FIC: "The Glambert Experience Feat. Kris-Kross"
Title: The Glambert Experience Feat. Kris-Kross
Author: coriande
Pairing: Adam/Kris (Kris/Katy, Adam/MC)
Rating: R.
Word count: ~6,800
Song: "Cat People" from Let's Dance
Warning(s): Fluff of the literal kind, some smutty stuff.
Summary: So. Someone has seen fit to fill Adam's apartment with cats. He looks around warily for a candid camera. Being famous is sometimes really weird.
Nineteen E calls him first, sounding apologetic. Like they're implying… something by thinking he knows where Kris is.
He hasn't come into the studio for three days. You don't have any idea where - do you? Adam shakes his head, laughing nervously. The big wigs always get him on edge, even though he's met Callie in the studio a hundred times and she's perfectly sweet and accommodating.
Adam? Mr. Lambert? Have you been in contact with Kris in the past week? And of course a head-tilt means nothing to them. "No," he says, and it's probably a bad thing that a little relief - so Kris hasn't just suddenly realized that spending substantial amounts of time with a giant glitter queen isn't how he wants to spend his free time - slips in there with the worry.
"Doesn't Katy know where he is?"
There's static on the phone. There shouldn't be - Adam's phone is newish, from the Idol people, and he hasn't had time to destroy it yet.
Actually, we can't get a hold of her either. She sounds embarrassed, like she's owning up to losing a pair of borrowed shoes rather than the American Idol and Sweetheart.
"Maybe they're on vacation somewhere?" God knows Adam wants to get away from it on occasion, the constant barrage of people (and he likes the press junket, sociable by nature) - if that's what they're doing, Adam's only regret is that he didn't think to whisk Kris away to Tahiti or Greece before his wife. He collapses on the couch (leather, new and kind of sticky if he's being totally honest).
He's wondering where a couple of kids from Arkansas would go on their first hey-we-are-millionaires-now-honey getaway. Kris has never been to Europe. Adam plumps for the south of France. Or Italy, maybe.
And then his kitchen explodes and he almost drops the phone.
Adam? Adam? Did Kris say something to you about traveling?
"Sorrygottago, hope you find him," Adam spits out and races into the kitchen. Maybe it's a cat burglar - is he famous enough to have a cat burglar now? That's kind of fantastic - but he doesn't get to try out the badass kung-fu moves Drake taught him when they were dating (to protect your virtue in L.A. alleyways, sweetie) because it's not a cat burglar.
It's a cat. A smallish orange and white tabby, crouched on the low bay windowsill and looking at the pile of pans still clattering on the floor in abject horror, like it has no idea how it, or they, got there.
Adam has all kinds of cooking paraphernalia stashed in his kitchen. He's never used about seventy percent of it, but at least he knows that if he ever wants to julienne a cucumber, he's got just the tool for the job. The cat's knocked down his collection of copper-bottomed pots and a pair of graters (one has big holes for cheese and small holes for carrots, which would be great if Adam ever ate carrots), and is curled up on the wooden window seat looking like it's going to back into the glass...
Which is closed, what the fuck? Has some terrorist deposited a cat-shaped bomb in his kitchen and beat it, slamming the window behind him? Adam's thinking about backing away when the cat makes a noise.
Mrrt?
It doesn't open its mouth, but tilts its head like a curious kid, tail receding in size. Mrrt! it says, sounding pleased, and cautiously uncurls itself to step towards him. Adam's experience with cats is limited to a shoestring production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical at the age of nineteen (he played the Rum Tum Tugger), which isn't going to be much help here. But the cat doesn't look aggressive, so he gets down on his knees and crooks a cautious finger forwards.
"Hey, boy. What are you doing in here, huh?" Adam watches the cat's ears swivel, fascinated - he thought only owls did that, but the cat's kind of owl-like when he thinks of it, tremendous round eyes and a small angled face. It looks soft, and the patterns on its head recall a furry tic-tac-toe board. Adam inches forwards, but before he can reach out and touch the cat, it leaps into the air and dashes around him into the living room.
"Wait, cat!" Adam calls stupidly, unfolding to follow the flash of orange tail. Is this normal feline behaviour? "I'm not gonna hurt you." He stumbles into the living room, foot half-asleep from where he was squatting on it, but the cat is nowhere to be seen. Adam considers the possibility of a hallucinatory episode before loping up the stairs and turning into the bedroom.
The cat is there, looking reassuringly solid and sniffing at something on his duvet (his mom sent the quilt when he moved, it is fabulously warm and features a charming rainbow log cabin pattern). Adam thinks it might be a grey cashmere sweater, until it yawns, stretches and looks up at him with a second pair of green eyes.
Great.
---
After he finds the second cat, Adam does a full sweep of the house armed with a Bolivian feather duster (another impulse purchase) and with the orange cat trotting along behind him, occasionally jumping up on things to sniff them or making helpful voyages behind the refrigerator and under his guest bed. Adam's heard of a rat problem, but this is a new one, and he suspects that calling the exterminator is not the appropriate course of action.
When they get to the bathroom, Adam has satisfied himself that there are only two cats in the house and also that all the doors and windows are locked and have been all day. The cat has satisfied itself that Adam's boots are fun, that if it presses against Adam's leg he will reach down and scratch its crosshatched head, and that the grater in the kitchen was thoroughly vanquished during their first encounter.
So. Someone has seen fit to fill Adam's apartment with cats. He looks around warily for a candid camera. Being famous is sometimes really weird.
"Matt?" he says suspiciously. "Alisan?" Then, a little more hopefully than it maybe should be, "Kris?"
No answer. The orange cat rubs itself lovingly against his leg, leaving a trail of fur on his shins. "No!" Adam admonishes. "New pants, kitty. Bad kitty." The cat looks down, humbled - or possibly just distracted by an invisible fly. It flattens itself against the bathroom tile and its ears twitch. The latter, then. Adam brushes an ineffective hand across his legs.
He is not taking care of two strange, possibly robot spy cats. Not now. Not ever.
---
He Tweets a picture of the cats sleeping together on a few pieces of sheet music after a week with the caption: I've been adopted - vet says one boy and one lady. Any moniker suggestions? Forty minutes later he has a pile of names that could label all the unwanted children in China. He's leaning towards famous-people names for the pair, Bonnie and Clyde or Peaches Christ or something, and he's still thinking about it when the car comes to pick him up for his Yahoo interview.
Jennifer, the interviewer, is a sweet woman, and it's obvious her interest in him is real - she can actually reference the album, and has the same favourite track as him, so he gives her a proper smile and she flutters.
"So, Adam, my Twitter feed tells me you've got some new friends in your life." The cats flash on the screen behind them, a furry explosion. "Have you decided on names yet?" Adam nods - in the car he'd almost decided on Gilbert and Sullivan, fuck gender norms - but his mouth has other ideas.
"The boy is Kris, Kris-Kross. The female - the grey one, she's Katy-Kat."
Jennifer looks taken aback, but manages a grin. "Sounds good, Adam. That gives me a surprisingly apt segue into my next question. You've been acting as the interim American Idol for the past two weeks in the mysterious absence of Kris Allen. We all know you and Kris have been close since your stint as roommates during the competition: how has his sudden disappearance affected you?"
Adam hopes the camera can't see his throat tightening. "I think it's a good thing. Kris and Katy deserve some alone time, and the tour was hard on both of them. I fully expect him to be back with another album full of songs about naked sunbathing on some Moroccan beach." He can feel his smile straining - of course she wants to talk about Kris.
"And he hasn't contacted you at all? Sent you a private telephone number?"
The smile cracks and breaks. "No, but come on. Would you want someone calling you up and serenading you with electro-pop on your honeymoon?" He's reassembled the smile, but it's pieced together wrong, feels awkward on his face.
Jennifer tactfully moves on.
---
As it turns out, having cats kind of rocks Adam's world.
He takes Brad and Allison shopping for food and cat toys and expensive kitty litter - Allison protests the cost, but come on, he wouldn't want to shit in second-class dirt - and they bring them back to the apartment and instead of going out that night he has a couple other people over and they all spend a couple hours drinking weird alcohol so sweet it doesn't need a mixer and watching the cats fall over each other chasing their favourite things, which turn out to be pieces of wine cork on a string, go figure. Katy's more reserved than Kris, she'll stand there three feet away and expect you to get up to pet her, but they're both friendly and they seem to genuinely like Adam, which is kind of an ego boost.
The only person they won't go near is Matt, for some reason, though when he finds this out he starts bringing them milk bottle tops and disgusting bits of dead fish to play with. They wait until he's gone to eat them.
About twice a day - the times he'd usually be texting Kris or talking to Kris or thinking about Kris... although that last probably happens with more frequency - he wonders if they'll find it weird that he named his cats after them. He doesn't think it is, but then, he's got the cat-Kris and the person-Kris totally separated in his mind. It weirded him out for two days and then he got over it. And he has a silent suspicion that the fact that he named his cats after a couple has something to do with how well they get along, too. Everyone warned him about midnight catfights and destroyed furniture and no sleep again EVER, Adam, I'm serious here, but Kris and Katy are best friends. They sleep together during the day and share food and wash each other and are generally about as adorable as their namesakes, and Adam doesn't get a pang when he thinks about it, no sir.
---
The only weird thing about the cats - well, okay, about Kris-Kross - is that he won't sleep in Adam's bed when he's there. Katy started sleeping on his shins two days after they showed up, and now Adam finds it hard to drift off without her slight weight on his legs, but Kris just won't come into the bedroom after Adam's showered and changed for the night.
It's not the bed that scares him - Adam's caught them napping together in the afternoon sun on it several times - so he's kind of at a loss over the whole thing. But whatever, it's one camellia in a field of orchids, so Adam can't complain. (Though he can and does whine about the cat box; he's thinking about buying one of those self-cleaning litter things from SkyMall next time he flies. Those look awesome.)
Adam solves the mystery of where Kris sleeps the night after his first appearance as the 'interim' American Idol.
Before he left, Kris - the real Kris, Adam's taken to thinking - had mentioned that there wasn't too much 'Your American Idol' stuff to do outside of the usual album promotion and interviews. But this is a fundraiser, charity-type concert with a lot riding on it and whether they like it or not, the fans who paid for Kris Allen are going to get a whole faceful of Adam Lambert.
He's nervous as shit, but it actually goes pretty well; there are a few misplaced 'I Love You, Kris' signs and maybe ten percent of the people leave after he does Silicon Rings, but Adam's seen that happen at concerts he was actually billed on, so whatever. He likes the song, and he's not going to stop playing it. But the best comes before the encore, when he's stepping out into the lights again and the crowd is relatively quiet. From the back (and damn, this girl should consider a vocal career, because it carries), someone shouts into the stadium: You're kick awesome, Lambert!
Adam knocks For Your Entertainment out of the park and goes backstage to have a small, private cry.
---
When he gets home, all he wants to do is have a really gross wallow and watch Project Runway, but to really snuggle in he needs the audio remote, and he can't find it.
(Adam has a series of six or seven remotes that Kris likes to arrange on the coffee table in order of descending button number when he comes over, and after he wanders into the kitchen for an orange Adam can never find the one he wants.)
Anyways, while he's on his hands and knees under the bed, there's a sort of weird snuffling noise and Adam bangs his head on the bed frame trying to stand up, but it's just Kris. Of course. He's perched on the neglected acoustic guitar case in the corner of Adam's bedroom and it sounds like the dust is giving him a cat-cold, but he swishes his tail hopefully when Adam looks up at him.
Mrrr, says Kris, and stretches on the case. Adam hasn't touched an acoustic guitar since - well, it's been a while. Kris tried to teach him to play a couple times during the competition; once when he found Adam playing with the catches on the case of his baby during Country Week and another time, marginally more successfully, after the Week Five bottom two debacle.
"Here," and he slid down next to Adam on the bed, their hips bumping, "this should be easier for you, you don't have to bridge the chord. Just don't play the bottom or top strings when you strum." His fingers directed, placed. "Man, I'm jealous. Your hands are so big, this will be cake." But it wasn't, and Adam was still struggling with G when Kris's cell phone went off and he jumped like someone'd got him with a taser.
"Sorry, it's Katy," and he'd smiled, reassuring and wandered out to the balcony. "Be right back..."
Experimentally, Adam had plucked the strings, fingers in the last position Kris had manhandled them into, and gotten a sound that might have fit into a song. Maybe. If the audience was feeling tolerant.
When Kris came back from the balcony, Adam was holding the guitar awkwardly and singing "Sweet Katy Mine" to the tune of Sweet Caroline, banging on the body and playing the altered G chord, which didn't fit with the melody at all; and once he got it Kris laughed and his nose wrinkled up a little and he even joined in on the Ba ba ba at the end. Adam remembers wanting to throw the guitar across the room and bite Kris's collarbones. Instead, he improvised another verse.
Sweet Katy mine
[Ba ba ba]
Miss you like I knew I would
I need a sign
[Ba ba ba]
That we've never been this good
[Dee Da Dum]
In his living room, Idol a million miles away and Kris who knows how many more, Adam whistles a bit of the chorus and looks at Kris-Kross. He's curled up around the neck of the guitar case, tail hugging the curve of the latch. "Okay, Kris," and the cat jumps off at his name, "you win."
They don't move for the rest of the night except to get tea, Adam hunched over the guitar and plucking out the melodies to Colours Of The Wind and Closer and Sexual Healing with one finger and the cat curled up purring in the open velvet-lined guitar case, his back arched against the side. He fits in there perfectly, orange-white on blue. Adam knows the case will be full of cat hair in the morning, but can't bring himself to care.
All things considered, it's a pretty good night.
---
By the time Kris has been gone for three weeks, Adam is so used to the cats he doesn't even think twice before bringing Cam home with him. They've been in WeHo, and even though it was supposed to be what Cam had succinctly called 'a proper Straight First Date', with dinner and a movie and a porch kiss at the end of the night, by seven thirty they'd somehow made their way down the street to Candide, and into the VIP room upstairs and… well, Adam's never been very good at Proper Straight stuff.
It's not his fault Cameron's cute, doesn't follow television and manages to be reasonably funny, after all.
But he is trying to listen to the little voice in his head that says "Adam, hey Adam, don't just -" in a sleepy drawly way, and for some reason it prompts the words, "You want to come back to my place for a bit?" out into the suffocating atmosphere of the club.
Cam looks surprised but flattered - it's a good face on him. He has wide dark eyes that look kind of innocent under a metric fuckton of lashes, and a great compact body. Adam can't wait to see it all in the warm light of his bedroom. "Sure," he says, and then they're groping in the taxi like teenagers.
When Adam opens the door and practically trips over Katy, Cam gives a slightly drunk giggle. "Cute cat," he says, and stoops to pet her. She bristles a little, but permits it; the petting stops when Adam makes a grab for Cam's ass, though, in favour of slightly less innocent fondling. Katy disappears like a shot.
Cam, Adam discovers in the living room, is massively ticklish. It's endearing for reasons Adam doesn't want to explore, but his laugh is warm and rough and a little husky, and Adam likes it. It's been a while since he's had a guy laugh in his living room, even if it's for totally, absolutely different reasons.
(Though they did have a tickle fight, once. Over Adam playing Best of Cher, he thinks, while Kris was trying to cook lasagna. It was pretty cool.)
They get to the bedroom and Cam is delightfully contorted in the middle of the mattress -"Gymnast," he'd gasped when Adam had raised an eyebrow at his stretchiness - when it starts.
There's an irate yowl, and Kris leaps up from underneath a pillow and glares at Cam, who wriggles neatly off Adam's fingers and tips himself upright. "Ngh," he exhales in Adam's general direction, "cat lady, huh?" Adam would blush, but most of his blood is currently occupied with making sure his dick is hard as the proverbial bar of steel and he really, really wants to fuck Cam, if it's all the same to Kris.
Apparently it's not, because Cam has just reached out a tentative hand to Kris only to receive a vicious, claws-out swipe and a sound it takes Adam a moment to recognize as a hiss. Kris never hisses.
"Je-sus fuck," Cam grits and Christ, he's bleeding on Adam's sheets. "I don't think your cat likes me." He's holding his palms together, and red is leaking between them like he's got stigmata or something.
"Oh fuck, I'm so sorry Cam -"
Does he have band-aids? Kris brought band-aids over once, probably, "I'll get something to clean you up, are you all right? I don't know what happened, he's usually fine with strangers," and Kris is crouched on the bed, ready to spring again if Cam so much as moves. "What is wrong with you?" Adam practically yells, and Kris looks up at him balefully. Cam rocks on the edge of the bed.
Twenty minutes later, Cam's patched up and Kris is locked firmly out of the bedroom. They've gotten up to three fingers and Adam's cock is screaming yes, yes, motherfucking yes as his tongue slides down Cam's supple spine.
Then the yowling starts.
---
"I'm sorry dude, you're smoking hot, you are, but you need to do something about your cat. Fuck."
---
Adam jerks off furiously in the bathroom and glares at Kris when he saunters in and winds himself around Adam's ankle, purring.
"Oh, you can fuck right off. What do you have against sex? Are you a homophobic cat or something?" He aims a half-hearted kick; Kris increases the volume of his purr and jumps up on the bathroom counter to lick at the water plinking out of the faucet.
Adam sighs. He didn't really want to get laid anyways.
---
There are a lot of things in Adam's house. When he moved in, the place felt endlessly huge and infinitely empty, like no matter how many parties he held or sofa sets he bought there would always be another empty room with strangely coloured walls and heavy taupe curtains just down the hall.
Six months into his stay, he's started having to store things in the basement.
(The real) Kris and Katy have been gone for just over a month, and the new wardrobe he got from a last-minute eBay bid is neatly stowed in his bedroom when he gets home from a dinner with Tommy. The wardrobe is awesome, giant and black and majestic and imposing without being too gothy-goth. He thinks. Anyways, Adam's been expecting it for a couple of days.
He hasn't, however, been expecting there to be a naked woman curled comfortably on the floor inside, blissful sleeping face half-visible through the open doors. She's little and blonde and that's about all Adam registers before the doors swing shut and there's a quiet thunk from inside the wardrobe. For a second, he stares dumbly at the dark paneled wood, and then Kris comes loping in and starts mewing at the other side of the door, claws reaching towards it.
"Oh no you don't, bitch, that is a new piece of furniture," Adam says sharply (mindlessly) and scoops Kris up by his middle. Kris acquiesces quietly enough, ears tucked under Adam's chin and paws curled soft on his shoulder when Adam supports his feet. The doors to the wardrobe are still closed.
Cat in hand, Adam forces his feet to shuffle towards the closet, juggles Kris into one arm so he can open the door. He hasn't had a party in a while - and even if there had been some poor girl asleep in his house for a week, she wouldn't have passed out in furniture that's only a day old and - oh my God, Adam thinks.
She's dead. The delivery guys left a dead woman with no clothes on in his apartment and now he is going to go to jail and there will be no gel and all the men will be bigger than he is and he's going to die. The thought galvanizes him and he throws open the door to… hide the body or something. Poor dead naked girl.
Except there's no naked girl in the wardrobe. There's nobody at all, just a tan drop cloth and Katy-Kat, who is stretching luxuriously and yawning with all her teeth out. Adam drops Kris, who makes a vague indignant noise and hurries himself over to Katy to press down on her neck with his paws and lick her ears, which she tolerates with good humour. It's so normal that Adam almost chalks the girl thing up to some sort of momentary fantasy, which would hold more water if he'd seen, oh, Brett who works at the grocery store down the street sleeping naked in his cupboard. Yum.
Or whoever. It's not really the point. Anyways, unless all the magazine spreading and girlkissing he's been indulging in since the un-win has permanently bent his dick, it's probably not his subconscious telling him to look for a chick. The cute ones are already taken, anyways. Megan. Priss. Katy.
The girl in the cupboard looked kind of like Katy, actually. Not that Adam's seen her in the buff or anything. But her hair was all shiny. There can't be two people with hair that good in proximity; it just wouldn't be fair. He looks down at his Katy, who has had enough of the tongue bath and is hiding behind Adam's boots.
"Katy-Kat, did you just eat a naked girl in the wardrobe? Because you know that's unacceptable in my house." He looks sternly at her. Katy looks sternly back. Adam has always been a little unnerved by Katy's eyes - they're not aggressive, but it does feel like she's weighing him for some unfathomable cat purpose. She seems pleased enough by what she sees, though, and curls happily up nose to tail on his leather boot so he can't bloody go anywhere.
He sits and uses the fringe on his jacket to play with Kris for a half an hour instead. Life could be worse.
---
Life is awful.
Apparently Cam didn't watch quite as little television as he claimed. Twitter is Twittering, Perez is snarking, and the whole damn world apparently knows that Adam Lambert took some dude to bed and:
'oh my god, I was so scared, but I was just trying to be good and game, you know? But then he pulled out this knife - I don't know how the other guys who've been with him have held up for so long - and told me we were just going to play. I don't know what his definition of the word is, but I do know I haven't been able to use my hands for the past week. I've heard a lot of bad things about Adam Lambert, and I always defended him. You can bet I won't be, after this.'
There are photos too, god damn it. Blurry ones from the club that show them dancing, stupid fucking Cam with his slender fingers in Adam's back pockets and another picture of the bastard holding up his hands in front of his face; the last one sort of makes Adam laugh. It's obvious the marks are just cat scratches, albeit deep ones. No one who's actually into the scene would ever believe a word out of the kid's mouth.
But still. Still. Irrational hate is one thing, Adam holds his own against that, but it feels a little different when it might be coming from open-minded people who think he cuts his fucks up against their will to get his rocks off.
He's antsy and it's raining and he just wants to get home and drink and put on some Muse. There are five messages on his cell, and he's checking them under a bus shelter when the car pulls up and gets dirty gutter water all over his pants. And it's stupid, it's childish, but Adam just wants to scream, primal and angry like he's on stage instead of the corner of Western and Seventy Second with water dripping into his shoes.
Instead, he gets into the car and finishes the messages. There's one from his publicist and one from 19 - he deletes those without listening, they'll send a real game plan in the morning and he can deal with it then. Brad, a little nasal, wants to know why Adam never mentioned he was into knife play - 'we could have had so much fun, sweetie, jay kay of course' - and promises to launch a defensive YouTube campaign. His mom wants to know if he's okay, and Armstrong Home Security wants to know if he's been the victim of a recent home invasion, because they can help.
Adam turns off his phone as they pull into the driveway. It says goodbye in Japanese, because Kris fiddled with it once the day Adam got it and they never figured out how to fix it.
"Goodnight, Adam," says Matilda, and usually Adam talks a little with his driver, to talk about her business classes at night or her sixteen year old son, but tonight she'll have to make do with a tired nod. She rolls down the window and looks at him seriously. "You know no one believes a word of that bullshit, right?" That's enough for a wan smile.
"Thanks, Matilda. Have a good night." She reaches through the window and pats his cheek, then drives off into the night. Adam practically runs to the door, and to the liquor cupboard after that, kicking off his sodden shoes and socks for Katy to sniff. He gets down to his boxers and yanks on the fluffy terrycloth robe Alisan bought him a few years ago - not fancy enough for sexy stuff, but the warmest thing in the whole damn world next to the bottle of Jack he's set up on the end table. Both Katy and Kris have meandered into the room, and Adam gets up to shuffle over to the stereo through a perpetually moving field of cat-backs-and-tails. The CD changer light is on and Adam stabs at the Play button, but Supermassive Black Hole seems to be out of commission, because all he's getting is some simple piano and…
Oh. Kris's CD. He can't remember the name of the song, but it's a sad one, about love just out of reach, only it's Kris, so it's sweet and honest instead of being cloying and soppy. The chorus kicks in, bring it back, bring it back like an echo and suddenly Adam is crying. It's not dramatic; he doesn't go into the sobbing fits that engulfed him after Brad left or the hot tears of anger he was holding back earlier, he's just - leaking from the eyes, exhausted and lonely and just missing Kris so badly his chest aches.
The crying lasts maybe half an hour, the drinking another twenty minutes. Adam's about ready to fall asleep in front of the stereo with Beautiful Moon drifting out when a wet nose nudges his hand. He looks up and Katy's in front of him, her soft fur grazing his knuckles. She makes a small, insistent noise and walks towards the bedroom, tail twitching irritably when Adam doesn't seem inclined to follow.
He drags himself into the bedroom without bothering to turn the lights on, stumbling over the toppled guitar case, and burrowing into bed even as he slips off the robe. Passing out seems imminent when Katy hops up on the bed and picks her way towards him - but it's not Katy, weight slightly too heavy on Adam's stomach and fur too short.
Mrrt?
"Kris?" Adam asks stupidly, and there's a warm softness pressed against his bare chest, furry ears tickling his chin. Kris-Kross insinuates himself into the crook of Adam's shoulder like this is perfectly normal, seeming unfazed by the tears making a renewed effort to escape their ocular prison. "If you see Kris," Adam slurs, "tell him I miss him, okay, cat? Tell him to come back."
Kris purrs, and it sounds like a promise.
---
The first thing Adam notices in the morning is that his mouth tastes like dry spit. The second is that he's warm, body-warm as he was cold last night, and it's awesome. The third is that the bedroom smells like pancakes.
"Oh man, pancakes." The voice is awfully close. It sounds familiar.
There's a flat chest under his arm, and a nape in front of his lips. Adam kisses it, because it seems like the thing to do. The person the name is attached to stretches luxuriously and makes a vague noise of appreciation. Adam's heard the noise before. The last time was when he made Kris try his mom's homemade fried chicken and they finally got the recipe right after wasting a couple bowls of batter.
It made Adam hard then too, though much less confused.
"…Kris?"
He can feel the other person in the bed turning (and since when was there someone else in the bed, anyways?), and suddenly Kris is right there, and all Adam can think is oh my god I have a magic wish-granting cat. Then Kris gives him a slow sleepy smile and tugs Adam in by his hips and kisses him soft on the mouth and Adam knows it's not magic, because magic means fantasy and this is the most real thing he's ever felt.
Also it's completely fucking insane, and Adam intends to address it as soon as Kris is finished slowly pressing his lips to Adam's over and over like if he finds the perfect position, the perfect gentle crush of mouth on mouth, there will be some sort of confetti parade. Actually, it seems like he should probably set a different condition for the questions to start because if he has anything to say about it, this could go on for a long, long time. "Adam, Adam, I missed you so much," says Kris, happy and close and totally completely naked, which, what? Not that Adam's complaining. But, questions. Are they really more important than Kris's tongue slowly dipping in and out of Adam's mouth?
He comes to the reluctant conclusion that a couple of them are, and pulls back. "Katy?"
Kris gives him another warm smile and thumbs his cheek. "She's in the kitchen, making orange peel pancakes. I hope you don't mind us using your stuff, but you have some really awesome kitchen gadgets for a single guy. And she said I could stay in here with you for a while, since… well, you know."
He goes in for another kiss, on the jaw this time, and Adam puts up a hand to stop him - and what is he doing, stopping Kris Allen from kissing him, it's madness - but his brain is breaking and it's impeding his make out skills.
"Where have you been! Kris, I haven't seen you in, God, a month and a half! 19 thinks you and Katy eloped to get away from the pressure!" Kris blinks like the idea that he worried people is totally foreign, then makes an apologetic face that's so fucking tempting Adam almost forgets to be righteously indignant.
"Adam - I thought you knew, or I would have tried to contact you." He suddenly looks guilty.
"Knew about what?" Adam splutters, and he'd be genuinely angry by now if he weren't still hugging a naked Kris Allen, guaranteed mood enhancer. As a result, all he can muster up is bemusement.
"About the cat thing. Isn't that why you called us that?" Kris's face falls even further. "You mean you called your cats Kris and Katy and you didn't know? Weirdo." He says it with affection, and a knock on the door punctuates the statement.
"Are you two decent?"
"Yeah," Kris calls at the same time Adam barks "No!" but the door opens anyways and Katy comes in, a pair of Adam's boxers cinched with a scarf sliding off her hips and an old Breakfast on Pluto t-shirt Adam thought he'd relegated to the junk heap swamping her frame. She looks beautiful. "Katy," Kris says, "Adam didn't know about the cat thing."
Adam is too paralyzed by the fact that the wife of the naked man he's in bed with is standing in the doorway to speak; he's had nightmares like this. Only they were, um, nightmarish. This is more like Alternate Reality Express: Adam Dream Time Edition!
Katy comes over and perches on the side of the bed, stroking Kris's hair over his forehead and giving Adam a little smile. "Of course he didn't," she says calmly. "What kind of background checker lets her subject know he's being monitored?" Kris leans into Katy's touch and gives her palm a quick kiss. "Good point," he says, and Adam's about ready to pass out.
"I - what - Kris?"
Kris looks like he wants to laugh, but the sincerity of Adam's unease must convey itself somehow, because instead he sobers and slides himself close so their shoulders and hips are touching.
"Katy can do this thing. Well, all the girls in her family can, but Katy's really good at it." Kris beams up at Katy, who blushes prettily and waves her hand. "Anyways, during Idol, y'know, I thought we, I mean I know I… so I talked to her about it after the tour ended, I was a mess. But she was so good, and she said if I still felt the same way about you in a few months she'd organize it so she could, um, check you out and see if it'd work. And so we came around for a while. Hope we didn't cost you too much in cat food!"
Adam feels like the explanation should come with jazz hands or a giant 'GOTCHA!' stamp or something. But Kris is just sort of fidgeting and reaching for him again and Katy is sitting and watching him fondly with a thoughtful expression in her green eyes and Jesus.
It's Katy's eyes. They're exactly the same shade, colour - her pupils even look a little oval. She raises an eyebrow at him and gives a tiny, imperceptible nod. Adam's brain breaks a little more, but not in a bad way.
"So here we are! And there are going to be pancakes in a few minutes, unless you want to do something else." Kris punctuates the last statement with a less-than-imperceptible twist of his hips, and Adam is forcibly reminded once again of Kris Allen. Naked. In his bed. And, um, not-a-cat, because apparently he had Kris Allen in his bed last night too. What. Adam glances at Katy, but she just smirks a little, tips Kris's head up for a warm kiss, squeezes his hip and leaves, closing the bedroom door behind her.
"Kris?"
Kris sighs, and apparently he's just as blasé about this as Katy, because he seems way more interested in making tiny shocks of pleasure travel down Adam's body via all the sensitive spots on his throat than discussing the mechanics of cat transformation. There are fingers inching under his boxers and Kris's mouth is on his ear, repeating "Adam, Adam, Adam" like now that Kris has his voice back he can't say it enough.
Adam thinks maybe he can deal with that.
---
The orange peel is proving difficult to remove from Adam's best cast-iron frying pan, but he's finding it hard to hold it against Katy. He's finding it hard to hold anything against Katy at the moment, actually, as Kris's has his arms wrapped around Adam's waist from behind. He's not doing much to help with the dishes, as he seems to have appointed himself as head and sole member of the official 'Make Adam Horny' committee, which is consuming most of his time. Katy is brewing tea and watching indulgently, occasionally goosing one or the other of them as they pass by.
"Hey, Katy?" Kris's voice is a little muffled by the skin of Adam's back, but Katy makes a noise of assent. "Adam's birthday's coming up, at the end of the month. You wanna go in on a present?"
"Sure," Katy says. "What were you thinking of?"
Kris smiles and leans into Adam. "I thought he might like a cat."
Author: coriande
Pairing: Adam/Kris (Kris/Katy, Adam/MC)
Rating: R.
Word count: ~6,800
Song: "Cat People" from Let's Dance
Warning(s): Fluff of the literal kind, some smutty stuff.
Summary: So. Someone has seen fit to fill Adam's apartment with cats. He looks around warily for a candid camera. Being famous is sometimes really weird.
Nineteen E calls him first, sounding apologetic. Like they're implying… something by thinking he knows where Kris is.
He hasn't come into the studio for three days. You don't have any idea where - do you? Adam shakes his head, laughing nervously. The big wigs always get him on edge, even though he's met Callie in the studio a hundred times and she's perfectly sweet and accommodating.
Adam? Mr. Lambert? Have you been in contact with Kris in the past week? And of course a head-tilt means nothing to them. "No," he says, and it's probably a bad thing that a little relief - so Kris hasn't just suddenly realized that spending substantial amounts of time with a giant glitter queen isn't how he wants to spend his free time - slips in there with the worry.
"Doesn't Katy know where he is?"
There's static on the phone. There shouldn't be - Adam's phone is newish, from the Idol people, and he hasn't had time to destroy it yet.
Actually, we can't get a hold of her either. She sounds embarrassed, like she's owning up to losing a pair of borrowed shoes rather than the American Idol and Sweetheart.
"Maybe they're on vacation somewhere?" God knows Adam wants to get away from it on occasion, the constant barrage of people (and he likes the press junket, sociable by nature) - if that's what they're doing, Adam's only regret is that he didn't think to whisk Kris away to Tahiti or Greece before his wife. He collapses on the couch (leather, new and kind of sticky if he's being totally honest).
He's wondering where a couple of kids from Arkansas would go on their first hey-we-are-millionaires-now-honey getaway. Kris has never been to Europe. Adam plumps for the south of France. Or Italy, maybe.
And then his kitchen explodes and he almost drops the phone.
Adam? Adam? Did Kris say something to you about traveling?
"Sorrygottago, hope you find him," Adam spits out and races into the kitchen. Maybe it's a cat burglar - is he famous enough to have a cat burglar now? That's kind of fantastic - but he doesn't get to try out the badass kung-fu moves Drake taught him when they were dating (to protect your virtue in L.A. alleyways, sweetie) because it's not a cat burglar.
It's a cat. A smallish orange and white tabby, crouched on the low bay windowsill and looking at the pile of pans still clattering on the floor in abject horror, like it has no idea how it, or they, got there.
Adam has all kinds of cooking paraphernalia stashed in his kitchen. He's never used about seventy percent of it, but at least he knows that if he ever wants to julienne a cucumber, he's got just the tool for the job. The cat's knocked down his collection of copper-bottomed pots and a pair of graters (one has big holes for cheese and small holes for carrots, which would be great if Adam ever ate carrots), and is curled up on the wooden window seat looking like it's going to back into the glass...
Which is closed, what the fuck? Has some terrorist deposited a cat-shaped bomb in his kitchen and beat it, slamming the window behind him? Adam's thinking about backing away when the cat makes a noise.
Mrrt?
It doesn't open its mouth, but tilts its head like a curious kid, tail receding in size. Mrrt! it says, sounding pleased, and cautiously uncurls itself to step towards him. Adam's experience with cats is limited to a shoestring production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical at the age of nineteen (he played the Rum Tum Tugger), which isn't going to be much help here. But the cat doesn't look aggressive, so he gets down on his knees and crooks a cautious finger forwards.
"Hey, boy. What are you doing in here, huh?" Adam watches the cat's ears swivel, fascinated - he thought only owls did that, but the cat's kind of owl-like when he thinks of it, tremendous round eyes and a small angled face. It looks soft, and the patterns on its head recall a furry tic-tac-toe board. Adam inches forwards, but before he can reach out and touch the cat, it leaps into the air and dashes around him into the living room.
"Wait, cat!" Adam calls stupidly, unfolding to follow the flash of orange tail. Is this normal feline behaviour? "I'm not gonna hurt you." He stumbles into the living room, foot half-asleep from where he was squatting on it, but the cat is nowhere to be seen. Adam considers the possibility of a hallucinatory episode before loping up the stairs and turning into the bedroom.
The cat is there, looking reassuringly solid and sniffing at something on his duvet (his mom sent the quilt when he moved, it is fabulously warm and features a charming rainbow log cabin pattern). Adam thinks it might be a grey cashmere sweater, until it yawns, stretches and looks up at him with a second pair of green eyes.
Great.
---
After he finds the second cat, Adam does a full sweep of the house armed with a Bolivian feather duster (another impulse purchase) and with the orange cat trotting along behind him, occasionally jumping up on things to sniff them or making helpful voyages behind the refrigerator and under his guest bed. Adam's heard of a rat problem, but this is a new one, and he suspects that calling the exterminator is not the appropriate course of action.
When they get to the bathroom, Adam has satisfied himself that there are only two cats in the house and also that all the doors and windows are locked and have been all day. The cat has satisfied itself that Adam's boots are fun, that if it presses against Adam's leg he will reach down and scratch its crosshatched head, and that the grater in the kitchen was thoroughly vanquished during their first encounter.
So. Someone has seen fit to fill Adam's apartment with cats. He looks around warily for a candid camera. Being famous is sometimes really weird.
"Matt?" he says suspiciously. "Alisan?" Then, a little more hopefully than it maybe should be, "Kris?"
No answer. The orange cat rubs itself lovingly against his leg, leaving a trail of fur on his shins. "No!" Adam admonishes. "New pants, kitty. Bad kitty." The cat looks down, humbled - or possibly just distracted by an invisible fly. It flattens itself against the bathroom tile and its ears twitch. The latter, then. Adam brushes an ineffective hand across his legs.
He is not taking care of two strange, possibly robot spy cats. Not now. Not ever.
---
He Tweets a picture of the cats sleeping together on a few pieces of sheet music after a week with the caption: I've been adopted - vet says one boy and one lady. Any moniker suggestions? Forty minutes later he has a pile of names that could label all the unwanted children in China. He's leaning towards famous-people names for the pair, Bonnie and Clyde or Peaches Christ or something, and he's still thinking about it when the car comes to pick him up for his Yahoo interview.
Jennifer, the interviewer, is a sweet woman, and it's obvious her interest in him is real - she can actually reference the album, and has the same favourite track as him, so he gives her a proper smile and she flutters.
"So, Adam, my Twitter feed tells me you've got some new friends in your life." The cats flash on the screen behind them, a furry explosion. "Have you decided on names yet?" Adam nods - in the car he'd almost decided on Gilbert and Sullivan, fuck gender norms - but his mouth has other ideas.
"The boy is Kris, Kris-Kross. The female - the grey one, she's Katy-Kat."
Jennifer looks taken aback, but manages a grin. "Sounds good, Adam. That gives me a surprisingly apt segue into my next question. You've been acting as the interim American Idol for the past two weeks in the mysterious absence of Kris Allen. We all know you and Kris have been close since your stint as roommates during the competition: how has his sudden disappearance affected you?"
Adam hopes the camera can't see his throat tightening. "I think it's a good thing. Kris and Katy deserve some alone time, and the tour was hard on both of them. I fully expect him to be back with another album full of songs about naked sunbathing on some Moroccan beach." He can feel his smile straining - of course she wants to talk about Kris.
"And he hasn't contacted you at all? Sent you a private telephone number?"
The smile cracks and breaks. "No, but come on. Would you want someone calling you up and serenading you with electro-pop on your honeymoon?" He's reassembled the smile, but it's pieced together wrong, feels awkward on his face.
Jennifer tactfully moves on.
---
As it turns out, having cats kind of rocks Adam's world.
He takes Brad and Allison shopping for food and cat toys and expensive kitty litter - Allison protests the cost, but come on, he wouldn't want to shit in second-class dirt - and they bring them back to the apartment and instead of going out that night he has a couple other people over and they all spend a couple hours drinking weird alcohol so sweet it doesn't need a mixer and watching the cats fall over each other chasing their favourite things, which turn out to be pieces of wine cork on a string, go figure. Katy's more reserved than Kris, she'll stand there three feet away and expect you to get up to pet her, but they're both friendly and they seem to genuinely like Adam, which is kind of an ego boost.
The only person they won't go near is Matt, for some reason, though when he finds this out he starts bringing them milk bottle tops and disgusting bits of dead fish to play with. They wait until he's gone to eat them.
About twice a day - the times he'd usually be texting Kris or talking to Kris or thinking about Kris... although that last probably happens with more frequency - he wonders if they'll find it weird that he named his cats after them. He doesn't think it is, but then, he's got the cat-Kris and the person-Kris totally separated in his mind. It weirded him out for two days and then he got over it. And he has a silent suspicion that the fact that he named his cats after a couple has something to do with how well they get along, too. Everyone warned him about midnight catfights and destroyed furniture and no sleep again EVER, Adam, I'm serious here, but Kris and Katy are best friends. They sleep together during the day and share food and wash each other and are generally about as adorable as their namesakes, and Adam doesn't get a pang when he thinks about it, no sir.
---
The only weird thing about the cats - well, okay, about Kris-Kross - is that he won't sleep in Adam's bed when he's there. Katy started sleeping on his shins two days after they showed up, and now Adam finds it hard to drift off without her slight weight on his legs, but Kris just won't come into the bedroom after Adam's showered and changed for the night.
It's not the bed that scares him - Adam's caught them napping together in the afternoon sun on it several times - so he's kind of at a loss over the whole thing. But whatever, it's one camellia in a field of orchids, so Adam can't complain. (Though he can and does whine about the cat box; he's thinking about buying one of those self-cleaning litter things from SkyMall next time he flies. Those look awesome.)
Adam solves the mystery of where Kris sleeps the night after his first appearance as the 'interim' American Idol.
Before he left, Kris - the real Kris, Adam's taken to thinking - had mentioned that there wasn't too much 'Your American Idol' stuff to do outside of the usual album promotion and interviews. But this is a fundraiser, charity-type concert with a lot riding on it and whether they like it or not, the fans who paid for Kris Allen are going to get a whole faceful of Adam Lambert.
He's nervous as shit, but it actually goes pretty well; there are a few misplaced 'I Love You, Kris' signs and maybe ten percent of the people leave after he does Silicon Rings, but Adam's seen that happen at concerts he was actually billed on, so whatever. He likes the song, and he's not going to stop playing it. But the best comes before the encore, when he's stepping out into the lights again and the crowd is relatively quiet. From the back (and damn, this girl should consider a vocal career, because it carries), someone shouts into the stadium: You're kick awesome, Lambert!
Adam knocks For Your Entertainment out of the park and goes backstage to have a small, private cry.
---
When he gets home, all he wants to do is have a really gross wallow and watch Project Runway, but to really snuggle in he needs the audio remote, and he can't find it.
(Adam has a series of six or seven remotes that Kris likes to arrange on the coffee table in order of descending button number when he comes over, and after he wanders into the kitchen for an orange Adam can never find the one he wants.)
Anyways, while he's on his hands and knees under the bed, there's a sort of weird snuffling noise and Adam bangs his head on the bed frame trying to stand up, but it's just Kris. Of course. He's perched on the neglected acoustic guitar case in the corner of Adam's bedroom and it sounds like the dust is giving him a cat-cold, but he swishes his tail hopefully when Adam looks up at him.
Mrrr, says Kris, and stretches on the case. Adam hasn't touched an acoustic guitar since - well, it's been a while. Kris tried to teach him to play a couple times during the competition; once when he found Adam playing with the catches on the case of his baby during Country Week and another time, marginally more successfully, after the Week Five bottom two debacle.
"Here," and he slid down next to Adam on the bed, their hips bumping, "this should be easier for you, you don't have to bridge the chord. Just don't play the bottom or top strings when you strum." His fingers directed, placed. "Man, I'm jealous. Your hands are so big, this will be cake." But it wasn't, and Adam was still struggling with G when Kris's cell phone went off and he jumped like someone'd got him with a taser.
"Sorry, it's Katy," and he'd smiled, reassuring and wandered out to the balcony. "Be right back..."
Experimentally, Adam had plucked the strings, fingers in the last position Kris had manhandled them into, and gotten a sound that might have fit into a song. Maybe. If the audience was feeling tolerant.
When Kris came back from the balcony, Adam was holding the guitar awkwardly and singing "Sweet Katy Mine" to the tune of Sweet Caroline, banging on the body and playing the altered G chord, which didn't fit with the melody at all; and once he got it Kris laughed and his nose wrinkled up a little and he even joined in on the Ba ba ba at the end. Adam remembers wanting to throw the guitar across the room and bite Kris's collarbones. Instead, he improvised another verse.
Sweet Katy mine
[Ba ba ba]
Miss you like I knew I would
I need a sign
[Ba ba ba]
That we've never been this good
[Dee Da Dum]
In his living room, Idol a million miles away and Kris who knows how many more, Adam whistles a bit of the chorus and looks at Kris-Kross. He's curled up around the neck of the guitar case, tail hugging the curve of the latch. "Okay, Kris," and the cat jumps off at his name, "you win."
They don't move for the rest of the night except to get tea, Adam hunched over the guitar and plucking out the melodies to Colours Of The Wind and Closer and Sexual Healing with one finger and the cat curled up purring in the open velvet-lined guitar case, his back arched against the side. He fits in there perfectly, orange-white on blue. Adam knows the case will be full of cat hair in the morning, but can't bring himself to care.
All things considered, it's a pretty good night.
---
By the time Kris has been gone for three weeks, Adam is so used to the cats he doesn't even think twice before bringing Cam home with him. They've been in WeHo, and even though it was supposed to be what Cam had succinctly called 'a proper Straight First Date', with dinner and a movie and a porch kiss at the end of the night, by seven thirty they'd somehow made their way down the street to Candide, and into the VIP room upstairs and… well, Adam's never been very good at Proper Straight stuff.
It's not his fault Cameron's cute, doesn't follow television and manages to be reasonably funny, after all.
But he is trying to listen to the little voice in his head that says "Adam, hey Adam, don't just -" in a sleepy drawly way, and for some reason it prompts the words, "You want to come back to my place for a bit?" out into the suffocating atmosphere of the club.
Cam looks surprised but flattered - it's a good face on him. He has wide dark eyes that look kind of innocent under a metric fuckton of lashes, and a great compact body. Adam can't wait to see it all in the warm light of his bedroom. "Sure," he says, and then they're groping in the taxi like teenagers.
When Adam opens the door and practically trips over Katy, Cam gives a slightly drunk giggle. "Cute cat," he says, and stoops to pet her. She bristles a little, but permits it; the petting stops when Adam makes a grab for Cam's ass, though, in favour of slightly less innocent fondling. Katy disappears like a shot.
Cam, Adam discovers in the living room, is massively ticklish. It's endearing for reasons Adam doesn't want to explore, but his laugh is warm and rough and a little husky, and Adam likes it. It's been a while since he's had a guy laugh in his living room, even if it's for totally, absolutely different reasons.
(Though they did have a tickle fight, once. Over Adam playing Best of Cher, he thinks, while Kris was trying to cook lasagna. It was pretty cool.)
They get to the bedroom and Cam is delightfully contorted in the middle of the mattress -"Gymnast," he'd gasped when Adam had raised an eyebrow at his stretchiness - when it starts.
There's an irate yowl, and Kris leaps up from underneath a pillow and glares at Cam, who wriggles neatly off Adam's fingers and tips himself upright. "Ngh," he exhales in Adam's general direction, "cat lady, huh?" Adam would blush, but most of his blood is currently occupied with making sure his dick is hard as the proverbial bar of steel and he really, really wants to fuck Cam, if it's all the same to Kris.
Apparently it's not, because Cam has just reached out a tentative hand to Kris only to receive a vicious, claws-out swipe and a sound it takes Adam a moment to recognize as a hiss. Kris never hisses.
"Je-sus fuck," Cam grits and Christ, he's bleeding on Adam's sheets. "I don't think your cat likes me." He's holding his palms together, and red is leaking between them like he's got stigmata or something.
"Oh fuck, I'm so sorry Cam -"
Does he have band-aids? Kris brought band-aids over once, probably, "I'll get something to clean you up, are you all right? I don't know what happened, he's usually fine with strangers," and Kris is crouched on the bed, ready to spring again if Cam so much as moves. "What is wrong with you?" Adam practically yells, and Kris looks up at him balefully. Cam rocks on the edge of the bed.
Twenty minutes later, Cam's patched up and Kris is locked firmly out of the bedroom. They've gotten up to three fingers and Adam's cock is screaming yes, yes, motherfucking yes as his tongue slides down Cam's supple spine.
Then the yowling starts.
---
"I'm sorry dude, you're smoking hot, you are, but you need to do something about your cat. Fuck."
---
Adam jerks off furiously in the bathroom and glares at Kris when he saunters in and winds himself around Adam's ankle, purring.
"Oh, you can fuck right off. What do you have against sex? Are you a homophobic cat or something?" He aims a half-hearted kick; Kris increases the volume of his purr and jumps up on the bathroom counter to lick at the water plinking out of the faucet.
Adam sighs. He didn't really want to get laid anyways.
---
There are a lot of things in Adam's house. When he moved in, the place felt endlessly huge and infinitely empty, like no matter how many parties he held or sofa sets he bought there would always be another empty room with strangely coloured walls and heavy taupe curtains just down the hall.
Six months into his stay, he's started having to store things in the basement.
(The real) Kris and Katy have been gone for just over a month, and the new wardrobe he got from a last-minute eBay bid is neatly stowed in his bedroom when he gets home from a dinner with Tommy. The wardrobe is awesome, giant and black and majestic and imposing without being too gothy-goth. He thinks. Anyways, Adam's been expecting it for a couple of days.
He hasn't, however, been expecting there to be a naked woman curled comfortably on the floor inside, blissful sleeping face half-visible through the open doors. She's little and blonde and that's about all Adam registers before the doors swing shut and there's a quiet thunk from inside the wardrobe. For a second, he stares dumbly at the dark paneled wood, and then Kris comes loping in and starts mewing at the other side of the door, claws reaching towards it.
"Oh no you don't, bitch, that is a new piece of furniture," Adam says sharply (mindlessly) and scoops Kris up by his middle. Kris acquiesces quietly enough, ears tucked under Adam's chin and paws curled soft on his shoulder when Adam supports his feet. The doors to the wardrobe are still closed.
Cat in hand, Adam forces his feet to shuffle towards the closet, juggles Kris into one arm so he can open the door. He hasn't had a party in a while - and even if there had been some poor girl asleep in his house for a week, she wouldn't have passed out in furniture that's only a day old and - oh my God, Adam thinks.
She's dead. The delivery guys left a dead woman with no clothes on in his apartment and now he is going to go to jail and there will be no gel and all the men will be bigger than he is and he's going to die. The thought galvanizes him and he throws open the door to… hide the body or something. Poor dead naked girl.
Except there's no naked girl in the wardrobe. There's nobody at all, just a tan drop cloth and Katy-Kat, who is stretching luxuriously and yawning with all her teeth out. Adam drops Kris, who makes a vague indignant noise and hurries himself over to Katy to press down on her neck with his paws and lick her ears, which she tolerates with good humour. It's so normal that Adam almost chalks the girl thing up to some sort of momentary fantasy, which would hold more water if he'd seen, oh, Brett who works at the grocery store down the street sleeping naked in his cupboard. Yum.
Or whoever. It's not really the point. Anyways, unless all the magazine spreading and girlkissing he's been indulging in since the un-win has permanently bent his dick, it's probably not his subconscious telling him to look for a chick. The cute ones are already taken, anyways. Megan. Priss. Katy.
The girl in the cupboard looked kind of like Katy, actually. Not that Adam's seen her in the buff or anything. But her hair was all shiny. There can't be two people with hair that good in proximity; it just wouldn't be fair. He looks down at his Katy, who has had enough of the tongue bath and is hiding behind Adam's boots.
"Katy-Kat, did you just eat a naked girl in the wardrobe? Because you know that's unacceptable in my house." He looks sternly at her. Katy looks sternly back. Adam has always been a little unnerved by Katy's eyes - they're not aggressive, but it does feel like she's weighing him for some unfathomable cat purpose. She seems pleased enough by what she sees, though, and curls happily up nose to tail on his leather boot so he can't bloody go anywhere.
He sits and uses the fringe on his jacket to play with Kris for a half an hour instead. Life could be worse.
---
Life is awful.
Apparently Cam didn't watch quite as little television as he claimed. Twitter is Twittering, Perez is snarking, and the whole damn world apparently knows that Adam Lambert took some dude to bed and:
'oh my god, I was so scared, but I was just trying to be good and game, you know? But then he pulled out this knife - I don't know how the other guys who've been with him have held up for so long - and told me we were just going to play. I don't know what his definition of the word is, but I do know I haven't been able to use my hands for the past week. I've heard a lot of bad things about Adam Lambert, and I always defended him. You can bet I won't be, after this.'
There are photos too, god damn it. Blurry ones from the club that show them dancing, stupid fucking Cam with his slender fingers in Adam's back pockets and another picture of the bastard holding up his hands in front of his face; the last one sort of makes Adam laugh. It's obvious the marks are just cat scratches, albeit deep ones. No one who's actually into the scene would ever believe a word out of the kid's mouth.
But still. Still. Irrational hate is one thing, Adam holds his own against that, but it feels a little different when it might be coming from open-minded people who think he cuts his fucks up against their will to get his rocks off.
He's antsy and it's raining and he just wants to get home and drink and put on some Muse. There are five messages on his cell, and he's checking them under a bus shelter when the car pulls up and gets dirty gutter water all over his pants. And it's stupid, it's childish, but Adam just wants to scream, primal and angry like he's on stage instead of the corner of Western and Seventy Second with water dripping into his shoes.
Instead, he gets into the car and finishes the messages. There's one from his publicist and one from 19 - he deletes those without listening, they'll send a real game plan in the morning and he can deal with it then. Brad, a little nasal, wants to know why Adam never mentioned he was into knife play - 'we could have had so much fun, sweetie, jay kay of course' - and promises to launch a defensive YouTube campaign. His mom wants to know if he's okay, and Armstrong Home Security wants to know if he's been the victim of a recent home invasion, because they can help.
Adam turns off his phone as they pull into the driveway. It says goodbye in Japanese, because Kris fiddled with it once the day Adam got it and they never figured out how to fix it.
"Goodnight, Adam," says Matilda, and usually Adam talks a little with his driver, to talk about her business classes at night or her sixteen year old son, but tonight she'll have to make do with a tired nod. She rolls down the window and looks at him seriously. "You know no one believes a word of that bullshit, right?" That's enough for a wan smile.
"Thanks, Matilda. Have a good night." She reaches through the window and pats his cheek, then drives off into the night. Adam practically runs to the door, and to the liquor cupboard after that, kicking off his sodden shoes and socks for Katy to sniff. He gets down to his boxers and yanks on the fluffy terrycloth robe Alisan bought him a few years ago - not fancy enough for sexy stuff, but the warmest thing in the whole damn world next to the bottle of Jack he's set up on the end table. Both Katy and Kris have meandered into the room, and Adam gets up to shuffle over to the stereo through a perpetually moving field of cat-backs-and-tails. The CD changer light is on and Adam stabs at the Play button, but Supermassive Black Hole seems to be out of commission, because all he's getting is some simple piano and…
Oh. Kris's CD. He can't remember the name of the song, but it's a sad one, about love just out of reach, only it's Kris, so it's sweet and honest instead of being cloying and soppy. The chorus kicks in, bring it back, bring it back like an echo and suddenly Adam is crying. It's not dramatic; he doesn't go into the sobbing fits that engulfed him after Brad left or the hot tears of anger he was holding back earlier, he's just - leaking from the eyes, exhausted and lonely and just missing Kris so badly his chest aches.
The crying lasts maybe half an hour, the drinking another twenty minutes. Adam's about ready to fall asleep in front of the stereo with Beautiful Moon drifting out when a wet nose nudges his hand. He looks up and Katy's in front of him, her soft fur grazing his knuckles. She makes a small, insistent noise and walks towards the bedroom, tail twitching irritably when Adam doesn't seem inclined to follow.
He drags himself into the bedroom without bothering to turn the lights on, stumbling over the toppled guitar case, and burrowing into bed even as he slips off the robe. Passing out seems imminent when Katy hops up on the bed and picks her way towards him - but it's not Katy, weight slightly too heavy on Adam's stomach and fur too short.
Mrrt?
"Kris?" Adam asks stupidly, and there's a warm softness pressed against his bare chest, furry ears tickling his chin. Kris-Kross insinuates himself into the crook of Adam's shoulder like this is perfectly normal, seeming unfazed by the tears making a renewed effort to escape their ocular prison. "If you see Kris," Adam slurs, "tell him I miss him, okay, cat? Tell him to come back."
Kris purrs, and it sounds like a promise.
---
The first thing Adam notices in the morning is that his mouth tastes like dry spit. The second is that he's warm, body-warm as he was cold last night, and it's awesome. The third is that the bedroom smells like pancakes.
"Oh man, pancakes." The voice is awfully close. It sounds familiar.
There's a flat chest under his arm, and a nape in front of his lips. Adam kisses it, because it seems like the thing to do. The person the name is attached to stretches luxuriously and makes a vague noise of appreciation. Adam's heard the noise before. The last time was when he made Kris try his mom's homemade fried chicken and they finally got the recipe right after wasting a couple bowls of batter.
It made Adam hard then too, though much less confused.
"…Kris?"
He can feel the other person in the bed turning (and since when was there someone else in the bed, anyways?), and suddenly Kris is right there, and all Adam can think is oh my god I have a magic wish-granting cat. Then Kris gives him a slow sleepy smile and tugs Adam in by his hips and kisses him soft on the mouth and Adam knows it's not magic, because magic means fantasy and this is the most real thing he's ever felt.
Also it's completely fucking insane, and Adam intends to address it as soon as Kris is finished slowly pressing his lips to Adam's over and over like if he finds the perfect position, the perfect gentle crush of mouth on mouth, there will be some sort of confetti parade. Actually, it seems like he should probably set a different condition for the questions to start because if he has anything to say about it, this could go on for a long, long time. "Adam, Adam, I missed you so much," says Kris, happy and close and totally completely naked, which, what? Not that Adam's complaining. But, questions. Are they really more important than Kris's tongue slowly dipping in and out of Adam's mouth?
He comes to the reluctant conclusion that a couple of them are, and pulls back. "Katy?"
Kris gives him another warm smile and thumbs his cheek. "She's in the kitchen, making orange peel pancakes. I hope you don't mind us using your stuff, but you have some really awesome kitchen gadgets for a single guy. And she said I could stay in here with you for a while, since… well, you know."
He goes in for another kiss, on the jaw this time, and Adam puts up a hand to stop him - and what is he doing, stopping Kris Allen from kissing him, it's madness - but his brain is breaking and it's impeding his make out skills.
"Where have you been! Kris, I haven't seen you in, God, a month and a half! 19 thinks you and Katy eloped to get away from the pressure!" Kris blinks like the idea that he worried people is totally foreign, then makes an apologetic face that's so fucking tempting Adam almost forgets to be righteously indignant.
"Adam - I thought you knew, or I would have tried to contact you." He suddenly looks guilty.
"Knew about what?" Adam splutters, and he'd be genuinely angry by now if he weren't still hugging a naked Kris Allen, guaranteed mood enhancer. As a result, all he can muster up is bemusement.
"About the cat thing. Isn't that why you called us that?" Kris's face falls even further. "You mean you called your cats Kris and Katy and you didn't know? Weirdo." He says it with affection, and a knock on the door punctuates the statement.
"Are you two decent?"
"Yeah," Kris calls at the same time Adam barks "No!" but the door opens anyways and Katy comes in, a pair of Adam's boxers cinched with a scarf sliding off her hips and an old Breakfast on Pluto t-shirt Adam thought he'd relegated to the junk heap swamping her frame. She looks beautiful. "Katy," Kris says, "Adam didn't know about the cat thing."
Adam is too paralyzed by the fact that the wife of the naked man he's in bed with is standing in the doorway to speak; he's had nightmares like this. Only they were, um, nightmarish. This is more like Alternate Reality Express: Adam Dream Time Edition!
Katy comes over and perches on the side of the bed, stroking Kris's hair over his forehead and giving Adam a little smile. "Of course he didn't," she says calmly. "What kind of background checker lets her subject know he's being monitored?" Kris leans into Katy's touch and gives her palm a quick kiss. "Good point," he says, and Adam's about ready to pass out.
"I - what - Kris?"
Kris looks like he wants to laugh, but the sincerity of Adam's unease must convey itself somehow, because instead he sobers and slides himself close so their shoulders and hips are touching.
"Katy can do this thing. Well, all the girls in her family can, but Katy's really good at it." Kris beams up at Katy, who blushes prettily and waves her hand. "Anyways, during Idol, y'know, I thought we, I mean I know I… so I talked to her about it after the tour ended, I was a mess. But she was so good, and she said if I still felt the same way about you in a few months she'd organize it so she could, um, check you out and see if it'd work. And so we came around for a while. Hope we didn't cost you too much in cat food!"
Adam feels like the explanation should come with jazz hands or a giant 'GOTCHA!' stamp or something. But Kris is just sort of fidgeting and reaching for him again and Katy is sitting and watching him fondly with a thoughtful expression in her green eyes and Jesus.
It's Katy's eyes. They're exactly the same shade, colour - her pupils even look a little oval. She raises an eyebrow at him and gives a tiny, imperceptible nod. Adam's brain breaks a little more, but not in a bad way.
"So here we are! And there are going to be pancakes in a few minutes, unless you want to do something else." Kris punctuates the last statement with a less-than-imperceptible twist of his hips, and Adam is forcibly reminded once again of Kris Allen. Naked. In his bed. And, um, not-a-cat, because apparently he had Kris Allen in his bed last night too. What. Adam glances at Katy, but she just smirks a little, tips Kris's head up for a warm kiss, squeezes his hip and leaves, closing the bedroom door behind her.
"Kris?"
Kris sighs, and apparently he's just as blasé about this as Katy, because he seems way more interested in making tiny shocks of pleasure travel down Adam's body via all the sensitive spots on his throat than discussing the mechanics of cat transformation. There are fingers inching under his boxers and Kris's mouth is on his ear, repeating "Adam, Adam, Adam" like now that Kris has his voice back he can't say it enough.
Adam thinks maybe he can deal with that.
---
The orange peel is proving difficult to remove from Adam's best cast-iron frying pan, but he's finding it hard to hold it against Katy. He's finding it hard to hold anything against Katy at the moment, actually, as Kris's has his arms wrapped around Adam's waist from behind. He's not doing much to help with the dishes, as he seems to have appointed himself as head and sole member of the official 'Make Adam Horny' committee, which is consuming most of his time. Katy is brewing tea and watching indulgently, occasionally goosing one or the other of them as they pass by.
"Hey, Katy?" Kris's voice is a little muffled by the skin of Adam's back, but Katy makes a noise of assent. "Adam's birthday's coming up, at the end of the month. You wanna go in on a present?"
"Sure," Katy says. "What were you thinking of?"
Kris smiles and leans into Adam. "I thought he might like a cat."