Fanfic: The Memory Keeper (11/14)

[radiogaga33]

Title: The Memory Keeper (A Kradam Fanfic)

Author: Radiogaga33

Pairing: Kris/Adam

Setting: AU

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Kris, Adam, etc are their own people. They belong to themselves, not to me. No claims to any copyrights, trademarks, or any other intellectual property. This is purely a work of fiction from my very idle mind. It never happened.

Notes:  Now, this is the chapter that broke my heart.   [Warning: minor character death and description of abuse]

Comments welcome as always.

Many thanks as always to sweet_poeia for being my second set of eyes on this.  You're the best!!

Chapters 1-5 can be accessed here:  http://community.livejournal.com/kradam_ai/606618.html

(  Chapter 6: With My Arms Outstretched )
(  Chapter 7: A Different Truth )
(  Chapter 8: In The Name of Love )
(  Chapter 9: How To Save A Life )
(  Chapter 10: Things We Lost In the Fire )


The Memory Keeper

Chapter 11: Requiem

Adam bolted upright in bed. The room was still dark; the heavy beige curtains drawn across the wall of windows obscured the light from the morning sun. Adam sat there, disoriented for a moment, sleep still fogging his brain, wondering what had woken him up. A split second later, the ringing of the telephone on the bedside table gave him his answer. He reached out a slender, pale arm and picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“This is the Conway County sheriff’s office. Can I speak with Mr. Adam Lambert, please?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Adam Lambert, son of Jeffrey Lambert?”

“Yes, it is.”

“My apologies for calling so early in the morning sir. Had a devil of a time getting your contact information. I’m afraid I’m calling with bad news. Your father died last night at the medical center. They say it was his liver that went. My condolences.”

Adam held the receiver in front of him, staring at the object like it was some sort of alien artifact. His brain tried to process what he’d just heard.

“Mr. Lambert? Are you there? Mr. Lambert?”

The voice from the telephone receiver was a barely audible sound. The phone fell from Adam’s suddenly nerveless fingers and dropped to the floor.

Adam pushed off the bed and strode quickly towards the bathroom, pulling the door close behind him without shutting it. He went to the stylish copper bathtub, gleaming under the bright electric light, flipped the catch on the drain and turned the faucet. He moved to the sink as the tub began to fill slowly with hot water, sending up mesmerizing little wisps of steam. Adam hung over the porcelain, staring at his face in the mirror. He did not like what he saw. He stared at his wild black hair, his bloodshot blue eyes, the harsh set of his mouth, the despair etched into his brow, and the sharp angles of his gaunt face. He was thinner that he’d ever been in his life.

Adam saw a defeated man, a wild man, and now, an orphan.

“Your father died last night…”

Adam couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. He turned off the bathtub faucet, walked back into the room, and sat on his rumpled bed. His weary blue eyes glanced over the cold hotel room slowly. Where was he? Detroit, possibly. Or maybe Dayton. Adam couldn’t be sure. After three months and thousands of miles, it had all become the same.

Adam Lambert, twenty nine year-old frontman of The Citizen Vein, had finally made it big. A little less than two years ago, his band had gotten its break and signed a record deal with RCA. Their first single had been a number one hit and the album had gone platinum five times over. The new album had already gone double platinum after only one month on the charts. Teenage girls and boys spent their nights dreaming of the glam rock god while their mothers spent their days hiding their own obsession with the man. Adam gave the term “crossover appeal” a whole new meaning. He was a music magazine favorite and yet he hardly appeared in the celebrity rags. Only a few months into his stardom, the paparazzi had given up on him. Pictures of a permanently miserable man who skulked about town in threadbare clothing and massive sunglasses didn’t fetch too high a prize in Hollywood.

The band was currently on tour, pushing the new album. They had started in Portland, Oregon with Allison Iraheta as their opening act. The band had sort of adopted the pink-haired American Idol who, two years ago, had beaten out a certain Danny Gokey for the title. For the last three months, they’d moved almost daily from city to city, traipsing across the United States and Canada on their North American Tour.

Adam reclined on the bed and flung his arm across his face. He was tired. He knew he should be happy, thrilled beyond description to finally live his dream. He was grateful, he really was. He did his best to show it in his performances on stages across America. Many a music journalist had waxed superlative about Adam’s legendary shows, drawing comparisons to Freddie Mercury and David Bowie in their heydays. But after each show, he would collapse into bed on the tour bus or in a hotel room, miserable and alone, wishing he could share it all with Kris Allen.

A sharp feeling of despair ran through him at the thought of the man he loved. It was a familiar feeling, a constant one in the past two years since the fallout over the bet he’d made with Patrick Baylor. Kris had been gone for two years. He’d fallen off the face of the earth, as if he had only been a figment of Adam’s fevered imagination. Adam recalled the day he’d ventured back into the hospital, three weeks after the night he’d run off in the thunderstorm. Kris was long gone. The hospital couldn’t tell him where he had gone. Adam had called a few of Kris’s friends in the city and they’d been just as surprised as he was. Finally, Adam had called Kris’s mother. She had sobbed on the phone as she told him that she didn’t know either. Kris had simply called two days after she and the rest of the family had returned to Conway and told them he was leaving the country for a while. They still didn’t know where he’d gone.

Adam had kept calling every week for a year. On the fifty-third call in as many weeks, he’d finally given up for good. Either Mrs. Allen knew and had been instructed not to tell him or she really didn’t have a clue. At any rate, Adam wasn’t going to get any answers from her. Kris was gone. Lost to him for good, and there was nothing Adam could do about it.

After a lifetime of indifference, Adam had finally become a star-gazer.  Whenever the band played a city where he could actually make them out in the sky at night, he would stare up at the twinkling lights and the moon. In those moments, as despair threatened to drag him under, he would console himself with the thought that somewhere in the world, Kris was sleeping under the same stars, under the same moon. It would have to be enough. And surely, Kris would come back. It was two years now. Kris was yet to return.

And now, his father was dead. At long last, twenty one years after his mother had died, Adam Lambert was an orphan. He examined himself as he lay on the bed. He couldn’t tell how he felt about the news the sheriff had just delivered. He felt numb. It was like he was frozen, unable to feel anything. He wasn’t sad. He wasn’t happy. He wasn’t…anything. When he was a child, he’d fantasized about this moment. Adam had pictured his father dead every time he crawled into bed after a beating. He’d pictured him dead every time he dabbed makeup onto his skin, covering this bruise or that wound. He had thought then that he would be happy, overjoyed. Now that the moment had finally come, he was surprised to discover that he felt nothing. Adam didn’t know what it meant.

Two days later, he climbed into a black limousine at the airport just outside of Little Rock and sprawled across the backseat of the car, large sunglasses pulled tight over his eyes even in the interior of the vehicle. He had made arrangements over the phone with the local funeral house in Conway.  Tomorrow, he would bury his father. He’d let the funeral home director talk him into scheduling a brief ceremony before the interment. He wasn’t sure why. His father had lost most of his friends by the time Adam had slung a duffel bag over his shoulder and left Conway forever.

And now, he was back again. An hour and a half later, Adam sat up straighter in the backseat, slightly mesmerized as familiar buildings and storefronts came into view. Everything was as if he’d never left. It was like he’d aged twelve years while Conway had remained the same. If the town was Dorian Gray, Adam was the portrait in the attic.

His heart picked up considerable speed as the car raced towards his house. It pounded even faster when the car cruised by Thompson Street before making the turn onto James Street. The driver opened the door for Adam before lifting his small suitcase out of the trunk and carrying it to the front porch. Adam stood by the car for a long moment, just staring up at the house. It looked so ordinary. That was the most surprising part. The three-bedroom colonial on James Street looked just like any other house he’d ever seen in a picture. Where was the dark, ominous house of horrors that featured so prominently in his dreams? This one looked like something out of a home and garden magazine.

Well, maybe not quite. Adam’s gaze swept over the overgrown lawn and the weeds sprouting up tall and unabashed through the cracks in the asphalt of the driveway. His father had kept the old pick-up truck, Adam saw. It was dirty, its tires and wheels splattered with mud.

“What time should I be here tomorrow, Mr. Lambert?”

The question pulled Adam back from his musings.

“Nine a.m should do it, I think. Is that alright?”

“That’s fine, sir.”

Adam reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. He pressed it into the driver’s hands before turning to the house and walking towards the front porch. The sheriff’s office had said the keys would be in the mailbox. He opened it and pulled the small set of keys and a few letters from the box. Then he pushed the key into the lock, turned it, and walked through the door of the house he’d run away from twelve years ago-almost to the day.

It was dark, musty, pungent with the odor of sweat and alcohol. Just like it had been all those years ago. Adam’s stomach reacted immediately, churning violently. He clutched his abdomen and dropped his bag on the floor. He walked through the house, flipping every light switch he came across. When he was done, the place was filled with light. It wasn’t an improvement. Now he could see the layer of dust covering everything. The cobwebs in the corners, the beer and whiskey bottles lined along the walls. The kitchen was unused. The fridge contained only liquor. Rows and rows of it. No wonder his father’s liver had packed up. The man had lived on alcohol alone, it seemed.

Adam walked out of the kitchen and climbed up the stairs. He walked into his father’s room first and flipped the light switch. There were even more liquor bottles lined along the walls. The bed was a rumpled mess, the sheets stained with the remnants of beer and whiskey. His father had spent his last days in squalor. Had he known he was going to die? Why hadn’t he tried to track Adam down? If the silent room knew the answers to Adam’s questions, it wasn’t sharing them.

He walked to the closet and yanked the doors open. The small space was a complete mess as well. Adam crouched down and picked up shirts from the floor of the closet and tossed them up on the shelves. As he did, he noticed the ties and belts hanging on the doors of the closet. Adam reached out and ran a painted fingernail down the worn length of one of the belts. He recognized it. Adam stared hard at the cracked brown leather of the belt. It was the one his father had used on him the first time he’d broken skin. Adam had been ten, bent over a chair, screaming as the belt had hissed through the air and landed on his back over and over again.

Adam crouched down again and reached for the large black box sitting on the floor of the closet. It was where his father had kept all his important documents when Adam was growing up. Adam sat on the floor and began to sort through the contents of the box. In a battered envelope, he found the deed to the house and the title to the pick-up truck. There were some other documents there as well. His parents’ marriage license, his father’s expired driver’s licenses, his social security card, an unused, long-expired passport. He hadn’t left a will. Adam wasn’t surprised. The man his father had been wouldn’t have bothered with making out a will for a bastard.

Adam put the envelope down on the carpet beside him and pulled a brown box from the larger black one. The lock was open. Adam flipped the catch and opened the lid. Inside the brown box sat a gun and its magazine. Adam recognized this too. He’d seen his father drinking a beer and polishing the thing enough times as a child to commit it to memory. It was the only thing his father had taken care of, the only thing he had loved, this gun. Adam shut the box and got back on his feet. He picked up the envelope with the documents and walked to the door. After shutting the light, he closed the door softly behind him.

Adam walked across the landing and opened the door to his old room. He was shocked at what he saw. He’d expected to find it stockpiled with odds and ends, completely devoid of any evidence that Adam had ever been there. Instead, it looked like a morbid display in a museum. Everything was just as he’d left it twelve years ago. Beneath the thick layer of dust, his bed sheets were pulled neat and tight just like he’d left them the morning he’d made his break. He opened the closet. His old clothes filled the space, still hanging, albeit under a layer of dust and cobwebs. As he watched, a small spider crawled out of one of his old shoes. Adam spun around in the room. The effect was eerie. He couldn’t sleep here.

He reached into his pocket for his phone and dialed the number for the car service. When the operator came back on, Adam asked for the driver that had just left to be sent back. Adam was going to spend the night in a hotel. He walked down the stairs and picked up his black bag. He looked around him, giving the house one final once-over. It was so small. Had it shrunk over time or had his memory magnified it? Adam felt like a giant in a flower garden, awkward and miserable. He opened the front door and stepped outside quickly, locking it behind him.

Adam looked up the street. He thought about walking to Thompson Street, to the white house with the blue door. Mrs. Allen would be happy to see him. At least he hoped so. Adam faced a moment of indecision. Eventually it passed. No, he decided. He had no right to drop in unannounced. There was nothing to do but wait for the car to come back. Adam walked across the unkempt lawn and sat down on the sidewalk. He was alone on the quiet street. His black hair gleamed in the light of the setting sun. His blue eyes were the color of the ocean in the winter, bright with some unknown emotion. He rested his arms on his folded legs, bowing his head and staring at the ground. Adam didn’t know it, but in that moment, he looked exactly the way he had two decades ago on Thompson Street when Kris Allen had mistaken him for an angel.

At 9:30am the next day, Adam sat down in the empty parlor of the funeral home, staring at his father’s casket. In his hand, he held the small funeral program the director had given to him when he’d walked in half an hour ago. It was thin. The schedule printed beneath a picture of his father was little more than a brief prayer to be given by the junior reverend from the local church and a eulogy to be delivered by Adam himself. Adam turned in his chair and looked back at the small stack of programs by the door. No one was coming. Jeffrey Lambert had died in a hospital and would be buried along with his diseased liver and his stockpile of sins, alone. In the end, only the bastard son had come to attend the funeral of a drunkard. Today, Adam Lambert’s would be the only voice singing a requiem for the man who had reached the peak of his potential at seventeen and had drunk himself into an early grave three and a half decades later.

At Adam’s insistence, the program was called off and they proceeded directly to the cemetery. As the limousine driver ferried him to the burial ground, Adam was surprised to see that he still felt nothing. Last night, he had slipped the brown box and the tattered envelope into his bag and gone to sleep in his hotel room after a quick dinner. He hadn’t cried, he hadn’t reminisced. And today, he still felt nothing.

Thirty minutes later, Adam listened to the reverend intone without inflection about death, and God, and ashes and dust. Then the cemetery workers lowered his father’s casket into the ground. Adam had categorically insisted on a plot that was as far away from his mother’s as he could get in the cemetery. It was his parting gift to the man who’d never once given him anything in his life. Perhaps his fitful soul would rest better this way.

Adam immediately headed for the airport after the short ceremony. Ten hours and a couple of stopovers later, his plane touched down at LAX. Adam pulled his sunglasses on tight and ignored the curious stares of his fellow passengers as he waited for his luggage at the carousels. He’d had to check in the small bag because of the gun. Adam couldn’t say why he’d brought it back with him. Outside baggage claim, Adam hopped on the shuttle heading towards long-term parking. He always kept his silver Bolt in the airport lot whenever he left town. A few minutes later, he slipped into the stylish electric car and pulled out of the airport. He smiled as he sped down the highway towards the city. He loved to drive the car; he’d bought one the moment they’d hit the market last year.

Half an hour later, Adam slipped into the Sunset Room and walked right up to the bar. He parked himself on a bar stool a second before he and Matt exchanged greetings. The band had cancelled its shows for two weeks on account of Adam’s father. Adam had come home to rest. He smiled when Matt fixed him his usual “rum and coke” with a dramatic flourish and pushed the glass in front of him.

Matt watched him as he took a quick swallow.

“How was the funeral?” Adam had called Matt at the airport after he’d landed in Arkansas.

“It was the event of the decade, a complete crush. There wasn’t an empty seat in the house.” Adam paused. “No one came.”

“You buried him alone? You should have called me sooner. I would have come, Adam.”

“I know. You would have come. You’re always there for me.” Adam stared at Matt for a long moment. “You don’t owe me anything and yet you’re always there. Why is that?”

Adam raised an eyebrow. Was that hesitation he’d just seen in Matt’s eyes?

“What is it? Tell me.”

Matt was silent for a long moment before he spoke. “Do you remember that night, a few years back, when I got shit-wrecked in Vegas?”

“Yes. What about it?”

“I never told you that after you put me to bed and went to get undressed, I wasn’t asleep.” Adam felt the muscles in his shoulders fill with tension.

“When you took off your shirt, I saw. Your scars. I saw them and it shook me.”

They had been in Vegas for Matt’s twenty first birthday. Suddenly, Adam recalled how strange he’d been the morning after he’d gotten himself good and drunk. Adam had dismissed his odd behavior, chalking it up to a hang-over. He had never guessed at what Matt was revealing now.

“You never said anything,” Adam said.

“I didn’t want to push you. Besides, you’ve said and done enough over the years for me to put it together. Your father. He did that.”

Adam nodded. He heard Matt let out a curse under his breath.

“I knew it. That’s why if you’d called me, I would have come.”

“So is that why you’re always there for me? You feel sorry for me?”

“No. It has nothing to do with pity and everything to do with truth. I see you, Adam. I see the man behind the smoke and mirrors. That’s all.”

Was that how Matt had known two years ago that Adam had fallen in love with Kris?

“Smoke and mirrors. In the end, that’s all there is to me. In the end, the end, the end…”

Adam’s voice trailed off as he twirled the glass in his palm. After a few seconds, he spoke again.

“Do you think he’ll ever come back?”

“I don’t know.”

Adam reached into his pocket and pulled out the letter he had written on the plane.

“Matt, can you do something for me?”

“Anything.”

“If he ever comes back, give this to him for me. Please.” Adam held out the envelope to Matt. The bartender took it from his hand.

Adam pushed away from the bar and hopped off the stool. Matt gestured at the glass with a smile.

“You planning on paying for that?” Matt asked playfully.

“Put it on my tab, boss,” Adam replied. It was their old joke again.

“And when are you gonna pay your tab?”

“I’ll pay on the day I die.”

“I guess I won’t hold my breath then.”

This was the part where Adam usually laughed and told Matt that that was probably a good idea. This time, however, he didn’t.  Instead he stood silent for a long moment, his gaunt face creased with a deep frown.

“How much do you figure I owe you now?”

“Thousands, I’m sure.”

Adam reached into the inside pocket of his light jacket and pulled out his checkbook and a pen. He made out a check, ripped it out, and slid it across the bar towards Matt.

“Ten thousand dollars. There, that should do it. Imagine that. I’m finally paying my tab. Thanks for letting me slide by all these years.”

Matt shot him a worried look. “You say that like you’re not coming back.” Adam didn’t reply. “Adam?”

“Vegas, huh?” Adam shook his head and laughed. It was a mirthless sound. “You have your secrets, and I have mine. I should tell you at least once, I suppose. I love you, Matt. Isn’t it funny? When it mattered, I fought those words to the very end and today, I say them so easily. I love you. You’ve been a better friend to me than I ever deserved.”

“Adam, what’s going on? You’re scaring me.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I can never do anything right. Always smashing everything. You know what he said to me? He said, ‘There’s nothing left. You’ve broken everything.’ And I couldn’t say anything because it was true.”

“Adam…”

“If he ever comes back, give him the letter.”

“Adam-”

“Goodbye Matt.” Adam turned and walked away.

“Adam!”

Adam stumbled out the door, ignoring Matt’s call.

Thirty minutes later, Adam sat on the couch in his Studio City apartment. He’d moved out of his old place in West Hollywood a year ago. He would have stayed if not for the rabid fans that kept finding their way to his door. Adam looked at the coffee table in front of him. He’d pulled out the gun box and placed it on the gleaming black surface of the table. Next to it sat the small funeral program he’d also brought back with him. And beside those, sat a bottle of Scotch. It had been a gift from an RCA executive when The Citizen Vein had gone platinum for the first time. Adam had locked it in a cabinet and forgotten about it. Tonight, he remembered it.

Whiskey had been his father’s drink of choice. Adam stared at the bottle in front of him. Scotch was close enough. What was it about the amber liquid that made raging lunatics out of ordinary men? Adam didn’t know. He opened the bottle. The pungent smell of alcohol filled his senses and turned his stomach. Adam brought the bottle to his lips and forced himself to drink. He gasped in shock as the liquor burned a fiery path down his throat. How did people do this? Adam steeled himself and took another long swallow. It burned a little less this time. Perhaps because he was prepared for it. Then he took another long swallow. And another.  And another. And another. When he set the bottle back on the table, he’d swallowed a third of its contents.

Adam reached for the gun box and opened it. Slowly, he pulled the gleaming weapon from its case and settled it in his lap. He picked up the magazine and emptied the bullets in it into the box. He checked the gun. There was a round in the chamber. He pushed the empty magazine into place. Adam stared at the deadly instrument in his hand. His father had loved this hunk of metal more than he had ever loved Adam. He reached for the bottle and took two more long swallows of the burning amber liquid. Adam felt light-headed, shaky.

He had been a good son, hadn’t he? He had loved his father, hadn’t he? Despite all the mocking insults, all the taunts, all the brutal beatings, all the kicking and the shoving, he had loved the man, hadn’t he? Why hadn’t that been good enough to make up for the fact that Adam wasn’t his real son? He’d kept his head low and his mouth shut and still he’d been hammered down, like the proverbial nail he’d warned Kris about. All of a sudden, the dam gave way. Adam felt the numbness of the past three days washed away in a riptide of feeling. His back felt like it was on fire, like he was reliving the pain of each scar all over again. Why had his father done that to him? Why hadn’t he been good enough? Why was he still not good enough?

Adam took another long swallow from the bottle. He stared down at the gun in his hand, tears marring his vision for only the second time in his life. The first time he had cried had been the day his father had beaten him until he broke skin for the first time. The leather belt had hissed through the air over and over again while his father had told him to quit crying before he really got something to cry about. Adam hadn’t shed a single tear since that day.

But now he did. They fell down his cheeks as he thought of the last two years without Kris. Some days, he felt numb, immune to all feeling. Other days, he felt unending pain, overwhelmed with unbearable sensation. When it came to Kris, pain and desire were his constant companions. It was torture each morning, discovering which he would wake up to. Sometimes the pillows were wet, sometimes the bed sheets. His dreams were the cruelest part, tempting him with visions that would never come true. In all of his dreams, Kris came back and wrapped his arms around Adam again. In all of his dreams, Kris forgave him.

He had done a horrible thing, taking that bet. Adam knew it. It had been an incredibly foolish and reckless thing to do. But he had called it off, hadn’t he? He had laid himself bare for Kris, hadn’t he? He had loved him, hadn’t he? Adam had made a mistake, it was true. But weren’t lovers supposed to forgive each other? Why hadn’t Kris forgiven him? Why had Kris left him? Why hadn’t Adam’s love been good enough? Why was it still not good enough?

Adam took one final swallow from the bottle on the table. His vision was blurry, his hand shaky. He felt delirious, completely out of his mind. For a moment, he could have sworn that he heard someone pounding on his door. Adam ignored it. There were a hundred other sounds competing for attention in his head.

Adam lifted the gun in his left hand. It gleamed in the light of the room.

He thought of the last day he’d seen Kris, the day he’d raced out of his hospital room. He thought of the last time he’d seen his father alive. Strange, they were complete strangers to each other and yet, they’d both called him the same thing. Adam shook his head. The room spun in circles around him. And still the strange pounding noise continued. Had someone just called his name?

“Don’t you dare touch me! You think I want some worthless bastard’s hands on me?”

“Worthless bastard, that’s what you are. Worthless bastards don’t deserve to live.”

After a lifetime fighting those words, Adam finally agreed.

He was a worthless bastard. His father had said so. Kris had said so. Worthless bastards like him didn’t deserve to live.

Five seconds later, Adam Lambert pressed the cold barrel of his dead father’s gun to his head and closed his eyes.

[To be continued]