"You Look Like You Got Some Sun" for b_o_w_a
Author: bad_wolves
Recipient: b_o_w_a
Title: You Look Like You Got Some Sun
Rating: R
Word Count: 1942 words
Author’s Notes: Thanks to strikesoftly and mybestexcuse for their beta-fu!
Summary: "Tomorrow morning my parents are coming to get me and drive me back to Little Rock. Tomorrow morning you're catching a bus back to San Diego and you're not coming back, not even next summer. You're gonna be a rock star or a movie star or just make the best coffee anyone's ever had - and I'm going to try not to fail twelfth grade. Feels pretty final to me."
Kris sits on Adam's cot with his back to the wall and draws his knees up, waiting. The familiarity of the small room, separated from the rest of the boys' dormitory by a thin orange curtain, is a small ache in Kris' belly, like a reluctant goodbye. The bare bulb screwed into the middle of the ceiling is off as always, and it's the small plastic bedside lamp, perched on a milk crate, that casts the yellowish glow around the room, on the pictures push-pinned to the wood planks of the wall, on the clothes thrown over the back of a rickety desk chair, on Kris' own skin, browner now than it was at the beginning of the summer.
Adam, always pale but with more freckles now, appears at the curtain, holding it open with one hand. The dormitory behind him is empty, its usual occupants giving out the bright, muffled bursts of voice from outside, the last hurrahs. Adam is smiling at Kris. "Hey. Sorry that took so long, the last counselor meeting always gets a little touchy-feely."
He toes off his boots and drops down onto the cot, scooting over to sit next to Kris, his back against the wall too. Kris' shoulder almost touches Adam's now; he remembers three summers ago when Adam had seemed like a giant to Kris, before Kris hit the only growth spurt he suspects he'll ever have. He thanks god daily for small favors.
Kris leans into it momentarily then shifts, crossing his legs. The braided embroidery threads he's been looping around his fingers unspool in his palm, catching Adam's attention. Kris traces the colors of it in his hand, then holds it up for Adam to see better. Adam seems troubled.
"Kris..."
"No, listen."
"It doesn't have to mean--"
"Shut up. This is a friendship bracelet, people make them for each other and you're not supposed to ever take it off until it falls off by itself."
Adam looks like he wants to say something else but he doesn't, just nods and lets Kris reach for his arm. He feels Adam's gaze heavy on him as he ties the ends of the bracelet together on the pulse point inside Adam's wrist. These are good colors; the blues and golds suit Adam. Kris wonders what colors Adam would've chosen for him.
Like he read Kris' mind, Adam clears his throat, his voice softer in the silence of the cabin. "I didn't even get you anything."
"I'm covered," Kris says lightly with a strained smile, holding up his own wrist. There are six bracelets there already, in various states of discoloring, memories of previous summers and this one, of friends here and back home.
Adam's watching him again, the look on his face clouded like he's trying to figure things out. Kris watches his chest heave softly with every breath under the faded Bowie t-shirt the camp principal spent weeks trying, unsuccessfully, to get Adam to take off.
"It's not the end, you know," Adam says, and Kris looks up, fingers still wrapped loosely around Adam's wrist. Adam turns his hand so their fingers tangle, Adam's painted nails scratching lightly at the back of Kris' hand.
"What is it, then?"
"I don't know. But it's not over. You and me, we're not over."
A pitiful burst of anger blooms and Kris hangs on to it for lack of better bearings. "Tomorrow morning my parents are coming to get me and drive me back to Little Rock. Tomorrow morning you're catching a bus back to San Diego and you're not coming back, not even next summer. You're gonna be a rock star or a movie star or just make the best coffee anyone's ever had - and I'm going to try not to fail twelfth grade. Feels pretty final to me."
Maybe it does to Adam too because he stifles a flinch, eyes a little sad. Then he's moving and pulling Kris onto his lap, framing his face with both hands to kiss him hot and deep and wet, hungry and artless. The scratch of jeans against jeans makes something shiver in Kris' chest, like the way Adam pushes his fingers into Kris' hair, holding him. Familiar just like the makeshift privacy of the room around them.
Kris lets himself be held and kisses back, just as sloppily, until he can't breathe and can't think because he's so hard and so, so sad. He sniffles, eyes wet, as Adam's forehead drops to his shoulder, Adam's breath hot against Kris' collarbone through the cotton of his t-shirt. Kris finds soft, hot skin under the hem of Adam's t-shirt rucked up his back and he wants to ask Adam for more but this is what he wants to remember, needing and missing so much already that the feeling itself is its own punishment.
He's met plenty of teenage drama queens here over the years; he's learned a thing or two about feeling like your world is ending.
*
School starts in a week and Kris lets his parents take him to get supplies and new shoes. He calls Katy and they go see a couple movies, spend a few hours at a friend's party with Charles, make out in the bed of her daddy's pickup when they drive out to the bonfire out in the field near her cousin's house.
"Come on," Katy coaxes encouragingly, gently pleading, a tiny crease between her perfect eyebrows under the soft fall of her hair. It looks golden in the firelight and Kris runs his fingers through it, wishes it stirred something inside him more than guilt at her disappointment. He's soft in Katy's hand shoved in the open fly of his pants, and he was never able to hide it when his heart wasn't into it anyway, not with her. She sighs and pulls her hand out of his boxers gently, curling up in the crook of his arm on the blanket, warm hand on his belly under his shirt. All he can smell is the fire and other people's beer and how wet she is, how willing and ready and his, if he wanted.
"I'm sorry," he tells the blank night sky above them, and Katy nods against his shoulder, her breath shaking sweetly.
The next night in the shower, the green and pink bracelet she'd made him in tenth grade falls off his wrist when he's jacking off thinking of things that have nothing to do with her.
It doesn't have to mean--
He dries the broken strings and ties it to his keychain instead and feels guilty enough to avoid her for the rest of the week and the first two months of school.
She ignores him for the rest of the year, out of sympathy.
*
Adam shows up in late June, four days after school ends and two weeks into Kris' self-imposed martyr act. His parents spent the months leading up to summer trying to convince him to go back to camp, or to try another, but eventually they gave up, with the only condition that he has to sign up for soccer or baseball or something, and is under no circumstances to stay inside the house until September. Kris reluctantly agrees and signs up for art classes instead. He can't draw.
Adam's arrival shakes everything up, turning Kris' depressive status quo on its head and Kris' mother into a zealous super-host suddenly up to her elbows in pies and guest towels and a list of questions she wants to ask Adam's mother when she phones her later.
"Cool," Adam says, genuine and ever diplomatic, but he only has eyes for Kris, who's still stunned speechless by this sudden turn of events. Parents have always loved Adam, who, Kris is sure, was counting on this fact when he showed up in Arkansas with a duffel bag and less eyeliner than usual and a sweet aw shucks, ma'am smile stamped on his face under eyes crinkled up with something Kris recognized way more as mischief than a guileless good nature.
Lunch is leftover ham, collard greens and rice, which Adam only pretends not to want to eat until Kris' mom pours gravy all over it. Kris watches him with big eyes from across the table, disbelieving smile hidden behind his own glass of sweet tea.
*
Adam stands in the doorway and drops his duffel to his feet so he can raise both hands to make a frame, thumbs and forefingers touching, and looks at Kris' childhood room through it. "Jackpot," he grins.
Kris pushes past him, blushing. His single bed with the blue plaid duvet, his grade school baseball trophies, the shiny new guitar in the corner he's been trying to learn to play - these are things he never imagined he'd get to show Adam. Now that Adam is seeing all of it, Kris sort of wish he'd made more of himself, even just at sixteen, to make up for how much more awesome Adam is at living life than Kris has been so far.
Adam doesn't seem to care, though, and walks in after Kris, picking up things, reading book spines, finding the sketchbook from Kris' art class and flipping through the mess of charcoal inside. Kris snatches it out of his hands like it's the porn wedged under his mattress (men with broad bare shoulders and boys with narrow hips) and throws it into his open closet, where it lands with a flutter on a pile of sneakers.
"What are you doing here?"
Adam sits on the end of Kris' bed holding the snow globe Kris' grandparents brought him back from Canada. He shakes it but doesn't even look at him, eyes firmly meeting Kris'.
"I told you it wasn't the end."
Kris notices, belatedly, the blue and gold bracelet still tied to Adam's freckled wrist, along with a tangle of leather and studs.
*
Kris bites back a whimper and tips his head back, lets Adam mouth his way up his throat to bite at his jaw. The afternoon light comes in filtered through the living room curtains and the couch cushions are sinking under Kris with Adam's weight on top of him but he wouldn't - couldn't - move for the world.
"How long do we have?" Adam mumbles, tonguing Kris' pulse right under his ear. Kris shivers and pulls Adam up to kiss him, rewarded by the happy groan that rumbles out of Adam's chest. He tastes like iced tea and sugar and peach pie.
Kris' parents are off to a church meeting then groceries then to Kris' mom's sister's. They have forever. To talk about what Adam is really doing here instead of back in San Diego making lattes or off to New York trying to get on Broadway. To talk about how maybe they could both hit New York next summer and see what happens. But mostly to talk about them, about endings and beginnings and not only summers spent together but winters too and everything in between.
Adam pulls back, just enough to speak, laughing. "Kristopher. How long do we have?"
Kris grins back links both arms around Adam's middle tightly. Perfect fit. "A good, long while, I think."
Recipient: b_o_w_a
Title: You Look Like You Got Some Sun
Rating: R
Word Count: 1942 words
Author’s Notes: Thanks to strikesoftly and mybestexcuse for their beta-fu!
Summary: "Tomorrow morning my parents are coming to get me and drive me back to Little Rock. Tomorrow morning you're catching a bus back to San Diego and you're not coming back, not even next summer. You're gonna be a rock star or a movie star or just make the best coffee anyone's ever had - and I'm going to try not to fail twelfth grade. Feels pretty final to me."
Kris sits on Adam's cot with his back to the wall and draws his knees up, waiting. The familiarity of the small room, separated from the rest of the boys' dormitory by a thin orange curtain, is a small ache in Kris' belly, like a reluctant goodbye. The bare bulb screwed into the middle of the ceiling is off as always, and it's the small plastic bedside lamp, perched on a milk crate, that casts the yellowish glow around the room, on the pictures push-pinned to the wood planks of the wall, on the clothes thrown over the back of a rickety desk chair, on Kris' own skin, browner now than it was at the beginning of the summer.
Adam, always pale but with more freckles now, appears at the curtain, holding it open with one hand. The dormitory behind him is empty, its usual occupants giving out the bright, muffled bursts of voice from outside, the last hurrahs. Adam is smiling at Kris. "Hey. Sorry that took so long, the last counselor meeting always gets a little touchy-feely."
He toes off his boots and drops down onto the cot, scooting over to sit next to Kris, his back against the wall too. Kris' shoulder almost touches Adam's now; he remembers three summers ago when Adam had seemed like a giant to Kris, before Kris hit the only growth spurt he suspects he'll ever have. He thanks god daily for small favors.
Kris leans into it momentarily then shifts, crossing his legs. The braided embroidery threads he's been looping around his fingers unspool in his palm, catching Adam's attention. Kris traces the colors of it in his hand, then holds it up for Adam to see better. Adam seems troubled.
"Kris..."
"No, listen."
"It doesn't have to mean--"
"Shut up. This is a friendship bracelet, people make them for each other and you're not supposed to ever take it off until it falls off by itself."
Adam looks like he wants to say something else but he doesn't, just nods and lets Kris reach for his arm. He feels Adam's gaze heavy on him as he ties the ends of the bracelet together on the pulse point inside Adam's wrist. These are good colors; the blues and golds suit Adam. Kris wonders what colors Adam would've chosen for him.
Like he read Kris' mind, Adam clears his throat, his voice softer in the silence of the cabin. "I didn't even get you anything."
"I'm covered," Kris says lightly with a strained smile, holding up his own wrist. There are six bracelets there already, in various states of discoloring, memories of previous summers and this one, of friends here and back home.
Adam's watching him again, the look on his face clouded like he's trying to figure things out. Kris watches his chest heave softly with every breath under the faded Bowie t-shirt the camp principal spent weeks trying, unsuccessfully, to get Adam to take off.
"It's not the end, you know," Adam says, and Kris looks up, fingers still wrapped loosely around Adam's wrist. Adam turns his hand so their fingers tangle, Adam's painted nails scratching lightly at the back of Kris' hand.
"What is it, then?"
"I don't know. But it's not over. You and me, we're not over."
A pitiful burst of anger blooms and Kris hangs on to it for lack of better bearings. "Tomorrow morning my parents are coming to get me and drive me back to Little Rock. Tomorrow morning you're catching a bus back to San Diego and you're not coming back, not even next summer. You're gonna be a rock star or a movie star or just make the best coffee anyone's ever had - and I'm going to try not to fail twelfth grade. Feels pretty final to me."
Maybe it does to Adam too because he stifles a flinch, eyes a little sad. Then he's moving and pulling Kris onto his lap, framing his face with both hands to kiss him hot and deep and wet, hungry and artless. The scratch of jeans against jeans makes something shiver in Kris' chest, like the way Adam pushes his fingers into Kris' hair, holding him. Familiar just like the makeshift privacy of the room around them.
Kris lets himself be held and kisses back, just as sloppily, until he can't breathe and can't think because he's so hard and so, so sad. He sniffles, eyes wet, as Adam's forehead drops to his shoulder, Adam's breath hot against Kris' collarbone through the cotton of his t-shirt. Kris finds soft, hot skin under the hem of Adam's t-shirt rucked up his back and he wants to ask Adam for more but this is what he wants to remember, needing and missing so much already that the feeling itself is its own punishment.
He's met plenty of teenage drama queens here over the years; he's learned a thing or two about feeling like your world is ending.
*
School starts in a week and Kris lets his parents take him to get supplies and new shoes. He calls Katy and they go see a couple movies, spend a few hours at a friend's party with Charles, make out in the bed of her daddy's pickup when they drive out to the bonfire out in the field near her cousin's house.
"Come on," Katy coaxes encouragingly, gently pleading, a tiny crease between her perfect eyebrows under the soft fall of her hair. It looks golden in the firelight and Kris runs his fingers through it, wishes it stirred something inside him more than guilt at her disappointment. He's soft in Katy's hand shoved in the open fly of his pants, and he was never able to hide it when his heart wasn't into it anyway, not with her. She sighs and pulls her hand out of his boxers gently, curling up in the crook of his arm on the blanket, warm hand on his belly under his shirt. All he can smell is the fire and other people's beer and how wet she is, how willing and ready and his, if he wanted.
"I'm sorry," he tells the blank night sky above them, and Katy nods against his shoulder, her breath shaking sweetly.
The next night in the shower, the green and pink bracelet she'd made him in tenth grade falls off his wrist when he's jacking off thinking of things that have nothing to do with her.
It doesn't have to mean--
He dries the broken strings and ties it to his keychain instead and feels guilty enough to avoid her for the rest of the week and the first two months of school.
She ignores him for the rest of the year, out of sympathy.
*
Adam shows up in late June, four days after school ends and two weeks into Kris' self-imposed martyr act. His parents spent the months leading up to summer trying to convince him to go back to camp, or to try another, but eventually they gave up, with the only condition that he has to sign up for soccer or baseball or something, and is under no circumstances to stay inside the house until September. Kris reluctantly agrees and signs up for art classes instead. He can't draw.
Adam's arrival shakes everything up, turning Kris' depressive status quo on its head and Kris' mother into a zealous super-host suddenly up to her elbows in pies and guest towels and a list of questions she wants to ask Adam's mother when she phones her later.
"Cool," Adam says, genuine and ever diplomatic, but he only has eyes for Kris, who's still stunned speechless by this sudden turn of events. Parents have always loved Adam, who, Kris is sure, was counting on this fact when he showed up in Arkansas with a duffel bag and less eyeliner than usual and a sweet aw shucks, ma'am smile stamped on his face under eyes crinkled up with something Kris recognized way more as mischief than a guileless good nature.
Lunch is leftover ham, collard greens and rice, which Adam only pretends not to want to eat until Kris' mom pours gravy all over it. Kris watches him with big eyes from across the table, disbelieving smile hidden behind his own glass of sweet tea.
*
Adam stands in the doorway and drops his duffel to his feet so he can raise both hands to make a frame, thumbs and forefingers touching, and looks at Kris' childhood room through it. "Jackpot," he grins.
Kris pushes past him, blushing. His single bed with the blue plaid duvet, his grade school baseball trophies, the shiny new guitar in the corner he's been trying to learn to play - these are things he never imagined he'd get to show Adam. Now that Adam is seeing all of it, Kris sort of wish he'd made more of himself, even just at sixteen, to make up for how much more awesome Adam is at living life than Kris has been so far.
Adam doesn't seem to care, though, and walks in after Kris, picking up things, reading book spines, finding the sketchbook from Kris' art class and flipping through the mess of charcoal inside. Kris snatches it out of his hands like it's the porn wedged under his mattress (men with broad bare shoulders and boys with narrow hips) and throws it into his open closet, where it lands with a flutter on a pile of sneakers.
"What are you doing here?"
Adam sits on the end of Kris' bed holding the snow globe Kris' grandparents brought him back from Canada. He shakes it but doesn't even look at him, eyes firmly meeting Kris'.
"I told you it wasn't the end."
Kris notices, belatedly, the blue and gold bracelet still tied to Adam's freckled wrist, along with a tangle of leather and studs.
*
Kris bites back a whimper and tips his head back, lets Adam mouth his way up his throat to bite at his jaw. The afternoon light comes in filtered through the living room curtains and the couch cushions are sinking under Kris with Adam's weight on top of him but he wouldn't - couldn't - move for the world.
"How long do we have?" Adam mumbles, tonguing Kris' pulse right under his ear. Kris shivers and pulls Adam up to kiss him, rewarded by the happy groan that rumbles out of Adam's chest. He tastes like iced tea and sugar and peach pie.
Kris' parents are off to a church meeting then groceries then to Kris' mom's sister's. They have forever. To talk about what Adam is really doing here instead of back in San Diego making lattes or off to New York trying to get on Broadway. To talk about how maybe they could both hit New York next summer and see what happens. But mostly to talk about them, about endings and beginnings and not only summers spent together but winters too and everything in between.
Adam pulls back, just enough to speak, laughing. "Kristopher. How long do we have?"
Kris grins back links both arms around Adam's middle tightly. Perfect fit. "A good, long while, I think."