you can't handle the ficlets! [2/2]
( Part 1)
More TOMS donation drive ficlets: a pair of Kradam. (If you're linked to this post directly and want to see it with the cut tags intact, click here.)
Disclaimer: No disrespect intended to any of the persons depicted herein, who I hope are all living happy and fulfilled lives with their partner(s) of choice. This is purely fictional, and not in any way intended as an accurate representation of reality.
Adam/Kris. 1936 words. NC-17. For willow2355.
Avalanche
Prompt: Honeymoon
It wasn't supposed to go like this. Kris didn't have a firm idea in his head what it was going to be like, because once they realized they actually did have the same five straight days off they pretty much just bought a couple of tickets on the first flight heading anywhere but here, but Kris had been thinking 'vacation' and not 'torrential rain and lost luggage'.
Apparently he'd been thinking wrong.
"I got us a room," said Adam, hair flattened to his head in a shape Kris wasn't sure he'd ever seen before and rubbing his hands together to warm them. "It's not their best, but unless we want to try our luck somewhere else it's what they've got."
"It has a bed and a hot shower?" Adam nodded his head. "Then it'll do."
"The airline has my number, we can just hope for the best now."
Because in addition to the lost luggage and the downpour, Kris's phone was the casualty of an incident with a small child, a dog, and a concrete floor.
Kris nodded and slung his carry-on over his shoulder and followed Adam to the elevators. No one gave them a second glance, probably because everyone looked like a drowned rat right now and no one really cared about anything but getting home and getting dry.
Kris stole the shower first, mostly because Adam was on the phone with his manager, and had to wear a robe afterwards because he only had one change of clothes and he was saving those for tomorrow, on the off chance the storm let up and they actually managed to do anything. Not that the robe wasn't comfortable, but Adam was still on the phone and the window was rattling and the hotel room was as generic as dozens of other ones he'd been in.
By the time Adam got off the phone his hair was drying at odd angles-odd in a less than fashionable way-and his make-up was clearly smeared under his eyes.
"No more business for the next five days," he said. "I promise."
"Don't make promises you can't keep," said Kris, leaning back against the headboard and crossing his legs at the ankle. Both of them would probably be fielding at least a few calls, because days off were only days off because they didn't have to be anywhere, not because they didn't have to do anything. "And go shower. You're a mess."
"Flatterer," said Adam, crawling across the bed to give him a kiss then crawling off again before he completely messed up the covers. "You can borrow something of mine if you want."
"I'm fine," said Kris. "I'd kind of look ridiculous. No offense."
"You kind of would," agreed Adam, "and actually, the robe is a good look on you. Easy access."
"Go take a shower," said Kris, shooing him away. "Your hair looks like it's trying to achieve flight."
"How do you know it's not?" said Adam, and grinned at him before disappearing into the bathroom.
Kris sat there for a little while, then realized he was kind of sulking and got up and ordered them some room service. They certainly weren't going out anywhere, even if Kris hadn't been stuck in a robe, so they might as well enjoy a meal in. He had no doubt that room service was going to be pretty busy tonight.
It hadn't arrived when Adam came out of the shower anyway, scrubbed clean and no longer shivering, with just a towel wrapped around his waist.
"I figured there was no point putting anything on," he said, crawling right back up on the bed again. When Kris touched his shoulder his skin was still damp and warm. "We're just going to take it off again, right?"
"You're really in the mood, after all that?" said Kris, pushing a wet lock of hair up off Adam's forehead.
"You mean you're not?" said Adam. "This is our getaway. What do you want to do instead, watch television?"
Kris had to admit he had no interest in watching television, and Adam leaning over him like this, warm and soft, lips just slightly parted, always did get his body at least a little interested. Kris actually liked the way, from this close, he could see the roots of Adam's hair where he needed to touch up his dye job. He would never tell him that, of course, but he would insist that Adam not touch it till their vacation was over.
"Maybe I just need to get warmed up," he said, letting Adam pull the tie of his robe open. He definitely wasn't wearing anything underneath.
"Like I said," said Adam, kissing at Kris's throat. "Easy access. After everything we've gone through to be together, it's nice to have something nice and easy."
"I think you just called me easy," said Kris, "but I'm pretty sure I'm okay with it if you keep doing that."
"Not planning on stopping any time soon," said Adam, pushing the robe open and kissing further down Kris's body. His towel was still affixed to his hips, but one judicious tug and it was falling open too. "Especially with you getting with the program."
"I hate it when only one person's naked," said Kris, taking a moment to push himself up and shrug right out of the robe while he was still motivated to do anything other than let Adam take care of him. He yanked the towel off the bed too and dropped it on the carpet with the robe.
"I don't know," said Adam, "I think it can be hot sometimes. But not. Right. Now." And he punctuated each word with a kiss down the center of Kris's abdomen, right to his treasure trail.
"I really hope," said Kris, "that you're not stopping there."
"Do I ever?" said Adam, and moved even further to finally take Kris into his mouth, and even if Kris hadn't started out ready for this he was certainly more than ready now. He let out a soft sigh as Adam's mouth enveloped him, sinking back into the pillows and clutching at the bedspread to avoid tugging at Adam's wet hair, a terrible habit of his.
"You can...this would be enough," he murmured, and he wouldn't even have minded if this was all they did tonight, a couple of mutual blowjobs and then some well-earned sleep after the day they'd had. But Adam clearly had other ideas, and everything he needed to follow through on them.
"Don't think I didn't get things ready when you were showering," he said when he sat back again, one last lick up the length of Kris's cock. "I'm very good at multi-tasking."
"Boy, do I know it," said Kris, and barely kept from laughing at how fervently he said that. But, well, he would know, wouldn't he? "What kind of things?"
Adam didn't actually answer, just held up the bottle of lube between two fingers where Kris could see it. A moment later Kris closed his eyes again and let his head roll back and Adam actually used what he was promising to use. Or at least he started to.
"Wait, no," he said moments before Kris expected him to slide his fingers inside him, and Kris opened his eyes again and propped himself up on his elbows, looking for answers. Adam grinned at him. "We just showered. Why let that go to waste?"
And then his tongue was flicking against Kris's hole and Kris forgave him for just about everything ever. He even forgave him for things that weren't even his fault, just to have more things to forgive him for. He sort of wanted to reach down and tug his cock, but more than that he wanted this feeling to last forever and it definitely wasn't going to if he sped things up.
"How does everyone in the world not want to fuck you?" said Adam when he paused to take a breath, then his tongue was working against Kris's hole again and Kris didn't care if the entire rest of the world was indifferent to him as long as this one person wasn't.
Finally Adam slid a finger in alongside his tongue, then another, then Kris kind of lost track of what was going on because he just felt so good down there, and all over. But he knew it when Adam started pushing his cock inside, the shock of that first stretch that never really changed no matter how often they did it. Kris liked it that way, the way it always made his nerves spark in the same exciting way.
He tried to swing his legs up around Adam's body, but Adam grabbed hold of both of them and Kris liked it that way too, liked how Adam held him firmly and fucked him and let out these little soft noises that betrayed how tender he was feeling even as his body was thrusting hard. Sometimes Kris was loud during sex but tonight he was quiet, lost in himself and just breathing and letting the sensations well up in him.
"Adam, can you...?" he murmured finally, and didn't even have to finish before Adam was letting go of one of his hands and grabbing hold of his cock and Kris was coming all over him in a sudden and unstoppable surge.
"Fuck," murmured Adam, and laughed a little, and ran his thumb over the head of Kris's sensitive and slick cock as he kept thrusting inside him, pushing Kris's hips up, angling himself differently and getting more and more short of breath until finally he gasped and his breath caught and Kris could feel the pulse of his orgasm.
He was overwhelmed for a few moments, orgasm and exhaustion and just a sudden flood of affection, then he felt like he came back to himself enough for them to at least find a more comfortable position. Adam slipped the condom off with the ease of long practice and wrapping himself around Kris again a moment later. His skin was damp with sweat now instead of moisture from the shower, but he still smelled sweet and clean.
Neither one of them had anything on yet when there was a knock at the door, and neither one of them was particularly keen to move.
"If we ignore it," said Adam, "will it go away."
"Oh crap," said Kris. "I ordered food. I forgot."
At the mere mention of the word food his stomach rumbled, and Adam was still laughing at him when he slipped back into the robe and got up to answer the door before the food went away. He tipped well, and they ate on the other bed, the one that wasn't a complete wreck.
"This is all a little bit like a honeymoon," said Adam, lacing his fingers with Kris's while he picked at the remains of the salad. "You know, going away somewhere nice and then staying in your hotel room the whole time instead of sightseeing."
"I can tell you from experience," said Kris, "that you actually do a lot more vacation-type stuff than you'd think. Real honeymoons are different from television honeymoons."
"Don't spoil the illusion," said Adam. "Just go with it. For a little while, we can just pretend. I can even order some champagne later."
"Sure, I'm game," said Kris, and he was definitely in a better mood now than he had been earlier. Okay, so this vacation wasn't what he expected it to be right from the start. Maybe it was going to be even better.
Kris/Adam. 1329 words. PG-13. For gypsycaravan.
In A Bottle
Prompt: Jealous Adam
Adam knew that when the Idol tour ended, he was going to be seeing a lot less of Kris. He was going to be seeing a lot less of everyone. At the time he hadn't thought much about what that meant because he had so much to look forward to, so much to do. He had a whole life to get on with. But within a couple of weeks it really sank in that everything was different now. He didn't have the life back that he had before Idol, and he didn't have his Idol life either. He had something completely new, and it was all him.
But Kris would still be there. Kris was doing his own thing now, both completely different from what Adam was doing and almost exactly the same, in some weird way, but he was still there. He was on the other side of regular text messages, his songs were on Adam's iPod, and occasionally he was even there in person on those rare occasions when their schedules matched up.
So Adam didn't worry about it too much. He had this career to pursue right now, but Kris would always be there.
He passed a lot of months that way. They both did, really, and you wouldn't think staying in contact with friends would be a challenge but Adam had a lot of friends and he was a busy guy and sometimes things fell through the cracks even when he didn't mean for them to. Time passed a lot more quickly than he imagined it could.
Until one day, in a hotel room long after midnight, unable to sleep but too tired to get up and do anything, Adam looked up some clips of Kris's shows on youtube and saw Kris with his band. Saw the way Kris was with his band. And he realized that time hadn't stood still for him, that things outside of his bubble weren't the same as they had been when he and Kris had said goodbye after the Idol tour, moving on into their bright and shiny futures.
And even if he wanted to do something about that, maybe it was already too late.
Maybe.
Right now Kris was playing a show in New York, and somehow it just figured it would be New York. All this time and it always came back, not to Los Angeles, but to New York. Maybe it always would.
Adam texted Kris from the airport, and maybe he should have called but he didn't, that would almost have been strange for them. It was always texts. Ships passing in the night. He didn't wait for an answer before hailing a cab and heading for the venue before he could stop himself, before he could come to the very reasonable conclusion that this was a crazy trip. He was being a crazy person.
He was being worse than those people he called crazy in the privacy of his entire entourage. He was being more delusional. He didn't care.
The return text came right before he arrived, a friendly "hey how are you what are you doing in town?" that Adam didn't answer. Because in some strange way, answering it in person would be less weird than calling.
Getting backstage was as easy as breathing, and Kris Allen was lucky that Adam wasn't an axe murderer or something. He could have been. They didn't know. Kris was being completely reckless if he wasn't vetting everyone who came through those doors, whether someone recognized them as Adam Lambert or not. Or maybe Adam was overreacting just a little bit, because Kris had changed since Adam had last seen him, and maybe their moment wasn't on hold. Maybe their moment had passed when he wasn't even looking.
"Adam!" said Kris, squished up side by side with that friend of his. Of course he was.
Adam nodded at him and Kris suddenly looked very wary, and at least he hadn't forgotten that. At least he hadn't forgotten everything they'd learned about one another all those weeks sharing a room, hadn't forgotten how to read Adam's moods. There was still something there.
"Hey," said his buddy. Cale. It wasn't like Adam didn't know his name. It wasn't as though Adam hadn't met him a few times, dating right back to the competition. "Good to see you again!"
Adam just nodded again and had to watch as Kris curled his fingers around Cale's arm, leaned up and whispered something in his ear that Adam couldn't hear. Cale nodded and leaned in close to whisper something back, then Kris was laughing and resting his hand at the small of Cale's back and it seemed like an impossibly long time before Cale was gone.
"What's wrong?" Kris asked as soon as they were alone.
Adam shook his head and felt like there were no words for it because he didn't know what was wrong, he didn't know why it felt wrong. He had his career and Kris had his but that was supposed to be him whispering things in Kris's ear and making him laugh, and if Adam had almost forgotten that, maybe Kris had forgotten it entirely.
"I miss you," he said finally.
"You didn't fly to New York to tell me you missed me," said Kris.
"I think maybe I did," said Adam. "Actually, I think that might've been exactly what I did."
"Well, I miss you too," said Kris, and though he seemed completely sincere he was also frowning in confusion. Adam couldn't even blame him. "You're staying for the show, right?"
"I...can't," said Adam.
"You need to be somewhere else?"
"I just can't," said Adam. "I just can't watch...I waited too long."
"Have you been drinking?" said Kris. Not exactly the reaction Adam was going for. "I think Lizzie's busy but I can get Cale to get you-"
"Oh, I'm sure you can," snapped Adam. "I don't need anything from Cale."
"Okay seriously, this isn't cool," said Kris. "Stop playing games. You know I don't know what's going on and I don't have time for this. What are you doing here?"
"I thought we had time," said Adam. "I thought I would go on my tour and you would go on yours and afterwards there would be time."
"There will be," said Kris. "You're not dying are you?" Then his eyes widened and Adam didn't want him going down that road either.
"No," said Adam. "And as far as I know, neither are you. But time passed and I wasn't even paying attention. I know you and Katy are-"
"We can talk about that later," Kris interrupted him. "Things are complicated."
"It was always me. In the middle of the night and before you went on stage and in your ear when you needed a laugh. It was always me."
He still wasn't making sense but he couldn't say it, he couldn't say the things he needed to say because he hadn't thought them through before getting here. He hadn't stopped and worked it all out and come to Kris with all the composure he usually had, even when talking about uncomfortable things.
But Kris was getting it now, Adam could see it on his face. Kris could read his moods and he could read Kris's too, and not everything was forgotten.
"I'm not with Cale," he said, "and you're not too late."
And that was what Adam had flown across the country to hear. That was what he'd sacrificed sleep and rehearsal and interview time to know. It wasn't too late.
"You'll go on your tour," said Kris, "and I'll go on mine, and afterwards, there'll be time."
Kris had a new life now, and things were different, but they always would be. That was how life worked. What mattered was that Adam was not forgotten. There was still a time for them in a place for them in this shiny, scary new world.
More TOMS donation drive ficlets: a pair of Kradam. (If you're linked to this post directly and want to see it with the cut tags intact, click here.)
Disclaimer: No disrespect intended to any of the persons depicted herein, who I hope are all living happy and fulfilled lives with their partner(s) of choice. This is purely fictional, and not in any way intended as an accurate representation of reality.
Adam/Kris. 1936 words. NC-17. For willow2355.
Avalanche
Prompt: Honeymoon
It wasn't supposed to go like this. Kris didn't have a firm idea in his head what it was going to be like, because once they realized they actually did have the same five straight days off they pretty much just bought a couple of tickets on the first flight heading anywhere but here, but Kris had been thinking 'vacation' and not 'torrential rain and lost luggage'.
Apparently he'd been thinking wrong.
"I got us a room," said Adam, hair flattened to his head in a shape Kris wasn't sure he'd ever seen before and rubbing his hands together to warm them. "It's not their best, but unless we want to try our luck somewhere else it's what they've got."
"It has a bed and a hot shower?" Adam nodded his head. "Then it'll do."
"The airline has my number, we can just hope for the best now."
Because in addition to the lost luggage and the downpour, Kris's phone was the casualty of an incident with a small child, a dog, and a concrete floor.
Kris nodded and slung his carry-on over his shoulder and followed Adam to the elevators. No one gave them a second glance, probably because everyone looked like a drowned rat right now and no one really cared about anything but getting home and getting dry.
Kris stole the shower first, mostly because Adam was on the phone with his manager, and had to wear a robe afterwards because he only had one change of clothes and he was saving those for tomorrow, on the off chance the storm let up and they actually managed to do anything. Not that the robe wasn't comfortable, but Adam was still on the phone and the window was rattling and the hotel room was as generic as dozens of other ones he'd been in.
By the time Adam got off the phone his hair was drying at odd angles-odd in a less than fashionable way-and his make-up was clearly smeared under his eyes.
"No more business for the next five days," he said. "I promise."
"Don't make promises you can't keep," said Kris, leaning back against the headboard and crossing his legs at the ankle. Both of them would probably be fielding at least a few calls, because days off were only days off because they didn't have to be anywhere, not because they didn't have to do anything. "And go shower. You're a mess."
"Flatterer," said Adam, crawling across the bed to give him a kiss then crawling off again before he completely messed up the covers. "You can borrow something of mine if you want."
"I'm fine," said Kris. "I'd kind of look ridiculous. No offense."
"You kind of would," agreed Adam, "and actually, the robe is a good look on you. Easy access."
"Go take a shower," said Kris, shooing him away. "Your hair looks like it's trying to achieve flight."
"How do you know it's not?" said Adam, and grinned at him before disappearing into the bathroom.
Kris sat there for a little while, then realized he was kind of sulking and got up and ordered them some room service. They certainly weren't going out anywhere, even if Kris hadn't been stuck in a robe, so they might as well enjoy a meal in. He had no doubt that room service was going to be pretty busy tonight.
It hadn't arrived when Adam came out of the shower anyway, scrubbed clean and no longer shivering, with just a towel wrapped around his waist.
"I figured there was no point putting anything on," he said, crawling right back up on the bed again. When Kris touched his shoulder his skin was still damp and warm. "We're just going to take it off again, right?"
"You're really in the mood, after all that?" said Kris, pushing a wet lock of hair up off Adam's forehead.
"You mean you're not?" said Adam. "This is our getaway. What do you want to do instead, watch television?"
Kris had to admit he had no interest in watching television, and Adam leaning over him like this, warm and soft, lips just slightly parted, always did get his body at least a little interested. Kris actually liked the way, from this close, he could see the roots of Adam's hair where he needed to touch up his dye job. He would never tell him that, of course, but he would insist that Adam not touch it till their vacation was over.
"Maybe I just need to get warmed up," he said, letting Adam pull the tie of his robe open. He definitely wasn't wearing anything underneath.
"Like I said," said Adam, kissing at Kris's throat. "Easy access. After everything we've gone through to be together, it's nice to have something nice and easy."
"I think you just called me easy," said Kris, "but I'm pretty sure I'm okay with it if you keep doing that."
"Not planning on stopping any time soon," said Adam, pushing the robe open and kissing further down Kris's body. His towel was still affixed to his hips, but one judicious tug and it was falling open too. "Especially with you getting with the program."
"I hate it when only one person's naked," said Kris, taking a moment to push himself up and shrug right out of the robe while he was still motivated to do anything other than let Adam take care of him. He yanked the towel off the bed too and dropped it on the carpet with the robe.
"I don't know," said Adam, "I think it can be hot sometimes. But not. Right. Now." And he punctuated each word with a kiss down the center of Kris's abdomen, right to his treasure trail.
"I really hope," said Kris, "that you're not stopping there."
"Do I ever?" said Adam, and moved even further to finally take Kris into his mouth, and even if Kris hadn't started out ready for this he was certainly more than ready now. He let out a soft sigh as Adam's mouth enveloped him, sinking back into the pillows and clutching at the bedspread to avoid tugging at Adam's wet hair, a terrible habit of his.
"You can...this would be enough," he murmured, and he wouldn't even have minded if this was all they did tonight, a couple of mutual blowjobs and then some well-earned sleep after the day they'd had. But Adam clearly had other ideas, and everything he needed to follow through on them.
"Don't think I didn't get things ready when you were showering," he said when he sat back again, one last lick up the length of Kris's cock. "I'm very good at multi-tasking."
"Boy, do I know it," said Kris, and barely kept from laughing at how fervently he said that. But, well, he would know, wouldn't he? "What kind of things?"
Adam didn't actually answer, just held up the bottle of lube between two fingers where Kris could see it. A moment later Kris closed his eyes again and let his head roll back and Adam actually used what he was promising to use. Or at least he started to.
"Wait, no," he said moments before Kris expected him to slide his fingers inside him, and Kris opened his eyes again and propped himself up on his elbows, looking for answers. Adam grinned at him. "We just showered. Why let that go to waste?"
And then his tongue was flicking against Kris's hole and Kris forgave him for just about everything ever. He even forgave him for things that weren't even his fault, just to have more things to forgive him for. He sort of wanted to reach down and tug his cock, but more than that he wanted this feeling to last forever and it definitely wasn't going to if he sped things up.
"How does everyone in the world not want to fuck you?" said Adam when he paused to take a breath, then his tongue was working against Kris's hole again and Kris didn't care if the entire rest of the world was indifferent to him as long as this one person wasn't.
Finally Adam slid a finger in alongside his tongue, then another, then Kris kind of lost track of what was going on because he just felt so good down there, and all over. But he knew it when Adam started pushing his cock inside, the shock of that first stretch that never really changed no matter how often they did it. Kris liked it that way, the way it always made his nerves spark in the same exciting way.
He tried to swing his legs up around Adam's body, but Adam grabbed hold of both of them and Kris liked it that way too, liked how Adam held him firmly and fucked him and let out these little soft noises that betrayed how tender he was feeling even as his body was thrusting hard. Sometimes Kris was loud during sex but tonight he was quiet, lost in himself and just breathing and letting the sensations well up in him.
"Adam, can you...?" he murmured finally, and didn't even have to finish before Adam was letting go of one of his hands and grabbing hold of his cock and Kris was coming all over him in a sudden and unstoppable surge.
"Fuck," murmured Adam, and laughed a little, and ran his thumb over the head of Kris's sensitive and slick cock as he kept thrusting inside him, pushing Kris's hips up, angling himself differently and getting more and more short of breath until finally he gasped and his breath caught and Kris could feel the pulse of his orgasm.
He was overwhelmed for a few moments, orgasm and exhaustion and just a sudden flood of affection, then he felt like he came back to himself enough for them to at least find a more comfortable position. Adam slipped the condom off with the ease of long practice and wrapping himself around Kris again a moment later. His skin was damp with sweat now instead of moisture from the shower, but he still smelled sweet and clean.
Neither one of them had anything on yet when there was a knock at the door, and neither one of them was particularly keen to move.
"If we ignore it," said Adam, "will it go away."
"Oh crap," said Kris. "I ordered food. I forgot."
At the mere mention of the word food his stomach rumbled, and Adam was still laughing at him when he slipped back into the robe and got up to answer the door before the food went away. He tipped well, and they ate on the other bed, the one that wasn't a complete wreck.
"This is all a little bit like a honeymoon," said Adam, lacing his fingers with Kris's while he picked at the remains of the salad. "You know, going away somewhere nice and then staying in your hotel room the whole time instead of sightseeing."
"I can tell you from experience," said Kris, "that you actually do a lot more vacation-type stuff than you'd think. Real honeymoons are different from television honeymoons."
"Don't spoil the illusion," said Adam. "Just go with it. For a little while, we can just pretend. I can even order some champagne later."
"Sure, I'm game," said Kris, and he was definitely in a better mood now than he had been earlier. Okay, so this vacation wasn't what he expected it to be right from the start. Maybe it was going to be even better.
Kris/Adam. 1329 words. PG-13. For gypsycaravan.
In A Bottle
Prompt: Jealous Adam
Adam knew that when the Idol tour ended, he was going to be seeing a lot less of Kris. He was going to be seeing a lot less of everyone. At the time he hadn't thought much about what that meant because he had so much to look forward to, so much to do. He had a whole life to get on with. But within a couple of weeks it really sank in that everything was different now. He didn't have the life back that he had before Idol, and he didn't have his Idol life either. He had something completely new, and it was all him.
But Kris would still be there. Kris was doing his own thing now, both completely different from what Adam was doing and almost exactly the same, in some weird way, but he was still there. He was on the other side of regular text messages, his songs were on Adam's iPod, and occasionally he was even there in person on those rare occasions when their schedules matched up.
So Adam didn't worry about it too much. He had this career to pursue right now, but Kris would always be there.
He passed a lot of months that way. They both did, really, and you wouldn't think staying in contact with friends would be a challenge but Adam had a lot of friends and he was a busy guy and sometimes things fell through the cracks even when he didn't mean for them to. Time passed a lot more quickly than he imagined it could.
Until one day, in a hotel room long after midnight, unable to sleep but too tired to get up and do anything, Adam looked up some clips of Kris's shows on youtube and saw Kris with his band. Saw the way Kris was with his band. And he realized that time hadn't stood still for him, that things outside of his bubble weren't the same as they had been when he and Kris had said goodbye after the Idol tour, moving on into their bright and shiny futures.
And even if he wanted to do something about that, maybe it was already too late.
Maybe.
Right now Kris was playing a show in New York, and somehow it just figured it would be New York. All this time and it always came back, not to Los Angeles, but to New York. Maybe it always would.
Adam texted Kris from the airport, and maybe he should have called but he didn't, that would almost have been strange for them. It was always texts. Ships passing in the night. He didn't wait for an answer before hailing a cab and heading for the venue before he could stop himself, before he could come to the very reasonable conclusion that this was a crazy trip. He was being a crazy person.
He was being worse than those people he called crazy in the privacy of his entire entourage. He was being more delusional. He didn't care.
The return text came right before he arrived, a friendly "hey how are you what are you doing in town?" that Adam didn't answer. Because in some strange way, answering it in person would be less weird than calling.
Getting backstage was as easy as breathing, and Kris Allen was lucky that Adam wasn't an axe murderer or something. He could have been. They didn't know. Kris was being completely reckless if he wasn't vetting everyone who came through those doors, whether someone recognized them as Adam Lambert or not. Or maybe Adam was overreacting just a little bit, because Kris had changed since Adam had last seen him, and maybe their moment wasn't on hold. Maybe their moment had passed when he wasn't even looking.
"Adam!" said Kris, squished up side by side with that friend of his. Of course he was.
Adam nodded at him and Kris suddenly looked very wary, and at least he hadn't forgotten that. At least he hadn't forgotten everything they'd learned about one another all those weeks sharing a room, hadn't forgotten how to read Adam's moods. There was still something there.
"Hey," said his buddy. Cale. It wasn't like Adam didn't know his name. It wasn't as though Adam hadn't met him a few times, dating right back to the competition. "Good to see you again!"
Adam just nodded again and had to watch as Kris curled his fingers around Cale's arm, leaned up and whispered something in his ear that Adam couldn't hear. Cale nodded and leaned in close to whisper something back, then Kris was laughing and resting his hand at the small of Cale's back and it seemed like an impossibly long time before Cale was gone.
"What's wrong?" Kris asked as soon as they were alone.
Adam shook his head and felt like there were no words for it because he didn't know what was wrong, he didn't know why it felt wrong. He had his career and Kris had his but that was supposed to be him whispering things in Kris's ear and making him laugh, and if Adam had almost forgotten that, maybe Kris had forgotten it entirely.
"I miss you," he said finally.
"You didn't fly to New York to tell me you missed me," said Kris.
"I think maybe I did," said Adam. "Actually, I think that might've been exactly what I did."
"Well, I miss you too," said Kris, and though he seemed completely sincere he was also frowning in confusion. Adam couldn't even blame him. "You're staying for the show, right?"
"I...can't," said Adam.
"You need to be somewhere else?"
"I just can't," said Adam. "I just can't watch...I waited too long."
"Have you been drinking?" said Kris. Not exactly the reaction Adam was going for. "I think Lizzie's busy but I can get Cale to get you-"
"Oh, I'm sure you can," snapped Adam. "I don't need anything from Cale."
"Okay seriously, this isn't cool," said Kris. "Stop playing games. You know I don't know what's going on and I don't have time for this. What are you doing here?"
"I thought we had time," said Adam. "I thought I would go on my tour and you would go on yours and afterwards there would be time."
"There will be," said Kris. "You're not dying are you?" Then his eyes widened and Adam didn't want him going down that road either.
"No," said Adam. "And as far as I know, neither are you. But time passed and I wasn't even paying attention. I know you and Katy are-"
"We can talk about that later," Kris interrupted him. "Things are complicated."
"It was always me. In the middle of the night and before you went on stage and in your ear when you needed a laugh. It was always me."
He still wasn't making sense but he couldn't say it, he couldn't say the things he needed to say because he hadn't thought them through before getting here. He hadn't stopped and worked it all out and come to Kris with all the composure he usually had, even when talking about uncomfortable things.
But Kris was getting it now, Adam could see it on his face. Kris could read his moods and he could read Kris's too, and not everything was forgotten.
"I'm not with Cale," he said, "and you're not too late."
And that was what Adam had flown across the country to hear. That was what he'd sacrificed sleep and rehearsal and interview time to know. It wasn't too late.
"You'll go on your tour," said Kris, "and I'll go on mine, and afterwards, there'll be time."
Kris had a new life now, and things were different, but they always would be. That was how life worked. What mattered was that Adam was not forgotten. There was still a time for them in a place for them in this shiny, scary new world.