Random Hearts - Chapter 5
Sorry for the long wait.
Chapter 5
Adam hates silence.
At twelve, it meant too much opportunity to think, to wonder and worry about how different he felt from the other alpha boys, how little interest wavy hair, soft skin and burgeoning curves held for him. Silence meant hours sitting alone in his bedroom, anxiety hopelessly entangled with anger in the pit of his stomach. Because he felt betrayed in a way. By his wayward feelings, his thickening body, his cracking voice.
At sixteen, silence meant mornings in front of the mirror, cataloguing each new blemish on his face with a kind of ruthless diligence. It meant evenings lying in bed, unpacking the day, fresh wounds mixing with old ones-or perhaps they had all been the same wounds back then, rubbed raw and reopened each day. A whispered insult from a daring beta, an open taunt from another alpha in the hallway between classes. The struggle each time to push back his natural aggression, to keep his head high, to reveal nothing. Never let them scent his weakness.
At nineteen, silence meant sitting on the couch in their old house in San Diego, his brother next to him and his parents seated in two armchairs facing them. They had sat in silence while Adam’s mind skirted around reality in that way one’s mind can, in acrobatic twists and turns, all to protect itself. Breaking a mating bond. It wasn’t unheard of, had been legal for almost a hundred years. A random statistic flitted through. “One in every six mating bonds in North America ends with a mutual disclaiming.” A news article from eleventh grade social studies chased on its heels. Mating (Covalent) Bonds: The Dependency Factor and the Erosion of Tradition by E.J. Hughes. His parents disclaiming each other. Theoretical-except it wasn’t. Impossible, his mind attempted again, twisting and turning still, until it stopped short, all out of gambits. Not so impossible, Adam realized, finally recalling the long stretches of silence in the last few months, the stilted motion, bodies turned away from each other and scents masked.
At thirty-three, the old wounds are memories without teeth, incapable of hurting him. But Adam hates silence still, because, since nineteen, he has associated it with helplessness, with sad news and abrupt endings. So when he makes his way down to the bottom of the stairs that morning and finds nothing but silence, he pauses for a moment, that old worry rising. Somewhere along the line, he has gotten used to the sound of conversation filtering down the hallway leading to the kitchen in the mornings. Kris and Tommy’s voices, less halting than before, usually talking about music. Adam tries to recall Kris mentioning an early day at the studio but comes up with nothing. Another moment, and he gets moving again, pushing away the worry. Everything is fine. Why wouldn’t it be?
Tommy is standing by the sink when Adam walks into the kitchen, back turned to him. He is motionless, frozen almost, staring out the window while water runs from the faucet, wasting away.
“Tommy?”
The sound of his name makes Tommy jump, gasping and turning around quickly, wet hands dripping water onto the tiled floor.
“Sorry,” Adam says immediately, surprised at Tommy’s reaction. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Tommy’s face reddens as he ducks his head. “No, it was me. I didn’t realize you were there. I wasn’t….” His voice trails off, and for a moment, the only sounds in the kitchen are the hum of the refrigerator and the rushing water from the faucet.
“Do you want to shut that off?” Adam says, tilting his head in the direction of the sink.
Tommy mutters something under his breath, flushing deeper, before turning around and shutting off the water. “Can I get you some breakfast?” he asks afterward, voice strained.
“Please,” Adam replies before taking a seat at the kitchen table. He watches Tommy as the omega sets about fixing him a plate of egg whites and toast, wondering at his jerky movements, his trembling hands, and the sharp scent of nervousness pouring off him. Almost like those first few days, when they had all been walking on eggshells around each other, when silence had been a constant. When Kris had wanted Tommy gone.
“Have you seen Kris?” Adam asks, that familiar worry springing back.
Tommy startles again, like he’s somehow forgotten Adam is there. “I think I heard him in his workroom,” Tommy replies. Shaky, eyes not quite meeting Adam’s.
Silence again, while Adam eats and drinks his coffee and Tommy stands by the sink, fingers restless on the countertop. Adam is almost finished when Kris finally walks in, disheveled and weary, ink stains on his fingertips. On the periphery, he sees Tommy jerk suddenly, then stand up straighter, features tightening with…what? Adam can’t tell.
“Working hard already?” Adam says, smiling at Kris as he takes a seat at the table.
“These songs won’t write themselves,” Kris replies with an answering smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Are you alright?” Adam asks, thinking of how Kris gets sometimes when working on new songs, how intense and overly invested he can become.
“Sure,” Kris replies, gaze skittering away. “It’s gonna be a long one today. The suits are coming by to hear the tracks we’ve laid so far. All five of them. I can picture the shitshow already. ‘ Work faster, pick up the pace.’” Kris’s eyes are still darting about. At the wall, at the plate Tommy sets in front of him with a loud clang, at the salt shaker, at the tabletop-looking everywhere but straight at Adam.
They keep talking about Kris’s album, a familiar conversation and yet somehow stilted this time around, like there’s something else lurking between the words, something Adam ought to hear, only he can’t. He notices the way Kris still hasn’t looked directly at him since sitting down at the table. He notices the way Tommy’s hand trembles as he refills their coffee mugs. He notices the tightening in Kris’s shoulders while Tommy is near and the way they don’t look at each other, don’t speak to each other except for a murmured “thanks” from Kris before Tommy retreats to the other side of the kitchen, coffee pot rattling precariously in his hand.
Adam files away each detail and tries to ignore the tightening in his stomach and the dawning sense that something has shifted. He tilts his head a little, concentrating. Tommy’s scent is the same, sharp with nervousness still. Kris’s scent gives him…nothing. He takes in the rigid set of Kris’s shoulders and the weariness in his eyes, then he looks over at Tommy standing by the sink once again, hunched over it, small body almost folded in on itself. Silence. Just like before-no, everything is fine. Adam looks at Kris and Tommy in turn once again. Everything was fine.
“I should start getting ready to head out,” Kris says, breaking the silence. “Time to face the firing squad downtown.” He finally meets Adam’s eyes. “Are you heading out soon?”
“Yeah. I’ve got about forty minutes to call. Just enough time to get there if I leave now.”
Kris stands up. “See you in the evening then?”
“Good luck with the firing squad,” Adam says as Kris turns to leave. “Hey, maybe their guns will jam.”
“I wish.” He leaves the room without a glance in Tommy’s direction.
When Kris is gone, Tommy clears the table, head down, hands still shaking as he gathers up the plates and cups and ferries them to the sink. Adam watches him washing up. Frowning, he sorts through the jumble of details he has filed away. Some kind of confrontation, maybe? Yesterday or even this morning. Kris would have been stressed out over today’s meeting with his label’s executives. Maybe Tommy had made a mistake, rearranged something in Kris’s workroom or damaged a guitar? That has to be all it is.
“Hey,” Adam says, looking up when Tommy returns to the table with a damp cloth to wipe it down.
Tommy stills, nervous scent sharpening.
“Are you alright?” Adam asks gently. He notices the way Tommy’s pale fingers tighten around the cloth is his right hand. Another detail filed away.
“I’m fine,” Tommy says with a brief smile. “Everything is fine.”
Tommy’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes either.
***
Kris’s meeting with the label executives turns out as badly as he’d anticipated. This much, Adam can tell from the downward bent to Kris’s lips and the weary, listless way he recounts his day before locking himself away in his workroom and coming to bed long after Adam has already fallen asleep.
A few days later, it’s Adam’s turn to face the music, as it were. His meeting downtown goes marginally better than Kris’s but his marching orders are ultimately the same. Pick up the pace. Need more material. Mind the deadlines, the budget, and so on and so forth. Toeing the line keeps Adam busy, meeting with multiple producers, vetting new songs with the creative team-busy enough that it takes him a while to notice the silences building up, long stretches stacked high in the mornings, the hush broken only by the occasional halting question and murmured answer. Kris still doesn’t look at Tommy, and for his part, Tommy keeps to the other side of the kitchen, stealing occasional glances across the room, eyes unreadable the few times Adam notices him staring at Kris.
“Is everything alright with Tommy?” Adam asks one morning, following Kris out to his car. Today, Kris hadn’t turned up for breakfast at all, locking himself away in his workroom all morning before heading straight for the front doors.
“What do you mean?” Kris asks, looking away, hand clenched around his keys.
“Did something happen with Tommy?”
“Why? What did he say?”
“Nothing, but something is clearly wrong. It’s like we’ve gone in reverse.” He takes a step toward Kris. “Listen, whatever he did, I’m sure it was an honest mistake.”
A pained look flits across Kris’s face, there and gone so quickly that Adam decides he must have imagined it. “Tommy didn’t do anything. I’m the one that-” Kris stops abruptly and runs a hand through his hair, sending the already disheveled strands into further disarray. “It’s the album,” he starts again. “I’m stressed out over the album, that’s all.” He closes the gap between them and kisses Adam on the cheek. “Everything is fine.”
As if to make good on his declaration, Kris finally talks to Tommy again the next morning, asking about the house, supplies needed, upkeep-anything but music-and all in a painstakingly careful tone. Brittle, artificial. Tommy’s tone is equally careful when he replies, looking down at the floor, hands tightly clasped together in front of him, fingers twisting together, his habit revealing his nervousness even without reading his scent. Their conversation is wooden, enough so that Adam almost swears the silence was better. But Kris runs out of meaningless questions soon enough and a hush settles once again.
For no particular reason, Adam thinks of the way his father’s hand had reached for his mother’s in the space between their armchairs that day, only to stop short halfway to the mark and resettle on his lap. Whatever this is, it has to end.
An hour later, after Kris has headed off downtown, Adam is squinting into the mirror, putting on the finishing touches to his make-up. He has already made up his mind to talk to Tommy before leaving. If Kris won’t give him anything to work with, perhaps Tommy will. He is still standing in the bathroom, eyeing his reflection critically and trying to marshal the right words for the conversation ahead, when the sound of feet moving across the bedroom carpet reaches him-only a split-second before Tommy’s familiar scent follows.
“Hi,” Tommy says quietly when he stops in the doorway to the bathroom, thin arms piled high with freshly-washed towels. “I, um, came to replace the towels,” he says. “If you don’t mind,” he adds quickly.
Adam makes a vague gesture at the towel racks. “Do what you need to do.”
Tommy nods and begins moving around quietly, replacing the towels and bundling the used ones in his arms. Adam watches his reflection in the mirror. Despite all the new things he now owns, Tommy still wears Kris’s old clothes a couple of times a week. This burgundy t-shirt especially, old, bordering on threadbare and hanging loose on Tommy’s thin frame. Adam lips hitch in a smile as he remembers the first time he’d seen that shirt. Hollywood Week. Kris gesturing at the empty seat beside him in the auditorium, that gorgeous smile flashing bright and warm as he’d looked up at Adam. The connection between them had been instantaneous. The image in his mind’s eyes switches, memory settling on the first time he’d met Tommy, how breakable he had looked. Instantly, Adam had wanted to protect him against everything, like they were connected already.
“How did you learn to do that?”
Tommy’s voice pulls Adam from his thoughts. “What?” Adam says, turning around to face him.
“The make-up,” Tommy says, tilting his chin in the direction of the chaotic collection of bottles, tubes, compacts and brushes on Adam’s side of the large marble vanity in the bathroom. “How did you learn?”
“I used to do community theater back home in San Diego and I’d watch what the make-up person was doing when we had performances. I didn’t really practice on myself until I was older, when-”
Adam pauses, thinking of a Saturday morning spent in front of the mirror at sixteen, bathroom counter littered with all the make-up he had bought the evening before. He’d labored over his face for half an hour, hiding the acne, making the freckles disappear, creating a temporary version of himself-a vision of what he could be. Adam glances at his reflection over his shoulder. He has become that vision.
“When what?” Tommy prompts.
Memories without teeth. Adam shakes his head and smiles. “When I was a towering mass of teenage angst. Overweight, freckled, acned and trying to hide behind three layers of concealer and foundation.”
Tommy gives him a disbelieving look. “I can’t imagine you needing to hide anything. You’re beautiful.” His large eyes go even wider the instant he says the words. He sputters, face burning red with embarrassment as he looks away. “I didn’t-I mean….”
Adam watches him in stunned silence for a moment. Without warning, he flashes back to that day in his car, when Tommy had leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. But it had meant nothing-just like this means nothing. Tommy can’t mean it like that.
“You’re right,” Adam replies jokingly, trying to break the tension. “I’m practically perfect in every way.”
Tommy snorts at that, tension easing from his body. “I give an inch,” he says without rancor.
Adam grins. “See that’s where you went wrong. Alphas always take a mile if you let them.”
Tommy smiles, wide and bright for a moment before slipping back to shyness. He eyes the makeup on the vanity again. “When we went to Skingraft, that girl, Roxy, she put makeup on me.”
Adam tries not to think of the way Tommy had looked, or the way he’d reacted to him. “I remember.”
Tommy hesitates before speaking again. “Do you think-can you show me how to do what she did?”
“Sure. I can show you how do it even better than she did. Come here.”
“Right now?” Tommy asks, surprised.
“No time like the present.”
Tommy carefully sets the bundle in his arm on the side of the soaking tub and approaches the bathroom vanity.
Adam picks up a bottle of makeup remover and a cotton pad. “Here. First, I’m going to demonstrate on myself, then I’ll put in on you.” He proceeds to do just that, cleaning off his makeup and applying everything all over again, moving through the process slowly and talking through each step so that Tommy misses nothing. When Adam is finished with himself, he pats the countertop and tells Tommy to hop on. He rifles through his makeup case then, looking for the foundation he’d worn in the winter. It’s two shades lighter than what he’s wearing now and closer to Tommy’s pale complexion. When he finds it, he turns back to Tommy.
“Spread your legs for me,” Adam says.
The unintended double meaning to his words hits Adam when he hears the hitch in Tommy’s breath. Perched on the countertop, Tommy spreads his legs, blush creeping up his neck. Adam pretends he doesn’t notice any of it, mind skirting around possibilities. He steps between Tommy’s legs, foundation bottle in hand, and gets to work, layering Tommy’s face with color, describing each step again and directing Tommy’s movements. Look up, look down, tilt his face this way, that way. Tommy’s skin is soft beneath Adam’s fingertips where his thumb skims Tommy’s forehead as he sweeps on another layer of eyeshadow over Tommy’s eyelids. But Adam refuses to dwell on the realization, or the sensation of Tommy’s warm breath on his own skin as he leans close, wielding the small makeup brush.
Through it all, Tommy sits admirably still. Adam can’t help smiling a little at that when he finally notices, contrasting Tommy’s stillness with the way Kris had twitched and shifted the entire time Adam had first done this to him. That memory quickly gives way to another one, years ago, during Idol when they had both been about to travel back to their hometowns with camera crews in tow.
“Time to fix up a parade,” Kris had said dryly when they had returned to their shared bedroom the night before Kris’s flight back to Arkansas. “’Some kind of coming home in triumph is required.’”
Kris had been aiming for casual, ask-me-if-I-care, but he’d missed by a few hundred yards at least. Adam had caught the anxiety in his scent without even trying.
“It’s going to be alright, you know, going back home.” Adam had paused. “Maybe telling them about…us.”
“You don’t know where I come from-how they are.” Kris had pressed closer to Adam where they were sitting together on Adam’s bed. “I wish you were coming with me. I need you with me.”
Adam still doesn’t know what had made him think of what he’d done next. Rubbing the newly-applied layer of nail polish off his thumb and then painting a shiny coat of the same black polish onto Kris’s thumb.
“There, you see, I’ll be with you,” he’d said, their foreheads pressed together, Kris’s warm breath fanning across his skin. “I’ll always be with you.” And he’d meant it, silently promising forever long before he made his mating claim onstage on the last night of the Idol tour.
“Is it finished?”
With a surprised start, Adam realizes he has been standing there motionless while Tommy waited. He looks at Tommy’s face, examining his work so far. Almost perfect. Quickly, he picks up a tube of shiny pink gloss and leans in close again.
“Tilt your head up.” When Tommy obeys, Adam cups his jaw and sweeps the soft tip of the applicator across his lips. “Press your lips together.” After Tommy obeys, Adam touches up the corners of his lips before stepping away and eyeing the finished product. Out of nowhere, he feels a rush of childish excitement. Tommy’s reaction, Adam thinks, will be priceless. “Turn around and see.”
Tommy hops down off the vanity and takes a deep breath. Then he turns around and freezes instantly. For a long moment, Tommy simply stares at his reflection in shock. The transformation Adam has achieved is far more dramatic that what Roxy had done weeks ago. Tommy looks like something out a glam rock video fantasy, with a healthy touch of Ziggy Stardust flair thrown in.
“That can’t be me,” Tommy whispers, still staring at his reflection.
Adam would laugh, except that he understands what Tommy is really saying, what he’s feeling. He remembers what it was like, the first glimpse of that surreal version of himself in the mirror, the disbelief, the denial-that person in the mirror is miles beyond who I am, what I am. He can’t be me.
Adam comes up behind Tommy in front of the mirror and settles his hands on Tommy’s shoulders, squeezing softly. “That is you.”
For a second, Adam second-guesses himself, wondering if Tommy will flinch away from his touch. But Tommy doesn’t. Instead he lets out a deep breath and settles into Adam’s hold, sinking back a little so that their bodies touch. For the first time, Tommy’s scent is completely even, free of any nervousness or hurt or fear. Adam glances at his face in the mirror. Tommy looks happy.
Adam thinks of the conversation he had been gearing up for before Tommy had turned up on his own. Now. He should ask him now, while Tommy is relaxed, while he’s happy and unguarded.
“Remember when you first came here?” Adam begins, still holding on to Tommy’s shoulders. “Remember how I said you can ask me anything?”
Tommy nodded. “I remember.”
“I didn’t say it then, but, you should know that you can tell me anything too.”
Tommy frowns slightly. “Okay?”
Adam lets go of him and takes a few steps backward, waiting for Tommy to turn around before he continues. “Is everything alright between you and Kris?”
Tommy looks down at his feet, nervousness creeping into his scent. “Why?”
“I noticed that you’ve both been really quiet lately. I used to hear you talking about music all the time.” Adam hesitates, worrying about the implicit accusation in his next question. “Did something happen? Did you do something to upset Kris?”
Tommy’s gaze snaps up, eyes gone dark. “Did he say that I’d upset him?” He sounded hurt.
“No,” Adam replies quickly. He considers the other possibility. “Did Kris do something to upset you?”
Tommy looks away again, one hand clutching at the edge of the vanity, tightly, knuckles white with tension. “I’m not upset with him.”
“Then what is it?”
“Nothing. Mr. Allen is busy with his music. Nothing’s wrong.”
Adam gives him a long hard look, torn between taking Tommy at his word and pressing further. “Tommy-”
“I should go. There’s laundry and cleaning the dining room and your study,” Tommy walks to the tub and gathers up his bundle once again. “Won’t you be late for the studio?”
Adam looks at his watches and mutters a curse. “I gotta run.”
“Sorry to take up your time,” Tommy murmurs before hurrying out the door like there’s fire licking at his heels.
“You weren’t taking up….” Adam starts to say, but Tommy’s already gone.
The day at the studio is long and tiring, and afterward, Adam takes a dinner meeting with a European producer everyone’s apparently dying to work with. By the time he gets home, midnight has come and gone and the morning’s events are a dull heap piled in a corner of his consciousness, still waiting to be sorted through. He locks the front door and moves up the staircase and across the landing to his bedroom, expecting to find Kris in bed. He doesn’t. Instead, when he walks in, he finds the bathroom door open and Kris on his hands and knees inside, scrubbing the tile floor.
Adam stops short, staring at him in confusion. “What are you doing?”
Kris looks up, surprised. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Why are you scrubbing the floor?” Adam enters the bathroom and looks around, finally noticing that Kris must have been at this for a while. Every surface in the room is sparkling clean and the air is heavily scented with cleaning chemicals, the smell almost overpowering.
Kris drops the brush and stands up, wiping his wet hands on his jeans. He shrugs, but something is off about the gesture. It’s too deliberate, only a shadow of something real. “Nervous energy to burn,” he says. “Besides, the bathroom needed cleaning.”
“Tommy can do that. Why are you-leave it alone, please? Tommy can finish it in the morning. Come to bed.”
At the thought of Tommy, Adam suddenly remembers their time together earlier in the day. Tommy had been in their bathroom for almost an hour, long enough that his scent would have lingered all day. Adam looks at Kris. He can’t be trying to scrub out Tommy’s scent, can he? Adam shakes his head, pushing away the thought.
“I will. Let me finish this-I can’t leave the floor wet like this. I’ll be right there.”
Adam wants to argue, but a quick look at the stubborn set to Kris’s chin makes the fight bleed out of him all at once. He can wait.
“Okay.”
Adam walks back into the bedroom and undresses for the night, climbing into bed in a pair of dark blue sleep pants. By then, his exhaustion has morphed into restlessness, so that he is lying on his side, still wide awake when he hears Kris enter the room, undress and climb into bed. Kris lies still on the far side of the bed, long enough that Adam thinks he might stay there. But then he lets out a shuddering breath and slides over to Adam, pressing close, strong body warm and familiar. He wraps his arm around Adam, tight, clutching at him almost.
“I love you,” Kris whispers against the back of Adam’s neck. “I love you. I love you. I love you.” Over and over again, like he’s desperate. Like he’s drowning.
Adam turns around immediately and catches Kris’s gaze in the near darkness. “It’s okay, I’m right here.” He pulls Kris against his chest, holding him in a tight embrace, murmuring nonsensical things until Kris’s shallow breath evens out and he relaxes into Adam’s hold. “I love you too,” Adam says then, fingers carding through Kris’s hair. “Always.”
* * *
Adam wakes up alone, sprawled across the middle of their bed. It’s early still-earlier than Adam usually gets up in the morning-and he lies there, dazed and half-asleep, wondering what woke him. It takes half a minute for the sound of the running shower and the scent of Kris’s shampoo to reach him. There’s the culprit then, Adam thinks with a soft sigh before shifting up the mattress so that he can sit leaning against the tufted headboard. For a long while, he stares at the half-open bathroom door, listening to the sounds of Kris in the shower and thinking about last night. About finding Kris on his hands and knees, scrubbing the bathroom floor in the middle of the night. About the way he’d clung to Adam. What in the world is going on with him, Adam wonders, steeling himself for the conversation to be had.
Ten minutes after Adam wakes, Kris walks out of the bathroom, hair dark and wet and a towel wrapped low around his hips. It’s a familiar sight, and yet, it takes Adam’s breath away all over again.
“Good morning,” Kris says, a small smile playing at his lips.
“Hey,” Adam replies, giving him a soft smile before waving him over. “Come here.”
Kris crosses the room and sits down on the side of the bed. When he does, Adam shifts over toward him so that they are sitting side by side.
“Are you okay?” Adam asks, quietly, carefully. “What was going on with you last night?”
Kris shifts closer and leans his head against Adam’s shoulder. His hair is cold and wet against Adam’s bare skin, but Adam can’t bring himself to mind.
“I’m so sorry about that.” Kris sighs. “I’ve been letting everything get to me. This goddamned album has got me so stressed out.”
Adam slips his arm around Kris’s waist. He hums softly and sweeps his thumb back and forth along Kris’s warm skin, smiling a little at the soft moan Kris lets out before pressing even closer against Adam’s body.
“I don’t know why you get so worked each time,” Adam chides softly. “You’ve put out three albums, Kris. It ain’t your first time at the rodeo. You’ll make it through this one just fine too-same as the last three times.”
“I know, I know. It’s just…hard to find perspective in the middle of things.”
“I understand, but you’ve got to try.”
Kris lifts his head from Adam’s shoulder and turns to face him. “I propose a spa day for our anniversary this year,” he says. “Just a suggestion,” he adds quickly, grinning at Adam. “I wouldn’t want to deprive you of the one day every two years when I have to do exactly what you say.”
Adam rolls his eyes with mock indignation and laughs. He can’t remember who’d come up with the idea, but ever since their first anniversary, they’d decided not to give each other gifts. Instead, they traded off each year, one of them tasked with planning something special-sometimes just a day, sometimes a weekend. Two years ago, the last time it had been Adam’s turn, he had surprised Kris with a week-long trip to Argentina. They had spent two days in Buenos Aires before heading down for a boat tour of the South Pole. All because Kris had mentioned something about liking penguins. Adam may have been showing off a little.
“I’ll take your suggestion into consideration,” Adam replies, mentally scrapping the overnight Vegas trip he has been considering.
“Good.” Kris leans in to kiss Adam on the cheek. “I’m gonna go get dressed.”
When Kris is gone, Adam reflects on their conversation, finally seeing what he’d failed to until now. Their anniversary. For Adam, the event is nothing but happiness and the memory of happiness. For Kris, it’s all tangled up with sadness and loss. Kris’s parents had officially disclaimed him the day after his and Adam’s mating ceremony, and so, their anniversary marked that day as well, an annual reminder of what he’d lost. Of course, Kris has been acting strangely, keeping to himself, falling silent. It has never been easy for him. Add to that the pressure of the album, and Kris is probably at his breaking point. Or possibly beyond it, if the 2 am cleaning spree is anything to judge by.
The minute he gets to the studio, Adam calls up Lane’s assistant-who is effectively Adam’s assistant at this point-and gets her started on making the revised arrangements for his anniversary. Sandra is nothing if not brilliant, and almost as frighteningly capable as Lane, which is how come, despite the last-minute planning, she manages to book them a spa day in Palm Springs and reserve the entirety of Saam, the tasting room at The Bazaar in Beverly Hills, for a private dinner.
Several days later, on the morning of their anniversary, Adam can barely contain his excitement. He has given Kris next to no details about their day-payback for last year when Kris hadn’t breathed a word about the private concert he’d arranged for Adam and their closest friends-until they reached the rented out nightclub on Vine and David freaking Bowie had walked on stage. Come to think of it, Kris may have been showing off last time too.
They head down the stairs together, Kris cajoling and Adam holding the line, refusing to give Kris so much as one clue. Tommy is there, same as always, ready with breakfast when they walk in and take a seat at the table. After Tommy sets down their plates and steaming mugs of coffee, he excuses himself with a breathless murmur and rushes out of the room.
“What’s that about?” Adam asks.
“Beats me,” Kris replies, frowning a little and looking in the direction Tommy had gone. Over the last week, Kris has been making more of an effort to talk to Tommy, engaging him a little each morning. Their exchanges are still wooden, still noticeably removed from the easy rapport they had seemed to be building when Adam used to hear them talking about music. But it’s something.
Tommy returns in under a minute, holding two small, brightly wrapped boxes in his hands. He approaches the kitchen table and holds out the boxes with a shy smile. “Happy anniversary.”
Adam stares at him in surprise, half-aware that Kris is doing the same.
Tommy’s smile falters. “I thought I had the day right. Did I get it wrong? I’m sorry-I thought….” He trails off uncertainly and drops his outstretched arms.
“Wait,” Adam says. “No, you’ve got it right. I’m just-we’re just…surprised is all. You got us presents?”
“It’s nothing extravagant or anything,” Tommy says, ducking his head, “I just wanted-here, this is yours,” he says, handing a box to Adam. “And this is yours,” he adds, handing a box to Kris.
Adam smiles and starts ripping the wrapping paper. It almost pains him to do it, considering how prettily Tommy has wrapped the box. He gets his present open first, letting out a surprised, delighted sound when he sees the silver and crystal skull necklace from Skingraft he has been meaning to pick up when he goes back into the store.
“How did you know?” Adam asks, looking up at Tommy.
“You said you liked it, remember? The day you took me there. I called the store last week and Cassidy let me order it on the phone and shipped it over.”
“You’re amazing,” Adam says, before turning to Kris, who is just pulling off the last of the wrapping paper on his own gift and opening the box. Inside is a set of four ivory guitar picks.
“They’re made from mammoth ivory,” Tommy explains, not quite looking at Kris.
Kris stares at the box in his hand for a long moment. “This is too expensive,” he says, looking up at Tommy. “You shouldn’t have.”
Tommy meets his gaze. “I wanted to give it to you.” A look passes between them, filled with something Adam can’t quite figure out before Kris breaks it, looking down at the table.
When it becomes clear that Kris isn’t going to say anything further, Adam interjects quickly, looking up at Tommy with a bright smile. “Thank you so much for the gifts. I really like it.” Adam steals a quick glance at Kris. “We both really like them.”
Tommy casts a brief, wondering look at Kris before smiling back at Adam. “I’m glad you like them,” he says, before stealing away to the other side of the room as usual.
Adam and Kris finish up their meals, and when they’re done, they head up to pack a change of clothing for each of them. This is the only clue Adam has let slip thus far. For about an hour, their packing is continuously interrupted by phone calls. First Adam’s mother, then his father, his brother and assorted aunts, uncles and cousins. In between those, they field calls from various friends, all wishing them a happy anniversary. When they’re finally ready to leave, Adam pulls Tommy aside and explains their plans, giving him the name and number for the spa should any emergencies come up. With that, they’re finally off, tucked away in the backseat of the chauffeured car as they sail off toward Palm Springs.
Kris looks genuinely thrilled when they pull up at the spa hotel. He’s enthusiastic throughout the day, talkative for the first time in weeks, saying yes to every suggestion, from the ayurvedic massage to the triple oxygen facial to the sea-salt body scrub. By the time they leave the spa for the ride back to Los Angeles, Kris seems like his old self again, and that alone makes everything worth it-not that Adam didn’t have a truly excellent time indulging himself as well. A few well-wishing phone calls and text messages come in during the ride, and Adam replies while Kris lounges beside him, apparently content to do nothing at all.
When they get to The Bazaar and are escorted into Saam, Kris brightens up all over again. The waiters are attentive, the food is incredible and the wine lends a soft haze to the evening. After the thirteenth petite course in the twenty-movement meal is cleared away, Adam leans forward at the table and segues from their conversation about the European producer he’s been working with.
“So that was nice of Tommy to give us those presents,” he begins.
“Yeah, it was.”
“We should get him something in return. His birthday is next week.”
“I didn’t realize.”
“I remember reading the date on his papers the day he came.” Adam takes a sip of his wine. “I think I’ll get him his own makeup collection.”
“How do you know he’ll want that?”
“When I took him to Skingraft, Roxy-you remember her-put makeup on him. He asked me to show him how to do it the other day. He seemed to like it, so I figured he’d like his own collection. Just a few things to start him off.”
Kris hitches an eyebrow. “And by just a few things, you mean you’ll go straight to the nearest MAC store and clean them out. Right?”
Adam laughs, unabashed. “You know me too well,” he says. “What about you? You’ll get him something, won’t you?”
Kris’s lips tighten a little. “I’ll think of something.” He leans forward afterward, relaxing again. “Enough about that. I don’t want to talk about anything or anyone other than you and me.” Kris rests his hand on Adam’s on the table. “I want to remember every last detail about this anniversary. I want to remember tonight, always.”
There’s something strangely intense about the way Kris says the words, enough to give Adam pause. “Why are you saying it like that?” he asks, half-joking. “We’re going to have dozens more nights like this, dozens of anniversaries.”
Kris’s hand tightens on Adam’s. “Right,” he says flatly. “Of course we will.”
Before Adam can inquire after his sudden change of mood, Kris pulls back in his chair and slips his smartphone out of his pocket.
“Who is it this time?” Adam asks as Kris scans the screen.
“It’s Brad. He says happy anniversary and sorry to be so late, but better late than never.”
Adam can’t help but smile at the mention of his former boyfriend and long-time friend, and at the thought that Brad texted Kris rather than Adam himself. Kris’s instant and ongoing friendship with Brad still amuses and confounds Adam a little, but he doesn’t question it any longer, not when he considers the alternative.
He watches Kris type out a quick reply before putting the phone back into his pocket. When he looks up again, his expression is noticeably subdued. Adam tries to read his scent and finds a mix of hurt and sadness.
“What’s wrong?”
“The day is almost over. Everyone who would call or text us today has done it already. Just now, when my phone vibrated, I thought-I hoped that maybe, just maybe it was them.” Kris sighs heavily. “I don’t know why I do this to myself. They haven’t called once in over seven years, and yet I keep expecting them to. I keep thinking this year, they’ll call to say ‘Happy birthday’ or ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Happy anniversary’. Or just ‘you can come home now, you’re still pack’.”
Kris’s voice breaks with the last few words and Adam’s heart breaks right along with it, recalling the morning of their mating ceremony, how they’d delayed the reading of the mating rites for over an hour at Kris’s insistence. “They’ll be here,” he’d kept saying, watching the doors. But his parents hadn’t turned up, and Adam had hated them for how devastated Kris had looked after an hour and a half had gone by and the way he’d wiped at an errant tear angrily, like it had betrayed him.
“They don’t matter. Nothing matters but you and me. We’re our own pack,” Adam says now, repeating the same words he’d spoken to Kris that morning.
“And where will I be when you’re gone?”
“I’m not going anywhere. Ever.” Adam gives him a searching look. “Why would you say that?”
Kris looks away. “I’m sorry. It’s just...just-nothing. I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright. I just need to know that you know. I meant it then and I mean it now. We’re our own pack.” Adam waits until Kris looks at him again. Until he nods. Until he smiles. “Let’s not talk about them anymore. We’re not supposed to talk about anything or anyone besides you and me. Isn’t that what you said?”
“I did say that.”
“Good. So it’s settled then.” Adam stands up and holds out his hand to Kris. “Dance with me.”
Kris looks at him like he’s gone crazy. “This is a restaurant. There’s no dancing in restaurants.”
Adam looks around the room, empty save for themselves and the two waiters who have been attending to them.
“I bought out the whole room. I think that pretty much means we can do whatever the hell we want. So, if I want to dance with my mate on our anniversary, I’m going to go ahead and do exactly that.” Adam tilts his head, flashing Kris an impish grin. “Come on, dance with me. ‘Nothing hurts when we’re dancing.’”
Kris laughs, catching the reference. He had written that song for Adam five years ago in Belize. It had ended up on Adam’s second album, a quiet, meandering song, just a vocal track and an acoustic guitar line. The song had stuck out like a sore thumb on Adam’s album, but he’d fought the executives tooth and nail to keep it there.
The ambient music is something unfamiliar and non-descript, but they dance to it anyway, swaying close together, Kris’s arms around Adam’s neck. At some point, the staff changes the music, playing something more recognizable at a louder volume. Adam smiles appreciatively and pulls Kris even closer, breathing in his scent, traces of mint and lavender from the spa mixed in with hints of his shampoo and cologne. Nothing hurts when they’re dancing. And nothing matters except this, the feel of Kris’s body in his arms and they way they move together, perfectly in synch.
When the dance is over, the waiters applaud them while Kris flushes and Adam jokingly takes a bow. They finish the rest of the tasting menu on a wave of rambling conversation and easy smiles, and when they’re done, the staff escorts them through the main dining room of the restaurant. They smile and nod good-naturedly at the loud gasps and shocked smiles that greet them as the other diners recognize them. And outside, when a group of photographers-psychic apparently, or maybe just very well informed-descend upon them in a storm of camera flashes, they patiently pose for a few photographs before turning toward their car. Julian, their chauffeur for the day, drives away the more persistent photographers with his six feet and four inches of solid-muscled intimidation and a warning growl before shutting the door behind them and running around to the front seat to ferry them home.
Inside the car, Kris falls silent again, gazing out his window with a pensive look as the car makes its way toward the Hollywood Hills.
“You still with me?”
Kris looks over. “Still present.”
“The paparazzi didn’t bother you that much, did they?” Despite how long they’ve both been at this, Kris has never made peace with being followed and photographed. He still categorically hates it.
“No, they didn’t. I was thinking, is all.”
“What about?”
Kris doesn’t reply immediately. Instead, he stares out the window for a brief while. Finally, he turns to Adam with a haunted look.
“I don’t deserve this. This life, you-I don’t deserve any of it.”
“That’s not true.”
Kris shakes his head. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew what I come from.”
Adam moves closer to Kris. “I don’t care about the past. I know who you are, right now, in this moment. That’s all that matters to me.”
Instead of lifting Kris’s spirits, Adam’s reassurance seems to dampen them even further. Kris takes Adam’s hands in his, gripping them tightly.
“I love you. I love you so much.” That strange intensity is back in Kris’s voice, and this time, Adam feels a small jolt of fear.
“Don’t say it like that. Don’t say it like something bad is going to happen.”
Kris doesn’t say anything in response. Instead he drapes himself over Adam, nestles into him and clings fiercely until Adam wraps his arms around him. They remain like that for the rest of the ride, silently watching the streetlights racing by.
Julian comes around to open the door for them when they get home, and Adam slips him a hundred dollar bill before grabbing the small traveling bag in the trunk and walking to the front door with Kris. When they enter, a flash of movement sends Adam into high-alert before he flips on the foyer lights and finds Tommy standing there in a t-shirt and Kris’s old sleep pants.
“I heard the car,” Tommy explains. “I came to see if you need anything.”
“We’re fine,” Kris replies.
“Oh. Okay.” Tommy turns around to head back to his room. He only makes it a few steps before Kris moves toward him.
“Tommy.”
Adam tenses involuntarily when Kris calls out Tommy’s name.
“Yes, sir?” Tommy says, turning back around.
“Thank you again for the gifts. I really like the guitar picks. I appreciate that you thought of us. Of me.”
There’s an odd shade of relief to Tommy’s smile after Kris speaks. Once again, Adam can’t help feeling that there’s something lurking between the words being spoken.
“I’m happy you liked the gift,” Tommy replies.
Kris swallows hard and nods before turning toward the staircase. “You coming?” he throws over his shoulder when Adam doesn’t move.
“Right behind you,” Adam says, tightening his grip around the handle of the overnight bag and walking toward the staircase himself. “Goodnight, Tommy,” he says before climbing up behind Kris.
“Goodnight, Adam.”
At the top of the stairs, Adam flips the upstairs switch for the foyer, throwing the front of the house back into darkness. He crosses the landing and enters the bedroom, dropping the bag barely a second before Kris pushes him against the door and kisses him roughly, hands clutching at Adam’s charcoal-gray suit.
“Whoa,” Adam manages to get out in between, quick, desperate kisses as Kris’s hands tugs hard on the back of his neck, pulling him down.
“Please,” Kris murmurs against his lips, needy and hoarse already. “I need you, please.” He lets go of Adam’s neck and begins tugging at Adam’s clothes and his own simultaneously, groaning with dissatisfaction when buttons and zippers don’t give in as easily as he would like. Adam laughs breathlessly as he moves to help, desire spiking hot and sharp in response to the scent of Kris’s arousal. Between them, they manage to get rid of their clothing in record time, suits left behind in a crumpled mass beside their shoes and dress socks.
They fall into bed in a tangle of limbs, still kissing, gasping and groaning into each other’s mouths. Adam ends up on top of Kris, cradled between his spread thighs, making Kris moan low in his throat as he grinds his hard cock into Kris’s. The scent of arousal is sharp in the air now, enveloping them as their tongues slide against each other, as Adam’s cock slides against Kris’s, precome adding just enough slickness to ease the friction, making it sweeter-so fucking good.
Kris’s hands slide all over Adam’s back, skimming over his shoulder blades and sliding down, following the curve of his spine until they cup his ass, squeezing lightly. “I want you,” Kris groans, breaking their kiss just long enough to get the words out. He presses harder then, dipping his fingers into the crease of Adam’s ass, sliding along the delicate, burning hot skin until he brushes over the tightly clenched rim of Adam’s hole. “I want you like this,” Kris says, pushing in gently, just the tip of one finger. “I need you,” he says, rotating his finger, making Adam gasp harshly against the side of his neck.
Adam body goes rigid as he fights back the instinctive refusal, an alpha’s unwillingness to submit. They don’t do this all the time, but it happens often enough that Adam is well aware of the pleasure to be had when Kris fucks him, when Adam gets on his hands and knees for his beta and takes everything he has to give. So he holds still, warring with his natural instinct, not acquiescing, but not refusing either.
“Give me,” Kris breathes, finger still teasing at Adam’s entrance. “I need you. Alpha, please.”
Kris’s plea breaks the stalemate in Adam’s head. His alpha’s need to dominate is matched only by his need to protect his mate, to give to him. Kris’s deliberately chosen words are exactly what he needs to hear, and this time, just like all the other times, they shift his perception, transforming an act of submission into a one of giving, into another way of marking his claim over his mate.
“Alpha,” Kris murmurs again. “Give me, please.”
Adam groans like a man dying and pushes back, hissing softly when Kris’s finger slides in to the second knuckle, dry, too much friction, and yet, somehow not enough. Between his legs, his cock grows even harder, leaking precome onto Kris’s abdomen, wet streaks across soft skin.
“Anything you want,” he grits out between clenched teeth.
And he means it. Which is why he goes willingly when Kris shifts out from underneath him and directs Adam to his hands and knees, pushing down on his back until Adam’s forehead touches the mattress and his ass is canted high in the air.
“Spread your legs wider.”
At the sound of Adam’s growl, Kris appends a hastily-murmured “please.”
The instant Adam spreads his legs wider, Kris is there, fingers splayed wide on Adam’s ass, pushing until Adam’s hole is exposed. His tongue follows, firm and wet, dragging across the puckered flesh repeatedly, dipping past the twitching rim for a heart-stopping moment before retreating. Adam groans, pushing back, shameless, demanding more. Kris gives it to him, licking and sucking at Adam’s hole, getting him set, working him open with his tongue, fucking him with it. It’s obscene, wonderful and filthy and perfect, and by the time Kris is done with him, Adam feels like he’s been hard forever, cock aching between his thighs. The sound of Kris opening up the bottle of lube sounds like music to Adam’s overheated senses and the feel of slippery wet fingers sliding into him feel like the purest form of sensation.
Adam doesn’t tense up until Kris starts pushing into him, slick and hot, thrusting past the loosened, wet rim of his hole and pressing deep. Kris isn’t as long or thick as Adam is, but he’s plenty big enough-and Adam is tight enough-that Adam feels every fraction of every inch of Kris’s cock as it fucks into him, spreading him wide around the thickness of it. When Kris bottoms out, he strokes Adam’s hip, murmuring “alpha” and “let me” over and over until Adam groans, relaxing just enough for Kris to move, to pull back and push back in, fucking him.
Adam groans again, caught between pleasure and pain, between pushing back for more and shying away. Kris presses down on Adam’s lower back, urging him to spread his legs wider, shifting him lower on the bed so that the angle changes, so that, when Kris fucks into him again, his cocks strokes directly against Adam’s sweet spot, making pure pleasure pool at the base of his spine and throb along the length of his cock.
“Fuck,” Adam gasps out, mouth open against the bedsheets, as Kris starts to fuck him harder, pulling out so that only the head of his cock remains in Adam’s body before ramming back in, taking him. A fine sheen of sweat breaks out over Adam’s skin as Kris fucks him. Hard, fast, deep. Perfect. Too perfect, pushing Adam close to the edge, the promise of orgasm so close that Adam swears he can already feel the first phantom flutters of it. He moves a hand between his legs, reaching for his cock, only to have Kris bat his hand away.
“Not yet,” Kris says, breathlessly. He sounds wrecked, hips thrusting wildly, driving his cock into Adam’s body over and over again. “I need to feel you. I want to feel you come inside me. Mark me.” His words are nearly enough to make Adam come right there and then, but he wrestles himself under control, gritting his teeth, taking it until he feels Kris come with a choked gasp inside him.
Kris pulls out almost immediately, flipping over onto his back and spreading his legs wide. Beside him, Adam pushes up on his knees and looks down. Kris looks debauched, hair damp with sweat, skin flushed, half-hard cock glistening wet from fucking Adam.
“Take me.”
The words spur Adam into action. He grabs the bottle of lube and slicks his cock, hissing at the dizzying pleasure of it. Then he upends the bottle over Kris, getting him wet and messy with lube, two fingers pushing hot and slick into his ass before Adam settles between his legs and drives his cock into him.
“Oh God,” Kris pants, hands clutching convulsively at Adam’s hips as Adam pounds into him, working him hard and fast right from the start. The strained words break through the red-hot haze surrounding Adam, making him slow down.
“No, don’t stop. Adam, please,” Kris begs, thrusting up as much as he can, trying to take Adam’s cock deeper. “I want it. You and me, like this. I want to remember.”
Somewhere in the recesses of Adam’s overtaxed brain, Kris’s words ring a faint bell of alarm. Dimly, Adam thinks that he ought to slow down, to question this, to take note, but the pleasure drowns it all out, roaring through him as he picks up the pace, hips snapping, driving into Kris’s body with rough, almost brutal thrusts. Harder and harder, blinking back the sweat sliding down his temples, holding Kris’s legs open, grip unforgiving on the backs of his thighs. When he comes, Adam cries out Kris’s name, shuddering, hips jerking wildly as his climax runs roughshod over him, chasing every last coherent thought away.
When Adam is capable of movement again-or rather, when Kris’s strained breathing alerts him to the fact that he’s likely crushing Kris’s lungs-Adam shifts out of his boneless sprawl on top of Kris and lies down beside him.
“No, don’t go,” Kris whispers, curling into Adam, pressing his face into Adam’s neck.
The bedsheets are a mess, and so are they, both slick with sweat and lube and come. Adam knows he should get up, drag them both into the shower, but he can’t make himself move.
“We should clean up,” he suggests half-heartedly, pulling Kris closer.
“Stay here. Don’t let go of me. I need you.”
Whispered words against Adam’s skin. Pleading. Wanting. So Adam holds him even tighter, murmuring unintelligible assurances until Kris quiets down, until his breathing evens out and he falls asleep.
Chapter 5
Adam hates silence.
At twelve, it meant too much opportunity to think, to wonder and worry about how different he felt from the other alpha boys, how little interest wavy hair, soft skin and burgeoning curves held for him. Silence meant hours sitting alone in his bedroom, anxiety hopelessly entangled with anger in the pit of his stomach. Because he felt betrayed in a way. By his wayward feelings, his thickening body, his cracking voice.
At sixteen, silence meant mornings in front of the mirror, cataloguing each new blemish on his face with a kind of ruthless diligence. It meant evenings lying in bed, unpacking the day, fresh wounds mixing with old ones-or perhaps they had all been the same wounds back then, rubbed raw and reopened each day. A whispered insult from a daring beta, an open taunt from another alpha in the hallway between classes. The struggle each time to push back his natural aggression, to keep his head high, to reveal nothing. Never let them scent his weakness.
At nineteen, silence meant sitting on the couch in their old house in San Diego, his brother next to him and his parents seated in two armchairs facing them. They had sat in silence while Adam’s mind skirted around reality in that way one’s mind can, in acrobatic twists and turns, all to protect itself. Breaking a mating bond. It wasn’t unheard of, had been legal for almost a hundred years. A random statistic flitted through. “One in every six mating bonds in North America ends with a mutual disclaiming.” A news article from eleventh grade social studies chased on its heels. Mating (Covalent) Bonds: The Dependency Factor and the Erosion of Tradition by E.J. Hughes. His parents disclaiming each other. Theoretical-except it wasn’t. Impossible, his mind attempted again, twisting and turning still, until it stopped short, all out of gambits. Not so impossible, Adam realized, finally recalling the long stretches of silence in the last few months, the stilted motion, bodies turned away from each other and scents masked.
At thirty-three, the old wounds are memories without teeth, incapable of hurting him. But Adam hates silence still, because, since nineteen, he has associated it with helplessness, with sad news and abrupt endings. So when he makes his way down to the bottom of the stairs that morning and finds nothing but silence, he pauses for a moment, that old worry rising. Somewhere along the line, he has gotten used to the sound of conversation filtering down the hallway leading to the kitchen in the mornings. Kris and Tommy’s voices, less halting than before, usually talking about music. Adam tries to recall Kris mentioning an early day at the studio but comes up with nothing. Another moment, and he gets moving again, pushing away the worry. Everything is fine. Why wouldn’t it be?
Tommy is standing by the sink when Adam walks into the kitchen, back turned to him. He is motionless, frozen almost, staring out the window while water runs from the faucet, wasting away.
“Tommy?”
The sound of his name makes Tommy jump, gasping and turning around quickly, wet hands dripping water onto the tiled floor.
“Sorry,” Adam says immediately, surprised at Tommy’s reaction. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Tommy’s face reddens as he ducks his head. “No, it was me. I didn’t realize you were there. I wasn’t….” His voice trails off, and for a moment, the only sounds in the kitchen are the hum of the refrigerator and the rushing water from the faucet.
“Do you want to shut that off?” Adam says, tilting his head in the direction of the sink.
Tommy mutters something under his breath, flushing deeper, before turning around and shutting off the water. “Can I get you some breakfast?” he asks afterward, voice strained.
“Please,” Adam replies before taking a seat at the kitchen table. He watches Tommy as the omega sets about fixing him a plate of egg whites and toast, wondering at his jerky movements, his trembling hands, and the sharp scent of nervousness pouring off him. Almost like those first few days, when they had all been walking on eggshells around each other, when silence had been a constant. When Kris had wanted Tommy gone.
“Have you seen Kris?” Adam asks, that familiar worry springing back.
Tommy startles again, like he’s somehow forgotten Adam is there. “I think I heard him in his workroom,” Tommy replies. Shaky, eyes not quite meeting Adam’s.
Silence again, while Adam eats and drinks his coffee and Tommy stands by the sink, fingers restless on the countertop. Adam is almost finished when Kris finally walks in, disheveled and weary, ink stains on his fingertips. On the periphery, he sees Tommy jerk suddenly, then stand up straighter, features tightening with…what? Adam can’t tell.
“Working hard already?” Adam says, smiling at Kris as he takes a seat at the table.
“These songs won’t write themselves,” Kris replies with an answering smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Are you alright?” Adam asks, thinking of how Kris gets sometimes when working on new songs, how intense and overly invested he can become.
“Sure,” Kris replies, gaze skittering away. “It’s gonna be a long one today. The suits are coming by to hear the tracks we’ve laid so far. All five of them. I can picture the shitshow already. ‘ Work faster, pick up the pace.’” Kris’s eyes are still darting about. At the wall, at the plate Tommy sets in front of him with a loud clang, at the salt shaker, at the tabletop-looking everywhere but straight at Adam.
They keep talking about Kris’s album, a familiar conversation and yet somehow stilted this time around, like there’s something else lurking between the words, something Adam ought to hear, only he can’t. He notices the way Kris still hasn’t looked directly at him since sitting down at the table. He notices the way Tommy’s hand trembles as he refills their coffee mugs. He notices the tightening in Kris’s shoulders while Tommy is near and the way they don’t look at each other, don’t speak to each other except for a murmured “thanks” from Kris before Tommy retreats to the other side of the kitchen, coffee pot rattling precariously in his hand.
Adam files away each detail and tries to ignore the tightening in his stomach and the dawning sense that something has shifted. He tilts his head a little, concentrating. Tommy’s scent is the same, sharp with nervousness still. Kris’s scent gives him…nothing. He takes in the rigid set of Kris’s shoulders and the weariness in his eyes, then he looks over at Tommy standing by the sink once again, hunched over it, small body almost folded in on itself. Silence. Just like before-no, everything is fine. Adam looks at Kris and Tommy in turn once again. Everything was fine.
“I should start getting ready to head out,” Kris says, breaking the silence. “Time to face the firing squad downtown.” He finally meets Adam’s eyes. “Are you heading out soon?”
“Yeah. I’ve got about forty minutes to call. Just enough time to get there if I leave now.”
Kris stands up. “See you in the evening then?”
“Good luck with the firing squad,” Adam says as Kris turns to leave. “Hey, maybe their guns will jam.”
“I wish.” He leaves the room without a glance in Tommy’s direction.
When Kris is gone, Tommy clears the table, head down, hands still shaking as he gathers up the plates and cups and ferries them to the sink. Adam watches him washing up. Frowning, he sorts through the jumble of details he has filed away. Some kind of confrontation, maybe? Yesterday or even this morning. Kris would have been stressed out over today’s meeting with his label’s executives. Maybe Tommy had made a mistake, rearranged something in Kris’s workroom or damaged a guitar? That has to be all it is.
“Hey,” Adam says, looking up when Tommy returns to the table with a damp cloth to wipe it down.
Tommy stills, nervous scent sharpening.
“Are you alright?” Adam asks gently. He notices the way Tommy’s pale fingers tighten around the cloth is his right hand. Another detail filed away.
“I’m fine,” Tommy says with a brief smile. “Everything is fine.”
Tommy’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes either.
***
Kris’s meeting with the label executives turns out as badly as he’d anticipated. This much, Adam can tell from the downward bent to Kris’s lips and the weary, listless way he recounts his day before locking himself away in his workroom and coming to bed long after Adam has already fallen asleep.
A few days later, it’s Adam’s turn to face the music, as it were. His meeting downtown goes marginally better than Kris’s but his marching orders are ultimately the same. Pick up the pace. Need more material. Mind the deadlines, the budget, and so on and so forth. Toeing the line keeps Adam busy, meeting with multiple producers, vetting new songs with the creative team-busy enough that it takes him a while to notice the silences building up, long stretches stacked high in the mornings, the hush broken only by the occasional halting question and murmured answer. Kris still doesn’t look at Tommy, and for his part, Tommy keeps to the other side of the kitchen, stealing occasional glances across the room, eyes unreadable the few times Adam notices him staring at Kris.
“Is everything alright with Tommy?” Adam asks one morning, following Kris out to his car. Today, Kris hadn’t turned up for breakfast at all, locking himself away in his workroom all morning before heading straight for the front doors.
“What do you mean?” Kris asks, looking away, hand clenched around his keys.
“Did something happen with Tommy?”
“Why? What did he say?”
“Nothing, but something is clearly wrong. It’s like we’ve gone in reverse.” He takes a step toward Kris. “Listen, whatever he did, I’m sure it was an honest mistake.”
A pained look flits across Kris’s face, there and gone so quickly that Adam decides he must have imagined it. “Tommy didn’t do anything. I’m the one that-” Kris stops abruptly and runs a hand through his hair, sending the already disheveled strands into further disarray. “It’s the album,” he starts again. “I’m stressed out over the album, that’s all.” He closes the gap between them and kisses Adam on the cheek. “Everything is fine.”
As if to make good on his declaration, Kris finally talks to Tommy again the next morning, asking about the house, supplies needed, upkeep-anything but music-and all in a painstakingly careful tone. Brittle, artificial. Tommy’s tone is equally careful when he replies, looking down at the floor, hands tightly clasped together in front of him, fingers twisting together, his habit revealing his nervousness even without reading his scent. Their conversation is wooden, enough so that Adam almost swears the silence was better. But Kris runs out of meaningless questions soon enough and a hush settles once again.
For no particular reason, Adam thinks of the way his father’s hand had reached for his mother’s in the space between their armchairs that day, only to stop short halfway to the mark and resettle on his lap. Whatever this is, it has to end.
An hour later, after Kris has headed off downtown, Adam is squinting into the mirror, putting on the finishing touches to his make-up. He has already made up his mind to talk to Tommy before leaving. If Kris won’t give him anything to work with, perhaps Tommy will. He is still standing in the bathroom, eyeing his reflection critically and trying to marshal the right words for the conversation ahead, when the sound of feet moving across the bedroom carpet reaches him-only a split-second before Tommy’s familiar scent follows.
“Hi,” Tommy says quietly when he stops in the doorway to the bathroom, thin arms piled high with freshly-washed towels. “I, um, came to replace the towels,” he says. “If you don’t mind,” he adds quickly.
Adam makes a vague gesture at the towel racks. “Do what you need to do.”
Tommy nods and begins moving around quietly, replacing the towels and bundling the used ones in his arms. Adam watches his reflection in the mirror. Despite all the new things he now owns, Tommy still wears Kris’s old clothes a couple of times a week. This burgundy t-shirt especially, old, bordering on threadbare and hanging loose on Tommy’s thin frame. Adam lips hitch in a smile as he remembers the first time he’d seen that shirt. Hollywood Week. Kris gesturing at the empty seat beside him in the auditorium, that gorgeous smile flashing bright and warm as he’d looked up at Adam. The connection between them had been instantaneous. The image in his mind’s eyes switches, memory settling on the first time he’d met Tommy, how breakable he had looked. Instantly, Adam had wanted to protect him against everything, like they were connected already.
“How did you learn to do that?”
Tommy’s voice pulls Adam from his thoughts. “What?” Adam says, turning around to face him.
“The make-up,” Tommy says, tilting his chin in the direction of the chaotic collection of bottles, tubes, compacts and brushes on Adam’s side of the large marble vanity in the bathroom. “How did you learn?”
“I used to do community theater back home in San Diego and I’d watch what the make-up person was doing when we had performances. I didn’t really practice on myself until I was older, when-”
Adam pauses, thinking of a Saturday morning spent in front of the mirror at sixteen, bathroom counter littered with all the make-up he had bought the evening before. He’d labored over his face for half an hour, hiding the acne, making the freckles disappear, creating a temporary version of himself-a vision of what he could be. Adam glances at his reflection over his shoulder. He has become that vision.
“When what?” Tommy prompts.
Memories without teeth. Adam shakes his head and smiles. “When I was a towering mass of teenage angst. Overweight, freckled, acned and trying to hide behind three layers of concealer and foundation.”
Tommy gives him a disbelieving look. “I can’t imagine you needing to hide anything. You’re beautiful.” His large eyes go even wider the instant he says the words. He sputters, face burning red with embarrassment as he looks away. “I didn’t-I mean….”
Adam watches him in stunned silence for a moment. Without warning, he flashes back to that day in his car, when Tommy had leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. But it had meant nothing-just like this means nothing. Tommy can’t mean it like that.
“You’re right,” Adam replies jokingly, trying to break the tension. “I’m practically perfect in every way.”
Tommy snorts at that, tension easing from his body. “I give an inch,” he says without rancor.
Adam grins. “See that’s where you went wrong. Alphas always take a mile if you let them.”
Tommy smiles, wide and bright for a moment before slipping back to shyness. He eyes the makeup on the vanity again. “When we went to Skingraft, that girl, Roxy, she put makeup on me.”
Adam tries not to think of the way Tommy had looked, or the way he’d reacted to him. “I remember.”
Tommy hesitates before speaking again. “Do you think-can you show me how to do what she did?”
“Sure. I can show you how do it even better than she did. Come here.”
“Right now?” Tommy asks, surprised.
“No time like the present.”
Tommy carefully sets the bundle in his arm on the side of the soaking tub and approaches the bathroom vanity.
Adam picks up a bottle of makeup remover and a cotton pad. “Here. First, I’m going to demonstrate on myself, then I’ll put in on you.” He proceeds to do just that, cleaning off his makeup and applying everything all over again, moving through the process slowly and talking through each step so that Tommy misses nothing. When Adam is finished with himself, he pats the countertop and tells Tommy to hop on. He rifles through his makeup case then, looking for the foundation he’d worn in the winter. It’s two shades lighter than what he’s wearing now and closer to Tommy’s pale complexion. When he finds it, he turns back to Tommy.
“Spread your legs for me,” Adam says.
The unintended double meaning to his words hits Adam when he hears the hitch in Tommy’s breath. Perched on the countertop, Tommy spreads his legs, blush creeping up his neck. Adam pretends he doesn’t notice any of it, mind skirting around possibilities. He steps between Tommy’s legs, foundation bottle in hand, and gets to work, layering Tommy’s face with color, describing each step again and directing Tommy’s movements. Look up, look down, tilt his face this way, that way. Tommy’s skin is soft beneath Adam’s fingertips where his thumb skims Tommy’s forehead as he sweeps on another layer of eyeshadow over Tommy’s eyelids. But Adam refuses to dwell on the realization, or the sensation of Tommy’s warm breath on his own skin as he leans close, wielding the small makeup brush.
Through it all, Tommy sits admirably still. Adam can’t help smiling a little at that when he finally notices, contrasting Tommy’s stillness with the way Kris had twitched and shifted the entire time Adam had first done this to him. That memory quickly gives way to another one, years ago, during Idol when they had both been about to travel back to their hometowns with camera crews in tow.
“Time to fix up a parade,” Kris had said dryly when they had returned to their shared bedroom the night before Kris’s flight back to Arkansas. “’Some kind of coming home in triumph is required.’”
Kris had been aiming for casual, ask-me-if-I-care, but he’d missed by a few hundred yards at least. Adam had caught the anxiety in his scent without even trying.
“It’s going to be alright, you know, going back home.” Adam had paused. “Maybe telling them about…us.”
“You don’t know where I come from-how they are.” Kris had pressed closer to Adam where they were sitting together on Adam’s bed. “I wish you were coming with me. I need you with me.”
Adam still doesn’t know what had made him think of what he’d done next. Rubbing the newly-applied layer of nail polish off his thumb and then painting a shiny coat of the same black polish onto Kris’s thumb.
“There, you see, I’ll be with you,” he’d said, their foreheads pressed together, Kris’s warm breath fanning across his skin. “I’ll always be with you.” And he’d meant it, silently promising forever long before he made his mating claim onstage on the last night of the Idol tour.
“Is it finished?”
With a surprised start, Adam realizes he has been standing there motionless while Tommy waited. He looks at Tommy’s face, examining his work so far. Almost perfect. Quickly, he picks up a tube of shiny pink gloss and leans in close again.
“Tilt your head up.” When Tommy obeys, Adam cups his jaw and sweeps the soft tip of the applicator across his lips. “Press your lips together.” After Tommy obeys, Adam touches up the corners of his lips before stepping away and eyeing the finished product. Out of nowhere, he feels a rush of childish excitement. Tommy’s reaction, Adam thinks, will be priceless. “Turn around and see.”
Tommy hops down off the vanity and takes a deep breath. Then he turns around and freezes instantly. For a long moment, Tommy simply stares at his reflection in shock. The transformation Adam has achieved is far more dramatic that what Roxy had done weeks ago. Tommy looks like something out a glam rock video fantasy, with a healthy touch of Ziggy Stardust flair thrown in.
“That can’t be me,” Tommy whispers, still staring at his reflection.
Adam would laugh, except that he understands what Tommy is really saying, what he’s feeling. He remembers what it was like, the first glimpse of that surreal version of himself in the mirror, the disbelief, the denial-that person in the mirror is miles beyond who I am, what I am. He can’t be me.
Adam comes up behind Tommy in front of the mirror and settles his hands on Tommy’s shoulders, squeezing softly. “That is you.”
For a second, Adam second-guesses himself, wondering if Tommy will flinch away from his touch. But Tommy doesn’t. Instead he lets out a deep breath and settles into Adam’s hold, sinking back a little so that their bodies touch. For the first time, Tommy’s scent is completely even, free of any nervousness or hurt or fear. Adam glances at his face in the mirror. Tommy looks happy.
Adam thinks of the conversation he had been gearing up for before Tommy had turned up on his own. Now. He should ask him now, while Tommy is relaxed, while he’s happy and unguarded.
“Remember when you first came here?” Adam begins, still holding on to Tommy’s shoulders. “Remember how I said you can ask me anything?”
Tommy nodded. “I remember.”
“I didn’t say it then, but, you should know that you can tell me anything too.”
Tommy frowns slightly. “Okay?”
Adam lets go of him and takes a few steps backward, waiting for Tommy to turn around before he continues. “Is everything alright between you and Kris?”
Tommy looks down at his feet, nervousness creeping into his scent. “Why?”
“I noticed that you’ve both been really quiet lately. I used to hear you talking about music all the time.” Adam hesitates, worrying about the implicit accusation in his next question. “Did something happen? Did you do something to upset Kris?”
Tommy’s gaze snaps up, eyes gone dark. “Did he say that I’d upset him?” He sounded hurt.
“No,” Adam replies quickly. He considers the other possibility. “Did Kris do something to upset you?”
Tommy looks away again, one hand clutching at the edge of the vanity, tightly, knuckles white with tension. “I’m not upset with him.”
“Then what is it?”
“Nothing. Mr. Allen is busy with his music. Nothing’s wrong.”
Adam gives him a long hard look, torn between taking Tommy at his word and pressing further. “Tommy-”
“I should go. There’s laundry and cleaning the dining room and your study,” Tommy walks to the tub and gathers up his bundle once again. “Won’t you be late for the studio?”
Adam looks at his watches and mutters a curse. “I gotta run.”
“Sorry to take up your time,” Tommy murmurs before hurrying out the door like there’s fire licking at his heels.
“You weren’t taking up….” Adam starts to say, but Tommy’s already gone.
The day at the studio is long and tiring, and afterward, Adam takes a dinner meeting with a European producer everyone’s apparently dying to work with. By the time he gets home, midnight has come and gone and the morning’s events are a dull heap piled in a corner of his consciousness, still waiting to be sorted through. He locks the front door and moves up the staircase and across the landing to his bedroom, expecting to find Kris in bed. He doesn’t. Instead, when he walks in, he finds the bathroom door open and Kris on his hands and knees inside, scrubbing the tile floor.
Adam stops short, staring at him in confusion. “What are you doing?”
Kris looks up, surprised. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Why are you scrubbing the floor?” Adam enters the bathroom and looks around, finally noticing that Kris must have been at this for a while. Every surface in the room is sparkling clean and the air is heavily scented with cleaning chemicals, the smell almost overpowering.
Kris drops the brush and stands up, wiping his wet hands on his jeans. He shrugs, but something is off about the gesture. It’s too deliberate, only a shadow of something real. “Nervous energy to burn,” he says. “Besides, the bathroom needed cleaning.”
“Tommy can do that. Why are you-leave it alone, please? Tommy can finish it in the morning. Come to bed.”
At the thought of Tommy, Adam suddenly remembers their time together earlier in the day. Tommy had been in their bathroom for almost an hour, long enough that his scent would have lingered all day. Adam looks at Kris. He can’t be trying to scrub out Tommy’s scent, can he? Adam shakes his head, pushing away the thought.
“I will. Let me finish this-I can’t leave the floor wet like this. I’ll be right there.”
Adam wants to argue, but a quick look at the stubborn set to Kris’s chin makes the fight bleed out of him all at once. He can wait.
“Okay.”
Adam walks back into the bedroom and undresses for the night, climbing into bed in a pair of dark blue sleep pants. By then, his exhaustion has morphed into restlessness, so that he is lying on his side, still wide awake when he hears Kris enter the room, undress and climb into bed. Kris lies still on the far side of the bed, long enough that Adam thinks he might stay there. But then he lets out a shuddering breath and slides over to Adam, pressing close, strong body warm and familiar. He wraps his arm around Adam, tight, clutching at him almost.
“I love you,” Kris whispers against the back of Adam’s neck. “I love you. I love you. I love you.” Over and over again, like he’s desperate. Like he’s drowning.
Adam turns around immediately and catches Kris’s gaze in the near darkness. “It’s okay, I’m right here.” He pulls Kris against his chest, holding him in a tight embrace, murmuring nonsensical things until Kris’s shallow breath evens out and he relaxes into Adam’s hold. “I love you too,” Adam says then, fingers carding through Kris’s hair. “Always.”
* * *
Adam wakes up alone, sprawled across the middle of their bed. It’s early still-earlier than Adam usually gets up in the morning-and he lies there, dazed and half-asleep, wondering what woke him. It takes half a minute for the sound of the running shower and the scent of Kris’s shampoo to reach him. There’s the culprit then, Adam thinks with a soft sigh before shifting up the mattress so that he can sit leaning against the tufted headboard. For a long while, he stares at the half-open bathroom door, listening to the sounds of Kris in the shower and thinking about last night. About finding Kris on his hands and knees, scrubbing the bathroom floor in the middle of the night. About the way he’d clung to Adam. What in the world is going on with him, Adam wonders, steeling himself for the conversation to be had.
Ten minutes after Adam wakes, Kris walks out of the bathroom, hair dark and wet and a towel wrapped low around his hips. It’s a familiar sight, and yet, it takes Adam’s breath away all over again.
“Good morning,” Kris says, a small smile playing at his lips.
“Hey,” Adam replies, giving him a soft smile before waving him over. “Come here.”
Kris crosses the room and sits down on the side of the bed. When he does, Adam shifts over toward him so that they are sitting side by side.
“Are you okay?” Adam asks, quietly, carefully. “What was going on with you last night?”
Kris shifts closer and leans his head against Adam’s shoulder. His hair is cold and wet against Adam’s bare skin, but Adam can’t bring himself to mind.
“I’m so sorry about that.” Kris sighs. “I’ve been letting everything get to me. This goddamned album has got me so stressed out.”
Adam slips his arm around Kris’s waist. He hums softly and sweeps his thumb back and forth along Kris’s warm skin, smiling a little at the soft moan Kris lets out before pressing even closer against Adam’s body.
“I don’t know why you get so worked each time,” Adam chides softly. “You’ve put out three albums, Kris. It ain’t your first time at the rodeo. You’ll make it through this one just fine too-same as the last three times.”
“I know, I know. It’s just…hard to find perspective in the middle of things.”
“I understand, but you’ve got to try.”
Kris lifts his head from Adam’s shoulder and turns to face him. “I propose a spa day for our anniversary this year,” he says. “Just a suggestion,” he adds quickly, grinning at Adam. “I wouldn’t want to deprive you of the one day every two years when I have to do exactly what you say.”
Adam rolls his eyes with mock indignation and laughs. He can’t remember who’d come up with the idea, but ever since their first anniversary, they’d decided not to give each other gifts. Instead, they traded off each year, one of them tasked with planning something special-sometimes just a day, sometimes a weekend. Two years ago, the last time it had been Adam’s turn, he had surprised Kris with a week-long trip to Argentina. They had spent two days in Buenos Aires before heading down for a boat tour of the South Pole. All because Kris had mentioned something about liking penguins. Adam may have been showing off a little.
“I’ll take your suggestion into consideration,” Adam replies, mentally scrapping the overnight Vegas trip he has been considering.
“Good.” Kris leans in to kiss Adam on the cheek. “I’m gonna go get dressed.”
When Kris is gone, Adam reflects on their conversation, finally seeing what he’d failed to until now. Their anniversary. For Adam, the event is nothing but happiness and the memory of happiness. For Kris, it’s all tangled up with sadness and loss. Kris’s parents had officially disclaimed him the day after his and Adam’s mating ceremony, and so, their anniversary marked that day as well, an annual reminder of what he’d lost. Of course, Kris has been acting strangely, keeping to himself, falling silent. It has never been easy for him. Add to that the pressure of the album, and Kris is probably at his breaking point. Or possibly beyond it, if the 2 am cleaning spree is anything to judge by.
The minute he gets to the studio, Adam calls up Lane’s assistant-who is effectively Adam’s assistant at this point-and gets her started on making the revised arrangements for his anniversary. Sandra is nothing if not brilliant, and almost as frighteningly capable as Lane, which is how come, despite the last-minute planning, she manages to book them a spa day in Palm Springs and reserve the entirety of Saam, the tasting room at The Bazaar in Beverly Hills, for a private dinner.
Several days later, on the morning of their anniversary, Adam can barely contain his excitement. He has given Kris next to no details about their day-payback for last year when Kris hadn’t breathed a word about the private concert he’d arranged for Adam and their closest friends-until they reached the rented out nightclub on Vine and David freaking Bowie had walked on stage. Come to think of it, Kris may have been showing off last time too.
They head down the stairs together, Kris cajoling and Adam holding the line, refusing to give Kris so much as one clue. Tommy is there, same as always, ready with breakfast when they walk in and take a seat at the table. After Tommy sets down their plates and steaming mugs of coffee, he excuses himself with a breathless murmur and rushes out of the room.
“What’s that about?” Adam asks.
“Beats me,” Kris replies, frowning a little and looking in the direction Tommy had gone. Over the last week, Kris has been making more of an effort to talk to Tommy, engaging him a little each morning. Their exchanges are still wooden, still noticeably removed from the easy rapport they had seemed to be building when Adam used to hear them talking about music. But it’s something.
Tommy returns in under a minute, holding two small, brightly wrapped boxes in his hands. He approaches the kitchen table and holds out the boxes with a shy smile. “Happy anniversary.”
Adam stares at him in surprise, half-aware that Kris is doing the same.
Tommy’s smile falters. “I thought I had the day right. Did I get it wrong? I’m sorry-I thought….” He trails off uncertainly and drops his outstretched arms.
“Wait,” Adam says. “No, you’ve got it right. I’m just-we’re just…surprised is all. You got us presents?”
“It’s nothing extravagant or anything,” Tommy says, ducking his head, “I just wanted-here, this is yours,” he says, handing a box to Adam. “And this is yours,” he adds, handing a box to Kris.
Adam smiles and starts ripping the wrapping paper. It almost pains him to do it, considering how prettily Tommy has wrapped the box. He gets his present open first, letting out a surprised, delighted sound when he sees the silver and crystal skull necklace from Skingraft he has been meaning to pick up when he goes back into the store.
“How did you know?” Adam asks, looking up at Tommy.
“You said you liked it, remember? The day you took me there. I called the store last week and Cassidy let me order it on the phone and shipped it over.”
“You’re amazing,” Adam says, before turning to Kris, who is just pulling off the last of the wrapping paper on his own gift and opening the box. Inside is a set of four ivory guitar picks.
“They’re made from mammoth ivory,” Tommy explains, not quite looking at Kris.
Kris stares at the box in his hand for a long moment. “This is too expensive,” he says, looking up at Tommy. “You shouldn’t have.”
Tommy meets his gaze. “I wanted to give it to you.” A look passes between them, filled with something Adam can’t quite figure out before Kris breaks it, looking down at the table.
When it becomes clear that Kris isn’t going to say anything further, Adam interjects quickly, looking up at Tommy with a bright smile. “Thank you so much for the gifts. I really like it.” Adam steals a quick glance at Kris. “We both really like them.”
Tommy casts a brief, wondering look at Kris before smiling back at Adam. “I’m glad you like them,” he says, before stealing away to the other side of the room as usual.
Adam and Kris finish up their meals, and when they’re done, they head up to pack a change of clothing for each of them. This is the only clue Adam has let slip thus far. For about an hour, their packing is continuously interrupted by phone calls. First Adam’s mother, then his father, his brother and assorted aunts, uncles and cousins. In between those, they field calls from various friends, all wishing them a happy anniversary. When they’re finally ready to leave, Adam pulls Tommy aside and explains their plans, giving him the name and number for the spa should any emergencies come up. With that, they’re finally off, tucked away in the backseat of the chauffeured car as they sail off toward Palm Springs.
Kris looks genuinely thrilled when they pull up at the spa hotel. He’s enthusiastic throughout the day, talkative for the first time in weeks, saying yes to every suggestion, from the ayurvedic massage to the triple oxygen facial to the sea-salt body scrub. By the time they leave the spa for the ride back to Los Angeles, Kris seems like his old self again, and that alone makes everything worth it-not that Adam didn’t have a truly excellent time indulging himself as well. A few well-wishing phone calls and text messages come in during the ride, and Adam replies while Kris lounges beside him, apparently content to do nothing at all.
When they get to The Bazaar and are escorted into Saam, Kris brightens up all over again. The waiters are attentive, the food is incredible and the wine lends a soft haze to the evening. After the thirteenth petite course in the twenty-movement meal is cleared away, Adam leans forward at the table and segues from their conversation about the European producer he’s been working with.
“So that was nice of Tommy to give us those presents,” he begins.
“Yeah, it was.”
“We should get him something in return. His birthday is next week.”
“I didn’t realize.”
“I remember reading the date on his papers the day he came.” Adam takes a sip of his wine. “I think I’ll get him his own makeup collection.”
“How do you know he’ll want that?”
“When I took him to Skingraft, Roxy-you remember her-put makeup on him. He asked me to show him how to do it the other day. He seemed to like it, so I figured he’d like his own collection. Just a few things to start him off.”
Kris hitches an eyebrow. “And by just a few things, you mean you’ll go straight to the nearest MAC store and clean them out. Right?”
Adam laughs, unabashed. “You know me too well,” he says. “What about you? You’ll get him something, won’t you?”
Kris’s lips tighten a little. “I’ll think of something.” He leans forward afterward, relaxing again. “Enough about that. I don’t want to talk about anything or anyone other than you and me.” Kris rests his hand on Adam’s on the table. “I want to remember every last detail about this anniversary. I want to remember tonight, always.”
There’s something strangely intense about the way Kris says the words, enough to give Adam pause. “Why are you saying it like that?” he asks, half-joking. “We’re going to have dozens more nights like this, dozens of anniversaries.”
Kris’s hand tightens on Adam’s. “Right,” he says flatly. “Of course we will.”
Before Adam can inquire after his sudden change of mood, Kris pulls back in his chair and slips his smartphone out of his pocket.
“Who is it this time?” Adam asks as Kris scans the screen.
“It’s Brad. He says happy anniversary and sorry to be so late, but better late than never.”
Adam can’t help but smile at the mention of his former boyfriend and long-time friend, and at the thought that Brad texted Kris rather than Adam himself. Kris’s instant and ongoing friendship with Brad still amuses and confounds Adam a little, but he doesn’t question it any longer, not when he considers the alternative.
He watches Kris type out a quick reply before putting the phone back into his pocket. When he looks up again, his expression is noticeably subdued. Adam tries to read his scent and finds a mix of hurt and sadness.
“What’s wrong?”
“The day is almost over. Everyone who would call or text us today has done it already. Just now, when my phone vibrated, I thought-I hoped that maybe, just maybe it was them.” Kris sighs heavily. “I don’t know why I do this to myself. They haven’t called once in over seven years, and yet I keep expecting them to. I keep thinking this year, they’ll call to say ‘Happy birthday’ or ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Happy anniversary’. Or just ‘you can come home now, you’re still pack’.”
Kris’s voice breaks with the last few words and Adam’s heart breaks right along with it, recalling the morning of their mating ceremony, how they’d delayed the reading of the mating rites for over an hour at Kris’s insistence. “They’ll be here,” he’d kept saying, watching the doors. But his parents hadn’t turned up, and Adam had hated them for how devastated Kris had looked after an hour and a half had gone by and the way he’d wiped at an errant tear angrily, like it had betrayed him.
“They don’t matter. Nothing matters but you and me. We’re our own pack,” Adam says now, repeating the same words he’d spoken to Kris that morning.
“And where will I be when you’re gone?”
“I’m not going anywhere. Ever.” Adam gives him a searching look. “Why would you say that?”
Kris looks away. “I’m sorry. It’s just...just-nothing. I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright. I just need to know that you know. I meant it then and I mean it now. We’re our own pack.” Adam waits until Kris looks at him again. Until he nods. Until he smiles. “Let’s not talk about them anymore. We’re not supposed to talk about anything or anyone besides you and me. Isn’t that what you said?”
“I did say that.”
“Good. So it’s settled then.” Adam stands up and holds out his hand to Kris. “Dance with me.”
Kris looks at him like he’s gone crazy. “This is a restaurant. There’s no dancing in restaurants.”
Adam looks around the room, empty save for themselves and the two waiters who have been attending to them.
“I bought out the whole room. I think that pretty much means we can do whatever the hell we want. So, if I want to dance with my mate on our anniversary, I’m going to go ahead and do exactly that.” Adam tilts his head, flashing Kris an impish grin. “Come on, dance with me. ‘Nothing hurts when we’re dancing.’”
Kris laughs, catching the reference. He had written that song for Adam five years ago in Belize. It had ended up on Adam’s second album, a quiet, meandering song, just a vocal track and an acoustic guitar line. The song had stuck out like a sore thumb on Adam’s album, but he’d fought the executives tooth and nail to keep it there.
The ambient music is something unfamiliar and non-descript, but they dance to it anyway, swaying close together, Kris’s arms around Adam’s neck. At some point, the staff changes the music, playing something more recognizable at a louder volume. Adam smiles appreciatively and pulls Kris even closer, breathing in his scent, traces of mint and lavender from the spa mixed in with hints of his shampoo and cologne. Nothing hurts when they’re dancing. And nothing matters except this, the feel of Kris’s body in his arms and they way they move together, perfectly in synch.
When the dance is over, the waiters applaud them while Kris flushes and Adam jokingly takes a bow. They finish the rest of the tasting menu on a wave of rambling conversation and easy smiles, and when they’re done, the staff escorts them through the main dining room of the restaurant. They smile and nod good-naturedly at the loud gasps and shocked smiles that greet them as the other diners recognize them. And outside, when a group of photographers-psychic apparently, or maybe just very well informed-descend upon them in a storm of camera flashes, they patiently pose for a few photographs before turning toward their car. Julian, their chauffeur for the day, drives away the more persistent photographers with his six feet and four inches of solid-muscled intimidation and a warning growl before shutting the door behind them and running around to the front seat to ferry them home.
Inside the car, Kris falls silent again, gazing out his window with a pensive look as the car makes its way toward the Hollywood Hills.
“You still with me?”
Kris looks over. “Still present.”
“The paparazzi didn’t bother you that much, did they?” Despite how long they’ve both been at this, Kris has never made peace with being followed and photographed. He still categorically hates it.
“No, they didn’t. I was thinking, is all.”
“What about?”
Kris doesn’t reply immediately. Instead, he stares out the window for a brief while. Finally, he turns to Adam with a haunted look.
“I don’t deserve this. This life, you-I don’t deserve any of it.”
“That’s not true.”
Kris shakes his head. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew what I come from.”
Adam moves closer to Kris. “I don’t care about the past. I know who you are, right now, in this moment. That’s all that matters to me.”
Instead of lifting Kris’s spirits, Adam’s reassurance seems to dampen them even further. Kris takes Adam’s hands in his, gripping them tightly.
“I love you. I love you so much.” That strange intensity is back in Kris’s voice, and this time, Adam feels a small jolt of fear.
“Don’t say it like that. Don’t say it like something bad is going to happen.”
Kris doesn’t say anything in response. Instead he drapes himself over Adam, nestles into him and clings fiercely until Adam wraps his arms around him. They remain like that for the rest of the ride, silently watching the streetlights racing by.
Julian comes around to open the door for them when they get home, and Adam slips him a hundred dollar bill before grabbing the small traveling bag in the trunk and walking to the front door with Kris. When they enter, a flash of movement sends Adam into high-alert before he flips on the foyer lights and finds Tommy standing there in a t-shirt and Kris’s old sleep pants.
“I heard the car,” Tommy explains. “I came to see if you need anything.”
“We’re fine,” Kris replies.
“Oh. Okay.” Tommy turns around to head back to his room. He only makes it a few steps before Kris moves toward him.
“Tommy.”
Adam tenses involuntarily when Kris calls out Tommy’s name.
“Yes, sir?” Tommy says, turning back around.
“Thank you again for the gifts. I really like the guitar picks. I appreciate that you thought of us. Of me.”
There’s an odd shade of relief to Tommy’s smile after Kris speaks. Once again, Adam can’t help feeling that there’s something lurking between the words being spoken.
“I’m happy you liked the gift,” Tommy replies.
Kris swallows hard and nods before turning toward the staircase. “You coming?” he throws over his shoulder when Adam doesn’t move.
“Right behind you,” Adam says, tightening his grip around the handle of the overnight bag and walking toward the staircase himself. “Goodnight, Tommy,” he says before climbing up behind Kris.
“Goodnight, Adam.”
At the top of the stairs, Adam flips the upstairs switch for the foyer, throwing the front of the house back into darkness. He crosses the landing and enters the bedroom, dropping the bag barely a second before Kris pushes him against the door and kisses him roughly, hands clutching at Adam’s charcoal-gray suit.
“Whoa,” Adam manages to get out in between, quick, desperate kisses as Kris’s hands tugs hard on the back of his neck, pulling him down.
“Please,” Kris murmurs against his lips, needy and hoarse already. “I need you, please.” He lets go of Adam’s neck and begins tugging at Adam’s clothes and his own simultaneously, groaning with dissatisfaction when buttons and zippers don’t give in as easily as he would like. Adam laughs breathlessly as he moves to help, desire spiking hot and sharp in response to the scent of Kris’s arousal. Between them, they manage to get rid of their clothing in record time, suits left behind in a crumpled mass beside their shoes and dress socks.
They fall into bed in a tangle of limbs, still kissing, gasping and groaning into each other’s mouths. Adam ends up on top of Kris, cradled between his spread thighs, making Kris moan low in his throat as he grinds his hard cock into Kris’s. The scent of arousal is sharp in the air now, enveloping them as their tongues slide against each other, as Adam’s cock slides against Kris’s, precome adding just enough slickness to ease the friction, making it sweeter-so fucking good.
Kris’s hands slide all over Adam’s back, skimming over his shoulder blades and sliding down, following the curve of his spine until they cup his ass, squeezing lightly. “I want you,” Kris groans, breaking their kiss just long enough to get the words out. He presses harder then, dipping his fingers into the crease of Adam’s ass, sliding along the delicate, burning hot skin until he brushes over the tightly clenched rim of Adam’s hole. “I want you like this,” Kris says, pushing in gently, just the tip of one finger. “I need you,” he says, rotating his finger, making Adam gasp harshly against the side of his neck.
Adam body goes rigid as he fights back the instinctive refusal, an alpha’s unwillingness to submit. They don’t do this all the time, but it happens often enough that Adam is well aware of the pleasure to be had when Kris fucks him, when Adam gets on his hands and knees for his beta and takes everything he has to give. So he holds still, warring with his natural instinct, not acquiescing, but not refusing either.
“Give me,” Kris breathes, finger still teasing at Adam’s entrance. “I need you. Alpha, please.”
Kris’s plea breaks the stalemate in Adam’s head. His alpha’s need to dominate is matched only by his need to protect his mate, to give to him. Kris’s deliberately chosen words are exactly what he needs to hear, and this time, just like all the other times, they shift his perception, transforming an act of submission into a one of giving, into another way of marking his claim over his mate.
“Alpha,” Kris murmurs again. “Give me, please.”
Adam groans like a man dying and pushes back, hissing softly when Kris’s finger slides in to the second knuckle, dry, too much friction, and yet, somehow not enough. Between his legs, his cock grows even harder, leaking precome onto Kris’s abdomen, wet streaks across soft skin.
“Anything you want,” he grits out between clenched teeth.
And he means it. Which is why he goes willingly when Kris shifts out from underneath him and directs Adam to his hands and knees, pushing down on his back until Adam’s forehead touches the mattress and his ass is canted high in the air.
“Spread your legs wider.”
At the sound of Adam’s growl, Kris appends a hastily-murmured “please.”
The instant Adam spreads his legs wider, Kris is there, fingers splayed wide on Adam’s ass, pushing until Adam’s hole is exposed. His tongue follows, firm and wet, dragging across the puckered flesh repeatedly, dipping past the twitching rim for a heart-stopping moment before retreating. Adam groans, pushing back, shameless, demanding more. Kris gives it to him, licking and sucking at Adam’s hole, getting him set, working him open with his tongue, fucking him with it. It’s obscene, wonderful and filthy and perfect, and by the time Kris is done with him, Adam feels like he’s been hard forever, cock aching between his thighs. The sound of Kris opening up the bottle of lube sounds like music to Adam’s overheated senses and the feel of slippery wet fingers sliding into him feel like the purest form of sensation.
Adam doesn’t tense up until Kris starts pushing into him, slick and hot, thrusting past the loosened, wet rim of his hole and pressing deep. Kris isn’t as long or thick as Adam is, but he’s plenty big enough-and Adam is tight enough-that Adam feels every fraction of every inch of Kris’s cock as it fucks into him, spreading him wide around the thickness of it. When Kris bottoms out, he strokes Adam’s hip, murmuring “alpha” and “let me” over and over until Adam groans, relaxing just enough for Kris to move, to pull back and push back in, fucking him.
Adam groans again, caught between pleasure and pain, between pushing back for more and shying away. Kris presses down on Adam’s lower back, urging him to spread his legs wider, shifting him lower on the bed so that the angle changes, so that, when Kris fucks into him again, his cocks strokes directly against Adam’s sweet spot, making pure pleasure pool at the base of his spine and throb along the length of his cock.
“Fuck,” Adam gasps out, mouth open against the bedsheets, as Kris starts to fuck him harder, pulling out so that only the head of his cock remains in Adam’s body before ramming back in, taking him. A fine sheen of sweat breaks out over Adam’s skin as Kris fucks him. Hard, fast, deep. Perfect. Too perfect, pushing Adam close to the edge, the promise of orgasm so close that Adam swears he can already feel the first phantom flutters of it. He moves a hand between his legs, reaching for his cock, only to have Kris bat his hand away.
“Not yet,” Kris says, breathlessly. He sounds wrecked, hips thrusting wildly, driving his cock into Adam’s body over and over again. “I need to feel you. I want to feel you come inside me. Mark me.” His words are nearly enough to make Adam come right there and then, but he wrestles himself under control, gritting his teeth, taking it until he feels Kris come with a choked gasp inside him.
Kris pulls out almost immediately, flipping over onto his back and spreading his legs wide. Beside him, Adam pushes up on his knees and looks down. Kris looks debauched, hair damp with sweat, skin flushed, half-hard cock glistening wet from fucking Adam.
“Take me.”
The words spur Adam into action. He grabs the bottle of lube and slicks his cock, hissing at the dizzying pleasure of it. Then he upends the bottle over Kris, getting him wet and messy with lube, two fingers pushing hot and slick into his ass before Adam settles between his legs and drives his cock into him.
“Oh God,” Kris pants, hands clutching convulsively at Adam’s hips as Adam pounds into him, working him hard and fast right from the start. The strained words break through the red-hot haze surrounding Adam, making him slow down.
“No, don’t stop. Adam, please,” Kris begs, thrusting up as much as he can, trying to take Adam’s cock deeper. “I want it. You and me, like this. I want to remember.”
Somewhere in the recesses of Adam’s overtaxed brain, Kris’s words ring a faint bell of alarm. Dimly, Adam thinks that he ought to slow down, to question this, to take note, but the pleasure drowns it all out, roaring through him as he picks up the pace, hips snapping, driving into Kris’s body with rough, almost brutal thrusts. Harder and harder, blinking back the sweat sliding down his temples, holding Kris’s legs open, grip unforgiving on the backs of his thighs. When he comes, Adam cries out Kris’s name, shuddering, hips jerking wildly as his climax runs roughshod over him, chasing every last coherent thought away.
When Adam is capable of movement again-or rather, when Kris’s strained breathing alerts him to the fact that he’s likely crushing Kris’s lungs-Adam shifts out of his boneless sprawl on top of Kris and lies down beside him.
“No, don’t go,” Kris whispers, curling into Adam, pressing his face into Adam’s neck.
The bedsheets are a mess, and so are they, both slick with sweat and lube and come. Adam knows he should get up, drag them both into the shower, but he can’t make himself move.
“We should clean up,” he suggests half-heartedly, pulling Kris closer.
“Stay here. Don’t let go of me. I need you.”
Whispered words against Adam’s skin. Pleading. Wanting. So Adam holds him even tighter, murmuring unintelligible assurances until Kris quiets down, until his breathing evens out and he falls asleep.