You And I: Resuming
Here there be charityfic!
I have to make a note before anyone gets any further with this: I was already working on this before the tornadoes that went through the Midwest United States recently. This first section, in which Adam goes to Arkansas to help with disaster relief, was a bizarre and sad coincidence. If you'd prefer not to read because of the proximity of the event to the story, I understand.
Title: You And I: Resuming
Author: Ninalyn/technicolornina
Fandom: Adam Lambert
Pairing/Characters: Adam Lambert, Kris Allen, Katy Allen (past), Brad Bell, Kesha, various and sundry OCs
Word Count: 6940
Story Rating: R
Chapter Rating: R. Adam likes to swear.
Story Summary: Seven years after Idol, Adam and Kris and their lives have both drastically changed. Now they have to rebuild to get back to the people they once were--if that's really what they want.
Disclaimer: If you happen to be one of the people in this story, thanks for letting me play in your sandbox (and sorry for making your fictitious avatars go through such horrible shit). I'd recommend you read no further. You know, mental scarring and all that. If you're anyone else and you link one of said people to this story and I find out, yea, The Wrath Of Nina will fall on your head, and I'm short but I hit really hard for a girl.
Notes: Let me make this very clear: THERE IS DEATH IN THIS STORY!!! If you are one of those silly people who does not read the author's notes, don't bitch to me when you find out someone died in the backstory and you are bothered by it. I will refer you back to my BOLDED UNDERLINED ITALICIZED BRIGHT RED NOTE. And to those who go "DDD: HOW COULD YOU KILL X," it's nothing against X. It's just that all characters must be equally dispensable as plot fodder. I hope everyone in this story actually goes on to live a long, happy, healthy life. (And for those who will only care if it's Adam, Brad, or Kris, because I know y'all are out there: no, it's none of them.)
Feedback: I really do appreciate it when I get it, so if you care to make an author happy, please do.
Special Thanks/Dedications: For m_lasha, who requested Kradam in return for her generous donation to help_japan!
It’s been a long time since I came around
It’s been along time but I’m back in town
But this time I’m not leaving without you
--"You And I," Lady Gaga
At first, he thinks he's seeing things, then that he's looking at someone who just happens to have a similar face. But he blinks and rubs his eyes and takes a sip of water out of a mud-splattered bottle, and no-it's not just a lookalike. Kris is looking at Adam Lambert, Grammy winner and star of the world, wearing a pair of grimy jeans and carrying a little girl wearing a charcoal tee-shirt that looks suspiciously like it might have just come off Adam's back.
"Hey, I'm on one of the independent teams here and we're trying to find Mike or Darla Green," Adam says, and Kris blinks when he realises it's him Adam's addressing. Roommates seven years ago, and Adam doesn't even recognise him. Then again, considering they're meeting in the middle of what used to be a street and now looks like a hardware store sale gone mad and Kris is covered in dust and oil from some handyman's former garage workshop, maybe it's not surprising. After all, if not for the tattoos on Adam's bare arm, Kris probably wouldn't have recognised him, either.
"Adam?" he asks, and watches Adam rapidly cycle through a series of expressions-the I-know-I'm-famous-but-this-really-isn't-the-place game face followed rapidly by confusion and finally recognition-before settling on a grin that looks not entirely genuine.
"Hey!" he greets, and shifts the little girl so he can hug Kris with one arm. "What are you doing here, man?"
"Conway's not that far away," Kris answers. "We came in to help." He gestures at the group behind him, church men and women about thirty strong sorting through splintered boards and powdered stucco. The little girl in Adam's arms turns to look at him. "What's your name, sweetie?"
She mumbles something into Adam's shoulder and buries her face against his neck again, and Adam fills in. "This is Kaylee," he says. "I found her in a bathtub maybe half a block down." He pauses, and when he speaks again Kris can tell he's trying not to laugh. "Apparently nobody ever told her if you're getting in a bathtub to get away from a tornado you don't need to get undressed. I have no idea what happened to her clothes."
"Probably in a tree twenty miles away," Kris supplies, and reaches out to take her out of Adam's arms. "Parents?"
"Mike and Darla," Adam repeats. "Shit, Kris, I don't know. I don't even know what I'm doing here. I showed up with a friend to pass out water bottles and somebody shoved a safety vest at me and said they needed warm bodies to find people."
"A lot of the roofs fell in," Kris says. It's something to say and nothing Adam can't see with his own eyes. "Where's the guy you came with?"
"Chick," Adam corrects. "With the pickup. She didn't want to leave it alone."
Kris' mind fills in a pair of images: a broad-shouldered woman with a man's haircut and a flannel shirt standing on the running board of a Ford four-door, and then a wispy, waify girl with huge glasses and mood beads. He didn't know any of Adam's friends had a pickup, but in his admittedly limited experience, if there is such a thing as "a friend of Adam's with a pickup," it's as likely to be a hippie girl as a female lumberjack.
"We have a plan for our group, if you need somebody to join," Kris says, and shifts Kaylee so she won't slither out of his arms as soon as they start moving. She clung to Adam like a starfish, but as far as she's concerned Kris is just another grownup who isn't her mom or dad. "Why don't we take the kiddo back and pick up your friend?"
"Okay," Adam agrees, and rubs his arms where they've come over goosepimply in a chilly rain that really, really could have done them all a favour and held off for another six hours. "Let's get out of here."
-----------------
The friend turns out to be a tall blonde Kris' tired mind keeps trying to identify, by the end of the day, alternately as Keisha and Karen, and the pickup is just as unlikely: a dented 1993 Dodge Ram that's painted a faded, uneven red where it's not acid-trip purple or glossless, junkyard green. The girl who isn't Keisha (or Karen) identifies it as belonging to her brother, who "won't give the damned thing up even though I told him there's no reason he can't get one that doesn't look like the 1960s vomited all over it" and invites Kris to grab a water bottle from one of the few packs still stacked neatly in the yellow-and-rust-coloured bed. Kris accepts, wondering in the back of his mind if tetanus can travel through packaging plastic as he spins off the lid and drinks. The pickup looks shady, but the water tastes clean.
"Thanks."
"It's down, that's why we're here," she says, and Kris hasn't lost quite enough touch with Adam's form of street-rap to translate this to you're welcome. "We were just looking for a place to drop off supplies, but then we kind of . . . " She shrugs. Kris holds up the water bottle to stop her.
"Adam told me," he tells her. "You guys need a team to join?"
"After lunch," she agrees. "I haven't eaten since we got up and I'm starving."
"When did you get up?"
She bites the corner of her lip, thinking. "Well, Adam was in the back seat because he said he can't sleep sitting up-"
The back seat?
"-and I forgot to put up the sun screen last night. So maybe 5:30? Whenever the sun decided I didn't need my retinas anymore."
"Wait, you're sleeping in your truck?"
She gives Kris a look he can easily interpret: duh. "In case you haven't noticed, we're in the middle of nowhere and the middle of nowhere just got turned into firewood." She glances at Adam, picking up box lunches from the church crew and either happily oblivious or staunchly ignoring the snickers and whispers following his painted nails and pagan tattoos. "We came here to help, not to be an inconvenience to anybody."
"You shouldn't be sleeping in a truck," Kris protests. Then Adam is there, and shoving a small box into his hands.
"Sandwiches," he declares, and passes a box to the blonde before opening his own and glancing at its contents. "Salami. Kesha, did you get salami?"
"Looks like turkey," she tells him, and Adam turns on her a look Kris knows well from their time on Idol-the big-eyed innocent you know you wanna help me boy-next-door gaze that Allison's mother fell for every single time. "Wanna swap?"
"Do you mind?" Kris wonders vaguely how Adam can pull off that look and actually look sincere after the millionth or so time. Kesha holds out her sandwich, and Adam trades her before tearing into the sandwich with a fervour that suggests he has none of the same aversion to turkey.
Kris takes a bite of his-tuna fish salad-and washes it down with a swig of water. "K-Kesha said you guys are staying in the truck," he says, stuttering when he nearly calls her Kaitlyn. Forget the water; he needs coffee. Adam shrugs.
"It's only for a couple of days," he answers, and pops the top of the milk in his box before draining half of it in one swallow. "Then we've got to-d"
"You can stay at my place if you want, I've got a spare room," Kris interrupts. It's the kind of impulsive he expects more from Adam than himself, but it's not like they're total strangers, and something in him protests harshly at the idea of leaving a pair of Californians sleeping in a truck in the middle of Tornado Alley. If the alarms go off again in the middle of the night, they'll have no idea where to go.
The gratitude on Adam's face is almost embarrassing, but understandable; the pickup is a full-size, but even so someone Adam's size squeezing onto the back seat to lie down has to be an uncomfortable proposition. Kris just mumbles something about following him home when it gets too dark to work, and finishes his sandwich.
"Come on," he urges. "If we really get a move on we can finish two blocks by then."
-----------------
Kris sits on the bed, pondering the throw at its foot and wondering if he should add another. Adam as Kris remembers him could cheerfully sleep under a hand-knit quilt in July, but Adam as Kris remembers him is seven years and three world tours in the past.
Eventually he gets up to grab another blanket-what the heck, if they don't use it they can always kick it off the foot of the bed for Zorro to nest in-and that's how he happens to be walking past the spare room just in time to stop, perplexed, at the unexpected sight of his guests kissing on the guest bed.
Kris wonders momentarily if he should reach over and pull the door shut to offer them a little privacy, but before he can make up his mind to do it they break off and Adam rests his head on her shoulder.
"This is fucked up."
"Not your fault," Kesha tells him, in a voice that makes Kris smile with a sudden wash of reminiscence and sorrow counterpointed by the staunch, I'll-show-you-who-can't-do-it-herself expression on her face. It reminds him a little of Katy when she babysat in high school. "If the bitch says she'd rather drown than accept help-"
"Help from a fag, don't forget the important parts here," Adam interrupts. "She could've died, Kesha."
"And had nobody to blame but herself. Stop beating up on yourself. It's not like you asked to find a Class A bigot stuck in a flooded basement. And she didn't die, because that blonde guy got her out, so why don't you do something that makes sense, like sleeping?"
There's a long pause, presumably while Adam gathers the energy to pull himself off the bed. Then he sits up and takes his hand off her breast before staring at it for a moment with the blurry kind of surprise Kris only ever sees on drunks and pre-final college students. Kesha rolls over and starts laughing.
"I was wondering if you were going to notice."
" . . . . sorry?"
"I'm going to write to Perez first thing when we get back to LA and tell him you have to grope your kissing partners to make sure whether they're male or not. Go sleep."
"Fuck Perez."
"No, you fuck Perez. Pissy gays don't do it for me."
"You drove halfway across the country with me."
"If you're too tired to differentiate between pissy and bitchy, you're too tired to be having this conversation," she finally scolds him. "Go. To. Sleep. Or I swear I'm going to go out and get Kris, and we will tie your hands behind your back with your shirt-"
"I'm going, I'm going." Adam hauls himself off the bed, and Kris heads for the closet.
By the time he gets back with an extra blanket, don't-mind-me-it-takes-me-about-an-hour-to-fall-asleep-even-when-I'm-totally-bushed Adam is already sacked out on one side of Kris' bed, the covers on his side puddled around his hips where, Kris suspects from the hand on top of the blanket, they fell when Adam and consciousness parted ways. Kris pulls the blankets up to Adam's shoulders and lays the extra over the foot of the bed before shucking the sweatshirt he tossed on over his T-shirt and sliding in on the other side, acutely aware that he's in the same bed with another person for the first time in over a year, and suddenly realising just how easy it is to roll over and kick or bump into his bed partner.
But he's ready to drop off as soon as his head hits the pillow, and he barely has the chance to think he needs to offer both his guests the washing machine in the morning before he's out.
----------------
It's Kesha he finds in the kitchen in the morning, sipping a cup of the coffee she apparently found in his cupboard and brewed. Now she's sitting in one of the Shaker chairs at the table with one knee pulled up to her chin, the button-down she borrowed out of Kris' closet puddling around her legs. She peers up through her hair and smiles.
"Hi."
Kris raises a hand awkwardly and gets out a mug. It's been a long time since he's woken up with a woman in his kitchen. "Morning."
Kesha stretches in her chair. "Thanks for letting us stay," she says. "I think I had aches in places I didn't even know existed until I was in a hot shower again."
"You're welcome. It's nothing." Kris sits with his coffee and a piece of toast. Kesha stretches. Kris wonders if he should offer to swap rooms with Kesha and let her and Adam have the bigger bed, but he has no context for what he saw in the guest room, and he has no idea whether it'd even be appropriate in the circles they move in. Instead he nibbles his toast as she drinks her coffee.
"Is Adam okay?"
Kris blinks at her. It occurs to him that he heard snuffling behind him when he woke up around two in the morning to take a pee, but he took it for Adam's version of snoring. Until her question it never occurred to him that Adam might be crying in his sleep.
"I don't know," he finally admits. "He was out before I could talk to him last night. But I could tell he was stressed."
"Yeah," she agrees. "He hasn't really slept in a couple of days. I kept telling him there was a gun under the driver's seat if I really needed it and the locks on the truck only look like they're busted, but it was like he couldn't settle down anyway."
"I was thinking maybe I could suggest you guys just stay here today and chill," Kris says. He pauses. Then he confesses, "I heard you guys talking last night."
"About that bitch who called him every name in the book for trying to help her? I could have thrown her damned doorknob right at her head once I had it out of that tree," Kesha answers, and Kris can tell she's trying not to snap at him. "When someone offers to help you-"
"I know," Kris interrupts. "But I think he could probably use the day off. You, too." He reaches out and traces a pair of swoops under her eyes through her hair. "You've got circles that look like you haven't been sleeping too well yourself."
"Upright in a truck behind a steering wheel isn't that great for getting in eight uninterrupted hours," she agrees. "Maybe-" Then she yawns so widely Kris can almost tell whether she still has her tonsils. "It might be a good idea."
"It'll probably be easier to convince him to stay here if you're here," Kris answers. "At least, that's what he was like when we were roommates. If you go out, he's going to want to bull his way through because you shouldn't be out there alone."
"He's still like that," she agrees. Then she takes Kris' second slice of toast and breaks off a corner to nibble. She gets up and puts her cup in the sink. "I know we just got up, but-"
"If you want to sleep in, go ahead," Kris tells her. "It's not like you're going to be late for school." He pauses. "Want me throw your stuff in the wash?"
"I feel bad asking you to do everything."
"We can renegotiate my contract of servitude when you start asking me to bring you shaving water heated to exactly 86 degrees," he says, and while he's not entirely sure she gets the reference she still laughs. Then she yawns so widely Kris half-expects her jaw to stay that way.
"Thanks."
"No problem. Go take a nap." Kris waves her out of the kitchen.
As he does it occurs to him that he never asked her about swapping bedrooms, but then it also occurs to him that Adam will doubtless be up by ten whether he needs more sleep or not. Three hours away is time enough.
---------------------
"You really need to invest in a good facial cleanser," Adam says, scrubbing his face with the Dial sitting on Kris' sink. "You're going to get wrinkles."
"I can live with wrinkles," Kris answers from his place on the toilet seat. "My granddad used to say every wrinkle you get is a proof of an important truth you've learned."
"No wonder so many old people are so bitchy. They all know people were lying about them looking good in latex pants when they were twenty," Adam comments. "You still need a good facial cleanser. Hand soap burns the skin around your eyes and you end up looking like a drunk raccoon by the time you're fifty."
"I'll keep that in mind." Kris watches Kesha pad past the door in one of Adam's freshly-washed T-shirts. On him it's a little tight; on her it's almost big enough to be a dress. A very short dress on a very tall girl, but still better than the button-down and boxers she borrowed from Kris the night before. That combination was bordering on obscene in ways Kris would rather not think about.
"Ask Katy, she can probably help you pick out something that's better for your skin and isn't going to cost a fortune," Adam continues. Kris feels his stomach lurch. "Neutrogena is pretty good." He pauses. "Where is Katy, anyway? I haven't seen her all day. And she wasn't here last night, if I was sleeping with you."
Kris swallows hard and digs his fingernails-shorter than Adam's, but still sharp-into his palm. Don't get pissed at him. He doesn't know. He was probably halfway around the world when it happened. Adam looks concerned.
"You guys didn't get a divorce or something, did you? Shit, you're like . . . perfect for each other. Tell me you didn't get a divorce."
Kris takes a deep breath. "No. She . . . she died, Adam. About a year and a half ago."
The concern on Adam's face crashes to the floor. Kris can almost hear it shattering like brittle glass, leaving behind dismay and sadness.
"Fuck," he says, and then, "shit. Shit, Kris, I'm sorry."
"You couldn't have done anything." Even if you'd called I couldn't have talked to you.
"No, but-"
Adam's endless flow of chatter suddenly ceases, like he's cut it off with a cleaver. Then he's crouching in front of Kris with his hands on Kris' shoulders. Kris debates leaning into the hug and then doesn't. Adam squeezes his arms.
"I'm sorry for sounding like an asshole," Adam says. "I wish I'd known. Fuck, Kris."
Kris ignores the cussing and shakes his head. "It's okay. Really." It's not. "I know you didn't know. I think you were in Europe, or somewhere."
"Yeah, but-" This time Adam actually bites his lip as he looks away, and Kris can't help feeling sorry for him. Adam is used to artsy types who are comfortable talking through their feelings and crying it out before picking up the pieces and cheerfully continuing their interpretative tribal dance through life. A straight church boy from Arkansas is a real step up, challenge-wise. So rather than let Adam brood, Kris decides to change the subject.
"I had a question for you, actually," he says, and when Adam looks back at him Kris has to try not to flush. It's not that he cares one way or the other, per se, it's just that it's an incredibly awkward question to ask someone who just reappeared in his life after a well-over-three-year-long absence. "So, uh, the bed in the guest room is a single and mine is a double and I was wondering, after last night when you guys were together-nn." Kris has to bite his tongue and remind himself that even if he's completely off the mark, Adam won't think he's a total moron. And they're off that subject. The one he'd rather not talk about. "What I was going to say is, do you want to trade so you guys can share a bed?"
Adam blinks at him. Then a blush slowly blooms across his nose. "Oh. No. I mean, if you want to, but we're not-no. Shit, I'm sorry." It occurs vaguely to Kris that jumping from "my wife died" to "so, do you guys want to get a room?" was probably a bad idea, but there's nothing he can do about it now. "We're just friends." The blush deepens, and when Kris hears the next words out of Adam's mouth he understands why: Adam is comparing his grief to Kris' own and probably doing more internal berating for not being a more everpresent friend. "I kind of wasn't doing so hot last night."
"The way you conked out as soon as you hit the bed didn't tip me off at all," Kris answers, and after another of those incredulous stares Adam first snorts, then snickers.
"I don't think I've slept that way in years. Maybe ever."
"First night in Top Thirteen," Kris reminds him. It's a night he'll remember forever, not because it was the beginning of a life-changing journey or because it was his first time so far from home on something that wasn't church work, but because he walked in on Adam with some guy wearing a lot of bracelets who-later, after he and Adam were both fully dressed again-called Kris "pocket Idol" and used phrases like "legiterally the worst mistake this country made since Ronald fuck-the-monkey Reagan" that almost made sense, kind of, maybe-to someone on LSD, perhaps. The walking-in part wasn't such a big deal, but the guy was Kris' first totally in-your-face gay diva, and if Kris ever writes his memoirs he's going to make sure Brad is in them. Just for the bracelets.
"Not a fair comparison, Brad roofied me. Or something."
"Or something?"
"My drink wasn't blue."
Kris tries to look like this makes sense. "I think you're lucky he's on your side." Then he bites his tongue. The last he knew, Adam and Brad were only kind-of speaking to each other, and most of the time it was fighting. Then he sees Adam's lips quirk, and relaxes.
"Yeah, I am," he says. Then he stands up. "Come on, let's get out of here so Kesha can brush her teeth." He pads across the hall into the bedroom. Then he stops, looking at the bed and brooding. Adam is a world-class brooder, and Kris is pretty sure all the years in the world won't let him forget it.
"I'm zonked," Kris comments. He doesn't want to have the conversation he knows is bouncing around in Adam's head. Not right now. Possibly-probably-not ever. "Wanna hit the sack?"
"I've gotta call Brad," Adam answers. "I just realised I haven't talked to him since I've been down here and he's worried about Jerry. Can I borrow your back porch?"
"Sure. Who's Jerry?" Kris plunks onto the bed. Maybe he'll be lucky and he'll be deeply enough asleep to not notice when Adam joins him and starts his usual nightly toss-and-turn gyrations.
"His partner. Nice guy. History professor at UCLA. I still can't get over Brad being a grandfather by association," Adam answers, and it's Kris' turn to blink in confusion. In Adam's head that probably made sense, he's sure.
"Knock yourself out."
"Thanks," Adam says, and heads for the kitchen so he can get to the backyard.
Kris has no idea when Adam comes to bed; by then he's already down for the count.
----------------
"Hmm? No, probably another two days," Kris hears Adam say from the back porch. He finishes stirring the iced tea and holds up the jar to offer Kesha-also on her phone, in her case to her mom-a glass. She nods and makes a grateful kind of gesture. "They've got everybody cleared out. Now they're just trying to-mm." Adam shifts to take the glass Kris offers him and mouths a thank you. "Yeah. This time I'm driving." Adam raises his voice. "'Cause Kesha's a fucking maniac when you give her a stick shift to fondle. Right, Kesha?"
"Go blow Gene Simmons, Adam," Kesha calls across the porch, and all three of them laugh as Adam flicks her off. "Sorry, Mom. Say what?"
Adam finishes snickering and settles back into his conversation. "I know, but I've driven your mom's monster. A full cab can't be that different." He listens, then grins. "I bet he was just thrilled when he got that news. How're Kaylee and Cody?"
Kris hears the voice on the other end of Adam's phone start chattering at fever-pitch and smiles. The kids are no relation to Brad-they're his partner's grandkids, which made a lot more sense to Kris when he managed to get Adam's brain on a single track long enough to find out that Jerry is fifty-three and a recent emigrant from Closetland-but he spoils them to death. Kris imagines it's no great hardship for their mom to turn them over to Grandpa and Daddy Brad so she can get out of the house, either.
He sets down his own iced tea and watches Adam listen to Brad in the late-afternoon light over the back porch. With the path of destruction from the tornado cleared of people, everyone was told to go home for the day. Tomorrow-after the ground dries a little, hopefully-is time enough to start trying to sort through everything, and so the three of them are relishing their few hours of leisure time, Adam and Kesha making their phone calls to various people at home and Kris setting the kitchen to rights. It's nice to be content for a night.
He watches Adam listen, watches Adam smile, watches Adam laugh into the phone. Eventually Adam looks up and mouths 'playground' at Kris.
Kris considers being depressed. Then he just smiles back.
--------------
"We'll be separated into three groups," Mike says, and starts gesturing them into lines with his hands. "We'll each be taking one of the first three houses. Our job isn't to try to haul everything out but only to make it easier for people to come back and try to find anything they want to salvage before the wreckers come in." He gets to the middle of the divide of the bigger second group and looks uncertainly at Kris, standing right up front with his two new friends-Adam in nail polish and artistically paint-splattered jeans and Kesha in a T-shirt that says "AGENT 0069 JAMES BONDAGE" on the front. At least Kris was able to talk her into not wearing "That's not what your boyfriend said last night" to this morning's group. At last Mike rather awkwardly shuffles the two apparent ne'er-do-wells into Kris' group before assigning "incident location" numbers to each group. Their job is to pull out things that are obvious threats-jagged metal, boards with planks, any cinderblocks they find-so homeowners can return to the evacuation zone to see if anything is worth saving.
Adam pulls a pair of heavy leather work gloves out of his back pocket and slides them over his hands. Kris thinks vaguely that it's weird to see Adam in gloves that actually cover his fingers, and then they head off to the former mobile home that is their assignment.
Most of the group ignores them, working in another area altogether, but Adam listens in on the conversation-about how great it is that out in these rural places people band together when they need help-and eventually chips in with two cents of his own.
"Cities are like that, too," he says. "It's just that in a city it's more restricted to a neighbourhood than the whole place. There's this older lady on my block and her husband had a stroke last year. A couple of us went over to do her yardwork and take care of their dog and stuff so she could stay with him at the hospital."
The entire group pauses to stare at him like he's from another planet. "Yeah, but that's kind of different from something like this," Kris hears from one the youth group girls. She's wearing the kind of checkered shirt-jeans-flatironed hair combination that hasn't gone entirely out of style since 1994 or so. He searches his mind for a moment and turns up a name from his roster-Maddie Forrester. "I mean, she could always like, hire help." Kris hears the undertone in her voice: you are well-to-do and I resent you for it. Adam stares back, aware of hostility but not of its source.
"Not really. They're on some kind of fixed income from her husband's old shop. And I don't think most help wants to clean out the birdbath."
"But they're, like. Living with you."
Kris is pretty sure Adam laughing is the worst possible reaction, but there's nothing he can do to stop him. "WeHo isn't as expensive as people make it out to be. I'm pretty sure my Kroger is actually cheaper than the one in Conway." He shrugs. "Maybe there are some differences between the places we live, but people are pretty much the same everywhere." He shifts the cinderblock in his hand-one of the heavy-duty fifty-pound ones, now in pieces-to his other arm. "If you want to talk about it during lunch that'd be cool, but right now we should probably get this stuff out of here."
Most of the group hesitates, then slowly makes their way back to what they were doing. Kris hears an incoherent grumble from Maddie, and then an answer in a man's voice: "Well, what else can you expect from some Hollywood fag?"
Around Kris' neck is a small metal WWJD? pendant he got when he stepped down as the head of the youth group sixteen months ago, but so often these days he finds himself feeling the need to move one of those letters further over on the keyboard: What would Katy do? For a second he flounders, even though he can feel the way Adam tenses just for a second next to him before tossing his cinderblock into the pile of haul-away. Then he remembers the first time Adam encountered somebody ready to be malicious because he, a gay man, had achieved some kind of success-the way Katy reached over and firmly clicked out of the window Adam found when he tried to post on Danny's Facebook, and then folded her arms around his shoulders as she sat on his bed. He remembers seeing her eyes-her kind eyes-and feeling incredible pride to call her his wife as she spoke for them both: Ignore him. They're only making fun because they're afraid of you for not being afraid of yourself. It has nothing to do with what we as Christians are taught to do. I'd love to have you in our home.
He remembers the kiss she put on Adam's cheek as she told him to focus on his performance and forget the people who wanted him to fail, and he raises his voice. "Hey."
The talk stops again. And now they're all looking at him. Kris remembers Katy. Forget about trying to please the people who want you to fail, Adam. Do what you do best and I know you'll succeed. Kris trains his eyes on Maddie and the man next to her-her dad, he thinks, but he's not entirely sure. Dave Forrester has a twin brother. "We're here to do God's work, and He commands us to do unto others as we'd have done to ourselves. I don't think either one of you would like to be reduced to a single aspect of yourselves and hated for it."
"It's none of your business," and now Kris is sure-yes, it's Dave. "If you bothered reading your Bible while you have those godless people in your house, you'd know it says that the job of a Christian is to chastise and teach-"
"Excuse me, I'm a Methodist, and my Bible says you're full of shit," Kesha interrupts. Kris could kiss her. "The job of a Christian is to love. Read Matthew. Adam and I came here because we saw what was happening on the news and we wanted to help. So unless you're here because you want to look good, what do you say we drop the middle-school name-calling and get something done?"
Kris raises his eyebrows at her, impressed. Dave gapes. Then he drops his eyes and mutters something bitter about a woman's place and goes back to viciously sorting through splintered support beams. Kesha hauls the end of what probably used to be a plastic shower stall out from under a bunch of shingles. "Hey, Adam, want to give me a hand with this?"
Adam nods. He's staring at Kris like he's never seen him before, and Kris kind of knows why: when things between Adam and Danny got too heated, it was Katy who stepped in as a mediator, and Kris always let her.
Adam looks like he's going to reach out to hug Kris. Then he pulls his arms back to his sides and glances at the group of people laughing and chatting like one of their members hadn't just insulted a pair of people who joined them instead of welcoming them with God's love in their hearts.
Sometimes you've just got to pick which side you're on, Katy told him once.
Kris reaches out and pulls Adam into his arms.
------------------------------
"You mean you haven't looked at any of it at all?" Adam asks, and Kris can hear the incredulity Adam is trying not to let bubble to the surface. Kris shakes his head.
"After Katy died I just . . . really didn't feel like singing for a long time. Forget making new music." He squeezes his hands together between his knees and looks up. "She helped me write three of the tracks. Every time I think about looking at them I remember it's going to be the last thing she ever helped me write."
Adam puts a hand on top of the worried knot of Kris' fingers. "You could look at it another way," he suggests. "Produce them and release them as an EP. Title it after her. Give the world what she had to say and she'll live forever."
"I can't do that."
"I think you're confusing 'I can't do that' with 'I'm not ready to do that.'"
"I lost my contract with Jive, Adam," Kris spits out. "I had an album deal I defaulted on."
Adam looks thoughtful. "Are these finished tracks, or demos?"
"Adam, they're not going to care if-"
"Just answer the question, Kris."
Kris thinks. "We did some work on one of them. The other two are still demos. None of them were finished."
Adam leans forward and forces Kris to look him in the eyes. It's not so much a physical thing as the actual expression on Adam's face-one that somehow commands without commanding. "I don't like talking about this a whole lot because I don't want people to get the idea I think I'm the hottest shit to ever walk a stage," he says. "I don't. But when I switched labels to Virgin they made it pretty clear they wanted me to have a loud voice. Because when I'm allowed to yell ideas, albums sell." He shifts his elbows onto his knees, lets his hands dangle. "This is just an offer and you don't have to take it if you don't want to. But if you're interested, if you let me produce the tracks, I can release the EP under your name on my contract. There's some pretty good lawyers for the company who could work out the money part so you're getting an artist's cut instead of royalties. If you've got some decent demos to go with the EP, I could probably convince a few people to take a listen."
"You don't have to do that."
"I know I don't. I want to." Adam blinks as something that might have been jazz before a synthesizer got to it plays in his pocket. He fishes out his phone. "Why is Brad calling me at 5:30 in the morning?"
"It's almost eight," Kris points out. Adam shakes his head.
"LA is two hours behind," he answers, and then presses a button. "Hello?"
Kris hears Brad's high-pitched chattering on the other end of the phone. It almost sounds like one of the parodies of telephone chatter from the 1970s. Then Adam breaks in. "Whoa. Whoa, Brad, slow down. Jerry did what?" Adam's face grows serious. "Have you called Mandy or Debra?"
Kris listens to more indistinct chatter. Toward the end he becomes aware Brad is crying. Adam puts a hand on his forehead. "Brad. No, shh. Listen to me. Listen. You need-no, calm down. Brad. You need to-are you still at home? Okay. Have a glass of water and get dressed, and then make some tea and call Debra."
Kris hears more chatter, now down to a subdued mumble. "No, I don't mean Mandy or Nicole. Because-Brad, listen to me. The girls can call off from work. It's Anthony you need to worry about. You have to call Debra before he can get on the school bus." Adam pauses, frowns. "Brad, I promise they won't. No. Listen. You-no, listen to me. Calm down a little and then call Debra. No, I know you're scared. I know. But you need to-you tell them the truth, Brad. Anybody would panic. You woke up, you had to calm down so you weren't giving them information wrong, you haven't heard anything yet and you're on your way to the hospital. If they took him straight to the ER waiting 45 minutes isn't going to make a whole lot of difference anyway. I-yeah, I know."
Kris grabs the notebook off the question and scribbles a question: What's going on? Adam shakes his head and reaches for the notebook. "Brad-I know. Shhh. I'd be scared too. But he needs you right now. And that means you need to be able to think clearly. So get dressed and have some tea and call Debra." He scribbles an answer: Don't know. Jerry. "Okay. Are you gonna be okay for now? Give me a call back after you've called them and-I know my cell service isn't great out here, but I can stay on the porch and it should come through."
Kris reaches over and pries the phone out of Adam's hand. Adam stares at him and holds up his hands: what the hell, Kris? Kris ignores him and settles the phone on his shoulder. "Brad?"
It doesn't take a genius to tell Brad is crying just from his breathing, but if that wasn't enough, the heavy sniffling would be a huge hint. "Who is this?"
"Kris. Adam's staying with me while he's down here. Listen, do you have a pen and paper?"
"I have the whiteboard. We have one for messages."
"Okay. I want you to have my home number. If Adam's cell won't ring through you can call him here. Are you ready?"
"Hold on." There's a pause, and Brad's phone has a good enough receiver for Kris to hear him pulling open a drawer and rummaging through it. "Okay, I'm ready."
Kris gives him the number slowly, then asks him to repeat it so he can be sure it's right. "I'm going to put Adam back on now, okay?"
"Okay." With Kris' number on his message board Brad sounds at least a little calmer, and he feels okay about leaving silence on the line long enough to hand the phone back.
"Hey," Adam greets him. "Okay?" There's a pause, and then he makes an A-OK sign at Kris. "Do you want me there? Brad, that's not what I asked you. I-that's not the question either." Adam rolls his eyes. "Brad, let me ask you something. If I was in LA and you were in Dallas and I called you freaking out because my dad collapsed in the middle of the night and he was on his way to the hospital-okay, then. Let me talk to Kris and Kesha and I'll let you know what we figure out when you call back, okay? Okay. Go call Debra. Well, duh. If you don't keep me around for my amazing cooking skills it has to be for the flattery. I love you too." He flips the phone shut and looks bleakly at Kris. "Jerry's on his way to the hospital. Brad woke up in the middle of the night and he wasn't breathing."
"So you need to get back to LA?"
"Yeah. Brad's gonna hold together until the girls get there and then he's going to go into the bathroom and freak out. I can tell. Kesha's not up yet, is she?"
Kris shakes his head. "Don't worry about Kesha. My netbook's on the desk in the living room. Go look yourself up a ticket."
"If I go now, she's gonna have to drive back to LA alone."
"We'll work it out. You worry about Brad."
Adam hesitates, then nods and heads for the living room. Kris watches him go.
Then he bows his head and folds his hands with the name Jerry McAllister on his lips.
I have to make a note before anyone gets any further with this: I was already working on this before the tornadoes that went through the Midwest United States recently. This first section, in which Adam goes to Arkansas to help with disaster relief, was a bizarre and sad coincidence. If you'd prefer not to read because of the proximity of the event to the story, I understand.
Title: You And I: Resuming
Author: Ninalyn/technicolornina
Fandom: Adam Lambert
Pairing/Characters: Adam Lambert, Kris Allen, Katy Allen (past), Brad Bell, Kesha, various and sundry OCs
Word Count: 6940
Story Rating: R
Chapter Rating: R. Adam likes to swear.
Story Summary: Seven years after Idol, Adam and Kris and their lives have both drastically changed. Now they have to rebuild to get back to the people they once were--if that's really what they want.
Disclaimer: If you happen to be one of the people in this story, thanks for letting me play in your sandbox (and sorry for making your fictitious avatars go through such horrible shit). I'd recommend you read no further. You know, mental scarring and all that. If you're anyone else and you link one of said people to this story and I find out, yea, The Wrath Of Nina will fall on your head, and I'm short but I hit really hard for a girl.
Notes: Let me make this very clear: THERE IS DEATH IN THIS STORY!!! If you are one of those silly people who does not read the author's notes, don't bitch to me when you find out someone died in the backstory and you are bothered by it. I will refer you back to my BOLDED UNDERLINED ITALICIZED BRIGHT RED NOTE. And to those who go "DDD: HOW COULD YOU KILL X," it's nothing against X. It's just that all characters must be equally dispensable as plot fodder. I hope everyone in this story actually goes on to live a long, happy, healthy life. (And for those who will only care if it's Adam, Brad, or Kris, because I know y'all are out there: no, it's none of them.)
Feedback: I really do appreciate it when I get it, so if you care to make an author happy, please do.
Special Thanks/Dedications: For m_lasha, who requested Kradam in return for her generous donation to help_japan!
It’s been a long time since I came around
It’s been along time but I’m back in town
But this time I’m not leaving without you
--"You And I," Lady Gaga
At first, he thinks he's seeing things, then that he's looking at someone who just happens to have a similar face. But he blinks and rubs his eyes and takes a sip of water out of a mud-splattered bottle, and no-it's not just a lookalike. Kris is looking at Adam Lambert, Grammy winner and star of the world, wearing a pair of grimy jeans and carrying a little girl wearing a charcoal tee-shirt that looks suspiciously like it might have just come off Adam's back.
"Hey, I'm on one of the independent teams here and we're trying to find Mike or Darla Green," Adam says, and Kris blinks when he realises it's him Adam's addressing. Roommates seven years ago, and Adam doesn't even recognise him. Then again, considering they're meeting in the middle of what used to be a street and now looks like a hardware store sale gone mad and Kris is covered in dust and oil from some handyman's former garage workshop, maybe it's not surprising. After all, if not for the tattoos on Adam's bare arm, Kris probably wouldn't have recognised him, either.
"Adam?" he asks, and watches Adam rapidly cycle through a series of expressions-the I-know-I'm-famous-but-this-really-isn't-the-place game face followed rapidly by confusion and finally recognition-before settling on a grin that looks not entirely genuine.
"Hey!" he greets, and shifts the little girl so he can hug Kris with one arm. "What are you doing here, man?"
"Conway's not that far away," Kris answers. "We came in to help." He gestures at the group behind him, church men and women about thirty strong sorting through splintered boards and powdered stucco. The little girl in Adam's arms turns to look at him. "What's your name, sweetie?"
She mumbles something into Adam's shoulder and buries her face against his neck again, and Adam fills in. "This is Kaylee," he says. "I found her in a bathtub maybe half a block down." He pauses, and when he speaks again Kris can tell he's trying not to laugh. "Apparently nobody ever told her if you're getting in a bathtub to get away from a tornado you don't need to get undressed. I have no idea what happened to her clothes."
"Probably in a tree twenty miles away," Kris supplies, and reaches out to take her out of Adam's arms. "Parents?"
"Mike and Darla," Adam repeats. "Shit, Kris, I don't know. I don't even know what I'm doing here. I showed up with a friend to pass out water bottles and somebody shoved a safety vest at me and said they needed warm bodies to find people."
"A lot of the roofs fell in," Kris says. It's something to say and nothing Adam can't see with his own eyes. "Where's the guy you came with?"
"Chick," Adam corrects. "With the pickup. She didn't want to leave it alone."
Kris' mind fills in a pair of images: a broad-shouldered woman with a man's haircut and a flannel shirt standing on the running board of a Ford four-door, and then a wispy, waify girl with huge glasses and mood beads. He didn't know any of Adam's friends had a pickup, but in his admittedly limited experience, if there is such a thing as "a friend of Adam's with a pickup," it's as likely to be a hippie girl as a female lumberjack.
"We have a plan for our group, if you need somebody to join," Kris says, and shifts Kaylee so she won't slither out of his arms as soon as they start moving. She clung to Adam like a starfish, but as far as she's concerned Kris is just another grownup who isn't her mom or dad. "Why don't we take the kiddo back and pick up your friend?"
"Okay," Adam agrees, and rubs his arms where they've come over goosepimply in a chilly rain that really, really could have done them all a favour and held off for another six hours. "Let's get out of here."
-----------------
The friend turns out to be a tall blonde Kris' tired mind keeps trying to identify, by the end of the day, alternately as Keisha and Karen, and the pickup is just as unlikely: a dented 1993 Dodge Ram that's painted a faded, uneven red where it's not acid-trip purple or glossless, junkyard green. The girl who isn't Keisha (or Karen) identifies it as belonging to her brother, who "won't give the damned thing up even though I told him there's no reason he can't get one that doesn't look like the 1960s vomited all over it" and invites Kris to grab a water bottle from one of the few packs still stacked neatly in the yellow-and-rust-coloured bed. Kris accepts, wondering in the back of his mind if tetanus can travel through packaging plastic as he spins off the lid and drinks. The pickup looks shady, but the water tastes clean.
"Thanks."
"It's down, that's why we're here," she says, and Kris hasn't lost quite enough touch with Adam's form of street-rap to translate this to you're welcome. "We were just looking for a place to drop off supplies, but then we kind of . . . " She shrugs. Kris holds up the water bottle to stop her.
"Adam told me," he tells her. "You guys need a team to join?"
"After lunch," she agrees. "I haven't eaten since we got up and I'm starving."
"When did you get up?"
She bites the corner of her lip, thinking. "Well, Adam was in the back seat because he said he can't sleep sitting up-"
The back seat?
"-and I forgot to put up the sun screen last night. So maybe 5:30? Whenever the sun decided I didn't need my retinas anymore."
"Wait, you're sleeping in your truck?"
She gives Kris a look he can easily interpret: duh. "In case you haven't noticed, we're in the middle of nowhere and the middle of nowhere just got turned into firewood." She glances at Adam, picking up box lunches from the church crew and either happily oblivious or staunchly ignoring the snickers and whispers following his painted nails and pagan tattoos. "We came here to help, not to be an inconvenience to anybody."
"You shouldn't be sleeping in a truck," Kris protests. Then Adam is there, and shoving a small box into his hands.
"Sandwiches," he declares, and passes a box to the blonde before opening his own and glancing at its contents. "Salami. Kesha, did you get salami?"
"Looks like turkey," she tells him, and Adam turns on her a look Kris knows well from their time on Idol-the big-eyed innocent you know you wanna help me boy-next-door gaze that Allison's mother fell for every single time. "Wanna swap?"
"Do you mind?" Kris wonders vaguely how Adam can pull off that look and actually look sincere after the millionth or so time. Kesha holds out her sandwich, and Adam trades her before tearing into the sandwich with a fervour that suggests he has none of the same aversion to turkey.
Kris takes a bite of his-tuna fish salad-and washes it down with a swig of water. "K-Kesha said you guys are staying in the truck," he says, stuttering when he nearly calls her Kaitlyn. Forget the water; he needs coffee. Adam shrugs.
"It's only for a couple of days," he answers, and pops the top of the milk in his box before draining half of it in one swallow. "Then we've got to-d"
"You can stay at my place if you want, I've got a spare room," Kris interrupts. It's the kind of impulsive he expects more from Adam than himself, but it's not like they're total strangers, and something in him protests harshly at the idea of leaving a pair of Californians sleeping in a truck in the middle of Tornado Alley. If the alarms go off again in the middle of the night, they'll have no idea where to go.
The gratitude on Adam's face is almost embarrassing, but understandable; the pickup is a full-size, but even so someone Adam's size squeezing onto the back seat to lie down has to be an uncomfortable proposition. Kris just mumbles something about following him home when it gets too dark to work, and finishes his sandwich.
"Come on," he urges. "If we really get a move on we can finish two blocks by then."
-----------------
Kris sits on the bed, pondering the throw at its foot and wondering if he should add another. Adam as Kris remembers him could cheerfully sleep under a hand-knit quilt in July, but Adam as Kris remembers him is seven years and three world tours in the past.
Eventually he gets up to grab another blanket-what the heck, if they don't use it they can always kick it off the foot of the bed for Zorro to nest in-and that's how he happens to be walking past the spare room just in time to stop, perplexed, at the unexpected sight of his guests kissing on the guest bed.
Kris wonders momentarily if he should reach over and pull the door shut to offer them a little privacy, but before he can make up his mind to do it they break off and Adam rests his head on her shoulder.
"This is fucked up."
"Not your fault," Kesha tells him, in a voice that makes Kris smile with a sudden wash of reminiscence and sorrow counterpointed by the staunch, I'll-show-you-who-can't-do-it-herself expression on her face. It reminds him a little of Katy when she babysat in high school. "If the bitch says she'd rather drown than accept help-"
"Help from a fag, don't forget the important parts here," Adam interrupts. "She could've died, Kesha."
"And had nobody to blame but herself. Stop beating up on yourself. It's not like you asked to find a Class A bigot stuck in a flooded basement. And she didn't die, because that blonde guy got her out, so why don't you do something that makes sense, like sleeping?"
There's a long pause, presumably while Adam gathers the energy to pull himself off the bed. Then he sits up and takes his hand off her breast before staring at it for a moment with the blurry kind of surprise Kris only ever sees on drunks and pre-final college students. Kesha rolls over and starts laughing.
"I was wondering if you were going to notice."
" . . . . sorry?"
"I'm going to write to Perez first thing when we get back to LA and tell him you have to grope your kissing partners to make sure whether they're male or not. Go sleep."
"Fuck Perez."
"No, you fuck Perez. Pissy gays don't do it for me."
"You drove halfway across the country with me."
"If you're too tired to differentiate between pissy and bitchy, you're too tired to be having this conversation," she finally scolds him. "Go. To. Sleep. Or I swear I'm going to go out and get Kris, and we will tie your hands behind your back with your shirt-"
"I'm going, I'm going." Adam hauls himself off the bed, and Kris heads for the closet.
By the time he gets back with an extra blanket, don't-mind-me-it-takes-me-about-an-hour-to-fall-asleep-even-when-I'm-totally-bushed Adam is already sacked out on one side of Kris' bed, the covers on his side puddled around his hips where, Kris suspects from the hand on top of the blanket, they fell when Adam and consciousness parted ways. Kris pulls the blankets up to Adam's shoulders and lays the extra over the foot of the bed before shucking the sweatshirt he tossed on over his T-shirt and sliding in on the other side, acutely aware that he's in the same bed with another person for the first time in over a year, and suddenly realising just how easy it is to roll over and kick or bump into his bed partner.
But he's ready to drop off as soon as his head hits the pillow, and he barely has the chance to think he needs to offer both his guests the washing machine in the morning before he's out.
----------------
It's Kesha he finds in the kitchen in the morning, sipping a cup of the coffee she apparently found in his cupboard and brewed. Now she's sitting in one of the Shaker chairs at the table with one knee pulled up to her chin, the button-down she borrowed out of Kris' closet puddling around her legs. She peers up through her hair and smiles.
"Hi."
Kris raises a hand awkwardly and gets out a mug. It's been a long time since he's woken up with a woman in his kitchen. "Morning."
Kesha stretches in her chair. "Thanks for letting us stay," she says. "I think I had aches in places I didn't even know existed until I was in a hot shower again."
"You're welcome. It's nothing." Kris sits with his coffee and a piece of toast. Kesha stretches. Kris wonders if he should offer to swap rooms with Kesha and let her and Adam have the bigger bed, but he has no context for what he saw in the guest room, and he has no idea whether it'd even be appropriate in the circles they move in. Instead he nibbles his toast as she drinks her coffee.
"Is Adam okay?"
Kris blinks at her. It occurs to him that he heard snuffling behind him when he woke up around two in the morning to take a pee, but he took it for Adam's version of snoring. Until her question it never occurred to him that Adam might be crying in his sleep.
"I don't know," he finally admits. "He was out before I could talk to him last night. But I could tell he was stressed."
"Yeah," she agrees. "He hasn't really slept in a couple of days. I kept telling him there was a gun under the driver's seat if I really needed it and the locks on the truck only look like they're busted, but it was like he couldn't settle down anyway."
"I was thinking maybe I could suggest you guys just stay here today and chill," Kris says. He pauses. Then he confesses, "I heard you guys talking last night."
"About that bitch who called him every name in the book for trying to help her? I could have thrown her damned doorknob right at her head once I had it out of that tree," Kesha answers, and Kris can tell she's trying not to snap at him. "When someone offers to help you-"
"I know," Kris interrupts. "But I think he could probably use the day off. You, too." He reaches out and traces a pair of swoops under her eyes through her hair. "You've got circles that look like you haven't been sleeping too well yourself."
"Upright in a truck behind a steering wheel isn't that great for getting in eight uninterrupted hours," she agrees. "Maybe-" Then she yawns so widely Kris can almost tell whether she still has her tonsils. "It might be a good idea."
"It'll probably be easier to convince him to stay here if you're here," Kris answers. "At least, that's what he was like when we were roommates. If you go out, he's going to want to bull his way through because you shouldn't be out there alone."
"He's still like that," she agrees. Then she takes Kris' second slice of toast and breaks off a corner to nibble. She gets up and puts her cup in the sink. "I know we just got up, but-"
"If you want to sleep in, go ahead," Kris tells her. "It's not like you're going to be late for school." He pauses. "Want me throw your stuff in the wash?"
"I feel bad asking you to do everything."
"We can renegotiate my contract of servitude when you start asking me to bring you shaving water heated to exactly 86 degrees," he says, and while he's not entirely sure she gets the reference she still laughs. Then she yawns so widely Kris half-expects her jaw to stay that way.
"Thanks."
"No problem. Go take a nap." Kris waves her out of the kitchen.
As he does it occurs to him that he never asked her about swapping bedrooms, but then it also occurs to him that Adam will doubtless be up by ten whether he needs more sleep or not. Three hours away is time enough.
---------------------
"You really need to invest in a good facial cleanser," Adam says, scrubbing his face with the Dial sitting on Kris' sink. "You're going to get wrinkles."
"I can live with wrinkles," Kris answers from his place on the toilet seat. "My granddad used to say every wrinkle you get is a proof of an important truth you've learned."
"No wonder so many old people are so bitchy. They all know people were lying about them looking good in latex pants when they were twenty," Adam comments. "You still need a good facial cleanser. Hand soap burns the skin around your eyes and you end up looking like a drunk raccoon by the time you're fifty."
"I'll keep that in mind." Kris watches Kesha pad past the door in one of Adam's freshly-washed T-shirts. On him it's a little tight; on her it's almost big enough to be a dress. A very short dress on a very tall girl, but still better than the button-down and boxers she borrowed from Kris the night before. That combination was bordering on obscene in ways Kris would rather not think about.
"Ask Katy, she can probably help you pick out something that's better for your skin and isn't going to cost a fortune," Adam continues. Kris feels his stomach lurch. "Neutrogena is pretty good." He pauses. "Where is Katy, anyway? I haven't seen her all day. And she wasn't here last night, if I was sleeping with you."
Kris swallows hard and digs his fingernails-shorter than Adam's, but still sharp-into his palm. Don't get pissed at him. He doesn't know. He was probably halfway around the world when it happened. Adam looks concerned.
"You guys didn't get a divorce or something, did you? Shit, you're like . . . perfect for each other. Tell me you didn't get a divorce."
Kris takes a deep breath. "No. She . . . she died, Adam. About a year and a half ago."
The concern on Adam's face crashes to the floor. Kris can almost hear it shattering like brittle glass, leaving behind dismay and sadness.
"Fuck," he says, and then, "shit. Shit, Kris, I'm sorry."
"You couldn't have done anything." Even if you'd called I couldn't have talked to you.
"No, but-"
Adam's endless flow of chatter suddenly ceases, like he's cut it off with a cleaver. Then he's crouching in front of Kris with his hands on Kris' shoulders. Kris debates leaning into the hug and then doesn't. Adam squeezes his arms.
"I'm sorry for sounding like an asshole," Adam says. "I wish I'd known. Fuck, Kris."
Kris ignores the cussing and shakes his head. "It's okay. Really." It's not. "I know you didn't know. I think you were in Europe, or somewhere."
"Yeah, but-" This time Adam actually bites his lip as he looks away, and Kris can't help feeling sorry for him. Adam is used to artsy types who are comfortable talking through their feelings and crying it out before picking up the pieces and cheerfully continuing their interpretative tribal dance through life. A straight church boy from Arkansas is a real step up, challenge-wise. So rather than let Adam brood, Kris decides to change the subject.
"I had a question for you, actually," he says, and when Adam looks back at him Kris has to try not to flush. It's not that he cares one way or the other, per se, it's just that it's an incredibly awkward question to ask someone who just reappeared in his life after a well-over-three-year-long absence. "So, uh, the bed in the guest room is a single and mine is a double and I was wondering, after last night when you guys were together-nn." Kris has to bite his tongue and remind himself that even if he's completely off the mark, Adam won't think he's a total moron. And they're off that subject. The one he'd rather not talk about. "What I was going to say is, do you want to trade so you guys can share a bed?"
Adam blinks at him. Then a blush slowly blooms across his nose. "Oh. No. I mean, if you want to, but we're not-no. Shit, I'm sorry." It occurs vaguely to Kris that jumping from "my wife died" to "so, do you guys want to get a room?" was probably a bad idea, but there's nothing he can do about it now. "We're just friends." The blush deepens, and when Kris hears the next words out of Adam's mouth he understands why: Adam is comparing his grief to Kris' own and probably doing more internal berating for not being a more everpresent friend. "I kind of wasn't doing so hot last night."
"The way you conked out as soon as you hit the bed didn't tip me off at all," Kris answers, and after another of those incredulous stares Adam first snorts, then snickers.
"I don't think I've slept that way in years. Maybe ever."
"First night in Top Thirteen," Kris reminds him. It's a night he'll remember forever, not because it was the beginning of a life-changing journey or because it was his first time so far from home on something that wasn't church work, but because he walked in on Adam with some guy wearing a lot of bracelets who-later, after he and Adam were both fully dressed again-called Kris "pocket Idol" and used phrases like "legiterally the worst mistake this country made since Ronald fuck-the-monkey Reagan" that almost made sense, kind of, maybe-to someone on LSD, perhaps. The walking-in part wasn't such a big deal, but the guy was Kris' first totally in-your-face gay diva, and if Kris ever writes his memoirs he's going to make sure Brad is in them. Just for the bracelets.
"Not a fair comparison, Brad roofied me. Or something."
"Or something?"
"My drink wasn't blue."
Kris tries to look like this makes sense. "I think you're lucky he's on your side." Then he bites his tongue. The last he knew, Adam and Brad were only kind-of speaking to each other, and most of the time it was fighting. Then he sees Adam's lips quirk, and relaxes.
"Yeah, I am," he says. Then he stands up. "Come on, let's get out of here so Kesha can brush her teeth." He pads across the hall into the bedroom. Then he stops, looking at the bed and brooding. Adam is a world-class brooder, and Kris is pretty sure all the years in the world won't let him forget it.
"I'm zonked," Kris comments. He doesn't want to have the conversation he knows is bouncing around in Adam's head. Not right now. Possibly-probably-not ever. "Wanna hit the sack?"
"I've gotta call Brad," Adam answers. "I just realised I haven't talked to him since I've been down here and he's worried about Jerry. Can I borrow your back porch?"
"Sure. Who's Jerry?" Kris plunks onto the bed. Maybe he'll be lucky and he'll be deeply enough asleep to not notice when Adam joins him and starts his usual nightly toss-and-turn gyrations.
"His partner. Nice guy. History professor at UCLA. I still can't get over Brad being a grandfather by association," Adam answers, and it's Kris' turn to blink in confusion. In Adam's head that probably made sense, he's sure.
"Knock yourself out."
"Thanks," Adam says, and heads for the kitchen so he can get to the backyard.
Kris has no idea when Adam comes to bed; by then he's already down for the count.
----------------
"Hmm? No, probably another two days," Kris hears Adam say from the back porch. He finishes stirring the iced tea and holds up the jar to offer Kesha-also on her phone, in her case to her mom-a glass. She nods and makes a grateful kind of gesture. "They've got everybody cleared out. Now they're just trying to-mm." Adam shifts to take the glass Kris offers him and mouths a thank you. "Yeah. This time I'm driving." Adam raises his voice. "'Cause Kesha's a fucking maniac when you give her a stick shift to fondle. Right, Kesha?"
"Go blow Gene Simmons, Adam," Kesha calls across the porch, and all three of them laugh as Adam flicks her off. "Sorry, Mom. Say what?"
Adam finishes snickering and settles back into his conversation. "I know, but I've driven your mom's monster. A full cab can't be that different." He listens, then grins. "I bet he was just thrilled when he got that news. How're Kaylee and Cody?"
Kris hears the voice on the other end of Adam's phone start chattering at fever-pitch and smiles. The kids are no relation to Brad-they're his partner's grandkids, which made a lot more sense to Kris when he managed to get Adam's brain on a single track long enough to find out that Jerry is fifty-three and a recent emigrant from Closetland-but he spoils them to death. Kris imagines it's no great hardship for their mom to turn them over to Grandpa and Daddy Brad so she can get out of the house, either.
He sets down his own iced tea and watches Adam listen to Brad in the late-afternoon light over the back porch. With the path of destruction from the tornado cleared of people, everyone was told to go home for the day. Tomorrow-after the ground dries a little, hopefully-is time enough to start trying to sort through everything, and so the three of them are relishing their few hours of leisure time, Adam and Kesha making their phone calls to various people at home and Kris setting the kitchen to rights. It's nice to be content for a night.
He watches Adam listen, watches Adam smile, watches Adam laugh into the phone. Eventually Adam looks up and mouths 'playground' at Kris.
Kris considers being depressed. Then he just smiles back.
--------------
"We'll be separated into three groups," Mike says, and starts gesturing them into lines with his hands. "We'll each be taking one of the first three houses. Our job isn't to try to haul everything out but only to make it easier for people to come back and try to find anything they want to salvage before the wreckers come in." He gets to the middle of the divide of the bigger second group and looks uncertainly at Kris, standing right up front with his two new friends-Adam in nail polish and artistically paint-splattered jeans and Kesha in a T-shirt that says "AGENT 0069 JAMES BONDAGE" on the front. At least Kris was able to talk her into not wearing "That's not what your boyfriend said last night" to this morning's group. At last Mike rather awkwardly shuffles the two apparent ne'er-do-wells into Kris' group before assigning "incident location" numbers to each group. Their job is to pull out things that are obvious threats-jagged metal, boards with planks, any cinderblocks they find-so homeowners can return to the evacuation zone to see if anything is worth saving.
Adam pulls a pair of heavy leather work gloves out of his back pocket and slides them over his hands. Kris thinks vaguely that it's weird to see Adam in gloves that actually cover his fingers, and then they head off to the former mobile home that is their assignment.
Most of the group ignores them, working in another area altogether, but Adam listens in on the conversation-about how great it is that out in these rural places people band together when they need help-and eventually chips in with two cents of his own.
"Cities are like that, too," he says. "It's just that in a city it's more restricted to a neighbourhood than the whole place. There's this older lady on my block and her husband had a stroke last year. A couple of us went over to do her yardwork and take care of their dog and stuff so she could stay with him at the hospital."
The entire group pauses to stare at him like he's from another planet. "Yeah, but that's kind of different from something like this," Kris hears from one the youth group girls. She's wearing the kind of checkered shirt-jeans-flatironed hair combination that hasn't gone entirely out of style since 1994 or so. He searches his mind for a moment and turns up a name from his roster-Maddie Forrester. "I mean, she could always like, hire help." Kris hears the undertone in her voice: you are well-to-do and I resent you for it. Adam stares back, aware of hostility but not of its source.
"Not really. They're on some kind of fixed income from her husband's old shop. And I don't think most help wants to clean out the birdbath."
"But they're, like. Living with you."
Kris is pretty sure Adam laughing is the worst possible reaction, but there's nothing he can do to stop him. "WeHo isn't as expensive as people make it out to be. I'm pretty sure my Kroger is actually cheaper than the one in Conway." He shrugs. "Maybe there are some differences between the places we live, but people are pretty much the same everywhere." He shifts the cinderblock in his hand-one of the heavy-duty fifty-pound ones, now in pieces-to his other arm. "If you want to talk about it during lunch that'd be cool, but right now we should probably get this stuff out of here."
Most of the group hesitates, then slowly makes their way back to what they were doing. Kris hears an incoherent grumble from Maddie, and then an answer in a man's voice: "Well, what else can you expect from some Hollywood fag?"
Around Kris' neck is a small metal WWJD? pendant he got when he stepped down as the head of the youth group sixteen months ago, but so often these days he finds himself feeling the need to move one of those letters further over on the keyboard: What would Katy do? For a second he flounders, even though he can feel the way Adam tenses just for a second next to him before tossing his cinderblock into the pile of haul-away. Then he remembers the first time Adam encountered somebody ready to be malicious because he, a gay man, had achieved some kind of success-the way Katy reached over and firmly clicked out of the window Adam found when he tried to post on Danny's Facebook, and then folded her arms around his shoulders as she sat on his bed. He remembers seeing her eyes-her kind eyes-and feeling incredible pride to call her his wife as she spoke for them both: Ignore him. They're only making fun because they're afraid of you for not being afraid of yourself. It has nothing to do with what we as Christians are taught to do. I'd love to have you in our home.
He remembers the kiss she put on Adam's cheek as she told him to focus on his performance and forget the people who wanted him to fail, and he raises his voice. "Hey."
The talk stops again. And now they're all looking at him. Kris remembers Katy. Forget about trying to please the people who want you to fail, Adam. Do what you do best and I know you'll succeed. Kris trains his eyes on Maddie and the man next to her-her dad, he thinks, but he's not entirely sure. Dave Forrester has a twin brother. "We're here to do God's work, and He commands us to do unto others as we'd have done to ourselves. I don't think either one of you would like to be reduced to a single aspect of yourselves and hated for it."
"It's none of your business," and now Kris is sure-yes, it's Dave. "If you bothered reading your Bible while you have those godless people in your house, you'd know it says that the job of a Christian is to chastise and teach-"
"Excuse me, I'm a Methodist, and my Bible says you're full of shit," Kesha interrupts. Kris could kiss her. "The job of a Christian is to love. Read Matthew. Adam and I came here because we saw what was happening on the news and we wanted to help. So unless you're here because you want to look good, what do you say we drop the middle-school name-calling and get something done?"
Kris raises his eyebrows at her, impressed. Dave gapes. Then he drops his eyes and mutters something bitter about a woman's place and goes back to viciously sorting through splintered support beams. Kesha hauls the end of what probably used to be a plastic shower stall out from under a bunch of shingles. "Hey, Adam, want to give me a hand with this?"
Adam nods. He's staring at Kris like he's never seen him before, and Kris kind of knows why: when things between Adam and Danny got too heated, it was Katy who stepped in as a mediator, and Kris always let her.
Adam looks like he's going to reach out to hug Kris. Then he pulls his arms back to his sides and glances at the group of people laughing and chatting like one of their members hadn't just insulted a pair of people who joined them instead of welcoming them with God's love in their hearts.
Sometimes you've just got to pick which side you're on, Katy told him once.
Kris reaches out and pulls Adam into his arms.
------------------------------
"You mean you haven't looked at any of it at all?" Adam asks, and Kris can hear the incredulity Adam is trying not to let bubble to the surface. Kris shakes his head.
"After Katy died I just . . . really didn't feel like singing for a long time. Forget making new music." He squeezes his hands together between his knees and looks up. "She helped me write three of the tracks. Every time I think about looking at them I remember it's going to be the last thing she ever helped me write."
Adam puts a hand on top of the worried knot of Kris' fingers. "You could look at it another way," he suggests. "Produce them and release them as an EP. Title it after her. Give the world what she had to say and she'll live forever."
"I can't do that."
"I think you're confusing 'I can't do that' with 'I'm not ready to do that.'"
"I lost my contract with Jive, Adam," Kris spits out. "I had an album deal I defaulted on."
Adam looks thoughtful. "Are these finished tracks, or demos?"
"Adam, they're not going to care if-"
"Just answer the question, Kris."
Kris thinks. "We did some work on one of them. The other two are still demos. None of them were finished."
Adam leans forward and forces Kris to look him in the eyes. It's not so much a physical thing as the actual expression on Adam's face-one that somehow commands without commanding. "I don't like talking about this a whole lot because I don't want people to get the idea I think I'm the hottest shit to ever walk a stage," he says. "I don't. But when I switched labels to Virgin they made it pretty clear they wanted me to have a loud voice. Because when I'm allowed to yell ideas, albums sell." He shifts his elbows onto his knees, lets his hands dangle. "This is just an offer and you don't have to take it if you don't want to. But if you're interested, if you let me produce the tracks, I can release the EP under your name on my contract. There's some pretty good lawyers for the company who could work out the money part so you're getting an artist's cut instead of royalties. If you've got some decent demos to go with the EP, I could probably convince a few people to take a listen."
"You don't have to do that."
"I know I don't. I want to." Adam blinks as something that might have been jazz before a synthesizer got to it plays in his pocket. He fishes out his phone. "Why is Brad calling me at 5:30 in the morning?"
"It's almost eight," Kris points out. Adam shakes his head.
"LA is two hours behind," he answers, and then presses a button. "Hello?"
Kris hears Brad's high-pitched chattering on the other end of the phone. It almost sounds like one of the parodies of telephone chatter from the 1970s. Then Adam breaks in. "Whoa. Whoa, Brad, slow down. Jerry did what?" Adam's face grows serious. "Have you called Mandy or Debra?"
Kris listens to more indistinct chatter. Toward the end he becomes aware Brad is crying. Adam puts a hand on his forehead. "Brad. No, shh. Listen to me. Listen. You need-no, calm down. Brad. You need to-are you still at home? Okay. Have a glass of water and get dressed, and then make some tea and call Debra."
Kris hears more chatter, now down to a subdued mumble. "No, I don't mean Mandy or Nicole. Because-Brad, listen to me. The girls can call off from work. It's Anthony you need to worry about. You have to call Debra before he can get on the school bus." Adam pauses, frowns. "Brad, I promise they won't. No. Listen. You-no, listen to me. Calm down a little and then call Debra. No, I know you're scared. I know. But you need to-you tell them the truth, Brad. Anybody would panic. You woke up, you had to calm down so you weren't giving them information wrong, you haven't heard anything yet and you're on your way to the hospital. If they took him straight to the ER waiting 45 minutes isn't going to make a whole lot of difference anyway. I-yeah, I know."
Kris grabs the notebook off the question and scribbles a question: What's going on? Adam shakes his head and reaches for the notebook. "Brad-I know. Shhh. I'd be scared too. But he needs you right now. And that means you need to be able to think clearly. So get dressed and have some tea and call Debra." He scribbles an answer: Don't know. Jerry. "Okay. Are you gonna be okay for now? Give me a call back after you've called them and-I know my cell service isn't great out here, but I can stay on the porch and it should come through."
Kris reaches over and pries the phone out of Adam's hand. Adam stares at him and holds up his hands: what the hell, Kris? Kris ignores him and settles the phone on his shoulder. "Brad?"
It doesn't take a genius to tell Brad is crying just from his breathing, but if that wasn't enough, the heavy sniffling would be a huge hint. "Who is this?"
"Kris. Adam's staying with me while he's down here. Listen, do you have a pen and paper?"
"I have the whiteboard. We have one for messages."
"Okay. I want you to have my home number. If Adam's cell won't ring through you can call him here. Are you ready?"
"Hold on." There's a pause, and Brad's phone has a good enough receiver for Kris to hear him pulling open a drawer and rummaging through it. "Okay, I'm ready."
Kris gives him the number slowly, then asks him to repeat it so he can be sure it's right. "I'm going to put Adam back on now, okay?"
"Okay." With Kris' number on his message board Brad sounds at least a little calmer, and he feels okay about leaving silence on the line long enough to hand the phone back.
"Hey," Adam greets him. "Okay?" There's a pause, and then he makes an A-OK sign at Kris. "Do you want me there? Brad, that's not what I asked you. I-that's not the question either." Adam rolls his eyes. "Brad, let me ask you something. If I was in LA and you were in Dallas and I called you freaking out because my dad collapsed in the middle of the night and he was on his way to the hospital-okay, then. Let me talk to Kris and Kesha and I'll let you know what we figure out when you call back, okay? Okay. Go call Debra. Well, duh. If you don't keep me around for my amazing cooking skills it has to be for the flattery. I love you too." He flips the phone shut and looks bleakly at Kris. "Jerry's on his way to the hospital. Brad woke up in the middle of the night and he wasn't breathing."
"So you need to get back to LA?"
"Yeah. Brad's gonna hold together until the girls get there and then he's going to go into the bathroom and freak out. I can tell. Kesha's not up yet, is she?"
Kris shakes his head. "Don't worry about Kesha. My netbook's on the desk in the living room. Go look yourself up a ticket."
"If I go now, she's gonna have to drive back to LA alone."
"We'll work it out. You worry about Brad."
Adam hesitates, then nods and heads for the living room. Kris watches him go.
Then he bows his head and folds his hands with the name Jerry McAllister on his lips.