i got places you can lay your head (ai rpf, kris/adam, nc17) 1/2
Title: i got places you can lay your head (1/2)
Author: moirariordan
Fandom: american idol rpf
Pairings/Characters: kris allen/adam lambert, some past kris/katy, kris/omc
Rating: nc-17, hoo boy (I wrote sex! 0_0)
Summary: in which Kris runs away, and Adam chases after him. Eventually.
Title is from Alexz Johnson's Voodoo. A million thank yous to dansetheblues for doing last-minute beta duties on this baby. <3 Mwah!
Kris books a plane for Valencia, Spain with Cale’s credit card, holed up in his spare room, avoiding the radio, television and any website besides Expedia and Travelocity. There’s nothing special about Valencia, really, other than the fact he’s never been, and it’s cheaper than Sydney.
Cale doesn’t outright tell him not to go, but he still makes his opinion clear, in his roundabout Cale-way. He tries to stall Kris on booking hotel rooms and train tickets, refuses to help with laundry, sighs and changes the subject every time Kris brings it up. Kris finally stops talking about it, and since everything else in his life is currently a caution zone, they - well, they don’t talk much at all. Which leads to a lot of stilted silences in front of the TV, which leads to a lot of awkward throat clearing on Cale’s part, which leads to Cale’s girlfriend rolling her eyes not-so-inconspicuously and muttering “men!” under her breath every two minutes, which leads to Cale attempting to have “one-on-ones” which is apparently some kind of convoluted Cale-speak for “let’s bring up everything that Kris is trying to avoid by hiding out in Cale’s guest room and then make awkward conversation about it while Kris tries to set my head on fire with his eyes,” and whatever, Kris can’t wait to get out of here.
Cale’s girlfriend drives him to the airport, which Kris is infinitely grateful for. If Cale had taken him, or God forbid, he’d tried to drive himself, he’d have paparazzi climbing up his pant legs in two seconds flat.
Her name is Joanne, but everyone calls her Jo, apparently under threat of painful death. She’s friendly and sweet and a little bit fangirl-y, but Kris doesn’t mind. He’s been bogarting her boyfriend’s living room couch for the last week, the least he can do is put up with a few awkward questions on what Kelly Clarkson is like in person.
“Here,” she says, and hands him a knit cap. “Avoiding TMZ 101, right? I tried to find you some sunglasses, but all of mine are girly and brightly colored, and Cale keeps losing his.”
“I wouldn’t have minded brightly colored. I’m a colorful guy,” Kris tries to joke, incredibly lamely. And Jo has enough self-respect not to fake-laugh, which is a point in her column, in Kris’s book. “Thanks. Really.”
“Sure,” she says breezily. “Want me to wait a bit with you? People are probably expecting you to be - I mean, it might make it easier?” She blushes a little at her own stumble, wincing. Kris pretends not to notice.
“No, but thank you,” he says, and gives her a hug on impulse. “Sorry I’ve been such a pain.”
“Hey, mi casa es su casa,” she says. “Or, Cale’s casa es su casa, or whatever. Really, it was no trouble.” Her smile is genuine, and it makes Kris feel slightly better, slightly. He chooses to ignore the slightly pitying look that accompanies it. He has to take the bright sides where he can.
He bids her goodbye and shoves the cap as far down on his head as he can go, wrapping a scarf around his throat so it obscures the bottom half of his face. It’s the middle of December, so it isn’t a total reach, but it’s also California, which means that a heavy scarf is a little ridiculous in sixty-five degree weather, but whatever.
He knows he’s recognized by at least five or six different people in the airport, but nobody approaches him. Realistically he also knows that there’ve been a couple photos snapped, but he’s grateful not to have to deal with the swarming mob that he’d experienced just a few weeks before at this same airport. He thanks God for first-class tickets and premium customers being seated first, and escapes to the cold safety of the airplane, his lone carry-on stashed protectively beneath his seat.
(Asks himself, Is it pathetic that he’d bought two tickets so he wouldn’t have to sit next to anybody? Maybe. Is it any less pathetic than his life, in general? No. Case closed.)
He fidgets while the plane sits, humming on the runway, waiting patiently for the rest of its boarding passengers, and his hands are drawn instinctively to his phone, still and silent in his pocket. He hasn’t turned it on since he left Adam’s place for Cale’s, hasn’t wanted to deal with anything at all, anything real. But realistically he knows, American phones probably don’t work in Spain, or in mid-air, this is his last chance, he’s a total coward, et cetera et cetera. So he turns it on.
There’s an appalling number of voicemails and missed text messages, and he doesn’t even bother looking at his email since he knows the inbox is probably maxed out. He scrolls through the texts aimlessly - none from Adam. Not since - well, no new ones. Not that he hadn’t been expecting that.
A bunch from his assistant, his PR people, a few from random friends and acquaintances checking in with heartfelt I’m here if you want to talk, mans and sorry about everything, I’m totally behind yas and even a couple hey, fuck them, you’re hotter than Katy and Adam put together!s. A good chunk of them are from Allison, who is incoherent in text form on even her best day, so all he comprehends from hers is that DUUUUUUUUDE, LIFE SUCKS, and WANT ME TO CALL A HITMAN?! I’M SALVADORAN, I KNOW PEOPLE, and, well, lots of exclamation points.
The flight attendants are just beginning to start the pre-flight safety routine when Kris scrolls down to the bottom of the list, to the texts from about a week before, and sees one from Katy. He takes a huge gulp of air, and opens it.
You probably don’t wanna hear this from me right now - maybe ever? But I’m really sorry.
His eyes burn, and he turns the phone off violently, throwing it in his bag like it’s on fire. Yeah, that was a bad idea.
--
The thing about Kris is that he can be very deceptive, when he wants to be, needs to be. He knows people think of him as an open book, as maybe naïve, a little oblivious. And he is all of those things, sometimes, but not with the big things, the things that matter.
So he knew, knew it as it was happening, contrary to popular opinion. Knew exactly what it meant when he looked over at Katy at night and no longer felt the same pull, the same desire to be as close, close as possible, to touch and hold and protect. When the songs he was writing shifted to something darker, when she starting frowning every time he walked into the room, when he started talking to Adam with more frequency and enthusiasm at the same time he was forgetting to return Katy’s voicemails.
He didn’t know a lot of things, didn’t know most things, but he did know his own heart. Sometimes people don’t give him enough credit.
Katy started to catch on, too, despite his earnest attempts to hide that, at least, from her. He thought, we’re breaking up, for good this time, why should I rub it in her face, and it’s better this way, and I can hide the saddest part, because this is a fucking tragedy as it is. But she found out, because she’s Katy, and she’s his best friend, even when she can’t stand to look at him without crying, and she could tell. She could just tell.
They never talked about it, never actually voiced it out loud but there seemed to be some energy that settled over them, some terrible sense of finality that welled up between them until they both choked. It was a relief, to file, really.
But, they never talked about it. Maybe they should have. Maybe hindsight is twenty/twenty. Or maybe Kris is just a fucking idiot.
--
He spends two weeks in Valencia, then moves up the coast to Barcelona. He takes a train to France, makes the decision in Toulouse to move East rather than North, towards Italy and Switzerland rather than Great Britain. Doesn’t really notice much of the places he goes to, just the urge to travel, to keep moving, further and further away.
He stays in hotels, mostly set up by his assistant, the only one who has the number of his temporary cell phone. He asks her to pass along messages to his parents and feels like a dick, but he can’t quite stomach the thought of dealing with the concerned questions and sentiments yet. He keeps to himself, eats in his room instead of in restaurants, doesn’t initiate conversations with anyone. He doesn’t get recognized as much, especially when he stops shaving, wears Jo’s cap and his aviators everywhere, hides under heavy sweaters and scarves.
He’s been wandering around for going on a month when he picks up his phone in the middle of a courtyard in Bern. His assistant, also known as Beth, is mid-panic attack.
“…and I’m really sorry, but he got a hold of Gina, and Rick and Ben and even Joseph and they all threatened to fire me if I didn’t give him the number, and I know this is the last thing you wanted, and oh please don’t fire me, I really didn’t - “
“Wait, wait, slow down. Gave who my number?” Kris asks, already sort of knowing the answer.
“Adam,” Beth answers timidly. “He threatened to start skipping appearances if he couldn’t talk to you, and…um, yeah.”
“You gave Adam my number?” Kris repeats stupidly, feeling a sinking sort of dread in his stomach. “When?”
“Like, ten minutes ago?” As if on cue, the phone beeps with an incoming call and Kris groans. “I wanted to warn you - I’m really, really, really sorry, I swear I’ll do everything I can to - “
“It’s okay,” Kris interrupts, wincing as the phone beeps again angrily. “You’re not fired. I have to go.” He hangs up without waiting for a reply, and presses ‘end’ a few more times for good measure, making sure that the incoming call is cut off as well.
The phone rings again a minute later, and Kris sighs heavily. He could get a new phone? No, that’s ridiculous. He should just answer. It’s the mature, adult thing to do. Face his problems head on, instead of hiding at his best friend’s house and then running away to Europe like a huge coward. Or whatever.
“Hello?”
“Kris?” Adam always starts phone calls mid-conversation, not bothering to waste time on greetings or pleasantries, so that throws Kris off more than anything else. For a split second he thinks it’s not Adam, but then he hears muffled music, little noises and clamors in the background, all too familiar Adam noises that hit Kris directly in the gut. “Hello? Kris?”
“Adam.” Kris clears his throat, voice coming out rough and scratchy.
“You are there.” Adam sounds relieved, and the music shuts off abruptly. “I thought maybe the number was wrong, or something, when you didn’t pick up.”
Kris feels vaguely offended. “Maybe I was asleep,” he says pointedly. “It’s eleven pm here.”
“If you’d been asleep at eleven pm on a Friday, then I’d be really worried,” Adam jokes, but it falls flat and awkward. “Besides, you weren’t asleep.”
“No, I wasn’t.” Kris doesn’t know what else to say.
“So,” Adam says, brisk and forceful. “Mr. European Vacation, where are you right now? Paris? Rome? St. Petersburg?”
“Bern.”
“Bern? Why are you in fucking Bern?”
Kris rolls his eyes, suddenly irritated. “Adam. Why did you blackmail my assistant into giving you my phone number?”
Adam huffs. “Because nobody else had it. Duh.”
“I think you made her cry.”
“She’s a Hollywood assistant and all it takes to make her cry is a little blackmail? Lame.” Adam laughs, strained and fake.
“Adam.” Kris packs all the disapproval he possible can into the one word.
“Well, what the fuck, anyway,” Adam says darkly, mood switching like quicksilver. “You sneak off in the middle of the night, you don’t tell anyone where you’re going, your mother doesn’t even have your phone number, like what the actual fuck - “
“I had some things to figure out.”
“So go to a spa! Go to a cabin in the mountains and mope around in your underwear or something, but don’t like, fucking disappear like you’re fucking Jason Bourne or something, Jesus.”
“Come on, Adam,” Kris says, frustrated. “I couldn’t step foot outside without being mobbed. I had to get away for a while, just to catch my breath.”
Adam laughs, but it’s not a happy sound. “You think it wasn’t like that for me? Isn’t like that for me?”
Kris’s gut clenches and he doesn’t respond.
“Okay, look, don’t do that,” Adam says, sighing. “I’m sorry, okay? It’s not your fault, and I’m sorry I made you think that it was. I was a total asshole about it.” Kris keeps quiet, because, yeah, he kinda was. “It’s not your fault. At all.”
“Right,” says Kris miserably, “I’d have less trouble believing that if things were a little less fucked up right now.” He hears a sharp intake of breath, and an awkward silence descends.
When Adam finally speaks, his voice sounds choked, clogged. “I don’t know how this happened. I didn’t mean to - I mean, I’m sorry, Kris.”
He sounds miserable and helpless and really fucking genuine, and Kris sighs, heart pounding in his chest. “Well, it’s not your fault, either. I guess.”
Adam laughs shortly. “You sound so sincere.”
“I try.”
“If I - “ Adam clears his throat awkwardly, sounding unsure. “I mean, I just wanted to make sure you were okay, and everything. I can - lose this number, if you want me to.” He clears his throat again, louder. “I - would prefer not to, though.”
Kris bites his lip. “I thought we needed time?”
Adam laughs, waveringly. “I…decided I was wrong about that,” he says. “Yeah, definitely wrong. Goes along with the ‘being an asshole’ thing. Plus I’ve been informed by many, many people that I’m full of shit, and I’m inclined to believe them.”
Kris takes a deep breath. “Okay,” he says, ignoring the voice in his head screaming, bad idea, bad idea, bad horrible wrong idea at the top of its metaphorical lungs. “Well - I guess you don’t have to lose it, then. If you don’t want to.”
“Really?” Adam asks, hopeful. “So, I can call you?”
“Yes,” replies Kris cautiously.
“And text? Can you text? Cuz I can text more often then I can call.”
Kris feels a slight sinking sensation that might be dread. “Uh, yeah. I have texting.”
“Good. Cuz I’m going to text you, then. And you better text me back.”
“Okay,” says Kris obediently.
“And none of that, haha, el-oh-el, half-assed texts, either,” Adam continues. “I want thoughtful responses. Actual engagement. Send me your travel plans, pictures of funky European clothes, bitch about train schedules, or like, what you’re wearing, I don’t even care.”
“Okay,” Kris says, laughing despite himself.
“We’re gonna get through this,” Adam says firmly. “If I have to pull you through by your balls, we will get through this.”
Kris’s laugh settles into a smile, his whole body practically thrumming with emotion. “Okay,” he says, but it sounds like something else.
--
He likes Jon. Honestly, he does. He’s friendly, clean-shaven, wholesome. Good for Katy. There’s maybe some jealousy, but it’s just the leftovers, the green-tinged residue in the empty space where Katy used to be.
Adam never believes him when he says any of this. “Don’t give me the jealous-colored edges or whatever speech, okay, you’re totally in denial. Shut up, I’m taking you to get your aura read.”
“The last time we did that,” Kris points out, “she totally agreed with me.”
Adam frowns, disgruntled. “Fluke,” he says flippantly. “I have this new guy now, Paula gave me his number - don’t give me that look, she’s been totally stable lately, it’s actually kind of creepy - and he’s awesome, I went in last week, you remember I was all worked up about the Wal-Mart thing? He totally straightened me out.”
“Wow, all it takes is a psychic reading, huh?” Kris looks over at him, eyes wide. “Never would’ve thought.”
“Shut up, you know what I mean,” Adam grouses, groaning. He turns back to Kris and grins wickedly. “I’m very committed to my commitment to dick. For the record.”
A rush of heat races across Kris’s skin, and he feels his face flush. Adam laughs delightedly, which only makes it worse. “Good to know,” he mumbles, scowling at the ceiling.
“You’re so precious,” Adam coos, and Kris sighs internally. Precious? Just - fuck his life, seriously.
“Whatever, okay, I don’t need a psychic. Or a massage, or a therapist, or a new car, or anything. I’m fine.”
Adam sobers a little, chewing on one thumbnail thoughtfully. “It’d be okay if you weren’t,” he says. “You’re allowed to be jealous.”
“I know.”
“And I’m like, super impressed at how well you’ve been handling everything, but I’m a little worried you’re repressing.”
“You’ve made that quite clear.”
“And I know you don’t exactly want to fall apart in front of Katy and her new boyfriend and TMZ and the whole rest of the world, but I want to make sure you know that it’s just you and me, and you don’t have to be totally strong-silent-man all the time.”
Just you and me, Kris thinks, running it over in his head wistfully. “I know. And thank you. But I’m really okay.” He shrugs. “I really don’t know how else to say it, man.”
Adam eyes him skeptically. “Whatever you say,” he says breezily, and pulls out his phone. “I’m still taking you to see Raul.”
Kris snorts. “His name is Raul?”
“Don’t start.”
--
He spends a lot of time writing. He still gets restless if he stays in one spot for more than a couple days so there are lots of train, bus, ferry rides where he has time to sit and think, and usually if he directs his energy towards a song it’s a lot easier to avoid thinking about things that he really doesn’t want to think about.
He’s never avoided drama in his music before - even used it, to a certain extent, though not in the same way that Adam does. But melodrama is something different, and Kris ends up throwing out a lot of the crap he comes up with out of pure irritation. A few of the less emo ones, he sends to Beth, who gushes for ten minutes about how he’s turned a corner in his songwriting and is on to something really original and cool and awesome and neat (she may still be worried about being fired, he should probably have another talk with her about that) and tries to convince him to get into a studio somewhere and do some recording.
He doesn’t know how he feels about that, he hasn’t been in the studio since - well, a while. But Beth, the sneaky bitch, tells Adam, who proceeds to bug Kris about it non-stop for a solid week before he gives in just so he can get a break.
They hook him up with a studio in Stuttgart, even rent him an apartment to stay in. He falls back into the rhythm of working like he’d never left it, cranking out material like he’s on a deadline - only he’s not, this time, his last album is still going pretty solidly and with the press he’s gotten lately - humiliating and intrusive as it was, it was certainly fucking big - and well, the label can’t touch him. It feels nice, like he’s got all this motivation but no real urgency behind it, and he’s able to take his time in a way that he hadn’t with the other records, rewriting and reworking things until they’re exactly where he wants them to be. It’s like he always thought making an album would be, before he actually got into bed with 19 and realized that it’s far more about speedy results then careful quality. At least this time around he has time to write all the songs himself.
It does feel weird, to be without his band - Cale, especially. He still hasn’t talked to anyone, really (though his mother and later, Daniel, did get ahold of his number somehow - he suspects Adam). He hopes Cale isn’t hurt, or anything, about being left out, but considering Cale’s utmost distaste for studio work, he isn’t all that worried.
He talks to Adam almost every day, in some form or another. It’s really awkward at first, but it melts away soon enough with Adam’s insistence, his texts every twenty minutes with practically every thought that runs through his head, from the serious, concerned, thoughtful I hope you’re eating enough ones to the nonsensical I really want some boots made out of glass. Like Cinderella! Is that possible? Prob couldn’t dance in them, tho, boo.
Kris takes it in stride, mostly, thinking, this is what I wanted, right, for things to be like they were before, but it doesn’t stop him from feeling like he has a boyfriend without any of the actual benefits of having a boyfriend. Just - all the stuff from before, plus extra awkward guilt and tension, and still no sex whatsoever. Par for the course, pretty much.
The album is good, though, probably the best he’s ever done. He starts out thinking, acoustic, stripped down, coffee-shop music, but there’s this producer, Jan, who takes a listen to one of Kris’s pathetic I’m pining but trying not to be totally obvious about it songs, and looks Kris straight in the eye and says, “trumpets,” as if he’s announcing the Second Coming, and from there it just rolls out of control. He has flutes and violins and glockenspiels and trombones and a harp, and on one particularly kick-ass track, a gospel chorus. He refuses to work with other songwriters, writes everything himself. Goes through and learns everything about the technical sides of mixing and producing that he’d never had time to learn before. Does as much of the instrumental work himself as he can, works twelve hour days, sometimes going all night. The people at the studio are alternately impressed as hell and annoyed with his pickiness. But the result is tightly produced, written, eclectic, passionate, the most genuine work he’s ever produced in his entire life.
He hasn’t been home in six months, when he finishes. Gets a master copy and sends it to Adam, his mother, and the contact at 19, then collapses in his apartment and sleeps all through the night and straight through to the following afternoon.
19 loves it, wants to release it ASAP, and Kris expects there to be a strongly worded request to return to the States for press, but instead he’s pleasantly surprised.
“You did the album in Europe, they want you to stay in Europe,” Beth explains. “They’ve been pushing the whole ‘Europe inspires you’ thing ever since you moved there anyway. You know, like you went there for a vacation and ended up falling in love with it, and decided to stay and do your album there?”
Kris is startled by the word ‘moved.’ He looks around his apartment, irrationally shocked to see the volume of things he’s acquired in his time there. He’s been here for half a year, he’s pretty close to being a fluent speaker, he has friends and a drycleaner and a favorite restaurant, his parents visited the month before and bought him plants, and he’s still thinking of it as temporary. “Well, that’s good, I guess,” he says. “Do they even want to publicize it in the States?”
“God, of course they do,” Beth exclaims. “But they figure you’ll get better sales in Europe - Germany especially since, you know, you live there. So they want you to do all your press over there. In a couple months, maybe, you could come back for a little bit? But for now, stay where you are. I’ll fax you a schedule, the studio will help you with logistics if you need it. Yeah?”
“Sure,” Kris agrees easily. He finds himself actually…excited to do all the pre-album crap again. Maybe it’ll be different than it used to be in the States, who knows. At least here he doesn’t have to go on Leno.
Most of the reactions from his family and friends of the album are glowing - and with a few, some surprised awe, especially from Cale, who’d probably been expecting the emo whiny crap that Kris had started out with. He doesn’t hear from Adam, though, for almost a week after he sends him the songs. Kris gets more and more nervous the longer Adam doesn’t react, and considering that most of the thing is about Adam, Kris feels justified in his complete girly reaction.
He finally gets a call from Adam, and when Kris goes to pick up he sees on his fancy dual-time zone clock thing that it’s almost four am in LA, which makes him a little worried, to be honest.
“So I listened to your album,” Adam says, not waiting for a hello. His voice is thin, strained. He probably had a show tonight. “I can’t even comprehend how amazing it is.”
“Thank you,” Kris says, a tiny knot of tension he didn’t know he had coming loose.
“You’ve come so far,” Adam says, no small amount of pride in his voice. “We both have.”
There’s some layered meaning to that statement that Kris really doesn’t have the energy to dissect. “I’m really happy you like it,” he says instead. “I worked - harder on it then I’ve worked on anything.”
“I can tell,” Adam replies. “You can, Kris, it comes through in every note - God, every word.” His voice gets a little thick, and Kris swallows roughly. “It’s the most honest thing you’ve ever done.”
I know, Kris thinks, tired and disgruntled and uncomfortable and fed up and a million other things, all at once. “Thanks,” he says again, a little shortly. “Listen, I have to go.”
“Call me back,” Adam says, voice neutral and unreadable.
Kris hangs up without answering.
--
Adam goes through boyfriends like he goes through shoes - quickly, enthusiastically and with the attention span of a fourth grader.
“It’s this new thing I’m trying out,” he explains to Kris, once. “Like, I’m so picky usually, I don’t really get into anything with a guy unless I really, really like them, but well, that hasn’t been working out for me so well, so I figure, why not just lower my standards a little?”
“Pretty sure that a couple bad breakups and a dry spell isn’t reason enough to start dating every guy who tosses his phone number your way,” Kris replies dryly.
“Dry spell is not an adequate phrase for what I have been experiencing,” Adam laments. “My sex life is the fucking Mojave Desert, Kris. Only not during the day, when it’s hot and sweaty? No. At night, when it’s cold and dark and all the scorpions come out and play volleyball with my testicles.”
“I’m…not so sure that metaphor makes sense.”
“Yes, it totally does,” Adam says pointedly. “Anyway, I’m just being more open. So what if somebody’s not my soulmate, that doesn’t mean I can’t have a good time with him.”
Kris winces, thinking of just what Adam might be referring to by ‘good time.’ “Are you being…you know…”
Adam looks at him in disbelief. “Are you trying to give me the safe sex talk?”
“No,” Kris says sourly, but Adam bursts into laughter anyway. “Shut up, okay, you know what I mean. Safe sex for a famous person is not the same as safe sex for a…non-famous person.”
“Condoms, no camera phones, got it,” Adam says, but he’s still laughing. Kris shoves at him, rolling his eyes. “What about you? You should start dating again. I could even set you up with somebody - I know tons of people.” Adam grins. “Hot people. People with enough money and/or fame of their own that you don’t need to worry about glory hounds.”
“I don’t want to date right now,” Kris says honestly.
Adam gives him a look of pure disbelief. “Right.”
“Seriously.” Kris feels a wave of irritation that he pushes down determinedly. “Dating should be fun, right? Something you want to do?”
“Who doesn’t want to date?” Adam says, imitating Kris’s twang and managing to make it sound ridiculous.
“I don’t,” Kris mutters.
“Cuz you’re stubborn,” Adam shoots back. “This isn’t a ‘oh, I don’t feel like it’ kind of thing. Of course you’re not going to feel like dating when you’re still hung up on somebody - “
“I’m not hung up on Katy,” Kris interrupts. Adam happily ignores him.
“ - if you would just go out and meet people, you might find someone you like and it would be fun!” Adam insists. “But you’re never going to have any new experiences if you don’t open yourself up to them.”
Kris sighs. He’s not allowed to be sulky and jealous and whiny when he’s not going to take the step to tell Adam how he feels. It’s not fair to him, definitely not fair to Adam, and he manages it, mostly. And Adam is so warm and lovely that it’s easy, so easy to just forget about real life and just spend hours drinking margaritas and listening to music and talking and laughing. But it’s hard sometimes. He tries not to let it get to him, but, it’s hard.
“I’ll try,” he says finally. “Really.”
Adam smiles brilliantly. “I knew you’d see it my way,” he says, and preens.
“Don’t go too overboard on the modesty, buddy.”
“Modesty’s for losers,” Adam replies, and Kris laughs.
--
“You should call Katy,” Adam says, out of the blue one day. Kris trips over his shoelace.
“Why?”
Adam sighs. “Do you like, never turn on the television?”
“I watch the news,” Kris says defensively.
“German news,” Adam says. “Doesn’t count. What do they talk about, like, cars and Nazis and stuff? Whatever.”
Kris laughs. “Cars and Nazis,” he repeats incredulously. “Really? Really, you just said that to me. That just happened.”
“Shut up,” Adam whines. “I totally have a valid, serious reason for bringing this up.”
“Please, share your valid, serious reason.”
“Katy and Jon broke up,” Adam says, a little reluctantly. “He, uh - they’re saying he cheated on her.”
Kris’s breath stutters, a little twinge informing him that yep, not everything he felt for her is dead. “Oh.”
“I would call her myself, but…” Adam chuckles a little sadly. “Awkward.”
Adam had been staunchly Team Kris after the divorce, despite Kris’s repeated assurances that it wasn’t Katy’s fault, or wasn’t totally Katy’s fault, anyway. Adam still stopped returning her calls, though. Kris can’t say he isn’t grateful for the solidarity, especially after…well.
“I’ll call her,” Kris tells him. “I…guess.”
“Be mature,” Adam urges him, and then starts talking about some idea for his tour that involves him riding a motorcycle on stage, and Kris tunes out since he really doesn’t need that particular torturously hot mental image.
He calculates the time difference carefully, she’s living in Vancouver now, a regular on the newest Star Trek series on the SyFy channel. He doesn’t get American television very often, but he’s been able to catch a few episodes, she plays an alien assassin, and she’s fierce and beautiful and he’s ridiculously proud of her, when he’s not too busy resenting her for all the wrong reasons.
He still has her private number, which she’d sent to Beth a few months ago when she’d first moved. It’d been a gesture he’d ignored, and he feels vaguely guilty about it as it rings.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Katy.”
A sharp intake of breath, a long pause, and Katy speaks, voice wobbly. “Kris?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re calling me,” she says, and bursts into tears.
He spends about ten minutes trying to calm her down, which doesn’t work and just results in him getting upset himself, until they’re both laughing and crying at the same time, and talking over each other in their haste to say everything they’ve needed to say to each other for too long, years too long.
“I didn’t mean any of it,” is the first thing Katy says, “during all that crap during the divorce, all those nasty things I said, I didn’t mean any of them.”
“I know,” Kris says, because he did, he’d known it at the time and he knows it now. It’s not what had hurt him. “I didn’t mean anything either.”
“And I didn’t do it on purpose,” Katy blurts. “I really, really didn’t, God Kris, I swear if I could take it back I would. I couldn’t stand thinking about you or Adam, or what that must’ve done to you, I am so sorry.”
Kris feels something unknot and loosen, and he breathes a little easier than he has in a long time. He never knew how much he needed to hear that from her, until this moment. “It’s okay.” Then he laughs, out of pure relief. “Yeah. It’s okay. I know it was an accident. I could tell.”
She laughs too, but it sounds more like a sob. “Thank God. Thank God, Kris, I don’t know what I would’ve done if you were gonna be mad at me forever, I just - God, I’ve missed you so much - “
“I miss you too,” he says, and wipes at his eyes, dammit, “I do, I miss you every day, and I’m sorry. I love you, and I’m so sorry.”
“I love you too,” Katy says, all watery and small, and laughs again. “We’re pathetic. Oh my God, I wish I could hug you.”
“I owe you a million hugs,” Kris says. “A million a lot of things.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Katy replies, and snuffles loudly into the receiver. “Oh um, would you hate me if I paused this conversation to go blow my nose?”
Kris grins painfully into his arm, a warm rush of love bubbling up in his chest, threatening to overflow. “Of course not,” he chokes out, and has to rub at his eyes to keep them from welling up again.
He takes the welcome break to collect himself, and by the time she comes back they’re both calmer, though Kris can still hear the edge of tears in her voice. He thinks, how upset has she been, all this time? He doesn’t want to think about it.
“I heard about Jon,” he says delicately. “Well, Adam heard about Jon, and told me.”
“Adam told you?” Katy sounds startled. “You - I mean, you talk?”
“Yeah.” Kris shifts awkwardly. “He uh, says hi.”
He can tell she wants to ask, but she doesn’t, which he is so unbelievably grateful for. “Yeah, I kind of…saw it coming? He’d been spending more and more time with his co-star from this Jerry Bruckheimer project he’s been filming, and well.” He can see her shrugging in his mind’s eye, what her face must look like, a mix of sadness and resignation and pity. “I’m upset, but not as upset as I thought I’d be. If that makes sense.”
“It does.”
“I kind of feel like it’s okay, like this is what was meant to happen,” she goes on. “I never had any delusions about where it was going - it was nothing like you and me, I knew we wouldn’t last forever. I just wish he’d shown me a little bit more respect, you know?”
“You deserve respect,” Kris tells her earnestly. “You deserved more than Jon gave you. More than I gave you.”
“No, you always respected me,” Katy argues. “Maybe a little too much, sometimes. That was part of the problem.”
Kris sighs, lets his head fall back to the couch cushion, a headache forming at the sides of his temples. “I feel like we could talk about this for another twenty years and never really figure out what went wrong.”
“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” Katy says softly. “We loved each other, and we tried, and it didn’t work. Maybe we should stop torturing ourselves over it.”
“I never wanted it to end this way,” Kris tells her, and closes his eyes.
“Me neither,” she replies, and they sit in silence, listening to each other breathe.
--
He’s in New York, on a press tour, walking out of a subway station with his publicist, thinking about stopping for coffee, and his phone vibrates with a text from his mother. His publicist’s phone rings at almost the same time, and Kris’s stomach kind of drops into his shoes like it does whenever something really, really fucking bad is about to happen.
He’s herded back to his hotel as quickly as possible, and somebody’s laptop is shoved into his lap, the link already pulled up, and there’s Katy, his Katy, talking to Oprah, fucking Oprah. Oprah. He can’t actually believe this is happening.
“We had been drifting apart for awhile, like people just do sometimes, and that wasn’t his fault, or mine, really, it just was. He was moving one direction and I another - and I know that’s what everyone says, but it’s true.” Katy looks eerily calm and collected, her hair newly shorn, bobbing around her chin gracefully, her cheeks slightly flushed and healthy, eyes sparkling with warmth. She’s in a sundress, and she’s so, so beautiful. Kris feels sick.
“It was - um, there wasn’t any one thing or one point where we went, there, it’s over, but, well - no! No, nothing like that, no. I mean, we were separated for a little but, but still trying to make it work. And not to say that there weren’t, maybe, feelings involved. I mean, I know I developed feelings for Jon when I was still with Kris, technically. It happens. And Kris?”
Kris starts shaking his head mindlessly, thinking, how could she, how could you. No, no, no, no, no. Katy, no. No.
“I think he did. It felt like he did. And maybe there wasn’t much of us left to betray, but it still felt like a betrayal - just like I felt like I was betraying him with Jon. And every time I talked to Jon, went out to lunch, or whatever, all I could think about was that Kris was probably doing the same thing with Adam, and - oh.”
Kris chokes on his own saliva, pounds the table with his fist, the image on the screen blurring into an indistinguishable blob of color.
“I - I didn’t mean to say that.”
Too late.
--
It’s not like Kris doesn’t have friends other than Adam, it’s just that he’s not borderline co-dependent with any of them, so they tend to fade in comparison. There’s his landlord slash neighbor Sebastian, who comes over to watch football games and laughed for twenty minutes straight when Kris told him how he got to be famous, and Fritz and Annemarie, who run a homeless shelter that Kris volunteers at when he can, and who invite him over for Sunday dinners with their giggling, skittish family of foster children. And Kathrin at the studio, who travels with him on press trips and shares her crosswords with him, and who has a beautiful alto that’s being wasted because she’s too shy to lay down a demo track. He’s working on convincing her to maybe come on tour with him and sing backup, because when she’s not the center of attention she sings beautifully.
And there’s Jan, of course, who is tall and lanky and also gay, as Kris found out when he casually brought up an ex-boyfriend one day. Kris respects him as a producer and fellow musician, and also likes to watch the muscles in his wrist shift as he adjusts knobs on the soundboards, the shape of his shoulders beneath his t-shirts.
It’s not the first time he’s been attracted to somebody other than Katy or Adam, but it’s the first time that he hasn’t compared, hasn’t felt guilt for snuggling up against Jan’s side in the mixing room or sharing drinks with him, flirting and laughing with him at the bar after work.
He’s also nervous around him, like he used to be around Katy, a lifetime ago. His palms get sweaty, his stomach ties itself up in knots. Kris almost doesn’t trust that it’s real.
Kris wants to sing a few of the songs in German, which he speaks now, but speaking is a whole lot different than singing it, as it turns out. Jan’s been helping him with it, and one day he stops short in the middle of a lecture on pronunciation and asks Kris out on a date.
“A real, official date,” he says. “No more of this ambiguous hanging out and occasionally kissing stuff. I want to do it the right way.”
Kris blinks, surprised. “You’re asking me out?”
Jan fidgets, rubbing his hands together between his knees. “Well, yes.”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
Kris nods. He feels a little warm, pleasantly flushed. “Yes, I’ll go out with you.”
Jan smiles warmly, and Kris feels a faint fluttering in his stomach.
They go to a club to see a jazz trio that Jan produces. They sit in the back and drink vodka and make out, the music and smoky air of the club lulling Kris into a lazy trance. All thoughts of Adam disappear in place of the press of hands against Kris’s hips, the taste of the skin behind Jan’s ear.
Outside the club they’re stopped by a few of Kris’s fans, giggling and eyeing Jan’s hand on the small of Kris’s back. Kris signs autographs and poses for pictures with the girls, pulling Jan in by the waist to pose with them. On impulse, he reaches up and kisses Jan just as the camera flash goes off, the girls all laugh and squeal and Jan pulls away, smiling and blushing, Kris notes with satisfaction.
Jan drives him home and they spend another twenty minutes in the front seat, Kris climbing over the gear shift to reach under Jan’s shirt as they kiss, vodka and lust spinning through Kris’s veins and leaving him dizzy.
He finally tears himself away and climbs the stairs to his apartment on shaky legs, half-regretting not inviting him in. Takes a hot shower and jerks off almost frantically, collapsing against the wall of the shower in a shaky mess, then sliding to the floor and waiting until the water turns cold and clammy on his skin. Doesn’t think of Adam once.
The next day he finds a couple missed calls from Kathrin, and a text from Jan saying, had fun last night, :) which makes him smile. He’s about to call Kathrin back when his phone buzzes in his hand, and he swipes his thumb across the surface to answer it automatically, not thinking to check the caller ID on the display.
“Did you fire your publicist again?”
“Adam?” Kris blinks and checks his watch. “Dude, it’s like three am in LA right now, what are you doing up?”
“I sent you a link,” Adam says, ignoring his question. “Go check it.”
“Can I - “
“Now,” Adam demands, leaving no room for argument.
Kris grumbles and ambles over to his laptop, flipping it open and taking his time turning it on, just out of spite.
“Kris!”
“It’s warming up! Chill.”
Kris rolls his eyes, clicking through to his email and finding the message from Adam at the very top. Inside is a link to an article on PerezHilton.com, the headline declaring, Is Kris Allen Faking His Gay?
Kris shudders. There are pictures of he and Adam hugging, of he and Cale posing and smiling for the camera, arms around each other’s shoulders, a shot of Katy from the Oprah interview, smiling tightly, and oh snap, a paparazzi shot of Jan and Kris from last night, practically dry-humping in the booth at the club.
Kris skims it as quickly as he can; the gist is that the eminent Mr. Hilton apparently thinks he’s faking it all for publicity, or something. It’s not exactly hard-hitting journalism, as offensive as it is.
“So, do you believe it or something?” Kris asks dryly.
“What? Of course not,” Adam says. “That’s not the point. This isn’t exactly the kind of exposure you need right now, right before your album drops.”
Kris sighs. “It’s one article,” he says. “And who reads Perez Hilton anymore, anyway?”
“Lots of people!” Adam shrieks. “Did you see how many comments were on that thing?”
“You want me to read the comments on a Perez Hilton article about me?” Kris asks incredulously. “Do you want to destroy my self-esteem? No thanks.”
“What were you thinking, anyway?” Adam says quickly. “Was that last night? Like - really, climbing all over him in a place like that, you were practically asking to be photographed!”
Kris decides not to tell him about the pictures they’d posed for later. “I was thinking he was cute, and I was long overdue to start dating again,” he says evenly.
“Dating is not the same as rubbing off on some random guy in the middle of a club.”
“I was not - “
“And how do you even know that this guy didn’t bring you there for the express purpose of getting photographed with his hands down your pants?” Adam continues, words almost running together in his haste. “Hell, he probably called the German TMZ or whatever himself.”
“Jan wouldn’t do that,” Kris says firmly.
“Oh, Jan wouldn’t do that,” Adam replies mockingly. He stretches the syllables out in Jan’s name so it sounds like yawn, an acerbic twist to his words. “How well do you even know him? Are you dating or something?”
“I guess,” Kris answers. “I mean, we’re moving towards that.”
Adam is silent for a long moment. “Well, then,” he says sharply.
Kris clutches the phone tightly, the edges digging into his fingers. “Are you jealous?”
“What?” Adam scoffs. “No.”
“Oh, you’re concerned about my public image.”
“Because I’m your friend,” Adam says, ignoring the sarcasm. “You’re already on shaky ground right now anyway, and I know you don’t like thinking about this stuff, but this shit does affect album sales, you know.”
“You mean since Katy told the world I had feelings for you?” Adam makes a little sound, almost like a grunt. “Yeah well, thanks for the concern, but I’ll be fine.”
“You can’t just go around dating just anyone you know,” Adam grates out in frustration.
Kris almost wants to laugh at the hypocrisy. “Are you serious? Like you’re so selective with your boyfriends?”
“Now who’s jealous?” Adam snipes.
“Don’t,” Kris says, heart clenching. “Don’t go there.”
“You’re the one who brought it up,” Adam exclaims. “All I was worried about was how it looks to the press, and you’re just biting my head off.”
“It’s not about that,” Kris says, teeth clenched in frustration. “It’s about you not being fair. It’s about me trying to move on, finally, and you just being pissy that I’m not willing to be your safety school anymore.”
“Hey,” says Adam sharply. “That is not how it is.”
“Then how is it?” Kris asks. “You know, I talk to you more often then I talk to Jan - or anybody who you know, actually lives in the same country as I do. You text me every two hours, you tell me everything that runs through your head, and then you call me and tell me anything you left out, and you’re not seriously seeing how this is unhealthy for me?”
“I - “ Adam stutters. “No, I didn’t - “
“I know what you eat for breakfast every morning, I know what color your nail polish is, I know when you’re mad and when you’re tired and stressed and when you’re excited, I know everything. Because you tell me,” Kris says desperately. “You tell me all of this, and you don’t think - you don’t think about what it does to me, to talk to you all the time and to be in love with you, you fucking idiot, and I can’t stop listening. I can never stop listening to you.” He idly notices that his free hand is shaking, and he shoves it in his pocket mindlessly, unable to stop the flow of words. “I can’t do this anymore, I can’t be with you and not be with you, because it hurts, and it’s not healthy, and I can’t - live like this.”
A ringing silence echoes over the line, broken only by Kris’s jagged intakes of breath.
“Adam?” Kris huffs. “Adam, for God’s sake, be a man and say something.”
The sound in his ear changes slightly, and Kris pulls the cell phone away from his face to see that the call’s been disconnected.
Kris stares at the phone dumbly. “Son of a fucking bitch,” he says, and throws it against the wall. It clatters into three distinct pieces and he stares at it, chest heaving. Then he turns on his heel and crawls back into bed, tugging the covers over his head and shutting his eyes to the world.
--
part two
Author: moirariordan
Fandom: american idol rpf
Pairings/Characters: kris allen/adam lambert, some past kris/katy, kris/omc
Rating: nc-17, hoo boy (I wrote sex! 0_0)
Summary: in which Kris runs away, and Adam chases after him. Eventually.
Title is from Alexz Johnson's Voodoo. A million thank yous to dansetheblues for doing last-minute beta duties on this baby. <3 Mwah!
Kris books a plane for Valencia, Spain with Cale’s credit card, holed up in his spare room, avoiding the radio, television and any website besides Expedia and Travelocity. There’s nothing special about Valencia, really, other than the fact he’s never been, and it’s cheaper than Sydney.
Cale doesn’t outright tell him not to go, but he still makes his opinion clear, in his roundabout Cale-way. He tries to stall Kris on booking hotel rooms and train tickets, refuses to help with laundry, sighs and changes the subject every time Kris brings it up. Kris finally stops talking about it, and since everything else in his life is currently a caution zone, they - well, they don’t talk much at all. Which leads to a lot of stilted silences in front of the TV, which leads to a lot of awkward throat clearing on Cale’s part, which leads to Cale’s girlfriend rolling her eyes not-so-inconspicuously and muttering “men!” under her breath every two minutes, which leads to Cale attempting to have “one-on-ones” which is apparently some kind of convoluted Cale-speak for “let’s bring up everything that Kris is trying to avoid by hiding out in Cale’s guest room and then make awkward conversation about it while Kris tries to set my head on fire with his eyes,” and whatever, Kris can’t wait to get out of here.
Cale’s girlfriend drives him to the airport, which Kris is infinitely grateful for. If Cale had taken him, or God forbid, he’d tried to drive himself, he’d have paparazzi climbing up his pant legs in two seconds flat.
Her name is Joanne, but everyone calls her Jo, apparently under threat of painful death. She’s friendly and sweet and a little bit fangirl-y, but Kris doesn’t mind. He’s been bogarting her boyfriend’s living room couch for the last week, the least he can do is put up with a few awkward questions on what Kelly Clarkson is like in person.
“Here,” she says, and hands him a knit cap. “Avoiding TMZ 101, right? I tried to find you some sunglasses, but all of mine are girly and brightly colored, and Cale keeps losing his.”
“I wouldn’t have minded brightly colored. I’m a colorful guy,” Kris tries to joke, incredibly lamely. And Jo has enough self-respect not to fake-laugh, which is a point in her column, in Kris’s book. “Thanks. Really.”
“Sure,” she says breezily. “Want me to wait a bit with you? People are probably expecting you to be - I mean, it might make it easier?” She blushes a little at her own stumble, wincing. Kris pretends not to notice.
“No, but thank you,” he says, and gives her a hug on impulse. “Sorry I’ve been such a pain.”
“Hey, mi casa es su casa,” she says. “Or, Cale’s casa es su casa, or whatever. Really, it was no trouble.” Her smile is genuine, and it makes Kris feel slightly better, slightly. He chooses to ignore the slightly pitying look that accompanies it. He has to take the bright sides where he can.
He bids her goodbye and shoves the cap as far down on his head as he can go, wrapping a scarf around his throat so it obscures the bottom half of his face. It’s the middle of December, so it isn’t a total reach, but it’s also California, which means that a heavy scarf is a little ridiculous in sixty-five degree weather, but whatever.
He knows he’s recognized by at least five or six different people in the airport, but nobody approaches him. Realistically he also knows that there’ve been a couple photos snapped, but he’s grateful not to have to deal with the swarming mob that he’d experienced just a few weeks before at this same airport. He thanks God for first-class tickets and premium customers being seated first, and escapes to the cold safety of the airplane, his lone carry-on stashed protectively beneath his seat.
(Asks himself, Is it pathetic that he’d bought two tickets so he wouldn’t have to sit next to anybody? Maybe. Is it any less pathetic than his life, in general? No. Case closed.)
He fidgets while the plane sits, humming on the runway, waiting patiently for the rest of its boarding passengers, and his hands are drawn instinctively to his phone, still and silent in his pocket. He hasn’t turned it on since he left Adam’s place for Cale’s, hasn’t wanted to deal with anything at all, anything real. But realistically he knows, American phones probably don’t work in Spain, or in mid-air, this is his last chance, he’s a total coward, et cetera et cetera. So he turns it on.
There’s an appalling number of voicemails and missed text messages, and he doesn’t even bother looking at his email since he knows the inbox is probably maxed out. He scrolls through the texts aimlessly - none from Adam. Not since - well, no new ones. Not that he hadn’t been expecting that.
A bunch from his assistant, his PR people, a few from random friends and acquaintances checking in with heartfelt I’m here if you want to talk, mans and sorry about everything, I’m totally behind yas and even a couple hey, fuck them, you’re hotter than Katy and Adam put together!s. A good chunk of them are from Allison, who is incoherent in text form on even her best day, so all he comprehends from hers is that DUUUUUUUUDE, LIFE SUCKS, and WANT ME TO CALL A HITMAN?! I’M SALVADORAN, I KNOW PEOPLE, and, well, lots of exclamation points.
The flight attendants are just beginning to start the pre-flight safety routine when Kris scrolls down to the bottom of the list, to the texts from about a week before, and sees one from Katy. He takes a huge gulp of air, and opens it.
You probably don’t wanna hear this from me right now - maybe ever? But I’m really sorry.
His eyes burn, and he turns the phone off violently, throwing it in his bag like it’s on fire. Yeah, that was a bad idea.
--
The thing about Kris is that he can be very deceptive, when he wants to be, needs to be. He knows people think of him as an open book, as maybe naïve, a little oblivious. And he is all of those things, sometimes, but not with the big things, the things that matter.
So he knew, knew it as it was happening, contrary to popular opinion. Knew exactly what it meant when he looked over at Katy at night and no longer felt the same pull, the same desire to be as close, close as possible, to touch and hold and protect. When the songs he was writing shifted to something darker, when she starting frowning every time he walked into the room, when he started talking to Adam with more frequency and enthusiasm at the same time he was forgetting to return Katy’s voicemails.
He didn’t know a lot of things, didn’t know most things, but he did know his own heart. Sometimes people don’t give him enough credit.
Katy started to catch on, too, despite his earnest attempts to hide that, at least, from her. He thought, we’re breaking up, for good this time, why should I rub it in her face, and it’s better this way, and I can hide the saddest part, because this is a fucking tragedy as it is. But she found out, because she’s Katy, and she’s his best friend, even when she can’t stand to look at him without crying, and she could tell. She could just tell.
They never talked about it, never actually voiced it out loud but there seemed to be some energy that settled over them, some terrible sense of finality that welled up between them until they both choked. It was a relief, to file, really.
But, they never talked about it. Maybe they should have. Maybe hindsight is twenty/twenty. Or maybe Kris is just a fucking idiot.
--
He spends two weeks in Valencia, then moves up the coast to Barcelona. He takes a train to France, makes the decision in Toulouse to move East rather than North, towards Italy and Switzerland rather than Great Britain. Doesn’t really notice much of the places he goes to, just the urge to travel, to keep moving, further and further away.
He stays in hotels, mostly set up by his assistant, the only one who has the number of his temporary cell phone. He asks her to pass along messages to his parents and feels like a dick, but he can’t quite stomach the thought of dealing with the concerned questions and sentiments yet. He keeps to himself, eats in his room instead of in restaurants, doesn’t initiate conversations with anyone. He doesn’t get recognized as much, especially when he stops shaving, wears Jo’s cap and his aviators everywhere, hides under heavy sweaters and scarves.
He’s been wandering around for going on a month when he picks up his phone in the middle of a courtyard in Bern. His assistant, also known as Beth, is mid-panic attack.
“…and I’m really sorry, but he got a hold of Gina, and Rick and Ben and even Joseph and they all threatened to fire me if I didn’t give him the number, and I know this is the last thing you wanted, and oh please don’t fire me, I really didn’t - “
“Wait, wait, slow down. Gave who my number?” Kris asks, already sort of knowing the answer.
“Adam,” Beth answers timidly. “He threatened to start skipping appearances if he couldn’t talk to you, and…um, yeah.”
“You gave Adam my number?” Kris repeats stupidly, feeling a sinking sort of dread in his stomach. “When?”
“Like, ten minutes ago?” As if on cue, the phone beeps with an incoming call and Kris groans. “I wanted to warn you - I’m really, really, really sorry, I swear I’ll do everything I can to - “
“It’s okay,” Kris interrupts, wincing as the phone beeps again angrily. “You’re not fired. I have to go.” He hangs up without waiting for a reply, and presses ‘end’ a few more times for good measure, making sure that the incoming call is cut off as well.
The phone rings again a minute later, and Kris sighs heavily. He could get a new phone? No, that’s ridiculous. He should just answer. It’s the mature, adult thing to do. Face his problems head on, instead of hiding at his best friend’s house and then running away to Europe like a huge coward. Or whatever.
“Hello?”
“Kris?” Adam always starts phone calls mid-conversation, not bothering to waste time on greetings or pleasantries, so that throws Kris off more than anything else. For a split second he thinks it’s not Adam, but then he hears muffled music, little noises and clamors in the background, all too familiar Adam noises that hit Kris directly in the gut. “Hello? Kris?”
“Adam.” Kris clears his throat, voice coming out rough and scratchy.
“You are there.” Adam sounds relieved, and the music shuts off abruptly. “I thought maybe the number was wrong, or something, when you didn’t pick up.”
Kris feels vaguely offended. “Maybe I was asleep,” he says pointedly. “It’s eleven pm here.”
“If you’d been asleep at eleven pm on a Friday, then I’d be really worried,” Adam jokes, but it falls flat and awkward. “Besides, you weren’t asleep.”
“No, I wasn’t.” Kris doesn’t know what else to say.
“So,” Adam says, brisk and forceful. “Mr. European Vacation, where are you right now? Paris? Rome? St. Petersburg?”
“Bern.”
“Bern? Why are you in fucking Bern?”
Kris rolls his eyes, suddenly irritated. “Adam. Why did you blackmail my assistant into giving you my phone number?”
Adam huffs. “Because nobody else had it. Duh.”
“I think you made her cry.”
“She’s a Hollywood assistant and all it takes to make her cry is a little blackmail? Lame.” Adam laughs, strained and fake.
“Adam.” Kris packs all the disapproval he possible can into the one word.
“Well, what the fuck, anyway,” Adam says darkly, mood switching like quicksilver. “You sneak off in the middle of the night, you don’t tell anyone where you’re going, your mother doesn’t even have your phone number, like what the actual fuck - “
“I had some things to figure out.”
“So go to a spa! Go to a cabin in the mountains and mope around in your underwear or something, but don’t like, fucking disappear like you’re fucking Jason Bourne or something, Jesus.”
“Come on, Adam,” Kris says, frustrated. “I couldn’t step foot outside without being mobbed. I had to get away for a while, just to catch my breath.”
Adam laughs, but it’s not a happy sound. “You think it wasn’t like that for me? Isn’t like that for me?”
Kris’s gut clenches and he doesn’t respond.
“Okay, look, don’t do that,” Adam says, sighing. “I’m sorry, okay? It’s not your fault, and I’m sorry I made you think that it was. I was a total asshole about it.” Kris keeps quiet, because, yeah, he kinda was. “It’s not your fault. At all.”
“Right,” says Kris miserably, “I’d have less trouble believing that if things were a little less fucked up right now.” He hears a sharp intake of breath, and an awkward silence descends.
When Adam finally speaks, his voice sounds choked, clogged. “I don’t know how this happened. I didn’t mean to - I mean, I’m sorry, Kris.”
He sounds miserable and helpless and really fucking genuine, and Kris sighs, heart pounding in his chest. “Well, it’s not your fault, either. I guess.”
Adam laughs shortly. “You sound so sincere.”
“I try.”
“If I - “ Adam clears his throat awkwardly, sounding unsure. “I mean, I just wanted to make sure you were okay, and everything. I can - lose this number, if you want me to.” He clears his throat again, louder. “I - would prefer not to, though.”
Kris bites his lip. “I thought we needed time?”
Adam laughs, waveringly. “I…decided I was wrong about that,” he says. “Yeah, definitely wrong. Goes along with the ‘being an asshole’ thing. Plus I’ve been informed by many, many people that I’m full of shit, and I’m inclined to believe them.”
Kris takes a deep breath. “Okay,” he says, ignoring the voice in his head screaming, bad idea, bad idea, bad horrible wrong idea at the top of its metaphorical lungs. “Well - I guess you don’t have to lose it, then. If you don’t want to.”
“Really?” Adam asks, hopeful. “So, I can call you?”
“Yes,” replies Kris cautiously.
“And text? Can you text? Cuz I can text more often then I can call.”
Kris feels a slight sinking sensation that might be dread. “Uh, yeah. I have texting.”
“Good. Cuz I’m going to text you, then. And you better text me back.”
“Okay,” says Kris obediently.
“And none of that, haha, el-oh-el, half-assed texts, either,” Adam continues. “I want thoughtful responses. Actual engagement. Send me your travel plans, pictures of funky European clothes, bitch about train schedules, or like, what you’re wearing, I don’t even care.”
“Okay,” Kris says, laughing despite himself.
“We’re gonna get through this,” Adam says firmly. “If I have to pull you through by your balls, we will get through this.”
Kris’s laugh settles into a smile, his whole body practically thrumming with emotion. “Okay,” he says, but it sounds like something else.
--
He likes Jon. Honestly, he does. He’s friendly, clean-shaven, wholesome. Good for Katy. There’s maybe some jealousy, but it’s just the leftovers, the green-tinged residue in the empty space where Katy used to be.
Adam never believes him when he says any of this. “Don’t give me the jealous-colored edges or whatever speech, okay, you’re totally in denial. Shut up, I’m taking you to get your aura read.”
“The last time we did that,” Kris points out, “she totally agreed with me.”
Adam frowns, disgruntled. “Fluke,” he says flippantly. “I have this new guy now, Paula gave me his number - don’t give me that look, she’s been totally stable lately, it’s actually kind of creepy - and he’s awesome, I went in last week, you remember I was all worked up about the Wal-Mart thing? He totally straightened me out.”
“Wow, all it takes is a psychic reading, huh?” Kris looks over at him, eyes wide. “Never would’ve thought.”
“Shut up, you know what I mean,” Adam grouses, groaning. He turns back to Kris and grins wickedly. “I’m very committed to my commitment to dick. For the record.”
A rush of heat races across Kris’s skin, and he feels his face flush. Adam laughs delightedly, which only makes it worse. “Good to know,” he mumbles, scowling at the ceiling.
“You’re so precious,” Adam coos, and Kris sighs internally. Precious? Just - fuck his life, seriously.
“Whatever, okay, I don’t need a psychic. Or a massage, or a therapist, or a new car, or anything. I’m fine.”
Adam sobers a little, chewing on one thumbnail thoughtfully. “It’d be okay if you weren’t,” he says. “You’re allowed to be jealous.”
“I know.”
“And I’m like, super impressed at how well you’ve been handling everything, but I’m a little worried you’re repressing.”
“You’ve made that quite clear.”
“And I know you don’t exactly want to fall apart in front of Katy and her new boyfriend and TMZ and the whole rest of the world, but I want to make sure you know that it’s just you and me, and you don’t have to be totally strong-silent-man all the time.”
Just you and me, Kris thinks, running it over in his head wistfully. “I know. And thank you. But I’m really okay.” He shrugs. “I really don’t know how else to say it, man.”
Adam eyes him skeptically. “Whatever you say,” he says breezily, and pulls out his phone. “I’m still taking you to see Raul.”
Kris snorts. “His name is Raul?”
“Don’t start.”
--
He spends a lot of time writing. He still gets restless if he stays in one spot for more than a couple days so there are lots of train, bus, ferry rides where he has time to sit and think, and usually if he directs his energy towards a song it’s a lot easier to avoid thinking about things that he really doesn’t want to think about.
He’s never avoided drama in his music before - even used it, to a certain extent, though not in the same way that Adam does. But melodrama is something different, and Kris ends up throwing out a lot of the crap he comes up with out of pure irritation. A few of the less emo ones, he sends to Beth, who gushes for ten minutes about how he’s turned a corner in his songwriting and is on to something really original and cool and awesome and neat (she may still be worried about being fired, he should probably have another talk with her about that) and tries to convince him to get into a studio somewhere and do some recording.
He doesn’t know how he feels about that, he hasn’t been in the studio since - well, a while. But Beth, the sneaky bitch, tells Adam, who proceeds to bug Kris about it non-stop for a solid week before he gives in just so he can get a break.
They hook him up with a studio in Stuttgart, even rent him an apartment to stay in. He falls back into the rhythm of working like he’d never left it, cranking out material like he’s on a deadline - only he’s not, this time, his last album is still going pretty solidly and with the press he’s gotten lately - humiliating and intrusive as it was, it was certainly fucking big - and well, the label can’t touch him. It feels nice, like he’s got all this motivation but no real urgency behind it, and he’s able to take his time in a way that he hadn’t with the other records, rewriting and reworking things until they’re exactly where he wants them to be. It’s like he always thought making an album would be, before he actually got into bed with 19 and realized that it’s far more about speedy results then careful quality. At least this time around he has time to write all the songs himself.
It does feel weird, to be without his band - Cale, especially. He still hasn’t talked to anyone, really (though his mother and later, Daniel, did get ahold of his number somehow - he suspects Adam). He hopes Cale isn’t hurt, or anything, about being left out, but considering Cale’s utmost distaste for studio work, he isn’t all that worried.
He talks to Adam almost every day, in some form or another. It’s really awkward at first, but it melts away soon enough with Adam’s insistence, his texts every twenty minutes with practically every thought that runs through his head, from the serious, concerned, thoughtful I hope you’re eating enough ones to the nonsensical I really want some boots made out of glass. Like Cinderella! Is that possible? Prob couldn’t dance in them, tho, boo.
Kris takes it in stride, mostly, thinking, this is what I wanted, right, for things to be like they were before, but it doesn’t stop him from feeling like he has a boyfriend without any of the actual benefits of having a boyfriend. Just - all the stuff from before, plus extra awkward guilt and tension, and still no sex whatsoever. Par for the course, pretty much.
The album is good, though, probably the best he’s ever done. He starts out thinking, acoustic, stripped down, coffee-shop music, but there’s this producer, Jan, who takes a listen to one of Kris’s pathetic I’m pining but trying not to be totally obvious about it songs, and looks Kris straight in the eye and says, “trumpets,” as if he’s announcing the Second Coming, and from there it just rolls out of control. He has flutes and violins and glockenspiels and trombones and a harp, and on one particularly kick-ass track, a gospel chorus. He refuses to work with other songwriters, writes everything himself. Goes through and learns everything about the technical sides of mixing and producing that he’d never had time to learn before. Does as much of the instrumental work himself as he can, works twelve hour days, sometimes going all night. The people at the studio are alternately impressed as hell and annoyed with his pickiness. But the result is tightly produced, written, eclectic, passionate, the most genuine work he’s ever produced in his entire life.
He hasn’t been home in six months, when he finishes. Gets a master copy and sends it to Adam, his mother, and the contact at 19, then collapses in his apartment and sleeps all through the night and straight through to the following afternoon.
19 loves it, wants to release it ASAP, and Kris expects there to be a strongly worded request to return to the States for press, but instead he’s pleasantly surprised.
“You did the album in Europe, they want you to stay in Europe,” Beth explains. “They’ve been pushing the whole ‘Europe inspires you’ thing ever since you moved there anyway. You know, like you went there for a vacation and ended up falling in love with it, and decided to stay and do your album there?”
Kris is startled by the word ‘moved.’ He looks around his apartment, irrationally shocked to see the volume of things he’s acquired in his time there. He’s been here for half a year, he’s pretty close to being a fluent speaker, he has friends and a drycleaner and a favorite restaurant, his parents visited the month before and bought him plants, and he’s still thinking of it as temporary. “Well, that’s good, I guess,” he says. “Do they even want to publicize it in the States?”
“God, of course they do,” Beth exclaims. “But they figure you’ll get better sales in Europe - Germany especially since, you know, you live there. So they want you to do all your press over there. In a couple months, maybe, you could come back for a little bit? But for now, stay where you are. I’ll fax you a schedule, the studio will help you with logistics if you need it. Yeah?”
“Sure,” Kris agrees easily. He finds himself actually…excited to do all the pre-album crap again. Maybe it’ll be different than it used to be in the States, who knows. At least here he doesn’t have to go on Leno.
Most of the reactions from his family and friends of the album are glowing - and with a few, some surprised awe, especially from Cale, who’d probably been expecting the emo whiny crap that Kris had started out with. He doesn’t hear from Adam, though, for almost a week after he sends him the songs. Kris gets more and more nervous the longer Adam doesn’t react, and considering that most of the thing is about Adam, Kris feels justified in his complete girly reaction.
He finally gets a call from Adam, and when Kris goes to pick up he sees on his fancy dual-time zone clock thing that it’s almost four am in LA, which makes him a little worried, to be honest.
“So I listened to your album,” Adam says, not waiting for a hello. His voice is thin, strained. He probably had a show tonight. “I can’t even comprehend how amazing it is.”
“Thank you,” Kris says, a tiny knot of tension he didn’t know he had coming loose.
“You’ve come so far,” Adam says, no small amount of pride in his voice. “We both have.”
There’s some layered meaning to that statement that Kris really doesn’t have the energy to dissect. “I’m really happy you like it,” he says instead. “I worked - harder on it then I’ve worked on anything.”
“I can tell,” Adam replies. “You can, Kris, it comes through in every note - God, every word.” His voice gets a little thick, and Kris swallows roughly. “It’s the most honest thing you’ve ever done.”
I know, Kris thinks, tired and disgruntled and uncomfortable and fed up and a million other things, all at once. “Thanks,” he says again, a little shortly. “Listen, I have to go.”
“Call me back,” Adam says, voice neutral and unreadable.
Kris hangs up without answering.
--
Adam goes through boyfriends like he goes through shoes - quickly, enthusiastically and with the attention span of a fourth grader.
“It’s this new thing I’m trying out,” he explains to Kris, once. “Like, I’m so picky usually, I don’t really get into anything with a guy unless I really, really like them, but well, that hasn’t been working out for me so well, so I figure, why not just lower my standards a little?”
“Pretty sure that a couple bad breakups and a dry spell isn’t reason enough to start dating every guy who tosses his phone number your way,” Kris replies dryly.
“Dry spell is not an adequate phrase for what I have been experiencing,” Adam laments. “My sex life is the fucking Mojave Desert, Kris. Only not during the day, when it’s hot and sweaty? No. At night, when it’s cold and dark and all the scorpions come out and play volleyball with my testicles.”
“I’m…not so sure that metaphor makes sense.”
“Yes, it totally does,” Adam says pointedly. “Anyway, I’m just being more open. So what if somebody’s not my soulmate, that doesn’t mean I can’t have a good time with him.”
Kris winces, thinking of just what Adam might be referring to by ‘good time.’ “Are you being…you know…”
Adam looks at him in disbelief. “Are you trying to give me the safe sex talk?”
“No,” Kris says sourly, but Adam bursts into laughter anyway. “Shut up, okay, you know what I mean. Safe sex for a famous person is not the same as safe sex for a…non-famous person.”
“Condoms, no camera phones, got it,” Adam says, but he’s still laughing. Kris shoves at him, rolling his eyes. “What about you? You should start dating again. I could even set you up with somebody - I know tons of people.” Adam grins. “Hot people. People with enough money and/or fame of their own that you don’t need to worry about glory hounds.”
“I don’t want to date right now,” Kris says honestly.
Adam gives him a look of pure disbelief. “Right.”
“Seriously.” Kris feels a wave of irritation that he pushes down determinedly. “Dating should be fun, right? Something you want to do?”
“Who doesn’t want to date?” Adam says, imitating Kris’s twang and managing to make it sound ridiculous.
“I don’t,” Kris mutters.
“Cuz you’re stubborn,” Adam shoots back. “This isn’t a ‘oh, I don’t feel like it’ kind of thing. Of course you’re not going to feel like dating when you’re still hung up on somebody - “
“I’m not hung up on Katy,” Kris interrupts. Adam happily ignores him.
“ - if you would just go out and meet people, you might find someone you like and it would be fun!” Adam insists. “But you’re never going to have any new experiences if you don’t open yourself up to them.”
Kris sighs. He’s not allowed to be sulky and jealous and whiny when he’s not going to take the step to tell Adam how he feels. It’s not fair to him, definitely not fair to Adam, and he manages it, mostly. And Adam is so warm and lovely that it’s easy, so easy to just forget about real life and just spend hours drinking margaritas and listening to music and talking and laughing. But it’s hard sometimes. He tries not to let it get to him, but, it’s hard.
“I’ll try,” he says finally. “Really.”
Adam smiles brilliantly. “I knew you’d see it my way,” he says, and preens.
“Don’t go too overboard on the modesty, buddy.”
“Modesty’s for losers,” Adam replies, and Kris laughs.
--
“You should call Katy,” Adam says, out of the blue one day. Kris trips over his shoelace.
“Why?”
Adam sighs. “Do you like, never turn on the television?”
“I watch the news,” Kris says defensively.
“German news,” Adam says. “Doesn’t count. What do they talk about, like, cars and Nazis and stuff? Whatever.”
Kris laughs. “Cars and Nazis,” he repeats incredulously. “Really? Really, you just said that to me. That just happened.”
“Shut up,” Adam whines. “I totally have a valid, serious reason for bringing this up.”
“Please, share your valid, serious reason.”
“Katy and Jon broke up,” Adam says, a little reluctantly. “He, uh - they’re saying he cheated on her.”
Kris’s breath stutters, a little twinge informing him that yep, not everything he felt for her is dead. “Oh.”
“I would call her myself, but…” Adam chuckles a little sadly. “Awkward.”
Adam had been staunchly Team Kris after the divorce, despite Kris’s repeated assurances that it wasn’t Katy’s fault, or wasn’t totally Katy’s fault, anyway. Adam still stopped returning her calls, though. Kris can’t say he isn’t grateful for the solidarity, especially after…well.
“I’ll call her,” Kris tells him. “I…guess.”
“Be mature,” Adam urges him, and then starts talking about some idea for his tour that involves him riding a motorcycle on stage, and Kris tunes out since he really doesn’t need that particular torturously hot mental image.
He calculates the time difference carefully, she’s living in Vancouver now, a regular on the newest Star Trek series on the SyFy channel. He doesn’t get American television very often, but he’s been able to catch a few episodes, she plays an alien assassin, and she’s fierce and beautiful and he’s ridiculously proud of her, when he’s not too busy resenting her for all the wrong reasons.
He still has her private number, which she’d sent to Beth a few months ago when she’d first moved. It’d been a gesture he’d ignored, and he feels vaguely guilty about it as it rings.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Katy.”
A sharp intake of breath, a long pause, and Katy speaks, voice wobbly. “Kris?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re calling me,” she says, and bursts into tears.
He spends about ten minutes trying to calm her down, which doesn’t work and just results in him getting upset himself, until they’re both laughing and crying at the same time, and talking over each other in their haste to say everything they’ve needed to say to each other for too long, years too long.
“I didn’t mean any of it,” is the first thing Katy says, “during all that crap during the divorce, all those nasty things I said, I didn’t mean any of them.”
“I know,” Kris says, because he did, he’d known it at the time and he knows it now. It’s not what had hurt him. “I didn’t mean anything either.”
“And I didn’t do it on purpose,” Katy blurts. “I really, really didn’t, God Kris, I swear if I could take it back I would. I couldn’t stand thinking about you or Adam, or what that must’ve done to you, I am so sorry.”
Kris feels something unknot and loosen, and he breathes a little easier than he has in a long time. He never knew how much he needed to hear that from her, until this moment. “It’s okay.” Then he laughs, out of pure relief. “Yeah. It’s okay. I know it was an accident. I could tell.”
She laughs too, but it sounds more like a sob. “Thank God. Thank God, Kris, I don’t know what I would’ve done if you were gonna be mad at me forever, I just - God, I’ve missed you so much - “
“I miss you too,” he says, and wipes at his eyes, dammit, “I do, I miss you every day, and I’m sorry. I love you, and I’m so sorry.”
“I love you too,” Katy says, all watery and small, and laughs again. “We’re pathetic. Oh my God, I wish I could hug you.”
“I owe you a million hugs,” Kris says. “A million a lot of things.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Katy replies, and snuffles loudly into the receiver. “Oh um, would you hate me if I paused this conversation to go blow my nose?”
Kris grins painfully into his arm, a warm rush of love bubbling up in his chest, threatening to overflow. “Of course not,” he chokes out, and has to rub at his eyes to keep them from welling up again.
He takes the welcome break to collect himself, and by the time she comes back they’re both calmer, though Kris can still hear the edge of tears in her voice. He thinks, how upset has she been, all this time? He doesn’t want to think about it.
“I heard about Jon,” he says delicately. “Well, Adam heard about Jon, and told me.”
“Adam told you?” Katy sounds startled. “You - I mean, you talk?”
“Yeah.” Kris shifts awkwardly. “He uh, says hi.”
He can tell she wants to ask, but she doesn’t, which he is so unbelievably grateful for. “Yeah, I kind of…saw it coming? He’d been spending more and more time with his co-star from this Jerry Bruckheimer project he’s been filming, and well.” He can see her shrugging in his mind’s eye, what her face must look like, a mix of sadness and resignation and pity. “I’m upset, but not as upset as I thought I’d be. If that makes sense.”
“It does.”
“I kind of feel like it’s okay, like this is what was meant to happen,” she goes on. “I never had any delusions about where it was going - it was nothing like you and me, I knew we wouldn’t last forever. I just wish he’d shown me a little bit more respect, you know?”
“You deserve respect,” Kris tells her earnestly. “You deserved more than Jon gave you. More than I gave you.”
“No, you always respected me,” Katy argues. “Maybe a little too much, sometimes. That was part of the problem.”
Kris sighs, lets his head fall back to the couch cushion, a headache forming at the sides of his temples. “I feel like we could talk about this for another twenty years and never really figure out what went wrong.”
“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” Katy says softly. “We loved each other, and we tried, and it didn’t work. Maybe we should stop torturing ourselves over it.”
“I never wanted it to end this way,” Kris tells her, and closes his eyes.
“Me neither,” she replies, and they sit in silence, listening to each other breathe.
--
He’s in New York, on a press tour, walking out of a subway station with his publicist, thinking about stopping for coffee, and his phone vibrates with a text from his mother. His publicist’s phone rings at almost the same time, and Kris’s stomach kind of drops into his shoes like it does whenever something really, really fucking bad is about to happen.
He’s herded back to his hotel as quickly as possible, and somebody’s laptop is shoved into his lap, the link already pulled up, and there’s Katy, his Katy, talking to Oprah, fucking Oprah. Oprah. He can’t actually believe this is happening.
“We had been drifting apart for awhile, like people just do sometimes, and that wasn’t his fault, or mine, really, it just was. He was moving one direction and I another - and I know that’s what everyone says, but it’s true.” Katy looks eerily calm and collected, her hair newly shorn, bobbing around her chin gracefully, her cheeks slightly flushed and healthy, eyes sparkling with warmth. She’s in a sundress, and she’s so, so beautiful. Kris feels sick.
“It was - um, there wasn’t any one thing or one point where we went, there, it’s over, but, well - no! No, nothing like that, no. I mean, we were separated for a little but, but still trying to make it work. And not to say that there weren’t, maybe, feelings involved. I mean, I know I developed feelings for Jon when I was still with Kris, technically. It happens. And Kris?”
Kris starts shaking his head mindlessly, thinking, how could she, how could you. No, no, no, no, no. Katy, no. No.
“I think he did. It felt like he did. And maybe there wasn’t much of us left to betray, but it still felt like a betrayal - just like I felt like I was betraying him with Jon. And every time I talked to Jon, went out to lunch, or whatever, all I could think about was that Kris was probably doing the same thing with Adam, and - oh.”
Kris chokes on his own saliva, pounds the table with his fist, the image on the screen blurring into an indistinguishable blob of color.
“I - I didn’t mean to say that.”
Too late.
--
It’s not like Kris doesn’t have friends other than Adam, it’s just that he’s not borderline co-dependent with any of them, so they tend to fade in comparison. There’s his landlord slash neighbor Sebastian, who comes over to watch football games and laughed for twenty minutes straight when Kris told him how he got to be famous, and Fritz and Annemarie, who run a homeless shelter that Kris volunteers at when he can, and who invite him over for Sunday dinners with their giggling, skittish family of foster children. And Kathrin at the studio, who travels with him on press trips and shares her crosswords with him, and who has a beautiful alto that’s being wasted because she’s too shy to lay down a demo track. He’s working on convincing her to maybe come on tour with him and sing backup, because when she’s not the center of attention she sings beautifully.
And there’s Jan, of course, who is tall and lanky and also gay, as Kris found out when he casually brought up an ex-boyfriend one day. Kris respects him as a producer and fellow musician, and also likes to watch the muscles in his wrist shift as he adjusts knobs on the soundboards, the shape of his shoulders beneath his t-shirts.
It’s not the first time he’s been attracted to somebody other than Katy or Adam, but it’s the first time that he hasn’t compared, hasn’t felt guilt for snuggling up against Jan’s side in the mixing room or sharing drinks with him, flirting and laughing with him at the bar after work.
He’s also nervous around him, like he used to be around Katy, a lifetime ago. His palms get sweaty, his stomach ties itself up in knots. Kris almost doesn’t trust that it’s real.
Kris wants to sing a few of the songs in German, which he speaks now, but speaking is a whole lot different than singing it, as it turns out. Jan’s been helping him with it, and one day he stops short in the middle of a lecture on pronunciation and asks Kris out on a date.
“A real, official date,” he says. “No more of this ambiguous hanging out and occasionally kissing stuff. I want to do it the right way.”
Kris blinks, surprised. “You’re asking me out?”
Jan fidgets, rubbing his hands together between his knees. “Well, yes.”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
Kris nods. He feels a little warm, pleasantly flushed. “Yes, I’ll go out with you.”
Jan smiles warmly, and Kris feels a faint fluttering in his stomach.
They go to a club to see a jazz trio that Jan produces. They sit in the back and drink vodka and make out, the music and smoky air of the club lulling Kris into a lazy trance. All thoughts of Adam disappear in place of the press of hands against Kris’s hips, the taste of the skin behind Jan’s ear.
Outside the club they’re stopped by a few of Kris’s fans, giggling and eyeing Jan’s hand on the small of Kris’s back. Kris signs autographs and poses for pictures with the girls, pulling Jan in by the waist to pose with them. On impulse, he reaches up and kisses Jan just as the camera flash goes off, the girls all laugh and squeal and Jan pulls away, smiling and blushing, Kris notes with satisfaction.
Jan drives him home and they spend another twenty minutes in the front seat, Kris climbing over the gear shift to reach under Jan’s shirt as they kiss, vodka and lust spinning through Kris’s veins and leaving him dizzy.
He finally tears himself away and climbs the stairs to his apartment on shaky legs, half-regretting not inviting him in. Takes a hot shower and jerks off almost frantically, collapsing against the wall of the shower in a shaky mess, then sliding to the floor and waiting until the water turns cold and clammy on his skin. Doesn’t think of Adam once.
The next day he finds a couple missed calls from Kathrin, and a text from Jan saying, had fun last night, :) which makes him smile. He’s about to call Kathrin back when his phone buzzes in his hand, and he swipes his thumb across the surface to answer it automatically, not thinking to check the caller ID on the display.
“Did you fire your publicist again?”
“Adam?” Kris blinks and checks his watch. “Dude, it’s like three am in LA right now, what are you doing up?”
“I sent you a link,” Adam says, ignoring his question. “Go check it.”
“Can I - “
“Now,” Adam demands, leaving no room for argument.
Kris grumbles and ambles over to his laptop, flipping it open and taking his time turning it on, just out of spite.
“Kris!”
“It’s warming up! Chill.”
Kris rolls his eyes, clicking through to his email and finding the message from Adam at the very top. Inside is a link to an article on PerezHilton.com, the headline declaring, Is Kris Allen Faking His Gay?
Kris shudders. There are pictures of he and Adam hugging, of he and Cale posing and smiling for the camera, arms around each other’s shoulders, a shot of Katy from the Oprah interview, smiling tightly, and oh snap, a paparazzi shot of Jan and Kris from last night, practically dry-humping in the booth at the club.
Kris skims it as quickly as he can; the gist is that the eminent Mr. Hilton apparently thinks he’s faking it all for publicity, or something. It’s not exactly hard-hitting journalism, as offensive as it is.
“So, do you believe it or something?” Kris asks dryly.
“What? Of course not,” Adam says. “That’s not the point. This isn’t exactly the kind of exposure you need right now, right before your album drops.”
Kris sighs. “It’s one article,” he says. “And who reads Perez Hilton anymore, anyway?”
“Lots of people!” Adam shrieks. “Did you see how many comments were on that thing?”
“You want me to read the comments on a Perez Hilton article about me?” Kris asks incredulously. “Do you want to destroy my self-esteem? No thanks.”
“What were you thinking, anyway?” Adam says quickly. “Was that last night? Like - really, climbing all over him in a place like that, you were practically asking to be photographed!”
Kris decides not to tell him about the pictures they’d posed for later. “I was thinking he was cute, and I was long overdue to start dating again,” he says evenly.
“Dating is not the same as rubbing off on some random guy in the middle of a club.”
“I was not - “
“And how do you even know that this guy didn’t bring you there for the express purpose of getting photographed with his hands down your pants?” Adam continues, words almost running together in his haste. “Hell, he probably called the German TMZ or whatever himself.”
“Jan wouldn’t do that,” Kris says firmly.
“Oh, Jan wouldn’t do that,” Adam replies mockingly. He stretches the syllables out in Jan’s name so it sounds like yawn, an acerbic twist to his words. “How well do you even know him? Are you dating or something?”
“I guess,” Kris answers. “I mean, we’re moving towards that.”
Adam is silent for a long moment. “Well, then,” he says sharply.
Kris clutches the phone tightly, the edges digging into his fingers. “Are you jealous?”
“What?” Adam scoffs. “No.”
“Oh, you’re concerned about my public image.”
“Because I’m your friend,” Adam says, ignoring the sarcasm. “You’re already on shaky ground right now anyway, and I know you don’t like thinking about this stuff, but this shit does affect album sales, you know.”
“You mean since Katy told the world I had feelings for you?” Adam makes a little sound, almost like a grunt. “Yeah well, thanks for the concern, but I’ll be fine.”
“You can’t just go around dating just anyone you know,” Adam grates out in frustration.
Kris almost wants to laugh at the hypocrisy. “Are you serious? Like you’re so selective with your boyfriends?”
“Now who’s jealous?” Adam snipes.
“Don’t,” Kris says, heart clenching. “Don’t go there.”
“You’re the one who brought it up,” Adam exclaims. “All I was worried about was how it looks to the press, and you’re just biting my head off.”
“It’s not about that,” Kris says, teeth clenched in frustration. “It’s about you not being fair. It’s about me trying to move on, finally, and you just being pissy that I’m not willing to be your safety school anymore.”
“Hey,” says Adam sharply. “That is not how it is.”
“Then how is it?” Kris asks. “You know, I talk to you more often then I talk to Jan - or anybody who you know, actually lives in the same country as I do. You text me every two hours, you tell me everything that runs through your head, and then you call me and tell me anything you left out, and you’re not seriously seeing how this is unhealthy for me?”
“I - “ Adam stutters. “No, I didn’t - “
“I know what you eat for breakfast every morning, I know what color your nail polish is, I know when you’re mad and when you’re tired and stressed and when you’re excited, I know everything. Because you tell me,” Kris says desperately. “You tell me all of this, and you don’t think - you don’t think about what it does to me, to talk to you all the time and to be in love with you, you fucking idiot, and I can’t stop listening. I can never stop listening to you.” He idly notices that his free hand is shaking, and he shoves it in his pocket mindlessly, unable to stop the flow of words. “I can’t do this anymore, I can’t be with you and not be with you, because it hurts, and it’s not healthy, and I can’t - live like this.”
A ringing silence echoes over the line, broken only by Kris’s jagged intakes of breath.
“Adam?” Kris huffs. “Adam, for God’s sake, be a man and say something.”
The sound in his ear changes slightly, and Kris pulls the cell phone away from his face to see that the call’s been disconnected.
Kris stares at the phone dumbly. “Son of a fucking bitch,” he says, and throws it against the wall. It clatters into three distinct pieces and he stares at it, chest heaving. Then he turns on his heel and crawls back into bed, tugging the covers over his head and shutting his eyes to the world.
--
part two