Success
Adam stands inside the dull, metal double doors of his new high school, thinking thanks, mom; senior year’s a great time to move. Taking in a deep breath, he surveys the scene: very white, very small, very… Midwestern? Not that he’d know.
“Toto,” he mutters to himself, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” Or at least not California.
A voice behind him, quiet but amused, says, “Nope. You’re in AR-Kansas, now.”
Adam turns to see the source of the voice - a short little thing, brown hair, farmer’s tan - breeze by him, a funny look on his face, like he just swallowed a feather and it tickled all the way down.
++++++++++
The short little thing has a name, it turns out. It’s Kris Allen, and he is terrible at math. Can’t tell an integer from an inbred, really, thinks Adam, laughing, and Kris doesn’t seem to care that much.
He spends the whole period scuffing the sole of his well-worn sneaker against the floor to some rhythm playing in his head. Adam watches him, not the blackboard, and is grateful that the teacher still can’t remember his name.
“What song are you always kicking into the floor?” Adam asks one day when the bell rings.
“Dunno,” Kris answers, looking surprised. “Doesn’t have words yet.”
(The song has words four hours later. They have nothing to do with math. They are part of the first song Kris Allen will write about Adam Lambert.)
++++++++++
“Do you ever do your homework?”
“No, do you ever change your shirt?”
“No.”
They meet in the library. Adam lets Kris help him with his homework, not caring that he’s going to have to redo it later. His grades don’t matter, anyway, but Kris’s small, untidy writing in the margins of Adam’s books and papers does. At night, Adam retraces them with his finger when he’s lying in bed and has nice dreams.
One evening, after homework, Adam helps Kris buy a new shirt. One that’s not plaid. One that doesn’t have buttons.
At first Kris protests. He doesn’t think it’s him. But when Adam shows his approval by placing both hands under Kris’s new shirt in the dressing room, budging him against the ugly, gray wall, and kissing him until Kris closes his eyes and kisses back, Kris thinks he might never go back to buttons.
They’re too much work.
++++++++++
In the hallway, some kid yells “Faggot!” because Adam’s pants are too tight and his nails are too sparkly.
Kris gets suspended from school for what happens next. His mother clucks and pretends to be disappointed, and his father advises him, next time, to take it off school grounds.
“Oh, well,” Kris grins when Adam drops by. “Thanks for bringing me my homework.”
“No problem. Thanks for breaking Captain Phobe’s face with a soccer ball.”
“No problem.”
That’s the day that Kris starts polishing his thumbnail. He just does it black. He’s not sure he can pull off the sparkly topcoat, even though Adam insists that he can. Kris only has to break one more nose (across the street, in the deli parking lot, this time with just his fist) before people leave them both alone.
Well, mostly alone. Some of the girls shake their heads, like they’re sad about something.
++++++++++
They don’t go to prom. Instead, they go see a Kiss cover band, and Adam paints both their faces, and they make out in the pit, which is sort of like moshing with tongues, anyway, right?
But when they get knocked over and Adam bites Kris’s lip so hard that it bleeds, they take it out to the car. By the time they get back to Adam’s, both their lips are bleeding, and Adam’s mom makes Kris sleep on the couch.
“I’m eighteen!” Adam argues.
“Well, I’m older,” says his mom, but she’s smiling.
They think she knows that they sneak back outside to the car after she goes to bed, anyway. There are condoms on the counter by the door. They both roll their eyes dramatically and make disgusted noises, but they grab one, nonetheless.
++++++++++
June comes, and Adam's graduation present to Kris is a new guitar and a blow job in the bathroom before they line up to go on stage.
The zipper on Kris’s dress pants sticks, and it ends up breaking. Adam is laughing, quiet and mischievous, around Kris’s cock the entire time, and the vibrations from it make Kris mess up Adam’s hair. There are people lined up in the hallway outside, so Kris has to bite his hand when he comes, hot and hard and fast, into Adam’s mouth, which is still, somehow, smiling, even though his own erection is making him glad that he has a robe on.
Afterwards, Adam holds Kris’s pants together with a safety pin he removes from his ear. (My mom will be happy I took it out, anyway.) Kris lets Adam fix his own hair, because he’s way, way better at it. It still doesn’t look the way he wants it to when they run out of time and have to dash out of the bathroom and into line (they just pretend that everyone is staring because they both look so goddamn fabulous - disheveled, yes, but fabulous), but Adam doesn’t really care. He can still taste Kris in his mouth, and it’s even sweeter than the idea that he never has to forge another hall pass.
Kris accepts his diploma with his knees still shaking and a hickey on the inside of his left thigh, and poses for a picture next to the American flag. His smile in that photo is commented on, to this day, by nearly everyone who comes through his mama’s front door and sees it hanging in its frame on the wall. Goodness, but doesn’t he look proud of himself!
One day, when they’re alone in the house, Kris makes Adam sign the back of it. It says, “Tastes like success!” There’s a winking smiley-face drawn next to it. Nobody else knows it's there.