Fic: The Rescue Blues | AI8 | Kris/Adam | Adult | 2/2
The Rescue Blues
part 2, continued from here.
Kris doesn't see Adam all weekend and he's not sure what'll happen that Monday when he walks over to Caffeine Dealer for lunch. He doesn't know if Brad said anything to Adam, but since it's Brad, Kris wouldn't be surprised if he told Adam that Kris admitted his undying love over breakfast tacos at Magnolia, because Brad hates to wait for anything, even other people's drama. Maybe especially for other people's drama.
But Adam doesn't say anything, just smiles bright when he sees Kris and pulls off his apron, hanging it on one of the hooks behind the counter and saying, "I think Soup Peddler has French onion today."
And even though he might be in love with Adam, and even though he might be totally gay for Adam, or just totally gay in general (because no matter what Brad says, sometimes people just don't know, sometimes people have brain damage and psychological trauma and amnesia, and sexual orientation seems like the least important thing to figure out about himself), it's really hard to feel uncomfortable around Adam. There's something about him that makes Kris forget the rest of the world and the accident and those awful six months in Arkansas when he couldn't feel much of anything at all. Kris feels like he's being himself when he's with Adam. Like he's being genuine and himself without worrying about who that person used to be.
It's hard to feel weird around the only person who makes him feel like he's truly himself. He can't remember to be worried when Adam is looking down at Kris over the rims of his sunglasses and telling stories about horrible customers who demand chocolate sprinkles on everything or whatever weird thing Allison did that day or how Matt demanded payment for giving Kris a job in the form of a set-up with one of Adam's theater friends.
"And she's way too hot for him," Adam says as they hover just inside the doorway to the Soup Peddler to check out the day's menu, written in pink and turquoise chalk on a blackboard behind the counter. "Way out of his league. Plus, I think she's a socialist."
"I'm not convinced Matt is a real anarchist, though," Kris says, stepping up to the counter. "He's never even been arrested, and I know for a fact that he voted in the last election. Participation in organized government isn't very anarchical."
"That's so not a word," Adam says. He gives his order to the peddler, who says, "It's a word. It sounds made up on purpose, to fool the government drones." Kris knows better not to laugh; the peddler takes everything very seriously, and Kris doesn't want to be denied his French onion. He doesn't know if he liked it before, but it's pretty much his favorite thing now.
There are exactly three tables in the Soup Peddler and they snag the only empty one, stashed in the far corner underneath a huge, out-of-control spider plant, which Kris hates because sometimes dead leaves fall onto his head or once, into his soup. Kris ends up in the wobbly chair and spends five minutes trying to adjust his position so he's not tipping over every time he leans forward to eat his soup, until Adam wraps his fingers around Kris's wrist and says, "You're making me dizzy. Just submit to the wobbling."
Kris coughs and jerks his hand a little, and Adam lets go with a small frown, sitting back in his seat and looking at Kris in silence until Kris really does start to feel kind of weird. Even the soup tastes weird, too salty or something, and he can feel himself turning red just from all the staring. "Are you still upset?" Adam says finally, and when Kris looks up again, Adam actually looks nervous. "About the other night, I mean. I didn't--that wasn't the plan, the thing with Brad. It just kind of... happened. The living room wasn't a great decision." His mouth folds in on itself like he's trying not to say more, and Kris kind of hates that he made Adam look like that, guilty and sad and worried. Adam shouldn't look like that. It doesn't fit his face.
Kris shakes his head and looks down at his soup again. This is such a weird conversation to have over French onion. It feels like more of a potato and leek thing, or maybe one of those cold summer soups that Kris hates because soup just shouldn't be cold, it's unnatural and gross. "I was upset," Kris says. "Maybe I'm still upset. But not at you. You guys didn't do anything wrong. I'm maybe upset with myself, though." Kris stirs his soup a little, watching the bread dissolve slowly into pieces while the cheese sinks to the bottom of the bowl.
"You know you can talk to me, right?" Adam's fingers brush against his wrist again, and this time Kris doesn't jerk away. It feels like a long time since he let anyone touch him, and he can't remember the last time he felt comforted by such a simple, small thing. His mom was always touching him, little touches on his hand or elbow, longer hugs that were always just a little too tight, but that never felt like it was for him. Adam's fingers brush over the knob of his wrist bone and it feels right. It feels like belonging. "You can tell me anything, Kris. You know me."
"I want to," Kris says, and as soon as he says it, he knows it's true. He has about a million things he wants to tell Adam, like thank you, and he hopes Adam feels the same way, and please ask him to stay for good, and that Adam is the only person who knows the real him. He wants to tell Adam about the accident, about Katy and his hour of memories and how maybe that's all he'll ever get back, or maybe he'll have a flood of them all at once and turn back into the Kris he used to be. He wants to say how scared he is of that last thing, because he doesn't know how used-to-be-Kris would feel about Adam, and he's not sure he ever wants to find out. He just knows how he feels now, how this Kris feels, and he wants more than anything for that to be the most important part.
"Ask me again tomorrow?" Kris says, and Adam smiles.
*
The thing about amnesia is that the person Kris knows least about is always himself. He's only known Adam for a month, but he's already learned more about him than he did in the six months Kris spent in Arkansas trying to reconstruct himself from videos and stories and photos. He knows that Adam came to Austin as a hired singer for a band doing a South by Southwest showcase; he knows the band didn't get signed but Adam decided to stay anyway, because LA was nothing like he hoped it would be and everything he was secretly afraid of. LA was rejection after rejection, living off ramen and Trader Joe's gift cards from his mom and making bad sex decisions after even worse drug decisions. LA was a culture of toxicity, Adam says, and Austin felt like freedom, like the first breath of fresh air after being locked in a car with a smoker, and when Adam tells Kris this, Kris doesn't laugh because that feels too true to joke about. And that was five years ago and Adam's been here ever since, keeping shit weird.
There are other things Kris knows, weirdly intimate things to know about someone when he doesn't even know them about himself. He knows that Brad is the only person Adam's ever been in love with and it didn't end badly but it ended just the same, and sometimes when Kris sees them together, it makes his heart hurt a little, and not just for Adam, either. He wonders if that's how he felt about Katy once upon a time before he went all Sleeping Beauty on her, and he's kind of lucky in some ways because he'll maybe never have to know. Heartache doesn't look like much fun, so maybe it's good that Kris can't remember. Maybe there are some things it's better to forget.
So he knows a lot about Adam, but it's not until Adam's friend who manages the Kiss and Fly convinces Adam to sing in their post-Pride event that Kris realizes he's so wrong about that, because he never knew about this.
It's a low-key event for the Kiss and Fly, no drag burlesque, no crazy costumes, just a bunch of local queer singers doing short sets with a piano accompanist, and Kris buys about five drinks too many because all the proceeds are going to the queer youth center. Kris has money to spare and he has to navigate the incredibly awkward space between Brad and Matt somehow, which basically means getting them both so wasted that Brad forgets how much he hates pretentious philosopher-hipster types who wear fedoras "like they think they're bringing DoucheyBack," and Matt forgets to give his daily rant about the ways in which gays are contributing to their own oppression by participating in the patriarchal industrial complex that is the capitalist US economy. Whatever that means. Kris is pretty sure even Matt doesn't know.
By the time he returns to their table near the stage with a new round of drinks, though, Matt is already halfway through his speech and Brad's eyes are rolling so hard that Kris fears for their continued structural integrity.
"Thank fucking god," Brad says, snatching a glass from Kris's hand and downing it in one go. He looks pointedly from Kris to Matt and Kris sighs, hands over his own drink. "Don't look like that," Brad says, taking a long slurp from Kris's chocolate raspberry margarita. "It's your own fault for befriending an anarchist and then leaving us alone together. It would drive anyone to drink!"
"How can you live with this guy?" Matt asks as Kris slides into his seat. "All he cares about is reality television and the way he looks."
"That's so untrue," Brad says, sneering a little. "I also care about tequila and fucking hot guys. So don't worry," he adds, "you and your hat are perfectly safe."
As the current singer winds down her act, Brad waves at Scarlett and Alisan from across the crowded club to join them, friends of Brad's and Adam's, "burners," he calls them. "We all met at Burning Man," he says as the girls pull up chairs. He looks at Matt, raises an eyebrow. "I'm surprised you're not into it, Mr. Anarchist." Kris has only met them once before, his first night in Austin when he got so drunk he agreed to live with Brad, but he remembers them being nice. Then again, he was drunk enough to agree to live with Brad, so that's not saying much.
"It's just another example of capitalists usurping anarchist ideals to make money," Matt says.
"Plus the drugs," Scarlett says.
"And don't forget the orgies," Alisan adds. She glances at the stage, looks around the room with a satisfied nod. "People showed up. I knew if I could get Adam to sing, people would be willing to brave the wild unknown of Fourth Street to see him."
"Kris is a musician, too," Brad says, smiling sharply. "And he can actually play instruments, unlike some people who are not, as it turns out, the be all, end all of singing."
"Adam doesn't need instruments to be amazing," Alisan snaps, eyes narrowed at Brad across the table while he sips Kris's drink with an air of absolute innocence. "And stop acting like a jealous twat."
Kris isn't sure what to think and he's feeling lost again because there are so many things he still doesn't know, not just about himself or Adam or Brad, but about the world and how these things work. There are a hundred social cues he can't recognize anymore, a million things said through subtle facial expressions and body language clues that Kris has no idea how to read; he doesn't even have a context to put them in. But when he looks over at Matt, he looks just as confused as Kris feels, so it's probably not something he's supposed to get, anyway. Not this time. The tension snaps abruptly when a thin, pretty guy wearing a jacket with so many spikes attached that it could double as a weapon sets a tray full of shots down on their table and collapses heavily onto Brad's lap, laughing and saying, "Cassidy is here, bitches! Now the party can really start."
Brad tries to shove him off, saying, "What, is there a chair shortage, asshole?" but the guy must be heavier than he looks, because he doesn't move except to pass around shot glasses and lime slices. Kris takes his shot obediently, turning to Alisan and saying, "So, Adam must be pretty good, huh?" He licks the tequila off his lips and wonders when he got drunk, because suddenly he's feeling very good. Warm and loose and happy, and he's not even worrying about Brad flirting with Cassidy, not even wondering how Adam will feel about it or the fact that he sort of hopes Adam doesn't give a shit, even though a week ago he and Brad were hooking up on Kris's couch. Kris doesn't feel much of anything at all, actually, except a little drunk and a lot relaxed. No fear, no anxiety, he thinks, and smiles wide.
Alisan gives him a funny look. "You mean you've known Adam for almost a month and you've never heard him sing?"
Kris shrugs. "Mostly we go to the Soup Peddler and they barely let you talk, much less sing. We'd probably get banned for life, and then no more French onion, which would be really sad." Kris looks around at the crowd, and the club is pretty much bursting, every chair taken with people standing in the spaces between the tables and crowded around the bar in the back. Even the balcony above is full, and Kris shakes his head, says, "He must be good if all these people are here for him." He must be really good, Kris thinks, and wonders why Adam never said so. They've talked about music, about singing, about why Adam gave it all up in the first place, but Adam never mentioned that he could fill clubs with just rumors of a performance. It feels wrong that Kris didn't know.
"Well, you're about to find out," Alisan says, and nods toward the stage, where Adam is adjusting his mic stand and sliding onto a stool. And then he starts singing, and Kris realizes that he could know every personal tiny detail of Adam's life, every thought and wish and dream and disappointment, but he wouldn't know anything at all if he never knew this.
It's not just that he has a good voice. Everyone who sang that night before Adam was good, but there's something about Adam when he's singing, something so painfully honest that it feels like Kris is looking at Adam's insides, like he's reading the truths written beneath his skin, exposed for everyone to see. It feels like an invasion, like the time he found Katy's diary left behind with her US History book after they pulled an all-nighter to cram for the AP exam, and he knew he shouldn't look but he did it anyway. It didn't say anything important or shocking or anything, but he remembers one line in particular, one sentence that stuck with him because he'd thought the same thing: I love him, but sometimes I wonder if this is all there is.
The way Adam sings--Kris knows suddenly and with a terrifying clarity that Katy was right to wonder. Kris thinks that if he'd ever felt anything as deeply as Adam feels this song, he would know. The answer came like a shot in the back while you were running from your lesson, Adam sings, and Kris thinks he wouldn't have to try to remember that feeling because it would be a part of him, so deep inside that it couldn't escape. It couldn't just slip away with everything else.
On stage, Adam finishes his song and starts a new one, smiles a little, shakes his head like he can't really believe people are so happy to hear him. Afterward, standing outside in the thick heat of the night air waiting for their cab to show up, with Brad stumbling off with Cassidy down Sixth to hit Rain before last call, Kris laces his fingers between Adam's and says, "Why would you ever quit something you were born to do?"
Adam sighs and tilts his head back to look up at the stars. "It's not like I didn't try," he says, squeezing Kris's hand warmly. "I did the LA thing for three years, did the rejection thing for three years. The band and South By was supposed to be my break, and when it all fell apart, it just seemed like the universe was trying to tell me something."
Kris leans against him, a little drunk still, but thinking this is finally something he knows, it's the only thing he never forgot. "That's bullshit," Kris says. "The universe would never tell you to stop doing something you love. Maybe it was trying to tell you something, but it would never tell you that." Kris forgot everything except for the music, and he thinks that must mean something. The universe would never tell someone to give up.
"What about when you stop loving it?" Adam says in soft voice. He looks down at Kris, eyes bright in the orange glow on the street lamp.
"I think you have to ask if it's the music you stopped loving, or maybe the rest of it you started hating."
"Singing's like a shitty boyfriend," Adam says. "The sex is still amazing when you get it, but he leaves his dirty underwear on the bathroom floor and only calls when everyone else he knows is too busy to hang out. Then he leaves you for someone younger and prettier and thinner and you just don't have the heart to keep trying."
Kris still thinks it's bullshit, but he knows he can't make Adam want something if he's not ready for it, even if Kris thinks it's the most alive and present and beautiful Adam's ever been, singing on that stage. He leans closer and rests his head against Adam's shoulder, warm and happy and wishing more than anything that he could put words to the way Adam makes him feel. It seems important and big and he doesn't want to mess this up, but he's not sure he's ready either. Kris is basically only six months old, though, so he has an excuse. Adam's excuse, Kris thinks, is totally lame.
"Just don't--don't miss out on something because you're afraid of the past, you know?"
Adam doesn't say anything for a while, and Kris wonders if maybe he said something wrong, went too far and messed it up after all because it's not like Kris is one of Adam's old friends; he's not Brad or Alisan or even Matt. He's just some random guy who walked in off the street one day, some random guy who knows more about Adam's past than his own and is pretty much the last person who should be giving life advice, considering he can't remember what he was planning to do with his own in the first place. But then Adam wraps his arm around Kris's shoulders and says, "I know," and Kris thinks maybe he's not so random after all.
Maybe the universe was trying to tell Adam something, and it sent Kris in as a messenger. Or maybe Kris is still pretty drunk and the universe has nothing to do with it, but either way, he hopes Adam really does know.
*
"Do you believe in God?" Kris says. He's dusting the top shelves of the bookcases that never get cleaned or even looked at because no one likes to climb on the sliding ladder. They'll make Molotov cocktails and get arrested for trying to disrupt the Republican National Convention, but a wobbly ladder? Forget it. Anarchists, Kris thinks, are kind of lame.
Matt looks up at him from his position by the foot of the ladder, ready to slide Kris over when it's time to move to the next shelf. "Anarchists don't believe in God," Matt says.
Kris rolls his eyes. "I think we both know you're not really an anarchist. What do you believe?"
Matt shrugs. "Yeah, I guess I do. It's personal. I don't like organized religion, churches trying to tell everyone what to think and believe like they know God's will. People invented churches, not God." He pauses and jerks the ladder, sliding it down to the next shelf even though Kris hasn't finished the first one. "Also, fuck you. I'm totally an anarchist. You just don't get anarchy on a fundamental level. You color code your shirts by the days of the week. You so do not get anarchy."
Kris asks Brad while they're eating Chinese takeout and watching some lame reality show about lame people having lame conversations and sighing a lot. "Do you believe in God?"
Brad jabs at his noodles with his chopsticks and shrugs. "Yes. No. Sometimes. I don't believe that Jesus Christ is my personal savior or whatever, but I like to think there's some kind of magic being watching over us and nudging things along when we fuck up really badly." He pokes Kris in the leg with a bare toe, and Kris is just grateful Brad's wearing pants. Maybe there is a god. "What about you?" Brad says. "Do you believe in God?"
"I don't know." Kris doesn't know if there's a God or if he believes in one, but he would really like to believe. Somehow, he doesn't think that counts, though. It's not the same thing as faith, anyway.
"Big surprise. You don't know a lot of things," Brad says, stabbing at his noodles again. "You're like this alien who doesn't even know what his favorite book is, or whether he likes dick."
"I know you're a bitch," Kris says, and smiles sweetly while Brad chokes on his noodles.
When he asks Adam, he doesn't get an answer right away. They're waiting on the Congress Street bridge for the bats to come out, because Kris has been here almost two months and never seen the bats, which Adam decided was a tragedy that needed to be remedied immediately. The sun hits the water in a blaze of red-gold and Kris leans back against the railing to look up at the sky, hazy blue with a heavy moon already hanging low, like they're on Mars or something, everything red and blue and hot and dry. It reminds him of last summer when he and Daniel hiked up Mount Magazine to the highest point in Arkansas, ditching the official trail for a narrow dirt one lined with tall reeds and wildflowers until they found the edge, a cliff jutting out into the clear sky with Oklahoma spread out on one side and Arkansas on the other, the sun melting into the horizon in orange and red while the clouds bruised purple in the distance and Daniel said, "I wish we could just stay like this forever."
The bats come out then, a swarm of fluttering black rising in an arc like one massive animal, and it's so loud that Kris forgets what he was asking because the noise leaves no room for thoughts. It's just this mindless chirping-buzzing thing that Kris can feel in his bones like vibrations, like some bizarre sonic roller coaster, and Adam says, "Doesn't it feel beautiful?" Kris thinks it feels more than beautiful. It feels powerful. It feels right.
Later, walking back to Kris's apartment in the dark with the competing sounds of the buzz of the crickets and a blues-rock band covering Janis Joplin trickling out from Threadgill's, Adam says, "I believe in the universe. I believe that we get out what we put in, and everyday alive is a test we pass for future joy."
Kris grins up at him and nudges him a little, shoulder to shoulder. "Do you even know what that means?"
Adam laughs. "No, but it sounds good, doesn't it?" He shakes his head. "I think it just means... believing in God is kind of like having faith that we're never alone, no matter what. And I think that's true. No one is ever alone and no one ever has to be lost, because we all belong to this world and this universe and each other."
"That would be nice," Kris says, and Adam slides an arm around his waist, squeezing a little in a half-hug.
"It is nice."
*
August in Texas is a lot like what Kris would imagine Hell to be, if he believed in Hell, which he's not quite sure of but he thinks he probably doesn't. It's over a hundred degrees every day with no rain for a month, which he thinks should mean it would be dry, at least, but it's not. He steps outside his apartment and feels like he's drowning in the air, it's so thick with water, and the sky is a constant cloudless electric blue above, no rain in sight. Along the highway the road signs that usually tell him to buckle up in his truck proclaim in scrolling orange letters that there's a fire ban on, fireworks are forbidden, and to please report any brush fires to the police. Adam just rolls his eyes and directs Kris where to exit, guides him turn by turn until they pull up in front of the house Adam and his brother are renting. It's moving day, and Kris can't help but feel kind of melancholy about it.
And it's not like Adam's going far. He's just moving north of the capital, closer to campus because Neil is starting grad school in a few weeks and Adam is sick of his shitty, cockroach-infested apartment down south where people's cars get broken into every other day and his upstairs neighbors have nightly screaming fights on their balcony that don't end until he calls the cops on them. It's a ten minute drive, and it's not a big deal, but Kris still feels a little sad about it. It feels like an ending, or something. It feels wrong.
"You just don't like change," Adam says as they unload Matt's pickup, which he stated would be his only contribution to the moving efforts because he and moving other people's heavy objects don't get along. It's not that much stuff, mostly just clothes and books and CDs, a television and a stereo and a couple boxes of random crap. Adam didn't want to take his furniture. When Kris asked why, Adam just shrugged and said, "I just want to start fresh, you know? New beginning. Plus, I'm pretty sure it's all infested with cockroaches anyway. One got trapped inside the microwave display panel yesterday and couldn't find its way out. It would've been sad if it hadn't been so disgusting."
Neil comes out onto the porch to watch while they carry Adam's stuff inside, exchanging banter with Adam while he follows them through the house to Adam's bedroom, waits while they set his things in the middle of the room and follows them back out again.
"You could help, you know," Adam says as he shoulders a plastic garbage bag full of clothes and tucks a box under one arm.
"I could," Neil says, grinning, "but this is a lot more fun for me."
Kris smiles and grabs a heavy box of books, following Adam back into the house and thinking about the day he helped move Katy into her dorm freshman year of college, how nervous and excited she was about being away from home, and the way she hugged him before he left, squirming a little but holding on tight, like she couldn't decide if she wanted him to stay forever or be gone already. She said, "I hope you don't hate me for wanting to come here instead of Central Arkansas with you," and Kris said, "I could never hate you, you'll always be my best girl." Now Kris only knows her in bits and pieces, tiny flashes of memory that are more frustrating than revealing. He hopes she's happy, wherever she is. He thinks she's the kind of girl who could take over the world if she wanted to, and he'll probably never understand what she was doing with him. What they were doing together.
That was an ending too, Kris thinks as he sets the last box down and slides it into the center of Adam's new room, but it was a beginning, just like Adam said. It was kind of the beginning of all of this, because before then, Kris never realized that maybe he could do it on his own, just go off in the world and find his own way and let Katy find hers. He always thought their destinies were tied together, true and tight, but now he knows that was just a self-fulfilling prophecy; it only existed because he thought it did, because he thought that's the way things were supposed to be and it was maybe easier to go along with it.
The universe had other plans, and Kris can't be upset about that.
There's a party that night to celebrate the whole moving thing so Kris stays and helps Adam unpack while they wait for his new bed to be delivered. Adam sits on the floor in his walk-in closet, handing Kris shirts and pants and other mysterious garments for him to hang up or stack onto the built-in shelves. He smiles up at Kris and says, "Remember when you moved into Brad's and I had to give you a lesson in the proper care and handling of clothes?"
"It feels like a long time ago," Kris says. "I wasn't even gonna stay. California, here I come."
Adam laughs. "Right back where we started from."
"We're not singing the theme song from The OC," Kris says, hanging up the last shirt and shaking his head. "We're not that far gone yet. We have pride! We have dignity."
"Dignity is overrated," Adam says, standing up and brushing off his jeans. "You're right, though. It feels like a long time ago." He reaches up to brush a stray dust bunny from Kris's shoulder then leaves his hand there, warm and solid through Kris's t-shirt, fingertips just brushing the bare skin at the back of Kris's neck. "I still feel like I've known you forever," Adam says, and leans down to kiss him, just like that. Simple, easy. Real.
This is still the only kiss Kris can remember, or the only one that counts, really, because the thing with Kenny was lame and kind of sad and he was drunk anyway, but this. This is different; this is something Kris never wants to forget. He doesn't know if it's some kind of special first kiss magic, or if it's because it's Adam, or if Kris really is just batshit crazy, but Kris is pretty sure he never wants Adam to stop kissing him, now that he's finally started. It's just a soft press of lips, the only parts of them touching except for Adam's hand on his shoulder and his fingers on his neck, the wet heat of Adam's tongue tasting him, just once, and the soft rush of warmth against his cheek when Adam sighs a little and pulls away.
Adam grins, fingers sliding further up Kris's neck and back down in a shivery drag of skin-on-skin that makes Kris wish there wasn't a party tonight, that he could just stay here with Adam and do--whatever, just be, just touch--and then Adam says, "I can't believe we're doing this in a closet. It's so fifth grade. It's so gay!"
Kris laughs and leans up, because they should never stop kissing, except maybe to do other things, but then Neil is yelling from the front of the house that the mattress delivery guys are here and could Adam please come direct them where to deposit the bed. Adam pulls away with a smile and they go to help, and then Neil orders pizza and people start showing up, even Matt, who's still kind of pissed at Adam for never setting Matt up with his hot theater friend.
"He didn't even try," Matt says, narrowing his eyes at Adam from across the wide back deck. "I bet he didn't even ask her."
"You could ask her yourself," Kris says, frowning and shaking his head when Matt tries to pass him a pipe with a freshly packed bowl.
"One hit won't kill you," Matt says, rolling his eyes. "You're already drinking. Beer is so much worse for you. Plus, every time you smoke up is like giving the finger to the oppressive US government of fascists. They're secretly working with the drug cartels anyway to get the nation addicted to heroine and meth and cocaine and crack. That's how they keep the poor people poor, you know. It's all part of the plot, but marijuana doesn't fit in because it's actually like, good for you and shit. Cures diseases, helps with pain. No one smokes a J and then stabs their wife and kids, man. No one--"
"If I take it, will you shut up?" Kris says, and Matt just smiles and holds it out again. Kris's body seems to know what to do on its own, how to cover the little hole at the base of the bowl, when to breathe in, when to let go and how to hold the smoke in his lungs before breathing out in a slow exhale. He's done this before; even if his brain can't remember it, his body does. His parents never told him about this, and Kris thinks that he had a lot of secrets, before. It's like trying to unravel the mysteries of Laura Palmer without the pie and hookers. At least, he hopes not. Twin Peaks kind of freaked him out when he watched it with Brad last month, and now every time Brad gets even slightly drunk, he stares at Kris with wide eyes and says, "Your hair is full of secrets." Kris's hair is the opposite of secrets, he thinks. It's hard to have secrets when you can't remember anything.
"I thought you'd never done this?" Matt says, taking the pipe back. He lights the bowl and breathes in, passes the pipe back. Kris shrugs.
"I honestly don't know."
"You're honestly a fucking liar," Matt says, but he's smiling and tipping his head back to stare up at the night sky. He doesn't notice his hat slide from his head onto the rough wood of the deck, and Kris doesn't tell him, just takes another long hit and passes the pipe back. Matt looks better without it, anyway. Brad's kind of right about the DoucheyBack thing, although Kris would be really happy to never hear that song again, not even Brad's parody version about Matt's unhealthy love for fedoras.
"I have amnesia," Kris says. He kicks off his flip flops and settles on one of the long, built-in wooden benches that line the outside railing of the deck, rubs the soles of his feet against the still sun-warm wood, smooth and worn and almost soft against his skin.
"Now I know you're a fucking liar," Matt says. He looks down at Kris, rolls his eyes again. "Bowl's tapped. I'm gonna get a drink. You want anything?"
Kris is too busy looking at the sky to notice. Everything is bigger here, Kris thinks, even the sky. Even the night. He likes it.
Later, after Matt leaves and Brad passes out in Neil's bed and most everyone is out back on the deck exchanging "remember when" stories that Kris couldn't participate in even if he'd been there, Kris finds a guitar that someone abandoned on the living room sofa. He settles on the floor in front of the couch and starts playing, at first just songs he knows, songs he's learned since before, songs he's remembered along the way. He loves the feel of the strings against his fingers, the cool slide and drag of them against his skin as he changes chords, the low sweet sound of his own voice filling the room in a quiet sort of way.
"You have a good voice," Adam says from the doorway leading into the kitchen, leaning in the frame with his arms crossed, pale light from the overhead spilling into the darkened living from from behind him. "We should try to get you some shows. I have a friend who works at Buffalo Billiards, he could totally hook you up."
Kris pushes his palm flat against the shiny-slick surface of the guitar and ducks his head, shrugging. "I'm not that good," he says. "I'm nothing compared to you. I never got anywhere with it back in Arkansas."
Adam slides down to sit next to him on the floor so that their crossed knees brush whenever he shifts. He leans back against the couch, arms open wide along the cushions and says, "I'm just a singer. But you're like, an actual musician, and that should mean something, you know?" His fingers slide forward to drag a knuckle down the back of Kris's neck and Kris leans into it, tightens his grip on the guitar. "Play me something of yours."
Kris plays him the song he wrote the night he walked in on Adam with Brad, the song he rewrote because he'd really written it three years ago in his dorm room, sitting on the stained industrial carpet in the space between the beds and wondering what his next roommate would be like, and if things would always end this way. Kris has to stop halfway through, because it feels wrong, now, to be singing this song. It doesn't feel true anymore, more like a lie from a previous life. Maybe that's all it is.
Kris says, "I thought it was about you, but it's not. It's not even about me, you know?"
Adam says, "How wasted are you right now?"
"I'm not. Well, a little. But mostly not."
"Good," Adam says, pulling the guitar from Kris's slack grip and setting it aside, standing up and reaching for Kris's hands to pull him up, too. "Because I don't do random drunken hookups, but we've already fucked around long enough, and I'm tired of waiting."
"Me too," Kris says, and lets himself be led.
*
Katy told him they were both virgins, and Kris hasn't remembered anything since that makes him think otherwise. There are a lot of things his body remembers even when his his head doesn't--the slide and strum of his fingers on guitar strings, the shape of notes in his mouth and the smooth press of his hands on a keyboard coaxing out melodies in slow stutters and starts. But his body doesn't know this yet, the shocking heat of Adam's mouth on his, Adam's fingers wrapping around him, their bodies pressed skin to skin. Kris is pretty sure that he's the only one who's ever touched his dick before, because he thinks if he ever felt like this, he would remember it, brain damaged or not. He can't imagine forgetting.
"Is this--you okay?" Adam says in a long breath out, face pressed against Kris's neck. His fingers slide up, brush over the head of Kris's dick and he arches with a surprised little moan that makes Adam laugh and say, "Yeah, you're okay."
Kris kind of wants to hide his face in his hands because this is, yeah. It's overwhelming and crazy and he can't think when Adam's touching him like that and looking at him like that, but if he hid then he'd have to stop touching, too, and Kris doesn't want that. Adam's skin is warm and soft and his hip fits perfectly in the curve of Kris's palm. Facing each other with their legs tangled together, Kris thinks they must look like mismatched puzzle pieces and he can count the freckles on Adam's cheeks, spreading out in disorderly rows. He says, "This is my--I've never," and Adam twists his wrist a little and tightens his fingers just so, until Kris can't talk at all anymore.
"I know," Adam says, and kisses him again until Kris can't do anything but feel. He slides his hand down to meet Adam's, curls his fingers around Adam's dick, heavy and hot in his hand, and this is pretty normal, he knows how to do this. Even brain-damaged guys jerk off. Adam groans into his mouth and he comes just like that, spilling hot over Kris's fingers, teeth sliding along Kris's bottom lip and pressing down with a quick sharpness that makes Kris fuck into Adam's hand in fast thrusts, thinking this is it, it's been like two minutes and he's going to come and he doesn't even care because it's Adam and it feels like he's been wanting this forever. He's definitely been wanting this since before he can remember.
But Adam pulls away. "Wait," he says, and Kris shakes his head, slides his fingers along Adam's dick, still half-hard and slick, and just stares, he can't stop looking. Adam shivers and pulls Kris's hand away, pushes Kris onto his back and slides his mouth across Kris's stomach in a hot trail, palms pressed to Kris's wrists against the bed, holding him down, holding him in.
"I just want to," Adam says, and then he slides his mouth down Kris's dick, and Kris knows what a blowjob is, he's not stupid just because he can't remember shit, but nothing really prepared him for the feel of this, the shocking wet slide and the way Adam looks, eyelashes in dark pools against his cheeks and lips stretched and pink around Kris's dick. And then Adam lets one of his wrists go, slides his palm up Kris's chest to his face, fingers tracing the shape of his jaw and thumb pressing into his mouth in slow little thrusts, rubbing slickly against Kris's tongue and Kris wonders if this is what Adam feels like, wants to know what he tastes like and the noises he'd make if Kris tried.
And then Adam's hand is gone, back down Kris's body and brushing against the inside of his thigh before his thumb rubs against Kris's hole in a slow circle before pressing in. Kris never thought of this, never really considered it, but now that he has Adam's thumb sliding inside him and Adam's mouth on his dick, something in his brain clicks, like the mismatched puzzle pieces lining up to create something whole and crystal clear. It's weird and scary and amazing and overwhelming, like finding the last bit of melody for a song, and just as perfect. And then Adam twists his thumb in a slow, burning slide and swallows around Kris's dick and that's it, he's gone, he's wrecked.
*
He wakes up to Brad sitting on his shin and Neil staring down at them and thinks, oh fuck. He can feel Adam pressed up behind him, one arm slung around his waist, palm covering his hip in a circle of warmth. Brad smiles brightly at him and Kris thanks god for the existence of sheets.
"Oh, fuck no," Adam says, and presses his face into the back of Kris's neck. "You are not in my room right now."
"Oh, but we are," Brad says, bouncing up and down a little until Kris kicks out at him with a glare. "We were going to invite you out to Kerby Lane for some post-party pancakes, but clearly you have better things to do."
Adam lifts his head and glares at the two of them. "Oh my God, did you two hook up?"
"I'm straight!" Neil says.
"I have standards," Brad says. "Well. Sometimes."
Later, Kris won't be able to explain why he does it, except that he just woke up and he just had sex and he just fell in love; everything is happening all at once and maybe the brain damage affected his ability to control his mouth, because instead of telling Brad and Neil to please go away now so he can enjoy being naked with his--with Adam--he opens his mouth and says, "I have amnesia. Um. Just so you know."
Neil says, "I don't even know what to say to that," and Brad says, "I knew there had to be a real reason why you'd never seen Reservoir Dogs! I mean, okay, I thought it was because when you said you were from Arkansas, you really meant Jupiter, but still. I was totally right. Amnesia. That's why you never know anything about anything. Oh my god, you're like someone from Passions or something! Do you have an evil twin? Because there's always an--"
"I think we should go now," Neil says, giving Kris a hard stare. "Before the wait list gets ridiculous."
*
Kris rolls over onto his back, takes a deep breath and then another, says, "I'm serious. I really do have amnesia. I was in a motorcycle accident eight months ago, and now I have amnesia." It sounds like the most ridiculous lie he could ever tell. He keeps his eyes closed because he doesn't know if he can look at Adam right now. He doesn't know if he can see Adam looking at him, but then he thinks that that's letting the fear win, that's like saying he doesn't trust Adam or himself or whatever they have. Whatever this is. The old Kris, the before Kris--he didn't trust anyone, not really. He never told his truth like this to anyone, just kept it hidden away and buried beneath the expectations of a life already planned out for him.
This Kris wants to be different. He opens his eyes.
Adam just looks at him and says, "That explains a lot, actually."
"I remember some things," Kris says. He thinks that he has to explain, that Adam deserves to know, because right now it just feels like a big wall between them, like a one-way window that Adam doesn't even know is there, and that's just not fair. Even accused criminals being interrogated know about the one-way window thing. Even Kris has watched enough Law and Order late at night when he can't sleep to know about the window-mirror. "But mostly it's just random flashes and thoughts without context so it's hard to piece anything together."
Adam pushes up on his elbow, head cradled in his hand and hair sticking out in chaotic spikes like some sort of weird reverse halo. He traces Kris's collarbone with his index finger, pauses to stroke the smooth skin at the base of his throat. His eyeliner is smudged in a mess of blue-black around his eyes, and Kris thinks he really is beautiful, that if everything he's been through in the past year--the accident, the amnesia, the months of therapy and the decision to leave it all behind--was always leading him here, to this moment with Adam, then it was all worth it. It is all worth it, even if this is the end, too.
Adam doesn't say anything else. He presses his lips to Kris's shoulder, the side of his neck, his cheek. Kris says, "Don't you have any questions? Aren't you, I dunno. Confused or angry or. Something?"
Adam kisses him, and Kris can feel his lips curving into a smile against his skin. He pulls away to look down at Kris. "You're the one with amnesia," he says, laughing a little. "It's not like you'll know the answers."
"It doesn't change anything?"
Adam shrugs. "Memories aren't what make a person. You're still you. You're the only you I've ever known. You're the you I fell in love with, and nothing's gonna change that."
"You love me even though I'm brain damaged?"
"Your other assets make up for it," Adam says with a grin. "You love me even though I'm a fuck-up with ex-boyfriend issues who gave up on his rockstar dreams to run a coffee shop?"
"No," Kris says, "but I'm willing to overlook it for a blowjob."
*
Kris has taken to thinking of his life in befores and afters because it's all he knows how to do and the only way he can fit it all inside his head at once. He spent so long feeling empty and angry, just trying to find something authentic inside himself that he could hold onto, and now that he's remembering things, it's almost the opposite, like surrounding This Kris in a protective bubble so That Kris, the old Kris, can't contaminate it. His own past seems sinister and mysterious to him, and sometimes that's too freaky to handle. Sometimes This Kris just wants to forget again, and go back to being empty and safe.
That Kris had a family who loved him and a girlfriend who wanted to spend the rest of her life with him; That Kris was thinking about dropping out of college but he didn't know what he'd do instead. That Kris didn't have a plan and he didn't know what he wanted. That Kris let himself be led by other people's expectations and never felt right about going after what he really wanted. That Kris would never admit any of that in the first place, but This Kris knows it's true, just like he knows that his family still loves him even if they don't know him yet, and that the only thing he's ever loved with every part of himself is music.
This Kris thinks that he might love Adam a little bit more than that, and that's a truth that his former self would've packed away in a dark corner because examining it would be too scary. That Kris never liked to disappoint people. This Kris thinks he's already disappointed them so much that trying to be happy can't do any more damage.
"What's it like?" Adam says one afternoon, voice sleepy and rough against his pillow, eyelids fluttering a little when Kris traces the curve of his spine, counting the bumps. The house is empty and peaceful around them and the sun filtering in through Adam's gauzy curtains casts an eerie blue glow against the long, pale plane of Adam's back. Kris just looks down at him for a moment and he can hardly believe this is real life, or his real life, anyway. It's been a week since the party and he knows he's left this bed, gone to work and had cream of spinach soup and gotten the new, disgusting Guiness flavor at Hey Cupcake and watched Big Brother with Brad, but this feels more real than any of that day-to-day stuff, and he maybe never wants to leave.
"It's like war," Kris says finally, fingers drifting along the slice of Adam's shoulder blade, down the shadows of his ribs, memorizing the feel and shape of him. "It's like there's two of me trying to fight it out to be the real Kris or something. My parents and Katy, they were always trying to bring me back or snap me out of it or whatever. They wanted me to be a person I couldn't remember how to be. And I always just thought--I knew who I was. I know who I am, and they were the ones who were maybe remembering a person that never really existed."
"That sounds like it sucks," Adam says, shivering a little when Kris's fingers brush patterns along the inside of his arm. "Being at war with yourself. It sounds horrible."
"It's more like being at war with someone else's idea of me," Kris says. He leans down and presses his lips to Adam's shoulder, the back of his neck, the sharp line of his jaw. Adam's eyes flicker open, hot and dark, and Kris wants to stop talking about this now, he wants to stop talking altogether. That's the past; that's the old Kris always trying to make everyone else happy, always being a good son and a good boyfriend and living up to other people's idea of him. This Kris doesn't even know how to do that anymore. He can't remember.
"I think the universe really did send you here," Adam says, leaning up and reaching for him, pulling him down until Adam can slide over him, hot and overwhelming and kind of perfect.
"I think the universe wants you to fuck me," Kris says, and Adam's legs press Kris's open wide and his fingers press into Kris in a smooth glide, still slick from before, and Kris doesn't know how he ever doubted what he wanted, how he could've ever settled for his old life no matter how much he loved Katy or how much he couldn't stand to disappoint anyone. Adam's lips on his, tongue licking hot and wet inside as he fumbles with a condom, the surprised look in his eyes when he presses inside--Kris doesn't even want to imagine a world where he never knew these things. He isn't used to this, not yet, maybe not ever, because he doesn't know how to get used to something so overwhelming that he feels like he's being blown apart and put back together with Adam inside him. He doesn't think he wants to, because it should always be like this--a moment of perfect clarity when he looks at Adam and sees himself there, exactly as he is.
The universe always had big plans for him.
*
Kris wasn't sure about ACL because it seemed like a lot of money for the privilege of standing outside in the too-bright Texas sun all day just to see the one band they'd be there for, but Adam said, "Maybe you'll get drunk on twelve dollar margaritas and meet the love of your life and nothing will ever be the same again. I'm pretty sure the universe wants you to come see Muse, Kris. I read it on your star chart, so it must be true."
He doesn't get drunk off twelve dollar margaritas but he does get high off the free pot that Matt confiscated from some kid at the bookstore who was trying to steal a copy of The Anarchist's Cookbook, and that's how he ends up pressed up against the front barricade at the main stage of Zilker Park, Adam close behind him, arms braced on either side of him, singing in his ear, I just want you to hold me in your arms.
Kris turns around so he can see Adam, presses his face against Adam's neck and tastes the salt of his sweat, thinks he could listen to Adam sing forever and ever. "You should always be singing," Kris says, blinking up at him and feeling the sun on his face, hot and bright. "Why'd you give it up. That was kind of stupid."
Adam's hands slide around his waist and slip under his t-shirt to trace sweat-slick trails up his spine. "I feel like we've done this before," Adam says, grinning. "It's like, get Kris wasted and it's time to lecture Adam about wasting his talent or whatever." He shrugs. "Just got sick of being told that everything about me was wrong, you know?" He shakes his head and smiles a little, sadly. "Too Broadway, too theatrical, too gay. No band wanted to hire a singer like me, and I guess I just gave up or something. I got tired."
Kris says, "Well I'm wasted and it's definitely lecture Adam time, because yeah, like I said, that was pretty stupid. It's not like you're dead." He laughs. "It's not like you're brain damaged. There's always time to become someone else."
"Change my name and assume a disguise?" Adam says with a grin, and then the band comes on and Kris forgets what they were saying because this is important, too. This is life-changing because it's the sort of music that surrounds him until all he can feel is the beat and the melody and the words like waves crashing into him and swallowing him down. It's music he can get lost in. It's the kind of music he's going to create.
"You're right," Adam says later, lying with his head in Kris's lap in the shade of a tree while they wait for the crowd to thin out before trying to leave.
"Of course I'm right," Kris says. He looks down at Adam and sees himself reflected upside down in the dark shine of Adam's sunglasses. "What am I right about?"
"There's always time to become someone else," Adam says. He sits up and slides his sunglasses off, presses his lips to Kris's in a quick, hard kiss. "I know that it's probably not a great idea to make decisions while I'm still kind of high--"
"That kid had good weed, it's not our fault," Kris says, grinning.
"--but I think. I think you're right about the singing. Giving up is stupid. We should just do it. Go to California and start fresh. Be new."
"Run away to Hollywood and try to make it big?"
"Fuck no," Adam says, wrapping his fingers around Kris's wrist and squeezing. "We'll just try out for American Idol."
"What's American Idol?" Kris says, and Adam laughs.
"It's the future."
*
Here, enjoy a refreshing music mix.
part 2, continued from here.
Kris doesn't see Adam all weekend and he's not sure what'll happen that Monday when he walks over to Caffeine Dealer for lunch. He doesn't know if Brad said anything to Adam, but since it's Brad, Kris wouldn't be surprised if he told Adam that Kris admitted his undying love over breakfast tacos at Magnolia, because Brad hates to wait for anything, even other people's drama. Maybe especially for other people's drama.
But Adam doesn't say anything, just smiles bright when he sees Kris and pulls off his apron, hanging it on one of the hooks behind the counter and saying, "I think Soup Peddler has French onion today."
And even though he might be in love with Adam, and even though he might be totally gay for Adam, or just totally gay in general (because no matter what Brad says, sometimes people just don't know, sometimes people have brain damage and psychological trauma and amnesia, and sexual orientation seems like the least important thing to figure out about himself), it's really hard to feel uncomfortable around Adam. There's something about him that makes Kris forget the rest of the world and the accident and those awful six months in Arkansas when he couldn't feel much of anything at all. Kris feels like he's being himself when he's with Adam. Like he's being genuine and himself without worrying about who that person used to be.
It's hard to feel weird around the only person who makes him feel like he's truly himself. He can't remember to be worried when Adam is looking down at Kris over the rims of his sunglasses and telling stories about horrible customers who demand chocolate sprinkles on everything or whatever weird thing Allison did that day or how Matt demanded payment for giving Kris a job in the form of a set-up with one of Adam's theater friends.
"And she's way too hot for him," Adam says as they hover just inside the doorway to the Soup Peddler to check out the day's menu, written in pink and turquoise chalk on a blackboard behind the counter. "Way out of his league. Plus, I think she's a socialist."
"I'm not convinced Matt is a real anarchist, though," Kris says, stepping up to the counter. "He's never even been arrested, and I know for a fact that he voted in the last election. Participation in organized government isn't very anarchical."
"That's so not a word," Adam says. He gives his order to the peddler, who says, "It's a word. It sounds made up on purpose, to fool the government drones." Kris knows better not to laugh; the peddler takes everything very seriously, and Kris doesn't want to be denied his French onion. He doesn't know if he liked it before, but it's pretty much his favorite thing now.
There are exactly three tables in the Soup Peddler and they snag the only empty one, stashed in the far corner underneath a huge, out-of-control spider plant, which Kris hates because sometimes dead leaves fall onto his head or once, into his soup. Kris ends up in the wobbly chair and spends five minutes trying to adjust his position so he's not tipping over every time he leans forward to eat his soup, until Adam wraps his fingers around Kris's wrist and says, "You're making me dizzy. Just submit to the wobbling."
Kris coughs and jerks his hand a little, and Adam lets go with a small frown, sitting back in his seat and looking at Kris in silence until Kris really does start to feel kind of weird. Even the soup tastes weird, too salty or something, and he can feel himself turning red just from all the staring. "Are you still upset?" Adam says finally, and when Kris looks up again, Adam actually looks nervous. "About the other night, I mean. I didn't--that wasn't the plan, the thing with Brad. It just kind of... happened. The living room wasn't a great decision." His mouth folds in on itself like he's trying not to say more, and Kris kind of hates that he made Adam look like that, guilty and sad and worried. Adam shouldn't look like that. It doesn't fit his face.
Kris shakes his head and looks down at his soup again. This is such a weird conversation to have over French onion. It feels like more of a potato and leek thing, or maybe one of those cold summer soups that Kris hates because soup just shouldn't be cold, it's unnatural and gross. "I was upset," Kris says. "Maybe I'm still upset. But not at you. You guys didn't do anything wrong. I'm maybe upset with myself, though." Kris stirs his soup a little, watching the bread dissolve slowly into pieces while the cheese sinks to the bottom of the bowl.
"You know you can talk to me, right?" Adam's fingers brush against his wrist again, and this time Kris doesn't jerk away. It feels like a long time since he let anyone touch him, and he can't remember the last time he felt comforted by such a simple, small thing. His mom was always touching him, little touches on his hand or elbow, longer hugs that were always just a little too tight, but that never felt like it was for him. Adam's fingers brush over the knob of his wrist bone and it feels right. It feels like belonging. "You can tell me anything, Kris. You know me."
"I want to," Kris says, and as soon as he says it, he knows it's true. He has about a million things he wants to tell Adam, like thank you, and he hopes Adam feels the same way, and please ask him to stay for good, and that Adam is the only person who knows the real him. He wants to tell Adam about the accident, about Katy and his hour of memories and how maybe that's all he'll ever get back, or maybe he'll have a flood of them all at once and turn back into the Kris he used to be. He wants to say how scared he is of that last thing, because he doesn't know how used-to-be-Kris would feel about Adam, and he's not sure he ever wants to find out. He just knows how he feels now, how this Kris feels, and he wants more than anything for that to be the most important part.
"Ask me again tomorrow?" Kris says, and Adam smiles.
*
The thing about amnesia is that the person Kris knows least about is always himself. He's only known Adam for a month, but he's already learned more about him than he did in the six months Kris spent in Arkansas trying to reconstruct himself from videos and stories and photos. He knows that Adam came to Austin as a hired singer for a band doing a South by Southwest showcase; he knows the band didn't get signed but Adam decided to stay anyway, because LA was nothing like he hoped it would be and everything he was secretly afraid of. LA was rejection after rejection, living off ramen and Trader Joe's gift cards from his mom and making bad sex decisions after even worse drug decisions. LA was a culture of toxicity, Adam says, and Austin felt like freedom, like the first breath of fresh air after being locked in a car with a smoker, and when Adam tells Kris this, Kris doesn't laugh because that feels too true to joke about. And that was five years ago and Adam's been here ever since, keeping shit weird.
There are other things Kris knows, weirdly intimate things to know about someone when he doesn't even know them about himself. He knows that Brad is the only person Adam's ever been in love with and it didn't end badly but it ended just the same, and sometimes when Kris sees them together, it makes his heart hurt a little, and not just for Adam, either. He wonders if that's how he felt about Katy once upon a time before he went all Sleeping Beauty on her, and he's kind of lucky in some ways because he'll maybe never have to know. Heartache doesn't look like much fun, so maybe it's good that Kris can't remember. Maybe there are some things it's better to forget.
So he knows a lot about Adam, but it's not until Adam's friend who manages the Kiss and Fly convinces Adam to sing in their post-Pride event that Kris realizes he's so wrong about that, because he never knew about this.
It's a low-key event for the Kiss and Fly, no drag burlesque, no crazy costumes, just a bunch of local queer singers doing short sets with a piano accompanist, and Kris buys about five drinks too many because all the proceeds are going to the queer youth center. Kris has money to spare and he has to navigate the incredibly awkward space between Brad and Matt somehow, which basically means getting them both so wasted that Brad forgets how much he hates pretentious philosopher-hipster types who wear fedoras "like they think they're bringing DoucheyBack," and Matt forgets to give his daily rant about the ways in which gays are contributing to their own oppression by participating in the patriarchal industrial complex that is the capitalist US economy. Whatever that means. Kris is pretty sure even Matt doesn't know.
By the time he returns to their table near the stage with a new round of drinks, though, Matt is already halfway through his speech and Brad's eyes are rolling so hard that Kris fears for their continued structural integrity.
"Thank fucking god," Brad says, snatching a glass from Kris's hand and downing it in one go. He looks pointedly from Kris to Matt and Kris sighs, hands over his own drink. "Don't look like that," Brad says, taking a long slurp from Kris's chocolate raspberry margarita. "It's your own fault for befriending an anarchist and then leaving us alone together. It would drive anyone to drink!"
"How can you live with this guy?" Matt asks as Kris slides into his seat. "All he cares about is reality television and the way he looks."
"That's so untrue," Brad says, sneering a little. "I also care about tequila and fucking hot guys. So don't worry," he adds, "you and your hat are perfectly safe."
As the current singer winds down her act, Brad waves at Scarlett and Alisan from across the crowded club to join them, friends of Brad's and Adam's, "burners," he calls them. "We all met at Burning Man," he says as the girls pull up chairs. He looks at Matt, raises an eyebrow. "I'm surprised you're not into it, Mr. Anarchist." Kris has only met them once before, his first night in Austin when he got so drunk he agreed to live with Brad, but he remembers them being nice. Then again, he was drunk enough to agree to live with Brad, so that's not saying much.
"It's just another example of capitalists usurping anarchist ideals to make money," Matt says.
"Plus the drugs," Scarlett says.
"And don't forget the orgies," Alisan adds. She glances at the stage, looks around the room with a satisfied nod. "People showed up. I knew if I could get Adam to sing, people would be willing to brave the wild unknown of Fourth Street to see him."
"Kris is a musician, too," Brad says, smiling sharply. "And he can actually play instruments, unlike some people who are not, as it turns out, the be all, end all of singing."
"Adam doesn't need instruments to be amazing," Alisan snaps, eyes narrowed at Brad across the table while he sips Kris's drink with an air of absolute innocence. "And stop acting like a jealous twat."
Kris isn't sure what to think and he's feeling lost again because there are so many things he still doesn't know, not just about himself or Adam or Brad, but about the world and how these things work. There are a hundred social cues he can't recognize anymore, a million things said through subtle facial expressions and body language clues that Kris has no idea how to read; he doesn't even have a context to put them in. But when he looks over at Matt, he looks just as confused as Kris feels, so it's probably not something he's supposed to get, anyway. Not this time. The tension snaps abruptly when a thin, pretty guy wearing a jacket with so many spikes attached that it could double as a weapon sets a tray full of shots down on their table and collapses heavily onto Brad's lap, laughing and saying, "Cassidy is here, bitches! Now the party can really start."
Brad tries to shove him off, saying, "What, is there a chair shortage, asshole?" but the guy must be heavier than he looks, because he doesn't move except to pass around shot glasses and lime slices. Kris takes his shot obediently, turning to Alisan and saying, "So, Adam must be pretty good, huh?" He licks the tequila off his lips and wonders when he got drunk, because suddenly he's feeling very good. Warm and loose and happy, and he's not even worrying about Brad flirting with Cassidy, not even wondering how Adam will feel about it or the fact that he sort of hopes Adam doesn't give a shit, even though a week ago he and Brad were hooking up on Kris's couch. Kris doesn't feel much of anything at all, actually, except a little drunk and a lot relaxed. No fear, no anxiety, he thinks, and smiles wide.
Alisan gives him a funny look. "You mean you've known Adam for almost a month and you've never heard him sing?"
Kris shrugs. "Mostly we go to the Soup Peddler and they barely let you talk, much less sing. We'd probably get banned for life, and then no more French onion, which would be really sad." Kris looks around at the crowd, and the club is pretty much bursting, every chair taken with people standing in the spaces between the tables and crowded around the bar in the back. Even the balcony above is full, and Kris shakes his head, says, "He must be good if all these people are here for him." He must be really good, Kris thinks, and wonders why Adam never said so. They've talked about music, about singing, about why Adam gave it all up in the first place, but Adam never mentioned that he could fill clubs with just rumors of a performance. It feels wrong that Kris didn't know.
"Well, you're about to find out," Alisan says, and nods toward the stage, where Adam is adjusting his mic stand and sliding onto a stool. And then he starts singing, and Kris realizes that he could know every personal tiny detail of Adam's life, every thought and wish and dream and disappointment, but he wouldn't know anything at all if he never knew this.
It's not just that he has a good voice. Everyone who sang that night before Adam was good, but there's something about Adam when he's singing, something so painfully honest that it feels like Kris is looking at Adam's insides, like he's reading the truths written beneath his skin, exposed for everyone to see. It feels like an invasion, like the time he found Katy's diary left behind with her US History book after they pulled an all-nighter to cram for the AP exam, and he knew he shouldn't look but he did it anyway. It didn't say anything important or shocking or anything, but he remembers one line in particular, one sentence that stuck with him because he'd thought the same thing: I love him, but sometimes I wonder if this is all there is.
The way Adam sings--Kris knows suddenly and with a terrifying clarity that Katy was right to wonder. Kris thinks that if he'd ever felt anything as deeply as Adam feels this song, he would know. The answer came like a shot in the back while you were running from your lesson, Adam sings, and Kris thinks he wouldn't have to try to remember that feeling because it would be a part of him, so deep inside that it couldn't escape. It couldn't just slip away with everything else.
On stage, Adam finishes his song and starts a new one, smiles a little, shakes his head like he can't really believe people are so happy to hear him. Afterward, standing outside in the thick heat of the night air waiting for their cab to show up, with Brad stumbling off with Cassidy down Sixth to hit Rain before last call, Kris laces his fingers between Adam's and says, "Why would you ever quit something you were born to do?"
Adam sighs and tilts his head back to look up at the stars. "It's not like I didn't try," he says, squeezing Kris's hand warmly. "I did the LA thing for three years, did the rejection thing for three years. The band and South By was supposed to be my break, and when it all fell apart, it just seemed like the universe was trying to tell me something."
Kris leans against him, a little drunk still, but thinking this is finally something he knows, it's the only thing he never forgot. "That's bullshit," Kris says. "The universe would never tell you to stop doing something you love. Maybe it was trying to tell you something, but it would never tell you that." Kris forgot everything except for the music, and he thinks that must mean something. The universe would never tell someone to give up.
"What about when you stop loving it?" Adam says in soft voice. He looks down at Kris, eyes bright in the orange glow on the street lamp.
"I think you have to ask if it's the music you stopped loving, or maybe the rest of it you started hating."
"Singing's like a shitty boyfriend," Adam says. "The sex is still amazing when you get it, but he leaves his dirty underwear on the bathroom floor and only calls when everyone else he knows is too busy to hang out. Then he leaves you for someone younger and prettier and thinner and you just don't have the heart to keep trying."
Kris still thinks it's bullshit, but he knows he can't make Adam want something if he's not ready for it, even if Kris thinks it's the most alive and present and beautiful Adam's ever been, singing on that stage. He leans closer and rests his head against Adam's shoulder, warm and happy and wishing more than anything that he could put words to the way Adam makes him feel. It seems important and big and he doesn't want to mess this up, but he's not sure he's ready either. Kris is basically only six months old, though, so he has an excuse. Adam's excuse, Kris thinks, is totally lame.
"Just don't--don't miss out on something because you're afraid of the past, you know?"
Adam doesn't say anything for a while, and Kris wonders if maybe he said something wrong, went too far and messed it up after all because it's not like Kris is one of Adam's old friends; he's not Brad or Alisan or even Matt. He's just some random guy who walked in off the street one day, some random guy who knows more about Adam's past than his own and is pretty much the last person who should be giving life advice, considering he can't remember what he was planning to do with his own in the first place. But then Adam wraps his arm around Kris's shoulders and says, "I know," and Kris thinks maybe he's not so random after all.
Maybe the universe was trying to tell Adam something, and it sent Kris in as a messenger. Or maybe Kris is still pretty drunk and the universe has nothing to do with it, but either way, he hopes Adam really does know.
*
"Do you believe in God?" Kris says. He's dusting the top shelves of the bookcases that never get cleaned or even looked at because no one likes to climb on the sliding ladder. They'll make Molotov cocktails and get arrested for trying to disrupt the Republican National Convention, but a wobbly ladder? Forget it. Anarchists, Kris thinks, are kind of lame.
Matt looks up at him from his position by the foot of the ladder, ready to slide Kris over when it's time to move to the next shelf. "Anarchists don't believe in God," Matt says.
Kris rolls his eyes. "I think we both know you're not really an anarchist. What do you believe?"
Matt shrugs. "Yeah, I guess I do. It's personal. I don't like organized religion, churches trying to tell everyone what to think and believe like they know God's will. People invented churches, not God." He pauses and jerks the ladder, sliding it down to the next shelf even though Kris hasn't finished the first one. "Also, fuck you. I'm totally an anarchist. You just don't get anarchy on a fundamental level. You color code your shirts by the days of the week. You so do not get anarchy."
Kris asks Brad while they're eating Chinese takeout and watching some lame reality show about lame people having lame conversations and sighing a lot. "Do you believe in God?"
Brad jabs at his noodles with his chopsticks and shrugs. "Yes. No. Sometimes. I don't believe that Jesus Christ is my personal savior or whatever, but I like to think there's some kind of magic being watching over us and nudging things along when we fuck up really badly." He pokes Kris in the leg with a bare toe, and Kris is just grateful Brad's wearing pants. Maybe there is a god. "What about you?" Brad says. "Do you believe in God?"
"I don't know." Kris doesn't know if there's a God or if he believes in one, but he would really like to believe. Somehow, he doesn't think that counts, though. It's not the same thing as faith, anyway.
"Big surprise. You don't know a lot of things," Brad says, stabbing at his noodles again. "You're like this alien who doesn't even know what his favorite book is, or whether he likes dick."
"I know you're a bitch," Kris says, and smiles sweetly while Brad chokes on his noodles.
When he asks Adam, he doesn't get an answer right away. They're waiting on the Congress Street bridge for the bats to come out, because Kris has been here almost two months and never seen the bats, which Adam decided was a tragedy that needed to be remedied immediately. The sun hits the water in a blaze of red-gold and Kris leans back against the railing to look up at the sky, hazy blue with a heavy moon already hanging low, like they're on Mars or something, everything red and blue and hot and dry. It reminds him of last summer when he and Daniel hiked up Mount Magazine to the highest point in Arkansas, ditching the official trail for a narrow dirt one lined with tall reeds and wildflowers until they found the edge, a cliff jutting out into the clear sky with Oklahoma spread out on one side and Arkansas on the other, the sun melting into the horizon in orange and red while the clouds bruised purple in the distance and Daniel said, "I wish we could just stay like this forever."
The bats come out then, a swarm of fluttering black rising in an arc like one massive animal, and it's so loud that Kris forgets what he was asking because the noise leaves no room for thoughts. It's just this mindless chirping-buzzing thing that Kris can feel in his bones like vibrations, like some bizarre sonic roller coaster, and Adam says, "Doesn't it feel beautiful?" Kris thinks it feels more than beautiful. It feels powerful. It feels right.
Later, walking back to Kris's apartment in the dark with the competing sounds of the buzz of the crickets and a blues-rock band covering Janis Joplin trickling out from Threadgill's, Adam says, "I believe in the universe. I believe that we get out what we put in, and everyday alive is a test we pass for future joy."
Kris grins up at him and nudges him a little, shoulder to shoulder. "Do you even know what that means?"
Adam laughs. "No, but it sounds good, doesn't it?" He shakes his head. "I think it just means... believing in God is kind of like having faith that we're never alone, no matter what. And I think that's true. No one is ever alone and no one ever has to be lost, because we all belong to this world and this universe and each other."
"That would be nice," Kris says, and Adam slides an arm around his waist, squeezing a little in a half-hug.
"It is nice."
*
August in Texas is a lot like what Kris would imagine Hell to be, if he believed in Hell, which he's not quite sure of but he thinks he probably doesn't. It's over a hundred degrees every day with no rain for a month, which he thinks should mean it would be dry, at least, but it's not. He steps outside his apartment and feels like he's drowning in the air, it's so thick with water, and the sky is a constant cloudless electric blue above, no rain in sight. Along the highway the road signs that usually tell him to buckle up in his truck proclaim in scrolling orange letters that there's a fire ban on, fireworks are forbidden, and to please report any brush fires to the police. Adam just rolls his eyes and directs Kris where to exit, guides him turn by turn until they pull up in front of the house Adam and his brother are renting. It's moving day, and Kris can't help but feel kind of melancholy about it.
And it's not like Adam's going far. He's just moving north of the capital, closer to campus because Neil is starting grad school in a few weeks and Adam is sick of his shitty, cockroach-infested apartment down south where people's cars get broken into every other day and his upstairs neighbors have nightly screaming fights on their balcony that don't end until he calls the cops on them. It's a ten minute drive, and it's not a big deal, but Kris still feels a little sad about it. It feels like an ending, or something. It feels wrong.
"You just don't like change," Adam says as they unload Matt's pickup, which he stated would be his only contribution to the moving efforts because he and moving other people's heavy objects don't get along. It's not that much stuff, mostly just clothes and books and CDs, a television and a stereo and a couple boxes of random crap. Adam didn't want to take his furniture. When Kris asked why, Adam just shrugged and said, "I just want to start fresh, you know? New beginning. Plus, I'm pretty sure it's all infested with cockroaches anyway. One got trapped inside the microwave display panel yesterday and couldn't find its way out. It would've been sad if it hadn't been so disgusting."
Neil comes out onto the porch to watch while they carry Adam's stuff inside, exchanging banter with Adam while he follows them through the house to Adam's bedroom, waits while they set his things in the middle of the room and follows them back out again.
"You could help, you know," Adam says as he shoulders a plastic garbage bag full of clothes and tucks a box under one arm.
"I could," Neil says, grinning, "but this is a lot more fun for me."
Kris smiles and grabs a heavy box of books, following Adam back into the house and thinking about the day he helped move Katy into her dorm freshman year of college, how nervous and excited she was about being away from home, and the way she hugged him before he left, squirming a little but holding on tight, like she couldn't decide if she wanted him to stay forever or be gone already. She said, "I hope you don't hate me for wanting to come here instead of Central Arkansas with you," and Kris said, "I could never hate you, you'll always be my best girl." Now Kris only knows her in bits and pieces, tiny flashes of memory that are more frustrating than revealing. He hopes she's happy, wherever she is. He thinks she's the kind of girl who could take over the world if she wanted to, and he'll probably never understand what she was doing with him. What they were doing together.
That was an ending too, Kris thinks as he sets the last box down and slides it into the center of Adam's new room, but it was a beginning, just like Adam said. It was kind of the beginning of all of this, because before then, Kris never realized that maybe he could do it on his own, just go off in the world and find his own way and let Katy find hers. He always thought their destinies were tied together, true and tight, but now he knows that was just a self-fulfilling prophecy; it only existed because he thought it did, because he thought that's the way things were supposed to be and it was maybe easier to go along with it.
The universe had other plans, and Kris can't be upset about that.
There's a party that night to celebrate the whole moving thing so Kris stays and helps Adam unpack while they wait for his new bed to be delivered. Adam sits on the floor in his walk-in closet, handing Kris shirts and pants and other mysterious garments for him to hang up or stack onto the built-in shelves. He smiles up at Kris and says, "Remember when you moved into Brad's and I had to give you a lesson in the proper care and handling of clothes?"
"It feels like a long time ago," Kris says. "I wasn't even gonna stay. California, here I come."
Adam laughs. "Right back where we started from."
"We're not singing the theme song from The OC," Kris says, hanging up the last shirt and shaking his head. "We're not that far gone yet. We have pride! We have dignity."
"Dignity is overrated," Adam says, standing up and brushing off his jeans. "You're right, though. It feels like a long time ago." He reaches up to brush a stray dust bunny from Kris's shoulder then leaves his hand there, warm and solid through Kris's t-shirt, fingertips just brushing the bare skin at the back of Kris's neck. "I still feel like I've known you forever," Adam says, and leans down to kiss him, just like that. Simple, easy. Real.
This is still the only kiss Kris can remember, or the only one that counts, really, because the thing with Kenny was lame and kind of sad and he was drunk anyway, but this. This is different; this is something Kris never wants to forget. He doesn't know if it's some kind of special first kiss magic, or if it's because it's Adam, or if Kris really is just batshit crazy, but Kris is pretty sure he never wants Adam to stop kissing him, now that he's finally started. It's just a soft press of lips, the only parts of them touching except for Adam's hand on his shoulder and his fingers on his neck, the wet heat of Adam's tongue tasting him, just once, and the soft rush of warmth against his cheek when Adam sighs a little and pulls away.
Adam grins, fingers sliding further up Kris's neck and back down in a shivery drag of skin-on-skin that makes Kris wish there wasn't a party tonight, that he could just stay here with Adam and do--whatever, just be, just touch--and then Adam says, "I can't believe we're doing this in a closet. It's so fifth grade. It's so gay!"
Kris laughs and leans up, because they should never stop kissing, except maybe to do other things, but then Neil is yelling from the front of the house that the mattress delivery guys are here and could Adam please come direct them where to deposit the bed. Adam pulls away with a smile and they go to help, and then Neil orders pizza and people start showing up, even Matt, who's still kind of pissed at Adam for never setting Matt up with his hot theater friend.
"He didn't even try," Matt says, narrowing his eyes at Adam from across the wide back deck. "I bet he didn't even ask her."
"You could ask her yourself," Kris says, frowning and shaking his head when Matt tries to pass him a pipe with a freshly packed bowl.
"One hit won't kill you," Matt says, rolling his eyes. "You're already drinking. Beer is so much worse for you. Plus, every time you smoke up is like giving the finger to the oppressive US government of fascists. They're secretly working with the drug cartels anyway to get the nation addicted to heroine and meth and cocaine and crack. That's how they keep the poor people poor, you know. It's all part of the plot, but marijuana doesn't fit in because it's actually like, good for you and shit. Cures diseases, helps with pain. No one smokes a J and then stabs their wife and kids, man. No one--"
"If I take it, will you shut up?" Kris says, and Matt just smiles and holds it out again. Kris's body seems to know what to do on its own, how to cover the little hole at the base of the bowl, when to breathe in, when to let go and how to hold the smoke in his lungs before breathing out in a slow exhale. He's done this before; even if his brain can't remember it, his body does. His parents never told him about this, and Kris thinks that he had a lot of secrets, before. It's like trying to unravel the mysteries of Laura Palmer without the pie and hookers. At least, he hopes not. Twin Peaks kind of freaked him out when he watched it with Brad last month, and now every time Brad gets even slightly drunk, he stares at Kris with wide eyes and says, "Your hair is full of secrets." Kris's hair is the opposite of secrets, he thinks. It's hard to have secrets when you can't remember anything.
"I thought you'd never done this?" Matt says, taking the pipe back. He lights the bowl and breathes in, passes the pipe back. Kris shrugs.
"I honestly don't know."
"You're honestly a fucking liar," Matt says, but he's smiling and tipping his head back to stare up at the night sky. He doesn't notice his hat slide from his head onto the rough wood of the deck, and Kris doesn't tell him, just takes another long hit and passes the pipe back. Matt looks better without it, anyway. Brad's kind of right about the DoucheyBack thing, although Kris would be really happy to never hear that song again, not even Brad's parody version about Matt's unhealthy love for fedoras.
"I have amnesia," Kris says. He kicks off his flip flops and settles on one of the long, built-in wooden benches that line the outside railing of the deck, rubs the soles of his feet against the still sun-warm wood, smooth and worn and almost soft against his skin.
"Now I know you're a fucking liar," Matt says. He looks down at Kris, rolls his eyes again. "Bowl's tapped. I'm gonna get a drink. You want anything?"
Kris is too busy looking at the sky to notice. Everything is bigger here, Kris thinks, even the sky. Even the night. He likes it.
Later, after Matt leaves and Brad passes out in Neil's bed and most everyone is out back on the deck exchanging "remember when" stories that Kris couldn't participate in even if he'd been there, Kris finds a guitar that someone abandoned on the living room sofa. He settles on the floor in front of the couch and starts playing, at first just songs he knows, songs he's learned since before, songs he's remembered along the way. He loves the feel of the strings against his fingers, the cool slide and drag of them against his skin as he changes chords, the low sweet sound of his own voice filling the room in a quiet sort of way.
"You have a good voice," Adam says from the doorway leading into the kitchen, leaning in the frame with his arms crossed, pale light from the overhead spilling into the darkened living from from behind him. "We should try to get you some shows. I have a friend who works at Buffalo Billiards, he could totally hook you up."
Kris pushes his palm flat against the shiny-slick surface of the guitar and ducks his head, shrugging. "I'm not that good," he says. "I'm nothing compared to you. I never got anywhere with it back in Arkansas."
Adam slides down to sit next to him on the floor so that their crossed knees brush whenever he shifts. He leans back against the couch, arms open wide along the cushions and says, "I'm just a singer. But you're like, an actual musician, and that should mean something, you know?" His fingers slide forward to drag a knuckle down the back of Kris's neck and Kris leans into it, tightens his grip on the guitar. "Play me something of yours."
Kris plays him the song he wrote the night he walked in on Adam with Brad, the song he rewrote because he'd really written it three years ago in his dorm room, sitting on the stained industrial carpet in the space between the beds and wondering what his next roommate would be like, and if things would always end this way. Kris has to stop halfway through, because it feels wrong, now, to be singing this song. It doesn't feel true anymore, more like a lie from a previous life. Maybe that's all it is.
Kris says, "I thought it was about you, but it's not. It's not even about me, you know?"
Adam says, "How wasted are you right now?"
"I'm not. Well, a little. But mostly not."
"Good," Adam says, pulling the guitar from Kris's slack grip and setting it aside, standing up and reaching for Kris's hands to pull him up, too. "Because I don't do random drunken hookups, but we've already fucked around long enough, and I'm tired of waiting."
"Me too," Kris says, and lets himself be led.
*
Katy told him they were both virgins, and Kris hasn't remembered anything since that makes him think otherwise. There are a lot of things his body remembers even when his his head doesn't--the slide and strum of his fingers on guitar strings, the shape of notes in his mouth and the smooth press of his hands on a keyboard coaxing out melodies in slow stutters and starts. But his body doesn't know this yet, the shocking heat of Adam's mouth on his, Adam's fingers wrapping around him, their bodies pressed skin to skin. Kris is pretty sure that he's the only one who's ever touched his dick before, because he thinks if he ever felt like this, he would remember it, brain damaged or not. He can't imagine forgetting.
"Is this--you okay?" Adam says in a long breath out, face pressed against Kris's neck. His fingers slide up, brush over the head of Kris's dick and he arches with a surprised little moan that makes Adam laugh and say, "Yeah, you're okay."
Kris kind of wants to hide his face in his hands because this is, yeah. It's overwhelming and crazy and he can't think when Adam's touching him like that and looking at him like that, but if he hid then he'd have to stop touching, too, and Kris doesn't want that. Adam's skin is warm and soft and his hip fits perfectly in the curve of Kris's palm. Facing each other with their legs tangled together, Kris thinks they must look like mismatched puzzle pieces and he can count the freckles on Adam's cheeks, spreading out in disorderly rows. He says, "This is my--I've never," and Adam twists his wrist a little and tightens his fingers just so, until Kris can't talk at all anymore.
"I know," Adam says, and kisses him again until Kris can't do anything but feel. He slides his hand down to meet Adam's, curls his fingers around Adam's dick, heavy and hot in his hand, and this is pretty normal, he knows how to do this. Even brain-damaged guys jerk off. Adam groans into his mouth and he comes just like that, spilling hot over Kris's fingers, teeth sliding along Kris's bottom lip and pressing down with a quick sharpness that makes Kris fuck into Adam's hand in fast thrusts, thinking this is it, it's been like two minutes and he's going to come and he doesn't even care because it's Adam and it feels like he's been wanting this forever. He's definitely been wanting this since before he can remember.
But Adam pulls away. "Wait," he says, and Kris shakes his head, slides his fingers along Adam's dick, still half-hard and slick, and just stares, he can't stop looking. Adam shivers and pulls Kris's hand away, pushes Kris onto his back and slides his mouth across Kris's stomach in a hot trail, palms pressed to Kris's wrists against the bed, holding him down, holding him in.
"I just want to," Adam says, and then he slides his mouth down Kris's dick, and Kris knows what a blowjob is, he's not stupid just because he can't remember shit, but nothing really prepared him for the feel of this, the shocking wet slide and the way Adam looks, eyelashes in dark pools against his cheeks and lips stretched and pink around Kris's dick. And then Adam lets one of his wrists go, slides his palm up Kris's chest to his face, fingers tracing the shape of his jaw and thumb pressing into his mouth in slow little thrusts, rubbing slickly against Kris's tongue and Kris wonders if this is what Adam feels like, wants to know what he tastes like and the noises he'd make if Kris tried.
And then Adam's hand is gone, back down Kris's body and brushing against the inside of his thigh before his thumb rubs against Kris's hole in a slow circle before pressing in. Kris never thought of this, never really considered it, but now that he has Adam's thumb sliding inside him and Adam's mouth on his dick, something in his brain clicks, like the mismatched puzzle pieces lining up to create something whole and crystal clear. It's weird and scary and amazing and overwhelming, like finding the last bit of melody for a song, and just as perfect. And then Adam twists his thumb in a slow, burning slide and swallows around Kris's dick and that's it, he's gone, he's wrecked.
*
He wakes up to Brad sitting on his shin and Neil staring down at them and thinks, oh fuck. He can feel Adam pressed up behind him, one arm slung around his waist, palm covering his hip in a circle of warmth. Brad smiles brightly at him and Kris thanks god for the existence of sheets.
"Oh, fuck no," Adam says, and presses his face into the back of Kris's neck. "You are not in my room right now."
"Oh, but we are," Brad says, bouncing up and down a little until Kris kicks out at him with a glare. "We were going to invite you out to Kerby Lane for some post-party pancakes, but clearly you have better things to do."
Adam lifts his head and glares at the two of them. "Oh my God, did you two hook up?"
"I'm straight!" Neil says.
"I have standards," Brad says. "Well. Sometimes."
Later, Kris won't be able to explain why he does it, except that he just woke up and he just had sex and he just fell in love; everything is happening all at once and maybe the brain damage affected his ability to control his mouth, because instead of telling Brad and Neil to please go away now so he can enjoy being naked with his--with Adam--he opens his mouth and says, "I have amnesia. Um. Just so you know."
Neil says, "I don't even know what to say to that," and Brad says, "I knew there had to be a real reason why you'd never seen Reservoir Dogs! I mean, okay, I thought it was because when you said you were from Arkansas, you really meant Jupiter, but still. I was totally right. Amnesia. That's why you never know anything about anything. Oh my god, you're like someone from Passions or something! Do you have an evil twin? Because there's always an--"
"I think we should go now," Neil says, giving Kris a hard stare. "Before the wait list gets ridiculous."
*
Kris rolls over onto his back, takes a deep breath and then another, says, "I'm serious. I really do have amnesia. I was in a motorcycle accident eight months ago, and now I have amnesia." It sounds like the most ridiculous lie he could ever tell. He keeps his eyes closed because he doesn't know if he can look at Adam right now. He doesn't know if he can see Adam looking at him, but then he thinks that that's letting the fear win, that's like saying he doesn't trust Adam or himself or whatever they have. Whatever this is. The old Kris, the before Kris--he didn't trust anyone, not really. He never told his truth like this to anyone, just kept it hidden away and buried beneath the expectations of a life already planned out for him.
This Kris wants to be different. He opens his eyes.
Adam just looks at him and says, "That explains a lot, actually."
"I remember some things," Kris says. He thinks that he has to explain, that Adam deserves to know, because right now it just feels like a big wall between them, like a one-way window that Adam doesn't even know is there, and that's just not fair. Even accused criminals being interrogated know about the one-way window thing. Even Kris has watched enough Law and Order late at night when he can't sleep to know about the window-mirror. "But mostly it's just random flashes and thoughts without context so it's hard to piece anything together."
Adam pushes up on his elbow, head cradled in his hand and hair sticking out in chaotic spikes like some sort of weird reverse halo. He traces Kris's collarbone with his index finger, pauses to stroke the smooth skin at the base of his throat. His eyeliner is smudged in a mess of blue-black around his eyes, and Kris thinks he really is beautiful, that if everything he's been through in the past year--the accident, the amnesia, the months of therapy and the decision to leave it all behind--was always leading him here, to this moment with Adam, then it was all worth it. It is all worth it, even if this is the end, too.
Adam doesn't say anything else. He presses his lips to Kris's shoulder, the side of his neck, his cheek. Kris says, "Don't you have any questions? Aren't you, I dunno. Confused or angry or. Something?"
Adam kisses him, and Kris can feel his lips curving into a smile against his skin. He pulls away to look down at Kris. "You're the one with amnesia," he says, laughing a little. "It's not like you'll know the answers."
"It doesn't change anything?"
Adam shrugs. "Memories aren't what make a person. You're still you. You're the only you I've ever known. You're the you I fell in love with, and nothing's gonna change that."
"You love me even though I'm brain damaged?"
"Your other assets make up for it," Adam says with a grin. "You love me even though I'm a fuck-up with ex-boyfriend issues who gave up on his rockstar dreams to run a coffee shop?"
"No," Kris says, "but I'm willing to overlook it for a blowjob."
*
Kris has taken to thinking of his life in befores and afters because it's all he knows how to do and the only way he can fit it all inside his head at once. He spent so long feeling empty and angry, just trying to find something authentic inside himself that he could hold onto, and now that he's remembering things, it's almost the opposite, like surrounding This Kris in a protective bubble so That Kris, the old Kris, can't contaminate it. His own past seems sinister and mysterious to him, and sometimes that's too freaky to handle. Sometimes This Kris just wants to forget again, and go back to being empty and safe.
That Kris had a family who loved him and a girlfriend who wanted to spend the rest of her life with him; That Kris was thinking about dropping out of college but he didn't know what he'd do instead. That Kris didn't have a plan and he didn't know what he wanted. That Kris let himself be led by other people's expectations and never felt right about going after what he really wanted. That Kris would never admit any of that in the first place, but This Kris knows it's true, just like he knows that his family still loves him even if they don't know him yet, and that the only thing he's ever loved with every part of himself is music.
This Kris thinks that he might love Adam a little bit more than that, and that's a truth that his former self would've packed away in a dark corner because examining it would be too scary. That Kris never liked to disappoint people. This Kris thinks he's already disappointed them so much that trying to be happy can't do any more damage.
"What's it like?" Adam says one afternoon, voice sleepy and rough against his pillow, eyelids fluttering a little when Kris traces the curve of his spine, counting the bumps. The house is empty and peaceful around them and the sun filtering in through Adam's gauzy curtains casts an eerie blue glow against the long, pale plane of Adam's back. Kris just looks down at him for a moment and he can hardly believe this is real life, or his real life, anyway. It's been a week since the party and he knows he's left this bed, gone to work and had cream of spinach soup and gotten the new, disgusting Guiness flavor at Hey Cupcake and watched Big Brother with Brad, but this feels more real than any of that day-to-day stuff, and he maybe never wants to leave.
"It's like war," Kris says finally, fingers drifting along the slice of Adam's shoulder blade, down the shadows of his ribs, memorizing the feel and shape of him. "It's like there's two of me trying to fight it out to be the real Kris or something. My parents and Katy, they were always trying to bring me back or snap me out of it or whatever. They wanted me to be a person I couldn't remember how to be. And I always just thought--I knew who I was. I know who I am, and they were the ones who were maybe remembering a person that never really existed."
"That sounds like it sucks," Adam says, shivering a little when Kris's fingers brush patterns along the inside of his arm. "Being at war with yourself. It sounds horrible."
"It's more like being at war with someone else's idea of me," Kris says. He leans down and presses his lips to Adam's shoulder, the back of his neck, the sharp line of his jaw. Adam's eyes flicker open, hot and dark, and Kris wants to stop talking about this now, he wants to stop talking altogether. That's the past; that's the old Kris always trying to make everyone else happy, always being a good son and a good boyfriend and living up to other people's idea of him. This Kris doesn't even know how to do that anymore. He can't remember.
"I think the universe really did send you here," Adam says, leaning up and reaching for him, pulling him down until Adam can slide over him, hot and overwhelming and kind of perfect.
"I think the universe wants you to fuck me," Kris says, and Adam's legs press Kris's open wide and his fingers press into Kris in a smooth glide, still slick from before, and Kris doesn't know how he ever doubted what he wanted, how he could've ever settled for his old life no matter how much he loved Katy or how much he couldn't stand to disappoint anyone. Adam's lips on his, tongue licking hot and wet inside as he fumbles with a condom, the surprised look in his eyes when he presses inside--Kris doesn't even want to imagine a world where he never knew these things. He isn't used to this, not yet, maybe not ever, because he doesn't know how to get used to something so overwhelming that he feels like he's being blown apart and put back together with Adam inside him. He doesn't think he wants to, because it should always be like this--a moment of perfect clarity when he looks at Adam and sees himself there, exactly as he is.
The universe always had big plans for him.
*
Kris wasn't sure about ACL because it seemed like a lot of money for the privilege of standing outside in the too-bright Texas sun all day just to see the one band they'd be there for, but Adam said, "Maybe you'll get drunk on twelve dollar margaritas and meet the love of your life and nothing will ever be the same again. I'm pretty sure the universe wants you to come see Muse, Kris. I read it on your star chart, so it must be true."
He doesn't get drunk off twelve dollar margaritas but he does get high off the free pot that Matt confiscated from some kid at the bookstore who was trying to steal a copy of The Anarchist's Cookbook, and that's how he ends up pressed up against the front barricade at the main stage of Zilker Park, Adam close behind him, arms braced on either side of him, singing in his ear, I just want you to hold me in your arms.
Kris turns around so he can see Adam, presses his face against Adam's neck and tastes the salt of his sweat, thinks he could listen to Adam sing forever and ever. "You should always be singing," Kris says, blinking up at him and feeling the sun on his face, hot and bright. "Why'd you give it up. That was kind of stupid."
Adam's hands slide around his waist and slip under his t-shirt to trace sweat-slick trails up his spine. "I feel like we've done this before," Adam says, grinning. "It's like, get Kris wasted and it's time to lecture Adam about wasting his talent or whatever." He shrugs. "Just got sick of being told that everything about me was wrong, you know?" He shakes his head and smiles a little, sadly. "Too Broadway, too theatrical, too gay. No band wanted to hire a singer like me, and I guess I just gave up or something. I got tired."
Kris says, "Well I'm wasted and it's definitely lecture Adam time, because yeah, like I said, that was pretty stupid. It's not like you're dead." He laughs. "It's not like you're brain damaged. There's always time to become someone else."
"Change my name and assume a disguise?" Adam says with a grin, and then the band comes on and Kris forgets what they were saying because this is important, too. This is life-changing because it's the sort of music that surrounds him until all he can feel is the beat and the melody and the words like waves crashing into him and swallowing him down. It's music he can get lost in. It's the kind of music he's going to create.
"You're right," Adam says later, lying with his head in Kris's lap in the shade of a tree while they wait for the crowd to thin out before trying to leave.
"Of course I'm right," Kris says. He looks down at Adam and sees himself reflected upside down in the dark shine of Adam's sunglasses. "What am I right about?"
"There's always time to become someone else," Adam says. He sits up and slides his sunglasses off, presses his lips to Kris's in a quick, hard kiss. "I know that it's probably not a great idea to make decisions while I'm still kind of high--"
"That kid had good weed, it's not our fault," Kris says, grinning.
"--but I think. I think you're right about the singing. Giving up is stupid. We should just do it. Go to California and start fresh. Be new."
"Run away to Hollywood and try to make it big?"
"Fuck no," Adam says, wrapping his fingers around Kris's wrist and squeezing. "We'll just try out for American Idol."
"What's American Idol?" Kris says, and Adam laughs.
"It's the future."
*
Here, enjoy a refreshing music mix.