticeable only now, in its absence. Like the clutter of half-empty Vitamin Water bottles on the counter, the pairs of shoes tumbled just out of tripping range, Sasha’s scarf caught between the couch cushions. All picked up and packed away.
It was uncannily the same all those years ago on the Amsterdam--talk about full circle, Adam thinks. Debarkation day, the illusion of endless holiday dispelled, hospitality turned to brisk purpose as the crew hustled the passengers off the ship so that the turnaround could begin. Now, as then, he hears the unspoken, What are you waiting for? You’re no longer in possession.
Time to go backstage and give Jeni free rein, atone for all the nights he couldn’t be bothered with the elaborate effects that make her happy. Tonight is for false lashes and a galaxy of rhinestones, maybe the peacock-feather eye look she’s been wanting to try out.
Time enough later to dwell on his own turnaround.
--
Blind Items
Which pop sensation is shining less brightly these days? An eating disorder is the obvious culprit, given the up-and-comer’s increasingly frail looks. On a recent night out, however, club patrons noticed our star making frequent trips to the bathroom and returning with a little more sparkle each time.
“This one’s obviously not me,” Adam says wearily to his publicist at their hastily arranged meeting. “I’m not frail, for fuck’s sake, and I’m not doing meth or coke or whatever they’re hinting at. Not to mention that I haven’t been out to any clubs since I got home.”
“Probably some Disney princess turned wild child,” Roger agrees. He takes a sip of his soy latte before continuing apologetically, “A few commenters on the site mentioned your name, though. It’s the phrasing, the shining and sparkling thing.”
Adam waves away the biscotti Roger holds out to him, with thanks. There’s no one who isn’t bent on feeding him these days. “Funny how successful branding can come back to bite you in the ass.”
“Isn’t it? Management is making noises about increasing your visibility, showing everyone that you’re shining as brightly as ever. That’s not necessary, in my opinion. The gossip blogs are getting some mileage out of your weight loss, but I wouldn’t call it bad publicity. A lot of them are complimentary about your-- ” Roger consults a sheaf of printouts. “‘Newly svelte look,’ ‘rock-star leanness,’ and oh, somebody’s high, ‘prowling feline grace.’”
“That’s almost worse. I’d rather not be some impressionable kid’s thinspiration. Or come across as a hypocrite, advocating self-acceptance while I secretly crash diet myself into a smaller pair of jeans.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that just yet.” Roger radiates sympathetic understanding over his cup. “You should be fine if you keep reminding everyone that you’ve been touring on a nonstop schedule since June. Just don’t use the word exhaustion. By now the public’s figured out that it’s the go-to PR cover for everything from addiction to anorexia. You don’t want to raise any Lindsay Lohan connotations.”
“Yeah, God forbid. Twitter is my best friend, I guess.”
“Keep it light, the way you do so well. It’ll all resolve itself soon anyway, right? The tour is over, you’ve got plenty of downtime to catch up on your sleep and eat ice cream.” Roger smiles encouragingly. “And polish up your shine.”
Adam pushes away his untouched mocha. “Sure, I can do that.”
--
The withdrawal wasn’t as brutal as he’d expected. After the ride home from LAX, he’d ditched his bags in the foyer, turned off his phone, and gone straight to bed. When he woke up, muddled and blinking in what-where-when confusion, the windows were brilliant with the sunshine of a new day already half-gone. He’d made some calls, ordered in Thai and picked at it, opened the French doors to banish the stale air of a house unoccupied for more than three months. Waited to crash, or to return to normal. He’s still waiting.
He turns down all the invitations to parties and openings. One of these days he’ll make a salon appointment, hit Robertson and let the paps catch him shopping and looking normal and un-frail. For now, he goes out only to reconnect with friends. His closest confidantes, the ones who know, take one look at him and diagnose lovesickness. “Is everything all right with your boy?” they ask, eyes full of compassion, ready to listen and lend a shoulder and cry for his heartbreak. And it’s such a relief to be able to speak freely, he finds himself getting animated, sparkling, even, gushing about how Kris supports him and gets him and holds his hand from eight states away, about the Radiohead cover Kris did in Grand Rapids and the tank top he wore in St. Louis. Danielle or Alisan or Scarlett beaming at him across the table in whatever restaurant or coffeehouse or vegan café he’s been dragged out to, I’m so happy for you, Finally, No one deserves this more than you.
--
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
The water-bearer’s compass rarely fails, and never for long. Be on guard, however, against over-reliance on your inner lodestar. For all your prized independence, it’s balance you desire above all, and balance must come from without as well as within. Where you trust, don’t be afraid to follow.
--
“Did I wake you up?”
The enforced darkness of the blackout curtains is disorienting. Cocooned in the sheets--his own sheets, he’s not over the novelty of that--Adam squints at his phone. One-thirteen p.m. He has a hazy memory of waking up around eleven and choosing more sleep over coffee. “Just hibernating,” he says as brightly as he can.
Kris’s heartiness sounds just as forced. “Feels awesome, doesn’t it? I’ve barely even gone out. All I do is watch football and let my mom feed me. She can’t wait to get her hands on you, by the way. She’s promised-- ” he drops his voice suspensefully “ --that there will be cake.”
The expectant pause goes on a beat too long before Adam picks up his cue. “Aww, yay. Your mom is the best. You know I’m a big fan of her work.”
“So, uh. I did manage to go through the boxes of stuff I’ve got in storage. I’m thinking I’ll just donate it all to charity or something. A fresh start sounds good.”
Transparent, Adam thinks. Kris is reassuring him, and maybe giving the finger to fate while he’s at it. No more surviving on one day and when this is over. He’s handing Adam a guarantee of their future, in the form of details so prosaic they can only be real. “If you change your mind, there’s plenty of room.”
“Even closet space?”
Adam plays along. “For five plaid shirts? I’ll have to check. Probably.”
“Cool, then I can buy another one.” In a different tone, he says, “Adam . . . I can come out there now. I want to.”
Saying no is easier than it once would’ve been. “We’re almost there, Kris. Who knows how it’ll go down--I don’t think management knows, in spite of all their dire predictions. That’s their job, to anticipate the worst. But we shouldn’t take any unnecessary risks.”
Abandoning all pretense of casualness, Kris says, pleading, “Then stop freaking me out, OK? Eat something, and . . . I don’t even know, that’s what’s really getting to me. Just don’t say everything’s fine when it’s not. Let me help you.”
“I will, on all counts. Stop worrying. That goes for your mom, too.” The helpless quality of Kris’s silence tells Adam he’s not buying it. Adam knows he can look forward to more conversations like this, anxious on Kris’s side, pacifying on his own.
Before they hang up, Kris asks, obviously striving for normalcy, “Is Courtney still keeping in touch?”
“I haven’t been checking. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
--
Adam Lambert: Wasting Away?
Friends are expressing concern over the openly gay rocker’s mysterious weight loss, the National Enquirer can reveal.
The guyliner-loving star flaunted a healthy physique at the start of his summer Glam Nation tour. Now, mere months later, the dramatic change in his appearance is causing speculation.
“He looks like he could be ill,” says an insider. “I don’t think he was trying to lose weight. It was pretty sudden.”
Some fear the flamboyant singer’s excessive lifestyle of clubbing and partying might be to blame.
“I’m single and mingling,” Lambert was quoted as saying in July. “Nothing wrong with sampling what’s out there. I’m just having fun.”
Lambert, 28, grabbed the spotlight with his powerhouse pipes and theatrical flair on American Idol’s eighth season, where he lost out to fresh-faced Southerner Kris Allen.
Later that year, at the American Music Awards, he earned notoriety with a shocking performance that featured a controversial same-sex kiss . . .
“We can’t sue,” reports Gareth, Simon’s second-in-command. “Legal says it’s not libel. They skated close to the line but didn’t cross it.”
“They just used every fucking codeword in the book,” Adam says dully. Except for the insinuation of the gay disease, it’s nothing he doesn’t get on a regular basis. There’s no reason why flamboyant should have the blunt impact of fag on a bigot’s sign. The Enquirer isn’t out to stigmatize him, just to make a buck. The stigma is a side effect. Nothing personal.
He reserves the right to take insults personally, coded or otherwise. “Can I make a statement?”
The suits are shaking their heads. “We don’t want to give this any more airtime,” one of them answers. “Even if we had the option, a lawsuit probably wouldn’t be the way to go. Better to not acknowledge it at all.”
It’s always better to speak up, Adam knows. Even if it’s wasted effort, even if it serves to spread the story, he should call them on their exploitative bullshit. Yet he hasn’t composed a rebuttal. He’s not preparing to launch a series of scathing tweets. Ironic, after all the times Neil has urged him not to feed the trolls, all the times his dad has reiterated that there’s no shame in walking away from a pointless fight. This one has a point--the truth, which is its own reason--but for once nobody has to hold him back. Maybe he’s reached a new level of zen in dealing with fame.
The strategy session isn’t over. Gareth turns to Adam and says grimly, “We’ve got to do some damage control. It was bad enough when the rumors were about extreme dieting and coke use. You need to make a public appearance and show everyone you’re not on your deathbed.” He pauses. “You’re not, are you?”
It could be insensitive humor or even solicitude. More likely it’s concern for 19’s investment. Nothing personal here either. But aren’t you guys supposed to be on my side, too, not just your own? “No,” he says brusquely.
Before he leaves, they line up a red-carpet event for him, the premiere of some romantic comedy. “Don’t mention the Enquirer story,” is Gareth’s parting edict. “If a reporter brings it up, laugh like it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever heard.”
--
None of his rock star alter ego’s clothes fit. The lasciviously tight pants slide low on his hips; the embellished jackets overshoot their closures across his chest. His stylist, sympathetic, makes an emergency housecall with a rack of designer pieces, all his favorite labels. Sleek extravagant leathers, a biker bar’s worth of studs. He opts for a plain black suit, uneasy, for once, at the prospect of being an attention magnet.
Surveying himself dispassionately in the mirror, Adam can’t find much fault with what he sees. He’s thin for his frame but hardly emaciated. He’d weighed less in his early 20s, in the phase when he sort of was the person he gets mistaken for now, decorative and preening. And battling a dozen insecurities behind the I’m-fabulous facade, of course.
He’d look good, in that high-strung Hollywood way, if not for the lack of luster that’s never been him. No amount of Dolce & Gabbana can camouflage the invisible but dulling overlay, the flatness in his expression where there should be a spark.
As he lines his eyes, he notices indifferently that his black polish is chipped at the edges. Even with unlimited free time at his disposal, he didn’t bother to get a manicure this week. Too late to do anything about it now. Besides, he’s earned the right to relax on the image front for a while.
He’s never realized how much effort is involved in smiling, all those facial muscles resisting upward movement. As he poses on the carpet, shouts of his name fly like a hail of shrill projectiles. There are far bigger stars here, but he surpasses them all as a trending topic, and as a target. He turns right and left for the cameras, holding up under fire.
His readiness with a quote hasn’t deserted him. “I’ve been immersed in touring for months. Maybe people who sit at a computer all day don’t realize what’s involved in that.” It feels good to administer a slap on the wrist, however mild. “There’s a lot of sweat, a lot of hard work. It can be exhausting.” Shit, that word. “But it’s the most amazing experience, a privilege.”
“One more,” he says in an undertone to Lane. Just a few minutes between him and a nice cushiony reclining chair. No one will notice if he dozes through the cutesy bickering of Jennifer Aniston and the guy from Mad Men.
He’s delivering his sixth variation on the same soundbite when what’s-her-name from Extra breaks in to coo, “I think an old friend might be trying to get your attention.”
He turns politely, hand raised to wave to someone he met at an industry function or awards show. And freezes. The reporter is simpering, asking a question that might as well be in a foreign language for all he can process it. He’s shaking, that’s how he knows he can move again, and then he’s deserting her.
Improbably, incredibly, maybe once if you’re lucky, life can be a scene from a movie. Adam believes now. Star-crossed lovers can push their way through an unheeding crowd, eyes only for each other, to meet in the middle, reunited at last. He doesn’t play the scene to its cinematic conclusion. He’s too stunned to figure out whether it’s safe to hug Kris. He can only stand arrested, staring, all his devotion flushed out of hiding.
“You were in Arkansas,” he says lamely. Go to the ends of the earth for you. . . He can hear the soundtrack playing.
Kris lifts his shoulders, not even a full shrug. Trust him to underplay the grandest of all grand gestures. “I’m here.”
Adam is powerless to school his face, but there’s no time for it to matter. Kris does his self-incrimination one better by reaching out to take his hand. The contact is another shock, more full-frontal than the meeting of two palms has any right to be. Adam realizes, chasing tangents, that he left his gloves at home.
And now their private drama has an audience, cameras aiming their way and flashing in double time, shouts rising to a frenzied pitch. Kris holds on tighter, as though preventing Adam’s escape, as though making sure the gesture can’t be undone. Yes, it’s what you think, his grip states unequivocally. “Burn, bridges, burn,” he says out of the side of his mouth, daredevil smile not quite masking his impatience to be done with the formality of coming out in front of the whole world.
Lane appears at Adam’s elbow and addresses Kris, giving herself away as an accomplice. “Go on inside, hon. I’ll get you guys out before it starts.”
“No more than half an hour, OK? Less would be better.”
She comes through, dependable Lane, and they’re out of the theater and in the back of the limo within ten minutes. Seconds after that, Kris is wrapping his arms around Adam, sheltering rather than passionate, drawing him down to compensate for their height difference. Saying, muffled, into Adam’s hair, “I had to. I had to. Sometimes it’s not a choice.”
“I know, Kris. I’m so glad.” If Adam can only get closer, maybe he can believe it’s done. He presses his cheek to Kris’s too-fast heartbeat. “Were you scared?”
“No. I thought I might be. But that part of it didn’t seem important.” Kris’s hands mold to Adam’s back, warm through his jacket.
“You were so brave to do that alone. Let me welcome you properly. Welcome you home.” The implications of the word are so many, so dazzling and world-rearranging, Adam could get lost in the changed landscape.
“In a minute. I need this, OK?”
Adam settles for stroking Kris’s arm through his sleeve. I could hold you for a million years, to make you feel . . . The music is starting to fade. He closes his eyes. It’s safe in the quiet, too, peace unbroken except by the wet trickle down the side of his face. He brushes at it, groggy. Not his own tears.
“Kris-- ” Adam struggles upright.
“No, it’s all right. Hang on, I’ve got an idea.” Under Adam’s bemused gaze, Kris shoves through the cans in the bar and comes up with a Red Bull. He presses it into Adam’s hand, saying, “Drink this for me. Please.”
Adam isn’t going to refuse, not if it’s that important to Kris. He sips, grimacing at the cough-syrup taste, as Kris’s terse request through the intercom brings the limo to a stop in front of a CVS. “Five minutes,” Kris promises, scrambling out.
He’s back in less than that, clutching a plastic bag. “I got you A Five-Hour Energy shot, but it’s probably a bad idea to mix this crap. Maybe later.”
Hoping to make Kris smile, Adam says, “Couldn’t we have stopped at Starbucks instead?”
“Last time I checked, Starbucks doesn’t sell condoms and lube.”
“Oh.” Adam peeks into the bag. Condoms and lube, all right. “We’re going to?”
No smile, but a hint of flirtation. “I think we’ve held out long enough, don’t you?”
Adam isn’t sure. Neither of them will miss the trappings. They don’t have to sit on the same side of a booth in some low-lit jacket-and-tie restaurant, getting drunk on wine and expectation. Though he intends to do that, soon, and to hold Kris’s hand under the table--no, on the table--and to throw in a thousand dollars’ worth of candlelight and rose petals just to see Kris’s reaction. Kris will laugh, delighting in how over the top it is, how Adam, and understanding exactly what Adam means by it.
It can wait. But right now he feels capable of letting Kris down in the most basic of ways. After all that buildup, all that banking of potential. He opens the bag again, with some half-formed notion of finding guidance inside. “How’d you know what kind?”
“That magazine that got all TMI with you last year.”
“And you remembered?”
“I remember a lot of things.” Kris’s voice cracks without warning. “Your eyes, Adam.” Before Adam can move in to comfort him, he’s grabbing a cocktail napkin and swiping at his own. “OK, screw that. Are you feeling any more alert?”
“A little,” Adam lies. There’s a buzz from the caffeine, but it’s just a shiny lacquer over the thick layer of fatigue. He straightens his back so he won’t be tempted to sink into the padded leather, just let gravity take him down into Kris’s lap. “Tell me what else you remember.”
“Um, the night we stayed up smoking by the pool. You know the night I’m thinking of. I wish we hadn’t stopped.”
“Mmm.”
“There was that time I found you crashed out in my bunk last summer. Because you missed me, you said.”
“I did.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t just easier than climbing up?” Kris is making a game effort. “I was only gone for an hour.”
Adam curls his fingers, nails biting into his palm, bracing. “No, it smelled like you.”
“So you said. In front of Danny and Matt.”
Kris keeps talking, pausing only to tip the driver when they reach Adam’s house. “I never thought I’d have to do all the work in a conversation with you. Maybe I should be taking advantage of you, getting you to spill your secrets.”
“I don’t think I have any secrets, now that you’ve held my hand in front of E! News.” On the stairs, Kris’s guiding hand at the small of his back returns all of last summer to him in one tactile memory.
“You’ve got a few, but I know them already. Like, I know you wanted me to win.” Kris pulls Adam through the nearest doorway and into one of the guest rooms. “You still listening?”
“Always, Kris.”
“That’s another thing. You always did. Like nobody else ever had. Like you didn’t want to miss a word I said.”
“That’s how it’s supposed to work,” Adam says meaningfully, trying to reciprocate. It’s not the happiest allusion to make, on second thought, but Kris is preoccupied with stripping off the dress shirt and pants that are obviously fresh from a suitcase. There’s no break in his commentary, no opening for Adam to drift through. “Don’t judge, I had like twenty minutes. It was either shower off the airplane smell or break out the iron.” As an afterthought, he pulls off his wedding ring and lets it drop to the carpet before going to work on Adam’s tie. “Where’s your jewelry? You’re not wearing a single glittery thing tonight.”
“I guess I forgot.”
“Oh.” Kris finally goes quiet. His deft musician’s fingers, incapable of clumsiness, stumble on Adam’s buttons. His telltale face betrays anticipation--not the pleasurable kind. “Hey, are you nervous?” Adam asks in surprise, roused from his docile stupor. “Don’t be nervous, not with me.”
“You’re barely here, Adam, I can’t help it.” The picture he makes, kneeling naked to yank at Adam’s boots, should be irresistible to Adam’s pouncing urges. “When I was in college, the freshman guys had to attend this date rape seminar. The gist of it was, get consent every step of the way. Can you even-- ”
Adam has never seen Kris skittish like this. “Kris-- Of course you can do whatever you want. You can fuck me, if you’d rather.” It’s a selfishly appealing thought--to let Kris go on taking care of him, all the way to the end.
But it gets the most emphatic no he’s ever heard from Kris. “That’s not going to-- ” Kris huffs out a tense breath. “OK. I want you to kiss me. That’s always a good place to start.”
They lie down on the bed, Adam gratefully, Kris tentatively. Kris seems hesitant even to touch him, so Adam cups his cheek and sets out to prove his voluntary participation. He can do this.
The full lower lip distracts him, coaxing an unequal share of his attention. He nips and sucks at it, not quite hard enough to hurt, until he hits the lucky combination; he’s in, Kris’s tongue licking at his, inviting him further. This is what home means. No intrusive awareness of time running down. No desperation. It’s a daydream, gently unfolding.
“Hold me down,” is Kris’s next request, straight out of Adam’s fantasies, and Adam obediently pins his wrists to the mattress. Kris swallows, the motion of his throat drawing Adam’s gaze, and then, before he realizes his own intention, his mouth. Kris arches back into the pillow and says, “Yeah, like that,” a little slurred, so Adam gives him a collar of careful bites.
“Flowery,” Adam notes, nuzzling at the hint of hotel soap.
“If you don’t like it, I can sweat it off, no problem.”
Kris’s small red nipples deserve Adam’s mouth too. He slides lower, skin to skin, contact lull warming into blissful languor. Again, that sighing sense of home. He comes to rest there, on Kris’s smooth chest, and waits for Kris to complete the ritual, to stroke a hand over his hair. If you told me the blue is natural, Kris once teased, I’d believe you.
“Adam,” Kris says sharply.
“Am I too heavy?” Sitting up clears his head a little. “Oh. I’m sorry, Kris.”
“You’re not too heavy. It’s OK,” Kris says quickly, as Adam reaches out. “But I need you to stay with me.” He’s turning onto his stomach. “Can you grab the lube? Good. I want your fingers.”
Adam feels heavy, his body a separate weight, ungainly. He has to concentrate to make it obey. Kris helps, his voice taking on a high-stakes calm, as though he’s talking Adam through performing surgery. “Start with two, I can handle it. Yeah, that’s, that works. I’ve gotten pretty good at this, but you . . . ”
Adam circles with three, waiting for permission. “Yeah, go on,” Kris encourages him, strained now. “And, uh, talk to me. I don’t mean like, porn talk. Unless you want to,” he amends, taxing Adam’s brain with reconciling adorable and getting finger-fucked. “Just talk to me.”
Here’s something familiar, steadying. “You’re doing so well, Kris.” Desire moves in him sluggishly, even with the suggestive stretch around his fingers, the hot tight accommodation he’s making for himself, but pride is strong. “You really were made for this. For me. You’re going to take me just fine. It’s going to be-- ” What can he truthfully promise? “It’s going to be us, finally.”
“Now.” Kris pulls off Adam’s fingers with a groan, then groans again as Adam reflexively slides them back in, deeper, twisting. “I want you to put it in me now,” he says, ragged but determined. Still rescuing Adam. “Give it to me like this.”
Adam had taken it for granted that their first time would be face to face. “Like this,” he repeats, trusting in Kris. His meticulousness with the lube has Kris darting a worried glance over his shoulder and asking, “Are you-- ?”
“Yes. Very.” One part of him, at least, is as unflagging as ever. His old spontaneous laugh surfaces, and that’s heartening too. “Just warming this stuff up.” Satisfied, he rubs along the cleft of Kris’s ass to announce his presence. Kris is so finely made, classical lines on a compact scale. Poised where it is, Adam’s cock looks obscenely huge.
Undeterred, Kris grinds hard against the bed before lifting up to meet him. Presenting his ass to him. “I want you to watch us.” It ends on a labored exhale as Adam guides himself past the point of no return. “Watch . . . what you’re doing to me.”
Watching overloads Adam’s senses, the visual preempting the pleasure. He’s waited too long to experience this from the outside. Disobeying just this once, he lifts his eyes to the tense curve of Kris’s back, the listening tilt of his head. It’s too much in a different way; it pierces him where he has no defense.
Instinct stirs. He takes hold of Kris’s hips and tugs, a slow underwater drag, and Kris’s next instruction stalls at oh. When it comes, in a shocked rush, it’s more breath than words. “I want you to move, God, you’re so-- I want you to, I want you to fuck me, Adam, fuck me.”
He’s there, he’s doing it, living it in real time. Smoothly, inevitably, a corresponding bright space opens up inside him, a pristine sky behind parting clouds. A certainty that he was made for this, for giving, not as much as Kris can ask, but as much as he can receive. Kris drops his head onto his folded arms, no demand left in him, and Adam thrusts faster to keep up with his muffled cries. Let go. Let me, now. “Kris,” he pants, marveling at the seamlessness of the two of them. “Feel me.”
“Adam, Adam-- ” Kris’s shoulders stiffen, resisting; and Adam closes a hand around his already spurting cock and fucks him through it, hard, lavishing, on and on.
Kris is incoherent when Adam rolls him over, his chest heaving, wild eyes imploring. “No, you didn’t-- Keep going, Adam, please-- ”
Adam kisses him first, greeting and gratitude and a complete set of vows, lingering over it. “It was a beautiful view,” he says tenderly. “But I love this one even more.”
He’s miles from done, nowhere near ready for after, but he’s glowing, lit up like Las Vegas, neon in his veins. He pushes back in, past the quick sweet give, and then it’s all Kris, his Kris, surging up under him in new longing. “Let’s start all over. I want to start all over.”
--End--
Note: Chaining and feathering are terms from palmistry, as I recently learned from anya7lee. They refer to markings that indicate flirtatiousness and inconstancy in love when they appear on the heart line. (Though the interpretation varies a bit depending on where Google takes you.) In my borrowing, they're a metaphor for Adam's circumstances, not his capacity for faithfulness.
Song lyrics quoted are from “Doll Parts” by Hole, “Utopia” by Goldfrapp, “Superstition” by Stevie Wonder, “Rude Boy” by Rihanna, "To Make You Feel My Love” by Bob Dylan, and "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley. “Everyone gets the tattoo they deserve” is a line from an episode of The X-Files.
Pairing: Adam/Kris
Word count: 24,300
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Sex without love is a compromise that’s rarely cost Adam more than fleeting regret. Love without sex, no surprise, isn’t in his nature at all.
Warnings: Angst, weed
Disclaimer: Pure imagination. No disrespect intended.
Author's note: anya7lee, if the title rings a bell, that's no coincidence, bb. <3
Additional notes at the end of the story.
Chain and Feather, Part Three
Monte is the only one who calls him on it. “Not the brightest idea you’ve ever had. Fucking Texas in August, and you have them turn off the a/c? You trying to start a riot?”
Can it be coincidence, Adam wonders, that everyone brings him their issues when he’s got something pointy or adhesive within an inch of his eye? He returns Jeni’s commiserating smile and holds himself still for the sweep of the mascara wand. “Scratchy throat. Got to protect the pipes.”
“So drink some of that tea.” Monte leans across the makeup chair to poke at his lopsided pineapple tuft of hair. He gives Adam a skeptical eye in the mirror. “You’re not turning diva on us, are you?”
“It’s just one of those things, I guess,” Adam says vaguely. The powder brush is a blur, setting the foundation that will likely melt off before the fifteen-minute mark regardless.
“Whatever, Mariah. Security had to break up a couple of fights on the floor. Not just pushing and shoving, but punches thrown.”
“Shit.” Not Adam’s brightest idea for sure, but his conscience will have to meet him after the show. He has to make the next hour count. “Just a few minutes to showtime, OK?”
Monte persists, “Dude, what’s going on with you lately? You hide in back all day, you barely talk--how is that even possible--you never want to go out with us anymore-- ”
Deliverance appears in the form of Neil, wandering in for a round of genial shit-talking. Oblivious to the tension, he launches into a story about a couple of older female fans--“seriously, grandmas”--who cajoled Monte into signing their cleavage. Somewhere between “Fuck you, they were hot grandmas” and “Shouldn’t you be yelling ‘Wake up, sheeple’ on a street corner somewhere?”, Monte forgets about Adam and his erratic behavior.
Jeni touches Adam’s shoulder lightly. “All done, beautiful.” Thanking her, he gets up to go to wardrobe, and to stage a conquest.
It starts with a demand. The answering energy is spiked with something unwholesome, the nasty surprise in the tempting cocktail. He knocks it back in full knowledge, an invigorating defiance rising him to meet that edge, one blade clashing with another in the strobed darkness.
They fall back under the power of his voice. He disarms them with honesty, I can’t turn this around, I keep running into walls that I can’t break down, subdues them with the tears rolling down his face. And then he falls back, voluntarily, to win them with his own surrender. Falls back literally, reclining on the stairs, shifting, wanting, his lower register weaving a moody seduction, a lullaby from a siren’s mouth. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, aluminum risers digging into his spine, but he doesn’t care, he submits and makes it look graceful. His legs part as though he needs to say it more explicitly: Fuck me. Their fervor is lust, Oh God yes; they’re screaming his name as he takes it in and comes fully alive.
It’s benign. An invitation to desire, not darkness.
It’s just sex. Hell, it’s not even that.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
--
“Kris, I need-- ”
This time it’s really too late too call. Adam is a selfish asshole of a boyfriend-in-waiting, getting harder in his jeans at Kris’s sleep-thick murmured hello. But Kris only says, low and gratified, “Take it out for me.”
Adam pulls clumsily at his zipper. Kris can’t possibly hear the soft swish, but he says, “Gorgeous,” savoring and proprietary, so assured with it that Adam nearly comes untouched. Then, considerately, he goes straight for Adam’s weaknesses. “My hand, under yours. Move it all the way up and down. Show me how you want it.”
“Hard, really hard-- ”
“If I do it hard, you’re going to come so fast. Kneeling over me like this. Do you want to come on my chest and watch me rub it in? Do you want to come on my face?”
For a blind minute, Adam can only pant into Kris’s patient silence, too spent to even open his eyes and see what kind of mess he’s made, sticky fingers curling loosely. When the slamming pulse at his temples subsides, it leaves behind a dull headache. “Sorry, sorry, let me-- ”
“I’m good. Let’s-- ” Kris interrupts himself with a yawn. “Let’s talk for a while. Or spoon, or something.”
“No, go back to sleep. You knocked me out. I’m sorry, baby,” Adam says again, hushed, apologizing for all the things he can’t fix by himself.
--
After the second round of costume alterations, no one teases him about literally dancing his ass off. Instead, his friends demonstrate once again that they’ve got his back to an annoying degree, asking with studied nonchalance if he’s had lunch yet, returning from coffee runs with an extra muffin or cookie. “You eat that, you hear?” Sasha will say, a miniature version of his mom in full nurture mode.
Tommy, wily, knocks on his door one night holding something better. The weed does make Adam hungry, and expansive. He invites the others over and orders up a Roman-orgy spread from room service. “We’d like one of everything except the lobster,” he says giggling into the phone, reluctantly persuaded that testing his coordination on food is a bad rather than hilarious idea. Later, he sinks into a warm and voluptuous sort of melancholy, reliving the nights he breathed smoke from Kris’s mouth, slowly, because he needed the kiss more than the high, or the air.
Neil weighs in Neil-style. “Manorexia is not a good look on anyone,” he says, though he delivers a blistering commentary, liberally sprinkled with fucktards, when the gossip sites start whispering the same thing.
Kris’s approach is the most direct of all: “Do you think you might be depressed?”
“What? No.” Adam’s denial is automatic. Counting his blessings is part of his emotional discipline, an inoculation against celebrity entitlement. I’m living my dream. Everything I've ever wished for has come true. Through constant repetition, he’s trained himself not to put an asterisk next to this mantra.
“I looked it up. The symptoms include sleeping a lot, sudden weight loss, and mood changes.” Kris relays this information in his most inoffensive tone.
Now that Adam has the nurturing relationship he’s always wanted, he knows that finding the right person is only half of the equation. You have to be willing to relax into those enfolding arms. Relinquishing the caretaking side is surprisingly hard. “It fits, but it doesn’t feel like me, if you know what I mean. Wouldn’t I know if I was depressed?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. Maybe it’s hard to tell when you’re in the middle of something like that.”
Adam pictures himself edging across a high narrow bridge, steadfastly not looking down. “I have been feeling . . . off. All the things you mentioned. But touring’s not exactly a part-time job, or even a full-time job. Anyone would get tired.”
“I’ve seen you tired, Adam. Last summer we used to stay up half the night talking and then grab a nap wherever we could. We never really got caught up. But you were happy.”
“Of course I was. It was our summer together.” A whole summer of living in the moment and knowing that there was no better place to be. Adam wants to say a dozen things, all starting with Remember . . . ? But nostalgia is a slippery slope. If he indulges, he’ll start thinking of their shared life as something he’s lost.
“It is harder now,” he admits. “But I think it’s just the schedule getting to me. The responsibility.” He’s not going to mention their situation, as Kris put it.
“Why don’t you go see a doctor? It can’t hurt.”
“I went in for a physical right before the tour started. Very thorough, several needles. Although it was almost worth it to see the look on the doctor’s face when I told her I wasn’t sexually active.”
Kris knows better than to counter with arguments for Adam to shoot down. “Please, Adam,” he says simply, and there’s no answer to that but yes.
Besides the usual routine with the stethoscope and blood-pressure cuff, the exam consists of the expected questions about weight fluctuation, sleep patterns, and stress. Under the last heading, Adam conscientiously volunteers, “I haven’t had sex in over a year, and-- ” And what? He’s detoxing? Using the lust of strangers as methadone? With his perfectly healthy sense of the ridiculous, he’s aware that he’s complaining about a case of blue balls to someone who treats pain and disease. His laugh is shorthand for Fuck my life.
“You need to start taking better care of yourself,” is the unsurprising verdict. “And that includes going out and making new friends.” Adam produces a polite smile, and the doctor concludes, “You could stand to gain ten pounds, but as far as everything else goes, it looks like you’re in good shape. Pending lab results, of course.”
The lab results make it official. Whatever’s draining him, it’s not the kind of anemia that shows up on a blood panel.
--
Kris, I need more than your voice on the phone. I need to see your face when you make one of your smartass remarks and look so pleased with yourself. I need to watch you frown over the perfect arrangement of your guitars while we’re setting up our music room. I need to hold hands with you in public and introduce you as my boyfriend. I need to stop hiding what matters most to me. I need you in bed with me, telling me how much you love all those things you were so curious about. I need you under me, around me, for hours at a time, until we’ve forgotten what need feels like.
If he makes that call, Kris will say yes, divorced or not. Maybe the world won’t end. Unlikely, when even Adam’s stage kisses cause an uproar. Adam can predict the blog headline: American Idols In Gay Affair. Of course they’ll use the word gay, redundant as it is in context, because their definition of gay is scandalous.
Which doesn’t mean their careers will crash along with TMZ’s servers. They might even benefit in the long run. And then there’s the worst-case scenario: that his career will survive the tabloid apocalypse and Kris’s won’t.
You don’t always have to be the one who gives more. Adam concedes that. He can learn to take gracefully. He’s not willing to take everything.
--
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
A situation that seems beyond your control features prominently today. You might find fatalistic thinking undermining your Aquarian common sense. Remember the ancient maxim, Astra inclinant, non necessitant--the stars incline; they do not determine.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
Another message, another new picture. The droop of his head belies the brave glint of rhinestones around his eyes. A wash of glitter on his chest and a resigned set to his shoulders. The picture has a blue tint, a blue mood, electro lounge, way downtempo, brooding. Is this her victory dance?
There’s no symmetry here, no karma or poetic justice. His heart is . . . not pure, he won’t claim that much, but sound. He’s put enough miles on it in the past year to know what it’s made of.
She doesn’t understand what it means to ache. No one’s emptiness has a stranger’s name on it. You ache when it’s real, when your lips can’t imprint I want you directly on his skin, when you have to make do with your voice until it’s like not having a voice at all.
Johnnie Walker Black is not Adam’s friend. Good old J.W. is an enabler, as it turns out, convincing him first that he’s perfectly justified in feeling sorry for himself, and then, after he’s wallowed for a while, that it’s a fine idea to inflict his emo on Kris.
It pours out as though he can exorcise it in a torrent of words: the need, the temptation, his faltering grip on both. When he confesses the Ben incident, there’s a moment of stricken silence. “You were right,” Kris says, shaky. “I couldn’t have handled it. But never mind that now.”
The words keep flowing, unstoppable. “It’s such a shit excuse cheaters give, that it didn’t mean anything, but he was nothing to me, would’ve been nothing more than a fucking tranquilizer, basically. I would’ve hurt you, when all I want is to be with you, to be inside you, it fucking hurts, Kris, but that’s no excuse-- ”
“Look, maybe I’ll get around to kicking your ass for this at some point.” Kris sounds almost as agitated as he is, but it’s not hurt or anger. Desperation, rather, to put him back together. “But nothing happened, you didn’t do anything. I forgive you, if that’s what you need to hear. You can stop beating yourself up for it.”
“I know I’m rambling,” Adam says remorsefully, and rambles on. Promises of fidelity, babble about curses that’s sure to be a mortifying highlight of the morning-after replay. Kris, amazing Kris, stands firm under the onslaught, even humoring him with make-believe logic. “Curses don’t stand a chance against true love. Everybody knows that.”
From there, it’s an easy segue into the maudlin portion of the evening. “Sometimes I can’t believe you, Kris. That you’re real, that you’re mine. Not really mine yet, though,” he remembers, bereft--and disgusted. Even drunk, there’s only so much of his own pathos he can take.
“As soon as I get that goddamn piece of paper,” Kris says, suddenly fierce. “Screw waiting another six months after that. I don’t care if Simon Fuller calls personally to tell me to keep my pants on. We just have to hang on until the first of the year, that’s all, and then we’re damn well going to spend that six months making up for lost time.”
Adam can’t find the words for a selfless refusal. The reprieve nearly brings him to his knees. “I’m going to make it up to you, Kris. I’m-- ”
“Don’t say sorry again. This is how it’s supposed to work. For better or for worse, and all that,” Kris says with finality, and with sublime disregard for that missing piece of paper.
“Oh, God.” Adam's laughter wavers precariously. He’s going to wake up with a hangover for sure, more from the excess of self-pity than from the alcohol. “So romantic and fucked up. Perfect.”
--
“I don’t mind paying for it,” said Kris, earnest and young, all those months ago. “To have this . . . If there’s no place for this in your life, we can go back, pretend I kept it to myself. But if you feel it as much as I do . . . Adam. I hope you feel it as much as I do.”
“Kris,” Adam answered, faint reproach and bursting emotion, Kris rising up to meet him, Kris’s cheek soft beneath his stroking thumb. He got around to the yes eventually, superfluous as it was, for the sheer joy of saying it.
“I can’t imagine turning my back on this, ” Kris said then, on the threshold. This, to know and be known, with an intimacy that made sex seem commonplace. And as for sex, it was their smug secret that they were going to reinvent it together.
Adam couldn’t imagine turning his back on all that either. He can’t imagine it now, as he navigates the strange borderland, still pushing the limit of his capacity to feel.
--
It starts with a message. He waits until the last minute, until he’s put on his gloriously preposterous top hat and purple coat, because that’s part of it. Adam dripping fringe and attitude, Adam in flip-flops, Adam in mid-transformation: They’re all the same where Kris is concerned. And then he sends the text that says the rest: Tonight is for you.
“If you’ve ever stood up for yourself,” he begins. The audience is still jacked from the libidinous engine rev of “Whole Lotta Love,” but there’s a new stirring, a recognition of something unexpected and special, phones appearing in upraised hands from floor to balcony. “If you’ve ever stood up for a cause,” louder now, covering the stage in long strides, ten feet tall in his boots, “if you’ve ever stood up for love-- ” They’re cheering wildly, fired with his evangelical ardor, eager to follow wherever he leads. “Don’t let anybody tear you down. Raise your voice and fucking own it if they say you’re-- ” He lets the anticipation draw taut, and they’re shouting it out for him before he snaps that vibrating cord. “Crazy.”
It’s his message, his voice. The words don’t matter, except the ones he changes to fit, Does that make us crazy, Maybe we’re crazy, and the audience is throwing themselves into it, singing along at the top of their lungs, rallying. But he’s claiming it for the two of them alone. The anthem, and the legitimacy.
--
“I guess we both know what day it is,” Kris says, after he’s run out of ways to tell Adam to break a leg, melt faces, and blow the roof off the joint.
September 17. A day of endings, Adam would answer, if that didn’t sound so pathetic. He’s sworn off emotional binges along with phone numbers and too many cocktails. “A day of transition. A cusp day. That’s how I’m trying to think of it.”
“I thought maybe you scheduled your last show for today on purpose. A full circle thing.”
“No, it was pure coincidence. If there is such a thing. I don’t know about commemorating it. I don’t want to treat it like our anniversary.”
“When is our anniversary, anyway? I don’t want to get in trouble.” The mischievous tone is the one Kris reserves for yanking Adam’s chain.
“Don’t even joke about that shit. We don’t need the rulebook. We’re bigger than that.” If it’s an indirect slam at the life Kris had been on his way to leading with Katy, Adam blames September 17.
Kris reverts to meditativeness. “A year ago . . . right up until the night before, I never really believed the day would come. Or maybe I believed there’d be some miraculous intervention, and we’d go on being together.”
“I believed,” Adam says, wistful in spite of himself. “I tried to live each day without looking ahead to the next, let alone the last. No way to prepare for that.” No grasping the pain of a tearing where there was no perforation, or the numbness that would follow.
“In the back of my mind, I’ll always question myself for not getting on the plane to L.A. with you,” Kris says low. “Running to your gate, like a scene from a movie, and kissing you in front of everyone.”
Adam hadn’t expected that scene to play out. He hadn’t even wanted it to--not with the better part of himself, the part that put Kris’s welfare above his own need to hold on. But it played in his mind as he walked through the terminal with his largest pair of sunglasses substituting for composure. “I kept reminding myself that we already had our miracle. In any logical world, we would’ve missed each other. The way it happened was too far-out even for a movie.” Adam affects a sonorous announcer’s voice. “Two singers from different worlds meet as contestants on the country’s biggest reality show . . . Doesn’t that sound like the most contrived plot ever?”
“I’d go see it. Just to make out with you in the back of the theater.” Adam purrs appreciatively, and Kris says, serious again, “What I really, totally regret is not going to one of your shows. I know how much the tour meant to you, how much you put into it. Maybe even too much--but that’s why we do what we do, because we have that passion that makes it hard to hold back. And I never got to see it up close. Just once, you should’ve been able to look over and see me watching, going, That’s my boyfriend out there, being so amazing I don't even have the words for it.”
“I’d be lying if I said I never thought about that, Kris. Or about doing the same for you.”
“I know we did what we thought was right, and I don’t believe in regrets any more than you do-- ”
“But you needed to get this out. That’s good, that’s important.”
Unexpectedly, Kris laughs. “I just realized that I’ve been talking about my feelings.” Adam can guess the source of the quote. “For the past year and a half, actually. It’s not that hard. And writing about them is easier than it’s ever been.”
This time, Adam restrains himself. Just the smallest of complacent smiles as Kris adds, “But get this, pretty soon we can concentrate on, you know, living them.”
Foolishly, maybe even superstitiously, Adam doesn’t let himself count on soon yet. Dodging a little, he says, “Tomorrow morning, when I get on another plane to L.A., I’ll be moving toward you rather than away. That’ll be my full-circle moment.”
“But first you’re going to bedazzle another two thousand unsuspecting people.” Feelings disposed of, Kris returns to the subject of Adam’s final show, and Adam answers his questions until they’re just postponing goodbye.
Postponing it a few seconds more, Adam says, “You know, you’d have to play yourself in the movie. No one else is cute enough.”
“You’d have too play yourself too. No one else is you enough.”
--
His last show. Last fix. Adam ignores the twinge of anxiety. Tonight is an earned victory lap. Sold-out dates, hot-blooded crowds, his voice delivering every night. His chosen companions meshed not only into a highly functional unit, but a highly functional family.
He’s fulfilled his vision for his first solo tour. Onstage, sound and spectacle and yes, shock, a bit more than he’d planned on. Offstage, the stuff of the most boring Behind The Music episode ever. Not quite as boring as he would’ve liked, but still, no backstage catfights, no Spinal Tap moments, no STDs--at least he hopes Tommy used protection every time. He’s even proved that he can live with his brother in a prickly sort of harmony.
To mark his arrival, he takes a final look around the bus. Already it’s less familiar. Unnaturally quiet, for one thing, the perpetual background noise of the TV noticeable only now, in its absence. Like the clutter of half-empty Vitamin Water bottles on the counter, the pairs of shoes tumbled just out of tripping range, Sasha’s scarf caught between the couch cushions. All picked up and packed away.
It was uncannily the same all those years ago on the Amsterdam--talk about full circle, Adam thinks. Debarkation day, the illusion of endless holiday dispelled, hospitality turned to brisk purpose as the crew hustled the passengers off the ship so that the turnaround could begin. Now, as then, he hears the unspoken, What are you waiting for? You’re no longer in possession.
Time to go backstage and give Jeni free rein, atone for all the nights he couldn’t be bothered with the elaborate effects that make her happy. Tonight is for false lashes and a galaxy of rhinestones, maybe the peacock-feather eye look she’s been wanting to try out.
Time enough later to dwell on his own turnaround.
--
Blind Items
Which pop sensation is shining less brightly these days? An eating disorder is the obvious culprit, given the up-and-comer’s increasingly frail looks. On a recent night out, however, club patrons noticed our star making frequent trips to the bathroom and returning with a little more sparkle each time.
“This one’s obviously not me,” Adam says wearily to his publicist at their hastily arranged meeting. “I’m not frail, for fuck’s sake, and I’m not doing meth or coke or whatever they’re hinting at. Not to mention that I haven’t been out to any clubs since I got home.”
“Probably some Disney princess turned wild child,” Roger agrees. He takes a sip of his soy latte before continuing apologetically, “A few commenters on the site mentioned your name, though. It’s the phrasing, the shining and sparkling thing.”
Adam waves away the biscotti Roger holds out to him, with thanks. There’s no one who isn’t bent on feeding him these days. “Funny how successful branding can come back to bite you in the ass.”
“Isn’t it? Management is making noises about increasing your visibility, showing everyone that you’re shining as brightly as ever. That’s not necessary, in my opinion. The gossip blogs are getting some mileage out of your weight loss, but I wouldn’t call it bad publicity. A lot of them are complimentary about your-- ” Roger consults a sheaf of printouts. “‘Newly svelte look,’ ‘rock-star leanness,’ and oh, somebody’s high, ‘prowling feline grace.’”
“That’s almost worse. I’d rather not be some impressionable kid’s thinspiration. Or come across as a hypocrite, advocating self-acceptance while I secretly crash diet myself into a smaller pair of jeans.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that just yet.” Roger radiates sympathetic understanding over his cup. “You should be fine if you keep reminding everyone that you’ve been touring on a nonstop schedule since June. Just don’t use the word exhaustion. By now the public’s figured out that it’s the go-to PR cover for everything from addiction to anorexia. You don’t want to raise any Lindsay Lohan connotations.”
“Yeah, God forbid. Twitter is my best friend, I guess.”
“Keep it light, the way you do so well. It’ll all resolve itself soon anyway, right? The tour is over, you’ve got plenty of downtime to catch up on your sleep and eat ice cream.” Roger smiles encouragingly. “And polish up your shine.”
Adam pushes away his untouched mocha. “Sure, I can do that.”
--
The withdrawal wasn’t as brutal as he’d expected. After the ride home from LAX, he’d ditched his bags in the foyer, turned off his phone, and gone straight to bed. When he woke up, muddled and blinking in what-where-when confusion, the windows were brilliant with the sunshine of a new day already half-gone. He’d made some calls, ordered in Thai and picked at it, opened the French doors to banish the stale air of a house unoccupied for more than three months. Waited to crash, or to return to normal. He’s still waiting.
He turns down all the invitations to parties and openings. One of these days he’ll make a salon appointment, hit Robertson and let the paps catch him shopping and looking normal and un-frail. For now, he goes out only to reconnect with friends. His closest confidantes, the ones who know, take one look at him and diagnose lovesickness. “Is everything all right with your boy?” they ask, eyes full of compassion, ready to listen and lend a shoulder and cry for his heartbreak. And it’s such a relief to be able to speak freely, he finds himself getting animated, sparkling, even, gushing about how Kris supports him and gets him and holds his hand from eight states away, about the Radiohead cover Kris did in Grand Rapids and the tank top he wore in St. Louis. Danielle or Alisan or Scarlett beaming at him across the table in whatever restaurant or coffeehouse or vegan café he’s been dragged out to, I’m so happy for you, Finally, No one deserves this more than you.
--
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
The water-bearer’s compass rarely fails, and never for long. Be on guard, however, against over-reliance on your inner lodestar. For all your prized independence, it’s balance you desire above all, and balance must come from without as well as within. Where you trust, don’t be afraid to follow.
--
“Did I wake you up?”
The enforced darkness of the blackout curtains is disorienting. Cocooned in the sheets--his own sheets, he’s not over the novelty of that--Adam squints at his phone. One-thirteen p.m. He has a hazy memory of waking up around eleven and choosing more sleep over coffee. “Just hibernating,” he says as brightly as he can.
Kris’s heartiness sounds just as forced. “Feels awesome, doesn’t it? I’ve barely even gone out. All I do is watch football and let my mom feed me. She can’t wait to get her hands on you, by the way. She’s promised-- ” he drops his voice suspensefully “ --that there will be cake.”
The expectant pause goes on a beat too long before Adam picks up his cue. “Aww, yay. Your mom is the best. You know I’m a big fan of her work.”
“So, uh. I did manage to go through the boxes of stuff I’ve got in storage. I’m thinking I’ll just donate it all to charity or something. A fresh start sounds good.”
Transparent, Adam thinks. Kris is reassuring him, and maybe giving the finger to fate while he’s at it. No more surviving on one day and when this is over. He’s handing Adam a guarantee of their future, in the form of details so prosaic they can only be real. “If you change your mind, there’s plenty of room.”
“Even closet space?”
Adam plays along. “For five plaid shirts? I’ll have to check. Probably.”
“Cool, then I can buy another one.” In a different tone, he says, “Adam . . . I can come out there now. I want to.”
Saying no is easier than it once would’ve been. “We’re almost there, Kris. Who knows how it’ll go down--I don’t think management knows, in spite of all their dire predictions. That’s their job, to anticipate the worst. But we shouldn’t take any unnecessary risks.”
Abandoning all pretense of casualness, Kris says, pleading, “Then stop freaking me out, OK? Eat something, and . . . I don’t even know, that’s what’s really getting to me. Just don’t say everything’s fine when it’s not. Let me help you.”
“I will, on all counts. Stop worrying. That goes for your mom, too.” The helpless quality of Kris’s silence tells Adam he’s not buying it. Adam knows he can look forward to more conversations like this, anxious on Kris’s side, pacifying on his own.
Before they hang up, Kris asks, obviously striving for normalcy, “Is Courtney still keeping in touch?”
“I haven’t been checking. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
--
Adam Lambert: Wasting Away?
Friends are expressing concern over the openly gay rocker’s mysterious weight loss, the National Enquirer can reveal.
The guyliner-loving star flaunted a healthy physique at the start of his summer Glam Nation tour. Now, mere months later, the dramatic change in his appearance is causing speculation.
“He looks like he could be ill,” says an insider. “I don’t think he was trying to lose weight. It was pretty sudden.”
Some fear the flamboyant singer’s excessive lifestyle of clubbing and partying might be to blame.
“I’m single and mingling,” Lambert was quoted as saying in July. “Nothing wrong with sampling what’s out there. I’m just having fun.”
Lambert, 28, grabbed the spotlight with his powerhouse pipes and theatrical flair on American Idol’s eighth season, where he lost out to fresh-faced Southerner Kris Allen.
Later that year, at the American Music Awards, he earned notoriety with a shocking performance that featured a controversial same-sex kiss . . .
“We can’t sue,” reports Gareth, Simon’s second-in-command. “Legal says it’s not libel. They skated close to the line but didn’t cross it.”
“They just used every fucking codeword in the book,” Adam says dully. Except for the insinuation of the gay disease, it’s nothing he doesn’t get on a regular basis. There’s no reason why flamboyant should have the blunt impact of fag on a bigot’s sign. The Enquirer isn’t out to stigmatize him, just to make a buck. The stigma is a side effect. Nothing personal.
He reserves the right to take insults personally, coded or otherwise. “Can I make a statement?”
The suits are shaking their heads. “We don’t want to give this any more airtime,” one of them answers. “Even if we had the option, a lawsuit probably wouldn’t be the way to go. Better to not acknowledge it at all.”
It’s always better to speak up, Adam knows. Even if it’s wasted effort, even if it serves to spread the story, he should call them on their exploitative bullshit. Yet he hasn’t composed a rebuttal. He’s not preparing to launch a series of scathing tweets. Ironic, after all the times Neil has urged him not to feed the trolls, all the times his dad has reiterated that there’s no shame in walking away from a pointless fight. This one has a point--the truth, which is its own reason--but for once nobody has to hold him back. Maybe he’s reached a new level of zen in dealing with fame.
The strategy session isn’t over. Gareth turns to Adam and says grimly, “We’ve got to do some damage control. It was bad enough when the rumors were about extreme dieting and coke use. You need to make a public appearance and show everyone you’re not on your deathbed.” He pauses. “You’re not, are you?”
It could be insensitive humor or even solicitude. More likely it’s concern for 19’s investment. Nothing personal here either. But aren’t you guys supposed to be on my side, too, not just your own? “No,” he says brusquely.
Before he leaves, they line up a red-carpet event for him, the premiere of some romantic comedy. “Don’t mention the Enquirer story,” is Gareth’s parting edict. “If a reporter brings it up, laugh like it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever heard.”
--
None of his rock star alter ego’s clothes fit. The lasciviously tight pants slide low on his hips; the embellished jackets overshoot their closures across his chest. His stylist, sympathetic, makes an emergency housecall with a rack of designer pieces, all his favorite labels. Sleek extravagant leathers, a biker bar’s worth of studs. He opts for a plain black suit, uneasy, for once, at the prospect of being an attention magnet.
Surveying himself dispassionately in the mirror, Adam can’t find much fault with what he sees. He’s thin for his frame but hardly emaciated. He’d weighed less in his early 20s, in the phase when he sort of was the person he gets mistaken for now, decorative and preening. And battling a dozen insecurities behind the I’m-fabulous facade, of course.
He’d look good, in that high-strung Hollywood way, if not for the lack of luster that’s never been him. No amount of Dolce & Gabbana can camouflage the invisible but dulling overlay, the flatness in his expression where there should be a spark.
As he lines his eyes, he notices indifferently that his black polish is chipped at the edges. Even with unlimited free time at his disposal, he didn’t bother to get a manicure this week. Too late to do anything about it now. Besides, he’s earned the right to relax on the image front for a while.
He’s never realized how much effort is involved in smiling, all those facial muscles resisting upward movement. As he poses on the carpet, shouts of his name fly like a hail of shrill projectiles. There are far bigger stars here, but he surpasses them all as a trending topic, and as a target. He turns right and left for the cameras, holding up under fire.
His readiness with a quote hasn’t deserted him. “I’ve been immersed in touring for months. Maybe people who sit at a computer all day don’t realize what’s involved in that.” It feels good to administer a slap on the wrist, however mild. “There’s a lot of sweat, a lot of hard work. It can be exhausting.” Shit, that word. “But it’s the most amazing experience, a privilege.”
“One more,” he says in an undertone to Lane. Just a few minutes between him and a nice cushiony reclining chair. No one will notice if he dozes through the cutesy bickering of Jennifer Aniston and the guy from Mad Men.
He’s delivering his sixth variation on the same soundbite when what’s-her-name from Extra breaks in to coo, “I think an old friend might be trying to get your attention.”
He turns politely, hand raised to wave to someone he met at an industry function or awards show. And freezes. The reporter is simpering, asking a question that might as well be in a foreign language for all he can process it. He’s shaking, that’s how he knows he can move again, and then he’s deserting her.
Improbably, incredibly, maybe once if you’re lucky, life can be a scene from a movie. Adam believes now. Star-crossed lovers can push their way through an unheeding crowd, eyes only for each other, to meet in the middle, reunited at last. He doesn’t play the scene to its cinematic conclusion. He’s too stunned to figure out whether it’s safe to hug Kris. He can only stand arrested, staring, all his devotion flushed out of hiding.
“You were in Arkansas,” he says lamely. Go to the ends of the earth for you. . . He can hear the soundtrack playing.
Kris lifts his shoulders, not even a full shrug. Trust him to underplay the grandest of all grand gestures. “I’m here.”
Adam is powerless to school his face, but there’s no time for it to matter. Kris does his self-incrimination one better by reaching out to take his hand. The contact is another shock, more full-frontal than the meeting of two palms has any right to be. Adam realizes, chasing tangents, that he left his gloves at home.
And now their private drama has an audience, cameras aiming their way and flashing in double time, shouts rising to a frenzied pitch. Kris holds on tighter, as though preventing Adam’s escape, as though making sure the gesture can’t be undone. Yes, it’s what you think, his grip states unequivocally. “Burn, bridges, burn,” he says out of the side of his mouth, daredevil smile not quite masking his impatience to be done with the formality of coming out in front of the whole world.
Lane appears at Adam’s elbow and addresses Kris, giving herself away as an accomplice. “Go on inside, hon. I’ll get you guys out before it starts.”
“No more than half an hour, OK? Less would be better.”
She comes through, dependable Lane, and they’re out of the theater and in the back of the limo within ten minutes. Seconds after that, Kris is wrapping his arms around Adam, sheltering rather than passionate, drawing him down to compensate for their height difference. Saying, muffled, into Adam’s hair, “I had to. I had to. Sometimes it’s not a choice.”
“I know, Kris. I’m so glad.” If Adam can only get closer, maybe he can believe it’s done. He presses his cheek to Kris’s too-fast heartbeat. “Were you scared?”
“No. I thought I might be. But that part of it didn’t seem important.” Kris’s hands mold to Adam’s back, warm through his jacket.
“You were so brave to do that alone. Let me welcome you properly. Welcome you home.” The implications of the word are so many, so dazzling and world-rearranging, Adam could get lost in the changed landscape.
“In a minute. I need this, OK?”
Adam settles for stroking Kris’s arm through his sleeve. I could hold you for a million years, to make you feel . . . The music is starting to fade. He closes his eyes. It’s safe in the quiet, too, peace unbroken except by the wet trickle down the side of his face. He brushes at it, groggy. Not his own tears.
“Kris-- ” Adam struggles upright.
“No, it’s all right. Hang on, I’ve got an idea.” Under Adam’s bemused gaze, Kris shoves through the cans in the bar and comes up with a Red Bull. He presses it into Adam’s hand, saying, “Drink this for me. Please.”
Adam isn’t going to refuse, not if it’s that important to Kris. He sips, grimacing at the cough-syrup taste, as Kris’s terse request through the intercom brings the limo to a stop in front of a CVS. “Five minutes,” Kris promises, scrambling out.
He’s back in less than that, clutching a plastic bag. “I got you A Five-Hour Energy shot, but it’s probably a bad idea to mix this crap. Maybe later.”
Hoping to make Kris smile, Adam says, “Couldn’t we have stopped at Starbucks instead?”
“Last time I checked, Starbucks doesn’t sell condoms and lube.”
“Oh.” Adam peeks into the bag. Condoms and lube, all right. “We’re going to?”
No smile, but a hint of flirtation. “I think we’ve held out long enough, don’t you?”
Adam isn’t sure. Neither of them will miss the trappings. They don’t have to sit on the same side of a booth in some low-lit jacket-and-tie restaurant, getting drunk on wine and expectation. Though he intends to do that, soon, and to hold Kris’s hand under the table--no, on the table--and to throw in a thousand dollars’ worth of candlelight and rose petals just to see Kris’s reaction. Kris will laugh, delighting in how over the top it is, how Adam, and understanding exactly what Adam means by it.
It can wait. But right now he feels capable of letting Kris down in the most basic of ways. After all that buildup, all that banking of potential. He opens the bag again, with some half-formed notion of finding guidance inside. “How’d you know what kind?”
“That magazine that got all TMI with you last year.”
“And you remembered?”
“I remember a lot of things.” Kris’s voice cracks without warning. “Your eyes, Adam.” Before Adam can move in to comfort him, he’s grabbing a cocktail napkin and swiping at his own. “OK, screw that. Are you feeling any more alert?”
“A little,” Adam lies. There’s a buzz from the caffeine, but it’s just a shiny lacquer over the thick layer of fatigue. He straightens his back so he won’t be tempted to sink into the padded leather, just let gravity take him down into Kris’s lap. “Tell me what else you remember.”
“Um, the night we stayed up smoking by the pool. You know the night I’m thinking of. I wish we hadn’t stopped.”
“Mmm.”
“There was that time I found you crashed out in my bunk last summer. Because you missed me, you said.”
“I did.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t just easier than climbing up?” Kris is making a game effort. “I was only gone for an hour.”
Adam curls his fingers, nails biting into his palm, bracing. “No, it smelled like you.”
“So you said. In front of Danny and Matt.”
Kris keeps talking, pausing only to tip the driver when they reach Adam’s house. “I never thought I’d have to do all the work in a conversation with you. Maybe I should be taking advantage of you, getting you to spill your secrets.”
“I don’t think I have any secrets, now that you’ve held my hand in front of E! News.” On the stairs, Kris’s guiding hand at the small of his back returns all of last summer to him in one tactile memory.
“You’ve got a few, but I know them already. Like, I know you wanted me to win.” Kris pulls Adam through the nearest doorway and into one of the guest rooms. “You still listening?”
“Always, Kris.”
“That’s another thing. You always did. Like nobody else ever had. Like you didn’t want to miss a word I said.”
“That’s how it’s supposed to work,” Adam says meaningfully, trying to reciprocate. It’s not the happiest allusion to make, on second thought, but Kris is preoccupied with stripping off the dress shirt and pants that are obviously fresh from a suitcase. There’s no break in his commentary, no opening for Adam to drift through. “Don’t judge, I had like twenty minutes. It was either shower off the airplane smell or break out the iron.” As an afterthought, he pulls off his wedding ring and lets it drop to the carpet before going to work on Adam’s tie. “Where’s your jewelry? You’re not wearing a single glittery thing tonight.”
“I guess I forgot.”
“Oh.” Kris finally goes quiet. His deft musician’s fingers, incapable of clumsiness, stumble on Adam’s buttons. His telltale face betrays anticipation--not the pleasurable kind. “Hey, are you nervous?” Adam asks in surprise, roused from his docile stupor. “Don’t be nervous, not with me.”
“You’re barely here, Adam, I can’t help it.” The picture he makes, kneeling naked to yank at Adam’s boots, should be irresistible to Adam’s pouncing urges. “When I was in college, the freshman guys had to attend this date rape seminar. The gist of it was, get consent every step of the way. Can you even-- ”
Adam has never seen Kris skittish like this. “Kris-- Of course you can do whatever you want. You can fuck me, if you’d rather.” It’s a selfishly appealing thought--to let Kris go on taking care of him, all the way to the end.
But it gets the most emphatic no he’s ever heard from Kris. “That’s not going to-- ” Kris huffs out a tense breath. “OK. I want you to kiss me. That’s always a good place to start.”
They lie down on the bed, Adam gratefully, Kris tentatively. Kris seems hesitant even to touch him, so Adam cups his cheek and sets out to prove his voluntary participation. He can do this.
The full lower lip distracts him, coaxing an unequal share of his attention. He nips and sucks at it, not quite hard enough to hurt, until he hits the lucky combination; he’s in, Kris’s tongue licking at his, inviting him further. This is what home means. No intrusive awareness of time running down. No desperation. It’s a daydream, gently unfolding.
“Hold me down,” is Kris’s next request, straight out of Adam’s fantasies, and Adam obediently pins his wrists to the mattress. Kris swallows, the motion of his throat drawing Adam’s gaze, and then, before he realizes his own intention, his mouth. Kris arches back into the pillow and says, “Yeah, like that,” a little slurred, so Adam gives him a collar of careful bites.
“Flowery,” Adam notes, nuzzling at the hint of hotel soap.
“If you don’t like it, I can sweat it off, no problem.”
Kris’s small red nipples deserve Adam’s mouth too. He slides lower, skin to skin, contact lull warming into blissful languor. Again, that sighing sense of home. He comes to rest there, on Kris’s smooth chest, and waits for Kris to complete the ritual, to stroke a hand over his hair. If you told me the blue is natural, Kris once teased, I’d believe you.
“Adam,” Kris says sharply.
“Am I too heavy?” Sitting up clears his head a little. “Oh. I’m sorry, Kris.”
“You’re not too heavy. It’s OK,” Kris says quickly, as Adam reaches out. “But I need you to stay with me.” He’s turning onto his stomach. “Can you grab the lube? Good. I want your fingers.”
Adam feels heavy, his body a separate weight, ungainly. He has to concentrate to make it obey. Kris helps, his voice taking on a high-stakes calm, as though he’s talking Adam through performing surgery. “Start with two, I can handle it. Yeah, that’s, that works. I’ve gotten pretty good at this, but you . . . ”
Adam circles with three, waiting for permission. “Yeah, go on,” Kris encourages him, strained now. “And, uh, talk to me. I don’t mean like, porn talk. Unless you want to,” he amends, taxing Adam’s brain with reconciling adorable and getting finger-fucked. “Just talk to me.”
Here’s something familiar, steadying. “You’re doing so well, Kris.” Desire moves in him sluggishly, even with the suggestive stretch around his fingers, the hot tight accommodation he’s making for himself, but pride is strong. “You really were made for this. For me. You’re going to take me just fine. It’s going to be-- ” What can he truthfully promise? “It’s going to be us, finally.”
“Now.” Kris pulls off Adam’s fingers with a groan, then groans again as Adam reflexively slides them back in, deeper, twisting. “I want you to put it in me now,” he says, ragged but determined. Still rescuing Adam. “Give it to me like this.”
Adam had taken it for granted that their first time would be face to face. “Like this,” he repeats, trusting in Kris. His meticulousness with the lube has Kris darting a worried glance over his shoulder and asking, “Are you-- ?”
“Yes. Very.” One part of him, at least, is as unflagging as ever. His old spontaneous laugh surfaces, and that’s heartening too. “Just warming this stuff up.” Satisfied, he rubs along the cleft of Kris’s ass to announce his presence. Kris is so finely made, classical lines on a compact scale. Poised where it is, Adam’s cock looks obscenely huge.
Undeterred, Kris grinds hard against the bed before lifting up to meet him. Presenting his ass to him. “I want you to watch us.” It ends on a labored exhale as Adam guides himself past the point of no return. “Watch . . . what you’re doing to me.”
Watching overloads Adam’s senses, the visual preempting the pleasure. He’s waited too long to experience this from the outside. Disobeying just this once, he lifts his eyes to the tense curve of Kris’s back, the listening tilt of his head. It’s too much in a different way; it pierces him where he has no defense.
Instinct stirs. He takes hold of Kris’s hips and tugs, a slow underwater drag, and Kris’s next instruction stalls at oh. When it comes, in a shocked rush, it’s more breath than words. “I want you to move, God, you’re so-- I want you to, I want you to fuck me, Adam, fuck me.”
He’s there, he’s doing it, living it in real time. Smoothly, inevitably, a corresponding bright space opens up inside him, a pristine sky behind parting clouds. A certainty that he was made for this, for giving, not as much as Kris can ask, but as much as he can receive. Kris drops his head onto his folded arms, no demand left in him, and Adam thrusts faster to keep up with his muffled cries. Let go. Let me, now. “Kris,” he pants, marveling at the seamlessness of the two of them. “Feel me.”
“Adam, Adam-- ” Kris’s shoulders stiffen, resisting; and Adam closes a hand around his already spurting cock and fucks him through it, hard, lavishing, on and on.
Kris is incoherent when Adam rolls him over, his chest heaving, wild eyes imploring. “No, you didn’t-- Keep going, Adam, please-- ”
Adam kisses him first, greeting and gratitude and a complete set of vows, lingering over it. “It was a beautiful view,” he says tenderly. “But I love this one even more.”
He’s miles from done, nowhere near ready for after, but he’s glowing, lit up like Las Vegas, neon in his veins. He pushes back in, past the quick sweet give, and then it’s all Kris, his Kris, surging up under him in new longing. “Let’s start all over. I want to start all over.”
--End--
Note: Chaining and feathering are terms from palmistry, as I recently learned from anya7lee. They refer to markings that indicate flirtatiousness and inconstancy in love when they appear on the heart line. (Though the interpretation varies a bit depending on where Google takes you.) In my borrowing, they're a metaphor for Adam's circumstances, not his capacity for faithfulness.
Song lyrics quoted are from “Doll Parts” by Hole, “Utopia” by Goldfrapp, “Superstition” by Stevie Wonder, “Rude Boy” by Rihanna, "To Make You Feel My Love” by Bob Dylan, and "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley. “Everyone gets the tattoo they deserve” is a line from an episode of The X-Files.