update, 02/07/10.
I don't know why it took me the entirety of January to write this, but you can place part of the blame on the first 1.5 seasons of Battlestar Galactica, if you want. (Things that are now probably going to happen later in this fic: Kris discovers he's a cylon, everyone wears layered grey and black tank tops.) Sorry about the wait!
[you can read in context over here.]
____________
Kris was restless all of Saturday, sort of discontent and annoyed with everything. Even though he'd only been working on the song with Megan since Monday, he'd been so focused on it, and so happy to be focused on it, that its absence was a shock. He still had plenty of things to work on---he had an essay to write, and orchestra music to practice, and his mom kept reminding him that the yard needed to be raked---but he was avoiding all of that even more than usual. All he wanted was more music, and it was hard to make anything feel like enough. When he was just listening, he wanted to play his guitar. When was playing his guitar, he wanted to be singing. On Sunday afternoon he gave up, essay only half done, and retreated to the garage with a stack of CDs for a couple hours to play guitar and sing along. Daniel had to finish reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Tuesday, so Kris was exiled from the house again, but he was more comfortable singing in the garage anyway. His mom came out there to talk to him twice---once to bring him a blanket to wrap around his shoulders and ask him if he was all right (He was. His hands were like blocks of ice but he was happy.) and then again to tell him that since Daniel was now sitting around playing Half-Life on the computer, Kris could come back inside.
They had Monday off for Veteran's Day, so he hung out at Katy's house and snuggled and and talked and channel surfed with her all afternoon.
"How was the open mic?" she said, nudging Kris's leg with her knee.
"I told you, it was good," he said, and hurriedly skipped over a channel playing a figure skating competition. Katy would sit there and watch it forever; she'd taken figure skating lessons when she was ten and still loved it. Kris wasn't a fan, because there was just only so much of the theme from Carmen that he could stand.
"Yeah, but that's all you said. I want details."
"There was this really weird buffalo decoration on the wall by our table," Kris said, just to be a jerk. "It had wings." When he picked up the phone to call Katy on Saturday, he'd been planning on telling her all about the open mic, about what everyone sang and how good Pony Espresso's hot chocolate was. But then she'd asked him and all he'd said was that it was fun and that his song with Megan had gone okay. He just...hadn't wanted to say anything else. He didn't have the words to describe it, and he was afraid that even trying to explain would ruin it somehow, would make it seem less amazing, or make him seem completely nuts. It was the complete reverse of the way he'd felt initially, when telling Katy about the open mic had cemented it in his mind as something that was really happening. It wasn't just Katy, either. He hadn't really said anything to anyone, even his dad, who'd done the whole being-in-a-band thing and had to know something about the way Kris felt.
"Wing? Oh, like buffalo wings," Katy said, miming dipping a buffalo wing in some sauce.
"Okay, now that makes more sense," Kris said. "And I also wish we had a plate of buffalo wings."
"I'll get you some chips if you tell me about the open mic," Katy offered.
"What, the buffalo wasn't enough detail?"
"No," Katy said, grabbing the remote and hitting mute. "Seriously, how was it? Did something horrible happen and you just don't want to tell me?"
"Yes," Kris said, trying to keep a straight face. "There was a tragic piano accident. You know all those cartoons where pianos fall on people? It was just like that. I'm traumatized now. I've been trying to hide it from you so you don't worry." Katy threw a pillow at him. "I don't know what you want me to say," he continued, tucking the thrown pillow behind his head. "Our song went fine, I messed up a little on the guitar but I don't think anyone noticed. It was...I think it was better than playing in orchestra or at a competition or something. It was so much less serious."
"Are you going to go to the next one?"
"I don't even know when it is," Kris said. "I would if Megan asked me, definitely."
"Does she still want you to sing with her? Because you should sing."
"I think she's going to buy me a lute first."
"What?"
"It was a---remember the other day, Adam said she wanted me to follow her around like a minstrel? Minstrels have lutes, I guess."
"Okay," Katy said, and Kris guessed this was one of those things where you had to be there.
"And Adam is an amazing singer," he said, because now that he'd seemingly avoided having to talk about his own experience playing guitar, he sort of wanted to talk about everything else. "Like, seriously amazing." He realized his hands were in midair, sort of waving around like he was trying to draw a picture of the stunning-ness of Adam's singing.
"I know," Katy said, giving Kris a weird look. "And so do you. Remember that solo he did at the spring concert last year?"
"Not really," Kris said. "This was different. I don't know. We didn't get to hear see Sonic Pork Chop, though. They weren't there. And I got to play a ukulele for a couple minutes. I think I want one now."
"What are you going to do with a ukulele?" Katy looked thoughtful. "I guess we could have a luau."
"Only if you're going to get an entire pig and roast it on a spit in your backyard."
Katy crinkled her nose. "Oh my god, that would be so gross."
"You can't have a luau without an entire roast pig," Kris said. "And those tiki torches."
"You're crazy," Katy said, standing up and holding her hands out to Kris. He grabbed them and let her pull him up off the couch. "Let's get some chips."
____________
He and Daniel were washing and drying the dishes after dinner on Tuesday when Daniel handed Kris a newly-washed water glass and said, "Did you go on a date with Adam Lambert?"
"No, of course not," Kris said, reflexively. "What are you talking about?" (Daniel was obviously talking about the open mic, which was the only place Kris ever been with Adam that could be interpreted as a date, but he wanted to see what Daniel would say.)
"Tim Moore said he saw you, he was at that coffee place with his girlfriend---"
"There was an open mic, I was playing guitar for someone."
"No, I know. I told him that. But he said you guys were like...sitting together, though."
"That's what you do when there are tables. You sit at them," Kris snapped. "Adam's my friend."
"Yeah, but what if he has a crush on you or something?"
"He doesn't," Kris said, putting a stack of dinner plates back in the cabinet. "Don't be an asshole."
"Kristopher," said their mom from the living room, and Kris had a vague notion that it wasn't fantastic that she was hearing this conversation.
"Sorry," he called out to her, and looked back at Daniel, who was holding up his hands in surrender, water rolling down his wrists.
"I just thought you should know people are saying that you like, went out with him," Daniel said.
"I don't care," Kris said. "And your sleeves are getting wet."
They finished the dishes and Kris went to his room and filled out a worksheet for bio absently, wondering what part of the open mic Tim Moore (whoever he was, Kris couldn't put a face with the name) had seen. He mostly skipped over the step where he was supposed to be indignant about anyone assuming he'd like, gone out with Adam at all. None of the semi-date-ish stuff that he and Adam had done---sharing a muffin, leaning to talk into each other's ears while people were performing, Kris laughing into Adam's shoulder---was anything he wouldn't have done with anyone else he was friends with, but once he added in the fact that Adam actually did date guys, and that Tim Moore was obviously a douchebag who wandered around saying things like dude, your brother is totally gay, it wasn't difficult to see how the assumption had been made. It reminded him of calling his friend Brett's house, before Brett had moved away a couple summers ago, and Brett's older brother yelling "your boyfriend's on the phone!" But that had just been his brother's idea of a joke because Brett and Kris has been inseparable since second grade (Brett was the reason Kris played viola), and practically members of each other's families. Even two years later, the fact that they'd just gradually lost touch after Brett left still stung Kris a little. So this was a different situation, and not just because he hadn't known Adam for as long, but because Adam was gay.
Kris didn't want that to be true, but it was, and it made him a little uneasy. He wanted to be able to ignore the fact that there was supposed to be a separate set of rules for being friends with Adam. He thought he should be better than that, maybe because he was in the Gay-Straight Alliance, or even just because he liked Adam a lot as a person, but stuff like this happened and it got hard to avoid, and he had to admit to himself that he didn't want people to assume he was gay. He felt like shit about it, he knew he shouldn't care, but there it was. It wasn't even about Kris thinking that being gay was a bad thing, because he didn't think it was. He really didn't. The fact that he'd only become this certain about that after joining the GSA and meeting Adam didn't make it any less true, didn't make him any less sure. It was about the fact that other people thought it was a bad thing, thought that Kris's nonexistent date with Adam was somehow wrong and gross and worth gossiping about. And he hated that everyone was so stupid, so closed-minded, and he hated himself for giving a shit about what they thought in the first place, and this was all so complicated that he had no idea how Adam just seemed to sail around being himself without going crazy.
Kris, out of pure stubborn defiance, kind of wished they had been on a date, just so Tim Moore and whoever else would have to shut up and deal with it. He figured if they'd been on a date, he could have petted Adam's hair and fixed his tie, or he might have been able to tell Adam how good his singing actually was. Instead of saying that was...really good like a complete idiot (which was still making him wince inwardly whenever he thought about it), he could have wrapped his arms around Adam the way he'd wanted to, told him that the song had been beautiful, that it had hurt him in a way that made sadness feel like something perfect. A date would have meant Adam driving Kris home with his right arm draped over the back of Kris's seat, the two of them listening to the radio and laughing, insulated in their own little car-world in the dark. And kissing, his brain supplied helpfully. Dates had kissing, like maybe when Kris had gotten back from playing guitar, Adam would have said hey, welcome back from your trance state and kissed him on the cheek, his lips pressed there just long enough to be more than friendly.
But all of that was ridiculous, Kris thought, grabbing his CD player and his headphones, because he was with Katy, he didn't date guys, and whatever Daniel said (and Daniel had no idea what he was talking about, as usual), there was no way Adam had a crush on him. Adam was totally out of his league, if they'd even been playing for the same league or team or whatever that metaphor was, Kris was moving on and drowning it out with Matchbox 20's first album and finishing his worksheet and going to sleep.
____________
Kris was half expecting someone to ask about his "date" with Adam the next day at school. No one did, but expecting it made him edgy, and he was filled with a wary kind of relief by the end of the day when he met Katy at her locker and they headed to the GSA meeting.
"...so you talked about books," Adam was saying to Nina as they walked in the door. "That's sweet, she wants to get to know you."
"Yeah, but you know what I mean. Like, this girl randomly comes out to me at a bake sale, and then I'm just supposed to ignore that and talk about books?"
Adam shrugged. "Sure. She obviously thinks you...I don't know, look trustworthy or something. So maybe she's working her way back up to it."
"Give me a second," Nina said, holding up her hand. "I'm trying to figure out if you telling me to be patient is Alanis-ironic or regular-ironic."
"I'm patient," Adam said. "Sort of."
"You can't even sit still long enough for nail polish to dry!"
"That's totally not the point. Look, you know what happened with me and Mark. I wish I'd been---I kind of just...kind of talked him into being ready to be out with me, you know? And he wasn't, and he was miserable, and that made me miserable, and if I'd been more patient it...it would have been better. So just..."
"Chill, and talk about books," Nina said. "I guess so."
"We'll save her the seat next to you," Adam said, putting his arm around Nina and bumping the side of his face gently into hers. "And now we have to stop talking about this girl before she walks in and hears us."
Nina laughed, and Alicia and Spencer walked and started talking about some show they'd gone to at the American Legion Hall, and Kris tried to remind himself that it was probably a bad idea to tell Adam that someone (other than Allison, whose question about their boyfriend-ness Kris had chalked up to the fact that she was thirteen years old and kind of excitable) thought they'd been at the open mic as a couple. He wanted to tell Adam, all of a sudden, he wasn't sure exactly why, maybe just to prove that he could be cool about it. He thought it might make Adam uncomfortable, though, make him feel like he had to apologize for it, and Kris didn't want to do that.
Vanessa (who Kris had deduced had to be the "she" in Adam and Nina's conversation earlier) showed up and did sit down next to Nina, which made Kris happy, and then the meeting started in earnest and he realized that what he'd missed because he was rehearsing with Megan last week was the inevitable shift into Serious Dance-Planning Mode. Kris had been expecting this to happen much sooner, but he'd been glad for the delay.
"So we need to book a DJ like, now," Adam said, after a conversation about decorations during which Kris practiced the chords to "Across the Universe" in his head. "And I have the number of the guy who usually does the dances, but..."
"He always plays the electric slide," Becky finished. "No way."
"I think Anoop knows some guy who DJs," Megan said. "I can ask him."
Katy patted at Kris's shoulder to get his attention. "Didn't you meet a DJ guy at that wedding you played at in July?"
"I can't believe you remember that," Kris said. "I barely remember that. But yeah, he was nice, I think I have his card somewhere. I can try and find it."
"My band could play," Spencer said. "You'd still need a DJ, I guess, but we could do a set."
"See, now that would be cool," Adam said. "I wonder if we'd be allowed to have a live band."
"I can ask at student council," Jess said. "Which reminds me, a couple people from there want to come to one of our meetings, to talk about the dance and whose money we're using for what and whatever."
"Alicia should bake something for the meeting, then they'll do whatever we want," Megan said. "They'll get all distracted by cake and we can spend their money on a giant disco ball."
"That raspberry cake was good," Rob said, and everyone talked about baked goods for a while. It turned out that Alicia's dad had worked in a bakery while he was in college, hence her complicated, not-from-a-box bake sale contributions; and they decided to possibly have another bake sale, but only after meeting with the student council members, and that Alicia should definitely bake stuff for future meetings, but preferably stuff that didn't require forks. All of which made it really disappointing when it turned out that no one had remembered to bring anything to eat, forks required or otherwise, to this meeting. Clare (Kris could tell her apart from Zoe now, because Clare had dyed her hair blonde) gave them all sticks of cinnamon gum instead. Kris was folding his gum wrapper into smaller and smaller triangles when Adam walked over to him.
"Wait, so you play at weddings?" he said. Kris had been remembering him all dressed up and polished like he was at the open mic, but today he was just wearing jeans and a Ramones t-shirt, no makeup, his hair falling all soft-looking around his face.
"Yeah," Kris said, dropping his gum wrapper onto the desk. "Not guitar, though. I'm in this string quartet thing with some guys from orchestra, so we're not like...a wedding band, we play at the actual ceremony part. It's kind of lame."
"Getting paid for music isn't lame. Well, I mean, maybe if you were writing jingles or something."
"Don't make fun of my other job," Kris said, crossing his arms, not sure if Adam was going to play along or not.
"Please tell me you're responsible for the Meow Mix song," Adam said, managing to look completely sincere.
"I'm really proud of that one, actually."
"You should be, it's so catchy!"
"The hardest part was getting the cat to sing it," Kris said. "It kept forgetting the words and going sharp."
Adam tried to nod along seriously for a second, but then gave up and laughed, loud and sweet, and Kris almost just blurted out people thought we were on a date on Friday. He actually opened his mouth to say it, but he stopped himself, because he knew it would change this moment, even if he wasn't sure how it would change it. "I'll try and bring you that guy's card tomorrow," he said instead.
"Great, thanks," Adam said, not looking up from Kris's gum wrapper, which he'd picked up, unfolded, and ripped in half so he had a square. He refolded it a bunch of times, looking intent on what he was doing. Half a gum wrapper was pretty small, so his hands looked huge folding it, and he still had the purple nail polish on his left hand that Kris had noticed post-Halloween, but it was chipped off into little tiny purple blobs in the middle of each nail. He wondered if Adam's lack of ability to sit still was the reason he'd only had one hand painted in the first place. "It's supposed to be a boat," he said, handing the newly-folded gum wrapper half to Kris. It was now a little silver trapezoid topped with two white triangles like sails. It did sort of look like a boat. "That's the limit of my origami skills. I took a class at the library when I was like, eight, I still remember how to do these for some reason."
"I can fold straw wrappers into accordions," Kris said. "That's the limit of my skills. So this seems pretty cool to me." He put the boat down on the desk and slid it along a little like it was sailing somewhere.
____________
The radio was playing everything but the new Barenaked Ladies single Kris had turned it on hoping to hear that night, and when the totally obnoxious DJ announced that they were about to play three TLC songs in a row beginning with "No Scrubs," he gave up and shut it off. It did remind him he was supposed to look for the card the DJ he'd met at that wedding, though, so he looked around his room to no avail. He couldn't find any of his wedding music stuff, actually, so he moved his search into the living room, figuring it might have ended up in the bookshelf with his dad's sheet music.
"What are you looking for?" his mom said from the couch, where she was going through a stack of mail.
"My wedding sheet music. It was in this red folder..."
"It's not there with the other music stuff?"
"I don't see it."
"Did someone ask you all to do another wedding?"
"No, I need---I think I have a business card from this DJ, and they want a DJ for the dance, so I said I'd find it..."
"You're helping plan a dance?" His mom's tone was so disbelieving that Kris laughed.
"Not on purpose," he said. "The GSA is hosting the winter formal, I can't really avoid it."
"I think it's so nice that you and Katy are in that club," she said.
"It's an alliance, mom," Kris said, exaggeratedly annoyed so she'd know he was joking. "But I'm not---I'm not doing it just to prove how nice I am. I really like everybody there." There was something soft and sort of proud about his mom's expression, and he wanted to make sure she got it, that this wasn't some charity thing for him, the sexual orientation-related equivalent of volunteering at a food drive. It had sort of started out that way, maybe, but it was important to him that she realized it was different now, that his being a member of the GSA was something he actually wanted and enjoyed, not just a nice gesture.
"I know." She stood up to give him a hug. "I can tell when you talk about it. I'd like to meet some of them."
"You met Megan." He remembered Megan addressing his mom as "Kris's mom" and wanted to laugh.
"She seemed sweet."
"I can point everybody out to you at the winter concert," he said. "Most of us are in orchestra or choir." He thought about tapping his mom on the shoulder and saying there, that's Adam during the choir performance, and couldn't help smiling. His mom would love Adam, he was almost sure.
"Okay," his mom said, and ruffled his hair. "Did you check in the garage? For your folder?"
"Why would it be out there? I never play viola in the garage."
"Your dad moved some of his music out there, into that old filing cabinet in the corner. He wanted more room for CDs in here."
"Thanks," Kris said, heading off in the direction of the garage.
"Put on your coat if you're going out there," his mom called to him. Kris rolled his eyes again, but grabbed his jacket from his room anyway. He didn't have shoes on, so he was still cold once he'd been in the garage for more than a couple minutes, but after a little hunting he found his wedding music folder in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. He stuck his free hand into the pocket of his jacket on his way back into the house and almost smashed the little gum wrapper boat Adam had made him at the meeting, which he'd forgotten about. He pulled it out of his pocket carefully and put it on his nightstand in front of his alarm clock. He could see the triangle shapes of its sails silhouetted against the clock's glowing red numbers as he fell asleep.
(Including implausible origami in a fic would make me sad, so I spent a few minutes with some gum wrappers and a google search for simple origami. The less satisfactory results are pictured below.)
[you can read in context over here.]
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Kris was restless all of Saturday, sort of discontent and annoyed with everything. Even though he'd only been working on the song with Megan since Monday, he'd been so focused on it, and so happy to be focused on it, that its absence was a shock. He still had plenty of things to work on---he had an essay to write, and orchestra music to practice, and his mom kept reminding him that the yard needed to be raked---but he was avoiding all of that even more than usual. All he wanted was more music, and it was hard to make anything feel like enough. When he was just listening, he wanted to play his guitar. When was playing his guitar, he wanted to be singing. On Sunday afternoon he gave up, essay only half done, and retreated to the garage with a stack of CDs for a couple hours to play guitar and sing along. Daniel had to finish reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Tuesday, so Kris was exiled from the house again, but he was more comfortable singing in the garage anyway. His mom came out there to talk to him twice---once to bring him a blanket to wrap around his shoulders and ask him if he was all right (He was. His hands were like blocks of ice but he was happy.) and then again to tell him that since Daniel was now sitting around playing Half-Life on the computer, Kris could come back inside.
They had Monday off for Veteran's Day, so he hung out at Katy's house and snuggled and and talked and channel surfed with her all afternoon.
"How was the open mic?" she said, nudging Kris's leg with her knee.
"I told you, it was good," he said, and hurriedly skipped over a channel playing a figure skating competition. Katy would sit there and watch it forever; she'd taken figure skating lessons when she was ten and still loved it. Kris wasn't a fan, because there was just only so much of the theme from Carmen that he could stand.
"Yeah, but that's all you said. I want details."
"There was this really weird buffalo decoration on the wall by our table," Kris said, just to be a jerk. "It had wings." When he picked up the phone to call Katy on Saturday, he'd been planning on telling her all about the open mic, about what everyone sang and how good Pony Espresso's hot chocolate was. But then she'd asked him and all he'd said was that it was fun and that his song with Megan had gone okay. He just...hadn't wanted to say anything else. He didn't have the words to describe it, and he was afraid that even trying to explain would ruin it somehow, would make it seem less amazing, or make him seem completely nuts. It was the complete reverse of the way he'd felt initially, when telling Katy about the open mic had cemented it in his mind as something that was really happening. It wasn't just Katy, either. He hadn't really said anything to anyone, even his dad, who'd done the whole being-in-a-band thing and had to know something about the way Kris felt.
"Wing? Oh, like buffalo wings," Katy said, miming dipping a buffalo wing in some sauce.
"Okay, now that makes more sense," Kris said. "And I also wish we had a plate of buffalo wings."
"I'll get you some chips if you tell me about the open mic," Katy offered.
"What, the buffalo wasn't enough detail?"
"No," Katy said, grabbing the remote and hitting mute. "Seriously, how was it? Did something horrible happen and you just don't want to tell me?"
"Yes," Kris said, trying to keep a straight face. "There was a tragic piano accident. You know all those cartoons where pianos fall on people? It was just like that. I'm traumatized now. I've been trying to hide it from you so you don't worry." Katy threw a pillow at him. "I don't know what you want me to say," he continued, tucking the thrown pillow behind his head. "Our song went fine, I messed up a little on the guitar but I don't think anyone noticed. It was...I think it was better than playing in orchestra or at a competition or something. It was so much less serious."
"Are you going to go to the next one?"
"I don't even know when it is," Kris said. "I would if Megan asked me, definitely."
"Does she still want you to sing with her? Because you should sing."
"I think she's going to buy me a lute first."
"What?"
"It was a---remember the other day, Adam said she wanted me to follow her around like a minstrel? Minstrels have lutes, I guess."
"Okay," Katy said, and Kris guessed this was one of those things where you had to be there.
"And Adam is an amazing singer," he said, because now that he'd seemingly avoided having to talk about his own experience playing guitar, he sort of wanted to talk about everything else. "Like, seriously amazing." He realized his hands were in midair, sort of waving around like he was trying to draw a picture of the stunning-ness of Adam's singing.
"I know," Katy said, giving Kris a weird look. "And so do you. Remember that solo he did at the spring concert last year?"
"Not really," Kris said. "This was different. I don't know. We didn't get to hear see Sonic Pork Chop, though. They weren't there. And I got to play a ukulele for a couple minutes. I think I want one now."
"What are you going to do with a ukulele?" Katy looked thoughtful. "I guess we could have a luau."
"Only if you're going to get an entire pig and roast it on a spit in your backyard."
Katy crinkled her nose. "Oh my god, that would be so gross."
"You can't have a luau without an entire roast pig," Kris said. "And those tiki torches."
"You're crazy," Katy said, standing up and holding her hands out to Kris. He grabbed them and let her pull him up off the couch. "Let's get some chips."
____________
He and Daniel were washing and drying the dishes after dinner on Tuesday when Daniel handed Kris a newly-washed water glass and said, "Did you go on a date with Adam Lambert?"
"No, of course not," Kris said, reflexively. "What are you talking about?" (Daniel was obviously talking about the open mic, which was the only place Kris ever been with Adam that could be interpreted as a date, but he wanted to see what Daniel would say.)
"Tim Moore said he saw you, he was at that coffee place with his girlfriend---"
"There was an open mic, I was playing guitar for someone."
"No, I know. I told him that. But he said you guys were like...sitting together, though."
"That's what you do when there are tables. You sit at them," Kris snapped. "Adam's my friend."
"Yeah, but what if he has a crush on you or something?"
"He doesn't," Kris said, putting a stack of dinner plates back in the cabinet. "Don't be an asshole."
"Kristopher," said their mom from the living room, and Kris had a vague notion that it wasn't fantastic that she was hearing this conversation.
"Sorry," he called out to her, and looked back at Daniel, who was holding up his hands in surrender, water rolling down his wrists.
"I just thought you should know people are saying that you like, went out with him," Daniel said.
"I don't care," Kris said. "And your sleeves are getting wet."
They finished the dishes and Kris went to his room and filled out a worksheet for bio absently, wondering what part of the open mic Tim Moore (whoever he was, Kris couldn't put a face with the name) had seen. He mostly skipped over the step where he was supposed to be indignant about anyone assuming he'd like, gone out with Adam at all. None of the semi-date-ish stuff that he and Adam had done---sharing a muffin, leaning to talk into each other's ears while people were performing, Kris laughing into Adam's shoulder---was anything he wouldn't have done with anyone else he was friends with, but once he added in the fact that Adam actually did date guys, and that Tim Moore was obviously a douchebag who wandered around saying things like dude, your brother is totally gay, it wasn't difficult to see how the assumption had been made. It reminded him of calling his friend Brett's house, before Brett had moved away a couple summers ago, and Brett's older brother yelling "your boyfriend's on the phone!" But that had just been his brother's idea of a joke because Brett and Kris has been inseparable since second grade (Brett was the reason Kris played viola), and practically members of each other's families. Even two years later, the fact that they'd just gradually lost touch after Brett left still stung Kris a little. So this was a different situation, and not just because he hadn't known Adam for as long, but because Adam was gay.
Kris didn't want that to be true, but it was, and it made him a little uneasy. He wanted to be able to ignore the fact that there was supposed to be a separate set of rules for being friends with Adam. He thought he should be better than that, maybe because he was in the Gay-Straight Alliance, or even just because he liked Adam a lot as a person, but stuff like this happened and it got hard to avoid, and he had to admit to himself that he didn't want people to assume he was gay. He felt like shit about it, he knew he shouldn't care, but there it was. It wasn't even about Kris thinking that being gay was a bad thing, because he didn't think it was. He really didn't. The fact that he'd only become this certain about that after joining the GSA and meeting Adam didn't make it any less true, didn't make him any less sure. It was about the fact that other people thought it was a bad thing, thought that Kris's nonexistent date with Adam was somehow wrong and gross and worth gossiping about. And he hated that everyone was so stupid, so closed-minded, and he hated himself for giving a shit about what they thought in the first place, and this was all so complicated that he had no idea how Adam just seemed to sail around being himself without going crazy.
Kris, out of pure stubborn defiance, kind of wished they had been on a date, just so Tim Moore and whoever else would have to shut up and deal with it. He figured if they'd been on a date, he could have petted Adam's hair and fixed his tie, or he might have been able to tell Adam how good his singing actually was. Instead of saying that was...really good like a complete idiot (which was still making him wince inwardly whenever he thought about it), he could have wrapped his arms around Adam the way he'd wanted to, told him that the song had been beautiful, that it had hurt him in a way that made sadness feel like something perfect. A date would have meant Adam driving Kris home with his right arm draped over the back of Kris's seat, the two of them listening to the radio and laughing, insulated in their own little car-world in the dark. And kissing, his brain supplied helpfully. Dates had kissing, like maybe when Kris had gotten back from playing guitar, Adam would have said hey, welcome back from your trance state and kissed him on the cheek, his lips pressed there just long enough to be more than friendly.
But all of that was ridiculous, Kris thought, grabbing his CD player and his headphones, because he was with Katy, he didn't date guys, and whatever Daniel said (and Daniel had no idea what he was talking about, as usual), there was no way Adam had a crush on him. Adam was totally out of his league, if they'd even been playing for the same league or team or whatever that metaphor was, Kris was moving on and drowning it out with Matchbox 20's first album and finishing his worksheet and going to sleep.
____________
Kris was half expecting someone to ask about his "date" with Adam the next day at school. No one did, but expecting it made him edgy, and he was filled with a wary kind of relief by the end of the day when he met Katy at her locker and they headed to the GSA meeting.
"...so you talked about books," Adam was saying to Nina as they walked in the door. "That's sweet, she wants to get to know you."
"Yeah, but you know what I mean. Like, this girl randomly comes out to me at a bake sale, and then I'm just supposed to ignore that and talk about books?"
Adam shrugged. "Sure. She obviously thinks you...I don't know, look trustworthy or something. So maybe she's working her way back up to it."
"Give me a second," Nina said, holding up her hand. "I'm trying to figure out if you telling me to be patient is Alanis-ironic or regular-ironic."
"I'm patient," Adam said. "Sort of."
"You can't even sit still long enough for nail polish to dry!"
"That's totally not the point. Look, you know what happened with me and Mark. I wish I'd been---I kind of just...kind of talked him into being ready to be out with me, you know? And he wasn't, and he was miserable, and that made me miserable, and if I'd been more patient it...it would have been better. So just..."
"Chill, and talk about books," Nina said. "I guess so."
"We'll save her the seat next to you," Adam said, putting his arm around Nina and bumping the side of his face gently into hers. "And now we have to stop talking about this girl before she walks in and hears us."
Nina laughed, and Alicia and Spencer walked and started talking about some show they'd gone to at the American Legion Hall, and Kris tried to remind himself that it was probably a bad idea to tell Adam that someone (other than Allison, whose question about their boyfriend-ness Kris had chalked up to the fact that she was thirteen years old and kind of excitable) thought they'd been at the open mic as a couple. He wanted to tell Adam, all of a sudden, he wasn't sure exactly why, maybe just to prove that he could be cool about it. He thought it might make Adam uncomfortable, though, make him feel like he had to apologize for it, and Kris didn't want to do that.
Vanessa (who Kris had deduced had to be the "she" in Adam and Nina's conversation earlier) showed up and did sit down next to Nina, which made Kris happy, and then the meeting started in earnest and he realized that what he'd missed because he was rehearsing with Megan last week was the inevitable shift into Serious Dance-Planning Mode. Kris had been expecting this to happen much sooner, but he'd been glad for the delay.
"So we need to book a DJ like, now," Adam said, after a conversation about decorations during which Kris practiced the chords to "Across the Universe" in his head. "And I have the number of the guy who usually does the dances, but..."
"He always plays the electric slide," Becky finished. "No way."
"I think Anoop knows some guy who DJs," Megan said. "I can ask him."
Katy patted at Kris's shoulder to get his attention. "Didn't you meet a DJ guy at that wedding you played at in July?"
"I can't believe you remember that," Kris said. "I barely remember that. But yeah, he was nice, I think I have his card somewhere. I can try and find it."
"My band could play," Spencer said. "You'd still need a DJ, I guess, but we could do a set."
"See, now that would be cool," Adam said. "I wonder if we'd be allowed to have a live band."
"I can ask at student council," Jess said. "Which reminds me, a couple people from there want to come to one of our meetings, to talk about the dance and whose money we're using for what and whatever."
"Alicia should bake something for the meeting, then they'll do whatever we want," Megan said. "They'll get all distracted by cake and we can spend their money on a giant disco ball."
"That raspberry cake was good," Rob said, and everyone talked about baked goods for a while. It turned out that Alicia's dad had worked in a bakery while he was in college, hence her complicated, not-from-a-box bake sale contributions; and they decided to possibly have another bake sale, but only after meeting with the student council members, and that Alicia should definitely bake stuff for future meetings, but preferably stuff that didn't require forks. All of which made it really disappointing when it turned out that no one had remembered to bring anything to eat, forks required or otherwise, to this meeting. Clare (Kris could tell her apart from Zoe now, because Clare had dyed her hair blonde) gave them all sticks of cinnamon gum instead. Kris was folding his gum wrapper into smaller and smaller triangles when Adam walked over to him.
"Wait, so you play at weddings?" he said. Kris had been remembering him all dressed up and polished like he was at the open mic, but today he was just wearing jeans and a Ramones t-shirt, no makeup, his hair falling all soft-looking around his face.
"Yeah," Kris said, dropping his gum wrapper onto the desk. "Not guitar, though. I'm in this string quartet thing with some guys from orchestra, so we're not like...a wedding band, we play at the actual ceremony part. It's kind of lame."
"Getting paid for music isn't lame. Well, I mean, maybe if you were writing jingles or something."
"Don't make fun of my other job," Kris said, crossing his arms, not sure if Adam was going to play along or not.
"Please tell me you're responsible for the Meow Mix song," Adam said, managing to look completely sincere.
"I'm really proud of that one, actually."
"You should be, it's so catchy!"
"The hardest part was getting the cat to sing it," Kris said. "It kept forgetting the words and going sharp."
Adam tried to nod along seriously for a second, but then gave up and laughed, loud and sweet, and Kris almost just blurted out people thought we were on a date on Friday. He actually opened his mouth to say it, but he stopped himself, because he knew it would change this moment, even if he wasn't sure how it would change it. "I'll try and bring you that guy's card tomorrow," he said instead.
"Great, thanks," Adam said, not looking up from Kris's gum wrapper, which he'd picked up, unfolded, and ripped in half so he had a square. He refolded it a bunch of times, looking intent on what he was doing. Half a gum wrapper was pretty small, so his hands looked huge folding it, and he still had the purple nail polish on his left hand that Kris had noticed post-Halloween, but it was chipped off into little tiny purple blobs in the middle of each nail. He wondered if Adam's lack of ability to sit still was the reason he'd only had one hand painted in the first place. "It's supposed to be a boat," he said, handing the newly-folded gum wrapper half to Kris. It was now a little silver trapezoid topped with two white triangles like sails. It did sort of look like a boat. "That's the limit of my origami skills. I took a class at the library when I was like, eight, I still remember how to do these for some reason."
"I can fold straw wrappers into accordions," Kris said. "That's the limit of my skills. So this seems pretty cool to me." He put the boat down on the desk and slid it along a little like it was sailing somewhere.
____________
The radio was playing everything but the new Barenaked Ladies single Kris had turned it on hoping to hear that night, and when the totally obnoxious DJ announced that they were about to play three TLC songs in a row beginning with "No Scrubs," he gave up and shut it off. It did remind him he was supposed to look for the card the DJ he'd met at that wedding, though, so he looked around his room to no avail. He couldn't find any of his wedding music stuff, actually, so he moved his search into the living room, figuring it might have ended up in the bookshelf with his dad's sheet music.
"What are you looking for?" his mom said from the couch, where she was going through a stack of mail.
"My wedding sheet music. It was in this red folder..."
"It's not there with the other music stuff?"
"I don't see it."
"Did someone ask you all to do another wedding?"
"No, I need---I think I have a business card from this DJ, and they want a DJ for the dance, so I said I'd find it..."
"You're helping plan a dance?" His mom's tone was so disbelieving that Kris laughed.
"Not on purpose," he said. "The GSA is hosting the winter formal, I can't really avoid it."
"I think it's so nice that you and Katy are in that club," she said.
"It's an alliance, mom," Kris said, exaggeratedly annoyed so she'd know he was joking. "But I'm not---I'm not doing it just to prove how nice I am. I really like everybody there." There was something soft and sort of proud about his mom's expression, and he wanted to make sure she got it, that this wasn't some charity thing for him, the sexual orientation-related equivalent of volunteering at a food drive. It had sort of started out that way, maybe, but it was important to him that she realized it was different now, that his being a member of the GSA was something he actually wanted and enjoyed, not just a nice gesture.
"I know." She stood up to give him a hug. "I can tell when you talk about it. I'd like to meet some of them."
"You met Megan." He remembered Megan addressing his mom as "Kris's mom" and wanted to laugh.
"She seemed sweet."
"I can point everybody out to you at the winter concert," he said. "Most of us are in orchestra or choir." He thought about tapping his mom on the shoulder and saying there, that's Adam during the choir performance, and couldn't help smiling. His mom would love Adam, he was almost sure.
"Okay," his mom said, and ruffled his hair. "Did you check in the garage? For your folder?"
"Why would it be out there? I never play viola in the garage."
"Your dad moved some of his music out there, into that old filing cabinet in the corner. He wanted more room for CDs in here."
"Thanks," Kris said, heading off in the direction of the garage.
"Put on your coat if you're going out there," his mom called to him. Kris rolled his eyes again, but grabbed his jacket from his room anyway. He didn't have shoes on, so he was still cold once he'd been in the garage for more than a couple minutes, but after a little hunting he found his wedding music folder in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. He stuck his free hand into the pocket of his jacket on his way back into the house and almost smashed the little gum wrapper boat Adam had made him at the meeting, which he'd forgotten about. He pulled it out of his pocket carefully and put it on his nightstand in front of his alarm clock. He could see the triangle shapes of its sails silhouetted against the clock's glowing red numbers as he fell asleep.
(Including implausible origami in a fic would make me sad, so I spent a few minutes with some gum wrappers and a google search for simple origami. The less satisfactory results are pictured below.)