Hopscotch and All Like Things
Hopscotch and All Like Things
Rated PG-13
Word count: 2773, give or take.
Summary: Sequel to These Children Games. Kris helps Adam regain some of his lost innocence.
First part: These Children Games
Adam is given the fourth floor, a quaint living space the size of a small apartment. Awkwardly, Kris stands by the door, careful to be outside of the bubble of space Adam always manages to keep between them.
“So this is your home, you can do whatever you want to it except for burn it down, obviously. I live below you, so that wouldn't be very good. . .” Kris says, unsure of what to do. He toes around the bubble, keeping his eyes on Adam, keen to spot any shift of emotion on his face. So far Adam has been inscrutable. “Bathroom's there, complete with shower and tub. The water runs real hot, so look out for that.”
“Can I just go to sleep?” Adam asks abruptly, then covers his eyes with his hands, frowning. “Forgive me, that was rude. I'm not thinking straight-”
“Oh no! It's okay.” Kris flounders, taking a step closer to Adam. “You can do whatever you want. You're-you own yourself now.”
Adam stares at him, dumbstruck.
“What?”
“I never wanted a slave,” Kris explains. “I don't believe in it, and I especially didn't believe in the way they were treating you. It's-awful.” Kris shakes his head. “So I had to get you away from Mr. Pacelle first, and now I'm releasing you.”
Which is a horrible way to put it, as if Adam was some kind of animal.
As always, Adam is unreadable.
“I want to go to bed now.” He says, voice oddly cold.
Kris nods easily, though he's troubled.
“Sure, sure.”
He sidesteps around Adam and Adam actually dodges away from him. It's a little hurtful, but the small wince that Adam makes as he moves takes precedent over Kris's stung feelings.
“You're back. . .” Kris says slowly, as he takes in the sight of the cotton shirt he had given Adam, stretched tight across his broad shoulders, soft, dark dabs of blood soaking through.
“It's fine. I've dealt with worse.” Adam says automatically.
“No. It's terrible. I'm taking you to the hospital-”
“Please-” Adam says, strain tightening his voice. “I'm just so tired.”
Kris doesn't say anything, then relents.
“Okay, but I'm calling a doctor in the morning.”
“That's fine.”
But as Kris walks down the stairs he hears a small, disjointed, “Thank you,” so he whips around, eyes huge.
No one is there. Adam has already disappeared into the bathroom.
*
Once alone, Adam washes his face in the sink. He lets water sluice over his arms, scrubs them red with a washcloth. He bends down to unlace the old tennis shoes Kris had given him and it seems to tear his body open again. He falls against the counter, growling with pain and frustration.
He tries to sleep in the bed the room is furnished with, but the mattress is too much like an island, no protection offered from either way he turns, so Adam sleeps on the bathroom floor, making sure the door is locked.
*
“What do you want me to do?” Adam asks Kris a few days later, once he has recuperated a bit.
“Anything you want to do, you're not a slave anymore.” Kris answers. “You're a guest here. A friend.”
So Adam goes back to his room and sleeps.
*
He sleeps a lot, actually. He feels restless, useless even. Every now and then, Kris comes up to talk to him, tell him the goings on at his business. Adam just listens, fearing himself to be socially stunted when he doesn't respond. Kris isn't a social butterfly himself, so a lot of the time silences stretch between them like the rolling November clouds above them.
*
“I want to work for you.”
“What? No--” Kris protests, a confused look on his face.
Adam stops him with a shake of his head, his eyes determined.
“You don't understand, I need this. I need something to do. If you just give me some kind of chores to do around the house, yard work, anything. Just give me some kind of purpose.”
Kris licks his lips, looking a bit stunned.
“I never thought of it that way. I just thought you had been through so much and didn't want you to ever have to do anything unpleasant again.” He laughs freely, like he's relieved. “I hate household chores, if you can't tell. If it's what you want, then yeah.” Kris's face suddenly turns serious. “But I'm paying you, okay. I'm going to gouge myself, give you so much more than you deserve and then I'm going to bitch about it behind your back.” He smiles cheekily, endearingly.
Adam has never been paid for anything in his life, but he's pretty sure fifteen-hundred dollars a week is exorbitant pay for simply doing the laundry and dishes.
*
Sometimes Kris is surprised by how normal Adam seems. He acts like any other young man, if a little distant. He can read, has a high school education, and a deep concern for personal appearance. The only thing Adam didn't have that everyone else did was his freedom. It makes things easier and more difficult on Kris. On one hand, Adam doesn't seem to need or want to cry on anyone's shoulder, though Kris has arranged for him to meet with a therapist a few times a week, the only condition he set for Adam to live in his house; on the other, Kris just cannot seem to get through to him.
He calls Simon, hoping to understand things better.
“You should just be glad he is how he is.” Simon says. “Not to be rude, but I don't think you'd be able to handle someone less resilient than Adam.”
“I guess so. I just expected him to be more. . .shaken.”
“Oh he is, don't worry. He's just good at hiding it. It was how Logan raised him, to be prideful.”
Which didn't make any sense at all.
“Why would he do that? It sounds counterproductive.”
“Logan does not want a broken person; he wants to break them. You cannot tear a person down unless they are brought up first. As sick as it sounds, Logan treated Adam very much like a son. It made it all the more easy to humiliate him.”
Kris feels the sick bile of rage in his stomach just thinking about it.
“Speaking of Logan, the dear old bat wants to know if he can purchase Adam from you. He's been awfully lonely these days.”
“You tell him he can fuck himself.”
Simon laughs breezily.
“It'll be my pleasure.”
*
Three months in.
An important part of Adam's rehabilitation is learning how to drive. He had aced his permit test, but he is more than a little shaky on the road.
Kris cranes his head, watching Adam veer out of his lane.
“Hold on, Adam, you can get closer to the curb. Trust your depth perception.” Ever the mumbler, Kris's words are obviously misheard by Adam.
“Death perception? What the hell is that?” Adam asks, looking mildly horrified.
“Depth! Depth perception!” Kris laughs, yanking the steering wheel to avoid careening into another car.
He has Adam pull over so he can calm down.
After a few moments, Adam starts laughing, low and guilty and joyous. It makes Kris's heart swell.
“I wonder what their death perception is, you know, since I almost ran them off the road.” Adam jokes.
“Pretty damn high, I'd guess.”
“Shut up.” Adam throws a wadded up napkin at Kris, bumping the steering wheel in the process and making the horn yelp, startling them both.
*
Driving at night.
Kris watches Adam through bleary eyes, collar pulled up to his chin to keep the chill country air from slipping down his shirt. Adam is at ease behind the wheel now, maneuvering it with one hand while the other sits on the window edge.
Air gusts into the car, fanning his hair like flames; oddly appropriate, Kris thinks, because Adam's dyed black hair is growing out and it's growing out copper red. It's another secret that Kris knows, that only Kris is aware of.
Kris closes his eyes and sleeps.
*
Adam walks around to the passenger's side, opening the door and shaking Kris awake.
“Home sweet home.” He says once Kris opens his eyes.
“I'll sleep in the car, thanks.” Kris murmurs. When he sleepily turns his head to nuzzle against Adam's hand, something in Adam shrinks away, hurts. It must be good for him though, because, like the tears that gather in his eyes, Adam can't stop the smile forming on his face.
Goddamn, if he isn't the luckiest sonovabitch on earth.
*
One year. Logan Pacelle is dead.
A heart attack, everyone said at first, until professionals found the snowy residue on Mr. Pacelle's cup. Oleander. The murder was quickly attached to one of Mr. Pacelle's slaves, a gardener named Rosalyn. Deprived of any rights of personhood, Rosalyn was quickly put down.
Kris wasn't sure if he should tell any of this to Adam, but somehow Adam found out about it himself, bringing it up casually over dinner.
Then, not so casually, “I want to go to his funeral.”
Kris doesn't understand, and he can't because Adam has retreated again, every emotion turning inwards and leaving his face a clean slate. He acquiesces, letting the rest of the night pass by in silence.
*
The service is beautiful. Mr. Pacelle is as decadent and extravagant in death as he was in life. Throughout the eulogy, Kris starts to grow angry at the five dollar words used to describe Mr. Pacelle, the tear stained faces of his colleagues.
“You should say something.” Kris tells Adam, more for his vindictive benefit than for Adam's.
Adam shakes his head.
“I have nothing to say.”
Afterward they pass by a plot of ground, dark and churned by a recent burial. Adam stops, staring down at the sorry patch of earth.
“This was Rosalyn.” He says sadly, his voice low with mourning.
“I'm sorry.” Kris says, taking his place by Adam's side. He twines their fingers together, squeezing hard. “I'm so sorry, this shouldn't have happened.”
“Yeah.” Adam says uncertainly, like he's lost, like he's been uprooted and is now blowing around in a vicious wind. “I-” He begins, but doesn't seem to have the strength to finish it.
*
That night Kris decides to visit Adam.
He comes up the stairs, surprised to see the room empty.
“Adam? Adam, where are you?” He calls, scared until he sees Adam poke his head out of the bathroom.
“Yes?” Adam says, shocked when Kris rushes up and wraps his arms around him.
“Oh my god, what the hell are you doing in the bathroom, I didn't-” He stops, smoothing his hands up Adam's arms. “I'm sorry, I was just worried about you.”
“I'm fine, I'm in one piece.” Adam tries to block Kris's view into the bathroom, but Kris nosily looks over his shoulder, going up on his tiptoes to see the pillows, the blankets.
“What? You sleep in the bathroom?” Kris asks, genuine concern in his eyes.
Adam shrugs.
“It's no big deal. It just-feels better, I guess.”
It takes a moment for Kris to realize just how broken Adam is, that he'll probably never be the way he should have been had he grown up with love and care.
Kris bites his lip, a thousand thoughts buzzing around his head.
“We'll scoot over, I'm sleeping here tonight.”
They settle in, turned into each other like young girls at a slumber party.
“How do you feel?” Kris breathes into the darkness.
“I don't know,” Adam replies. “How should I feel? How should anyone feel? How do you feel?”
The last one is easy, so Kris answers it as such.
“I feel better knowing that scumbags like Logan Pacelle are burning in hell.”
“I don't believe in hell.” Adam says quickly, adamantly. Confusingly too. Kris can't wrap his mind around it.
“Adam, you have every right to be mad at him, this is the man who abused-no, tortured you for years. If he's going to spend the rest of eternity in torment, then great. He deserves it.”
“Yes, but-” Adam's voice wavers, grows faint. “Everything he did-I did it with him. Terrible, unforgivable things. Things that feel like they'll never, ever leave me. And Rosalyn too, what about her? Is she going to go to hell? I could have been her, I've thought about it so many times before-”
“Oh my god, Adam,” Kris reaches out blindly, grabbing Adam's trembling shoulders and pulling him tight. “no, don't do this-”
“There's absolutely nothing redeeming about me. I'm a hideous, awful person-”
“Adam, shh. No you're not, I promise.” Adam is curled up into a ball against Kris's chest, shaking with emotion. Kris can do nothing but hold him close. “Adam, listen to me. I don't know anything about the afterlife, but I do know you did nothing wrong. You and Rosalyn. I promise, I promise. . .”
*
Kris wakes up first. Adam's hair is in his face, thick and clean and dark. Against his chest, Adam's warm breath has left a damp spot. Kris inches down so he can look at Adam's sleeping face, his sweet parted lips and thick eyelashes. Kris aches to touch him, but a nagging voice in his head tells him not to, that it will be too much like taking advantage.
*
“He's planning on going to school.” Kris says, regaling his father with all the recent happenings in his life. Like always, there is no response. “He's going to live on campus, thinks it will give him a chance at a normal life. It will probably get lonely with out him, but Adam promised me he'd visit on the weekends.”
He gazes at his father, vegetative in his hospital bed, feeling very much like a small child.
“Is it selfish if I don't want him to leave me?” He asks. It's silly, because Kris already knows it's difficult for him to let people go. He has kept his father on life support for three years now, after all.
Kris rests his head on the blankets, smiling into them and smelling detergent. He can't stop the tears.
“Because I can't seem to help it.”
*
Adam has a room all to himself. He can afford it easily, what with a almost two years of Kris paying him a ridiculous amount of money to cook his breakfast. He has his schedule of classes printed up, nothing to stressful; a backpack and new clothes. He has everything he needs.
*
Kris wakes up when he hears a sharp tap on his window. He crawls out of bed, dragging his feet as he crosses the room. As he looks up another pebble hits his window, louder and more insistent.
“Hold on, hold on.” He grumbles to his empty room.
After the window is unlocked Kris shoves it open, peering to the ground below. Adam is down there, distant like a specter, but there all the same.
“Adam! What the hell are you doing here?” He shouts, mouth agape.
“It is, as of. . . now!” Adam exclaims, reading the watch on his wrist. “The weekend!”
“You crazy bastard!” Kris feels like whooping. He's on his toes, an uncontainable smile breaking across his face. “You stay there, no climbing up the lattice or anything.”
Kris dashes downstairs, not bothering with a jacket because the late summer night is balmy and comfortable. The grass is wet and slippery against his bare fee. Not thinking, not bothering to stop, Kris throws himself into Adam's arms and into a kiss.
There isn't a sound. Not even the crickets dare to interrupt the moment.
“This is insane. This is so very high school.” Kris whispers, his bottom lip pulling against Adam's lightly stubbled jaw.
“Well, I'm told that I am a good student.” Adam says, the beginning of pride glowing on his face.
Kris laughs and buries his face in Adam's neck. It feels wild; it feels like everything he's ever wanted.
Rated PG-13
Word count: 2773, give or take.
Summary: Sequel to These Children Games. Kris helps Adam regain some of his lost innocence.
First part: These Children Games
Adam is given the fourth floor, a quaint living space the size of a small apartment. Awkwardly, Kris stands by the door, careful to be outside of the bubble of space Adam always manages to keep between them.
“So this is your home, you can do whatever you want to it except for burn it down, obviously. I live below you, so that wouldn't be very good. . .” Kris says, unsure of what to do. He toes around the bubble, keeping his eyes on Adam, keen to spot any shift of emotion on his face. So far Adam has been inscrutable. “Bathroom's there, complete with shower and tub. The water runs real hot, so look out for that.”
“Can I just go to sleep?” Adam asks abruptly, then covers his eyes with his hands, frowning. “Forgive me, that was rude. I'm not thinking straight-”
“Oh no! It's okay.” Kris flounders, taking a step closer to Adam. “You can do whatever you want. You're-you own yourself now.”
Adam stares at him, dumbstruck.
“What?”
“I never wanted a slave,” Kris explains. “I don't believe in it, and I especially didn't believe in the way they were treating you. It's-awful.” Kris shakes his head. “So I had to get you away from Mr. Pacelle first, and now I'm releasing you.”
Which is a horrible way to put it, as if Adam was some kind of animal.
As always, Adam is unreadable.
“I want to go to bed now.” He says, voice oddly cold.
Kris nods easily, though he's troubled.
“Sure, sure.”
He sidesteps around Adam and Adam actually dodges away from him. It's a little hurtful, but the small wince that Adam makes as he moves takes precedent over Kris's stung feelings.
“You're back. . .” Kris says slowly, as he takes in the sight of the cotton shirt he had given Adam, stretched tight across his broad shoulders, soft, dark dabs of blood soaking through.
“It's fine. I've dealt with worse.” Adam says automatically.
“No. It's terrible. I'm taking you to the hospital-”
“Please-” Adam says, strain tightening his voice. “I'm just so tired.”
Kris doesn't say anything, then relents.
“Okay, but I'm calling a doctor in the morning.”
“That's fine.”
But as Kris walks down the stairs he hears a small, disjointed, “Thank you,” so he whips around, eyes huge.
No one is there. Adam has already disappeared into the bathroom.
*
Once alone, Adam washes his face in the sink. He lets water sluice over his arms, scrubs them red with a washcloth. He bends down to unlace the old tennis shoes Kris had given him and it seems to tear his body open again. He falls against the counter, growling with pain and frustration.
He tries to sleep in the bed the room is furnished with, but the mattress is too much like an island, no protection offered from either way he turns, so Adam sleeps on the bathroom floor, making sure the door is locked.
*
“What do you want me to do?” Adam asks Kris a few days later, once he has recuperated a bit.
“Anything you want to do, you're not a slave anymore.” Kris answers. “You're a guest here. A friend.”
So Adam goes back to his room and sleeps.
*
He sleeps a lot, actually. He feels restless, useless even. Every now and then, Kris comes up to talk to him, tell him the goings on at his business. Adam just listens, fearing himself to be socially stunted when he doesn't respond. Kris isn't a social butterfly himself, so a lot of the time silences stretch between them like the rolling November clouds above them.
*
“I want to work for you.”
“What? No--” Kris protests, a confused look on his face.
Adam stops him with a shake of his head, his eyes determined.
“You don't understand, I need this. I need something to do. If you just give me some kind of chores to do around the house, yard work, anything. Just give me some kind of purpose.”
Kris licks his lips, looking a bit stunned.
“I never thought of it that way. I just thought you had been through so much and didn't want you to ever have to do anything unpleasant again.” He laughs freely, like he's relieved. “I hate household chores, if you can't tell. If it's what you want, then yeah.” Kris's face suddenly turns serious. “But I'm paying you, okay. I'm going to gouge myself, give you so much more than you deserve and then I'm going to bitch about it behind your back.” He smiles cheekily, endearingly.
Adam has never been paid for anything in his life, but he's pretty sure fifteen-hundred dollars a week is exorbitant pay for simply doing the laundry and dishes.
*
Sometimes Kris is surprised by how normal Adam seems. He acts like any other young man, if a little distant. He can read, has a high school education, and a deep concern for personal appearance. The only thing Adam didn't have that everyone else did was his freedom. It makes things easier and more difficult on Kris. On one hand, Adam doesn't seem to need or want to cry on anyone's shoulder, though Kris has arranged for him to meet with a therapist a few times a week, the only condition he set for Adam to live in his house; on the other, Kris just cannot seem to get through to him.
He calls Simon, hoping to understand things better.
“You should just be glad he is how he is.” Simon says. “Not to be rude, but I don't think you'd be able to handle someone less resilient than Adam.”
“I guess so. I just expected him to be more. . .shaken.”
“Oh he is, don't worry. He's just good at hiding it. It was how Logan raised him, to be prideful.”
Which didn't make any sense at all.
“Why would he do that? It sounds counterproductive.”
“Logan does not want a broken person; he wants to break them. You cannot tear a person down unless they are brought up first. As sick as it sounds, Logan treated Adam very much like a son. It made it all the more easy to humiliate him.”
Kris feels the sick bile of rage in his stomach just thinking about it.
“Speaking of Logan, the dear old bat wants to know if he can purchase Adam from you. He's been awfully lonely these days.”
“You tell him he can fuck himself.”
Simon laughs breezily.
“It'll be my pleasure.”
*
Three months in.
An important part of Adam's rehabilitation is learning how to drive. He had aced his permit test, but he is more than a little shaky on the road.
Kris cranes his head, watching Adam veer out of his lane.
“Hold on, Adam, you can get closer to the curb. Trust your depth perception.” Ever the mumbler, Kris's words are obviously misheard by Adam.
“Death perception? What the hell is that?” Adam asks, looking mildly horrified.
“Depth! Depth perception!” Kris laughs, yanking the steering wheel to avoid careening into another car.
He has Adam pull over so he can calm down.
After a few moments, Adam starts laughing, low and guilty and joyous. It makes Kris's heart swell.
“I wonder what their death perception is, you know, since I almost ran them off the road.” Adam jokes.
“Pretty damn high, I'd guess.”
“Shut up.” Adam throws a wadded up napkin at Kris, bumping the steering wheel in the process and making the horn yelp, startling them both.
*
Driving at night.
Kris watches Adam through bleary eyes, collar pulled up to his chin to keep the chill country air from slipping down his shirt. Adam is at ease behind the wheel now, maneuvering it with one hand while the other sits on the window edge.
Air gusts into the car, fanning his hair like flames; oddly appropriate, Kris thinks, because Adam's dyed black hair is growing out and it's growing out copper red. It's another secret that Kris knows, that only Kris is aware of.
Kris closes his eyes and sleeps.
*
Adam walks around to the passenger's side, opening the door and shaking Kris awake.
“Home sweet home.” He says once Kris opens his eyes.
“I'll sleep in the car, thanks.” Kris murmurs. When he sleepily turns his head to nuzzle against Adam's hand, something in Adam shrinks away, hurts. It must be good for him though, because, like the tears that gather in his eyes, Adam can't stop the smile forming on his face.
Goddamn, if he isn't the luckiest sonovabitch on earth.
*
One year. Logan Pacelle is dead.
A heart attack, everyone said at first, until professionals found the snowy residue on Mr. Pacelle's cup. Oleander. The murder was quickly attached to one of Mr. Pacelle's slaves, a gardener named Rosalyn. Deprived of any rights of personhood, Rosalyn was quickly put down.
Kris wasn't sure if he should tell any of this to Adam, but somehow Adam found out about it himself, bringing it up casually over dinner.
Then, not so casually, “I want to go to his funeral.”
Kris doesn't understand, and he can't because Adam has retreated again, every emotion turning inwards and leaving his face a clean slate. He acquiesces, letting the rest of the night pass by in silence.
*
The service is beautiful. Mr. Pacelle is as decadent and extravagant in death as he was in life. Throughout the eulogy, Kris starts to grow angry at the five dollar words used to describe Mr. Pacelle, the tear stained faces of his colleagues.
“You should say something.” Kris tells Adam, more for his vindictive benefit than for Adam's.
Adam shakes his head.
“I have nothing to say.”
Afterward they pass by a plot of ground, dark and churned by a recent burial. Adam stops, staring down at the sorry patch of earth.
“This was Rosalyn.” He says sadly, his voice low with mourning.
“I'm sorry.” Kris says, taking his place by Adam's side. He twines their fingers together, squeezing hard. “I'm so sorry, this shouldn't have happened.”
“Yeah.” Adam says uncertainly, like he's lost, like he's been uprooted and is now blowing around in a vicious wind. “I-” He begins, but doesn't seem to have the strength to finish it.
*
That night Kris decides to visit Adam.
He comes up the stairs, surprised to see the room empty.
“Adam? Adam, where are you?” He calls, scared until he sees Adam poke his head out of the bathroom.
“Yes?” Adam says, shocked when Kris rushes up and wraps his arms around him.
“Oh my god, what the hell are you doing in the bathroom, I didn't-” He stops, smoothing his hands up Adam's arms. “I'm sorry, I was just worried about you.”
“I'm fine, I'm in one piece.” Adam tries to block Kris's view into the bathroom, but Kris nosily looks over his shoulder, going up on his tiptoes to see the pillows, the blankets.
“What? You sleep in the bathroom?” Kris asks, genuine concern in his eyes.
Adam shrugs.
“It's no big deal. It just-feels better, I guess.”
It takes a moment for Kris to realize just how broken Adam is, that he'll probably never be the way he should have been had he grown up with love and care.
Kris bites his lip, a thousand thoughts buzzing around his head.
“We'll scoot over, I'm sleeping here tonight.”
They settle in, turned into each other like young girls at a slumber party.
“How do you feel?” Kris breathes into the darkness.
“I don't know,” Adam replies. “How should I feel? How should anyone feel? How do you feel?”
The last one is easy, so Kris answers it as such.
“I feel better knowing that scumbags like Logan Pacelle are burning in hell.”
“I don't believe in hell.” Adam says quickly, adamantly. Confusingly too. Kris can't wrap his mind around it.
“Adam, you have every right to be mad at him, this is the man who abused-no, tortured you for years. If he's going to spend the rest of eternity in torment, then great. He deserves it.”
“Yes, but-” Adam's voice wavers, grows faint. “Everything he did-I did it with him. Terrible, unforgivable things. Things that feel like they'll never, ever leave me. And Rosalyn too, what about her? Is she going to go to hell? I could have been her, I've thought about it so many times before-”
“Oh my god, Adam,” Kris reaches out blindly, grabbing Adam's trembling shoulders and pulling him tight. “no, don't do this-”
“There's absolutely nothing redeeming about me. I'm a hideous, awful person-”
“Adam, shh. No you're not, I promise.” Adam is curled up into a ball against Kris's chest, shaking with emotion. Kris can do nothing but hold him close. “Adam, listen to me. I don't know anything about the afterlife, but I do know you did nothing wrong. You and Rosalyn. I promise, I promise. . .”
*
Kris wakes up first. Adam's hair is in his face, thick and clean and dark. Against his chest, Adam's warm breath has left a damp spot. Kris inches down so he can look at Adam's sleeping face, his sweet parted lips and thick eyelashes. Kris aches to touch him, but a nagging voice in his head tells him not to, that it will be too much like taking advantage.
*
“He's planning on going to school.” Kris says, regaling his father with all the recent happenings in his life. Like always, there is no response. “He's going to live on campus, thinks it will give him a chance at a normal life. It will probably get lonely with out him, but Adam promised me he'd visit on the weekends.”
He gazes at his father, vegetative in his hospital bed, feeling very much like a small child.
“Is it selfish if I don't want him to leave me?” He asks. It's silly, because Kris already knows it's difficult for him to let people go. He has kept his father on life support for three years now, after all.
Kris rests his head on the blankets, smiling into them and smelling detergent. He can't stop the tears.
“Because I can't seem to help it.”
*
Adam has a room all to himself. He can afford it easily, what with a almost two years of Kris paying him a ridiculous amount of money to cook his breakfast. He has his schedule of classes printed up, nothing to stressful; a backpack and new clothes. He has everything he needs.
*
Kris wakes up when he hears a sharp tap on his window. He crawls out of bed, dragging his feet as he crosses the room. As he looks up another pebble hits his window, louder and more insistent.
“Hold on, hold on.” He grumbles to his empty room.
After the window is unlocked Kris shoves it open, peering to the ground below. Adam is down there, distant like a specter, but there all the same.
“Adam! What the hell are you doing here?” He shouts, mouth agape.
“It is, as of. . . now!” Adam exclaims, reading the watch on his wrist. “The weekend!”
“You crazy bastard!” Kris feels like whooping. He's on his toes, an uncontainable smile breaking across his face. “You stay there, no climbing up the lattice or anything.”
Kris dashes downstairs, not bothering with a jacket because the late summer night is balmy and comfortable. The grass is wet and slippery against his bare fee. Not thinking, not bothering to stop, Kris throws himself into Adam's arms and into a kiss.
There isn't a sound. Not even the crickets dare to interrupt the moment.
“This is insane. This is so very high school.” Kris whispers, his bottom lip pulling against Adam's lightly stubbled jaw.
“Well, I'm told that I am a good student.” Adam says, the beginning of pride glowing on his face.
Kris laughs and buries his face in Adam's neck. It feels wild; it feels like everything he's ever wanted.