The Notepad
Title: The Notepad
Chapter: Drabble
Pairing: Kradam
Rating: PG
Summary: Written for the Drabble Meme at ontd_ai. Prompt: Adam & Kris writing a song on the tour bus.
A/N: First fic posted to kradam_ai :) (*A lyric from “Lullaby” by The Spill Canvas.)
Crammed between the bus wall and Kris’s mattress is small notepad. The first few pages are small reminders about press junkets and meetings about his record. After that several pages are filled with phrases, some crossed out, that would make no sense to anyone but Adam and Kris at first glance.
Kris isn’t sure how it began, it just seemed that it had always been. One of them would get inspired by a fleeting glance of America as it sped past the bus windows or by a fan’s story of redemption through their music or friendship. They’d find the notepad and express themselves in that moment, which was all too fleeting. At first nothing rhymed because they weren’t quite sure what they were doing. Around the fifth tour stop, they started thinking about how to make it rhyme, crossing out each other's words and inserting ones that fit in better. Sometimes Kris would write entire verses only to cross them out because they rang false or cheesy. Sometimes he felt his words were too honest, especially once the song, for that’s what it was, became more about him and Adam than the tour experience.
One night at around 10PM in a Jersey hotel, Adam came to Kris’s door. He didn’t speak, he simply let himself in (for they had exchanged keys) and crawled into bed beside Kris who had just set aside his guitar and was ready for sleep. Adam leaned in and Kris closed his eyes, his heart hammering in his chest, suddenly wide awake and not entirely sure he was ready for this but not able to speak and break the perfect silence. He only opened his eyes when he felt a familiar weight in his lap: his guitar.
Adam tilted his head and smirked as he waved the notepad, “I think it’s almost done, it just needs a tune.” Kris didn’t realize it, but he started strumming a rhythm that matched his heartbeat in the moment where he thought Adam was finally going to kiss him.
“Oh, I like that; it sounds like the road and home at the same time. Do you know what I mean?” He didn’t wait for an answer, “Of course you do, now we need a melody.”
They worked through the night, though Kris would really call it play. Adam paced around the room singing runs and putting great flourish on the melody before saying “It’s too simple for that; too honest.” He sang it straight through, with great feeling, with Kris providing harmonies and the occasional lyric change. As the last refrain of the chorus rang throughout the room, Kris felt a knot in his chest unravel and a sudden clarity in his mind that he wasn’t quite sure he could explain away with the late hour.
As the orange hues of the morning sun filtered through the cracks of the curtains, Adam declared “I think we just wrote the love song to end all love songs. I’ll fight you over which one of us gets to put it on our album.”
Kris looked up at Adam who was stretching, his freckled face exposed and bright without the foundation that had been washed off a few hours prior, his eyes shining with excitement. A line from another love song sprang to Kris’s mind then: you shine so bright/ you put the sun to shame*.
“Adam?” Kris whispered before reaching up and pulling him down and pressing his lips against the freckled lips that had taunted him for hours…days…months. The guitar fell with a tuneless clang as Adam pushed it away to pull Kris flush against him. Kris thought he heard him sing a line from the song, but all thoughts fled his mind as Adam nipped at his neck.
So wrong, so right
An urge I won’t fight