FIC: "Running Gun Blues"
Title: Running Gun Blues
Author: lordnelson100
Pairing: Adam/Kris
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 10,000
Song: "Running Gun Blues" from The Man Who Sold The World
Warnings: violence, language, sex, horror, issues of consent, black magic, Gokey family fuckery, illegal immigration. Goes AU, oh, three paragraphs in.
Summary: Don't open the door!
The thing about demons: they're liminal beings. They hang out in the spaces between, at the edges of things. They're looking for an in.
Thresholds, doorways, slightly cracked windows. A phone off the hook. The last seat on an empty bus late at night, the one you could have sworn was empty. The untorn movie ticket you find in your pocket--to a show you've never seen. A package you signed for without looking at the address label--which is blurred beyond legibility. It feels oddly heavy in your hands and yet when opened, turns out to be completely empty.
There's stuff you have to watch for, when you know what's out there. But mistakes, they come easy.
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Kris Allen, July 23 2009: "I've been a lot of places . . . I've seen things that I know shouldn't happen."
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August 2009 ~ Thursday ~ 12 midnight
Adam first noticed it one exhausting summer midnight, a darkened blur at the edge of a crowd of sweating fans. These nightly after-concert forays were always weird. He'd come off the stage slick with sweat, amped and buzzing from song and stage smoke, starlight and fame, and end up here, in yet another dead-end parking lot.
The tarmac was hot and smelt of oil. Behind them loomed the huge sports center, now darkening, vast air conditioners booming. Sodium lights gave everything and everyone across the vast lots a melancholy tinge of burnt orange. The buses ran their engines, chugging and groaning as the roadies ran in loads of gear, drivers stolid-faced but checking their watches, filled with secret yearning to pull out onto the sweet and empty open road. Or so Adam thought. Why shouldn't bus drivers have inner fantasies of escape? He certainly did.
Around the Idols swarmed the fans. Some kindly-faced and eager, others desperate and unhappy, screaming, pleading, whining, laughing, carved by the harsh light into a hundred masks of round-mouthed outcries, all unwilling to just go home and let the circus pass by, to be alone again. All those reaching hands (sometimes you couldn't tell who was touching you, or just when a light caress became a discourteous clutch). All those out-thrust gifts (beads and toys and photos, CD cases and hats and candy and the occasional baggie of intoxicants all shoved pellmell into your hands). There were rules about what could be given, what not to touch, but not enough time or people to catch everything. Things changed hands, and that was that.
There. At the back of the crowd. Just at the edge of his vision, but disappearing every time he turned his head to get a better look. At first he thought it was someone in a dark cape with the hood up (in this heat?). Then his subconscious counted too many hands and tried to reframe: was it the outline of more then one person, one piggyback on the other (a game? a stunt?)? He thought he heard his name called (but a hundred people were shouting his name, all the time, Adam Adam Adam).
He felt a sudden, suffocating urge to get out of the crowd, to get to the edge of the toomanypeople and into the deep, shadowed emptiness beyond. It would be cool and quiet, surely, far over there, where the hot glare of the parking lot ended, and the thick smudged outline of trees began. He was surprised to find his feet already in motion.
But a warm hand landed on his bare arm now, firm, tugging. "Whoa now, dude," said Kris. "And where are you off to? You're not gonna leave me here by my lonesome with these all -- ?" He didn't fill in the blank, but gave the crowd a comic side-eye and Adam a half-grin.
"Well, if someone weren't so unforgivably slow . . . I personally have been up and down this damn line twice with my usual sleek efficiency while you . . . " Adam tried hard for haughty, managed only petulant. But the crawling feeling at the back of his throat dissipated as he slung an arm over Kris's shoulder and inwardly sighed at the neat fit. "Slow POKE!" And he followed the word with the gesture, landing a black-painted fingertip somewhere around the smaller man's temple and gently pushing.
Kris just smirked. "Can' help it if I'm thorough." It was true. Kris was the steady turtle of the fan line, laid back and cordial, but dogged about sticking his own pace. I need to see what I'm signing, he said. Where I'm from, they always warned me not to put my name to anything without looking at it.
But tonight he paused and looked up into Adam's face, brow scrunching and "decision NOW" passing quickly over his bluntly handsome little features (and just when did Adam learn to read this man's every wordless expression, he wondered). Without bothering to explain, Kris has called over a handler and handed over his pens and gift bags, lifted up a hand to the crowd.
"Wave bye now, Adam. We're goin' in."
"Ooooh, bossy. And why right now?"
"Because you look like you've had it. And I know I have."
And the two of them break off and head away from the hububb together, one tall and one short shadow overlapping and flowing before them as they wearily stroll.
There were some screeches and groans from the crowd behind them as they escaped into the dim of the buses. Tour handlers were lying their asses off, making up excuses on the fly, the other Idols were (Adam knew without looking) deflating slightly, shrugging off annoyance at being instantly converted into leftovers, second bests. Neither Kris nor Adam liked to play up the issue of final two, stars, signed, favorites, but it's there, and from time to time Kris would quietly use that underlying reality--winner, here--to make it clear to people when he'd made up his mind.
That night Adam found he was truly grateful for it, clambering straight up into his bunk and lying down with a groan, throwing down his boots and belt with a thunk into the aisle, snickering as Kris swore and reached out of his own bunk to toss them someplace the other guys wouldn't trip over them on the way in. "You really come in handy when you're cocky, you know that, darling?"
"You can thank me later, bitch," said Kris in a honeyed, off-hand tone that Adam would have sworn was flirting, if he wasn't dropping down, down, down straight into sleep.
That was the start of it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's the ass crack of dawn when Adam awakes for some reason he can't identify. He rolls out of bed to take a piss, and halfway down the bus he finds Kris at one of the built-in tables. A grey-blue light filters in the window. Kris has his guitar in his hands, silently fingering without making a sound, and head turned to profile, staring out the window.
For some reason he can't make clear to himself, Adam stays silent too, finally slipping onto the bench next to Kris and following his gaze. "What's up? Can't you sleep?" he whispers. He touches Kris' shoulder, softly. "You lonely?" Kris does not reply. His gaze stays fixed.
Outside, Adam notices a pickup truck, rusted-out and dirt spattered, that's silently keeping pace with the bus. The pair roll side by side, alone on the empty highway in the fading ink of night.
The windows of the truck are dark, but Adam thinks he sees a hand flail, wave, signal? A metallic glint, the curve of a shoulder, fingers. He turns to Kris, mouthing What and suddenly the man is pushing him out of the way, climbing over his lap--'Scuse me, he mutters--and is gone, retreating into his bunk like a wary animal gone to ground.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The sun comes up, molten hot and angry, late-summer gold, and they hit another city, another massive concrete stadium and, like clockwork, the Idol show gets built again; like a recurring dream, the audience assembles once more, different and yet strangely like each other crowd in each other town. And the singers, they pace their steps over again, like one of fifty other nights.
Only tonight is different to Adam, because his good friend Kris is patently avoiding him, lingering behind the group, his face pale, faint dark circles under his eyes, full lips parted and almost panting. God, he looks like he's going to bolt the room at any minute, and he won't meet Adam's gaze.
Their usual companionship is based on being two together among a crowd, a constantly rewoven net of jokes and nudges, eye-rolls and half-hidden grins, an effortless and happy tuning into each other. Now tonight, for no reason Adam can determine, he's suddenly on the outside, and Kris is shivering behind an invisible wall. But if there's a story here, it's not one Adam is in on, and that's . . . unfamiliar, after all these months. Unacceptable, really. What the fuckety fuck, Arkansas?
Before the last number, just as they're about to rise up on the lift, Kris slips his hand into Adam's and leaves it there, as they rise and rise. Adam briefly imagines he's not going to let it go even when they emerge in front of ten thousand people. But he does.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Adam makes them go out that night, so it's his fault. That's what he thinks, later.
As soon as they have a hotel stop in a decent size city, he implements the plan. He makes sure to get a driver with a town car, not a limo, the better for low profile gutter-crawling, ruthlessly cold-shoulders poor adorable Matty and his puppydog, takemetoo eyes, and practically manhandles Kris out the door. He's a bit of a bitch about it, if you want to know the truth. He has a sudden memory of Brad, pissed and tearful, hissing at him: Fucking Adam Lambert always knows best.
When this memory pops up, Adam is in front of his mirror, painting his eyes with ruthless precision. Blue, silver, black. Making his night-time face. But the memory doesn't make him change his mind about pretty much forcing Kris go out with him that night. "I do SO know best!" He tells himself, "I do."
He has to take action, do something about Kris's silence, his shut-down, folded-in body. And some people would say that dragging his straight, married, affectionate but secretive best-friend slash publicly-revealed crush to a crowded late night gay bar would not be the best way to break through the wrongness, the sudden new mistrust and distance between them, and reveal what's eating at the man's tender little heart.
Those people would be wrong. Rule one of self-revelation is to get on familiar ground, somewhere you can be yourself. And Adam's ground, his comfortable good place, involves a fucktastic beat, some alcohol, and a bedazzled backdrop of fellow freaks.
Besides, what else is he going to do? Sit next to Kris on a Pottery Barn sofa and solicit therapeutic insights? Fuck that shit. He's going to squeeze this nonsense out of Kris with a little late night, one-on-one ass-kicking. Something's wrong with his friend, ergo Adam will fix it. He draws himself up to his full, impressive height , spreads bejeweled fingers, and delivers a Fierceness Lecture to himself. "I am not going to say it. I am not some fucking little girl." A part of him does want to say it, though. What did I do wrong? Shut up, self, he tells himself. It's not about you. Probably. Hopefully.
But as soon as they get to the club, Kris is gone from his side, slips away like a fish into a stream. Shitcakes. Adam refuses to run after him, though, makes a dignified progress to the bar instead, and eyefucks the bartender into serving him instantly. An icy vodka and tonic puts some fluff back in his crest and he turns to scan the club and get back on task. Your Mission, should you choose to accept it: find the Pocket Idol and shake some motherfucking sense into him.
There's something doing on on the dance floor--a disturbance in the Force--and Adam wanders over. At the center of the crowd, a space forms around an Asian man--boy?--with skin like bronze, a dark mess of hair sweeping over his forehead, brows like quick flicks of an ink brush, an open vest and a trail of sweat-slicked skin bared to the waist, a bicep ringed in silver, a shiver of bangles on a graceful wrist.
He dances. Whirling lights slide rapidly over the packed dance floor, making spots, stripes, that slide over skin and whirl onward. Momentarily, bars of shifting light and dark divide the stranger's face into an angry mask. He bares his teeth and they are white, white and sharp. His body spins in a spiral death roll, trailing a lascivious whip of a raised arm.
Around him, the mass of pretty, hungry men seems to surge. The air is sucked out of the room. What the fuck was in that drink, thinks Adam, except everybody else seems to have slurped down toxins, too. People are stumbling and the floor seems to tilt. Distorted shadows are cast along the wall, and Adam feels like he's hallucinating: as the dancer whirls, two arms become four, become six, and his profile seems to morph and shift--pointed ears, staring eyes of fire. The air is full of cologne and male sweat, but there's something else, a night stink of jungle and decay.
Suddenly, there's Kris, and where did he get to, and what? The little man goes right up to the dancer, gets in the guy's face. Kris Allen's expression is fierce, brow lowered, and his lips are moving, but Adam can't hear anything but pounding music, and the tiger-faced stranger is laughing in a very scary way. To Adam's utter shock, Kris is grabbing the other man by the wrist, pulling him in his wake, and away they go through the crowd, disappearing into the dark shadows at the back of the club.
And Adam is sober enough to think: so that's how it is. All this time. Me being so careful. And everything I thought I saw. Secrets and lies. For a time--he doesn't know how long--he returns to the bar and stands there. Feels an cold ugliness blossom inside him at the utterly unfamiliar, unwelcome idea of hating Kris Allen. Thinks about leaving.
But the part of him that loves is thinking--can't just go. Maybe Kris has checked out whatever passes for the downlow in Conway, Arkansas, but a place like this, no. Not safe with strangers, Adam, tells himself, not if you don't know how to handle yourself, the things that Adam's been learning since he was eighteen. And he goes looking, figuring, at best Kris will laugh at him, at worst hate his guts but, so.
He bangs into the men's room and there's a pair of feet sticking limply out from under a stall door. Heart just seizes up. No, no, wrong, not his, and Adam yanks open the door of the stall and oh. A slaughterhouse of blood and mess, someone he's never seen before. And now he won't be able to get their ruined face out of his head. He feels his gorge rising and hot tears, too, but there's no time. He has to find . . . Please. Please.
He hurries down the club's back hall, a slimy cement slot, finds a back door, plastic crates of empty bottles tipped over in haste, spinning on the concrete. Adam spills out the back door, cursing, tripping over the sill, and holy cocksucking hell, what is going on?
In the half-lit alley, the figure from inside the club is moving--he, it--same clothes, same jewelry, but ripped, distorted, swollen--at least seven feet tall now, and his skin is shiny blue black, inhuman, like slate or gunmetal. His face is a bloody car accident, an overexposed photo, a raving dog, a snarling tiger, pitiless golden eyes with pupils like slits, and huge white sharp teeth protruding from his mouth, a bright red tongue lolling obscenely.
His, Its! bare arms ripple with muscle, bound with elaborate rings--weirdly pretty, and horrible--and some of its many hands clutch gleaming knives. It gestures elegantly with bloodstained talons and leaps from bare foot to bare foot. It is dancing for Kris. It is trying to kill him.
And the man from Arkansas is, impossibly, singing. No, chanting. His round dark eyes are cast up to the sky, boyish face aglow, and he throws a hand up like he's raising an invisible congregation to its feet. There's some sort of smoke rising out of the ground, and whatever this horrible thing is, this monster, it is now spitting harsh garbled words in an unfamiliar language that Adam's brain can nonetheless decipher as hoh shit!
In this moment, though, it's grabbing Kris' shirt front and yanking his lithe, precious body straight off the ground and Adam abandons the idea of phoning 911 There's a Fucking Monster Out Here and dashes forward with a pretty stupid idea that amounts to getting in between the monster and its prey.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Adam knows he's shouting, but he can't really help it.
"It, it, it, just blew up! And you! That was, what the hell, some sort of goddamn magic, SPELL? And you killed that thing! It was gone. And that guy in the men's room was dead. That thing wanted to kill you too, but you . . . you . . . !"
"I know, it's crazy, right?"
"Crazy doesn't exactly cover it, Kristopher. Where the fuck did it come from?"
"It followed me, I guess," Kris says, with a rueful look, putting one hand behind his neck like he does when he's awshucksing something sane, something out of their normal, daylight, ordinary world.
Adam, for his part, pacing the hotel room, is pretty sure they've missed the exit for "ordinary," even by his own fairly distorted standards, and driven straight into Crazy Land. He tries to shout less: "Followed you how? From where?"
"From Thailand. Couple years back, when I did the mission. Must have been on the road a while. It's a Rakshasa, a demon that hangs out in the East, a real bad sort of thing. Well, a demon, ergo, bad. Obviously."
"Oh a demon, obviously. From Thailand. WHAT in the name of fuck are you talking about?"
Kris is staring at him guiltily, now. "Really? Wow. Adam, I . . . I thought you knew, y'know? Well not knew knew, about me, but kind of . . . you know. In the ballpark."
"The BALL PARK? What ballpark? The ballpark of DEMONS ARE REAL, and trying to kill us, only you know how to kill them back? I repeat, HOW THE FUCK?"
"But you've seen them before . . . I mean months ago, when I realized you'd been around them before, when we talked, I figured you guessed a little bit about me."
"I WHAT? You WHEN?"
Kris is pulling out his MacBook, clicking through some folders, and pulling up a picture of Adam. He points. "Remember when we talked about secrets?"
And Adam remembers these photos, recalls the conversation. But not, apparently, the same way Kris does.
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March 2009
Adam recalled the night vividly. Their room, the mansion, early in The Show. A very shitty night. He'd been proud and hurt, pissed-off and weary, shamed, and ashamed to be ashamed.
Kris had just looked at the glowing screen with a little furrow to his clear brow, and said to Adam, simply: "Tell me about this?"
"It's not about being gay!" he snapped, thinking Fantastic. Because that doesn't gay at all, you pissy queen. Adam was on a roll now, and Kris lying on his stomach, sprawled across his bed, all calm and whatever, wasn't helping.
"OK, if you say so."
"What you're saying is, people in your home town think you're rooming with the Spawn of Satan. The Damned. The faggoty devil's food cake of eeeeeevil . . . !"
"To be fair: in this one Youtubey here, you're surrounded by flames, holdin' out a giant pitchfork."
"It's a PERFORMANCE, douchebag. FUCK Danny Gokey."
"Agreed. So you tell me."
Earlier that evening. Some cheeseball chain chow bucket in LA he'd never ordinarily be caught deadd in. His fellow contestants, and a gaggle of relations and hangers-on. At dinner, he been trying his damnedest to charm the norms. That had been his mistake.
Halfway through, Danny Gokey had pushed a photo onto his plate--a print-out of an old Adam photo from the Internet. It was Lambert in full Zodiac Show regalia, wild painted eyes and mouth, bare arms and chest, green body paint, dripping with jewelry at the throat and wrist, worked-up hair like David Bowie's orphan cousin. He looked exotic, he looked sexy, he looked crazy, he looked scary. God, he'd loved every moment of that show. Before he'd decided he needed to become America's Acceptable Faggot on national television.
Sign it, said Danny. On behalf of the group. When he raised his eyes from the photo though, what he saw was Danny, grinning and sweating, nervous, fronting, Adam realized, already half-regretful but trying to carry it off, puffing himself out with feigned jokiness. Even as he did this asshole thing, the small eyes locked behind his stupid glasses begged for a break, as Adam sat up sharply, threw his shoulders back. Around the table, Danny's home-town relatives, fat and nervous, snickering and greedy-eyed. Behold, the village. Wanting to see him flinch. Like Adam hadn't familiarized himself with the symptoms from grade school onward. For a second, he saw the image of his painted body through the lens they used: evidence of his freakishness, ugliness, ridiculousness.
And Adam was supposed to follow their game plan by making a fuss, showing his belly and whining. Well, the hell with that. He lifted his chin, signed the image of Green Freak Adam with a flair, and gave them all a plastic grin. Played the rest of the meal that way, armor up, hard, cold, and elegant. Haters to the left. The rest of the Idols, his fellow zoo animals, looked on, a mixture of dismayed, clueless, and damn it, pitying.
When he got back to the room, he felt about a second from breaking things. He lay down on his bed, strapped on his iPod, and twirled the volume up to ear=bleed. David Bowie wailed with sly viciousness.
"I count the corpses on my left, I find I'm not so tidy."
And it wasn't tidy, was it?
"And now I've got the running gun blues."
He had the blues, that was for sure, and he felt like he could make a few corpses himself, right now. Was the rage at the Gokeys, for being the way people were, or at himself, for taking a path where he needed, asked for, their acceptance?
And then the door opened quietly and his roommate appeared. Stood over him with a sympathetic gaze. Touched his shoulder.
And Adam wasn't ready for that touch, not ready to let his guard down and get scraped raw again, so there was an edge to his voice as he slid off his bed, shouldered past the little man, and went to lounge in the room's shabby armchair. "So now what? Do I need to slake your curiosity, too? Need a heart to heart on my corrupt past?" And he thought, if the boy mentions Jesus, I'll fucking slap him.
But Kris, as usual, was nothing if not laid back. "Now that you mention it. Adam. I am kinda curious. I mean, I've seen that picture already. That and a bunch of stuff. But it's not like I totally get it. Fill me in, why don't you?"
And that's not what Adam was expecting.
Kris seemed mild enough as he flipped up his MacBook lid, clicked a folder. And there they were: vids, pics, Adam with Scarlett and the Zodiac cast, men and women in a wild array. Paint, wigs, mask, leathers, chains and glitter. Dancing. Touching. Posing. And yes, him wielding a giant pitchfork, surrounded by flames, his body half-bare, half outlined in skintight kink wear, wailing like a banshee. Straight out of the subconscious nightmares of Middle America. His wild life, brought to you in digital glory.
"Kinda wild, right? So, tell me about these."
"What the hell?" Adam's wary. "You have, what, *background* on me? I'm fucking flattered. Are you one of my stalkers now?"
"Nope," said Kris. "A friend back home sent me these links when they heard we were room-mates. They were, okay, a little worried."
"Because I'm Hollywood faggot? A freak? And I'm going to get my queer chocolate in your straight, church-going peanut butter?"
"Because me and you are from different worlds, and they didn't understand."
Adam stopped, moved by something generous and tender in his roommate's face. Somehow, it seemed to him: this was not the usual glib straight Christian crap, gay=sex=danger=AIDS=death, this was . . . just Kris Allen asking, for reals, about his life.
Which is how Adam ended up trying to explain "Crawl Through Fire" to his worship=leading, pop-warbling erstwhile competitor and hot, friendly roommate. And The Zodiac show. And Upright Cabaret. And Burning Man. It took a while.
"It's not about sex, either. Or not just about sex. . . When I dress like that, when I'm in costume: it's about being free, about being beautiful and strange and wild. All the stuff we're not supposed to be like, in just our lives."
Kris said: "I'm not attacking here, just asking, but . . . if it's about being free, why the make-up, the outfits and masks?"
Adam was waving his arms now: "But, we, we all hide! We hide in plain site, we hide in being ordinary, we hide under our own skin! We all have inner dark stuff, right? It's about taking the stuff inside that you're afraid of, that others are afraid of, and turning it right side out."
"You know what a real mask would be? Pretending to be the sort of boy that these people would allow me to be! If I gave into that, I'd be stuffed in the closet, a fat, miserable music teacher, with a wife whose life I'd be ruining, and giving nothing worthwhile to the world but fear and loathing in San Diego."
And Kris actually laughed. "Wow, you have your alternate universe all figured out. How very J. J. Abrams of you. I love how it's all or nothing: either you're a glittery alien in the Zodiac Show, or Marian the Librarian."
And Kris had looked thoughtful, then. "OK, but, what about these other guys? So you know why you're there, but it's not like you could know for everybody, right? If everybody's in costume, if nobody looks like themselves . . . couldn't someone take advantage of that? Use it to hurt you? You're saying this is about openness, but who knows what these other dudes are hiding?"
And Adam struggled with that, because, actually, true. Real. "I guess there's an element of whatever, darkness. Risk, okay, of course. But the world is a dangerous place. At some level, it's just dangerous to be me. Isn't that why we're here on this crazy show, you as well as me? Because we're saying fuck all that?"
And then his friend is being serious: "OK, look. I git it, at least someways, at least about the no safe places part . . . if not the glitter. The world is a dangerous place, yeah. I've been a few places in the world that aren't so safe. When we were in Africa, people dying on cots with no medicine, and cleaning up in Indonesia after all those people drowned, and the whole Burma thing. There's stuff that will just reach out and eat people up if no one's willing to put themselves out there and find out what they can do to save them. If we all just stayed put, like you say, there wouldn't be be much saving going on."
Adam, laughing now, anger softened away, sat down on Kris' bed: "Did you just find common ground between my gay cabaret past and your Christian missionary past? Oooh, you're just full of surprises. What are you hiding under that JC Penney plaid shirt?"
Kris looked at him, startled and intense.
"Okay," thought Adam. "And?"
"I guess we all have our secrets," said Kris. "Just . . . Promise me you don't hook up with people till you at least know what's under the make up."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Present Day ~ August 2009
"THAT guy? A DEMON? You noticed a demon in the cast pictures of my old show and you're just now telling me? That's . . . Shit, I don't even know his name, I think he was dating the bartender."
"More like hunting the bartender. Those demons are pretty greedy. And they're always hungry. Unfortunately, they like to get to know their meals before they have them. Poor guy. My friends back home spotted him in these videos from your show, they didn't know what to think. Whether you were . . . involved at all."
"Involved with monsters?"
"There are plenty of people who are. Specially in LA."
"Kris. How do you even know these things?"
"I told you, I went on some missions. Didn't exactly say what those missions were."
Adam: "I thought--like building huts and handing out medicine and holding orphans and acting Bible stories out with puppets."
Kris: "Hey! That's, well, pretty close. Okay, not puppets. But that's not the only type of saving there is. These demon things are hell in the poorer parts of the world. People livin' in alleys and tents, kids wandering on their own. There was one real bad one, ravaging the village we were set up in, so . . . You know, I took it out."
"But how do you know what to do?" Adam wants to know.
Kris sighs: "You're gonna have to trust me on some stuff, 'cause the story's too long to tell tonight. Let's just say there are places back in Arkansas where hellfire and brimstone ain't just a flowery expression."
"OK, on the off-chance I can deal with your insane story that you killed a monster way down in Thailand with your crazy missionary fu, what the hell was one doing, here, tonight?"
"A revenge kind of thing. You know. For me taking out its brother."
"And it found you how?"
And now Kris is rolling his eyes. "How do you think? It might be that goin' on national television wasn't the best idea in the world. But y'know . . . my music! And it's not like I really thought I'd make it past the Hollywood round."
"Well, how come it didn't just come charging into the Nokia theater and, whatever, start tearing up Disco Week?" Adam's attitudinal, but shivers a little at the thought, the idea of something bloody and mean coming after Kris, following him from the far corners of the earth with some sort of evil magic mad-on.
"Here's the thing about demons. There are rules. They can't come right out and go after you in broad daylight, on your playing field."
"They're like . . . they live on the borders of our world, right? And to get into our lives, there's gotta be an opening, something for them to cross over through. So they play us. Get us to exchange things--take a gift from them, sign a deal, sit in on a game of cards, eat from your bowl, an invite to the ball--all the classic fairytale stuff."
"They can shape-shift for while, too. Look like people. Not exactly right, but close enough if you're not paying attention, that's why they favor crowds and dark places. They try to find a way in, so you give them the power, and weaken yours."
"But that kid, the dead guy at the bar in the bathroom, he . . . ?"
"The demon had been hanging around there for a while, waiting on us. That poor ol' boy, he just said yes to the wrong stranger."
It's late, so late. Adam is struggling to adapt to a world in which tiny, doe-eyed worship leaders from Arkansas have dark pasts. Protect people from hungry, sharp bad things. Are in danger, still. Kris is watching him sympathetically but warily. He touches Adam's shoulder, leads him to the door. Sighs. "I know it's a lot. You go on now. Get some sleep. And lock your door, OK?"
As Adam turns to go, Kris gets weird again. Hugs him furiously, burying his face in the taller man's shoulder, with that vulnerable abandon that's punched a hole in Adam's polished armor from the first.
In a minute, he's out in the hall, crosses it to his own room. Scrubs away his face. Careful strokes with a sponge undo the now-ruined makeup, caked with sweat and a few tears, if he's being honest, because what a fucking night. He runs cold water over his hands, strips away his gear, lies down in boxers and shivers. Time passes. Suddenly he's up again, throwing on a quick cover of boots, jeans, tee, and bolting across the hall, rapping, then pounding on Kris' door.
No answer. He thinks he can hear movement, though. Adam finds himself rasping through clenched teeth: "Let me in, Allen, or so help me I'll scream murder to security and have them break down your door." There's a faintly heard sigh, and Kris opens the door warily. Right away, it's clear that Adam's Bat Sense is correct: it's not over yet.
In the middle of the room, there's a circle of lit candles. Kris steps to the other side of it. He's shirtless now, naked to the waist, barefoot, clad only in soft gray sweats. A small silver cross on a chain around his neck. His pale torso, so very tight and precious, sculpted from muscular shoulders down to a slender waist. The manly scruff of his sideburns and slight stubble framing the full, pink mouth. The dark trail starting just over the waistband of his sweats and leading downward, the gentle swell of his dick beneath the soft cotton. Any other night, Adam gazes, thinking, on any other night, this, this, is why he would be here.
Right now, though, what arrests Adam's gaze on Kris' bare chest are four, long parallel cuts, finely beaded with blood. Adam places a his open palm on Kris's breastbone and says, harsher then he intends: "What is this? What are you still hiding from me?"
Kris' voice is low, broken: "Adam. Y'all have to go, do you hear me? It's not safe for you. The Rakshasa . . . it got me, before I got it."
"But you killed it. It's gone, isn't it?"
"They come in threes. The one I killed in Thailand, the one you saw me kill . . . and one more. In threes. And since the second one got at me, drew blood, its brother will have power over me now."
"Power like what? Like . . . like the boy who was killed at the bar, like the people you were talking about in Thailand? How does it -- ?"
"It'll try to call me out. It's like I said. There are rules. They can't just come here and break down the door. They can't cross thresholds, not unless you invite them in, but . . . once they get a finger in, they start to call you. Make you want to go, to just pass on out to where they are, where you're not safe anymore."
"So, this thing cast some sort of whammy on you when it scratched you." Adam was pacing now, and waving his hands. "Then why aren't we running, dammit? Or calling in our security or the police or someone?"
"NO. No, man. No one will believe us, and in the confusion, the risk goes up that someone else gets hurt. This thing is after me, I can't risk it going through someone else to get to me. Need to sit tight, wait till these scratches heal, and the spell wears off, then I can go after it. Just. Hold out. Need to resist the call, the draw it has on me, till daybreak."
And Adam is finally furious. He takes Kris by the shoulders and shakes him, hard: "So what, you're going to sit right here on the carpet and pray? By yourself? And hope that Jesus takes an interest, like he clearly doesn't for everybody else who gets killed by something evil or, or, cancer, or a fucking *bus*!"
And Adam has finally crossed some sort of line because Kris' eyes are hot and dark and he looks sort of shocked and pissed and his hand goes up and takes Adam's jaw with almost a yank and he says quietly, "Yeah, I pray, and no, we are not going *there," you and me." "Okay," says Adam, and wonders why Kris does not take his hand away. It's so warm. They are standing toe to toe. Kris keeps his hand on Adam's face and keeps looking into his eyes, just like that, and then he swallows. Adam sees him, he can tell it's that thing in the throat you feel when you're trying to not do tears. And he puts his hand on the side of Kris' face.
Suddenly, the room phone rings, and both their cell phones go off at once , and they both jump a foot. Don't answer, Kris whispers. Like I'm fucking going to, Adam breathes and then he half-laughs because it's all so fucking ridiculously creepy.
They fight for a while after that, Kris half-heartedly trying to get Adam to leave, Adam holding his ground. There's a moment when Kris stops mid-sentence, though.
"What?" Adam whispers. "What is it?" Adam could hear nothing but silence. Kris had his head sharply turned, tendon standing out on his neck, eyes closed, listening, listening. "Adam," Kris said low and husky. "Whatever I do, whatever I say, don't let me leave this room tonight."
Adam takes his hand and promises.
Things start out normally enough (or maybe mundane is a better word, because what is normal in their lives? Even on the nights without demons). As the night crawls by, they let the TV blare, they play cards sprawled on the ugly hotel room rug, drink whiskey from the minibar till their eyes are falling shut.
At one point, with no one touching it, the clock radio comes suddenly to life and blares: "AND IF YOU SAY RUN, I'LL RUN WITH YOU. IF YOU SAY HIDE, WE'LL HIDE! "
Adam unplugs it. Hides it under the bed for good measure. Finally, Kris sacks out on the sofa of the suite, makes Adam take the bed. As he drops off, Adam wonders, "Is this all just some asstastic bad dream, a delusion? Bad club drugs? Food poisoning? Should I be dragging us both to a therapist in the morning to have our scrambled brains untangled?"
In the middle of the night, he wakes with a start, and freezes.
Kris is at the door of the room, his hand on the knob and lock. His eyes are glazed, his breathing slow. Adam is across the room so fast he can't remember how he got there. At his touch, Kris shudders and looks up into Adam's face, and now Adam is finally scared again, because Kris clearly is.
Adam leads him back to the bed, gets him to sit down, lifts his feet and tips till he's lying on his back. Then he ties Kris' hands to the headboard with his belt. Tight. Fast. When it's done, they stare at each other wordlessly.
Adam lies down beside his friend. There's no sound but their breathing. Yet Kris seems to be listening once more, swallowing and shutting his eyes. Till he turns his head and says, low: "Adam, would you--?" Adam whispers back, "Would I what?" and Kris kisses Adam then, very sweetly, very gently on the side of the face, and Adam can't help tightening the hand he has cupped on the other man's bicep, and then Kris shifts his angle and is kissing him full on the mouth, with a low hmmmm sound that sends a hot bolt down Adam's body.
Still, Adam tries to be good, to hold back. He rears up a little, hesitant. And Kris is so calm and easy, but breathing a little fast, sprawled out there, bound and shirtless and loose. Adam can't help it and dips in again to kiss Kris' temple, the pulse of his neck, and Kris says softly, "Like that." Adam says: "We shouldn't . . ." but Kris is talking over him saying low, "When you're touching me, it's better. I'm not hearing that, outside."
And there are months and months and months of held-back feelings in his touch as Adam strokes Kris' jaw, feels the rough stubble starting, drops another kiss on his pink lips, says fiercely, "You want me to . . .?" and when his friend jerks out between clenched teeth, "Yeah, oh yeah," Adam doesn't need an engraved invitation. He's biting that tender neck now, hot and good, and with one finger he traces a nipple, pinches it as Kris lets out a low cry.
Fucking straight boys. God he wants it, how he's always wanted it. He lets himself go to town after that. It all works. They can have both things. He'll keep his friend safe, and make it so good for him. He skims his hand down Kris's body, over his flat tummy, pets his cock through the soft material as it firms for him. Yesssss.
The smaller man arcs into his hand with a gasp, pressing his erection into his grip, and Adam's own cock is like iron. He takes a minute and undresses deliberately, gracefully, watching Kris watch him. He runs his hand up his own hard-on, putting on a show: yeah, all this baby. Then he yanks Kris' sweats down to his ankles and off.
So pretty. The man's cock is so pretty. He knew it would be. Pink and full. There are men who look more vulnerable when they're erect, delectable and made to be taken and played with, and Kris is one of those. Adam stares at him a minute longer, then pushes Kris' legs apart almost roughly, strokes up and down the man's sweet dick as Kris makes urgent noise. Adam takes him into his mouth in one long sucking motion. Kris says, "Oh, Adam" in a shocked voice, and comes right away. Ha.
Adam couldn't stop now if he wanted to. He's straddling Kris, sliding the head of his own cock into that wide sweet mouth, then pulling it almost all the way out, wet and pink, then plunging in again. As Kris takes it and takes it in, mouth relaxed and cheeks hollowed, eyes dark and shiny, Adam knows not even the first time he's done this and church people and their sins and straight boys and their secrets and missionary in the jungle and those thoughts have him pumping hard, steady and deep, till he shoots with a ugh into the soft, wet hole beneath him. Kris swallows and Adam curses lovingly at the sight and fetches water, holds it to that wonderful mouth, sets it on the table. He collapses then, he lies panting on Kris smooth, planed breast.
And Kris whispers softly into his ear: Let me go.
Adam's head snaps up. He feels a hot pain blossom in his chest.
It's his friend's voice, but poisoned and strange, and his eyes are wild. "You can do anything you want. Anything. Touch me however. Fuck me. I know you want to fuck me. Just do it and let me go. I need to go!"
Praying isn't Adam's thing. But he searches his memory now, finds ancient Hebrew words and chants them to himself as he holds down the stranger beside him, who strains against his ties, throws himself against them, yelling, "Let me go, let me go, FUCK you Lambert, let me GO." "Stop it. Stop it, shut up." Adam is covering Kris mouth. He has a moment of panic, a moment of belated self-preservation: what if somebody hears, finds them like this? What would people say? What would they think? A little late for that now, fucker.
It gets worse. At some point, Kris no longer seems to know him. He's struggling against the bonds, straining his shoulder and wrists, writhing. His body is fevered. He's hard, too, and erect. In pain, moaning with it. And Adam tries not to touch, not to violate, but can only keep him still by lying half across him. A horrible parody of the closeness he's dreamed of, late on other nights that now seem a century ago. Shh, shh, lie quiet, lie still, he finds himself whispering.
Finally, Kris passes out. He's motionless now at last, but Adam is filled with a horrible new fear. What if he stops breathing, what if his heart stops? How does this work? There's no one to ask, and he's never been so alone. And Adam finds his throat tight, his eyes hot and wet. He kisses Kris' lips once, twice, and again, and lies the hours till dawn awake in a half-delirious anxiety, listening to their hearts beat.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sometime after dawn, light is seeping through the thick hotel shades and Kris is speaking to Adam, his voice sad and rough. Adam knows, without knowing how, that what ever it was that went on in the night is done, for now. Trying not to look in Kris's face, he unties him, retreats to the edge of the bed. Sits facing the wall. There's a light touch on his shoulder, then the other man's weight is gone from the mattress.
He turns his head, and can see Kris in the bathroom, shoulders slumping, as if in defeat.
Adam dresses slowly, painfully, and then suddenly, he's bolting from the room, heedless. Finds a stairwell and plunges down it, dropping from step to step, his footfalls echoing. Then stops, leans on a wall, slides to the floor. Sits with his head in his hands, shaking. What did I do?
He realizes, numbly, he may not even be able to get out of the stairs and back into the hotel without his room key and if that isn't a metaphor, what is. No going back, this time, Lambert.
An old black man in a janitor's coverall is wearily making his way up the stairs with a bucket and mop. He pauses and looks at Adam. Wordlessly, he offers him a cigarette, dangling from dark withered fingers on the end of a wrist like a dry old branch. Wiping his messed-up face and half-laughing, because what must he look like? Adam takes it. The old man gives him a light, wheezing with a strangled chuckle that's a terrible advertisement for a tobacco-fueled future, Adam thinks, but still says, Thanks.
He draws in burning, comforting smoke. His eyes settle on the name stitched on the janitor's pocket: Willis, it reads in old-fashioned looping script, blue on white, but the white is flecked with red. Paint or--? And the old man's shadow against the stairwell wall is flowing, swelling, and crowned with a with many-layered crown.
As Adam rockets to his feet, Willisorwhatevertookhisoutfit explodes forwards and massive arms are everywhere, are grabbing and clutching, and the thing is enormous now, skin splitting, shooting impossibly up and out, huge elaborate head almost touching the ceiling of the stairwell. Its roar echoes up the stairwell and the horrid stink of its hot breath spills over the side of Adam's face as it squeezes and squeezes the life out of him.
From somewhere his hand comes up and he jams the lit cigarette in its ear. The roar turns to a scream and it tosses Adam hard against the wall, cursing in an unknown language and then growling distinctly, Motherfucking faggot! And he has time to wonder dazedly if those are the last words he'll ever hear.
And the answer is NO, because there's a mighty shout and Kris Allen is standing on the next landing looking down and there is fury in his chesnut eyes. The demon snarls up at him: "Ah, it is you at last! You are indeed as beautiful as they say! I shall enjoy seeing your tears when I slay your lover before your very eyes, in vengeance for your destruction of mine!"
Kris' eyebrows rise up: "Hold on, your lovers? I thought they were your brothers!"
"What is your point?" says the demon, huffily, and, "Ewwww!" Adam says or wheezes, because his chest really hurts, and Kris rolls his eyes, "Fine. Whatever. Anyways!"
And now he's making passes in the air with one hand that leave a silver trail and look pretty much like Now Go Straight to Hell! and clutching the cross at his neck with the other, and holy shit, there he goes again! Because now this demon is starting to smoke and it howls up at him and brandishes five or six knives.
But now Kris is leaping an entire flight of stairs and landing precisely on the demon's chest as it topples onto its back. It flails and seizes his wrist, but he grabs up a knife with his free hand and somewhat elegantly plants it in the thing's throat. Black goo bubbles out and the thing simultaneously crumbles in on itself and explodes. Difficult to describe unless you see it for yourself.
Adam says, "This time, can I call 911?" Kris says, "Okay, right. I think you oughta. I'm pretty sure I need an ambulance." And tumbles down.
~~~~~~~~~
In the silent stairway, there is a tiny island of quiet. Kris leans his head on Adam's shoulder, breathing hard, and Adam cups the back of his head with his hand. He thinks, creates, imagines a story and tells it, and Kris nods, repeats it back to him. He's always been so quick to take a cue from Adam.
It sounds lame. It sounds insane. All about a crazy fan, a sudden attack, "he had a knife!" (true!) and Kris pushed him, and fell himself. Its only virtue, as a story, is that it fits with the sort of insanity modern America accepts, and pays good money for, and not the sort of insanity that's been around since the days when the fairy tales we tell our kids were real.
A whole lot of fuckery goes down once Adam calls 911 and their 19E handlers, hotel people and security and management on the phone to Hollywood, and then police, doctors, the whole world it seems. There's men shouting into walkie talkies and phones, and lots of orders given, and a stretcher and an ambulance and siren lights.
There's a long period which Adam will later remember only as a blur. How weird the sunlight looked, as they drove to the hospital in the lemony, clean early morning air, as ordinary people went for coffee. Hours of official talk and talk and talk in windowless room, doctors checking him out, police asking questions, then everything again and again, for his agent and manager and lawyer. At some point the give him actual news. Kris has a broken wrist and a broken foot and strained shoulder, they say. Lucky and could have been worse, they say. They don't know the half of it.
He almost welcomes the endless delay and fucking about, because of what it allows him to defer. Finally, they let him go. He's walking down the hallway now, past the lonely potted plants and sleeping relatives of people tucked away in numbered rooms. Past the signs for Radiology and Neurology and all the -ologies that have to do with fighting the mortality of our soft and vulnerable bodies, magic or no.
He finds the correct number and Adam is the hospital room now, with his back against the door. Machines sigh and whoosh and beep. Kris is sitting up in his bed in a paper hospital gown, staring wordlessly. He looks tiny.
Adam can't speak.
Kris does, holding out a hand. "Could you just . . . c'mere?"
No. No. He can't come here, he has to stand over here, away, not touching, and in fact, never again touching because.
But somehow he is across the room, because, what the true hell. Kris is kissing Adam again, soft and hot, and he murmurs through clenched teeth: "I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry. Please don't hate me."
And Adam: "What I did. That night, and I--!"
"No. NO. God, Adam. There was a spell, but it was only letting out what was in there anyways. Under the skin, like you said. It was me, I wanted to, I wanted a lot of things, and I never told you, I never said, never told the truth."
Kris stops, and he's shaking a little, his hand on either of Adam's shoulders, warm and right, and he says distinctly: "I love you."
Time stops.
"I love you, but--"
Adam thinks, "And but, goddammit."
"But I made promises. And you have places to be."
Katy Allen chooses this moment to show up.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kris Allen's wife looks very pretty, at this moment, standing in the hospital doorway in a green flowery dress, and matching pumps, her gold hair up, her forehead so pure and smooth except for a little frown. She looks resolved.
"She's taking this calmly," Adam thinks, and says faintly, "Oh, Katy! Sweetie, Kris, and I . . . ?" He stops, because where does he go from there?
She eyes him with her lovely doll's face and her voice is calm and full of Arkansas honey: "Adam, stay where you are. I take it you know?"
Adam: "Well, I--"
She looks not only lovely, really, but also very small and very sad: "Well, alright then. I'm gonna say what I have to say and be done. I love you, Kris, but . . . I can't do this any more. You promised. No more secrets. No more lies. No more running around at night, and danger, and magic.
"No more demons. I love you, but I cannot handle this. When I get home, I'm filing for divorce. I'm sorry."
She is out of the doorway, then, and they hear her heels clicking down the hospital hallway.
Kris: "Huh. Well, there you go."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next few weeks are weird. Well, even weirder. They do the final shows of the tour after all, and it is insane, even by Idol standards. Kris has a cast and sling on one wrist and a cast on one foot and he can't play his beloved guitar or the piano, even. And it doesn't matter because the crowds go absolutely fucking wild every single night as he hobbles out on Adam's arm and then sings, all alone, in the center of the stage. He's their hero, and they don't even know the half of it. And Adam's their other hero, and the lie they told the media becomes a fairytale, and who saved who from what isn't very clear, but it doesn't matter, because they saved each other, which is actually true, and somehow the crowd feels it and feels saved, too. The record labels are happy.
He and Adam are very careful with one another, very gentle, and very distant.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A week after the tour ends, Kris goes to the hospital and gets the casts off. Texts Adam: "Free at last." Adam thinks about that and takes a deep breath and sends: "Come over?"
An hour later, they are standing on Adam's deck, looking at a burned-out LA sunset, and awkward as hell. They've killed a bottle of wine without getting any more comfortable with one another. Everything feels jagged and broken and off, and what if they can never make it right again?
Kris stands, puts his drink on a table. Adam bites down on the words don't go. And then Kris is taking his hand, pulling him to his feet, and then leading him into the house and up the stairs.
Kris has dropped his shirt to the ground. He goes and kneels by the bed, his warm, bare torso bent over the comforter.
Adam says nothing, does nothing, tries to root himself where he stands, to keep that precious, icy, safe distance between them. Then he sees the small tremble of Kris' shoulder. The bare, vulnerable feet. Sees him swallow with parted lips, and a darkness like despair shadowing his eyes. Then he is across the room, kneeling himself, bending over Kris and shaping to him.
He isn't gentle. He can't be, now. He drags Kris' jeans off roughly. Kisses the tender back of his neck, then bites, hard and reaches under, finding the nub of a nipple, which he plays with, yanks, twists as Kris makes a low uh sound. Then he's grabbing the man's pretty, smooth cock and giving it a hard squeeze, and Kris' dick is so firm and right in his grasp, and he deciphers, again, without being told, that this is not the first time for this, either. But there's no time right now for old stories, old secrets. Adam stops and strips himself, now, and kneels. His own cock, proud and thick and huge, is nesting against Kris' perfect ass. He could take him right now, bareback, fever hot and dangerous. Kris would let him. He almost does it.
But he slows long enough to put a condom on, and touch him, ready him there and then he's doing everything fast. He shoves the head of his cock into Kris, who cries out wild and thin. But Adam doesn't stop, he pushes all the way in, moaning with pleasure. He pins Kris down, a hand on each wrist and fucks him thoroughly, a long, hard screwing full of pent-up love, fear, and, yeah, a little latent, sharp anger. At some point Kris bucks and grunts and comes prettily for Adam, who swears and praises him and keeps nailing him till they're both sore, slick and exhausted. It finally ends with Adam coming thick and painful and screaming to rattle the windows. He stays draped over Kris for a long while after, breathing heavily, his cock gradually softening but still in Kris. Finally, he slides out and they scramble across the bed and lie in each other arms.
Kris lets out mildly, looking at the ceiling with half a smile on his face. "So. Did you get that out of your system?"
"I don't know. I might have to try a few more times."
"Bitch."
"Bench."
They're quiet for a while.
Adam asks: "So, anything more I should know about you? Love, monsters, whatever?"
"Probably. You never know."
And Adam Lambert, gazing on the strange and lovely mystery that is Kris Allen, finds he is alright with that. He's definitely going to look into some new locks, though.
Postscript
I count the corpses on my left, I find I'm not so tidy
So I better get away, better make it today
I've cut twenty-three down since friday
Footnotes
1) Rakshasa - via Wikipedia
2) Running Gun Blues - via YouTube
3) Authorial note: Can one be jossed by another fanfic? I think so. I am a huge fan of the mighty astolat. This story began running in my head after reading all of her work up through "Houses of the Living." I've never written fic longer then a quite brief interlude, so this has been in progress since July. And then! Well, "City of a Thousand Wonders" came out, which is the best demonic Kradam adventure of all time. So.
4) Thanks to Yeats for the challenge: David Bowie songs. Adam Lambert. This is where I went with it.
Author: lordnelson100
Pairing: Adam/Kris
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 10,000
Song: "Running Gun Blues" from The Man Who Sold The World
Warnings: violence, language, sex, horror, issues of consent, black magic, Gokey family fuckery, illegal immigration. Goes AU, oh, three paragraphs in.
Summary: Don't open the door!
The thing about demons: they're liminal beings. They hang out in the spaces between, at the edges of things. They're looking for an in.
Thresholds, doorways, slightly cracked windows. A phone off the hook. The last seat on an empty bus late at night, the one you could have sworn was empty. The untorn movie ticket you find in your pocket--to a show you've never seen. A package you signed for without looking at the address label--which is blurred beyond legibility. It feels oddly heavy in your hands and yet when opened, turns out to be completely empty.
There's stuff you have to watch for, when you know what's out there. But mistakes, they come easy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kris Allen, July 23 2009: "I've been a lot of places . . . I've seen things that I know shouldn't happen."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
August 2009 ~ Thursday ~ 12 midnight
Adam first noticed it one exhausting summer midnight, a darkened blur at the edge of a crowd of sweating fans. These nightly after-concert forays were always weird. He'd come off the stage slick with sweat, amped and buzzing from song and stage smoke, starlight and fame, and end up here, in yet another dead-end parking lot.
The tarmac was hot and smelt of oil. Behind them loomed the huge sports center, now darkening, vast air conditioners booming. Sodium lights gave everything and everyone across the vast lots a melancholy tinge of burnt orange. The buses ran their engines, chugging and groaning as the roadies ran in loads of gear, drivers stolid-faced but checking their watches, filled with secret yearning to pull out onto the sweet and empty open road. Or so Adam thought. Why shouldn't bus drivers have inner fantasies of escape? He certainly did.
Around the Idols swarmed the fans. Some kindly-faced and eager, others desperate and unhappy, screaming, pleading, whining, laughing, carved by the harsh light into a hundred masks of round-mouthed outcries, all unwilling to just go home and let the circus pass by, to be alone again. All those reaching hands (sometimes you couldn't tell who was touching you, or just when a light caress became a discourteous clutch). All those out-thrust gifts (beads and toys and photos, CD cases and hats and candy and the occasional baggie of intoxicants all shoved pellmell into your hands). There were rules about what could be given, what not to touch, but not enough time or people to catch everything. Things changed hands, and that was that.
There. At the back of the crowd. Just at the edge of his vision, but disappearing every time he turned his head to get a better look. At first he thought it was someone in a dark cape with the hood up (in this heat?). Then his subconscious counted too many hands and tried to reframe: was it the outline of more then one person, one piggyback on the other (a game? a stunt?)? He thought he heard his name called (but a hundred people were shouting his name, all the time, Adam Adam Adam).
He felt a sudden, suffocating urge to get out of the crowd, to get to the edge of the toomanypeople and into the deep, shadowed emptiness beyond. It would be cool and quiet, surely, far over there, where the hot glare of the parking lot ended, and the thick smudged outline of trees began. He was surprised to find his feet already in motion.
But a warm hand landed on his bare arm now, firm, tugging. "Whoa now, dude," said Kris. "And where are you off to? You're not gonna leave me here by my lonesome with these all -- ?" He didn't fill in the blank, but gave the crowd a comic side-eye and Adam a half-grin.
"Well, if someone weren't so unforgivably slow . . . I personally have been up and down this damn line twice with my usual sleek efficiency while you . . . " Adam tried hard for haughty, managed only petulant. But the crawling feeling at the back of his throat dissipated as he slung an arm over Kris's shoulder and inwardly sighed at the neat fit. "Slow POKE!" And he followed the word with the gesture, landing a black-painted fingertip somewhere around the smaller man's temple and gently pushing.
Kris just smirked. "Can' help it if I'm thorough." It was true. Kris was the steady turtle of the fan line, laid back and cordial, but dogged about sticking his own pace. I need to see what I'm signing, he said. Where I'm from, they always warned me not to put my name to anything without looking at it.
But tonight he paused and looked up into Adam's face, brow scrunching and "decision NOW" passing quickly over his bluntly handsome little features (and just when did Adam learn to read this man's every wordless expression, he wondered). Without bothering to explain, Kris has called over a handler and handed over his pens and gift bags, lifted up a hand to the crowd.
"Wave bye now, Adam. We're goin' in."
"Ooooh, bossy. And why right now?"
"Because you look like you've had it. And I know I have."
And the two of them break off and head away from the hububb together, one tall and one short shadow overlapping and flowing before them as they wearily stroll.
There were some screeches and groans from the crowd behind them as they escaped into the dim of the buses. Tour handlers were lying their asses off, making up excuses on the fly, the other Idols were (Adam knew without looking) deflating slightly, shrugging off annoyance at being instantly converted into leftovers, second bests. Neither Kris nor Adam liked to play up the issue of final two, stars, signed, favorites, but it's there, and from time to time Kris would quietly use that underlying reality--winner, here--to make it clear to people when he'd made up his mind.
That night Adam found he was truly grateful for it, clambering straight up into his bunk and lying down with a groan, throwing down his boots and belt with a thunk into the aisle, snickering as Kris swore and reached out of his own bunk to toss them someplace the other guys wouldn't trip over them on the way in. "You really come in handy when you're cocky, you know that, darling?"
"You can thank me later, bitch," said Kris in a honeyed, off-hand tone that Adam would have sworn was flirting, if he wasn't dropping down, down, down straight into sleep.
That was the start of it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's the ass crack of dawn when Adam awakes for some reason he can't identify. He rolls out of bed to take a piss, and halfway down the bus he finds Kris at one of the built-in tables. A grey-blue light filters in the window. Kris has his guitar in his hands, silently fingering without making a sound, and head turned to profile, staring out the window.
For some reason he can't make clear to himself, Adam stays silent too, finally slipping onto the bench next to Kris and following his gaze. "What's up? Can't you sleep?" he whispers. He touches Kris' shoulder, softly. "You lonely?" Kris does not reply. His gaze stays fixed.
Outside, Adam notices a pickup truck, rusted-out and dirt spattered, that's silently keeping pace with the bus. The pair roll side by side, alone on the empty highway in the fading ink of night.
The windows of the truck are dark, but Adam thinks he sees a hand flail, wave, signal? A metallic glint, the curve of a shoulder, fingers. He turns to Kris, mouthing What and suddenly the man is pushing him out of the way, climbing over his lap--'Scuse me, he mutters--and is gone, retreating into his bunk like a wary animal gone to ground.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The sun comes up, molten hot and angry, late-summer gold, and they hit another city, another massive concrete stadium and, like clockwork, the Idol show gets built again; like a recurring dream, the audience assembles once more, different and yet strangely like each other crowd in each other town. And the singers, they pace their steps over again, like one of fifty other nights.
Only tonight is different to Adam, because his good friend Kris is patently avoiding him, lingering behind the group, his face pale, faint dark circles under his eyes, full lips parted and almost panting. God, he looks like he's going to bolt the room at any minute, and he won't meet Adam's gaze.
Their usual companionship is based on being two together among a crowd, a constantly rewoven net of jokes and nudges, eye-rolls and half-hidden grins, an effortless and happy tuning into each other. Now tonight, for no reason Adam can determine, he's suddenly on the outside, and Kris is shivering behind an invisible wall. But if there's a story here, it's not one Adam is in on, and that's . . . unfamiliar, after all these months. Unacceptable, really. What the fuckety fuck, Arkansas?
Before the last number, just as they're about to rise up on the lift, Kris slips his hand into Adam's and leaves it there, as they rise and rise. Adam briefly imagines he's not going to let it go even when they emerge in front of ten thousand people. But he does.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Adam makes them go out that night, so it's his fault. That's what he thinks, later.
As soon as they have a hotel stop in a decent size city, he implements the plan. He makes sure to get a driver with a town car, not a limo, the better for low profile gutter-crawling, ruthlessly cold-shoulders poor adorable Matty and his puppydog, takemetoo eyes, and practically manhandles Kris out the door. He's a bit of a bitch about it, if you want to know the truth. He has a sudden memory of Brad, pissed and tearful, hissing at him: Fucking Adam Lambert always knows best.
When this memory pops up, Adam is in front of his mirror, painting his eyes with ruthless precision. Blue, silver, black. Making his night-time face. But the memory doesn't make him change his mind about pretty much forcing Kris go out with him that night. "I do SO know best!" He tells himself, "I do."
He has to take action, do something about Kris's silence, his shut-down, folded-in body. And some people would say that dragging his straight, married, affectionate but secretive best-friend slash publicly-revealed crush to a crowded late night gay bar would not be the best way to break through the wrongness, the sudden new mistrust and distance between them, and reveal what's eating at the man's tender little heart.
Those people would be wrong. Rule one of self-revelation is to get on familiar ground, somewhere you can be yourself. And Adam's ground, his comfortable good place, involves a fucktastic beat, some alcohol, and a bedazzled backdrop of fellow freaks.
Besides, what else is he going to do? Sit next to Kris on a Pottery Barn sofa and solicit therapeutic insights? Fuck that shit. He's going to squeeze this nonsense out of Kris with a little late night, one-on-one ass-kicking. Something's wrong with his friend, ergo Adam will fix it. He draws himself up to his full, impressive height , spreads bejeweled fingers, and delivers a Fierceness Lecture to himself. "I am not going to say it. I am not some fucking little girl." A part of him does want to say it, though. What did I do wrong? Shut up, self, he tells himself. It's not about you. Probably. Hopefully.
But as soon as they get to the club, Kris is gone from his side, slips away like a fish into a stream. Shitcakes. Adam refuses to run after him, though, makes a dignified progress to the bar instead, and eyefucks the bartender into serving him instantly. An icy vodka and tonic puts some fluff back in his crest and he turns to scan the club and get back on task. Your Mission, should you choose to accept it: find the Pocket Idol and shake some motherfucking sense into him.
There's something doing on on the dance floor--a disturbance in the Force--and Adam wanders over. At the center of the crowd, a space forms around an Asian man--boy?--with skin like bronze, a dark mess of hair sweeping over his forehead, brows like quick flicks of an ink brush, an open vest and a trail of sweat-slicked skin bared to the waist, a bicep ringed in silver, a shiver of bangles on a graceful wrist.
He dances. Whirling lights slide rapidly over the packed dance floor, making spots, stripes, that slide over skin and whirl onward. Momentarily, bars of shifting light and dark divide the stranger's face into an angry mask. He bares his teeth and they are white, white and sharp. His body spins in a spiral death roll, trailing a lascivious whip of a raised arm.
Around him, the mass of pretty, hungry men seems to surge. The air is sucked out of the room. What the fuck was in that drink, thinks Adam, except everybody else seems to have slurped down toxins, too. People are stumbling and the floor seems to tilt. Distorted shadows are cast along the wall, and Adam feels like he's hallucinating: as the dancer whirls, two arms become four, become six, and his profile seems to morph and shift--pointed ears, staring eyes of fire. The air is full of cologne and male sweat, but there's something else, a night stink of jungle and decay.
Suddenly, there's Kris, and where did he get to, and what? The little man goes right up to the dancer, gets in the guy's face. Kris Allen's expression is fierce, brow lowered, and his lips are moving, but Adam can't hear anything but pounding music, and the tiger-faced stranger is laughing in a very scary way. To Adam's utter shock, Kris is grabbing the other man by the wrist, pulling him in his wake, and away they go through the crowd, disappearing into the dark shadows at the back of the club.
And Adam is sober enough to think: so that's how it is. All this time. Me being so careful. And everything I thought I saw. Secrets and lies. For a time--he doesn't know how long--he returns to the bar and stands there. Feels an cold ugliness blossom inside him at the utterly unfamiliar, unwelcome idea of hating Kris Allen. Thinks about leaving.
But the part of him that loves is thinking--can't just go. Maybe Kris has checked out whatever passes for the downlow in Conway, Arkansas, but a place like this, no. Not safe with strangers, Adam, tells himself, not if you don't know how to handle yourself, the things that Adam's been learning since he was eighteen. And he goes looking, figuring, at best Kris will laugh at him, at worst hate his guts but, so.
He bangs into the men's room and there's a pair of feet sticking limply out from under a stall door. Heart just seizes up. No, no, wrong, not his, and Adam yanks open the door of the stall and oh. A slaughterhouse of blood and mess, someone he's never seen before. And now he won't be able to get their ruined face out of his head. He feels his gorge rising and hot tears, too, but there's no time. He has to find . . . Please. Please.
He hurries down the club's back hall, a slimy cement slot, finds a back door, plastic crates of empty bottles tipped over in haste, spinning on the concrete. Adam spills out the back door, cursing, tripping over the sill, and holy cocksucking hell, what is going on?
In the half-lit alley, the figure from inside the club is moving--he, it--same clothes, same jewelry, but ripped, distorted, swollen--at least seven feet tall now, and his skin is shiny blue black, inhuman, like slate or gunmetal. His face is a bloody car accident, an overexposed photo, a raving dog, a snarling tiger, pitiless golden eyes with pupils like slits, and huge white sharp teeth protruding from his mouth, a bright red tongue lolling obscenely.
His, Its! bare arms ripple with muscle, bound with elaborate rings--weirdly pretty, and horrible--and some of its many hands clutch gleaming knives. It gestures elegantly with bloodstained talons and leaps from bare foot to bare foot. It is dancing for Kris. It is trying to kill him.
And the man from Arkansas is, impossibly, singing. No, chanting. His round dark eyes are cast up to the sky, boyish face aglow, and he throws a hand up like he's raising an invisible congregation to its feet. There's some sort of smoke rising out of the ground, and whatever this horrible thing is, this monster, it is now spitting harsh garbled words in an unfamiliar language that Adam's brain can nonetheless decipher as hoh shit!
In this moment, though, it's grabbing Kris' shirt front and yanking his lithe, precious body straight off the ground and Adam abandons the idea of phoning 911 There's a Fucking Monster Out Here and dashes forward with a pretty stupid idea that amounts to getting in between the monster and its prey.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Adam knows he's shouting, but he can't really help it.
"It, it, it, just blew up! And you! That was, what the hell, some sort of goddamn magic, SPELL? And you killed that thing! It was gone. And that guy in the men's room was dead. That thing wanted to kill you too, but you . . . you . . . !"
"I know, it's crazy, right?"
"Crazy doesn't exactly cover it, Kristopher. Where the fuck did it come from?"
"It followed me, I guess," Kris says, with a rueful look, putting one hand behind his neck like he does when he's awshucksing something sane, something out of their normal, daylight, ordinary world.
Adam, for his part, pacing the hotel room, is pretty sure they've missed the exit for "ordinary," even by his own fairly distorted standards, and driven straight into Crazy Land. He tries to shout less: "Followed you how? From where?"
"From Thailand. Couple years back, when I did the mission. Must have been on the road a while. It's a Rakshasa, a demon that hangs out in the East, a real bad sort of thing. Well, a demon, ergo, bad. Obviously."
"Oh a demon, obviously. From Thailand. WHAT in the name of fuck are you talking about?"
Kris is staring at him guiltily, now. "Really? Wow. Adam, I . . . I thought you knew, y'know? Well not knew knew, about me, but kind of . . . you know. In the ballpark."
"The BALL PARK? What ballpark? The ballpark of DEMONS ARE REAL, and trying to kill us, only you know how to kill them back? I repeat, HOW THE FUCK?"
"But you've seen them before . . . I mean months ago, when I realized you'd been around them before, when we talked, I figured you guessed a little bit about me."
"I WHAT? You WHEN?"
Kris is pulling out his MacBook, clicking through some folders, and pulling up a picture of Adam. He points. "Remember when we talked about secrets?"
And Adam remembers these photos, recalls the conversation. But not, apparently, the same way Kris does.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
March 2009
Adam recalled the night vividly. Their room, the mansion, early in The Show. A very shitty night. He'd been proud and hurt, pissed-off and weary, shamed, and ashamed to be ashamed.
Kris had just looked at the glowing screen with a little furrow to his clear brow, and said to Adam, simply: "Tell me about this?"
"It's not about being gay!" he snapped, thinking Fantastic. Because that doesn't gay at all, you pissy queen. Adam was on a roll now, and Kris lying on his stomach, sprawled across his bed, all calm and whatever, wasn't helping.
"OK, if you say so."
"What you're saying is, people in your home town think you're rooming with the Spawn of Satan. The Damned. The faggoty devil's food cake of eeeeeevil . . . !"
"To be fair: in this one Youtubey here, you're surrounded by flames, holdin' out a giant pitchfork."
"It's a PERFORMANCE, douchebag. FUCK Danny Gokey."
"Agreed. So you tell me."
Earlier that evening. Some cheeseball chain chow bucket in LA he'd never ordinarily be caught deadd in. His fellow contestants, and a gaggle of relations and hangers-on. At dinner, he been trying his damnedest to charm the norms. That had been his mistake.
Halfway through, Danny Gokey had pushed a photo onto his plate--a print-out of an old Adam photo from the Internet. It was Lambert in full Zodiac Show regalia, wild painted eyes and mouth, bare arms and chest, green body paint, dripping with jewelry at the throat and wrist, worked-up hair like David Bowie's orphan cousin. He looked exotic, he looked sexy, he looked crazy, he looked scary. God, he'd loved every moment of that show. Before he'd decided he needed to become America's Acceptable Faggot on national television.
Sign it, said Danny. On behalf of the group. When he raised his eyes from the photo though, what he saw was Danny, grinning and sweating, nervous, fronting, Adam realized, already half-regretful but trying to carry it off, puffing himself out with feigned jokiness. Even as he did this asshole thing, the small eyes locked behind his stupid glasses begged for a break, as Adam sat up sharply, threw his shoulders back. Around the table, Danny's home-town relatives, fat and nervous, snickering and greedy-eyed. Behold, the village. Wanting to see him flinch. Like Adam hadn't familiarized himself with the symptoms from grade school onward. For a second, he saw the image of his painted body through the lens they used: evidence of his freakishness, ugliness, ridiculousness.
And Adam was supposed to follow their game plan by making a fuss, showing his belly and whining. Well, the hell with that. He lifted his chin, signed the image of Green Freak Adam with a flair, and gave them all a plastic grin. Played the rest of the meal that way, armor up, hard, cold, and elegant. Haters to the left. The rest of the Idols, his fellow zoo animals, looked on, a mixture of dismayed, clueless, and damn it, pitying.
When he got back to the room, he felt about a second from breaking things. He lay down on his bed, strapped on his iPod, and twirled the volume up to ear=bleed. David Bowie wailed with sly viciousness.
"I count the corpses on my left, I find I'm not so tidy."
And it wasn't tidy, was it?
"And now I've got the running gun blues."
He had the blues, that was for sure, and he felt like he could make a few corpses himself, right now. Was the rage at the Gokeys, for being the way people were, or at himself, for taking a path where he needed, asked for, their acceptance?
And then the door opened quietly and his roommate appeared. Stood over him with a sympathetic gaze. Touched his shoulder.
And Adam wasn't ready for that touch, not ready to let his guard down and get scraped raw again, so there was an edge to his voice as he slid off his bed, shouldered past the little man, and went to lounge in the room's shabby armchair. "So now what? Do I need to slake your curiosity, too? Need a heart to heart on my corrupt past?" And he thought, if the boy mentions Jesus, I'll fucking slap him.
But Kris, as usual, was nothing if not laid back. "Now that you mention it. Adam. I am kinda curious. I mean, I've seen that picture already. That and a bunch of stuff. But it's not like I totally get it. Fill me in, why don't you?"
And that's not what Adam was expecting.
Kris seemed mild enough as he flipped up his MacBook lid, clicked a folder. And there they were: vids, pics, Adam with Scarlett and the Zodiac cast, men and women in a wild array. Paint, wigs, mask, leathers, chains and glitter. Dancing. Touching. Posing. And yes, him wielding a giant pitchfork, surrounded by flames, his body half-bare, half outlined in skintight kink wear, wailing like a banshee. Straight out of the subconscious nightmares of Middle America. His wild life, brought to you in digital glory.
"Kinda wild, right? So, tell me about these."
"What the hell?" Adam's wary. "You have, what, *background* on me? I'm fucking flattered. Are you one of my stalkers now?"
"Nope," said Kris. "A friend back home sent me these links when they heard we were room-mates. They were, okay, a little worried."
"Because I'm Hollywood faggot? A freak? And I'm going to get my queer chocolate in your straight, church-going peanut butter?"
"Because me and you are from different worlds, and they didn't understand."
Adam stopped, moved by something generous and tender in his roommate's face. Somehow, it seemed to him: this was not the usual glib straight Christian crap, gay=sex=danger=AIDS=death, this was . . . just Kris Allen asking, for reals, about his life.
Which is how Adam ended up trying to explain "Crawl Through Fire" to his worship=leading, pop-warbling erstwhile competitor and hot, friendly roommate. And The Zodiac show. And Upright Cabaret. And Burning Man. It took a while.
"It's not about sex, either. Or not just about sex. . . When I dress like that, when I'm in costume: it's about being free, about being beautiful and strange and wild. All the stuff we're not supposed to be like, in just our lives."
Kris said: "I'm not attacking here, just asking, but . . . if it's about being free, why the make-up, the outfits and masks?"
Adam was waving his arms now: "But, we, we all hide! We hide in plain site, we hide in being ordinary, we hide under our own skin! We all have inner dark stuff, right? It's about taking the stuff inside that you're afraid of, that others are afraid of, and turning it right side out."
"You know what a real mask would be? Pretending to be the sort of boy that these people would allow me to be! If I gave into that, I'd be stuffed in the closet, a fat, miserable music teacher, with a wife whose life I'd be ruining, and giving nothing worthwhile to the world but fear and loathing in San Diego."
And Kris actually laughed. "Wow, you have your alternate universe all figured out. How very J. J. Abrams of you. I love how it's all or nothing: either you're a glittery alien in the Zodiac Show, or Marian the Librarian."
And Kris had looked thoughtful, then. "OK, but, what about these other guys? So you know why you're there, but it's not like you could know for everybody, right? If everybody's in costume, if nobody looks like themselves . . . couldn't someone take advantage of that? Use it to hurt you? You're saying this is about openness, but who knows what these other dudes are hiding?"
And Adam struggled with that, because, actually, true. Real. "I guess there's an element of whatever, darkness. Risk, okay, of course. But the world is a dangerous place. At some level, it's just dangerous to be me. Isn't that why we're here on this crazy show, you as well as me? Because we're saying fuck all that?"
And then his friend is being serious: "OK, look. I git it, at least someways, at least about the no safe places part . . . if not the glitter. The world is a dangerous place, yeah. I've been a few places in the world that aren't so safe. When we were in Africa, people dying on cots with no medicine, and cleaning up in Indonesia after all those people drowned, and the whole Burma thing. There's stuff that will just reach out and eat people up if no one's willing to put themselves out there and find out what they can do to save them. If we all just stayed put, like you say, there wouldn't be be much saving going on."
Adam, laughing now, anger softened away, sat down on Kris' bed: "Did you just find common ground between my gay cabaret past and your Christian missionary past? Oooh, you're just full of surprises. What are you hiding under that JC Penney plaid shirt?"
Kris looked at him, startled and intense.
"Okay," thought Adam. "And?"
"I guess we all have our secrets," said Kris. "Just . . . Promise me you don't hook up with people till you at least know what's under the make up."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Present Day ~ August 2009
"THAT guy? A DEMON? You noticed a demon in the cast pictures of my old show and you're just now telling me? That's . . . Shit, I don't even know his name, I think he was dating the bartender."
"More like hunting the bartender. Those demons are pretty greedy. And they're always hungry. Unfortunately, they like to get to know their meals before they have them. Poor guy. My friends back home spotted him in these videos from your show, they didn't know what to think. Whether you were . . . involved at all."
"Involved with monsters?"
"There are plenty of people who are. Specially in LA."
"Kris. How do you even know these things?"
"I told you, I went on some missions. Didn't exactly say what those missions were."
Adam: "I thought--like building huts and handing out medicine and holding orphans and acting Bible stories out with puppets."
Kris: "Hey! That's, well, pretty close. Okay, not puppets. But that's not the only type of saving there is. These demon things are hell in the poorer parts of the world. People livin' in alleys and tents, kids wandering on their own. There was one real bad one, ravaging the village we were set up in, so . . . You know, I took it out."
"But how do you know what to do?" Adam wants to know.
Kris sighs: "You're gonna have to trust me on some stuff, 'cause the story's too long to tell tonight. Let's just say there are places back in Arkansas where hellfire and brimstone ain't just a flowery expression."
"OK, on the off-chance I can deal with your insane story that you killed a monster way down in Thailand with your crazy missionary fu, what the hell was one doing, here, tonight?"
"A revenge kind of thing. You know. For me taking out its brother."
"And it found you how?"
And now Kris is rolling his eyes. "How do you think? It might be that goin' on national television wasn't the best idea in the world. But y'know . . . my music! And it's not like I really thought I'd make it past the Hollywood round."
"Well, how come it didn't just come charging into the Nokia theater and, whatever, start tearing up Disco Week?" Adam's attitudinal, but shivers a little at the thought, the idea of something bloody and mean coming after Kris, following him from the far corners of the earth with some sort of evil magic mad-on.
"Here's the thing about demons. There are rules. They can't come right out and go after you in broad daylight, on your playing field."
"They're like . . . they live on the borders of our world, right? And to get into our lives, there's gotta be an opening, something for them to cross over through. So they play us. Get us to exchange things--take a gift from them, sign a deal, sit in on a game of cards, eat from your bowl, an invite to the ball--all the classic fairytale stuff."
"They can shape-shift for while, too. Look like people. Not exactly right, but close enough if you're not paying attention, that's why they favor crowds and dark places. They try to find a way in, so you give them the power, and weaken yours."
"But that kid, the dead guy at the bar in the bathroom, he . . . ?"
"The demon had been hanging around there for a while, waiting on us. That poor ol' boy, he just said yes to the wrong stranger."
It's late, so late. Adam is struggling to adapt to a world in which tiny, doe-eyed worship leaders from Arkansas have dark pasts. Protect people from hungry, sharp bad things. Are in danger, still. Kris is watching him sympathetically but warily. He touches Adam's shoulder, leads him to the door. Sighs. "I know it's a lot. You go on now. Get some sleep. And lock your door, OK?"
As Adam turns to go, Kris gets weird again. Hugs him furiously, burying his face in the taller man's shoulder, with that vulnerable abandon that's punched a hole in Adam's polished armor from the first.
In a minute, he's out in the hall, crosses it to his own room. Scrubs away his face. Careful strokes with a sponge undo the now-ruined makeup, caked with sweat and a few tears, if he's being honest, because what a fucking night. He runs cold water over his hands, strips away his gear, lies down in boxers and shivers. Time passes. Suddenly he's up again, throwing on a quick cover of boots, jeans, tee, and bolting across the hall, rapping, then pounding on Kris' door.
No answer. He thinks he can hear movement, though. Adam finds himself rasping through clenched teeth: "Let me in, Allen, or so help me I'll scream murder to security and have them break down your door." There's a faintly heard sigh, and Kris opens the door warily. Right away, it's clear that Adam's Bat Sense is correct: it's not over yet.
In the middle of the room, there's a circle of lit candles. Kris steps to the other side of it. He's shirtless now, naked to the waist, barefoot, clad only in soft gray sweats. A small silver cross on a chain around his neck. His pale torso, so very tight and precious, sculpted from muscular shoulders down to a slender waist. The manly scruff of his sideburns and slight stubble framing the full, pink mouth. The dark trail starting just over the waistband of his sweats and leading downward, the gentle swell of his dick beneath the soft cotton. Any other night, Adam gazes, thinking, on any other night, this, this, is why he would be here.
Right now, though, what arrests Adam's gaze on Kris' bare chest are four, long parallel cuts, finely beaded with blood. Adam places a his open palm on Kris's breastbone and says, harsher then he intends: "What is this? What are you still hiding from me?"
Kris' voice is low, broken: "Adam. Y'all have to go, do you hear me? It's not safe for you. The Rakshasa . . . it got me, before I got it."
"But you killed it. It's gone, isn't it?"
"They come in threes. The one I killed in Thailand, the one you saw me kill . . . and one more. In threes. And since the second one got at me, drew blood, its brother will have power over me now."
"Power like what? Like . . . like the boy who was killed at the bar, like the people you were talking about in Thailand? How does it -- ?"
"It'll try to call me out. It's like I said. There are rules. They can't just come here and break down the door. They can't cross thresholds, not unless you invite them in, but . . . once they get a finger in, they start to call you. Make you want to go, to just pass on out to where they are, where you're not safe anymore."
"So, this thing cast some sort of whammy on you when it scratched you." Adam was pacing now, and waving his hands. "Then why aren't we running, dammit? Or calling in our security or the police or someone?"
"NO. No, man. No one will believe us, and in the confusion, the risk goes up that someone else gets hurt. This thing is after me, I can't risk it going through someone else to get to me. Need to sit tight, wait till these scratches heal, and the spell wears off, then I can go after it. Just. Hold out. Need to resist the call, the draw it has on me, till daybreak."
And Adam is finally furious. He takes Kris by the shoulders and shakes him, hard: "So what, you're going to sit right here on the carpet and pray? By yourself? And hope that Jesus takes an interest, like he clearly doesn't for everybody else who gets killed by something evil or, or, cancer, or a fucking *bus*!"
And Adam has finally crossed some sort of line because Kris' eyes are hot and dark and he looks sort of shocked and pissed and his hand goes up and takes Adam's jaw with almost a yank and he says quietly, "Yeah, I pray, and no, we are not going *there," you and me." "Okay," says Adam, and wonders why Kris does not take his hand away. It's so warm. They are standing toe to toe. Kris keeps his hand on Adam's face and keeps looking into his eyes, just like that, and then he swallows. Adam sees him, he can tell it's that thing in the throat you feel when you're trying to not do tears. And he puts his hand on the side of Kris' face.
Suddenly, the room phone rings, and both their cell phones go off at once , and they both jump a foot. Don't answer, Kris whispers. Like I'm fucking going to, Adam breathes and then he half-laughs because it's all so fucking ridiculously creepy.
They fight for a while after that, Kris half-heartedly trying to get Adam to leave, Adam holding his ground. There's a moment when Kris stops mid-sentence, though.
"What?" Adam whispers. "What is it?" Adam could hear nothing but silence. Kris had his head sharply turned, tendon standing out on his neck, eyes closed, listening, listening. "Adam," Kris said low and husky. "Whatever I do, whatever I say, don't let me leave this room tonight."
Adam takes his hand and promises.
Things start out normally enough (or maybe mundane is a better word, because what is normal in their lives? Even on the nights without demons). As the night crawls by, they let the TV blare, they play cards sprawled on the ugly hotel room rug, drink whiskey from the minibar till their eyes are falling shut.
At one point, with no one touching it, the clock radio comes suddenly to life and blares: "AND IF YOU SAY RUN, I'LL RUN WITH YOU. IF YOU SAY HIDE, WE'LL HIDE! "
Adam unplugs it. Hides it under the bed for good measure. Finally, Kris sacks out on the sofa of the suite, makes Adam take the bed. As he drops off, Adam wonders, "Is this all just some asstastic bad dream, a delusion? Bad club drugs? Food poisoning? Should I be dragging us both to a therapist in the morning to have our scrambled brains untangled?"
In the middle of the night, he wakes with a start, and freezes.
Kris is at the door of the room, his hand on the knob and lock. His eyes are glazed, his breathing slow. Adam is across the room so fast he can't remember how he got there. At his touch, Kris shudders and looks up into Adam's face, and now Adam is finally scared again, because Kris clearly is.
Adam leads him back to the bed, gets him to sit down, lifts his feet and tips till he's lying on his back. Then he ties Kris' hands to the headboard with his belt. Tight. Fast. When it's done, they stare at each other wordlessly.
Adam lies down beside his friend. There's no sound but their breathing. Yet Kris seems to be listening once more, swallowing and shutting his eyes. Till he turns his head and says, low: "Adam, would you--?" Adam whispers back, "Would I what?" and Kris kisses Adam then, very sweetly, very gently on the side of the face, and Adam can't help tightening the hand he has cupped on the other man's bicep, and then Kris shifts his angle and is kissing him full on the mouth, with a low hmmmm sound that sends a hot bolt down Adam's body.
Still, Adam tries to be good, to hold back. He rears up a little, hesitant. And Kris is so calm and easy, but breathing a little fast, sprawled out there, bound and shirtless and loose. Adam can't help it and dips in again to kiss Kris' temple, the pulse of his neck, and Kris says softly, "Like that." Adam says: "We shouldn't . . ." but Kris is talking over him saying low, "When you're touching me, it's better. I'm not hearing that, outside."
And there are months and months and months of held-back feelings in his touch as Adam strokes Kris' jaw, feels the rough stubble starting, drops another kiss on his pink lips, says fiercely, "You want me to . . .?" and when his friend jerks out between clenched teeth, "Yeah, oh yeah," Adam doesn't need an engraved invitation. He's biting that tender neck now, hot and good, and with one finger he traces a nipple, pinches it as Kris lets out a low cry.
Fucking straight boys. God he wants it, how he's always wanted it. He lets himself go to town after that. It all works. They can have both things. He'll keep his friend safe, and make it so good for him. He skims his hand down Kris's body, over his flat tummy, pets his cock through the soft material as it firms for him. Yesssss.
The smaller man arcs into his hand with a gasp, pressing his erection into his grip, and Adam's own cock is like iron. He takes a minute and undresses deliberately, gracefully, watching Kris watch him. He runs his hand up his own hard-on, putting on a show: yeah, all this baby. Then he yanks Kris' sweats down to his ankles and off.
So pretty. The man's cock is so pretty. He knew it would be. Pink and full. There are men who look more vulnerable when they're erect, delectable and made to be taken and played with, and Kris is one of those. Adam stares at him a minute longer, then pushes Kris' legs apart almost roughly, strokes up and down the man's sweet dick as Kris makes urgent noise. Adam takes him into his mouth in one long sucking motion. Kris says, "Oh, Adam" in a shocked voice, and comes right away. Ha.
Adam couldn't stop now if he wanted to. He's straddling Kris, sliding the head of his own cock into that wide sweet mouth, then pulling it almost all the way out, wet and pink, then plunging in again. As Kris takes it and takes it in, mouth relaxed and cheeks hollowed, eyes dark and shiny, Adam knows not even the first time he's done this and church people and their sins and straight boys and their secrets and missionary in the jungle and those thoughts have him pumping hard, steady and deep, till he shoots with a ugh into the soft, wet hole beneath him. Kris swallows and Adam curses lovingly at the sight and fetches water, holds it to that wonderful mouth, sets it on the table. He collapses then, he lies panting on Kris smooth, planed breast.
And Kris whispers softly into his ear: Let me go.
Adam's head snaps up. He feels a hot pain blossom in his chest.
It's his friend's voice, but poisoned and strange, and his eyes are wild. "You can do anything you want. Anything. Touch me however. Fuck me. I know you want to fuck me. Just do it and let me go. I need to go!"
Praying isn't Adam's thing. But he searches his memory now, finds ancient Hebrew words and chants them to himself as he holds down the stranger beside him, who strains against his ties, throws himself against them, yelling, "Let me go, let me go, FUCK you Lambert, let me GO." "Stop it. Stop it, shut up." Adam is covering Kris mouth. He has a moment of panic, a moment of belated self-preservation: what if somebody hears, finds them like this? What would people say? What would they think? A little late for that now, fucker.
It gets worse. At some point, Kris no longer seems to know him. He's struggling against the bonds, straining his shoulder and wrists, writhing. His body is fevered. He's hard, too, and erect. In pain, moaning with it. And Adam tries not to touch, not to violate, but can only keep him still by lying half across him. A horrible parody of the closeness he's dreamed of, late on other nights that now seem a century ago. Shh, shh, lie quiet, lie still, he finds himself whispering.
Finally, Kris passes out. He's motionless now at last, but Adam is filled with a horrible new fear. What if he stops breathing, what if his heart stops? How does this work? There's no one to ask, and he's never been so alone. And Adam finds his throat tight, his eyes hot and wet. He kisses Kris' lips once, twice, and again, and lies the hours till dawn awake in a half-delirious anxiety, listening to their hearts beat.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sometime after dawn, light is seeping through the thick hotel shades and Kris is speaking to Adam, his voice sad and rough. Adam knows, without knowing how, that what ever it was that went on in the night is done, for now. Trying not to look in Kris's face, he unties him, retreats to the edge of the bed. Sits facing the wall. There's a light touch on his shoulder, then the other man's weight is gone from the mattress.
He turns his head, and can see Kris in the bathroom, shoulders slumping, as if in defeat.
Adam dresses slowly, painfully, and then suddenly, he's bolting from the room, heedless. Finds a stairwell and plunges down it, dropping from step to step, his footfalls echoing. Then stops, leans on a wall, slides to the floor. Sits with his head in his hands, shaking. What did I do?
He realizes, numbly, he may not even be able to get out of the stairs and back into the hotel without his room key and if that isn't a metaphor, what is. No going back, this time, Lambert.
An old black man in a janitor's coverall is wearily making his way up the stairs with a bucket and mop. He pauses and looks at Adam. Wordlessly, he offers him a cigarette, dangling from dark withered fingers on the end of a wrist like a dry old branch. Wiping his messed-up face and half-laughing, because what must he look like? Adam takes it. The old man gives him a light, wheezing with a strangled chuckle that's a terrible advertisement for a tobacco-fueled future, Adam thinks, but still says, Thanks.
He draws in burning, comforting smoke. His eyes settle on the name stitched on the janitor's pocket: Willis, it reads in old-fashioned looping script, blue on white, but the white is flecked with red. Paint or--? And the old man's shadow against the stairwell wall is flowing, swelling, and crowned with a with many-layered crown.
As Adam rockets to his feet, Willisorwhatevertookhisoutfit explodes forwards and massive arms are everywhere, are grabbing and clutching, and the thing is enormous now, skin splitting, shooting impossibly up and out, huge elaborate head almost touching the ceiling of the stairwell. Its roar echoes up the stairwell and the horrid stink of its hot breath spills over the side of Adam's face as it squeezes and squeezes the life out of him.
From somewhere his hand comes up and he jams the lit cigarette in its ear. The roar turns to a scream and it tosses Adam hard against the wall, cursing in an unknown language and then growling distinctly, Motherfucking faggot! And he has time to wonder dazedly if those are the last words he'll ever hear.
And the answer is NO, because there's a mighty shout and Kris Allen is standing on the next landing looking down and there is fury in his chesnut eyes. The demon snarls up at him: "Ah, it is you at last! You are indeed as beautiful as they say! I shall enjoy seeing your tears when I slay your lover before your very eyes, in vengeance for your destruction of mine!"
Kris' eyebrows rise up: "Hold on, your lovers? I thought they were your brothers!"
"What is your point?" says the demon, huffily, and, "Ewwww!" Adam says or wheezes, because his chest really hurts, and Kris rolls his eyes, "Fine. Whatever. Anyways!"
And now he's making passes in the air with one hand that leave a silver trail and look pretty much like Now Go Straight to Hell! and clutching the cross at his neck with the other, and holy shit, there he goes again! Because now this demon is starting to smoke and it howls up at him and brandishes five or six knives.
But now Kris is leaping an entire flight of stairs and landing precisely on the demon's chest as it topples onto its back. It flails and seizes his wrist, but he grabs up a knife with his free hand and somewhat elegantly plants it in the thing's throat. Black goo bubbles out and the thing simultaneously crumbles in on itself and explodes. Difficult to describe unless you see it for yourself.
Adam says, "This time, can I call 911?" Kris says, "Okay, right. I think you oughta. I'm pretty sure I need an ambulance." And tumbles down.
~~~~~~~~~
In the silent stairway, there is a tiny island of quiet. Kris leans his head on Adam's shoulder, breathing hard, and Adam cups the back of his head with his hand. He thinks, creates, imagines a story and tells it, and Kris nods, repeats it back to him. He's always been so quick to take a cue from Adam.
It sounds lame. It sounds insane. All about a crazy fan, a sudden attack, "he had a knife!" (true!) and Kris pushed him, and fell himself. Its only virtue, as a story, is that it fits with the sort of insanity modern America accepts, and pays good money for, and not the sort of insanity that's been around since the days when the fairy tales we tell our kids were real.
A whole lot of fuckery goes down once Adam calls 911 and their 19E handlers, hotel people and security and management on the phone to Hollywood, and then police, doctors, the whole world it seems. There's men shouting into walkie talkies and phones, and lots of orders given, and a stretcher and an ambulance and siren lights.
There's a long period which Adam will later remember only as a blur. How weird the sunlight looked, as they drove to the hospital in the lemony, clean early morning air, as ordinary people went for coffee. Hours of official talk and talk and talk in windowless room, doctors checking him out, police asking questions, then everything again and again, for his agent and manager and lawyer. At some point the give him actual news. Kris has a broken wrist and a broken foot and strained shoulder, they say. Lucky and could have been worse, they say. They don't know the half of it.
He almost welcomes the endless delay and fucking about, because of what it allows him to defer. Finally, they let him go. He's walking down the hallway now, past the lonely potted plants and sleeping relatives of people tucked away in numbered rooms. Past the signs for Radiology and Neurology and all the -ologies that have to do with fighting the mortality of our soft and vulnerable bodies, magic or no.
He finds the correct number and Adam is the hospital room now, with his back against the door. Machines sigh and whoosh and beep. Kris is sitting up in his bed in a paper hospital gown, staring wordlessly. He looks tiny.
Adam can't speak.
Kris does, holding out a hand. "Could you just . . . c'mere?"
No. No. He can't come here, he has to stand over here, away, not touching, and in fact, never again touching because.
But somehow he is across the room, because, what the true hell. Kris is kissing Adam again, soft and hot, and he murmurs through clenched teeth: "I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry. Please don't hate me."
And Adam: "What I did. That night, and I--!"
"No. NO. God, Adam. There was a spell, but it was only letting out what was in there anyways. Under the skin, like you said. It was me, I wanted to, I wanted a lot of things, and I never told you, I never said, never told the truth."
Kris stops, and he's shaking a little, his hand on either of Adam's shoulders, warm and right, and he says distinctly: "I love you."
Time stops.
"I love you, but--"
Adam thinks, "And but, goddammit."
"But I made promises. And you have places to be."
Katy Allen chooses this moment to show up.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kris Allen's wife looks very pretty, at this moment, standing in the hospital doorway in a green flowery dress, and matching pumps, her gold hair up, her forehead so pure and smooth except for a little frown. She looks resolved.
"She's taking this calmly," Adam thinks, and says faintly, "Oh, Katy! Sweetie, Kris, and I . . . ?" He stops, because where does he go from there?
She eyes him with her lovely doll's face and her voice is calm and full of Arkansas honey: "Adam, stay where you are. I take it you know?"
Adam: "Well, I--"
She looks not only lovely, really, but also very small and very sad: "Well, alright then. I'm gonna say what I have to say and be done. I love you, Kris, but . . . I can't do this any more. You promised. No more secrets. No more lies. No more running around at night, and danger, and magic.
"No more demons. I love you, but I cannot handle this. When I get home, I'm filing for divorce. I'm sorry."
She is out of the doorway, then, and they hear her heels clicking down the hospital hallway.
Kris: "Huh. Well, there you go."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next few weeks are weird. Well, even weirder. They do the final shows of the tour after all, and it is insane, even by Idol standards. Kris has a cast and sling on one wrist and a cast on one foot and he can't play his beloved guitar or the piano, even. And it doesn't matter because the crowds go absolutely fucking wild every single night as he hobbles out on Adam's arm and then sings, all alone, in the center of the stage. He's their hero, and they don't even know the half of it. And Adam's their other hero, and the lie they told the media becomes a fairytale, and who saved who from what isn't very clear, but it doesn't matter, because they saved each other, which is actually true, and somehow the crowd feels it and feels saved, too. The record labels are happy.
He and Adam are very careful with one another, very gentle, and very distant.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A week after the tour ends, Kris goes to the hospital and gets the casts off. Texts Adam: "Free at last." Adam thinks about that and takes a deep breath and sends: "Come over?"
An hour later, they are standing on Adam's deck, looking at a burned-out LA sunset, and awkward as hell. They've killed a bottle of wine without getting any more comfortable with one another. Everything feels jagged and broken and off, and what if they can never make it right again?
Kris stands, puts his drink on a table. Adam bites down on the words don't go. And then Kris is taking his hand, pulling him to his feet, and then leading him into the house and up the stairs.
Kris has dropped his shirt to the ground. He goes and kneels by the bed, his warm, bare torso bent over the comforter.
Adam says nothing, does nothing, tries to root himself where he stands, to keep that precious, icy, safe distance between them. Then he sees the small tremble of Kris' shoulder. The bare, vulnerable feet. Sees him swallow with parted lips, and a darkness like despair shadowing his eyes. Then he is across the room, kneeling himself, bending over Kris and shaping to him.
He isn't gentle. He can't be, now. He drags Kris' jeans off roughly. Kisses the tender back of his neck, then bites, hard and reaches under, finding the nub of a nipple, which he plays with, yanks, twists as Kris makes a low uh sound. Then he's grabbing the man's pretty, smooth cock and giving it a hard squeeze, and Kris' dick is so firm and right in his grasp, and he deciphers, again, without being told, that this is not the first time for this, either. But there's no time right now for old stories, old secrets. Adam stops and strips himself, now, and kneels. His own cock, proud and thick and huge, is nesting against Kris' perfect ass. He could take him right now, bareback, fever hot and dangerous. Kris would let him. He almost does it.
But he slows long enough to put a condom on, and touch him, ready him there and then he's doing everything fast. He shoves the head of his cock into Kris, who cries out wild and thin. But Adam doesn't stop, he pushes all the way in, moaning with pleasure. He pins Kris down, a hand on each wrist and fucks him thoroughly, a long, hard screwing full of pent-up love, fear, and, yeah, a little latent, sharp anger. At some point Kris bucks and grunts and comes prettily for Adam, who swears and praises him and keeps nailing him till they're both sore, slick and exhausted. It finally ends with Adam coming thick and painful and screaming to rattle the windows. He stays draped over Kris for a long while after, breathing heavily, his cock gradually softening but still in Kris. Finally, he slides out and they scramble across the bed and lie in each other arms.
Kris lets out mildly, looking at the ceiling with half a smile on his face. "So. Did you get that out of your system?"
"I don't know. I might have to try a few more times."
"Bitch."
"Bench."
They're quiet for a while.
Adam asks: "So, anything more I should know about you? Love, monsters, whatever?"
"Probably. You never know."
And Adam Lambert, gazing on the strange and lovely mystery that is Kris Allen, finds he is alright with that. He's definitely going to look into some new locks, though.
Postscript
I count the corpses on my left, I find I'm not so tidy
So I better get away, better make it today
I've cut twenty-three down since friday
Footnotes
1) Rakshasa - via Wikipedia
2) Running Gun Blues - via YouTube
3) Authorial note: Can one be jossed by another fanfic? I think so. I am a huge fan of the mighty astolat. This story began running in my head after reading all of her work up through "Houses of the Living." I've never written fic longer then a quite brief interlude, so this has been in progress since July. And then! Well, "City of a Thousand Wonders" came out, which is the best demonic Kradam adventure of all time. So.
4) Thanks to Yeats for the challenge: David Bowie songs. Adam Lambert. This is where I went with it.