drabbles: this is a sacred, ass-free zone | american idol, popslash | adult
this is a sacred, ass-free zone
a series of unrelated drabbles that i was surprisingly sober while writing
Notes: I took drabble requests a few days ago. I've written about half of them; basically, the ones I had immediate ideas for. I will continue to work on the others, but I really need to start my fic for aificathon, so it might be a while before the rest of the requests get filled. For now, enjoy... this. In which there is MPREG, drag, tentacles, feathers, and the word 'fingering' way more times than I have ever written it previously (sober).
for Wendy: "How about an outtake from your awesome Lance/Justin MPREG?"
At first, Justin thinks it's a joke. And not like some sort of cosmic joke by God to fuck with him for being so perfect and successful at everything he's ever attempted in life, either, but an actual joke, as in Lance trying to pull one over on him or something. As jokes go, though, this one isn't very funny. It's kind of stupid, actually, especially since Lance is a guy and this sort of thing is really only something girls can get away with, like the time Jessica tried the same thing because Justin wanted to break up.
He doesn't want to break up with Lance, though, so mostly, Justin's just confused.
"You're... pregnant." He looks at Lance, lying naked next to him, at Lance's dick which has just spent many happy minutes inside Justin's ass, and rolls his eyes. "Um, okay then, Arnold."
Lance groans and throws his arm over his eyes to cover his face. "I'm not joking, Justin," he says. Justin frowns. Lance can be kind of a freaky mind-reader sometimes, and he knows Justin hates that.
"Good, because it's not a funny joke. It's pretty lame, and I would know because I guest star on Saturday Night Live all the time."
"Yeah, you're a comic genius," Lance says dryly. He removes his arm and looks at Justin, eyes serious in a face much paler than usual. "I had that doctor's appointment a few days ago. You know, the check up thing? And there was a mix up with my urine sample or something, they mislabeled it and they ended up testing it for pregnancy and guess what."
"That's just stupid," Justin says. "Why would they even test--and the whole mislabeled thing--I mean. This isn't a Lifetime movie, Lance. This is real life. Shit like that doesn't happen in real life."
Lance sits up and rummages through the nightstand, gets out of bed with a small box in his hand and heads to the bathroom. "What are you doing?" Justin says.
Lance shrugs. "Proving it."
Justin can hear Lance in the bathroom, opening up the box, taking a piss. Oh, Justin thinks. Lance is actually taking a pregnancy test. He's peeing on one of those weird little sticks with the windows and the symbols and shit that Justin always sees ads for on late night TV, promising the earliest detection in the history of ever, before you've even missed your period. Justin laughs a little to himself, thinking that must be how Lance knew--a lifetime of missed periods. Justin's pretty sure that if Lance had girl parts with the ability to make babies, Justin would've noticed by now. They've been together for long enough that he definitely would've noticed. Plus, Lance is a bass. There's just no way he could be pregnant, even if it was like, medically possible or whatever. His voice is way too low for him to ever get knocked up.
Lance emerges from the bathroom a few minutes later, sits on the edge of the bed and solemnly holds up the stick. There's a pink plus sign in the little window. Justin stares at it. He swallows hard, and stares at it some more, and tries to think of something to say but can't, because all his thoughts seem to have escaped his brain the instant Lance showed him the stick. Maybe, he thinks, aliens did it. That seems like the only explanation, and would also explain Justin's inability to form coherent thoughts, and possibly why people are finally starting to listen to JC's music now. It must be aliens. Or possibly demons, or maybe even Satan himself. Justin's seen Rosmary's Baby. He watched it with Trace when they were twelve because his mom told him it was the scariest movie she could think of, and then it totally wasn't because it was just about a devil baby with red eyes and it didn't even have any child-eating clowns in it, so it totally wasn't scary.
But the point is, devil baby. It seems like a logical explanation.
And Justin knows he shouldn't say it, because he actually really does love Lance, and he trusts Lance, and he doesn't think Lance would ever cheat on him, not even with Satan, not even with a really hot alien. But it's kind of a shock, the whole pregnancy thing, and the words just kind of spew out of Justin's mouth like some sort of verbal vomit. "Is it mine?"
Lance throws the stick at him--which, ew, it has his pee on it!--and pinches Justin's thigh, hard. "Yes, it's fucking yours. Please. Who else but Justin Timberlake would miraculously be able to impregnate a dude? Obviously, it's yours."
Justin frowns. "But I don't even. I mean, we only did it that way the one time, and I was so drunk that it wasn't--"
"Oh, is that your excuse for being a terrible fuck?" Lance rolls his eyes. "Just admit that you're a slutty bottom and our failed experiment in drunken switch hitting failed. And also made me pregnant."
"It was just that one time, though!" Justin says.
"It can happen the first time, Justin. It's not like you were wearing a condom."
"You're a guy!" Justin says.
"I know," Lance says, looking kind of miserable.
"And you're sure you weren't like, abducted by aliens? You haven't had any weird dreams about dark mysterious men trying to get freaky with you?"
"Only if you count Joey," Lance says.
Justin narrows his eyes. "Fuck you!"
"No," Lance says, "we tried that, remember? And then I got pregnant."
Justin stares at Lance's stomach, flat and hard and kind of gorgeous, because Lance works really hard on his body and that's something Justin has been appreciating for a few years now, and maybe even before that if he's being really honest with himself. Somewhere inside that six-pack, there's a clump of cells growing and dividing and doing whatever it is embryos do, and eventually it will be a baby. An actual baby. That Justin and Lance somehow made, without even the aid of aliens or Satan. Justin reaches out and traces the dip down the center of Lance's stomach, presses his hand flat against the muscles there.
"This is really fucking weird," Justin says.
"I know," Lance says. "It's. I don't even know. Weird isn't enough of a word to describe it. I always wanted kids, but. I didn't want to actually birth them." He lies back down next to Justin and leans up on one elbow to look down at him, frowning a little and looking so unhappy that Justin finds himself frowning, too, moving his hand to Lance's forehead to try to smooth out the wrinkles there.
"What are you thinking?" Justin says.
"I don't know. I don't even know what to think anymore. It's like the whole world flipped inside out on me, you know?" Justin nods and Lance catches his hand, presses it to Lance's chest where Justin can feel his heart beating fast and hard beneath his palm. "What are you thinking?" Lance says.
Justin looks up at him and smiles, presses their mouths together in a soft kiss. "I'm thinking that we're gonna be dads. And that this is kind of a miracle, and it's kind of awesome if you think about it, because we're gonna have a kid, and it'll be ours and maybe we should just be grateful to--to God, or whatever fluke of nature that made this happen. I think," Justin says, smiling wide, "it's gonna be amazing."
*
for mistresscurvy: "Drabble prompt: Adam/Kris, the outfit Adam is rocking above."
Kris only sees the picture because about ten million fans--okay five, but whatever--tweet him links to it. And Kris knows he shouldn't follow links that random fans send him, because that's how he ended up watching a video in which he and Adam go at it Bella&Edward style (which, okay, is maybe kind of closer to the truth than he usually lets on, aside from the part where Adam never watches him sleep and has yet to impregnate him with a half-vampire psychic super fetus capable of communicating from the womb, but still!), but sometimes the bus is really boring and everyone else is asleep or messing around on their iPhones or else watching a movie for the hundredth time that Kris didn't think was funny the first time, so he clicks. And that's how he sees the picture.
And the thing is, it should be totally ridiculous. Adam is wearing like, some sort of Henry VIII-style outfit with an armored sleeve and these random leather straps criss-crossing one leg and a giant white ruff around his face and possibly the biggest feather Kris has ever seen perched at a physics-defying angle on his head. He looks like he's about ready to make an off-with-their-heads! style decree, all dark-eyed and grumpy, kind of like the way he looks when he first wakes up in the morning and there isn't coffee already made.
So it should be totally ridiculous, except that's when Kris notices Adam's hand. The hand between Adam's legs, looking like, well. Like he's doing something to himself that Kris is pretty sure Adam doesn't usually do except to other people. Which Kris should know, judging from the constantly sore state of his poor ass, which Adam only gives a rest when Drake comes around. The entire idea of it--of Adam doing that to himself, maybe while wearing the leather gloves he has on in the picture, getting his fingers slick and--and pushing inside, and it would have to be slow because Adam doesn't normally do that, so he'd probably be pretty tight even just for fingers, sliding them in and out with those little twists of his wrist that make Kris crazy and--
"What are you looking at?" Adam says, coming up behind him where he's sitting at the tiny dine-in booth by the kitchenette.
Kris flushes and looks up, blinking a little and trying to clear the images from his brain because he's pretty sure Adam will see them somehow and know that Kris was wondering what it would be like to touch Adam like that. It's not what they do. And it's not that Kris feels weird about it or whatever, because he doesn't; he'd pretty much do whatever Adam let him do if he could. And it's not some weird Katy Rule, either, because she doesn't care what they do as long as Kris doesn't care what she does (they discovered a long time ago that Don't Ask Don't Tell turns out to be a great policy when it involves long-distances relationships, especially when no valuable Arabic linguists are being fired in the process). It's just that Adam doesn't do that, Kris is pretty sure. Adam doesn't even own a dildo. Well, not one he uses on himself.
When Kris doesn't answer right away, Adam snatches his phone away and looks at the picture, smiling wide and bright when he sees what it is. "It turned out so awesome," he says, messing around with Kris's phone, trying to enlarge the picture to see it better. "Oh my god, that hat was crazy. I look like I want to murder someone because the wardrobe girl stuck like a million pins in my head to make the fucking thing stay on. I got to keep it, though, so it was totally worth it."
"You look like you're about to finger yourself," Kris blurts out, kind of loudly. Down the hallway from the bunk area, Kris hears Anoop yell, "No ass play on the bus! This is a sacred, ass-free zone!"
"Now there's a contradiction in terms," Adam says, grinning and handing back Kris's phone. He slides his hand around the back of Kris's neck, squeezing a little and rubbing his index finger along the bumps at the top of his spine. He says, "So I guess you like the picture, huh?"
"It's. Yeah. The feather and the tie thing and. It's nice. Um."
Adam tilts his head to the side a little, assessing. "You don't give a shit about the feather or the tie thing. You just want to fuck me."
"Um," says Kris, and puts his head down on the table. His face feels hot and it's probably bright red and he can't even look at Adam right now, but that doesn't stop Adam from sliding into the booth next to him and leaning down to whisper into his ear.
"You can, you know," he says, and not even in a sexy way, just like he's saying, "Oh, it's going to rain today," or something, but Kris gets instantly hard anyway. He doesn't lift his head up from the table, just makes a pitiful little moaning noise in the back of his throat. "I'll let you fuck me," Adam says casually, and Kris's dick twitches a little in his jeans.
"I thought you didn't, uh. You didn't do that," Kris says finally, to the table.
"I prefer the top," Adam says, "but there are lots of ways to be on top." Kris looks up and Adam grins. "Since I got to keep the feather hat, all we need to do now is wait for someone to throw a riding crop on stage, and we'll be set. Hey--wait, what are you doing?" Adam asks, watching as Kris picks up his phone and starts hitting buttons frantically.
"I'm tweeting," Kris says. "There has to be some girl out there coming to the show tonight who rides horses."
*
for wutendeskind: "Adam/Kris - WATCHING PROJECT RUNWAY"
"So," Kris says, glancing up briefly from his phone to look at the television, "what's this show about?"
Adam stares at him. "What is this show about? Kris. KRIS. Please don't tell me that you've never seen Project Runway."
Kris shrugs. "I guess I won't tell you, then."
"Oh my fucking God, how do you exist? No, seriously, please explain this to me. How do you live in a world without Project Runway? You probably don't even know who Tim Gunn is. That's like, the saddest fucking thing I've ever heard."
Kris coughs. "Um. Well. Is this the one with Tyra Banks?" Adam just stares at him. "What? I know who Tyra Banks is! I think Daniel still has her first Sports Illustrated cover. I think he still jerks off to it, actually."
"No, Kris," Adam says very slowly, like Kris is maybe a little retarded, which from the way Adam is looking at him, Kris is starting to question it himself a bit, "this is not the one with Tyra Banks. This is the one with Tim Gunn and Heidi Klum and they design clothes and have challenges and it's amazing, okay? It's life changing. It's Project Runway!"
"Oh, well," Kris says, "if it's life changing then I guess I should pay attention and--wait. Heidi Klum? The one who's married to Seal? The Victoria's Secret model?"
Adam rolls his eyes. "Yes. She's an Angel or something. Women in lingerie isn't really my thing, so."
"Oh, me neither," Kris says, looking dreamy and far away. "But Seal is so cool, man. Now meeting him would be totally life changing."
"You're so weird," Adam says, but when Kris tries to respond with some witty comment like, "I know you are but what am I" or "Weirdly AWESOME," Adam says, "Shhh. Tim Gunn is speaking now. Prepare to have your life changed."
Kris doesn't see what's so great about Tim Gunn. He's old and he wears glasses and uncomfortable-looking suits and has this kind of Madonna faux-British accent thing going on. Kris is pretty sure his life isn't being changed by this, but Adam looks so happy and pleased and enraptured that Kris decides not to say anything. Instead, he sits back and watches the show, thinking that maybe he'll learn something. Plaid never goes out of style, but there might be new and more awesome ways to wear it, and that might actually be life changing.
Well, it would be wardrobe changing, at least. His shirts are starting to smell.
*
for cabayuki: "pickle, Adam/Kris or Adam/Cassidy; I'll let you decide ;)"
"Adam," Kris says, frowning as he stares into the almost completely empty refrigerator, "your fridge is empty. All you have is like, mustard and pickles and a thing of garlic that I think might be growing itself a head. We have to go shopping." He closes the door and sighs. "Man cannot live on pickles alone."
"Whatever," Adam says from the kitchen table, sipping happily at the Starbucks Kris brought him. Kris is such a good friend. Kris comes bearing caffeine; he's Adam's favorite kind of person, the kind that understands and is willing to feed Adam's addictions. "Pickles are awesome. Pickles have less calories than you spend chewing them. Pickles are the perfect food."
Kris rolls his eyes and leans against the fridge, arms crossed over his chest. "Pickles have no nutritional value, Adam. You're going to get like, scurvy or something."
Adam shrugs. "I'm okay with that. Pirates get scurvy, right? Pirates are sexy. Therefore, pickles are the perfect food. I rest my case!"
"If we go to the grocery," Kris says with a long-suffering sigh, "and you actually buy real food with vitamins and protein and stuff, I will do that thing you keep begging me to do."
Adam sets his cup down and looks at Kris with wide eyes. This is serious. This is monumental. Adam maintains that pickles are totally enough to live on, but if Kris is willing to do the thing...
"Do you promise?" Adam says.
"I promise."
Adam narrows his eyes. "Do you pinkie swear? I don't want you getting out of this on a technicality."
Kris crosses the distance between them and holds out his pinkie finger. Adam's is like twice as big as Kris's when he wraps it around, but that is not something Adam is going to let himself think about right now. No distractions, because this is important. This is important enough to give in about the pickle thing, so it's definitely way more important than thinking about how small Kris is and what he'd maybe feel like under Adam and--yes. Important. Adam looks at Kris expectantly, says, "Well? I'm waiting."
Kris's shoulders slump a little and he says, "I, Kris Allen, do solemnly swear to let you, Adam Lambert, take me shopping."
"And buy what I tell you to," Adam says.
Kris groans a little. "And buy what you tell me to," he says, "but I'm not spending more than a hundred dollars on jeans, that's just ridiculous."
"One fifty," Adam counters, "and I get to choose what you wear at least once a week."
"One fifty," Kris agrees, "but I get veto power with Matt as the tie-breaker. And no bondage stuff. I don't wanna find out later that I was wearing a cock ring the whole time."
Adam smirks a little. "Oh, believe me. If I was going to make you wear a cock ring, you'd know."
"And no more pickles," Kris says.
"Only if I get pregnant and have a craving," Adam promises.
"If you get pregnant," Kris says, "you can have anything you want. If you get pregnant, I'll buy five hundred dollar jeans."
Adam looks at him consideringly. It's a tempting offer. But it would kind of defeat the purpose of the no calorie pickles in the first place, and then there'd be baby weight to lose, and it would just be a huge thing. Adam sighs and lets go of Kris's finger. He can give up pickles. He can eat real food even if it's not perfect like pickles. But he's totally going to trick Kris into wearing a cock ring as a bracelet. Revenge, he thinks, much like certain types of a now forbidden food he shall not name because it would cause great sadness in his heart, is sweet.
*
for sylum_tru: "AJ/Nick: not necessarily pairing, but I want them to please be mocking JC and his failcatness (and possibly having heard The Cab sing and wonder how the lead singer sounds SO MUCH like JC) like seriously"
It's not that Nick thinks JC is untalented, because clearly, the guy can sing, and sometimes he can even write a good song as long as you don't really pay attention to the lyrics too closely, but there's just something about his style or his production or whatever that's just off. It doesn't make sense. All his songs are like ten completely different things thrown together over a weird-ass melody in a range that only JC and maybe Brian can actually hit, and to Nick it just all sounds like, well. Like crap.
BJ could probably produce a better song than the demo AJ just played them, and she can't boil water without lighting her hair on fire, so that's saying something. Something bad. Like the song JC wrote for them.
AJ turns off the sound and stares at them all expectantly. Nick looks to Brian for support, because he's the normal one, the level-headed one, the one that knows how to tell AJ no without sounding like a total asshole (a feat Nick can't accomplish ever, but AJ's had like fifteen years to get used to Nick being a total asshole, so he'd just ignore Nick anyway), but Brian's messing around on his phone and smiling to himself. Nick doesn't think he even bothered to listen to the demo.
Howie is just as useless, checking his watch every few minutes like he has somewhere more important to be, and okay, so he maybe just had a baby or whatever, but that's what his wife is for, right? It's a baby; it's not like the thing does anything interesting yet. Howie's missing out on some really fabulous shitting and sleeping and eating, Nick is sure. He rolls his eyes when Howie checks his watch again. What a freaking loser. Nick is never having kids if it turns you into a loser like Howie.
(Not that Nick ever planned on having kids in the first place, because if he's being honest, he knows that his kids would be so fucked up, it would just be cruel to have them in the first place. Unless he landed a really smart chick who could like, combat the hard-wired trailer trash embedded in Nick's genes. Like, Nick would totally have kids with Natalie Portman. She went to Harvard and she was in Star Wars, so she's smart and completely awesome. But until Natalie Portman offers to be his baby mama, Nick is sticking to the no babies plan. It's in the best interests of the entire world, really. Maybe the future of the human race, even.)
Howie's always been kind of a loser, but this is a new level of loser even for him. He used to at least care about the music. Now all he cares about is his wife and his baby and whatever. Maybe he should've quit like Kevin. At least then Nick wouldn't have to watch his fast descent to further lows of loseritude. They wouldn't really have a band, either, but whatever. They could've replaced Howie with Chris Kirkpatrick. Chris would totally agree that JC's songs suck, and he wouldn't be afraid to say it, either.
"So?" AJ says. "No one's saying anything. Are you guys just so impressed that you have no opinions?"
Nick sighs. Clearly, it's up to him, and he's going to fuck it up and they'll end up having to sing this fucking song anyway, but he at least has to try. It's ametaphor for love as war featuring an intergalactic battle between Earth robots and aliens from Venus; he has to at least try.
"It's, uh. It's interesting. But that's a fuck of a lot of disco claps at the end, man. And. I'm not sure about the range. Like, who's gonna sing that?"
AJ waves his hand in the air like he just doesn't care. "JC will do the arrangement, you know he's like a genius at that shit."
Nick knows no such thing, but he shrugs anyway. "I'm not sure about the lyrics either, to be honest, man. I mean, all the. The aliens and the robots and stuff? I just don't know if it's really Backstreet material."
AJ snorts. "Because we always sing about shit that makes sense. I still don't know what 'I Want It That Way' is about."
"I'm pretty sure it's about date rape," Brian says, not looking up from his phone. They're all silent for a moment, just thinking about that, and actually, Nick's never really stopped to consider the implications of the words in that song, but Brian's kind of right. Date rape is really the only thing that makes sense. Wow, that's kind of disturbing. Brian looks up at the silence and rolls his eyes. "I'm joking, oh my God. We haven't been singing a song about date rape for ten years."
"Okay," Nick says, "but aliens. And robots. Seriously?"
Brian shrugs. "The fans will probably like it. At least it's different."
"I kind of like it," Howie says. Not that his losery opinion counts to Nick, but AJ and Brian seem to think it matters. "I like the tweedly Casio keyboard stuff, and the disco claps. You can never have enough disco claps."
AJ beams. "Awesome, because we wrote this other one I think you guys'll really dig. It's a ballad about the apocalypse and I think it has single potential."
"Oh my fucking god," Nick says, staring at AJ like he's lost his mind, because duh, he fucking has. "We're doomed."
AJ beams. "Exactly."
*
for moonmelody: "Adam/Brad, feather"
The thing about Brad is, he's not in any way imaginable a down-to-Earth kind of guy. He's maybe a down-to-Mars kind of guy, but no one would ever call him humble or sweet or vanilla; no one would ever accuse him of being normal. He's actually kind of pretentious and full of his own unique snowflakiness and the importance of his art, but at least he knows it and he never pretends otherwise. He knows exactly what he wants and how to get it, and right now he wants to dress Adam up like the burliest anime school girl ever and film himself fucking Adam with a novelty tentacle-shaped strap-on, wearing nothing but Adam's black feather ruff and a Britney Pink wig.
When he explains this to Adam, though, Adam is less than impressed or convinced. "Absolutely not," he says flatly, and goes back to eating his breakfast and reading US Weekly. Brad taps his nails against the formica table top and sighs.
"But Adam," he explains patiently, "I thought you said you wanted to support my art. This is important to me."
"We're not making a sex tape," Adam says. He wrinkles his nose. "And I'm not really into tentacles."
Brad rolls his eyes. "The sex is like, totally beside the point of the video. It's about the meaninglessness in assigning gender based on sex organs; it's about the stupidity of labels like 'gay' and 'straight' and 'lesbian' and 'feminine' and 'masculine.' It's about how we're all animals, we're all beasts and civilized society is just another tool of the patriarchal industrial complex used to--"
"If I say yes, will you shut up and let me read about Brangelina's last maybe possible breakup wedding?"
Brad smiles. "If you say yes, I'll never mention the patriarch ever again."
Adam sighs. "I don't want anyone seeing my face."
"I have a Nixon mask you can wear, it'll be perfect. And symbolic. Or maybe Dick Cheney would be better; we could simulate him getting shot in the face for once. We'll call it 'Whittington's Revenge.'" It's so pretentiously awesome that Brad can barely contain himself. This is going to be the best video he's ever made. It's going to be epic. He won't be surprised if it takes over the world, actually, but then, Brad's a very down-to-Mars sort of boy, so not a lot surprises him, especially when it comes to his own genius.
"Fine," Adam says, frowning down at Angelina looking pale and lifeless in his magazine. "Just don't get come on my feather collar. I need that thing for work."
"Don't worry," Brad says solemnly, "your feather collar will be perfectly safe. I'll save all my ejaculate for Dick Cheney's face, and that's a promise."
*
for buildyourwalls: "Give me a Brad/Adam when Brad realized he was madly in love with Adam."
Brad feels like he's kind of been in love with Adam his whole life, like this is some kind of Neil Gaiman destiny bullshit, the gods and the stars and probably the aliens all conspiring to bring them together so that the world can live in peace and harmony or whatever. And maybe that's just because he's high, or because it's his first Burning Man and everything is already kind of insane and overwhelming and it doesn't actually mean anything at all. But maybe it's because he's nineteen and a year ago he was stuck in Richardson getting drunk off ill-gotten Lonestar with Amy and Lisa bemoaning his virginity, and now he's surrounded by half-naked people and the hypnotic beat of the drum circle three tents away and the desert sky above, pure black and bright white, so clear and true that he thinks he could touch it if he wanted to. He doesn't, though, because he has Adam, staring down at him with wide eyes, palms cupping his face, thumbs tracing the sharp lines of his cheekbones.
He can't think about the stars when Adam is looking at him like that.
Adam says, "Let's play a game, okay? We're going to talk to each other using only our brains."
"Are you psychic?" Brad says. Anything seems possible. The universe is infinite and terrible, beautiful and chaotic, and Brad is pretty sure he can see it all in the shapes Adam's freckles make across his left cheek. Anything seems possible.
Adam laughs. "No, but I'm high, and we don't need superpowers to know what we're thinking."
Brad is thinking that he only met Adam a few days ago, but he's pretty sure he never wants to let him go; he's thinking about what it would be like to kiss him, to suck him, to do everything he jerked off thinking about back in his blue and white bedroom in Richardson, lying on his twin bed with its Target pink and purple geometric comforter and biting his wrist when he came so his mom didn't hear him and bang on his bedroom door to ask why he wasn't doing his chores. He thinks about what it would be like to be with Adam, for real; to be boyfriends and stop fucking around with any random hot guy he meets at a club just because he's trying so hard to forget who he used to be, racing headlong into who he wants to become that Brad Bell, Virgin Drama Geek, ceases to exist in the real world and can only be found on page one-ninety-eight of the 2004 Lake Highlands High yearbook.
He's thinking that he could be in love, that he wants to be in love; he thinks about that Dan Bern song, about how in a city of three million two hundred and sixty nine thousand nine hundred eighty four, everyone was lonely, except they're not in the city right now, and Brad's not even sure they're on the planet, either, and he's not lonely, not at all.
For the first time in his life, maybe, and he's pretty sure that this is what love feels like. Then Adam leans down and presses their lips together, a soft slide that lasts forever and ever, just breathing each other in with their eyes wide open, and maybe Brad can't actually read Adam's thoughts, but he's pretty sure it doesn't matter, because this is, after all, some Neil Gaiman destiny bullshit, and everything will be exactly the way it's meant to be.
(Unless Gaiman gets Terry Pratchett to co-write and then all bets are off, and Brad will probably end up condemned to wander alone on a distant planet that is actually the back of a giant space tortoise. But he's willing to take his chances. Adam, he thinks as his eyes flutter shut and their tongues slide together, is totally worth it. And he's pretty sure he'll still think so tomorrow.)
a series of unrelated drabbles that i was surprisingly sober while writing
Notes: I took drabble requests a few days ago. I've written about half of them; basically, the ones I had immediate ideas for. I will continue to work on the others, but I really need to start my fic for aificathon, so it might be a while before the rest of the requests get filled. For now, enjoy... this. In which there is MPREG, drag, tentacles, feathers, and the word 'fingering' way more times than I have ever written it previously (sober).
for Wendy: "How about an outtake from your awesome Lance/Justin MPREG?"
At first, Justin thinks it's a joke. And not like some sort of cosmic joke by God to fuck with him for being so perfect and successful at everything he's ever attempted in life, either, but an actual joke, as in Lance trying to pull one over on him or something. As jokes go, though, this one isn't very funny. It's kind of stupid, actually, especially since Lance is a guy and this sort of thing is really only something girls can get away with, like the time Jessica tried the same thing because Justin wanted to break up.
He doesn't want to break up with Lance, though, so mostly, Justin's just confused.
"You're... pregnant." He looks at Lance, lying naked next to him, at Lance's dick which has just spent many happy minutes inside Justin's ass, and rolls his eyes. "Um, okay then, Arnold."
Lance groans and throws his arm over his eyes to cover his face. "I'm not joking, Justin," he says. Justin frowns. Lance can be kind of a freaky mind-reader sometimes, and he knows Justin hates that.
"Good, because it's not a funny joke. It's pretty lame, and I would know because I guest star on Saturday Night Live all the time."
"Yeah, you're a comic genius," Lance says dryly. He removes his arm and looks at Justin, eyes serious in a face much paler than usual. "I had that doctor's appointment a few days ago. You know, the check up thing? And there was a mix up with my urine sample or something, they mislabeled it and they ended up testing it for pregnancy and guess what."
"That's just stupid," Justin says. "Why would they even test--and the whole mislabeled thing--I mean. This isn't a Lifetime movie, Lance. This is real life. Shit like that doesn't happen in real life."
Lance sits up and rummages through the nightstand, gets out of bed with a small box in his hand and heads to the bathroom. "What are you doing?" Justin says.
Lance shrugs. "Proving it."
Justin can hear Lance in the bathroom, opening up the box, taking a piss. Oh, Justin thinks. Lance is actually taking a pregnancy test. He's peeing on one of those weird little sticks with the windows and the symbols and shit that Justin always sees ads for on late night TV, promising the earliest detection in the history of ever, before you've even missed your period. Justin laughs a little to himself, thinking that must be how Lance knew--a lifetime of missed periods. Justin's pretty sure that if Lance had girl parts with the ability to make babies, Justin would've noticed by now. They've been together for long enough that he definitely would've noticed. Plus, Lance is a bass. There's just no way he could be pregnant, even if it was like, medically possible or whatever. His voice is way too low for him to ever get knocked up.
Lance emerges from the bathroom a few minutes later, sits on the edge of the bed and solemnly holds up the stick. There's a pink plus sign in the little window. Justin stares at it. He swallows hard, and stares at it some more, and tries to think of something to say but can't, because all his thoughts seem to have escaped his brain the instant Lance showed him the stick. Maybe, he thinks, aliens did it. That seems like the only explanation, and would also explain Justin's inability to form coherent thoughts, and possibly why people are finally starting to listen to JC's music now. It must be aliens. Or possibly demons, or maybe even Satan himself. Justin's seen Rosmary's Baby. He watched it with Trace when they were twelve because his mom told him it was the scariest movie she could think of, and then it totally wasn't because it was just about a devil baby with red eyes and it didn't even have any child-eating clowns in it, so it totally wasn't scary.
But the point is, devil baby. It seems like a logical explanation.
And Justin knows he shouldn't say it, because he actually really does love Lance, and he trusts Lance, and he doesn't think Lance would ever cheat on him, not even with Satan, not even with a really hot alien. But it's kind of a shock, the whole pregnancy thing, and the words just kind of spew out of Justin's mouth like some sort of verbal vomit. "Is it mine?"
Lance throws the stick at him--which, ew, it has his pee on it!--and pinches Justin's thigh, hard. "Yes, it's fucking yours. Please. Who else but Justin Timberlake would miraculously be able to impregnate a dude? Obviously, it's yours."
Justin frowns. "But I don't even. I mean, we only did it that way the one time, and I was so drunk that it wasn't--"
"Oh, is that your excuse for being a terrible fuck?" Lance rolls his eyes. "Just admit that you're a slutty bottom and our failed experiment in drunken switch hitting failed. And also made me pregnant."
"It was just that one time, though!" Justin says.
"It can happen the first time, Justin. It's not like you were wearing a condom."
"You're a guy!" Justin says.
"I know," Lance says, looking kind of miserable.
"And you're sure you weren't like, abducted by aliens? You haven't had any weird dreams about dark mysterious men trying to get freaky with you?"
"Only if you count Joey," Lance says.
Justin narrows his eyes. "Fuck you!"
"No," Lance says, "we tried that, remember? And then I got pregnant."
Justin stares at Lance's stomach, flat and hard and kind of gorgeous, because Lance works really hard on his body and that's something Justin has been appreciating for a few years now, and maybe even before that if he's being really honest with himself. Somewhere inside that six-pack, there's a clump of cells growing and dividing and doing whatever it is embryos do, and eventually it will be a baby. An actual baby. That Justin and Lance somehow made, without even the aid of aliens or Satan. Justin reaches out and traces the dip down the center of Lance's stomach, presses his hand flat against the muscles there.
"This is really fucking weird," Justin says.
"I know," Lance says. "It's. I don't even know. Weird isn't enough of a word to describe it. I always wanted kids, but. I didn't want to actually birth them." He lies back down next to Justin and leans up on one elbow to look down at him, frowning a little and looking so unhappy that Justin finds himself frowning, too, moving his hand to Lance's forehead to try to smooth out the wrinkles there.
"What are you thinking?" Justin says.
"I don't know. I don't even know what to think anymore. It's like the whole world flipped inside out on me, you know?" Justin nods and Lance catches his hand, presses it to Lance's chest where Justin can feel his heart beating fast and hard beneath his palm. "What are you thinking?" Lance says.
Justin looks up at him and smiles, presses their mouths together in a soft kiss. "I'm thinking that we're gonna be dads. And that this is kind of a miracle, and it's kind of awesome if you think about it, because we're gonna have a kid, and it'll be ours and maybe we should just be grateful to--to God, or whatever fluke of nature that made this happen. I think," Justin says, smiling wide, "it's gonna be amazing."
*
for mistresscurvy: "Drabble prompt: Adam/Kris, the outfit Adam is rocking above."
Kris only sees the picture because about ten million fans--okay five, but whatever--tweet him links to it. And Kris knows he shouldn't follow links that random fans send him, because that's how he ended up watching a video in which he and Adam go at it Bella&Edward style (which, okay, is maybe kind of closer to the truth than he usually lets on, aside from the part where Adam never watches him sleep and has yet to impregnate him with a half-vampire psychic super fetus capable of communicating from the womb, but still!), but sometimes the bus is really boring and everyone else is asleep or messing around on their iPhones or else watching a movie for the hundredth time that Kris didn't think was funny the first time, so he clicks. And that's how he sees the picture.
And the thing is, it should be totally ridiculous. Adam is wearing like, some sort of Henry VIII-style outfit with an armored sleeve and these random leather straps criss-crossing one leg and a giant white ruff around his face and possibly the biggest feather Kris has ever seen perched at a physics-defying angle on his head. He looks like he's about ready to make an off-with-their-heads! style decree, all dark-eyed and grumpy, kind of like the way he looks when he first wakes up in the morning and there isn't coffee already made.
So it should be totally ridiculous, except that's when Kris notices Adam's hand. The hand between Adam's legs, looking like, well. Like he's doing something to himself that Kris is pretty sure Adam doesn't usually do except to other people. Which Kris should know, judging from the constantly sore state of his poor ass, which Adam only gives a rest when Drake comes around. The entire idea of it--of Adam doing that to himself, maybe while wearing the leather gloves he has on in the picture, getting his fingers slick and--and pushing inside, and it would have to be slow because Adam doesn't normally do that, so he'd probably be pretty tight even just for fingers, sliding them in and out with those little twists of his wrist that make Kris crazy and--
"What are you looking at?" Adam says, coming up behind him where he's sitting at the tiny dine-in booth by the kitchenette.
Kris flushes and looks up, blinking a little and trying to clear the images from his brain because he's pretty sure Adam will see them somehow and know that Kris was wondering what it would be like to touch Adam like that. It's not what they do. And it's not that Kris feels weird about it or whatever, because he doesn't; he'd pretty much do whatever Adam let him do if he could. And it's not some weird Katy Rule, either, because she doesn't care what they do as long as Kris doesn't care what she does (they discovered a long time ago that Don't Ask Don't Tell turns out to be a great policy when it involves long-distances relationships, especially when no valuable Arabic linguists are being fired in the process). It's just that Adam doesn't do that, Kris is pretty sure. Adam doesn't even own a dildo. Well, not one he uses on himself.
When Kris doesn't answer right away, Adam snatches his phone away and looks at the picture, smiling wide and bright when he sees what it is. "It turned out so awesome," he says, messing around with Kris's phone, trying to enlarge the picture to see it better. "Oh my god, that hat was crazy. I look like I want to murder someone because the wardrobe girl stuck like a million pins in my head to make the fucking thing stay on. I got to keep it, though, so it was totally worth it."
"You look like you're about to finger yourself," Kris blurts out, kind of loudly. Down the hallway from the bunk area, Kris hears Anoop yell, "No ass play on the bus! This is a sacred, ass-free zone!"
"Now there's a contradiction in terms," Adam says, grinning and handing back Kris's phone. He slides his hand around the back of Kris's neck, squeezing a little and rubbing his index finger along the bumps at the top of his spine. He says, "So I guess you like the picture, huh?"
"It's. Yeah. The feather and the tie thing and. It's nice. Um."
Adam tilts his head to the side a little, assessing. "You don't give a shit about the feather or the tie thing. You just want to fuck me."
"Um," says Kris, and puts his head down on the table. His face feels hot and it's probably bright red and he can't even look at Adam right now, but that doesn't stop Adam from sliding into the booth next to him and leaning down to whisper into his ear.
"You can, you know," he says, and not even in a sexy way, just like he's saying, "Oh, it's going to rain today," or something, but Kris gets instantly hard anyway. He doesn't lift his head up from the table, just makes a pitiful little moaning noise in the back of his throat. "I'll let you fuck me," Adam says casually, and Kris's dick twitches a little in his jeans.
"I thought you didn't, uh. You didn't do that," Kris says finally, to the table.
"I prefer the top," Adam says, "but there are lots of ways to be on top." Kris looks up and Adam grins. "Since I got to keep the feather hat, all we need to do now is wait for someone to throw a riding crop on stage, and we'll be set. Hey--wait, what are you doing?" Adam asks, watching as Kris picks up his phone and starts hitting buttons frantically.
"I'm tweeting," Kris says. "There has to be some girl out there coming to the show tonight who rides horses."
*
for wutendeskind: "Adam/Kris - WATCHING PROJECT RUNWAY"
"So," Kris says, glancing up briefly from his phone to look at the television, "what's this show about?"
Adam stares at him. "What is this show about? Kris. KRIS. Please don't tell me that you've never seen Project Runway."
Kris shrugs. "I guess I won't tell you, then."
"Oh my fucking God, how do you exist? No, seriously, please explain this to me. How do you live in a world without Project Runway? You probably don't even know who Tim Gunn is. That's like, the saddest fucking thing I've ever heard."
Kris coughs. "Um. Well. Is this the one with Tyra Banks?" Adam just stares at him. "What? I know who Tyra Banks is! I think Daniel still has her first Sports Illustrated cover. I think he still jerks off to it, actually."
"No, Kris," Adam says very slowly, like Kris is maybe a little retarded, which from the way Adam is looking at him, Kris is starting to question it himself a bit, "this is not the one with Tyra Banks. This is the one with Tim Gunn and Heidi Klum and they design clothes and have challenges and it's amazing, okay? It's life changing. It's Project Runway!"
"Oh, well," Kris says, "if it's life changing then I guess I should pay attention and--wait. Heidi Klum? The one who's married to Seal? The Victoria's Secret model?"
Adam rolls his eyes. "Yes. She's an Angel or something. Women in lingerie isn't really my thing, so."
"Oh, me neither," Kris says, looking dreamy and far away. "But Seal is so cool, man. Now meeting him would be totally life changing."
"You're so weird," Adam says, but when Kris tries to respond with some witty comment like, "I know you are but what am I" or "Weirdly AWESOME," Adam says, "Shhh. Tim Gunn is speaking now. Prepare to have your life changed."
Kris doesn't see what's so great about Tim Gunn. He's old and he wears glasses and uncomfortable-looking suits and has this kind of Madonna faux-British accent thing going on. Kris is pretty sure his life isn't being changed by this, but Adam looks so happy and pleased and enraptured that Kris decides not to say anything. Instead, he sits back and watches the show, thinking that maybe he'll learn something. Plaid never goes out of style, but there might be new and more awesome ways to wear it, and that might actually be life changing.
Well, it would be wardrobe changing, at least. His shirts are starting to smell.
*
for cabayuki: "pickle, Adam/Kris or Adam/Cassidy; I'll let you decide ;)"
"Adam," Kris says, frowning as he stares into the almost completely empty refrigerator, "your fridge is empty. All you have is like, mustard and pickles and a thing of garlic that I think might be growing itself a head. We have to go shopping." He closes the door and sighs. "Man cannot live on pickles alone."
"Whatever," Adam says from the kitchen table, sipping happily at the Starbucks Kris brought him. Kris is such a good friend. Kris comes bearing caffeine; he's Adam's favorite kind of person, the kind that understands and is willing to feed Adam's addictions. "Pickles are awesome. Pickles have less calories than you spend chewing them. Pickles are the perfect food."
Kris rolls his eyes and leans against the fridge, arms crossed over his chest. "Pickles have no nutritional value, Adam. You're going to get like, scurvy or something."
Adam shrugs. "I'm okay with that. Pirates get scurvy, right? Pirates are sexy. Therefore, pickles are the perfect food. I rest my case!"
"If we go to the grocery," Kris says with a long-suffering sigh, "and you actually buy real food with vitamins and protein and stuff, I will do that thing you keep begging me to do."
Adam sets his cup down and looks at Kris with wide eyes. This is serious. This is monumental. Adam maintains that pickles are totally enough to live on, but if Kris is willing to do the thing...
"Do you promise?" Adam says.
"I promise."
Adam narrows his eyes. "Do you pinkie swear? I don't want you getting out of this on a technicality."
Kris crosses the distance between them and holds out his pinkie finger. Adam's is like twice as big as Kris's when he wraps it around, but that is not something Adam is going to let himself think about right now. No distractions, because this is important. This is important enough to give in about the pickle thing, so it's definitely way more important than thinking about how small Kris is and what he'd maybe feel like under Adam and--yes. Important. Adam looks at Kris expectantly, says, "Well? I'm waiting."
Kris's shoulders slump a little and he says, "I, Kris Allen, do solemnly swear to let you, Adam Lambert, take me shopping."
"And buy what I tell you to," Adam says.
Kris groans a little. "And buy what you tell me to," he says, "but I'm not spending more than a hundred dollars on jeans, that's just ridiculous."
"One fifty," Adam counters, "and I get to choose what you wear at least once a week."
"One fifty," Kris agrees, "but I get veto power with Matt as the tie-breaker. And no bondage stuff. I don't wanna find out later that I was wearing a cock ring the whole time."
Adam smirks a little. "Oh, believe me. If I was going to make you wear a cock ring, you'd know."
"And no more pickles," Kris says.
"Only if I get pregnant and have a craving," Adam promises.
"If you get pregnant," Kris says, "you can have anything you want. If you get pregnant, I'll buy five hundred dollar jeans."
Adam looks at him consideringly. It's a tempting offer. But it would kind of defeat the purpose of the no calorie pickles in the first place, and then there'd be baby weight to lose, and it would just be a huge thing. Adam sighs and lets go of Kris's finger. He can give up pickles. He can eat real food even if it's not perfect like pickles. But he's totally going to trick Kris into wearing a cock ring as a bracelet. Revenge, he thinks, much like certain types of a now forbidden food he shall not name because it would cause great sadness in his heart, is sweet.
*
for sylum_tru: "AJ/Nick: not necessarily pairing, but I want them to please be mocking JC and his failcatness (and possibly having heard The Cab sing and wonder how the lead singer sounds SO MUCH like JC) like seriously"
It's not that Nick thinks JC is untalented, because clearly, the guy can sing, and sometimes he can even write a good song as long as you don't really pay attention to the lyrics too closely, but there's just something about his style or his production or whatever that's just off. It doesn't make sense. All his songs are like ten completely different things thrown together over a weird-ass melody in a range that only JC and maybe Brian can actually hit, and to Nick it just all sounds like, well. Like crap.
BJ could probably produce a better song than the demo AJ just played them, and she can't boil water without lighting her hair on fire, so that's saying something. Something bad. Like the song JC wrote for them.
AJ turns off the sound and stares at them all expectantly. Nick looks to Brian for support, because he's the normal one, the level-headed one, the one that knows how to tell AJ no without sounding like a total asshole (a feat Nick can't accomplish ever, but AJ's had like fifteen years to get used to Nick being a total asshole, so he'd just ignore Nick anyway), but Brian's messing around on his phone and smiling to himself. Nick doesn't think he even bothered to listen to the demo.
Howie is just as useless, checking his watch every few minutes like he has somewhere more important to be, and okay, so he maybe just had a baby or whatever, but that's what his wife is for, right? It's a baby; it's not like the thing does anything interesting yet. Howie's missing out on some really fabulous shitting and sleeping and eating, Nick is sure. He rolls his eyes when Howie checks his watch again. What a freaking loser. Nick is never having kids if it turns you into a loser like Howie.
(Not that Nick ever planned on having kids in the first place, because if he's being honest, he knows that his kids would be so fucked up, it would just be cruel to have them in the first place. Unless he landed a really smart chick who could like, combat the hard-wired trailer trash embedded in Nick's genes. Like, Nick would totally have kids with Natalie Portman. She went to Harvard and she was in Star Wars, so she's smart and completely awesome. But until Natalie Portman offers to be his baby mama, Nick is sticking to the no babies plan. It's in the best interests of the entire world, really. Maybe the future of the human race, even.)
Howie's always been kind of a loser, but this is a new level of loser even for him. He used to at least care about the music. Now all he cares about is his wife and his baby and whatever. Maybe he should've quit like Kevin. At least then Nick wouldn't have to watch his fast descent to further lows of loseritude. They wouldn't really have a band, either, but whatever. They could've replaced Howie with Chris Kirkpatrick. Chris would totally agree that JC's songs suck, and he wouldn't be afraid to say it, either.
"So?" AJ says. "No one's saying anything. Are you guys just so impressed that you have no opinions?"
Nick sighs. Clearly, it's up to him, and he's going to fuck it up and they'll end up having to sing this fucking song anyway, but he at least has to try. It's ametaphor for love as war featuring an intergalactic battle between Earth robots and aliens from Venus; he has to at least try.
"It's, uh. It's interesting. But that's a fuck of a lot of disco claps at the end, man. And. I'm not sure about the range. Like, who's gonna sing that?"
AJ waves his hand in the air like he just doesn't care. "JC will do the arrangement, you know he's like a genius at that shit."
Nick knows no such thing, but he shrugs anyway. "I'm not sure about the lyrics either, to be honest, man. I mean, all the. The aliens and the robots and stuff? I just don't know if it's really Backstreet material."
AJ snorts. "Because we always sing about shit that makes sense. I still don't know what 'I Want It That Way' is about."
"I'm pretty sure it's about date rape," Brian says, not looking up from his phone. They're all silent for a moment, just thinking about that, and actually, Nick's never really stopped to consider the implications of the words in that song, but Brian's kind of right. Date rape is really the only thing that makes sense. Wow, that's kind of disturbing. Brian looks up at the silence and rolls his eyes. "I'm joking, oh my God. We haven't been singing a song about date rape for ten years."
"Okay," Nick says, "but aliens. And robots. Seriously?"
Brian shrugs. "The fans will probably like it. At least it's different."
"I kind of like it," Howie says. Not that his losery opinion counts to Nick, but AJ and Brian seem to think it matters. "I like the tweedly Casio keyboard stuff, and the disco claps. You can never have enough disco claps."
AJ beams. "Awesome, because we wrote this other one I think you guys'll really dig. It's a ballad about the apocalypse and I think it has single potential."
"Oh my fucking god," Nick says, staring at AJ like he's lost his mind, because duh, he fucking has. "We're doomed."
AJ beams. "Exactly."
*
for moonmelody: "Adam/Brad, feather"
The thing about Brad is, he's not in any way imaginable a down-to-Earth kind of guy. He's maybe a down-to-Mars kind of guy, but no one would ever call him humble or sweet or vanilla; no one would ever accuse him of being normal. He's actually kind of pretentious and full of his own unique snowflakiness and the importance of his art, but at least he knows it and he never pretends otherwise. He knows exactly what he wants and how to get it, and right now he wants to dress Adam up like the burliest anime school girl ever and film himself fucking Adam with a novelty tentacle-shaped strap-on, wearing nothing but Adam's black feather ruff and a Britney Pink wig.
When he explains this to Adam, though, Adam is less than impressed or convinced. "Absolutely not," he says flatly, and goes back to eating his breakfast and reading US Weekly. Brad taps his nails against the formica table top and sighs.
"But Adam," he explains patiently, "I thought you said you wanted to support my art. This is important to me."
"We're not making a sex tape," Adam says. He wrinkles his nose. "And I'm not really into tentacles."
Brad rolls his eyes. "The sex is like, totally beside the point of the video. It's about the meaninglessness in assigning gender based on sex organs; it's about the stupidity of labels like 'gay' and 'straight' and 'lesbian' and 'feminine' and 'masculine.' It's about how we're all animals, we're all beasts and civilized society is just another tool of the patriarchal industrial complex used to--"
"If I say yes, will you shut up and let me read about Brangelina's last maybe possible breakup wedding?"
Brad smiles. "If you say yes, I'll never mention the patriarch ever again."
Adam sighs. "I don't want anyone seeing my face."
"I have a Nixon mask you can wear, it'll be perfect. And symbolic. Or maybe Dick Cheney would be better; we could simulate him getting shot in the face for once. We'll call it 'Whittington's Revenge.'" It's so pretentiously awesome that Brad can barely contain himself. This is going to be the best video he's ever made. It's going to be epic. He won't be surprised if it takes over the world, actually, but then, Brad's a very down-to-Mars sort of boy, so not a lot surprises him, especially when it comes to his own genius.
"Fine," Adam says, frowning down at Angelina looking pale and lifeless in his magazine. "Just don't get come on my feather collar. I need that thing for work."
"Don't worry," Brad says solemnly, "your feather collar will be perfectly safe. I'll save all my ejaculate for Dick Cheney's face, and that's a promise."
*
for buildyourwalls: "Give me a Brad/Adam when Brad realized he was madly in love with Adam."
Brad feels like he's kind of been in love with Adam his whole life, like this is some kind of Neil Gaiman destiny bullshit, the gods and the stars and probably the aliens all conspiring to bring them together so that the world can live in peace and harmony or whatever. And maybe that's just because he's high, or because it's his first Burning Man and everything is already kind of insane and overwhelming and it doesn't actually mean anything at all. But maybe it's because he's nineteen and a year ago he was stuck in Richardson getting drunk off ill-gotten Lonestar with Amy and Lisa bemoaning his virginity, and now he's surrounded by half-naked people and the hypnotic beat of the drum circle three tents away and the desert sky above, pure black and bright white, so clear and true that he thinks he could touch it if he wanted to. He doesn't, though, because he has Adam, staring down at him with wide eyes, palms cupping his face, thumbs tracing the sharp lines of his cheekbones.
He can't think about the stars when Adam is looking at him like that.
Adam says, "Let's play a game, okay? We're going to talk to each other using only our brains."
"Are you psychic?" Brad says. Anything seems possible. The universe is infinite and terrible, beautiful and chaotic, and Brad is pretty sure he can see it all in the shapes Adam's freckles make across his left cheek. Anything seems possible.
Adam laughs. "No, but I'm high, and we don't need superpowers to know what we're thinking."
Brad is thinking that he only met Adam a few days ago, but he's pretty sure he never wants to let him go; he's thinking about what it would be like to kiss him, to suck him, to do everything he jerked off thinking about back in his blue and white bedroom in Richardson, lying on his twin bed with its Target pink and purple geometric comforter and biting his wrist when he came so his mom didn't hear him and bang on his bedroom door to ask why he wasn't doing his chores. He thinks about what it would be like to be with Adam, for real; to be boyfriends and stop fucking around with any random hot guy he meets at a club just because he's trying so hard to forget who he used to be, racing headlong into who he wants to become that Brad Bell, Virgin Drama Geek, ceases to exist in the real world and can only be found on page one-ninety-eight of the 2004 Lake Highlands High yearbook.
He's thinking that he could be in love, that he wants to be in love; he thinks about that Dan Bern song, about how in a city of three million two hundred and sixty nine thousand nine hundred eighty four, everyone was lonely, except they're not in the city right now, and Brad's not even sure they're on the planet, either, and he's not lonely, not at all.
For the first time in his life, maybe, and he's pretty sure that this is what love feels like. Then Adam leans down and presses their lips together, a soft slide that lasts forever and ever, just breathing each other in with their eyes wide open, and maybe Brad can't actually read Adam's thoughts, but he's pretty sure it doesn't matter, because this is, after all, some Neil Gaiman destiny bullshit, and everything will be exactly the way it's meant to be.
(Unless Gaiman gets Terry Pratchett to co-write and then all bets are off, and Brad will probably end up condemned to wander alone on a distant planet that is actually the back of a giant space tortoise. But he's willing to take his chances. Adam, he thinks as his eyes flutter shut and their tongues slide together, is totally worth it. And he's pretty sure he'll still think so tomorrow.)