(no subject)
Title: Swansong
Author: estel_willow
Pairing: Kradam
Word Count: 1812
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Uh, not mine? Not real? Didn't happen? :)
Summary: Based off the prompt poppetawoppet requested here for a really angsty kiss.
He pushes up onto his tiptoes and presses his lips against Adam’s in a kiss that’s as much an I love you and Goodbye as anything.
Author’s Note: So, I should be working on my big bang. But I was browsing through the prompts post and saw this and my brain went “screw the big bang, write this!” so now I have to go wrestle my brain back under control ;) It’s not as angsty as I would have liked, but gotta run with what the muse demands :)
Also unbeta’d. *sheepish*
Feedback is <3!
“This isn’t going to work,” Kris is saying, but Adam can’t hear through the roaring of blood, the way it is pounding in his ears like it’s trying to deafen him. “Adam? Adam, look at me.”
Adam tries, he does, he tries to drag his eyes off the spot on the wall they focused on, tries to turn his attention to Kris because Kris demands it and Kris needs it and Kris deserves it and everything else Adam can’t give him. He wants stability and reassurance, he deserves someone to love him completely and totally without thoughts of anyone else. Adam isn’t that man. He wants to be, God does he want to be, but he can’t. He isn’t. He knew it was only a matter of time until Kris figured that out.
“Please, Adam, just- don’t make this harder than it already is.”
It doesn’t make it any easier to hear though. It doesn’t make it easier to know that Kris is done with him. Adam feels - irrationally - that Kris has stopped trying.
Anger swirls in the pit of Adam’s stomach. Don’t make this harder? “Harder for who, Kris? You or me? You think it’s easy?” His voice is a snarl, thick with hurt and indignation: Adam’s always been the one that leaves, never the other way around. No one has ever left Adam, not really, not even Brad. It was over long before Brad walked out, Adam had gone first in that relationship too.
He watches as Kris recoils a little, flinches in the face of Adam’s anger. Adam has never been angry with him before, frustrated yes, but never angry.
“Don’t do that,” Kris’ voice is soft, pacifying. It’s got that tone that Adam hates because it makes Adam feel like he’s the one in the wrong, that he’s the one who should be apologising and grovelling and begging Kris not to go. He’s never begged in his life. He’s not about to start now.
Kris is finishing up packing his bag, stuffing clothes into it with slightly more force than is necessary and there’s a tight set to the line of his shoulders. He’s hurting and he’s upset and the way his lips are pressed together show that he’s still trying to be the stoic one. Adam knows he’ll cry later, but right now he’s so outraged that Kris would just give up on them so easily.
He doesn’t realise that he’s said it aloud until Kris turns on him.
“You think that’s what I’m doing, Adam?” he asks, a sharp tone to the edges of his voice like what Adam’s said has finally drawn a reaction, an emotion out of Kris. “You think I’m giving up on us?” He laughs then, bitter and harsh and everything that he isn’t. It’s twisted and jaded and he looks so hurt and confused and resigned that Adam wonders if he’s missed their relationship falling apart.
“What is it then?” Adam asks, the anger speaking and harshening his tone. He watches Kris flinch again. He’s a bad person. “If it’s not giving up? You don’t give a shit, clearly you don’t otherwise you’d not be leaving.” There’s a rational voice in his mind screaming at him to stop talking, to just stop. That this can be fixed if only they actually talk about it and try, but Adam’s anger keeps talking, his wounded pride snapping at the fact that Kris would leave him. Them.
“Adam, I left my wife for you,” Kris points out and Adam sneers at him, interrupting.
“Oh yeah, and you’ve never stopped holding that over my head. You left Katy - who you weren’t happy with anyway - for me. And only for me, not because you wanted to leave her or anything, no that’s not the case at all.”
Kris just sighs. It’s obvious to him that he can’t win this and all he has to do is leave, but he can’t. He can’t quite walk out that door without Adam knowing.
“I love you, Adam,” he says and shakes his head, “God only knows why.” And he does, he knows why: Adam’s his best friend, the closest thing he has to a soulmate if he believed in that kind of thing. Adam understands him, or at least so Kris thought. But Adam can’t give up what he loves and he finds it difficult to compromise and Kris can’t live like that. “But I’m not a trophy. I’m not someone you can take out and kiss in public and cause a scandal.”
Adam just looks at him, hurt now filtering in through the edges of his expression. Kris continues anyway, not looking at Adam because he knows it he does then he’ll stop and they’ll never discuss this.
“I’ve tried to be what you want me to be, but I’m not the guy that’ll go out with you and do that stuff. I don’t like it, I never did it with Katy. I didn’t like kissing her in front of our friends and family on the day we got married, let alone in front of cameras where the pictures would get posted on the internet.
“I can’t be that person for you, Adam. I hope you find him, but I’m- I’m not him. And it’s obvious that you feel the same way.”
Of course they both know what Kris is talking about. He’s talking about Tommy, the shows and the flirtations for the fans, the way that Adam spends a lot of time with his bass guitarist on and off stage and the way that they’re close. Too close. The way that Kris and Adam used to be before Tommy appeared and shattered the dream.
“Don’t bring him into this,” Adam warns and Kris just zips up his bag. He doesn’t have a lot of stuff at Adam’s house, Adam realises suddenly. Kris has been moving it out steadily over the last week. It means his mind was made up long before this conversation. It makes Adam angry again. “He’s got nothing to do with it.”
“But he’s the one you’ll call when I leave here,” Kris points out softly and Adam hates that he’s right. “He’s the one that you’ll ask to come over and you’ll have a drink and a joint with and then everything in your world will be okay.”
One thing Kris always does - and it always infuriates Adam - is put himself down. He underestimates his own importance in every way. Particularly when it came to what he means to Adam.
“It’s okay,” Kris says finally and the look in his eyes tells Adam that it isn’t alright, but that maybe it will be one day. Just not yet. He stands in front of Adam, toes touching. The contract between their shoes is as stark as it ever was. Old, battered converse kissing pointed snakeskin boots. Chalk and cheese.
He reaches up, hand touching Adam’s cheek and stubbornly, Adam doesn’t move. He doesn’t lean into it, he doesn’t turn his head to press a kiss to Kris’ guitar-callused palm. He doesn’t even breathe in because he knows that if he does, he’ll realise that maybe this is the last time he’ll be standing like this and all because of his own mistakes.
But were they his mistakes, really? Was it his fault? He doesn’t think so, that cool anger and hurt twisting and tumbling inside him and the indignation that Kris is trying to lay the blame on him for this. If he had been thinking straight he would see that Kris isn’t. Kris is, in his own way, apologising for not being good enough, gay enough, for Adam.
“Adam,” Kris murmurs and it sounds like heartbreak. He pushes up onto his tiptoes and presses his lips against Adam’s in a kiss that’s as much an I love you and Goodbye as anything. It’s barely there, just a soft kiss but Adam’s hands lift and clutch at Kris’ shirt, slide up to cup his face as he kisses back.
It’s desperate then, it becomes I love you and Don’t leave me and I’m so sorry. The biting of Kris’ lower lip screams I’ll try harder and the soft soothing curl of Kris’ tongue merely replies It wouldn’t work. Hands fist in clothes and hair as the two men kiss for the last time, trying to remember everything about this moment and every kiss that has come before.
Committing things to memory is always hard, musically neither man has a problem. They can remember the chords and the notes, the sweeping of the lyrics, the verse and the bridge. Adam’s always improvised, Kris has always stuck to what he knows, but somehow they made it work. But this kiss feels discordant, final.
It is their swansong.
When it breaks, Kris’ eyes were shining. He looks down and fists his fingers in the strap of his bag. He doesn’t say anything, he can’t. He just puts it over his shoulder and steps around Adam who is standing there feeling the cold space that Kris has left behind.
Kris picks up his guitar and looks back when he reaches the front door. Adam has moved from the bedroom to the lounge, his feet making the steps mechanically. Adam can’t remember taking them.
“Kris-” He opens his mouth to ask Kris to stay, to beg him to reconsider because they’re good together. They can make this work. “Kris, please.”
Kris just shakes his head. “It’s over, Adam.” His voice is tight, pained and strained and at least Adam knows that Kris is finding this whole thing just as hard. “It’s- I’ll see you around.”
The key is dropped in the pot beside the front door. Kris’ key no longer.
The apartment is silent when the door shuts behind Kris and Adam doesn’t know what to do with himself. He can’t breathe: there isn’t enough air in the world right now and the pain in his chest rivals the pain he felt when Brad walked out of his life. That had been over before too.
His fingers fumble for his iphone. He looks back at the front door before he pushes Kris’ words aside and manages to send a desperate text.
Glitterbaby, need u 2 come over. Kris left.
In that moment, with the taste of Kris still lingering on his lips, Adam hates him.
The night it still young. Adam thinks maybe he’ll be alright. When he wakes up alone the next morning, though, he knows that he’ll feel empty and broken, but he figures he can cross that bridge when he comes to it.
He sinks into the chair, fingers in his hair as he just waits. Tommy will be there soon. They will have a drink and a joint and for a little while, at least, Adam will forget.
Author: estel_willow
Pairing: Kradam
Word Count: 1812
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Uh, not mine? Not real? Didn't happen? :)
Summary: Based off the prompt poppetawoppet requested here for a really angsty kiss.
He pushes up onto his tiptoes and presses his lips against Adam’s in a kiss that’s as much an I love you and Goodbye as anything.
Author’s Note: So, I should be working on my big bang. But I was browsing through the prompts post and saw this and my brain went “screw the big bang, write this!” so now I have to go wrestle my brain back under control ;) It’s not as angsty as I would have liked, but gotta run with what the muse demands :)
Also unbeta’d. *sheepish*
Feedback is <3!
“This isn’t going to work,” Kris is saying, but Adam can’t hear through the roaring of blood, the way it is pounding in his ears like it’s trying to deafen him. “Adam? Adam, look at me.”
Adam tries, he does, he tries to drag his eyes off the spot on the wall they focused on, tries to turn his attention to Kris because Kris demands it and Kris needs it and Kris deserves it and everything else Adam can’t give him. He wants stability and reassurance, he deserves someone to love him completely and totally without thoughts of anyone else. Adam isn’t that man. He wants to be, God does he want to be, but he can’t. He isn’t. He knew it was only a matter of time until Kris figured that out.
“Please, Adam, just- don’t make this harder than it already is.”
It doesn’t make it any easier to hear though. It doesn’t make it easier to know that Kris is done with him. Adam feels - irrationally - that Kris has stopped trying.
Anger swirls in the pit of Adam’s stomach. Don’t make this harder? “Harder for who, Kris? You or me? You think it’s easy?” His voice is a snarl, thick with hurt and indignation: Adam’s always been the one that leaves, never the other way around. No one has ever left Adam, not really, not even Brad. It was over long before Brad walked out, Adam had gone first in that relationship too.
He watches as Kris recoils a little, flinches in the face of Adam’s anger. Adam has never been angry with him before, frustrated yes, but never angry.
“Don’t do that,” Kris’ voice is soft, pacifying. It’s got that tone that Adam hates because it makes Adam feel like he’s the one in the wrong, that he’s the one who should be apologising and grovelling and begging Kris not to go. He’s never begged in his life. He’s not about to start now.
Kris is finishing up packing his bag, stuffing clothes into it with slightly more force than is necessary and there’s a tight set to the line of his shoulders. He’s hurting and he’s upset and the way his lips are pressed together show that he’s still trying to be the stoic one. Adam knows he’ll cry later, but right now he’s so outraged that Kris would just give up on them so easily.
He doesn’t realise that he’s said it aloud until Kris turns on him.
“You think that’s what I’m doing, Adam?” he asks, a sharp tone to the edges of his voice like what Adam’s said has finally drawn a reaction, an emotion out of Kris. “You think I’m giving up on us?” He laughs then, bitter and harsh and everything that he isn’t. It’s twisted and jaded and he looks so hurt and confused and resigned that Adam wonders if he’s missed their relationship falling apart.
“What is it then?” Adam asks, the anger speaking and harshening his tone. He watches Kris flinch again. He’s a bad person. “If it’s not giving up? You don’t give a shit, clearly you don’t otherwise you’d not be leaving.” There’s a rational voice in his mind screaming at him to stop talking, to just stop. That this can be fixed if only they actually talk about it and try, but Adam’s anger keeps talking, his wounded pride snapping at the fact that Kris would leave him. Them.
“Adam, I left my wife for you,” Kris points out and Adam sneers at him, interrupting.
“Oh yeah, and you’ve never stopped holding that over my head. You left Katy - who you weren’t happy with anyway - for me. And only for me, not because you wanted to leave her or anything, no that’s not the case at all.”
Kris just sighs. It’s obvious to him that he can’t win this and all he has to do is leave, but he can’t. He can’t quite walk out that door without Adam knowing.
“I love you, Adam,” he says and shakes his head, “God only knows why.” And he does, he knows why: Adam’s his best friend, the closest thing he has to a soulmate if he believed in that kind of thing. Adam understands him, or at least so Kris thought. But Adam can’t give up what he loves and he finds it difficult to compromise and Kris can’t live like that. “But I’m not a trophy. I’m not someone you can take out and kiss in public and cause a scandal.”
Adam just looks at him, hurt now filtering in through the edges of his expression. Kris continues anyway, not looking at Adam because he knows it he does then he’ll stop and they’ll never discuss this.
“I’ve tried to be what you want me to be, but I’m not the guy that’ll go out with you and do that stuff. I don’t like it, I never did it with Katy. I didn’t like kissing her in front of our friends and family on the day we got married, let alone in front of cameras where the pictures would get posted on the internet.
“I can’t be that person for you, Adam. I hope you find him, but I’m- I’m not him. And it’s obvious that you feel the same way.”
Of course they both know what Kris is talking about. He’s talking about Tommy, the shows and the flirtations for the fans, the way that Adam spends a lot of time with his bass guitarist on and off stage and the way that they’re close. Too close. The way that Kris and Adam used to be before Tommy appeared and shattered the dream.
“Don’t bring him into this,” Adam warns and Kris just zips up his bag. He doesn’t have a lot of stuff at Adam’s house, Adam realises suddenly. Kris has been moving it out steadily over the last week. It means his mind was made up long before this conversation. It makes Adam angry again. “He’s got nothing to do with it.”
“But he’s the one you’ll call when I leave here,” Kris points out softly and Adam hates that he’s right. “He’s the one that you’ll ask to come over and you’ll have a drink and a joint with and then everything in your world will be okay.”
One thing Kris always does - and it always infuriates Adam - is put himself down. He underestimates his own importance in every way. Particularly when it came to what he means to Adam.
“It’s okay,” Kris says finally and the look in his eyes tells Adam that it isn’t alright, but that maybe it will be one day. Just not yet. He stands in front of Adam, toes touching. The contract between their shoes is as stark as it ever was. Old, battered converse kissing pointed snakeskin boots. Chalk and cheese.
He reaches up, hand touching Adam’s cheek and stubbornly, Adam doesn’t move. He doesn’t lean into it, he doesn’t turn his head to press a kiss to Kris’ guitar-callused palm. He doesn’t even breathe in because he knows that if he does, he’ll realise that maybe this is the last time he’ll be standing like this and all because of his own mistakes.
But were they his mistakes, really? Was it his fault? He doesn’t think so, that cool anger and hurt twisting and tumbling inside him and the indignation that Kris is trying to lay the blame on him for this. If he had been thinking straight he would see that Kris isn’t. Kris is, in his own way, apologising for not being good enough, gay enough, for Adam.
“Adam,” Kris murmurs and it sounds like heartbreak. He pushes up onto his tiptoes and presses his lips against Adam’s in a kiss that’s as much an I love you and Goodbye as anything. It’s barely there, just a soft kiss but Adam’s hands lift and clutch at Kris’ shirt, slide up to cup his face as he kisses back.
It’s desperate then, it becomes I love you and Don’t leave me and I’m so sorry. The biting of Kris’ lower lip screams I’ll try harder and the soft soothing curl of Kris’ tongue merely replies It wouldn’t work. Hands fist in clothes and hair as the two men kiss for the last time, trying to remember everything about this moment and every kiss that has come before.
Committing things to memory is always hard, musically neither man has a problem. They can remember the chords and the notes, the sweeping of the lyrics, the verse and the bridge. Adam’s always improvised, Kris has always stuck to what he knows, but somehow they made it work. But this kiss feels discordant, final.
It is their swansong.
When it breaks, Kris’ eyes were shining. He looks down and fists his fingers in the strap of his bag. He doesn’t say anything, he can’t. He just puts it over his shoulder and steps around Adam who is standing there feeling the cold space that Kris has left behind.
Kris picks up his guitar and looks back when he reaches the front door. Adam has moved from the bedroom to the lounge, his feet making the steps mechanically. Adam can’t remember taking them.
“Kris-” He opens his mouth to ask Kris to stay, to beg him to reconsider because they’re good together. They can make this work. “Kris, please.”
Kris just shakes his head. “It’s over, Adam.” His voice is tight, pained and strained and at least Adam knows that Kris is finding this whole thing just as hard. “It’s- I’ll see you around.”
The key is dropped in the pot beside the front door. Kris’ key no longer.
The apartment is silent when the door shuts behind Kris and Adam doesn’t know what to do with himself. He can’t breathe: there isn’t enough air in the world right now and the pain in his chest rivals the pain he felt when Brad walked out of his life. That had been over before too.
His fingers fumble for his iphone. He looks back at the front door before he pushes Kris’ words aside and manages to send a desperate text.
Glitterbaby, need u 2 come over. Kris left.
In that moment, with the taste of Kris still lingering on his lips, Adam hates him.
The night it still young. Adam thinks maybe he’ll be alright. When he wakes up alone the next morning, though, he knows that he’ll feel empty and broken, but he figures he can cross that bridge when he comes to it.
He sinks into the chair, fingers in his hair as he just waits. Tommy will be there soon. They will have a drink and a joint and for a little while, at least, Adam will forget.