Fic: Sam
Title: Sam
Pairing: Kris/Adam
Rating: PG-13
Length: 2,400 words
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not real. This is for fun only. No disrespect or offense meant to anyone.
Warnings: Babies! Also, there's something weird about this fic that I can't quite put my finger on. My dear online cookie did fix some of the weirdness, but still... a bit wonky for some reason.
Notes: This is for the "baby - adoption" square in my schmoop_bingo card. Possibly first in a series - because I have more baby prompts. *eyeroll*
Beta by cookie57.
Summary: When Kris calls from his latest humanitarian trip and tells Adam that he has kind of sort of maybe possibly accidentally adopted a baby girl, Adam laughs for ten minutes straight.
When Kris calls from his latest humanitarian trip and tells Adam that he has kind of sort of maybe possibly accidentally adopted a baby girl, Adam laughs for ten minutes straight.
Then he realizes Kris isn’t joking.
“Look, they just-I said she was a pretty girl, that’s all.”
Kris sounds distraught, but Adam is not in a forgiving mood. This ruins all of his carefully cultivated plans. “That’s all. How can that possibly be all?”
“Well.” Oh, Adam knows that tone. That tone means that Kris is wishing he could lie to Adam-but he so can’t. “I might have agreed with them when they said she needed a good home.” Adam sighs into the receiver. “But I didn’t say I would take her! There was no talk of me doing the adopting! It was just, like, a wish. A wish someone would adopt her, you know?”
Adam makes a pained sound and hits his forehead against his closet door. Repeatedly.
“But-she was sick. She had no one. And the orphanage is so over-crowded, they didn’t even have enough beds, let alone medicine, so I had to-you know, I had to. I just meant to take her to the doctor’s, and then there was some paperwork, but I thought it was just for the day!”
Adam glares at the glossy cherry wood of his closet door. It’s a wonder Kris hasn’t adopted a baby from every country he’s visited, really. Adam is never letting him go anywhere without a chaperon ever again.
“I did think it was a lot of paperwork for just one trip, but I thought it would be rude to ask,” Kris says sulkily.
Adam rolls his eyes. “Just-tell them it was a mistake. It’s not too late.”
“I can’t do that!” Kris exclaims, sounding even more panicked.
“No, seriously, you can,” Adam placates him. “No one has to know. Tell them to keep it quiet, and make a donation. A large one.”
“No! That’s not-! What would she think?”
“Who?”
“Sam! The baby! She’s a person! You can’t just return a person!”
Oh, really, now? “Well, you can’t just go and take one either, but apparently you did!”
Kris’ silence screams heartbreak. Sometimes, Adam hates the fact that he can read Kris’ silences. It sucks so hard when they’re the unhappy kind.
“I’ll . . . I’ll figure something out,” Kris says finally, tone soft and subdued. “I guess I’ll . . . talk to you later?”
Adam hits his forehead against the closet door one last time, and then wrenches it open. “Stop being stupid,” he tells Kris. “Sit tight and wait for me. I’ll be there in . . . I don’t even know. I’ll text you my flight info.”
Kris is silent again, but it’s a relieved silence this time. It makes Adam pack faster.
“Adam. Thank you,” Kris says earnestly. Adam’s hands want to reach through the line to give him a good shake. “But you really don’t have to leave everything for-”
“Oh, fuck off, Kristopher,” Adam says and hangs up on him.
He doesn’t have to leave everything his ass.
-
Adam arrives at the hotel, sweaty and sticky and tired, but seeing the delighted grin on Kris’ face makes it all better.
Almost.
“Adam,” Kris breathes and buries his face in Adam’s chest.
And okay, yeah, that really does make it all better. Adam holds on tight and inhales deeply. It’s been too long. He’s missed the way Kris smells. Except . . .
“You smell like puke.”
Kris pulls back, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. “Um. Yeah. She’s still a bit sick.”
Adam looks toward the corner Kris gestures to, and there she is. Sitting in a makeshift playpen, staring morosely at a bright red stuffed toy crab.
She is cute. Cute cheeks and a cute nose and a cute pout. How she manages to look gloomy with that combination is a mystery Adam can’t explain, but he thoroughly approves of it nonetheless.
“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Kris confides quietly. “I mean, I don’t even know what to do with her hair!”
That’s kind of obvious. The little girl has a head full of tight curls, and the pink hairclip Kris apparently tried to put them up with is clinging just barely to a stray lock hanging near her left cheek. Kris needs professional help.
“We’ll take her to Amanda’s when we’re back home. She’ll show you how to do it.”
Well, that settles it then. On the way here, Adam had focused on the thought that maybe he could still talk Kris out of this, but the second he stepped foot into the room, that thought went out the window. Kris looks at Sam the way he looks at his favorite guitar, only with a couple thousand times more force and panic-and Adam has never been good at telling him he can’t have something he wants.
Adam won’t let himself despair though. He’ll just have to adjust his plans. They’re still workable . . . more or less.
“Uh. That’s gonna take a while,” Kris says, looking away uncomfortably.
That doesn’t sound good. “You are not gonna be traveling around the world with a toddler in tow.”
“No!” Kris says. “I’m . . . gonna have to stay here . . . for six months.”
Adam stares at him, waiting for the punch line. Kris stares back.
“I have to. Says so in the paperwork.”
Adam follows Kris’ gaze to the desk in the corner, then looks back at Kris to find him staring nervously at Sam. A part of Adam wants to go over to that desk and burn the whole thing down to ashes, papers and all. Instead, he bites the inside of his cheek, fists his hands to his sides, and heads out to the balcony.
When Kris calls after him, Adam holds a fist up to say give me a second.
Or maybe it says, go fuck yourself.
It could go either way, really.
-
“I’m sorry. I never should have called you,” Kris says.
Adam grips the railing tight enough to hurt his palms and fails to bite back an incredulous sound.
Kris steps closer. “I shouldn’t have bothered you with this. I was just-”
Adam snorts and turns his head to glare at Kris. “You shouldn’t have bothered me?”
Kris nods, a bit unsure now.
“So you adopt a baby, move to another continent, and not only do you not tell me before, but you think you shouldn’t have even bothered me with it after?”
“That’s not what I-”
“Do you honestly have no clue? At all?” Adam lets go of the railing to cross his arms over his chest. He’s not just asking a rhetorical question here. At this point, he really wants to know the answer. He always knew Kris was a bit slow when it came to relationships, but this is just insulting.
“About what?” Kris asks.
Adam searches Kris’ eyes, hoping to find something-anything, but no, Kris is not even trying to be cute. He’s just . . . stupid. “You know what, never mind,” he says, straightening up his hunched shoulders and taking in a deep, calming breath. “It’s nothing.”
But now, of course, Kris won’t take his word for it. He stares at the side of Adam’s face, eyes squinting as if he’s trying to see through his skull, and after a couple of minutes, he says, “You said you wanted to talk when I got back.”
Adam snorts. In another life . . .
“What about?”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“Will you stop being an ass? This is kind of a crisis for me if you haven’t noticed-”
“See, that-that’s incredible.” Adam is spluttering; he’s furious, and he either draws blood with his words when he gets like this, or sounds completely incoherent.
“What is?” Kris yells, throwing up his arms.
“You! You-thinking that this is all about you!”
Kris chuckles humorlessly. “Yeah, I forgot it’s always about Adam Lambert. I accidentally adopt a baby, but it’s somehow still about you?”
Adam clamps his lips shut before he can retort. This isn’t going anywhere good. “I should go,” he says and heads back inside. Sam is lying on the carpet, head pillowed on her crab; Adam ignores her questioning look. His bag is still by the door, and he didn’t even take off his jacket. He’s ready to go in seconds.
He opens the door, but then turns back to say goodbye to Kris. They won’t be seeing each other for months. Just the thought of that is enough to give Adam stomach cramps, and he feels like crying, because-dammit, this was not how he had planned things!
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Kris asks, striding purposefully towards him. For a moment there, Adam thinks Kris is going to hit him, he looks so mad. “You came all this way to-”
Adam drops his bag, grabs Kris’ stupid red shirt, and cuts his words off with his lips. It’s a horrible kiss, dry lips meeting too hard, but that’s what he came here to do-well, it was supposed to go smoother and more romantic, but still-and he’s not boarding another transcontinental flight before he does it.
“There,” Adam says stupidly when he releases Kris.
Kris stumbles back a step and presses his fingers to his lips.
“That’s why it’s about me,” Adam says. “And you know it, so don’t give me that crap. I thought we were waiting, I thought we were on more or less the same page!”
“I don’t . . .” Kris stares at him with impossibly wide eyes. “I didn’t...”
Adam sighs, deflating a little. “I’ve been waiting, anyway,” he says wryly.
“But why?”
Adam blinks. “What do you mean why? Because I love you, that’s why.”
“I mean-why wait? I was there.”
“You were there, but you were married. And then you were divorced. And then you were sad. And then you were straight. And then you were dating. And then you were off saving kids-”
“Okay, okay,” Kris says, putting a hand on Adam’s flailing arm. “I get it. I just wish you had . . .”
He leaves the sentence hanging, and Adam hears the finality in his tone, the regret. Now it’s too late. He had planned to ask Kris to be with him-all the time, like he knew they both wanted. They could move in together, get a new house, one that would be theirs, but now Kris won’t even need a place in L.A. for months, and when he does, he’ll probably want one for himself and his daughter . . .
“Yeah,” Adam says, hiding a sniffle underneath the word. “Whatever.” He’ll hold his head up high and not shed a tear until he boards the goddamn plane. Then there’ll be booze. Lots and lots of booze. “I guess it’s just not meant to be or something.”
Kris frowns. “That’s bullshit.”
“No, bullshit would be going off and adopting a child without even considering how it would affect your-your-”
“It was an accident!”
“Oh, I guess that makes it okay then!”
“Will you ever shut up about that?”
“I don’t think so!”
“Bluh-hum-ka?”
They both turn to the baby, who’s managed to escape her playpen and is crawling towards them at a determined pace.
“She’s fast,” Adam observes.
“You have no idea.”
She holds her crab out to Adam-who takes it from her dutifully-and then starts climbing up Kris’ leg. Smiling down at her like a lunatic, Kris picks her up and settles her on his hip. She asks for her crab back as soon as she’s comfortable.
“Khum,” she says with a nod.
“You’re welcome?” Adam offers.
Kris grins at him.
They look so cute together; Adam kind of wants to take a picture. But then he remembers that he’s going back alone and decides that he probably doesn’t want a reminder of what he’s leaving behind.
“I guess I should . . .”
He picks up his bag; it feels much heavier than it did ten minutes ago. He tries to smile at Kris, and Kris seems to be attempting something similar himself, but they just end up grimacing at each other.
“I didn’t know,” Kris says hurriedly. “I thought you gave up a long time ago. I thought maybe-maybe you didn’t want to.” He shrugs.
“That’s because you’re an idiot,” Adam tells him, and determined to leave before he starts to cry or picks another fight, he turns around to go.
Kris grabs the handle of his bag and stops him.
“What?”
He licks his lips nervously and sneaks a glance at the baby who’s busy chewing on a claw. “You could stay?”
“I . . .”
“I can’t leave her now. I can’t. And I know you don’t want kids. But . . .” He shrugs. “Maybe you could at least-visit?”
Adam thinks about not wanting kids. It’s more like he never considered it, really. He could want kids. Maybe. It could happen. Then he thinks about the album he’s supposed to be promoting in a month, about the studio, his assistant, his agent . . . and realizes that he’s been leaning forward and now his lips are almost touching Kris’.
“Will it traumatize her if I kiss you now?” he mumbles.
“She’s nine months old,” Kris mumbles back.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means she won’t mind,” Kris says and pulls him down.
It goes much better than the first kiss. Kris’ lips immediately open under his, and he sighs into Adam’s mouth, welcoming Adam’s tongue and pressing even closer; it makes Adam want to push him up against a wall and do things to him that he’s pretty sure would traumatize the baby-nine months old or not. But then, it seems resisting the urge won’t be a problem, because just as Adam’s hands start itching to touch, Sam makes her opinions on the subject known by letting out a wet sound and puking on Adam’s shirt.
“I think that means she approves,” Kris offers with an almost-proud smile.
Adam highly doubts that.
Sam burps at him loudly.
Kris laughs.
Pairing: Kris/Adam
Rating: PG-13
Length: 2,400 words
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not real. This is for fun only. No disrespect or offense meant to anyone.
Warnings: Babies! Also, there's something weird about this fic that I can't quite put my finger on. My dear online cookie did fix some of the weirdness, but still... a bit wonky for some reason.
Notes: This is for the "baby - adoption" square in my schmoop_bingo card. Possibly first in a series - because I have more baby prompts. *eyeroll*
Beta by cookie57.
Summary: When Kris calls from his latest humanitarian trip and tells Adam that he has kind of sort of maybe possibly accidentally adopted a baby girl, Adam laughs for ten minutes straight.
When Kris calls from his latest humanitarian trip and tells Adam that he has kind of sort of maybe possibly accidentally adopted a baby girl, Adam laughs for ten minutes straight.
Then he realizes Kris isn’t joking.
“Look, they just-I said she was a pretty girl, that’s all.”
Kris sounds distraught, but Adam is not in a forgiving mood. This ruins all of his carefully cultivated plans. “That’s all. How can that possibly be all?”
“Well.” Oh, Adam knows that tone. That tone means that Kris is wishing he could lie to Adam-but he so can’t. “I might have agreed with them when they said she needed a good home.” Adam sighs into the receiver. “But I didn’t say I would take her! There was no talk of me doing the adopting! It was just, like, a wish. A wish someone would adopt her, you know?”
Adam makes a pained sound and hits his forehead against his closet door. Repeatedly.
“But-she was sick. She had no one. And the orphanage is so over-crowded, they didn’t even have enough beds, let alone medicine, so I had to-you know, I had to. I just meant to take her to the doctor’s, and then there was some paperwork, but I thought it was just for the day!”
Adam glares at the glossy cherry wood of his closet door. It’s a wonder Kris hasn’t adopted a baby from every country he’s visited, really. Adam is never letting him go anywhere without a chaperon ever again.
“I did think it was a lot of paperwork for just one trip, but I thought it would be rude to ask,” Kris says sulkily.
Adam rolls his eyes. “Just-tell them it was a mistake. It’s not too late.”
“I can’t do that!” Kris exclaims, sounding even more panicked.
“No, seriously, you can,” Adam placates him. “No one has to know. Tell them to keep it quiet, and make a donation. A large one.”
“No! That’s not-! What would she think?”
“Who?”
“Sam! The baby! She’s a person! You can’t just return a person!”
Oh, really, now? “Well, you can’t just go and take one either, but apparently you did!”
Kris’ silence screams heartbreak. Sometimes, Adam hates the fact that he can read Kris’ silences. It sucks so hard when they’re the unhappy kind.
“I’ll . . . I’ll figure something out,” Kris says finally, tone soft and subdued. “I guess I’ll . . . talk to you later?”
Adam hits his forehead against the closet door one last time, and then wrenches it open. “Stop being stupid,” he tells Kris. “Sit tight and wait for me. I’ll be there in . . . I don’t even know. I’ll text you my flight info.”
Kris is silent again, but it’s a relieved silence this time. It makes Adam pack faster.
“Adam. Thank you,” Kris says earnestly. Adam’s hands want to reach through the line to give him a good shake. “But you really don’t have to leave everything for-”
“Oh, fuck off, Kristopher,” Adam says and hangs up on him.
He doesn’t have to leave everything his ass.
-
Adam arrives at the hotel, sweaty and sticky and tired, but seeing the delighted grin on Kris’ face makes it all better.
Almost.
“Adam,” Kris breathes and buries his face in Adam’s chest.
And okay, yeah, that really does make it all better. Adam holds on tight and inhales deeply. It’s been too long. He’s missed the way Kris smells. Except . . .
“You smell like puke.”
Kris pulls back, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. “Um. Yeah. She’s still a bit sick.”
Adam looks toward the corner Kris gestures to, and there she is. Sitting in a makeshift playpen, staring morosely at a bright red stuffed toy crab.
She is cute. Cute cheeks and a cute nose and a cute pout. How she manages to look gloomy with that combination is a mystery Adam can’t explain, but he thoroughly approves of it nonetheless.
“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Kris confides quietly. “I mean, I don’t even know what to do with her hair!”
That’s kind of obvious. The little girl has a head full of tight curls, and the pink hairclip Kris apparently tried to put them up with is clinging just barely to a stray lock hanging near her left cheek. Kris needs professional help.
“We’ll take her to Amanda’s when we’re back home. She’ll show you how to do it.”
Well, that settles it then. On the way here, Adam had focused on the thought that maybe he could still talk Kris out of this, but the second he stepped foot into the room, that thought went out the window. Kris looks at Sam the way he looks at his favorite guitar, only with a couple thousand times more force and panic-and Adam has never been good at telling him he can’t have something he wants.
Adam won’t let himself despair though. He’ll just have to adjust his plans. They’re still workable . . . more or less.
“Uh. That’s gonna take a while,” Kris says, looking away uncomfortably.
That doesn’t sound good. “You are not gonna be traveling around the world with a toddler in tow.”
“No!” Kris says. “I’m . . . gonna have to stay here . . . for six months.”
Adam stares at him, waiting for the punch line. Kris stares back.
“I have to. Says so in the paperwork.”
Adam follows Kris’ gaze to the desk in the corner, then looks back at Kris to find him staring nervously at Sam. A part of Adam wants to go over to that desk and burn the whole thing down to ashes, papers and all. Instead, he bites the inside of his cheek, fists his hands to his sides, and heads out to the balcony.
When Kris calls after him, Adam holds a fist up to say give me a second.
Or maybe it says, go fuck yourself.
It could go either way, really.
-
“I’m sorry. I never should have called you,” Kris says.
Adam grips the railing tight enough to hurt his palms and fails to bite back an incredulous sound.
Kris steps closer. “I shouldn’t have bothered you with this. I was just-”
Adam snorts and turns his head to glare at Kris. “You shouldn’t have bothered me?”
Kris nods, a bit unsure now.
“So you adopt a baby, move to another continent, and not only do you not tell me before, but you think you shouldn’t have even bothered me with it after?”
“That’s not what I-”
“Do you honestly have no clue? At all?” Adam lets go of the railing to cross his arms over his chest. He’s not just asking a rhetorical question here. At this point, he really wants to know the answer. He always knew Kris was a bit slow when it came to relationships, but this is just insulting.
“About what?” Kris asks.
Adam searches Kris’ eyes, hoping to find something-anything, but no, Kris is not even trying to be cute. He’s just . . . stupid. “You know what, never mind,” he says, straightening up his hunched shoulders and taking in a deep, calming breath. “It’s nothing.”
But now, of course, Kris won’t take his word for it. He stares at the side of Adam’s face, eyes squinting as if he’s trying to see through his skull, and after a couple of minutes, he says, “You said you wanted to talk when I got back.”
Adam snorts. In another life . . .
“What about?”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“Will you stop being an ass? This is kind of a crisis for me if you haven’t noticed-”
“See, that-that’s incredible.” Adam is spluttering; he’s furious, and he either draws blood with his words when he gets like this, or sounds completely incoherent.
“What is?” Kris yells, throwing up his arms.
“You! You-thinking that this is all about you!”
Kris chuckles humorlessly. “Yeah, I forgot it’s always about Adam Lambert. I accidentally adopt a baby, but it’s somehow still about you?”
Adam clamps his lips shut before he can retort. This isn’t going anywhere good. “I should go,” he says and heads back inside. Sam is lying on the carpet, head pillowed on her crab; Adam ignores her questioning look. His bag is still by the door, and he didn’t even take off his jacket. He’s ready to go in seconds.
He opens the door, but then turns back to say goodbye to Kris. They won’t be seeing each other for months. Just the thought of that is enough to give Adam stomach cramps, and he feels like crying, because-dammit, this was not how he had planned things!
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Kris asks, striding purposefully towards him. For a moment there, Adam thinks Kris is going to hit him, he looks so mad. “You came all this way to-”
Adam drops his bag, grabs Kris’ stupid red shirt, and cuts his words off with his lips. It’s a horrible kiss, dry lips meeting too hard, but that’s what he came here to do-well, it was supposed to go smoother and more romantic, but still-and he’s not boarding another transcontinental flight before he does it.
“There,” Adam says stupidly when he releases Kris.
Kris stumbles back a step and presses his fingers to his lips.
“That’s why it’s about me,” Adam says. “And you know it, so don’t give me that crap. I thought we were waiting, I thought we were on more or less the same page!”
“I don’t . . .” Kris stares at him with impossibly wide eyes. “I didn’t...”
Adam sighs, deflating a little. “I’ve been waiting, anyway,” he says wryly.
“But why?”
Adam blinks. “What do you mean why? Because I love you, that’s why.”
“I mean-why wait? I was there.”
“You were there, but you were married. And then you were divorced. And then you were sad. And then you were straight. And then you were dating. And then you were off saving kids-”
“Okay, okay,” Kris says, putting a hand on Adam’s flailing arm. “I get it. I just wish you had . . .”
He leaves the sentence hanging, and Adam hears the finality in his tone, the regret. Now it’s too late. He had planned to ask Kris to be with him-all the time, like he knew they both wanted. They could move in together, get a new house, one that would be theirs, but now Kris won’t even need a place in L.A. for months, and when he does, he’ll probably want one for himself and his daughter . . .
“Yeah,” Adam says, hiding a sniffle underneath the word. “Whatever.” He’ll hold his head up high and not shed a tear until he boards the goddamn plane. Then there’ll be booze. Lots and lots of booze. “I guess it’s just not meant to be or something.”
Kris frowns. “That’s bullshit.”
“No, bullshit would be going off and adopting a child without even considering how it would affect your-your-”
“It was an accident!”
“Oh, I guess that makes it okay then!”
“Will you ever shut up about that?”
“I don’t think so!”
“Bluh-hum-ka?”
They both turn to the baby, who’s managed to escape her playpen and is crawling towards them at a determined pace.
“She’s fast,” Adam observes.
“You have no idea.”
She holds her crab out to Adam-who takes it from her dutifully-and then starts climbing up Kris’ leg. Smiling down at her like a lunatic, Kris picks her up and settles her on his hip. She asks for her crab back as soon as she’s comfortable.
“Khum,” she says with a nod.
“You’re welcome?” Adam offers.
Kris grins at him.
They look so cute together; Adam kind of wants to take a picture. But then he remembers that he’s going back alone and decides that he probably doesn’t want a reminder of what he’s leaving behind.
“I guess I should . . .”
He picks up his bag; it feels much heavier than it did ten minutes ago. He tries to smile at Kris, and Kris seems to be attempting something similar himself, but they just end up grimacing at each other.
“I didn’t know,” Kris says hurriedly. “I thought you gave up a long time ago. I thought maybe-maybe you didn’t want to.” He shrugs.
“That’s because you’re an idiot,” Adam tells him, and determined to leave before he starts to cry or picks another fight, he turns around to go.
Kris grabs the handle of his bag and stops him.
“What?”
He licks his lips nervously and sneaks a glance at the baby who’s busy chewing on a claw. “You could stay?”
“I . . .”
“I can’t leave her now. I can’t. And I know you don’t want kids. But . . .” He shrugs. “Maybe you could at least-visit?”
Adam thinks about not wanting kids. It’s more like he never considered it, really. He could want kids. Maybe. It could happen. Then he thinks about the album he’s supposed to be promoting in a month, about the studio, his assistant, his agent . . . and realizes that he’s been leaning forward and now his lips are almost touching Kris’.
“Will it traumatize her if I kiss you now?” he mumbles.
“She’s nine months old,” Kris mumbles back.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means she won’t mind,” Kris says and pulls him down.
It goes much better than the first kiss. Kris’ lips immediately open under his, and he sighs into Adam’s mouth, welcoming Adam’s tongue and pressing even closer; it makes Adam want to push him up against a wall and do things to him that he’s pretty sure would traumatize the baby-nine months old or not. But then, it seems resisting the urge won’t be a problem, because just as Adam’s hands start itching to touch, Sam makes her opinions on the subject known by letting out a wet sound and puking on Adam’s shirt.
“I think that means she approves,” Kris offers with an almost-proud smile.
Adam highly doubts that.
Sam burps at him loudly.
Kris laughs.