stammering elocution (soundtrack: amsterdam).
title: stammering elocution.
author: conditionelle
pairing: Kris/Adam (more implied this time than otherwise).
rating: G, more or less.
summary: His nerves are a coiled spring a mile long, hair turned to flames around the edges as Allison's curls spill onto his shoulders on the way back to the mansion, all the manic performance high gone and now just tired children coming home with head held high, resolutely squared shoulders and lockdown eyes.
notes: So Tuesday and Wednesday collectively kind of made me a mess; yeah, I have no other excuses for this piece of work.
His nerves are a coiled spring a mile long, hair turned to flames around the edges as Allison's curls spill onto his shoulders on the way back to the mansion, all the manic performance high gone and now just tired children coming home with head held high, resolutely squared shoulders and lockdown eyes. From the back row Adam stares, out the window ostensibly, but the edge of his peripheral vision lingers along contours and the thin line between city-lights and the encroaching darkness: the angular curve of Kris' jaw, the arrhythmic beat of his fingers against the van door. Watching Kris from this angle, his chest swells with something like adrenaline draining out of his pores, an all-too-frozen smile that once was genuine but now sits upon his features because it has nowhere else to go.
Danny, in the adjacent seat, mirrors his posture imperfectly. (Adam sees, knows; no eyes on the back of his head, it simply is obvious by now.) The divide is a mile wide, began with Allison's studied silence and ended with Adam's pointed-away knees - but no. Really, it ends with an absence, the fact that Kris is somewhere deep inside himself and no longer here; evident in the hug, the infinitesimal holding-back that never was before; evident in the tight corners of his mouth trying its best to remain in neutral, the upwards flare too much to ask for.
There's no explaining what happened. They're running out of time.
Adam reaches out and lays a dry palm on Kris' shoulder - he's not sure why, maybe for reassurance, checking to see if he's still here - and flinches when there is no response whatsoever.
Somewhere in the house a clock chimes the half-hour, and the house is as-if empty already, abandoned to the ghosts. With only four of them left, without the whisper of piano-key lullabies in the night air, the atmosphere shifts for the first but not final time toward a chill uncommon in Los Angeles in May. (Confessionals under cover of movie nights are a thing of the past.) Kris disappears before anyone realizes it; Danny calls it a night as well when the silence begins to get a little bit awkward; and Allison, valiantly trying not to show that she's nodding off, grudgingly goes to bed. Downstairs, then, into the sanctuary of their basement, and Adam has a thousand jokes on the tip of his tongue to make the situation better (somehow).
Adam, though imperiously unimpressed in the face of the scavenging media, finds himself in the rare situation of being speechless as the light from the corridor hits Kris' profile, turns him into the lines of a Kandinsky self-portrait, pieces falling into focus and the truth an inch away from the surface. He says, Kris - who doesn't start, doesn't turn, doesn't move, doesn't do anything but pause almost imperceptibly and continue on.
So his name hangs in silence, like an elephant in the room, and Adam (strangely unsure of what to do with himself now) sits on the counter of the washroom that they share and watches.
(It's the clockwork-steady motion that jabs at Adam like a knife between the ribs, the matter-of-fact gesture that hints at a gradual but painful transition from surrealist dreams back down to sobering reality. The preternatural restraint and affectless automation turn Kris into almost a stranger. He didn't bring much, travelled light, is truly that simple a guy. He could leave Adam here as easily and quietly as they found each other.)
Adam thinks, as he catalogues the contents of Kris' open and steadily filling suitcase, that he knows what the problem is. It's guilt.
(The guilt of wishing that he had fought harder for the duet partner he wanted; the guilt of daring to think about not doing the right thing. Simon's words fester beneath his skin, making inroads on the price exacted by his humility and decency. Adam could scream.)
Three long strides and he bridges the distance between them, insistently pulls the pair of jeans out of Kris' hands and holds on to those hands, presses a teasing kiss to the fingernail with the polish (their little joke gone too far in the tense days leading up to now). He wishes he had ten more hands to be everywhere at once - to make things okay, to blot out the entire evening leading up to now, to shake some Machiavellian sense into this too-good-for-his-own-good boy who is as good as saying his goodbyes. Instead, Adam settles for a sequential disarmament, methodical in his own right so that in no time at all he's pressing his forehead against Kris' and they have eye contact for the first time since the show ended, and he's saying that it's okay - it's okay to wish that tonight had turned out otherwise.
Kris just laughs - a bitter brittle burst of air, a sigh turned explosive from being held in for too long - and laughs and laughs and cries, dry racking sobs that stop as abruptly as they begin, his cheeks dry and the coiled spring unwound, but here, here again, for the first time in hours. Leaning against the bed together, shoulder to shoulder, his lips a hair's breadth away from the shell of Adam's ear, he confesses in a whisper so quiet that Adam feels it more than he hears it, he says: I wish it had been us, isn't that awful? Then: no, that's a lie, I don't wish that - things are as they should have been.
Adam doesn't know what to say in return, so they sit together in the silence that no longer feels stifling. They wake up in the morning with perfectly mirrored cramped necks and the beginnings of a smile.
He still doesn't know what to say when it's results night and Kris is all of a sudden buried in his shoulder and clinging on for dear life, and the words that slip out ironically are I told you so. Kris laughs shakily before he lets go, and just like that the laugh grounds Adam as well, in a way that even the previous week had not, the world becomes real again and the super-amplified foregone conclusion they were building up to in this last hour finally explodes in his ears. It's the worst night of the competition yet and it's not fair and Adam, with his mind half-dissociated as the camera pans away (as they can all let the tears finally flow freely), thinks - this isn't how it was supposed to go, not her and not him, how could they have run out of time just like that, it's not fair.
Allison says as they hug, a tangle of tears and eyeliner and mascara, non, je ne regrette rien. And Adam feels, for the first time, echoes of the survivor's guilt Kris has been emanating all this time.
And they're so, so rapidly running out of time.
author: conditionelle
pairing: Kris/Adam (more implied this time than otherwise).
rating: G, more or less.
summary: His nerves are a coiled spring a mile long, hair turned to flames around the edges as Allison's curls spill onto his shoulders on the way back to the mansion, all the manic performance high gone and now just tired children coming home with head held high, resolutely squared shoulders and lockdown eyes.
notes: So Tuesday and Wednesday collectively kind of made me a mess; yeah, I have no other excuses for this piece of work.
His nerves are a coiled spring a mile long, hair turned to flames around the edges as Allison's curls spill onto his shoulders on the way back to the mansion, all the manic performance high gone and now just tired children coming home with head held high, resolutely squared shoulders and lockdown eyes. From the back row Adam stares, out the window ostensibly, but the edge of his peripheral vision lingers along contours and the thin line between city-lights and the encroaching darkness: the angular curve of Kris' jaw, the arrhythmic beat of his fingers against the van door. Watching Kris from this angle, his chest swells with something like adrenaline draining out of his pores, an all-too-frozen smile that once was genuine but now sits upon his features because it has nowhere else to go.
Danny, in the adjacent seat, mirrors his posture imperfectly. (Adam sees, knows; no eyes on the back of his head, it simply is obvious by now.) The divide is a mile wide, began with Allison's studied silence and ended with Adam's pointed-away knees - but no. Really, it ends with an absence, the fact that Kris is somewhere deep inside himself and no longer here; evident in the hug, the infinitesimal holding-back that never was before; evident in the tight corners of his mouth trying its best to remain in neutral, the upwards flare too much to ask for.
There's no explaining what happened. They're running out of time.
Adam reaches out and lays a dry palm on Kris' shoulder - he's not sure why, maybe for reassurance, checking to see if he's still here - and flinches when there is no response whatsoever.
Somewhere in the house a clock chimes the half-hour, and the house is as-if empty already, abandoned to the ghosts. With only four of them left, without the whisper of piano-key lullabies in the night air, the atmosphere shifts for the first but not final time toward a chill uncommon in Los Angeles in May. (Confessionals under cover of movie nights are a thing of the past.) Kris disappears before anyone realizes it; Danny calls it a night as well when the silence begins to get a little bit awkward; and Allison, valiantly trying not to show that she's nodding off, grudgingly goes to bed. Downstairs, then, into the sanctuary of their basement, and Adam has a thousand jokes on the tip of his tongue to make the situation better (somehow).
Adam, though imperiously unimpressed in the face of the scavenging media, finds himself in the rare situation of being speechless as the light from the corridor hits Kris' profile, turns him into the lines of a Kandinsky self-portrait, pieces falling into focus and the truth an inch away from the surface. He says, Kris - who doesn't start, doesn't turn, doesn't move, doesn't do anything but pause almost imperceptibly and continue on.
So his name hangs in silence, like an elephant in the room, and Adam (strangely unsure of what to do with himself now) sits on the counter of the washroom that they share and watches.
(It's the clockwork-steady motion that jabs at Adam like a knife between the ribs, the matter-of-fact gesture that hints at a gradual but painful transition from surrealist dreams back down to sobering reality. The preternatural restraint and affectless automation turn Kris into almost a stranger. He didn't bring much, travelled light, is truly that simple a guy. He could leave Adam here as easily and quietly as they found each other.)
Adam thinks, as he catalogues the contents of Kris' open and steadily filling suitcase, that he knows what the problem is. It's guilt.
(The guilt of wishing that he had fought harder for the duet partner he wanted; the guilt of daring to think about not doing the right thing. Simon's words fester beneath his skin, making inroads on the price exacted by his humility and decency. Adam could scream.)
Three long strides and he bridges the distance between them, insistently pulls the pair of jeans out of Kris' hands and holds on to those hands, presses a teasing kiss to the fingernail with the polish (their little joke gone too far in the tense days leading up to now). He wishes he had ten more hands to be everywhere at once - to make things okay, to blot out the entire evening leading up to now, to shake some Machiavellian sense into this too-good-for-his-own-good boy who is as good as saying his goodbyes. Instead, Adam settles for a sequential disarmament, methodical in his own right so that in no time at all he's pressing his forehead against Kris' and they have eye contact for the first time since the show ended, and he's saying that it's okay - it's okay to wish that tonight had turned out otherwise.
Kris just laughs - a bitter brittle burst of air, a sigh turned explosive from being held in for too long - and laughs and laughs and cries, dry racking sobs that stop as abruptly as they begin, his cheeks dry and the coiled spring unwound, but here, here again, for the first time in hours. Leaning against the bed together, shoulder to shoulder, his lips a hair's breadth away from the shell of Adam's ear, he confesses in a whisper so quiet that Adam feels it more than he hears it, he says: I wish it had been us, isn't that awful? Then: no, that's a lie, I don't wish that - things are as they should have been.
Adam doesn't know what to say in return, so they sit together in the silence that no longer feels stifling. They wake up in the morning with perfectly mirrored cramped necks and the beginnings of a smile.
He still doesn't know what to say when it's results night and Kris is all of a sudden buried in his shoulder and clinging on for dear life, and the words that slip out ironically are I told you so. Kris laughs shakily before he lets go, and just like that the laugh grounds Adam as well, in a way that even the previous week had not, the world becomes real again and the super-amplified foregone conclusion they were building up to in this last hour finally explodes in his ears. It's the worst night of the competition yet and it's not fair and Adam, with his mind half-dissociated as the camera pans away (as they can all let the tears finally flow freely), thinks - this isn't how it was supposed to go, not her and not him, how could they have run out of time just like that, it's not fair.
Allison says as they hug, a tangle of tears and eyeliner and mascara, non, je ne regrette rien. And Adam feels, for the first time, echoes of the survivor's guilt Kris has been emanating all this time.
And they're so, so rapidly running out of time.