Tainted -- Chapter 19
Kris didn’t know exactly how long they stayed there on the bed, Kris just holding Adam close and letting him cry until the soft fabric of Kris’s shirt was soaked through with his tears. He just gently rubbed Adam’s back, murmuring the occasional reassuring phrase, but mostly just letting Adam take comfort in the long-withheld release of his pain and fear.
Even after Adam was too exhausted to cry anymore, his tears long since gone dry, he still clung to Kris with a desperation that tore at Kris’s heart - as if he was afraid to ever let go. Kris just kept stroking his hand up and down Adam’s back in a slow, soothing motion.
“It’s okay, Adam,” he whispered. “I’m here. You’re all right…”
As a peaceful, weary stillness fell over them, Adam finally raised his head slightly, still not quite able to raise his tearful eyes from their focus somewhere around Kris’s stomach. His voice was halting, small and hesitant when at last he ventured to speak, his fingers still clenched tightly in the soft cotton at Kris’s sides.
“I-I’m so sorry, Kris…”
“No, don’t be…” Kris immediately began to reassure him, but Adam pressed on.
“No, r-really, I… I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to… to push you away. I kn-know I hurt you, and I’d never hurt you, Kris, you have to know that, but I didn’t… don’t… have a ch-choice, and… I want to talk to you, I want to tell you everything, but I can’t, Kris, I just can’t…”
“Hey, shhh,” Kris gently soothed Adam as his words became more and more rushed, gradually edging toward panic again. “Shhh, it’s all right…” He tightened his arms around Adam, one hand guiding his head back down onto Kris’s shoulder and just quietly holding him until he seemed to calm down again.
Kris hesitated, a pensive frown creasing his brow as he struggled with what he wanted to say. Finally, he cautiously ventured to speak.
“Adam… if someone’s… threatening you… if there’s someone you’re afraid of, then… then you should tell someone. They can’t hurt you if they’re in jail, can they?”
Adam went very still in Kris’s arms, but he didn’t raise his head. He swallowed hard, the sound audible in the heavy stillness of the room. When he finally replied, his voice was hushed, fearful.
“It… it isn’t that simple…”
He offered no further explanation, and Kris let out a slow sigh, nodding once in reluctant acceptance. “Okay…”
“And…” Adam hesitated, and for a moment Kris wasn’t sure he was going to go on at all. “… and you… you wouldn’t… believe me…”
His voice was so soft that Kris barely caught the words at all - but when he did, his eyes widened with disbelief, and he reached down a gentle hand to touch Adam’s chin, firmly tilting his head up in an attempt to make him face him. Adam submitted to the motion, but kept his eyes averted, visibly trembling as he bit his lip and struggled to keep his emotions at bay.
“Adam… Adam, look at me…”
Adam closed his eyes, swallowing back a soft sob.
“Look at me.” Kris persisted gently. He waited until Adam raised wide blue eyes, shimmering with unshed tears, to reluctantly meet his own, before going on in a tone of quiet intensity. “I will believe you. Do you hear me, Adam? I swear to you I will believe you.”
Kris felt Adam’s jaw quivering under his hand, saw the visible struggle on his face to keep it together - saw that he was mere moments away from breaking down again. His voice was small and trembling and lost as he stammered out a confused, frightened response.
“I… I d-don’t know… I can’t…”
He was on the verge of shutting down again - of shutting Kris out again - and no matter what happened, Kris couldn’t allow that to happen. He couldn’t do anything to help Adam if Adam wouldn’t let him in. This was more progress than he’d been able to make since the kidnapping, and he was unwilling to let it go. He pulled Adam close again, running a hand gently through his hair as Adam rested his brow against Kris’s shoulder once more.
“It’s all right,” Kris repeated. “It’s okay, Adam, I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me anything, okay? I’m here for you no matter what. I just… I want you to know that if you want to, I’ll listen, and I swear to you I’ll be on your side. Okay? I need you to know that.”
Adam’s silent nod against Kris’s shoulder was all the affirmation he was going to get.
A few more minutes passed in weighted silence before Adam spoke again, a broken desperation in his voice. “Please… please don’t tell anybody about this…”
“Of course not,” Kris assured him with mild indignation. “Adam, I would never…”
“No, about… about any of this,” Adam clarified softly, raising his head to urgently meet Kris’s confused gaze. “No one can know that we were together at all tonight.”
Understanding dawned in Kris’s expression, though he was still puzzled. “Because of… the guy who’s watching you. The guy you’re scared of.”
Adam nodded, his eyes lowered in shame. “We can’t let anyone know that we’re… t-talking again. No one. Not the others, not the… the crew, or the handlers. No one. Not… not even Larissa, Kris.”
Kris’s frown deepened and he shook his head slightly. “Why not Larissa?” he asked with a note of curiosity in his voice. “She’s nowhere near here. There’s no way she could accidentally tell anyone…”
Kris was sure he wasn’t imagining the way Adam’s face suddenly paled, and the slight shudder that passed through him, his grip on Kris’s t-shirt tightening. His eyes were wide and trapped, looking anywhere but at Kris’s face, as he stumbled over an awkward non-explanation.
“We just c-can’t… can’t tell anyone, Kris. Not anyone at all. It’s s-safer that way. Please.”
Kris’s mind was unwillingly drawn back to his conversation with Allison, and what she’d told him about Larissa’s conversation with Adam just before the buses had left the last hotel. A sick, uneasy feeling began in the pit of his stomach, and he mentally debated for a few moments before reaching out to tilt Adam’s head up again, silently demanding eye contact.
It made Kris feel a little sicker, the way Adam so submissively met his gaze, yielding to the guidance of his hand - as if even with Kris, he was somehow afraid to disobey what he knew was expected of him. His eyes were wide and terrified, filled with dread at the idea that Kris might somehow find out what it was that he was still hiding. Kris almost changed his mind and let it go, taking pity on Adam’s broken state - but he had to know whether or not Allison’s suspicions bore any truth.
“Adam…” he began, drawing in a deep breath and letting out the rest of his words in a rush. “What did Rissa say to you by the bus yesterday?”
Adam’s gaze was suddenly stricken, his lips parted and trembling in alarm that was clearly visible in his eyes. “N-nothing,” he whispered, shaking his head - nothing about his tone or appearance in any way convincing. “Nothing important, she j-just… said goodbye, Kris, it was nothing…”
Now Kris was alarmed, by Adam’s reaction to what he had hoped was a question with a simple and reassuring answer. He sat up straight on the bed, reaching out to grasp Adam’s arm as Adam instinctively pulled away.
“Adam, tell me!” he insisted, fearful. “What does any of this have to do with Larissa?”
Adam flinched violently away from Kris’s hand, his eyes wide and panicked as he withdrew, scrambling backward across the bed until he got to his feet. In an instant he went from lying close in Kris’s arms to standing, his back pressed hard against the wall beside the bed, trembling violently. He shook his head desperately, his breath ragged and shallow as he tried to withdraw further, though there was nowhere to go.
“Nothing,” he desperately insisted. “Nothing, it’s nothing to do with her, I swear.” As Kris rose from the bed and came toward him, Adam flinched again, his arms crossed over his torso in a pitiful defense, his face turned away against the wall. He closed his eyes as if to shut Kris out, shaking his head and pleading in a broken whimper. “Please, Kris, it’s nothing. Stop, don’t make me… don’t make me…”
Kris stopped just short of touching him, silent and troubled, his heart racing with dread as his mind tried to fathom what Larissa could possibly have to do with this whole mess. He considered for a long moment, taking in Adam’s heartbreaking posture of pleading desperation, and making a decision that would leave him tormented with questions, but might give Adam a little peace for the moment.
“I won’t, Adam,” he murmured, cautiously touching Adam’s arm, then edging in closer to steady him with both hands on his forearms. “I… I won’t ask you again, all right? I promise. It’s… your business. You don’t have to say anything.”
“D-don’t tell her,” Adam whispered, his head lowered in defeat, unconsciously leaning forward a little into the comfort of Kris’s touch. “Please…”
Some deep instinct was breaking through Kris’s mental defenses, whispering insistently in his mind that there was far more to this than he had imagined - far more than he really wanted to know. He felt a roiling nausea rising up in his throat as various ideas and implications circled in his mind, and he desperately needed to know which of them, if any, was the truth.
But not as bad as Adam needs to feel safe right now…
“I won’t say a word to her, Adam,” Kris promised. “This is between you and me, not her. I won’t tell her anything you don’t want me to, okay? I promise. All right?”
Adam nodded haltingly, drawing in a sharp, shuddering breath.
“Hey,” Kris murmured, trying to draw his focus. “Look at me, Adam. Hey.”
As Adam slowly looked up at him, looking more exhausted and shaken than ever, Kris wrestled momentarily with the decision of whether or not to tell Adam what he was thinking. Had their friendship been in its normal state, he would have told Adam long before. No, Adam was so perceptive when it came to Kris, Adam probably would have told him before he even knew - but they hadn’t been speaking, and there was a lot that Adam didn’t know about Kris’s life these days.
Going into this conversation, Kris wouldn’t have dreamed of sharing his own drama. It hadn’t seemed to matter when faced with what Adam was going through, what he needed to somehow get out.
Now, in the light of the half-revelations he’d gleaned from this encounter, Kris thought that this bit of news might be particularly comforting to his friend.
“Wanna know something?” Kris ventured with a tentative half-smile, shaking his head slightly. “You don’t really have to worry about me saying anything to Larissa, even if I wanted to - which I really don’t. And… I guess that’s sort of the point. I hardly talk to her - not about anything important, anyway - anymore, and… and I think… I think she’s not really… who I thought she was when we got together. I think… maybe it was just a… a rebound thing? You know, after Katy? And… I guess what I’m really trying to say here, is…”
Adam was staring at him, wide-eyed, but Kris wasn’t quite looking at Adam as he finished - didn’t quite see the rising horror on his face that was not at all the reaction he would have expected as he obliviously continued.
“… Larissa doesn’t really matter at this point, anyway. I wouldn’t tell her anything at all, because… well, because I think I’m breaking up with her."
TBC...