You And I: Rethinking
Title: You And I: Rethinking
Author: Ninalyn/technicolornina
Fandom: Adam Lambert
Pairing/Characters: Adam Lambert, Kris Allen, Katy Allen (past), Brad Bell, Kesha, Lady Gaga, Neil Lambert, various and sundry OCs
Word Count: 8087
Story Rating: R
Chapter Rating: R. Adam likes to swear. Angel likes to swear even more.
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!
I want to love you
But something's pulling me away from you
Jesus is my virtue
And Judas is the demon I cling to, I cling to
I'm just a holy fool, oh baby, it's so cruel
But I'm still in love with Judas, baby
I'm just a holy fool, oh baby, it's so cruel
But I'm still in love with Judas, baby
--"Judas," Lady Gaga
Kesha is the one who leads Kris around West Hollywood, pointing out Kroger and Whole Foods and the bar where Adam does most of his casual socialising before driving him up one street and down another and onto a block of trees and brightly-coloured houses and pulling into a driveway. Kris looks at her in surprise. Of all the places he might have expected Adam to live-from a walk-up apartment to some moderately splashy place in Beverly Hills-this quiet little house, two stories with a full porch full of wind chimes and a hummingbird feeder on the front, would be the last. It looks like the kind of place most of Kris' neighbours would be happy to live in.
Kesha doesn't bother knocking or ringing the doorbell; she just troops right on in, kicking off her shoes as she goes. "Adam! Company!"
"We're in here," calls a woman's voice, and Kris sticks close as he follows Kesha down a short hallway and into a living room, where Adam is lying on the couch apropos of nothing so much as a rajah reclining on a throne.
It probably also helps that his arm is in Lady Gaga's lap.
"My hands are getting tired," she says, guiding a humming metal contraption over his wrist. Kesha groans.
"Oh my god. I leave you people alone with my tattoo gun just long enough to drive back from Arkansas . . . "
"It was Adam's idea," Gaga-Lady? Gaga? Both together? Kris is pretty sure someone's told him this before, but he's forgotten-announces, and puts down the gun. "I need a break, Adam. My hands are going numb from the vibrating. Don't you even dare."
"Adam, are you harassing the girls again?" a voice calls in from what Kris assumes is the kitchen. Adam's eyes flutter open, and he turns his head and grins.
"Only the ones who like it. Hi, Kris."
"Hi," Kris greets, as Adam studies his arm and slowly sits up. "Uh . . . what's up?"
"They're torturing me," the voice calls again. Kris turns around and sees Neil in the doorway. "They've been having a debate for the last half hour. Journey versus Styx."
"All I'm saying is, I never saw Riff fall asleep to 'Don't Stop Beliving'," Adam says, and Gaga-maybe it's Stefani in private company-rolls her eyes.
"It might help if you actually sang it to him before jumping to that conclusion," she scolds as Neil vanishes back into the kitchen, and Adam waves a hand.
"Whatever. Kris, you've met Gaga, right?"
Well, that answers one question. "Um . . . no." He holds out a hand. "Nice to meet you?"
Gaga takes his hand and starts laughing. "Adam, you've brought us a blusher."
"Don't look at me. I came back alone." He twists his head around to stare at Kris. "How did you get here, anyway?"
"He rode with me," Kesha cuts in, and rolls her eyes. "Because both of you have this stupid idea I'm one of those stupid shitty romance-novel heroines with no brains who'd probably faint if I pricked myself on a thorn. I can take care of myself, you know."
"Hey, I don't-" Kris starts to protest. Gaga cuts him off.
"He's just looking for someone to mother. Maybe we should get him a puppy," she suggests, and as Adam lets out an "oh, hell no" Kesha laughs. Then she plunks down on the sofa and starts examining Adam's arm.
"We should drag Neil in here and have a jam session," she says. "If you can play a synth with half a lizard on your wrist."
"It's going to be a dragon," Adam protests. "It's a Chinese good-luck symbol."
"Whatever. Don't break my tattoo gun. So Kris just got here and he was asking me what hotels are around here until he can find a place to rent and the only one I know that isn't, like, tour-expensive just got raided for running a prostitution ring, so do you guys have any ideas?" Kesha rambles, and Kris can't help wryly thinking now who thinks who can't take care of himself?
"Yeah, it's called I have a spare room," Adam says. "Since when are you moving to LA?"
Kris fumbles with his fingers a bit. It's something to do. "Well . . . it was either that or make you come back to Arkansas for awhile. And I figured you'd had enough of that for now."
Adam blinks. Then he grins. "You wanna do it?"
Kris hesitates. Then he wonders what else did I come here for? and nods. Gaga props her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands.
"What are we doing? Orgies, mad dance parties on the bar, convincing this cute little friend of yours he wants to go get a manicure?" She glances at a thunderstruck Kris, then smiles. "Only joking."
"Gaga, you're gonna kill him."
"Not at all," she says, and picks up the tattoo gun before pulling a board into her lap. "Brace your hand. If you'd like this finished before I leave Los Angeles again, that is."
Adam does. Kesha pokes Kris in the side. "You better listen to him," she tells him, and hands him the key to the bed of the pickup. "Your stuff's in the back."
Kris goes.
---------------------
There are six of them in Adam's living room by the time Adam declares everyone arrived: Adam, Adam's manager, two Virgin execs, Kris, and a golden retriever/Irish setter mix Adam saw a few months ago on the Adopt-a-Pet section on the local news and promptly fell in love with. Kris can't remember the names of the manager or the execs, but the dog's name is Jackson.
Adam is shooting back and forth pleasantries and business talk ("So what I was thinking is, if it was released as a limited pressing to gauge interest it'd probably get a lot of publicity for being a new project") mixed liberally with gossip about the new Idol season ("Evan might be better if he'd do something that isn't a power ballad for once") and chatter about his kindergarten-bound godson ("I don't know what the teacher's gonna do with him, he's reading second-grade stuff already"). Kris tries and fails to keep up, finally sitting back and letting Adam do his thing. At least until Adam turns to him and goes "What do you think?"
Kris tries to remember what Adam's last conversational thread was-was it something about releasing digital copies or gushing about the little goth-looking boy from Albany, New York who sang "Judas" last week?-and for a second he comes up empty. Then he decides Adam probably isn't asking him to rate Angel Traynor's relative hotness on a scale of one to ten and hopes he's not making a fool of himself. "I've been totally out of touch for more than a year, but if the business is still about where it was when I dropped out, a limited pressing is probably good. My last tour ended two years ago."
"And your Twitter still has over ten thousand followers even though you've mostly been doing retweets for the last four months, I checked," Adam chips in. "It's not a perfect measurement, but it's something."
One of the execs folds his hands on top of the tray Adam gave him. "The question, of course, is whether there's anything to deliver beyond an eleven-minute short play," he says. "And while I understand and sympathise with your circumstances, Virgin's average time between an EP and the following LP is six months. I feel I have to express concern over whether that's a deadline you'd be able to meet."
"I've got-" Kris hears a click in his throat and reaches for the coffee Adam poured earlier. Then he tries again. "I've got about twelve other songs in demo. It's not enough for a whole album if you want really strong stuff, but it's close. I'd say probably five are tracks I'd be willing to have produced and released right now, without any changes except filling out the backing track. It's not a whole lot, but it'd make six months pretty doable."
"And you wouldn't be interested in releasing a full album with your choice of those fifteen tracks, maybe a small amount of additional writing?" Exec Number Two asks, raising his eyebrows. Kris shakes his head.
"I know you guys are trying to give me a fair shot and I really appreciate it-you have no idea how much-but it's been three and a half years since my last album dropped. An EP's cheaper to produce and sell, especially with digital tracks. It'd probably be a better way to find out how many people are still interested. And how many of those like what they hear."
"He's got a point, that's why I wanted to do that cutting-room release last year," Adam says. "Indigo was taking too long."
"Yes," agrees Exec Number One. "But if it were properly publicized, a new full-length album-after three years of silence, no less-could be quite impressive."
"He's got a point," Kris sheepishly admits to Adam. "It worked for Train. And they were on hiatus for almost a decade."
"He's right, you're right, you can't both be right," Adam answers, and rolls his eyes. "Don't make me make all the decisions here."
"Let's ask the rabbi," Kris suggests, and though Execs One and Two stare at him like he's suddenly started speaking Greek, Adam laughs loudly and with a heartiness that suggests Kris completely surprised him into it. Watching Adam laugh that way is something of a treat, and Kris watches him, grinning, until Adam winds down.
"Here's a thought," Adam says at last. "And don't tell me it doesn't work, because one of my friends started his own label this way. Release two EPs, six months apart. If you put the tracks on both together, they make up the number of a full album, but in bites. You keep them both really available and use the difference in the number sold between the first EP and second EP to guide which direction your next album should go."
The execs look at each other thoughtfully. Kris thinks it sounds like a pretty good idea, but he has no idea how it'd go over with fans who've been waiting for way too long for new material. At last Exec Number One looks at Kris.
"Where are these demo tracks of yours?"
"I've got a couple of cassette recordings with me, but the masters are in Arkansas," Kris confesses. "I didn't want to risk anything driving them across the country. There are no other copies."
"You left them in Tornado Alley, that's risk enough," Adam tells him, and Kris gives him a look.
"They're in the cyclone cellar, Adam." Kris looks at Exec Number Two, suddenly unsure. "Cassettes are okay, aren't they? I was going to put them on CD but the studio I used to work in is closed to repair tornado damage and my transfer stuff at home is kind of old . . . " He trails off.
"Not ideal, but for demo recordings it's good enough," Exec Number Two says. Then he glances between Adam and Kris. "You understand nobody can make promises until we've heard the demo and know what kind of quality we're talking about here-"
"We know," Adam agrees.
"But provided it sounds like we could move a limited pressing, at least, I think you'll get your shadow contract. That's strictly off the record and between us, of course. But Virgin is always looking to pick up saleable artists."
"Got it," Kris says, and catches Adam's eye across the living room. Adam glances back.
He's still not sure where Adam keeps his extra boxes of cereal and there's a lot Adam doesn't know about the last eighteen months, but both of them know what the wordless exchange between them means: we've got this one in the bag.
-----------------------
"Not fucking cool!" Adam calls from the living room, and Kris wanders in, still in a pair of sleep shorts and with a bowl of Lucky Charms (apparently the only cereal Adam is currently willing to eat) in one hand.
"What?"
"Angel," Adam answers, and Kris blinks in sleepy surprise. He'd been half-expecting Angel-with his long black hair and multiple facial piercings and an incongruous pink and blue and purple "love is love is love" tattoo on one pale wrist-to get voted off the week he decided to sing Lady Gaga, but he didn't even make the bottom three, probably at least in part because he and Adam went from borderline flirtatious to borderline salacious all over Twitter that night, and the ensuing "Angel and Adam are screwing" rumours mobilized a huge army of power-voting Glamberts in Angel's favour. Kris replays last night's show in his head and decides there was nothing even remotely offensive about his cover of "Life on Mars?" no matter how weird it was, and that if anything, it's probably Deirdre (whose idea of "Classic Rock Week" was a version of "Stay Awhile" so bad even Kris can find nothing charitable to say about it) who'll be going home. "He's done."
"But results don't come out until tonight?"
Adam shakes his head and points to the screen of his laptop. Kris looks. ATraynorAI15 I've been asked to leave Idol, Kris reads. Tonight will be my last performance regardless of vote count. Sorry, Traytors. Above it is another: @TraytorGirl194 No word yet. Probably not.
"He got kicked off the show and the tour," Adam fumes. "And the producers won't comment. I looked it up."
"What happened?"
"I don't-hold on," Adam says, and refreshes the page. There's a new tweet. @adamlambert Disqualified. Wish I could elaborate but you know how the NDA works.
Adam stares at this missive for a few seconds before opening his direct messages and pecking furiously at the keyboard. Are you out of the AI contract or is it still in place outside of the NDA?
Kris sits down and munches his Lucky Charms before they can go soggy.
Out of it after tonight. Back to Square One.
Not really. Top Four is pretty good. You'll get signed.
Probably not. Fourth never gets signed.
Daughtry, Allison, James, that chick from last season with the pink fauxhawk. Lunch?
Kris raises his eyebrows. "He just got disqualified from his way out of his best friend's basement and you're asking him on a date?"
"He could probably use the company." Adam glances back at his screen. "I wonder if I should call him."
"That's not creepy," Kris agrees. "'Hey, I've been practically having public cyber-sex with you for five weeks and you just got bad news, wanna chat?'"
The long-suffering stare Adam gives him could wilt plants. "I got his phone number when I performed on Top Ten week." Then he glances back at his screen.
Jessica Wilson, and I can't. Rehearsal. Kris can almost hear the bitterness right through the screen. Still have 2tix for 2nite. Want to come?
----------------------
Kris rolls over in bed and takes out his earbuds, listening. Adam can be quiet when he wants to be, but although the house was remodeled when Adam moved in the vents are the same old 1950s monsters that carry sound so clearly they might as well be right next to each other as a whole house apart, and every little noise from Adam's room comes straight upstairs.
But it's quiet now except for an unfamiliar breathing sound that Kris supposes is Adam's other guest for the evening, tucked beneath Adam's bright purple blankets. Kris wonders briefly, in an absent kind of way, what kind of unholy mess that long black hair is in; did either of them bother straightening it before dozing off, or is it still tangled around Adam's wrists and between the sheets? And does it really matter?
He puts his iPod back on the bedside table, and then there's a closing door from downstairs and a creak-Adam's bed, an antique monstrosity he picked up because he liked the carved posts and didn't care about the loose joints he and Neil and Eber spent an entire afternoon fixing after Adam flopped on it and landed, mattress and all, on the floor-and then the small, catlike sound of someone being noisy about stretching.
"He's not so bad for a holy roller," Kris hears Angel comment, and a kind of noncommittal sound out of Adam. "I expected him to throw a fit when you asked me to stay."
"Why?"
"The obvious."
Somehow even when Adam is a floor away and Kris doesn't have his face for context Kris can tell Adam's silence is a bewildered one.
"Obvious?"
Angel's tone is so dry Kris feels like he could use it to sand furniture. "We sure didn't come back here to play cards."
"Kris isn't like that."
"Mm." There's a pause. "If you knew someone had done something incredibly wrong, and your only chance of setting it right meant staying somewhere you had one friend and no job and trying to do it could get you in a lot of trouble, would you done it?"
"I have," Adam answers. "More than once. Why?"
The next pause is so long Kris is starting to wonder if Angel is going to answer at all. Then, finally, he does.
"I have this feeling you'll be able to read all about it in the newspaper in a month or so."
-----------------
"And cut. Kris, can you come out here a minute?"
Kris takes off his giant headphones and joins Adam at the board. Adam cues up to the 37-second mark and plays back the freshly-laid vocals.
"Look, this is driving me fucking crazy. I know you don't speak Spanish, but if you're going to use it you have to pronounce it right."
"The Spanish was Katy's idea."
"Okay, but you still have to say it right, Kris." Kris gets the sense Adam's just about reached the end of whatever rope it is he's swinging on today. "Spanish is phonetic, this isn't hard. The As are all pronounced like in 'father'. Always. With maybe two exceptions I can think of."
"That's not what you said five minutes ago."
"Did you miss where I said there are a few uncommon exceptions?"
"About this same word?"
Adam starts yelling, and after listening to him for about thirty seconds Kris just turns around and walks out, thinking to himself that Adam and his perfectionist tendencies can just go spit. If he tries talking reasonably right now he's going to deck Adam, instead.
Kris finds himself outside the studio wishing he smoked just so he could have something to puff angrily on. Instead he slumps against the wall and bangs a fist backward against it, thinking to himself that he'd love to take that know-it-all pout off Adam's face and-
Kris blinks at himself. Maybe I should start sleeping with my headphones in when he's got company.
He's standing alone for maybe ten minutes before Adam appears. In his hand is a small twist of white paper, and after a second Kris realises what it is.
"Should you really have that at a studio?"
"I have a prescription."
"For pot." Kris decides not to word it like a question.
"Stress," Adam answers. "And sleeping problems during and just after tour. I fucking hate antidepressants and sleeping pills. They kill your liver and the only time I tried actual sleeping pills for about two weeks I ended up with these really vivid godawful nightmares I couldn't wake up from. Not stupid shit like getting onstage and realising I was naked, more like . . . chewing out Neil's throat and not being able to stop. A couple of times when I did finally wake up I found scratches and bite marks. I was doing it to myself in my sleep."
"Dear God, Adam!" Kris stares at him. Adam shrugs.
"Now you know why I got the pot scrip. Psych pills and I don't really get along."
He offers the joint, and because Kris is smart enough to know what it really means he takes a small hit for politeness' sake. Adam takes one more drag and stubs it out.
"Look," he says finally. "We've been here for like seven hours and we're both tired. You wanna just get some takeout and call it a night?"
"Yeah." Kris doesn't even have to think about that one. Adam nods toward the car, and as they walk toward it he spins his keys around one finger.
"You wanna drive? I know it's only three miles, but I had way more of that joint than you did."
Kris tries very hard to not visibly freeze. "Uh . . . . are you, you know, okay to drive?"
"Probably. If I was gonna nod out I'd be there already."
"How high of a percentage is 'probably'?"
Adam ponders. "Say around like ninety-five. If I start getting tired I can always pull into somebody's driveway. It's not like you just nod out with no warning on the medical stuff. If you don't mind adding a mile to the drive I can go through residential all the way home."
"You drive," Kris says. Then he tries to smile without it looking fake. "I'd probably get lost. Even the residential streets here are huge to me."
Adam shrugs and unlocks the car. Kris slides into the passenger seat and breathes a sigh of relief before tapping the button to turn on the radio. He's too worn out for conversation. Adam reaches up for something from the CD visor over Kris' seat.
"Here, I convinced Cassidy to burn this a couple of days ago," he grins, and slides the disc into the player before hitting the scramble button. Adam's car is for the moderately upwardly-mobile; Adam's car stereo system would probably make Lamborghini drivers jealous.
"I was in my early forties, with a lot of life before me . . . "
Kris dives for the eject button. His elbow catches the gearshift, and suddenly instead of moving forward they're going backward, straight into a six-lane intersection. Kris hears the blare of a horn that isn't Adam's as headlights fill the car and thinks oh sweet Jesus-
Adam slams on the brakes and throws an arm across Kris' chest to shove him back into his seat before changing gears so fast Kris can actually hear them grinding. Then they're back on the quiet little side-street and Adam's pulling over. Kris can already tell he's going to start yelling, but he doesn't have the energy to protest. And really, isn't it his fault? If he hadn't had that kind of knee-jerk reaction . . .
"That was the song playing when Katy died," he mumbles, somewhere between What the hell were you thinking? and what he's sure would have been some diatribe about LA traffic. It doesn't change anything and he knows it, but he feels Adam deserves an explanation, or at least part of one. Adam shuts up so fast Kris can almost hear the click of his jaw. Then he shuts off the ignition and reaches across the seat to open Kris' seatbelt and pull him into a hug.
Kris wants to protest, push Adam off, say he's fine, but then Adam's fingers thread into his hair and bring his head down to Adam's shoulder and Kris can't help himself; he melts into Adam's side, and they sit for nearly twenty minutes that way without saying a word.
----------------------
"-can't believe it's down to those two," Kris hears a high-pitched voice say from the living room, and he shucks his muddy shoes to go take a look, curious. "I mean, Ashley's pretty good, but Deirdre? I was sure it was going to be Ashley and Ryan after what happened in Top Five week."
Kris leans against the doorframe to address Brad on the couch; if he sits down with his jeans in their current condition he's pretty sure Adam will kill him. "I thought Deirdre was going to be gone that week."
"I thought she was going to be out after Top Eight," Brad says. "Calling that an 'Elvis cover' is an insult to Elvis and covers both."
"I wondered how she even got into the Top Thirteen," Adam cuts in. "I watched her audition and top 24 songs after she sang all of 'Drops of Jupiter' off-key, and I know it's kind of way open to interpretation what key any Alanis Morissette song is in, but there's free interpretation and then there's just . . . bad."
There's a man sitting next to Brad-brown hair liberally streaked with gray, small wire-rimmed glasses, very square hands-and when Brad looks at him expectantly he shrugs. "I couldn't carry a tune in a paper bag. I don't think I should judge."
Kris barely notices when Gaga answers. He's starting to get used to weird people and household names hanging out here every hour of the day and night. "Then I will. She doesn't take herself seriously enough. I don't watch regularly, but the week that one boy sang one of my songs-"
"Angel," Adam cuts in. "He's coming for dinner, if he ever gets here."
Gaga raises her eyebrows at him, but declines to comment. "So many people absolutely flooded my Twitter with links that I decided to watch the entire episode just to see what he was up against. I'm fairly certain she didn't actually rehearse except on mentor day. That's far from enough."
"I remember that," Brad's companion says. "I've seen enough kids get up for oral presentations they wrote the night before to know an I-don't-actually-know-this expression when I see one."
"Well, you know what 'finals' means, right?" Brad asks. "Fuck, I never actually learned shit."
Adam and Gaga snicker. The gray-haired man rolls his eyes. Kris can't help a small chuckle; for someone who used to date Adam, Brad's rarely that vulgar. Kris hears the front door open, and then a heavy clunking that can only be a pair of thigh-high black laceup steel-toed combat boots hitting the floor.
"Yo," Angel greets as he slouches into the living room, dangling a jacket from one hand. Then his eyes widen. Kris bites his tongue to fight the impish urge to introduce Gaga to Angel as casually as Adam once did to Kris. "Uh . . . hi."
"Well, if it isn't the devil himself, appearing as spoken of," Gaga greets him. Adam beams across the room. "Adam invited me so we could finish up just a couple of small details on a track we're writing. I hope you won't think I'm intruding."
Kris sees the sparkle in her eyes and knows full well Angel's getting baited, but he doesn't say a word-just waits to see what Angel will say. If Gaga's hoping for something dramatic, she's in for a disappointment: Angel just half-mumbles "it's his house" and slinks like a cat against Adam's side.
"Angel, Gaga and Brad," Adam fills in, like this is an introduction he makes every single day. "Gaga, you've met Brad-no?" he asks, as Gaga shakes her head. "Yeah, you have. He's the guy who visited me in the studio the last time we got together on a track. You've got to remember this. He brought us coffee from that little Spanish place."
Gaga stares at him blankly. Adam stares back. "Come on. You told him he might end up leaving naked if everything under his coat matched his top hat."
"Oh, that was you!" Gaga enthuses, and Kris coughs very hard. Adam continues like he didn't have to stop at all.
"Kris, Angel, Gaga-Jerry, Brad's partner. Jerry, this is everybody."
"Pleasure to meet you, everybody," Jerry answers in a pleasant tone just bordering on dry before reaching out to shake hands with the air. Brad stifles a chuckle with one hand. Kris grins.
"I hate to be the one raining on the parade-"
"Then don't," Gaga suggests. "Unless you're raining glitter."
"I really need to change out of these jeans. So I'll be back?"
"Yeah, try not to get peat moss on the couch, please," Adam chips in. "I just got the stains out from the last time I let Riff in here with grape juice."
"Just give up on furniture that's not black," Kris hears Angel suggest from Adam's shoulder as he heads off down the hall. "It looks better anyway."
Kris changes out of his work jeans and the T-shirt he borrowed from Adam's drawer and into something he hopes is appropriate for a dinner party Adam's holding. Finally he washes up and wanders back into Adam's living room, where Jerry is telling stories about horrible student papers and everyone else is sharing review horror stories.
"There was this one guy on my last album who was kind of a douche," Adam's saying, and then he gets cut off by Gaga.
"No, Kesha put this one very aptly. He wasn't 'kind of a douche,' he was a grade-A asshole with all his brains located directly south of his waist."
Adam waves a hand to acknowledge the contribution and keeps going. "He tore the third track to pieces talking about how he thought it was all-what'd he call it, 'saccharine and fake' for me to be singing to a girl, and you could tell he was basing the entire thing on the title. The single was released as 'The Most Beautiful Girl' for some reason, but the album edit is 'For Molly Jane.' If he'd even read the lyrics he would have known I wrote it for my goddaughter."
"Wow, way to fake like a bad porn actress," Brad says, and Kris snorts. Brad looks up at him and pats the sofa as he scoots over. Kris sits. "I think I remember that. Because he went on this big long diatribe about you dating a girl just to have somebody to go places with and how it was doomed to fail and trying to tie that to the album somehow, and apparently didn't stalk your personal life enough to know you'd just tweeted this big long spaz post about Godbaby Number Two showing up. Which, you know, you'd think would be kind of important."
"You'd think," Adam agrees. Angel makes a kind of weird sneezing noise.
"Only if you're straight. The rest of us are only interested in kinky sex with multiple partners, you know."
Brad rolls his eyes. "Oh, right. I forgot I was supposed to be cheating on my boyfriend this afternoon. Silly me, and I wasted all that time picking up milk instead of trying to indoctrinate small children, too."
"You were picking up the milk for the grandkids so they'd think gay people actually need food like normal people. It's indirect indoctrination," Adam offers. Brad giggles.
"Of course. I'm very sneaky that way." He stretches out and leans against Jerry. Kris watches Jerry fold an arm around him with something too lonely to be jealousy while Adam opens a conversation between Angel and Gaga.
And feels more alone than he has since one night in an upturned car.
-------------------
"They don't actually know yet," Jerry says, from his place tucked comfortably into the corner of Adam's couch with an arm around Brad's shoulders. Kris finally got over calling him "Dr. McAllister" about an hour ago. "I'm supposed to go in for my physical in two weeks. The ER doctor sent me home with a CPAP mask and told me to make sure I mention having had at least one episode of sleep apnea so they can check out my lungs."
Brad opens his eyes. "And you'd better keep the appointment this time. One more last-minute faculty meeting you just can't miss and I think I'm going to wring the dean's neck for him."
Jerry chuckles. Kris watches them, snuggled together like a single unit, and then glances across at Adam. No help there; Angel isn't draped over him the way Brad is draped over Jerry, but he has one hand tangled up with Adam's and the other on Adam's knee. Earbuds and the iPod are going to be the order of the night for Kris.
"Noted," Jerry tells him, and Brad closes his eyes again, happily oblivious to everything around him but the warm side he's pressed against. Kris looks over at Gaga, tapping a pen against a notebook, and wonders if she'd mind squeezing the book over a little so he could sit with her on the loveseat-anything to not be the only odd wheel in the room. He glances at Adam again, and this time their eyes meet. Adam pats the sofa cushion next to him.
"Get out of that chair and join the party," Adam says, and Kris takes the seat Adam offers. It earns him a death glare from Angel that he tries to ignore. Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm invading your makeout bubble. And probably the couch you have sex on when I'm not here and you don't make it all the way to his bedroom. Deal with it. Gaga suddenly throws her head back against the seat cushion.
"I want you to know this is absolutely maddening," she tells Adam. "The only rhyme I can think of is in Italian and it's at least two syllables too long."
"I want you to know I think you're absolutely inhuman," Brad cuts in. "You're actually one of those aliens who did probes in the 1960s and now you're masquerading as a pop star using everything you learned when you did them."
Gaga stares at him, her mouth open. Then she flips two pages in the notebook and starts scribbling madly, lower lip between her teeth and a look of intense concentration on her face. Adam watches her and chuckles.
"You better watch it, Brad, she'll write you into her next album."
Gaga slaps the pen down on the table and hands Adam the notebook. He looks at it, then blinks at it.
"Gaga, half of this is in-what language is this?"
"Quechua," she answers, in a tone that suggests everyone should know this. "I learned it on the tour bus last summer."
"Let me see it," Jerry says. "I taught a class last semester on the history of native tribes in Central America."
Adam hands him the notebook. Jerry reads over the page and raises his eyebrows. "Why can I never have students like this?"
"I told you she's an alien," Brad says. "Do you believe me now?"
Jerry reaches across the table to hand back her notebook. "Your grammar is excellent."
Gaga nods in a way that suggests he should have expected it to be nothing less. Jerry rubs absently at the shoulder Brad's been leaning on as he sits back. "Mm. I think I'll call it 'Apachekta'," Gaga muses, and then she smiles before making a face. "It's not what I wanted to finish . . . "
"Gaga, one of these days you're going to take up something simple, like training killer bees," Adam tells her, and takes the notebook again before flipping back to the first page. "And you know, if you change the terminating syllable in the line before this you can have it still make sense and have your pick of half a dozen adjectives for this."
"Not adjectives, nouns."
"Whatever." Adam scribbles out a word, fills in a line, stares at the book, scribbles some more, and hands it back. Jerry shifts on the couch.
"Bradley, you're going to have to get off my shoulder, my whole arm is going numb."
"Sorry," Brad answers, and swings his legs up onto the other sofa so he can put his head in Jerry's lap, instead. "What're you two so stuck on?"
Gaga hands him the notebook without comment. Brad frowns down at the page.
"Mm. Hey, pocket Idol, take a look and see what you think." Brad tosses Kris the notebook. Kris smiles. It's been years since anybody called him that, and the irony of being called 'pocket-sized' by someone an inch and a half shorter than him isn't lost on him in the slightest. Kris looks down at the lyrics, then up at the notations-written over the words in Adam's writing as a sequence of letters with beat notes, occasionally with a sharp or flat symbol, rather than on an actual staff-that suggest there's already a melody written. Kris stares at it, willing something to give itself up. Angel leans over Adam's lap to look with him.
"Okay, so maybe this is just me, but-" Angel points. "If you change the last quarter-note in this measure to a pair of eighths, make one a G-flat instead of a G, and then make the B a glory note, doesn't that give you the two extra syllables?"
"Wrong key, the G-flat would have to be an F-sharp," Kris answers absently. "And you'd have to do an eighth and two sixteenths, because the glory note isn't uncounted."
"Yeah, but it'd work."
"The liner notes for this track are going to be utterly ridiculous," Gaga says, and hands Kris the pen. "Fill it in and see how it sounds, would you, love?"
Kris doesn't comment on his new pet name; he just scratches out Adam's old notes and fills in new ones before looking thoughtfully at the keyboard in the corner that's actually Neil's. Piano he can do, but the keyboard has an assortment of synth keys and switches Kris might be able to navigate, if his life absolutely depended on it. Angel makes the sneezing sound again and takes the notebook out of Kris' hands so he can set it on the music stand before switching on the power.
He's halfway through the first bar when Kris hears Brad, his voice laced with concern: "Jerry?"
"This is just not going away," Jerry says, and Kris looks over at the other sofa, where Jerry is still rubbing his shoulder. "I think I might have pinched a nerve somehow."
Angel's playing suddenly tapers off as he looks over. "You don't look too hot, man."
"Baby?" Brad asks, and brushes a stray lock of hair off Jerry's face. Now everybody's looking. Jerry shifts and coughs.
"I'm sorry, I think I need to step outside for a minute," Jerry offers, and Kris thinks it's a lie of near-Presidential quality. Jerry doesn't look like he's stepping anywhere. Adam must agree, because he's already part of the way out of his seat.
"You want some water? You're really pale," Adam tells him, and then everything happens very fast.
Everything is supposed to slow down in an emergency, but all Kris can remember later is a series of sounds and one sensation. It's more than enough: Brad screaming, the dull clunk of the keyboard chair as Angel knocks it over, and then Gaga's voice, weirdly calm: "We need to call 911. No, shhhh, darling, let Adam help him."
Kris bangs his shin on the coffee table trying to get to the group by the sofa, and that's when he realises why Gaga hasn't made the call herself: her voice is calm, but her hands are shaking so badly she more drops than sets her phone in his palm as she pulls Brad away from the sofa to let Adam in. There's a lock on the phone, and underneath it is a little button that says "Emergency Call." Kris taps it and watches the phone self-dial 911.
Kris hears the dispatcher's voice, and then his own, like a badly-tuned radio, giving Adam's address and stating the nature of their emergency as requested.
"I think somebody here's had a heart attack."
-------------------
"Excuse me, Brad Bell?"
Kris watches as Brad looks up at the nurse in front of him. She's very young-Kris is more than willing to bet she hasn't been out of school two years at the most-but with the circles underneath his swollen eyes, Brad looks younger. Kris looks at the girls on either side of him (blonde and perfectly-coiffed lawyer on one side; blonde and ponytailed waitress on the other) and the little boy on his lap and hopes fervently for all their sakes that the news they're about to get isn't any worse than they've had already.
"Would you and your family please come with me?"
Kris feels his gut clench, and when he looks at Angel's face he sees pretty much the same feeling written there. But they get up-Brad, Mandy and Nicole, Kaylee and Cody, Adam and Kris and Angel bringing up the rear-and follow her down the hall and through a door into what looks like every breakroom Kris has ever been in.
"Dr. Hoffman thought you might feel more comfortable out of the public lobby," the nurse explains, and the grateful look Brad gives her would be pathetic if it wasn't very obviously coming from a place of complete emotional exhaustion. Kris and Angel worked out a rough unspoken schedule for keeping an eye on the door to protect Brad and the girls from curious eyes wondering what a television star was doing in the waiting room, but they haven't been able to shield the McAllister family circle completely, and at least one woman Kris is cheerfully ready to call a complete idiot actually approached Kris to ask if he thought Brad would give her an autograph.
"We still have someone coming," Brad tells her. "His son's not here yet."
"What does he look like?"
"Tall, brown hair, really skinny," Brad says. "He's seventeen. His mother's bringing him. She looks more like Mandy. Her name's Debra."
"I'll make sure they get back here," the nurse tells him. Brad thanks her pleasantly enough, but as soon as she's out the door he sits down and puts his face in his hands. Adam sits to rub his back and looks up at Kris and Angel.
"You guys don't have to stay," he says. Angel shifts, and Kris feels suddenly bad for him. "I don't know how long we're gonna be here."
"I'm staying," Kris answers, and reaches absently for the strap on the back of Cody's overalls as he runs past. "In case you guys need somebody to watch the kids."
The older blonde-Amanda, always Mandy to her family and never to her clients-smiles wearily up at him. "They're a handful."
"It's not a problem," Kris answers. Angel shifts again, and Kris glances over at him. On his face is an unmistakeable I-don't-do-kids look, and he's staring down at his combat boots like they're the most fascinating thing he's ever seen. Kris decides to take pity on him and offer him an easy out. "You wanna go back to the house and feed Jackson? He's probably hiding under the kitchen table wondering where all the people went."
Angel mumbles a vague affirmative and bends over to kiss Adam's cheek. Adam touches Angel's face with his free hand, but he has no time for Angel's discomfort; right now he has all he can handle in the form of Brad's grief, and so it's Kris who follows Angel into the hallway.
"Thanks," Angel mumbles, and then suddenly he blurts out "It's not like I don't care, I just can't-"
"It's okay," Kris assures him. "Really."
"Like I feel so fucking useless," Angel spits. "I mean, what the fuck are you supposed to do?"
"Whatever you can to make it easier for the people it affects," Kris answers. "And by taking care of things at the house you're letting Adam stay with Brad, and Brad needs him right now."
Angel scrubs a hand across his face. One of his bracelets gets caught on his right eyebrow ring, and Kris watches him free himself with an air of absence that suggests getting stuff caught on his facial piercings is just a way of life for Angel by now. "I guess. This is fucked up."
"Yeah, it is," Kris agrees. "Want me have Adam give you a call when we find out what's going on?"
"Yeah," Angel says. "I have shit to do at the hotel, too." The look he gives Kris isn't the same kind of exhaustion Brad is currently wearing, but it's from the same family. "You ever notice it can't just sprinkle a little bit when shit goes wrong? When it rains it really does fucking pour."
"Yeah," Kris agrees. "Get some sleep."
"Like hell," Angel mumbles, and heads for the elevator.
Kris heads back inside.
------------------
It's Conway all over again.
Adam is sitting on his own bed instead of a guest single and he doesn't have the same look of bone-deep exhaustion that he had in Kris' home, but his face is still despondent, and when Kris sits down with him he offers up that same hopeless look.
"Do you think leaving him with Debra was okay?" he asks, and after a moment's thought Kris nods.
"She'll take care of him just like the girls," Kris decides. "She's his ex because he's gay, not because she's a horrible person."
"And two years after he came out he started dating someone half her age," Adam adds. "I'm getting the feeling she's a way stronger person than I am."
"You're still friends with some of your exes."
"Not the two who left me for someone else."
Kris pulls Adam into a hug and strokes his hair, remembers the night they sat this way on the side of the road while Adam let Kris finally cry the tears he never gave himself before. Adam has none of Kris' hesitation about taking comfort, and he crumples into Kris' arms with his head resting on Kris' shoulder as he clings.
"I'm not sorry he met somebody he could fall in love with that way," Adam says. "But I really fucking wish it'd been somebody who wasn't twice his age."
"Thirty-year-olds can need bypass surgery too," Kris points out. Adam buries his face against Kris' shoulder.
"Not nearly as likely, though."
Kris is never entirely sure why what he does next seems like the most logical thing to do, although eventually he'll chalk it up to having lived with Adam's particular brand of crazy for over a month. All he knows in that moment with Adam's weight heavy on his arms and Adam's grief for his friend heavy on his heart is that once he saw someone comfort Adam from this kind of sadness in a particular way, and so it makes perfect sense to him to put a hand on the back of Adam's head and bring their lips together.
You know what they call this, don't you? Adultery.
But it's the kind of thing Adam does with many of his close friends both male and female, and Kris is assuming-in spite of the dangers that brings-that if Angel minded, he'd have split already. Wherever the line between friendly and adulterous might fall in Adam's mind, this is on the safe side of it.
Adam pulls back not even far enough to take them apart and then relaxes into Kris' arms, nipping at Kris' bottom lip as he does. Kris wonders if he's comfortable enough to let Adam kiss him that way, a way Kris' upbringing reserves for lovers and spouses, and then he runs his fingers through Adam's hair and opens his mouth as he pulls them both down onto the bed to lie. Adam pulls him into an embrace that's not quite a cuddle and kisses him with his whole mouth, nipping and licking and scratching his nails gently down Kris' back, relaxing into the bed so rapidly Kris swears he can almost see the melancholy draining right out of him as he accepts comfort.
Adam rolls them over, lying on his back with Kris on his chest, and Kris pulls back. There's unusual boundaries and there are places Kris simply isn't comfortable going, and this is one of the latter. Adam opens his eyes and looks up at him.
"Stay with me," he says, and then, "please?"
Kris nods, considers squirming himself free, and decides not to. Adam is hurting enough without Kris pulling away from him now. Adam closes his eyes.
"Don't let me sleep," he tells Kris. "Past eight, I mean. I need to call Brad."
"Okay."
Adam pulls him close again and kisses Kris' temple. Kris lets him, holds Adam as he slides gradually into sleep.
But Kris stays awake for nearly two hours, his mind too busy to sleep.
Author: Ninalyn/technicolornina
Fandom: Adam Lambert
Pairing/Characters: Adam Lambert, Kris Allen, Katy Allen (past), Brad Bell, Kesha, Lady Gaga, Neil Lambert, various and sundry OCs
Word Count: 8087
Story Rating: R
Chapter Rating: R. Adam likes to swear. Angel likes to swear even more.
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!
I want to love you
But something's pulling me away from you
Jesus is my virtue
And Judas is the demon I cling to, I cling to
I'm just a holy fool, oh baby, it's so cruel
But I'm still in love with Judas, baby
I'm just a holy fool, oh baby, it's so cruel
But I'm still in love with Judas, baby
--"Judas," Lady Gaga
Kesha is the one who leads Kris around West Hollywood, pointing out Kroger and Whole Foods and the bar where Adam does most of his casual socialising before driving him up one street and down another and onto a block of trees and brightly-coloured houses and pulling into a driveway. Kris looks at her in surprise. Of all the places he might have expected Adam to live-from a walk-up apartment to some moderately splashy place in Beverly Hills-this quiet little house, two stories with a full porch full of wind chimes and a hummingbird feeder on the front, would be the last. It looks like the kind of place most of Kris' neighbours would be happy to live in.
Kesha doesn't bother knocking or ringing the doorbell; she just troops right on in, kicking off her shoes as she goes. "Adam! Company!"
"We're in here," calls a woman's voice, and Kris sticks close as he follows Kesha down a short hallway and into a living room, where Adam is lying on the couch apropos of nothing so much as a rajah reclining on a throne.
It probably also helps that his arm is in Lady Gaga's lap.
"My hands are getting tired," she says, guiding a humming metal contraption over his wrist. Kesha groans.
"Oh my god. I leave you people alone with my tattoo gun just long enough to drive back from Arkansas . . . "
"It was Adam's idea," Gaga-Lady? Gaga? Both together? Kris is pretty sure someone's told him this before, but he's forgotten-announces, and puts down the gun. "I need a break, Adam. My hands are going numb from the vibrating. Don't you even dare."
"Adam, are you harassing the girls again?" a voice calls in from what Kris assumes is the kitchen. Adam's eyes flutter open, and he turns his head and grins.
"Only the ones who like it. Hi, Kris."
"Hi," Kris greets, as Adam studies his arm and slowly sits up. "Uh . . . what's up?"
"They're torturing me," the voice calls again. Kris turns around and sees Neil in the doorway. "They've been having a debate for the last half hour. Journey versus Styx."
"All I'm saying is, I never saw Riff fall asleep to 'Don't Stop Beliving'," Adam says, and Gaga-maybe it's Stefani in private company-rolls her eyes.
"It might help if you actually sang it to him before jumping to that conclusion," she scolds as Neil vanishes back into the kitchen, and Adam waves a hand.
"Whatever. Kris, you've met Gaga, right?"
Well, that answers one question. "Um . . . no." He holds out a hand. "Nice to meet you?"
Gaga takes his hand and starts laughing. "Adam, you've brought us a blusher."
"Don't look at me. I came back alone." He twists his head around to stare at Kris. "How did you get here, anyway?"
"He rode with me," Kesha cuts in, and rolls her eyes. "Because both of you have this stupid idea I'm one of those stupid shitty romance-novel heroines with no brains who'd probably faint if I pricked myself on a thorn. I can take care of myself, you know."
"Hey, I don't-" Kris starts to protest. Gaga cuts him off.
"He's just looking for someone to mother. Maybe we should get him a puppy," she suggests, and as Adam lets out an "oh, hell no" Kesha laughs. Then she plunks down on the sofa and starts examining Adam's arm.
"We should drag Neil in here and have a jam session," she says. "If you can play a synth with half a lizard on your wrist."
"It's going to be a dragon," Adam protests. "It's a Chinese good-luck symbol."
"Whatever. Don't break my tattoo gun. So Kris just got here and he was asking me what hotels are around here until he can find a place to rent and the only one I know that isn't, like, tour-expensive just got raided for running a prostitution ring, so do you guys have any ideas?" Kesha rambles, and Kris can't help wryly thinking now who thinks who can't take care of himself?
"Yeah, it's called I have a spare room," Adam says. "Since when are you moving to LA?"
Kris fumbles with his fingers a bit. It's something to do. "Well . . . it was either that or make you come back to Arkansas for awhile. And I figured you'd had enough of that for now."
Adam blinks. Then he grins. "You wanna do it?"
Kris hesitates. Then he wonders what else did I come here for? and nods. Gaga props her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands.
"What are we doing? Orgies, mad dance parties on the bar, convincing this cute little friend of yours he wants to go get a manicure?" She glances at a thunderstruck Kris, then smiles. "Only joking."
"Gaga, you're gonna kill him."
"Not at all," she says, and picks up the tattoo gun before pulling a board into her lap. "Brace your hand. If you'd like this finished before I leave Los Angeles again, that is."
Adam does. Kesha pokes Kris in the side. "You better listen to him," she tells him, and hands him the key to the bed of the pickup. "Your stuff's in the back."
Kris goes.
---------------------
There are six of them in Adam's living room by the time Adam declares everyone arrived: Adam, Adam's manager, two Virgin execs, Kris, and a golden retriever/Irish setter mix Adam saw a few months ago on the Adopt-a-Pet section on the local news and promptly fell in love with. Kris can't remember the names of the manager or the execs, but the dog's name is Jackson.
Adam is shooting back and forth pleasantries and business talk ("So what I was thinking is, if it was released as a limited pressing to gauge interest it'd probably get a lot of publicity for being a new project") mixed liberally with gossip about the new Idol season ("Evan might be better if he'd do something that isn't a power ballad for once") and chatter about his kindergarten-bound godson ("I don't know what the teacher's gonna do with him, he's reading second-grade stuff already"). Kris tries and fails to keep up, finally sitting back and letting Adam do his thing. At least until Adam turns to him and goes "What do you think?"
Kris tries to remember what Adam's last conversational thread was-was it something about releasing digital copies or gushing about the little goth-looking boy from Albany, New York who sang "Judas" last week?-and for a second he comes up empty. Then he decides Adam probably isn't asking him to rate Angel Traynor's relative hotness on a scale of one to ten and hopes he's not making a fool of himself. "I've been totally out of touch for more than a year, but if the business is still about where it was when I dropped out, a limited pressing is probably good. My last tour ended two years ago."
"And your Twitter still has over ten thousand followers even though you've mostly been doing retweets for the last four months, I checked," Adam chips in. "It's not a perfect measurement, but it's something."
One of the execs folds his hands on top of the tray Adam gave him. "The question, of course, is whether there's anything to deliver beyond an eleven-minute short play," he says. "And while I understand and sympathise with your circumstances, Virgin's average time between an EP and the following LP is six months. I feel I have to express concern over whether that's a deadline you'd be able to meet."
"I've got-" Kris hears a click in his throat and reaches for the coffee Adam poured earlier. Then he tries again. "I've got about twelve other songs in demo. It's not enough for a whole album if you want really strong stuff, but it's close. I'd say probably five are tracks I'd be willing to have produced and released right now, without any changes except filling out the backing track. It's not a whole lot, but it'd make six months pretty doable."
"And you wouldn't be interested in releasing a full album with your choice of those fifteen tracks, maybe a small amount of additional writing?" Exec Number Two asks, raising his eyebrows. Kris shakes his head.
"I know you guys are trying to give me a fair shot and I really appreciate it-you have no idea how much-but it's been three and a half years since my last album dropped. An EP's cheaper to produce and sell, especially with digital tracks. It'd probably be a better way to find out how many people are still interested. And how many of those like what they hear."
"He's got a point, that's why I wanted to do that cutting-room release last year," Adam says. "Indigo was taking too long."
"Yes," agrees Exec Number One. "But if it were properly publicized, a new full-length album-after three years of silence, no less-could be quite impressive."
"He's got a point," Kris sheepishly admits to Adam. "It worked for Train. And they were on hiatus for almost a decade."
"He's right, you're right, you can't both be right," Adam answers, and rolls his eyes. "Don't make me make all the decisions here."
"Let's ask the rabbi," Kris suggests, and though Execs One and Two stare at him like he's suddenly started speaking Greek, Adam laughs loudly and with a heartiness that suggests Kris completely surprised him into it. Watching Adam laugh that way is something of a treat, and Kris watches him, grinning, until Adam winds down.
"Here's a thought," Adam says at last. "And don't tell me it doesn't work, because one of my friends started his own label this way. Release two EPs, six months apart. If you put the tracks on both together, they make up the number of a full album, but in bites. You keep them both really available and use the difference in the number sold between the first EP and second EP to guide which direction your next album should go."
The execs look at each other thoughtfully. Kris thinks it sounds like a pretty good idea, but he has no idea how it'd go over with fans who've been waiting for way too long for new material. At last Exec Number One looks at Kris.
"Where are these demo tracks of yours?"
"I've got a couple of cassette recordings with me, but the masters are in Arkansas," Kris confesses. "I didn't want to risk anything driving them across the country. There are no other copies."
"You left them in Tornado Alley, that's risk enough," Adam tells him, and Kris gives him a look.
"They're in the cyclone cellar, Adam." Kris looks at Exec Number Two, suddenly unsure. "Cassettes are okay, aren't they? I was going to put them on CD but the studio I used to work in is closed to repair tornado damage and my transfer stuff at home is kind of old . . . " He trails off.
"Not ideal, but for demo recordings it's good enough," Exec Number Two says. Then he glances between Adam and Kris. "You understand nobody can make promises until we've heard the demo and know what kind of quality we're talking about here-"
"We know," Adam agrees.
"But provided it sounds like we could move a limited pressing, at least, I think you'll get your shadow contract. That's strictly off the record and between us, of course. But Virgin is always looking to pick up saleable artists."
"Got it," Kris says, and catches Adam's eye across the living room. Adam glances back.
He's still not sure where Adam keeps his extra boxes of cereal and there's a lot Adam doesn't know about the last eighteen months, but both of them know what the wordless exchange between them means: we've got this one in the bag.
-----------------------
"Not fucking cool!" Adam calls from the living room, and Kris wanders in, still in a pair of sleep shorts and with a bowl of Lucky Charms (apparently the only cereal Adam is currently willing to eat) in one hand.
"What?"
"Angel," Adam answers, and Kris blinks in sleepy surprise. He'd been half-expecting Angel-with his long black hair and multiple facial piercings and an incongruous pink and blue and purple "love is love is love" tattoo on one pale wrist-to get voted off the week he decided to sing Lady Gaga, but he didn't even make the bottom three, probably at least in part because he and Adam went from borderline flirtatious to borderline salacious all over Twitter that night, and the ensuing "Angel and Adam are screwing" rumours mobilized a huge army of power-voting Glamberts in Angel's favour. Kris replays last night's show in his head and decides there was nothing even remotely offensive about his cover of "Life on Mars?" no matter how weird it was, and that if anything, it's probably Deirdre (whose idea of "Classic Rock Week" was a version of "Stay Awhile" so bad even Kris can find nothing charitable to say about it) who'll be going home. "He's done."
"But results don't come out until tonight?"
Adam shakes his head and points to the screen of his laptop. Kris looks. ATraynorAI15 I've been asked to leave Idol, Kris reads. Tonight will be my last performance regardless of vote count. Sorry, Traytors. Above it is another: @TraytorGirl194 No word yet. Probably not.
"He got kicked off the show and the tour," Adam fumes. "And the producers won't comment. I looked it up."
"What happened?"
"I don't-hold on," Adam says, and refreshes the page. There's a new tweet. @adamlambert Disqualified. Wish I could elaborate but you know how the NDA works.
Adam stares at this missive for a few seconds before opening his direct messages and pecking furiously at the keyboard. Are you out of the AI contract or is it still in place outside of the NDA?
Kris sits down and munches his Lucky Charms before they can go soggy.
Out of it after tonight. Back to Square One.
Not really. Top Four is pretty good. You'll get signed.
Probably not. Fourth never gets signed.
Daughtry, Allison, James, that chick from last season with the pink fauxhawk. Lunch?
Kris raises his eyebrows. "He just got disqualified from his way out of his best friend's basement and you're asking him on a date?"
"He could probably use the company." Adam glances back at his screen. "I wonder if I should call him."
"That's not creepy," Kris agrees. "'Hey, I've been practically having public cyber-sex with you for five weeks and you just got bad news, wanna chat?'"
The long-suffering stare Adam gives him could wilt plants. "I got his phone number when I performed on Top Ten week." Then he glances back at his screen.
Jessica Wilson, and I can't. Rehearsal. Kris can almost hear the bitterness right through the screen. Still have 2tix for 2nite. Want to come?
----------------------
Kris rolls over in bed and takes out his earbuds, listening. Adam can be quiet when he wants to be, but although the house was remodeled when Adam moved in the vents are the same old 1950s monsters that carry sound so clearly they might as well be right next to each other as a whole house apart, and every little noise from Adam's room comes straight upstairs.
But it's quiet now except for an unfamiliar breathing sound that Kris supposes is Adam's other guest for the evening, tucked beneath Adam's bright purple blankets. Kris wonders briefly, in an absent kind of way, what kind of unholy mess that long black hair is in; did either of them bother straightening it before dozing off, or is it still tangled around Adam's wrists and between the sheets? And does it really matter?
He puts his iPod back on the bedside table, and then there's a closing door from downstairs and a creak-Adam's bed, an antique monstrosity he picked up because he liked the carved posts and didn't care about the loose joints he and Neil and Eber spent an entire afternoon fixing after Adam flopped on it and landed, mattress and all, on the floor-and then the small, catlike sound of someone being noisy about stretching.
"He's not so bad for a holy roller," Kris hears Angel comment, and a kind of noncommittal sound out of Adam. "I expected him to throw a fit when you asked me to stay."
"Why?"
"The obvious."
Somehow even when Adam is a floor away and Kris doesn't have his face for context Kris can tell Adam's silence is a bewildered one.
"Obvious?"
Angel's tone is so dry Kris feels like he could use it to sand furniture. "We sure didn't come back here to play cards."
"Kris isn't like that."
"Mm." There's a pause. "If you knew someone had done something incredibly wrong, and your only chance of setting it right meant staying somewhere you had one friend and no job and trying to do it could get you in a lot of trouble, would you done it?"
"I have," Adam answers. "More than once. Why?"
The next pause is so long Kris is starting to wonder if Angel is going to answer at all. Then, finally, he does.
"I have this feeling you'll be able to read all about it in the newspaper in a month or so."
-----------------
"And cut. Kris, can you come out here a minute?"
Kris takes off his giant headphones and joins Adam at the board. Adam cues up to the 37-second mark and plays back the freshly-laid vocals.
"Look, this is driving me fucking crazy. I know you don't speak Spanish, but if you're going to use it you have to pronounce it right."
"The Spanish was Katy's idea."
"Okay, but you still have to say it right, Kris." Kris gets the sense Adam's just about reached the end of whatever rope it is he's swinging on today. "Spanish is phonetic, this isn't hard. The As are all pronounced like in 'father'. Always. With maybe two exceptions I can think of."
"That's not what you said five minutes ago."
"Did you miss where I said there are a few uncommon exceptions?"
"About this same word?"
Adam starts yelling, and after listening to him for about thirty seconds Kris just turns around and walks out, thinking to himself that Adam and his perfectionist tendencies can just go spit. If he tries talking reasonably right now he's going to deck Adam, instead.
Kris finds himself outside the studio wishing he smoked just so he could have something to puff angrily on. Instead he slumps against the wall and bangs a fist backward against it, thinking to himself that he'd love to take that know-it-all pout off Adam's face and-
Kris blinks at himself. Maybe I should start sleeping with my headphones in when he's got company.
He's standing alone for maybe ten minutes before Adam appears. In his hand is a small twist of white paper, and after a second Kris realises what it is.
"Should you really have that at a studio?"
"I have a prescription."
"For pot." Kris decides not to word it like a question.
"Stress," Adam answers. "And sleeping problems during and just after tour. I fucking hate antidepressants and sleeping pills. They kill your liver and the only time I tried actual sleeping pills for about two weeks I ended up with these really vivid godawful nightmares I couldn't wake up from. Not stupid shit like getting onstage and realising I was naked, more like . . . chewing out Neil's throat and not being able to stop. A couple of times when I did finally wake up I found scratches and bite marks. I was doing it to myself in my sleep."
"Dear God, Adam!" Kris stares at him. Adam shrugs.
"Now you know why I got the pot scrip. Psych pills and I don't really get along."
He offers the joint, and because Kris is smart enough to know what it really means he takes a small hit for politeness' sake. Adam takes one more drag and stubs it out.
"Look," he says finally. "We've been here for like seven hours and we're both tired. You wanna just get some takeout and call it a night?"
"Yeah." Kris doesn't even have to think about that one. Adam nods toward the car, and as they walk toward it he spins his keys around one finger.
"You wanna drive? I know it's only three miles, but I had way more of that joint than you did."
Kris tries very hard to not visibly freeze. "Uh . . . . are you, you know, okay to drive?"
"Probably. If I was gonna nod out I'd be there already."
"How high of a percentage is 'probably'?"
Adam ponders. "Say around like ninety-five. If I start getting tired I can always pull into somebody's driveway. It's not like you just nod out with no warning on the medical stuff. If you don't mind adding a mile to the drive I can go through residential all the way home."
"You drive," Kris says. Then he tries to smile without it looking fake. "I'd probably get lost. Even the residential streets here are huge to me."
Adam shrugs and unlocks the car. Kris slides into the passenger seat and breathes a sigh of relief before tapping the button to turn on the radio. He's too worn out for conversation. Adam reaches up for something from the CD visor over Kris' seat.
"Here, I convinced Cassidy to burn this a couple of days ago," he grins, and slides the disc into the player before hitting the scramble button. Adam's car is for the moderately upwardly-mobile; Adam's car stereo system would probably make Lamborghini drivers jealous.
"I was in my early forties, with a lot of life before me . . . "
Kris dives for the eject button. His elbow catches the gearshift, and suddenly instead of moving forward they're going backward, straight into a six-lane intersection. Kris hears the blare of a horn that isn't Adam's as headlights fill the car and thinks oh sweet Jesus-
Adam slams on the brakes and throws an arm across Kris' chest to shove him back into his seat before changing gears so fast Kris can actually hear them grinding. Then they're back on the quiet little side-street and Adam's pulling over. Kris can already tell he's going to start yelling, but he doesn't have the energy to protest. And really, isn't it his fault? If he hadn't had that kind of knee-jerk reaction . . .
"That was the song playing when Katy died," he mumbles, somewhere between What the hell were you thinking? and what he's sure would have been some diatribe about LA traffic. It doesn't change anything and he knows it, but he feels Adam deserves an explanation, or at least part of one. Adam shuts up so fast Kris can almost hear the click of his jaw. Then he shuts off the ignition and reaches across the seat to open Kris' seatbelt and pull him into a hug.
Kris wants to protest, push Adam off, say he's fine, but then Adam's fingers thread into his hair and bring his head down to Adam's shoulder and Kris can't help himself; he melts into Adam's side, and they sit for nearly twenty minutes that way without saying a word.
----------------------
"-can't believe it's down to those two," Kris hears a high-pitched voice say from the living room, and he shucks his muddy shoes to go take a look, curious. "I mean, Ashley's pretty good, but Deirdre? I was sure it was going to be Ashley and Ryan after what happened in Top Five week."
Kris leans against the doorframe to address Brad on the couch; if he sits down with his jeans in their current condition he's pretty sure Adam will kill him. "I thought Deirdre was going to be gone that week."
"I thought she was going to be out after Top Eight," Brad says. "Calling that an 'Elvis cover' is an insult to Elvis and covers both."
"I wondered how she even got into the Top Thirteen," Adam cuts in. "I watched her audition and top 24 songs after she sang all of 'Drops of Jupiter' off-key, and I know it's kind of way open to interpretation what key any Alanis Morissette song is in, but there's free interpretation and then there's just . . . bad."
There's a man sitting next to Brad-brown hair liberally streaked with gray, small wire-rimmed glasses, very square hands-and when Brad looks at him expectantly he shrugs. "I couldn't carry a tune in a paper bag. I don't think I should judge."
Kris barely notices when Gaga answers. He's starting to get used to weird people and household names hanging out here every hour of the day and night. "Then I will. She doesn't take herself seriously enough. I don't watch regularly, but the week that one boy sang one of my songs-"
"Angel," Adam cuts in. "He's coming for dinner, if he ever gets here."
Gaga raises her eyebrows at him, but declines to comment. "So many people absolutely flooded my Twitter with links that I decided to watch the entire episode just to see what he was up against. I'm fairly certain she didn't actually rehearse except on mentor day. That's far from enough."
"I remember that," Brad's companion says. "I've seen enough kids get up for oral presentations they wrote the night before to know an I-don't-actually-know-this expression when I see one."
"Well, you know what 'finals' means, right?" Brad asks. "Fuck, I never actually learned shit."
Adam and Gaga snicker. The gray-haired man rolls his eyes. Kris can't help a small chuckle; for someone who used to date Adam, Brad's rarely that vulgar. Kris hears the front door open, and then a heavy clunking that can only be a pair of thigh-high black laceup steel-toed combat boots hitting the floor.
"Yo," Angel greets as he slouches into the living room, dangling a jacket from one hand. Then his eyes widen. Kris bites his tongue to fight the impish urge to introduce Gaga to Angel as casually as Adam once did to Kris. "Uh . . . hi."
"Well, if it isn't the devil himself, appearing as spoken of," Gaga greets him. Adam beams across the room. "Adam invited me so we could finish up just a couple of small details on a track we're writing. I hope you won't think I'm intruding."
Kris sees the sparkle in her eyes and knows full well Angel's getting baited, but he doesn't say a word-just waits to see what Angel will say. If Gaga's hoping for something dramatic, she's in for a disappointment: Angel just half-mumbles "it's his house" and slinks like a cat against Adam's side.
"Angel, Gaga and Brad," Adam fills in, like this is an introduction he makes every single day. "Gaga, you've met Brad-no?" he asks, as Gaga shakes her head. "Yeah, you have. He's the guy who visited me in the studio the last time we got together on a track. You've got to remember this. He brought us coffee from that little Spanish place."
Gaga stares at him blankly. Adam stares back. "Come on. You told him he might end up leaving naked if everything under his coat matched his top hat."
"Oh, that was you!" Gaga enthuses, and Kris coughs very hard. Adam continues like he didn't have to stop at all.
"Kris, Angel, Gaga-Jerry, Brad's partner. Jerry, this is everybody."
"Pleasure to meet you, everybody," Jerry answers in a pleasant tone just bordering on dry before reaching out to shake hands with the air. Brad stifles a chuckle with one hand. Kris grins.
"I hate to be the one raining on the parade-"
"Then don't," Gaga suggests. "Unless you're raining glitter."
"I really need to change out of these jeans. So I'll be back?"
"Yeah, try not to get peat moss on the couch, please," Adam chips in. "I just got the stains out from the last time I let Riff in here with grape juice."
"Just give up on furniture that's not black," Kris hears Angel suggest from Adam's shoulder as he heads off down the hall. "It looks better anyway."
Kris changes out of his work jeans and the T-shirt he borrowed from Adam's drawer and into something he hopes is appropriate for a dinner party Adam's holding. Finally he washes up and wanders back into Adam's living room, where Jerry is telling stories about horrible student papers and everyone else is sharing review horror stories.
"There was this one guy on my last album who was kind of a douche," Adam's saying, and then he gets cut off by Gaga.
"No, Kesha put this one very aptly. He wasn't 'kind of a douche,' he was a grade-A asshole with all his brains located directly south of his waist."
Adam waves a hand to acknowledge the contribution and keeps going. "He tore the third track to pieces talking about how he thought it was all-what'd he call it, 'saccharine and fake' for me to be singing to a girl, and you could tell he was basing the entire thing on the title. The single was released as 'The Most Beautiful Girl' for some reason, but the album edit is 'For Molly Jane.' If he'd even read the lyrics he would have known I wrote it for my goddaughter."
"Wow, way to fake like a bad porn actress," Brad says, and Kris snorts. Brad looks up at him and pats the sofa as he scoots over. Kris sits. "I think I remember that. Because he went on this big long diatribe about you dating a girl just to have somebody to go places with and how it was doomed to fail and trying to tie that to the album somehow, and apparently didn't stalk your personal life enough to know you'd just tweeted this big long spaz post about Godbaby Number Two showing up. Which, you know, you'd think would be kind of important."
"You'd think," Adam agrees. Angel makes a kind of weird sneezing noise.
"Only if you're straight. The rest of us are only interested in kinky sex with multiple partners, you know."
Brad rolls his eyes. "Oh, right. I forgot I was supposed to be cheating on my boyfriend this afternoon. Silly me, and I wasted all that time picking up milk instead of trying to indoctrinate small children, too."
"You were picking up the milk for the grandkids so they'd think gay people actually need food like normal people. It's indirect indoctrination," Adam offers. Brad giggles.
"Of course. I'm very sneaky that way." He stretches out and leans against Jerry. Kris watches Jerry fold an arm around him with something too lonely to be jealousy while Adam opens a conversation between Angel and Gaga.
And feels more alone than he has since one night in an upturned car.
-------------------
"They don't actually know yet," Jerry says, from his place tucked comfortably into the corner of Adam's couch with an arm around Brad's shoulders. Kris finally got over calling him "Dr. McAllister" about an hour ago. "I'm supposed to go in for my physical in two weeks. The ER doctor sent me home with a CPAP mask and told me to make sure I mention having had at least one episode of sleep apnea so they can check out my lungs."
Brad opens his eyes. "And you'd better keep the appointment this time. One more last-minute faculty meeting you just can't miss and I think I'm going to wring the dean's neck for him."
Jerry chuckles. Kris watches them, snuggled together like a single unit, and then glances across at Adam. No help there; Angel isn't draped over him the way Brad is draped over Jerry, but he has one hand tangled up with Adam's and the other on Adam's knee. Earbuds and the iPod are going to be the order of the night for Kris.
"Noted," Jerry tells him, and Brad closes his eyes again, happily oblivious to everything around him but the warm side he's pressed against. Kris looks over at Gaga, tapping a pen against a notebook, and wonders if she'd mind squeezing the book over a little so he could sit with her on the loveseat-anything to not be the only odd wheel in the room. He glances at Adam again, and this time their eyes meet. Adam pats the sofa cushion next to him.
"Get out of that chair and join the party," Adam says, and Kris takes the seat Adam offers. It earns him a death glare from Angel that he tries to ignore. Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm invading your makeout bubble. And probably the couch you have sex on when I'm not here and you don't make it all the way to his bedroom. Deal with it. Gaga suddenly throws her head back against the seat cushion.
"I want you to know this is absolutely maddening," she tells Adam. "The only rhyme I can think of is in Italian and it's at least two syllables too long."
"I want you to know I think you're absolutely inhuman," Brad cuts in. "You're actually one of those aliens who did probes in the 1960s and now you're masquerading as a pop star using everything you learned when you did them."
Gaga stares at him, her mouth open. Then she flips two pages in the notebook and starts scribbling madly, lower lip between her teeth and a look of intense concentration on her face. Adam watches her and chuckles.
"You better watch it, Brad, she'll write you into her next album."
Gaga slaps the pen down on the table and hands Adam the notebook. He looks at it, then blinks at it.
"Gaga, half of this is in-what language is this?"
"Quechua," she answers, in a tone that suggests everyone should know this. "I learned it on the tour bus last summer."
"Let me see it," Jerry says. "I taught a class last semester on the history of native tribes in Central America."
Adam hands him the notebook. Jerry reads over the page and raises his eyebrows. "Why can I never have students like this?"
"I told you she's an alien," Brad says. "Do you believe me now?"
Jerry reaches across the table to hand back her notebook. "Your grammar is excellent."
Gaga nods in a way that suggests he should have expected it to be nothing less. Jerry rubs absently at the shoulder Brad's been leaning on as he sits back. "Mm. I think I'll call it 'Apachekta'," Gaga muses, and then she smiles before making a face. "It's not what I wanted to finish . . . "
"Gaga, one of these days you're going to take up something simple, like training killer bees," Adam tells her, and takes the notebook again before flipping back to the first page. "And you know, if you change the terminating syllable in the line before this you can have it still make sense and have your pick of half a dozen adjectives for this."
"Not adjectives, nouns."
"Whatever." Adam scribbles out a word, fills in a line, stares at the book, scribbles some more, and hands it back. Jerry shifts on the couch.
"Bradley, you're going to have to get off my shoulder, my whole arm is going numb."
"Sorry," Brad answers, and swings his legs up onto the other sofa so he can put his head in Jerry's lap, instead. "What're you two so stuck on?"
Gaga hands him the notebook without comment. Brad frowns down at the page.
"Mm. Hey, pocket Idol, take a look and see what you think." Brad tosses Kris the notebook. Kris smiles. It's been years since anybody called him that, and the irony of being called 'pocket-sized' by someone an inch and a half shorter than him isn't lost on him in the slightest. Kris looks down at the lyrics, then up at the notations-written over the words in Adam's writing as a sequence of letters with beat notes, occasionally with a sharp or flat symbol, rather than on an actual staff-that suggest there's already a melody written. Kris stares at it, willing something to give itself up. Angel leans over Adam's lap to look with him.
"Okay, so maybe this is just me, but-" Angel points. "If you change the last quarter-note in this measure to a pair of eighths, make one a G-flat instead of a G, and then make the B a glory note, doesn't that give you the two extra syllables?"
"Wrong key, the G-flat would have to be an F-sharp," Kris answers absently. "And you'd have to do an eighth and two sixteenths, because the glory note isn't uncounted."
"Yeah, but it'd work."
"The liner notes for this track are going to be utterly ridiculous," Gaga says, and hands Kris the pen. "Fill it in and see how it sounds, would you, love?"
Kris doesn't comment on his new pet name; he just scratches out Adam's old notes and fills in new ones before looking thoughtfully at the keyboard in the corner that's actually Neil's. Piano he can do, but the keyboard has an assortment of synth keys and switches Kris might be able to navigate, if his life absolutely depended on it. Angel makes the sneezing sound again and takes the notebook out of Kris' hands so he can set it on the music stand before switching on the power.
He's halfway through the first bar when Kris hears Brad, his voice laced with concern: "Jerry?"
"This is just not going away," Jerry says, and Kris looks over at the other sofa, where Jerry is still rubbing his shoulder. "I think I might have pinched a nerve somehow."
Angel's playing suddenly tapers off as he looks over. "You don't look too hot, man."
"Baby?" Brad asks, and brushes a stray lock of hair off Jerry's face. Now everybody's looking. Jerry shifts and coughs.
"I'm sorry, I think I need to step outside for a minute," Jerry offers, and Kris thinks it's a lie of near-Presidential quality. Jerry doesn't look like he's stepping anywhere. Adam must agree, because he's already part of the way out of his seat.
"You want some water? You're really pale," Adam tells him, and then everything happens very fast.
Everything is supposed to slow down in an emergency, but all Kris can remember later is a series of sounds and one sensation. It's more than enough: Brad screaming, the dull clunk of the keyboard chair as Angel knocks it over, and then Gaga's voice, weirdly calm: "We need to call 911. No, shhhh, darling, let Adam help him."
Kris bangs his shin on the coffee table trying to get to the group by the sofa, and that's when he realises why Gaga hasn't made the call herself: her voice is calm, but her hands are shaking so badly she more drops than sets her phone in his palm as she pulls Brad away from the sofa to let Adam in. There's a lock on the phone, and underneath it is a little button that says "Emergency Call." Kris taps it and watches the phone self-dial 911.
Kris hears the dispatcher's voice, and then his own, like a badly-tuned radio, giving Adam's address and stating the nature of their emergency as requested.
"I think somebody here's had a heart attack."
-------------------
"Excuse me, Brad Bell?"
Kris watches as Brad looks up at the nurse in front of him. She's very young-Kris is more than willing to bet she hasn't been out of school two years at the most-but with the circles underneath his swollen eyes, Brad looks younger. Kris looks at the girls on either side of him (blonde and perfectly-coiffed lawyer on one side; blonde and ponytailed waitress on the other) and the little boy on his lap and hopes fervently for all their sakes that the news they're about to get isn't any worse than they've had already.
"Would you and your family please come with me?"
Kris feels his gut clench, and when he looks at Angel's face he sees pretty much the same feeling written there. But they get up-Brad, Mandy and Nicole, Kaylee and Cody, Adam and Kris and Angel bringing up the rear-and follow her down the hall and through a door into what looks like every breakroom Kris has ever been in.
"Dr. Hoffman thought you might feel more comfortable out of the public lobby," the nurse explains, and the grateful look Brad gives her would be pathetic if it wasn't very obviously coming from a place of complete emotional exhaustion. Kris and Angel worked out a rough unspoken schedule for keeping an eye on the door to protect Brad and the girls from curious eyes wondering what a television star was doing in the waiting room, but they haven't been able to shield the McAllister family circle completely, and at least one woman Kris is cheerfully ready to call a complete idiot actually approached Kris to ask if he thought Brad would give her an autograph.
"We still have someone coming," Brad tells her. "His son's not here yet."
"What does he look like?"
"Tall, brown hair, really skinny," Brad says. "He's seventeen. His mother's bringing him. She looks more like Mandy. Her name's Debra."
"I'll make sure they get back here," the nurse tells him. Brad thanks her pleasantly enough, but as soon as she's out the door he sits down and puts his face in his hands. Adam sits to rub his back and looks up at Kris and Angel.
"You guys don't have to stay," he says. Angel shifts, and Kris feels suddenly bad for him. "I don't know how long we're gonna be here."
"I'm staying," Kris answers, and reaches absently for the strap on the back of Cody's overalls as he runs past. "In case you guys need somebody to watch the kids."
The older blonde-Amanda, always Mandy to her family and never to her clients-smiles wearily up at him. "They're a handful."
"It's not a problem," Kris answers. Angel shifts again, and Kris glances over at him. On his face is an unmistakeable I-don't-do-kids look, and he's staring down at his combat boots like they're the most fascinating thing he's ever seen. Kris decides to take pity on him and offer him an easy out. "You wanna go back to the house and feed Jackson? He's probably hiding under the kitchen table wondering where all the people went."
Angel mumbles a vague affirmative and bends over to kiss Adam's cheek. Adam touches Angel's face with his free hand, but he has no time for Angel's discomfort; right now he has all he can handle in the form of Brad's grief, and so it's Kris who follows Angel into the hallway.
"Thanks," Angel mumbles, and then suddenly he blurts out "It's not like I don't care, I just can't-"
"It's okay," Kris assures him. "Really."
"Like I feel so fucking useless," Angel spits. "I mean, what the fuck are you supposed to do?"
"Whatever you can to make it easier for the people it affects," Kris answers. "And by taking care of things at the house you're letting Adam stay with Brad, and Brad needs him right now."
Angel scrubs a hand across his face. One of his bracelets gets caught on his right eyebrow ring, and Kris watches him free himself with an air of absence that suggests getting stuff caught on his facial piercings is just a way of life for Angel by now. "I guess. This is fucked up."
"Yeah, it is," Kris agrees. "Want me have Adam give you a call when we find out what's going on?"
"Yeah," Angel says. "I have shit to do at the hotel, too." The look he gives Kris isn't the same kind of exhaustion Brad is currently wearing, but it's from the same family. "You ever notice it can't just sprinkle a little bit when shit goes wrong? When it rains it really does fucking pour."
"Yeah," Kris agrees. "Get some sleep."
"Like hell," Angel mumbles, and heads for the elevator.
Kris heads back inside.
------------------
It's Conway all over again.
Adam is sitting on his own bed instead of a guest single and he doesn't have the same look of bone-deep exhaustion that he had in Kris' home, but his face is still despondent, and when Kris sits down with him he offers up that same hopeless look.
"Do you think leaving him with Debra was okay?" he asks, and after a moment's thought Kris nods.
"She'll take care of him just like the girls," Kris decides. "She's his ex because he's gay, not because she's a horrible person."
"And two years after he came out he started dating someone half her age," Adam adds. "I'm getting the feeling she's a way stronger person than I am."
"You're still friends with some of your exes."
"Not the two who left me for someone else."
Kris pulls Adam into a hug and strokes his hair, remembers the night they sat this way on the side of the road while Adam let Kris finally cry the tears he never gave himself before. Adam has none of Kris' hesitation about taking comfort, and he crumples into Kris' arms with his head resting on Kris' shoulder as he clings.
"I'm not sorry he met somebody he could fall in love with that way," Adam says. "But I really fucking wish it'd been somebody who wasn't twice his age."
"Thirty-year-olds can need bypass surgery too," Kris points out. Adam buries his face against Kris' shoulder.
"Not nearly as likely, though."
Kris is never entirely sure why what he does next seems like the most logical thing to do, although eventually he'll chalk it up to having lived with Adam's particular brand of crazy for over a month. All he knows in that moment with Adam's weight heavy on his arms and Adam's grief for his friend heavy on his heart is that once he saw someone comfort Adam from this kind of sadness in a particular way, and so it makes perfect sense to him to put a hand on the back of Adam's head and bring their lips together.
You know what they call this, don't you? Adultery.
But it's the kind of thing Adam does with many of his close friends both male and female, and Kris is assuming-in spite of the dangers that brings-that if Angel minded, he'd have split already. Wherever the line between friendly and adulterous might fall in Adam's mind, this is on the safe side of it.
Adam pulls back not even far enough to take them apart and then relaxes into Kris' arms, nipping at Kris' bottom lip as he does. Kris wonders if he's comfortable enough to let Adam kiss him that way, a way Kris' upbringing reserves for lovers and spouses, and then he runs his fingers through Adam's hair and opens his mouth as he pulls them both down onto the bed to lie. Adam pulls him into an embrace that's not quite a cuddle and kisses him with his whole mouth, nipping and licking and scratching his nails gently down Kris' back, relaxing into the bed so rapidly Kris swears he can almost see the melancholy draining right out of him as he accepts comfort.
Adam rolls them over, lying on his back with Kris on his chest, and Kris pulls back. There's unusual boundaries and there are places Kris simply isn't comfortable going, and this is one of the latter. Adam opens his eyes and looks up at him.
"Stay with me," he says, and then, "please?"
Kris nods, considers squirming himself free, and decides not to. Adam is hurting enough without Kris pulling away from him now. Adam closes his eyes.
"Don't let me sleep," he tells Kris. "Past eight, I mean. I need to call Brad."
"Okay."
Adam pulls him close again and kisses Kris' temple. Kris lets him, holds Adam as he slides gradually into sleep.
But Kris stays awake for nearly two hours, his mind too busy to sleep.