from this moment (you are the one) - Kradam - NC17
Title: from this moment (you are the one)
Rating: NC17
Pairing: Kris/Adam
Word Count: ~14,000
Beta: The always lovely sbb23, who goes far beyond the call of duty to whip my fics into shape. What would I do without you? <333
Disclaimer: Not true. Not even a little bit. Not even at all.
Summary: To save his family's winery Kris accepts a surprise proposal from an old friend. Contemporary Arranged Marriage fic, just go with the flow, okay?
Notes: Written for kristina_bitch who asked nothing for over at the ontd_ai charity drive to benefit The Houston Area Women's Center. This is what happens when you don't leave me a prompt. I write 14k of arranged marriage fic and then force it on you on a whim. :P
Special thanks to realpestilence for the prompt, encouragement and hand holding, and to the kradio benches for always being there when I need them. <33333 Oh, and thanks to the peeps at Beepx3 who helped with the silly gifts and the wedding song. The wedding song never actually made it into the fic, but the title is kind of telling, dontcha think? ;)
Kris is having a bad day on top of a really shitty year and the last person he expects to see when he pulls up to Allen Winery is Adam Lambert, but there he is, sitting on the front steps with his long legs stretched out in front of him and his face tilted up towards the sun. Kris hasn't seen him in over a year, not since Kris had dropped out of American Idol, and it's been six months since he’d stopped returning Adam's calls.
Kris figured Adam would confront him about it eventually, but he couldn't have picked a worse day if he’d actually tried. Kris had spent all morning in an uncomfortable meeting with the bank only to be told what he already knew - they're all out of options and only a miracle will save Allen Winery from foreclosure at the end of the month. And now he has to go inside and tell his family that the winery that has been in the family for generations will very soon be the property of the bank, except there's a rockstar between him and the front door.
Kris parks his pickup next to the shiny black Mustang that must belong to Adam and slides the key out of the ignition. It would be a lie to say that he hasn't missed Adam. He’d kept up with Adam's skyrocketing career after winning American Idol as well as he could, but seeing him in person again is weirdly unsettling.
So much has happened since they’d last seen each other that Kris doubts that the instant connection they’d shared on Idol, the one the fans quickly dubbed Kradam, is still there, and somehow that adds another stone to the weight on his chest. Adam had gone on to live his dream, their dream, and Kris had been sucked back to the winery and his family, and while he doesn't regret his decision it kind of doesn't seem worth it right now when they're going to lose Allen Winery anyway.
"Hello there stranger," Adam says, when Kris finally finds the guts to exit the car, and he pushes himself up from the stairs, stretching his lanky frame out.
"Hi," Kris responds, trying but failing not to stare.
He’d forgotten how tall Adam was, and he seems even taller now with all the weight he lost. Everything about him is different, yet exactly the same, and Kris’s heart makes a few confused summersaults. He never did know what to feel around Adam.
"So… uhm…" Kris says, licking his lips nervously. "What are you doing here?"
The sun slants over Adam's face illuminating his wicked smile. "Actually," Adam says, "I thought I'd ask you to marry me."
Kris drops his car keys with the shock, twitching when they thud against the gravel. "Seriously?" he asks voice too high-pitched, even though he's almost certain Adam's joking.
"Yeah," Adam says, still grinning in the same unsettling way. "Seriously. I'll get down on one knee if you want me to."
Kris doesn't even know what to say. Adam looks slightly deranged with the way he smiles, but he doesn't seem to be joking. At the back of Kris's mind a tiny niggling little voice informs him that marrying Adam would mean the end to their financial problems and he promptly blushes almost crimson just for thinking it.
"Okay," Adam says. "That might have been a bit abrupt. Just hear me out, okay?"
"Okay," Kris says weakly, crouching down to pick up his keys just so he won't have to look at Adam.
"Why don't you show me around while we talk?" Adam says. "This place looks amazing."
"Yeah," Kris mumbles, giving Adam a glance. "It is."
If nothing else, giving Adam a tour will put off the inevitable for a few more minutes. It's not as if Kris is in a hurry to disappoint his whole family. Kris takes Adam around the house towards the vineyard, hyper aware of the hand Adam puts between his shoulder blades, and he dutifully points out the interesting things along the way, such as the press, fermentation vats, laboratory, bottling line, and tasting room.
"I'd become an alcoholic in a heartbeat if I had access to all this wine," Adam says, when Kris lets him look into one of the caves, the air inside cool and musty.
Kris shrugs. "I've been surrounded by wine my entire life," he says. "It's not something I drink to get drunk."
"Huh?" Adam says, still staring at the rows and rows of bottles. "Then what do you drink to get drunk?"
"Scotch," Kris says. "And lots of it." He kind of needs a stiff drink right now, actually, but he promised himself once that he wouldn't ever drink to bury his problems and so far he’s never broken that promise.
They continue the tour and while Adam asks a hundred questions, he doesn't actually mention the whole proposal thing again until Kris is about dying of curiosity. He knows, of course, that Adam's private life has been a subject of intense scrutiny in the gossip rags, and one scandal has been following another lately, ranging from naked photos of a much younger Adam leaking on the internet to ex-boyfriends selling their tell-all stories to the tabloids. Getting married kind of makes sense - if nothing else it would probably take the focus off Adam's private life for the time being - but getting married to Kris really doesn't, at least not in any way that Kris can comprehend.
"Okay," Adam says, when they sit down on a bench overlooking the vineyard with even rows of carefully kept grape vines stretching out before them. "I bet you're wondering why I asked you to marry me."
"You could say that," Kris says, kicking up dust with the toe of one of his sneakers. Inanely he thinks they’re the same sneakers he wore the last time he saw Adam, scuffed white converse hi-tops.
"As I see it we're both in need of a miracle right now. You need money to save all of this." Adam makes a sweeping gesture with his hand. "And I need to get married or my record company will drop me like a hot potato."
"Really?" Kris asks with a frown. It's pretty much impossible to turn on the radio without hearing an Adam Lambert song these days and Adam's album sales are off the charts.
"Yeah, well…" Adam scuffs his toes against the ground, covering his snakeskin boots (the same ones he wore the last time Kris saw him) and the lower edges of his skinny black jeans with clingy grey dust. "American Idol is a family-friendly show and the news about me lately isn't very family friendly. The record company's been great so far, but they have to draw the line somewhere and either I clean up my act or they drop me."
"Why me?" Kris asks, giving Adam a curious look.
They’d hit it off like wildfire during Kris's time on American Idol, their souls connecting through music and a shared sense of humor, but it was never a question of romance. Kris was still engaged to Katy at the time and despite telling Rolling Stone he had a crush on Kris, Adam never gave the impression that is was more than friendship to him either.
"Well," Adam says with a soft smile. "I like you, and even better, I trust you to not screw me over. Kissing and telling has been kind of a trend lately."
"Kissing," Kris repeats dumbly, because somehow he thought Adam was offering a marriage of convenience only.
Adam slants him a look and another wicked smile. "Oh believe me, honey, a sexless marriage was not what I had in mind. If you say yes and we do this, then it's for real."
Kris blinks and licks his lips reflexively. "I… uh… "
"You don't have to answer right now," Adam says, patting Kris's knee. "Just think about it, okay?"
"Uhm… yeah," Kris says, swallowing thickly. "I will." He highly doubts he will be able to stop thinking about it even if he wants to.
*
Everyone, from Kris's dad to his ex-fiancée, tells Kris he's insane for even considering it, but Kris can't stop thinking about Adam's offer. Maybe he doesn't really know Adam all that well and maybe marrying him will put Kris rather uncomfortably in Adam's debt, but it will save the winery and it's not like Kris is completely opposed to the idea of having sex with Adam.
Kris had always figured he wasn't exactly one hundred percent straight - in fact he wonders if such a thing even exists - and Adam's not the first man Kris has had confused feelings about. There was never anything romantic about their interactions during their time on Idol, or after, but it's not like Kris never thought about it. Adam has his own force field and it's practically impossible not to think about having sex with him when you see him perform - sexuality is such a large part of his stage persona.
For a week he goes back and forth between yes and no, changing his mind about three times a day. The thing is that when he thinks about turning Adam down, he feels as if he's making a huge mistake, but when he thinks about saying yes, he's scared shitless…but it doesn't feel wrong. His brother says it's probably because saying yes would save the winery, but Kris doesn't think that's the whole story.
He and Adam had just clicked from the first moment they met, and when Kris stopped returning Adam's calls it had nothing to do with jealousy, or resentment. It was simply because he didn't want to suck even a moment of joy out of Adam's life with his own misery. If he's honest with himself there was more than one night after things got difficult with Katy that he considered calling Adam and asking to meet just to get one of Adam's full body hugs, but he always stopped himself because he didn't want to be that guy and because he kind of thought that maybe Adam had moved on from their friendship once he stopped pushing.
Kris had given himself a week to think, but when he wakes up, way too early, on the morning of his last day, he still doesn't have an answer. He pulls on boxers and a t-shirt and heads to the kitchen to make himself some coffee only to find his mom already there.
"Morning, sweetie," she says without turning around when Kris enters, even though Kris can swear his bare feet didn't make a sound against the tiles. "Want some coffee?"
"Yeah," he says, gratefully accepting the cup when she holds it out. "What are you doing up?"
She smiles at him, reaching out to ruffle his hair. "I figured you'd be up early so I thought I'd be sneaky to get a chance to talk to you alone."
"Oh." He flushes slightly and sips from his cup. His mom is the only one that has yet to give her input on the situation. He thought that meant she wanted him to make up his own mind, but now he realizes she was just waiting for the time when her opinion would have most impact. He's got to give it to her, when it comes to mothering she surely has no rival in the known universe.
"Come, let's go outside," she says nodding towards the patio doors.
Kris follows her with a vague sense of trepidation. The thing about his mother is that she gives excellent advice, even if it's not at all what you want to hear. She was the one who told him to wait to get married until after Idol, and as much as he loathed it at the time, she was right. Even with him dropping out, he and Katy hadn’t made it, and he thinks that in her mysterious mother way she’d known they wouldn't last.
"Did you make up your mind yet?" she asks when they're seated in the hammock, swinging gently back and forth.
Kris shakes his head and sips at his coffee. He still isn't sure. She sighs and pats his knee.
"I'm not going to tell you what to do," she says softly. "I think you need to figure this one out on your own. I just wanted to tell you that it's okay to want it."
Kris blinks, turning his head to look at her.
"I know you," she says softly. "You'll always be my baby and I think that a large part of your struggle right now is the thought of what people might think when they find out you actually want it."
Kris flushes and looks down into his cup. "I like him," he says weakly. "I mean… I don't know if this is a good idea but…"
He trails off - it's almost impossible to explain the weird churn of emotions he experiences when Adam is near, because he doesn't understand them himself.
"Music was always such a huge part of your life," she says, running a hand through his hair. "But until this last week I haven't seen you touch your guitar in a year. I missed that part of you and if Adam brings music back into your life, then maybe he's the one you need to be with."
"I think that counts as telling me what to do," Kris says, slanting her a look.
She laughs. "And I thought I was being so sneaky."
He puts his head down on her shoulder and sighs. "I just don't know if I want my life all over the tabloids," he says. "You know they'll make this into a huge thing."
"A marriage is a huge thing dear," she says. "Besides, if you ever want to be a recording artist in your own right then you’d better get used to it."
Kris smiles and rubs his cheeks against the soft cotton of her shirt. She smells just right, like cinnamon and apples and lazy summer days.
"I'm going to say yes," he whispers.
"I knew you would, baby," she answers, patting his back. "I knew you would."
*
Kris sends Adam a text, he's too chicken to call in case Adam changed his mind, but despite it still being too fricking early in the morning, Adam calls within two minutes.
"Really?" he asks, sounding shell-shocked and ecstatic at the same time. "Really? You'll marry me?"
Kris laughs, and his stomach flutters weirdly. "Yeah, you loon. I dipped my fries in crazy sauce, okay? Let's do this."
Adam laughs too, obviously delighted, and Kris can almost see him before his inner eye. Adam has a great laugh.
"Okay," he says. "Okay, okay… So wow, uhm… fuck. I thought for sure you'd tell me to fuck off."
Kris snorts. "Yeah, well…" he says, "I guess you're stuck with me now."
It feels weird to say it out loud and he experiences a sudden case of vertigo that could be the start of a panic attack, but he's not exactly scared.
"I'll be good to you," Adam says, suddenly serious, as if he can sense Kris's discomfort. "I'll make it work."
"I believe you," Kris whispers, and strangely enough he does.
If someone had told him two weeks ago that he would be getting married to a man, Kris would most likely have told them to fuck off, but right now it doesn't seem so weird. There was always something boundary-breaking about his friendship with Adam and maybe, if Kris hadn't dropped out of Idol and then cut their ties, it would have grown into something more a lot earlier.
"There's so much to plan," Adam says and he sounds way too happy about it. "We need a wedding planner, and a location and clothes and oh my God where do you want to go for our honeymoon?"
"I… uh…"
"How about Greece? One of the islands? I don't think too many people there have heard of me yet." Adam laughs. "We'll talk about it later, okay? Oh and do you have a preference for a date? I'll be out of town for the next two weeks doing some international promo, but we’d better get this show on the road if we want to get married before next year. "
Kris's head is buzzing and he flails a little trying to come up with a proper response to Adam's flow of words, but luckily Adam doesn't really seem to need his input. He just goes on and on about flowers and clothes and bridesmaids and groomsmen in a way that makes Kris think he’s put a lot of thought into this.
"Oh," Adam says, sobering suddenly. "How are you doing… uhm… financially? Is there something that needs to be taken care of right now?"
Adam sounds kind of embarrassed to even be asking and Kris flushes, staring down at his bare feet on the floorboards.
"No, we're… uhm… we're good right now." They won't be for long, but Kris can't bring himself to say it. "I'll… uhm… I'll talk to the bank again."
The thing is that Kris might not even need Adam's money. The promise of a financially stable backer will probably be enough to give them the respite they need. The winery itself is producing well and they will have money coming in eventually, it's just been a really shitty year of bad timing, and unnecessary costs with his dad's medical bills to top it all off, and much like Adam's record company, the bank felt like they had to draw the line somewhere. They've been more than forthcoming for the last few months, but they're a business and at the end of the day it's all about money.
"Yeah, okay…" Adam hesitates for a moment. "Just… if you need anything tell me okay? It's not a big deal. I couldn't care less about the money."
Kris wonders what Adam would have said if Kris had turned him down and then asked for a loan. Somehow he thinks that Adam would have given him the money anyway and suddenly the whole marriage deal makes even less sense. Not that Kris is going to back down now, but it's food for thought.
"So when are you leaving and when do you come back?" Kris asks, because he kind of thought he'd get to see Adam again soon and maybe, just maybe, he was looking forward to it.
"Tomorrow morning, but if it's okay with you, I'll come by this afternoon."
"Yeah," Kris says relieved. "Yeah, that's okay."
"I thought… Well, my friend Jade is a wedding planner. She has her own business and I thought that maybe if it's okay with you that she could plan it. She just started and she could really use a high profile client to get the business rolling, but if you have someone else that's fine too."
"No," Kris says, rolling his eyes at the thought that he'd have a wedding planner lined up. "Sounds good to me."
"Great. I'll bring her along then."
"Okay," Kris says, squashing down the tiny pinprick of disappointment. They're about to get married, he's sure he'll have plenty of alone time with Adam in the future. "Will you be staying for dinner?"
"If you want me to," Adam says, sounding a bit tense all of a sudden.
"You don't have to if you’ve got things to do before you leave… I just thought that maybe you'd like to meet my family again."
"Of course," Adam says, way too fast and Kris smiles, suddenly realizing Adam's nervous. Serves him right, he's been far too composed about this thing.
"See you later then," Kris says cheerfully. "Dinner's around seven."
"Yeah… Okay. See you." Adam sounds nauseous and Kris can't stop grinning. Maybe it's incredibly mean of him, but he wants Adam to be nervous. It puts them on more even footing.
*
Jade doesn't look anything like Kris imagined a wedding planner would look like, but she does look very much like one of Adam's friends, and that's really all the qualification she needs in Kris's book. She's tall, taller than Kris anyway, and brightly colored tattoos climb up both of her bare arms. She's wearing a white tank top, baggy jeans and flip flops and her rainbow colored dreads are pulled back into a messy ponytail, but the card she gives Kris looks professional and the intimidating stack of folders and magazines she's carrying under her arm says she means business.
Kris is impressed and more than a little intimidated by her ability to take notes on her iPhone while walking and juggling her huge stack of things. Adam trails behind them with an amused look on his face while Kris tries to answer all her million and one questions about preferences. How is he supposed to know what he prefers? He's never gotten married before and some of the questions just don't make any sense.
Besides it's hard to focus with Adam so close, because whenever Kris looks at him he doesn't see a friend, or even a rockstar, he sees his future husband, and that's enough to make his heart stutter. After dumping all her things on the dining room table Jade demands a tour, and Kris gives her the same one he gave Adam a week ago, while Adam and Jade discuss venues in a way that makes Kris think they've talked about this before.
Every now and then one of them will ask him what he thinks, and he'll hem and haw and agree with whatever Adam's saying in the vaguest way possible. To his untrained ear all the venues on their approved list seem far too large and intimidating. He figured there'd be a certain amount of show involved in the proceedings, but do they really need a locale that seats two thousand people?
"We could always get married here," he says distractedly when they're walking back towards the house.
His parents and his grandparents before them all got married on the property, exchanging their vows underneath the great oak trees that sprawl towards the sky at the lower edge of the vineyard, and they've hosted other wedding parties as well, for friends of the family and distant relatives. Kris always thought he'd get married here, but that was before he said yes to Adam, of course. It takes him a moment to realize that he lost his companions and when he turns around he finds them staring at him as if he's grown a second head.
"It was just a suggestion," he says petulantly. He's one of the grooms, he should be allowed to make suggestions.
Adam tilts his head to the side and his eyes take on this soft edge that Kris would be sure he just imagined if Adam's voice hadn't been pitched to match them. "Do you want to get married here?" he asks.
Kris shrugs, breaking eye contact to look out over the estate. This is where he got his roots and if he's honest with himself this is where he wants to get married.
"I guess," he murmurs, flushing slightly. He's sure it doesn't mesh with whatever plans Adam and Jade have for the nuptials, but he also doesn't want to start the proceedings off with a lie. He looks up at Adam and Jade through his bangs to find Adam smiling at him and Jade looking around with a calculating look on her face.
"Okay," Adam says. "Then we'll get married here."
"Just like that?" Kris asks with a frown.
"You want to get married here," Adam says as if that explains everything and starts walking again, tugging Jade along by the arm.
"I… uh… thank you," Kris says when Adam catches up to him.
Adam just grins and slings an arm across Kris's shoulders, pulling him into Adam's side.
"I told you I'd make you happy," he says.
Kris doesn't recall Adam saying any such thing, but he appreciates the sentiment. He tangles his fingers in the back of Adam's t-shirt and allows himself to just be content. Maybe this will actually work out.
*
Jade leaves before dinner claiming she's got a previous engagement, so it's just Adam and Kris that sit down to dinner with Kris's family. Adam is quite obviously nervous, fidgeting with his napkin and bouncing his knee against Kris's under the table, but he answers all the questions directed his way with his usual easy charm.
Kris had told his dad and Daniel about his decision this morning, and while they weren't exactly happy about it, they didn't give him any grief either. He's kind of surprised about how much he wants them to like Adam and he can tell by the end of the night that at least Daniel has been completely won over by Adam's wit and his wild tales. It makes him happy because he would hate for things to get tense with his family over this.
After dinner Kris walks Adam out to his car and it's the first time they're alone together all day. The sun is setting, painting the sky a bright orange and Kris feels oddly nervous.
"You okay?" Adam asks, bumping their shoulders together and Kris shrugs.
"Just overwhelmed, I think," he answers.
Adam smiles and pulls his keys out of his pocket, resting a hand lightly on the roof of his car.
"It'll be okay," he says, twisting the long strands of the whip on his key chain around his fingers.
Kris looks up at him, captivated by the way the dying light illuminates Adam's face. He can't help but wonder what Adam's really getting out of this besides a concession to his record company. There must have been tons of other people Adam could have asked that would more than happily have taken Adam up on his offer.
"I… uh… I guess we'll talk while you're away?" Kris says, worrying at the hem of his shirt with nervous fingers.
"Of course," Adam says. "I have to warn you though, I suck at figuring out time zones so chances are I'll call you in the middle of the night."
"It's okay," Kris says. He figures that if they're to get married he'll have to get used to that sort of thing. The thought makes him feel warm inside and he reaches out to touch Adam's arm.
"I…" He cuts himself off, worrying at his lower lip. There are so many things he wants to say to Adam, but he doesn't even know how to begin. "I'm happy you asked me," he finally says, more than aware that his cheeks are turning pink.
Adam's smile makes the embarrassment worth it and when Adam reaches out to cup his face, Kris realizes this is what he's been waiting for all night. Adam bends forward slowly, obviously hesitant, and in the end it's Kris that locks their lips together, pushing himself up on his toes to reach, which ends with him crashing into Adam's chest caught off balance. Adam laughs, steadying Kris with his hands on Kris's shoulders.
"Easy," he says, smiling wide.
Kris would be affronted but then Adam bends down, kissing him again, and he forgets all about his bruised ego. Kris hasn't kissed a lot of people in his life, in fact he can count them on one hand with Katy being the most recent, and none of them even come close to Adam. It's overwhelming to be kissed with such determination, and Kris finds himself letting Adam take the lead without even meaning to.
Whenever he thought about this (and they were confused jumbled thoughts that never failed to make him blush even in the privacy of his own room) he figured that kissing another man would be weird, but it's really not at all. Adam's lips are more demanding than a woman's and the way he just takes charge is unfamiliar, but it isn't weird. It feels right.
Adam pulls back after one last lingering kiss with a soft smile on his face. "Was that okay?" he asks, and Kris nods in response because he doesn't trust his voice.
He's confused and turned on and a little scared, but somehow it feels good, as if this is exactly how he's supposed to be feeling. He reaches out to touch Adam's lips that are still slick with spit and slightly parted. He doesn't know why but the way Adam nips at his fingertip makes him shiver.
"I should go," Adam says, taking half a step back.
Kris follows, eyes focused on Adam's reddened lips.
"I have things to do."
Kris touches Adam's cheek, rubbing his thumb against the corner of Adam's mouth.
"I need to pack."
Kris moves his other hand to curl around Adam's shoulder, keeping him still.
"Uh… your dad is watching us from the front porch."
Kris whips his head around to find that Adam's telling the truth. His dad is watching them from the shadows by the front door and Kris's face heats up with embarrassment. He drops his hands from Adam's body and watches Adam's face drop with them. Adam masks it quickly with the flash of a smile and a head toss, but Kris still feels like shit.
"I'm sorry," he murmurs, ducking his head. "It's… I mean…"
"It's okay," Adam says quickly. "I understand."
Adam turns to open the car door, but Kris stops him with a hand to his arm. He doesn't know why, but it feels important to do this right.
"No," Kris says, nervous but determined. "It's not okay."
Adam turns back to him with a frown and Kris kisses him. It's just a quick peck on the lips but it's a statement and the way Adam smiles against his mouth makes it worth it.
"Have a good trip," Kris murmurs, hoping that the waning light hides his blush. "Call me."
"Believe me," Adam answers. "I will."
Adam squeezes his hand briefly and then he's opening the door and sliding into the car. Kris watches as Adam pulls out of the parking lot and he keeps on watching until Adam's car disappears out of sight before going back to the house. He thinks he needs to talk to his dad.
*
Kris finds his dad in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher with more clanging than is strictly necessary.
"Are you mad at me?" Kris asks, taking a seat at the table without looking at his dad.
The clanging continues uninterrupted and Kris sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face.
"I got close to Adam on Idol," he says. "Too close maybe, I don't know, and when things started getting difficult with Katy I thought that maybe Adam was a part of that."
The clanging stops, but Kris doesn't look up. He’s never told anyone this, he’s barely admitted it to himself, but maybe his dad needs to hear it.
"So I stopped returning his calls and I stopped answering his texts and even after I broke up with Katy I didn't initiate contact again, because I was afraid that if I did it would mean something. Something about who I am and what I want that I wasn't quite ready to accept." Kris licks his lips, trying to find a way to formulate his thoughts that doesn't sound crass.
"You wanted him." The statement is tired, but not surprised, and Kris finally looks up to find his dad watching him, eyes dark and intense in the dim light.
"I…" Kris bites down on his lip. "Yes. Yes, I did. I didn't want to, but I did."
Neil nods, bracing his hands on the counter behind him. "And now?"
Kris flushes, looking down on his hands. He’d never imagined he would have to come out to his dad, especially not after he agreed to marry another man. "I still do," he murmurs, the back of his neck heating up. "I love this place and I'd do just about anything to save it, but that's not why I said yes."
He jumps when a hand lands on his shoulder, and looks up to find his dad smiling at him. "Now that wasn't so hard, was it?" he says, and Kris almost chokes on his tongue. "I can't say I fully understand, but you'll always be my son and I'll support you no matter what you do."
Kris’s eyes feels suspiciously wet and he bites down on his lower lip. "I love you dad," he whispers, voice rough, and finds himself pulled out of the chair and manhandled into a tight hug.
"I love you too, son," Neil says. "I really, really do."
Kris buries his face against his dad's neck and hugs back hard. He didn't realize how much his dad's approval would mean to him and now that he has it, it feels as if a great weight has been lifted from his shoulders. He knows Neil wasn't happy about the way his accident changed the course of Kris's life and maybe this is his way of giving back. He can't go back in time and change the events of that fateful night over a year ago, but he can give Kris this, an opportunity to turn onto a new road without the guilt of having his father's disapproval hanging over his head. Whatever his reasons are, Kris is grateful.
*
Adam wasn't lying about not being able to figure out time zones. After the first couple of times he wakes Kris up in the middle of the night, Kris gives him his own ringtone and the sound of phone no longer gives him a heart attack. They have the most random conversations and Kris starts looking forward to his wake up calls even if they leave him sleep-deprived. They talk about everything and nothing, sometimes about the wedding, but mostly just about life.
They do however manage to set a date in mid-August and with some help from Jade, his mom and Katy, Kris manages to decide on an invitation design without freaking out too much about what Adam will think. Adam says that he trusts Kris to make the decision and Jade has a complete list of everyone to be invited, but Kris still freaks out a little. The fact that Adam trusts him with it just makes it worse somehow. Adam laughs when Kris tells him about it, but Kris can tell that it's a pleased laugh. He's got a pretty extensive catalogue of Adam's different laughs by now.
Three days into Adam's trip the first package arrives via FedEx, and Kris thinks it's something that has to do with the wedding, but it's not. It's a light blue t-shirt with My Boyfriend Went To London And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt printed across the chest. It surprises a laugh out of him and he can't stop smiling for the rest of the day, wearing it around the house. The next one arrives a couple of days after that, boasting the same message but this time it’s an odd shade of green, and from Berlin.
Before the two weeks are up Kris has four more t-shirts with the same message from Madrid, Stockholm, Paris and Oslo. They're in different colors too, ranging from black to a really obnoxious yellow. It takes almost a week before Kris can wear them without blushing every time someone comments, but he considers it his coming out and despite the few snide looks he gets around the winery, most people are actually nice about it.
Adam gets kind of quiet when Kris tells him about it and says that he didn't have to do that, which is just stupid. It's going to be all over the tabloids as soon as the news leak and Kris actually prefers to give the people he's known his entire life some warning before they catch it on the news.
All in all it's probably the weirdest two weeks of Kris's life, even more overwhelming than his time on Idol and the excruciating disappointment when he had to leave. There's just so much going on all the time with the winery, the wedding, and the never-ending process of coming out to everyone he knows. It's weird and dizziness-inducing and whenever he tries to just stop and breathe Adam calls, or there's some emergency that needs his attention.
When Adam finally comes home, Kris is so sleep-deprived he's nauseous with it and more than ready to hand over the wedding planning to someone that actually cares about what colors the bridesmaids wear. When Adam shows up he doesn't even stop to think, he just walks right into him, making Adam stagger backwards with his weight.
"Hey," Adam says, wrapping his arms around Kris's back. "Are you okay?"
"I just don't care if they wear green or blue," Kris whines into Adam's neck. "I really don't."
"We're going with blue," Adam says firmly and something in Kris's chest unwinds, making him feel like he can breathe properly for the first time in a week.
"Thank you," he murmurs, inhaling deeply. Adam smells nice - Kris didn't even know he knew what Adam smelled like, but he smells like leather, skin, sun and Dior Homme and Kris has missed it.
Adam chuckles and pats Kris's back. "Sometimes you're such a guy," he says.
Kris snorts and tilts his head back to look up at Adam. "Would you rather have me be a girl?"
Adam shakes his head with a smile curling his lips.
"Yeah, thought so," Kris says, smiling against Adam's mouth when Adam bends down to kiss him.
They're interrupted by Jade who shouts at them to come inside and help out. Kris is not sure how it happened but Jade has more or less moved in, setting up camp in the rarely used dining room, and now everyone is involved in the planning. He was grateful for the support in the beginning but after two weeks of every woman he's ever known nagging him about making decisions - not so much.
Adam makes all the difference though, and within an hour they suddenly have a color and a design for the bridesmaid dresses, a complete list of bridesmaids, a date for them to have their measurements taken and about three hundred other tiny, but apparently important, details ironed out. Kris's input mostly consists in serving everyone coffee and holding Adam's hand. He feels that’s more fitting to his skills when it comes to wedding planning and Adam's hands are really nice.
Sometime during Adam's absence Kris had decided to stop thinking so much and just go with the flow. Analyzing every little thing only gave him a headache, and he was tired of headaches. Now, sitting here in his dining room with Adam's fingers entwined with his, Kris not only doesn’t have a headache, he feels comfortable. It's really easy to imagine that this is the conclusion of a much longer courtship.
Adam stays for dinner again and by the time Kris follows him out to his car he's so beyond tired he hangs on Adam's arm to even keep upright. Jade had left about an hour ago, promising to come back early tomorrow morning, and Kris is of half a mind to ask Adam to stay. He probably would if the thought of being alone with Adam in his room didn't scare him nearly to death.
"What are the plans for tomorrow?" Adam asks, pulling Kris in with his free arm until Kris crashes into his chest.
"I have a meeting with the bank," Kris murmurs into the soft cotton of Adam's shirt. "And I guess we'll be doing some more planning?"
"I'll come with you," Adam says, running a hand down Kris's back letting it come to rest just above the swell of Kris's ass. "To the bank, I mean."
Kris wants to protest, but to be honest he's pretty sure Adam's presence will make his meeting with the bank go much smoother. He lets his eyes slip shut, resting his cheek against Adam's shoulder. He doesn't want to think about the bank, or the part of this wedding deal that entails saving the winery. It makes him feel cheap, as if his ‘yes’ doesn't mean anything when he's coming to realize that it probably means everything.
"I set up a meeting with my PR for tomorrow afternoon," Adam says, worming his fingers in under the edge of Kris's t-shirt to touch skin. "We need to start talking about how to handle the press, and I want you to meet my handler."
"Okay," Kris murmurs, even if the mere thought makes his stomach drop.
"And I was thinking maybe you could stay with me for a couple of days? There's a lot of people I want you to meet, you know, friends and family."
Kris hums in agreement. Adam's fingers are painting circles against his skin and Kris would pretty much agree to anything right now just to have Adam stay right where he is. Adam sighs, pulling Kris closer.
"I should go," he says.
Kris makes a sound of protest, tightening his hold on Adam's waist. "I missed you," he whispers, even if admitting it out loud makes his cheeks burn.
"Yeah?" Adam asks, sliding one of his hands up to tangle in Kris's hair, forcing him to look up. "I missed you too."
Kris is pretty sure neither of them makes a conscious effort to initiate the kiss, they just fall into it. He doesn't know how long they stay like that mouths sliding slick against each other and tongues tangling, but when he finally pulls back to suck in a breath, his pulse is whooshing in his ears and he's hard in his jeans.
He can't really see Adam's eyes in the dark, the lights outside the front door don’t reach across the yard and Kris forgot to turn on the lights by the parking lot, but he can see the slick glitter of Adam's lips curling into a smile that makes his breath catch in his throat.
"I'll see you tomorrow," Adam says, touching a hand to Kris's face. "Okay?"
"Yeah," Kris breathes. "Okay."
Letting Adam go is much harder than it should be, and he makes Adam promise that he'll text when he's home. The thought of Adam driving back to LA alone makes him nervous, but Adam doesn't ask to stay and Kris is too scared to offer. It's not until he's curled up in bed with the confirmation on his phone screen that Adam got home safely that he realizes he’s agreed to stay with Adam for a couple of days. The thought makes his heart trip all over itself and he falls asleep somewhere between being scared witless and elated.
Continued.
Rating: NC17
Pairing: Kris/Adam
Word Count: ~14,000
Beta: The always lovely sbb23, who goes far beyond the call of duty to whip my fics into shape. What would I do without you? <333
Disclaimer: Not true. Not even a little bit. Not even at all.
Summary: To save his family's winery Kris accepts a surprise proposal from an old friend. Contemporary Arranged Marriage fic, just go with the flow, okay?
Notes: Written for kristina_bitch who asked nothing for over at the ontd_ai charity drive to benefit The Houston Area Women's Center. This is what happens when you don't leave me a prompt. I write 14k of arranged marriage fic and then force it on you on a whim. :P
Special thanks to realpestilence for the prompt, encouragement and hand holding, and to the kradio benches for always being there when I need them. <33333 Oh, and thanks to the peeps at Beepx3 who helped with the silly gifts and the wedding song. The wedding song never actually made it into the fic, but the title is kind of telling, dontcha think? ;)
Kris is having a bad day on top of a really shitty year and the last person he expects to see when he pulls up to Allen Winery is Adam Lambert, but there he is, sitting on the front steps with his long legs stretched out in front of him and his face tilted up towards the sun. Kris hasn't seen him in over a year, not since Kris had dropped out of American Idol, and it's been six months since he’d stopped returning Adam's calls.
Kris figured Adam would confront him about it eventually, but he couldn't have picked a worse day if he’d actually tried. Kris had spent all morning in an uncomfortable meeting with the bank only to be told what he already knew - they're all out of options and only a miracle will save Allen Winery from foreclosure at the end of the month. And now he has to go inside and tell his family that the winery that has been in the family for generations will very soon be the property of the bank, except there's a rockstar between him and the front door.
Kris parks his pickup next to the shiny black Mustang that must belong to Adam and slides the key out of the ignition. It would be a lie to say that he hasn't missed Adam. He’d kept up with Adam's skyrocketing career after winning American Idol as well as he could, but seeing him in person again is weirdly unsettling.
So much has happened since they’d last seen each other that Kris doubts that the instant connection they’d shared on Idol, the one the fans quickly dubbed Kradam, is still there, and somehow that adds another stone to the weight on his chest. Adam had gone on to live his dream, their dream, and Kris had been sucked back to the winery and his family, and while he doesn't regret his decision it kind of doesn't seem worth it right now when they're going to lose Allen Winery anyway.
"Hello there stranger," Adam says, when Kris finally finds the guts to exit the car, and he pushes himself up from the stairs, stretching his lanky frame out.
"Hi," Kris responds, trying but failing not to stare.
He’d forgotten how tall Adam was, and he seems even taller now with all the weight he lost. Everything about him is different, yet exactly the same, and Kris’s heart makes a few confused summersaults. He never did know what to feel around Adam.
"So… uhm…" Kris says, licking his lips nervously. "What are you doing here?"
The sun slants over Adam's face illuminating his wicked smile. "Actually," Adam says, "I thought I'd ask you to marry me."
Kris drops his car keys with the shock, twitching when they thud against the gravel. "Seriously?" he asks voice too high-pitched, even though he's almost certain Adam's joking.
"Yeah," Adam says, still grinning in the same unsettling way. "Seriously. I'll get down on one knee if you want me to."
Kris doesn't even know what to say. Adam looks slightly deranged with the way he smiles, but he doesn't seem to be joking. At the back of Kris's mind a tiny niggling little voice informs him that marrying Adam would mean the end to their financial problems and he promptly blushes almost crimson just for thinking it.
"Okay," Adam says. "That might have been a bit abrupt. Just hear me out, okay?"
"Okay," Kris says weakly, crouching down to pick up his keys just so he won't have to look at Adam.
"Why don't you show me around while we talk?" Adam says. "This place looks amazing."
"Yeah," Kris mumbles, giving Adam a glance. "It is."
If nothing else, giving Adam a tour will put off the inevitable for a few more minutes. It's not as if Kris is in a hurry to disappoint his whole family. Kris takes Adam around the house towards the vineyard, hyper aware of the hand Adam puts between his shoulder blades, and he dutifully points out the interesting things along the way, such as the press, fermentation vats, laboratory, bottling line, and tasting room.
"I'd become an alcoholic in a heartbeat if I had access to all this wine," Adam says, when Kris lets him look into one of the caves, the air inside cool and musty.
Kris shrugs. "I've been surrounded by wine my entire life," he says. "It's not something I drink to get drunk."
"Huh?" Adam says, still staring at the rows and rows of bottles. "Then what do you drink to get drunk?"
"Scotch," Kris says. "And lots of it." He kind of needs a stiff drink right now, actually, but he promised himself once that he wouldn't ever drink to bury his problems and so far he’s never broken that promise.
They continue the tour and while Adam asks a hundred questions, he doesn't actually mention the whole proposal thing again until Kris is about dying of curiosity. He knows, of course, that Adam's private life has been a subject of intense scrutiny in the gossip rags, and one scandal has been following another lately, ranging from naked photos of a much younger Adam leaking on the internet to ex-boyfriends selling their tell-all stories to the tabloids. Getting married kind of makes sense - if nothing else it would probably take the focus off Adam's private life for the time being - but getting married to Kris really doesn't, at least not in any way that Kris can comprehend.
"Okay," Adam says, when they sit down on a bench overlooking the vineyard with even rows of carefully kept grape vines stretching out before them. "I bet you're wondering why I asked you to marry me."
"You could say that," Kris says, kicking up dust with the toe of one of his sneakers. Inanely he thinks they’re the same sneakers he wore the last time he saw Adam, scuffed white converse hi-tops.
"As I see it we're both in need of a miracle right now. You need money to save all of this." Adam makes a sweeping gesture with his hand. "And I need to get married or my record company will drop me like a hot potato."
"Really?" Kris asks with a frown. It's pretty much impossible to turn on the radio without hearing an Adam Lambert song these days and Adam's album sales are off the charts.
"Yeah, well…" Adam scuffs his toes against the ground, covering his snakeskin boots (the same ones he wore the last time Kris saw him) and the lower edges of his skinny black jeans with clingy grey dust. "American Idol is a family-friendly show and the news about me lately isn't very family friendly. The record company's been great so far, but they have to draw the line somewhere and either I clean up my act or they drop me."
"Why me?" Kris asks, giving Adam a curious look.
They’d hit it off like wildfire during Kris's time on American Idol, their souls connecting through music and a shared sense of humor, but it was never a question of romance. Kris was still engaged to Katy at the time and despite telling Rolling Stone he had a crush on Kris, Adam never gave the impression that is was more than friendship to him either.
"Well," Adam says with a soft smile. "I like you, and even better, I trust you to not screw me over. Kissing and telling has been kind of a trend lately."
"Kissing," Kris repeats dumbly, because somehow he thought Adam was offering a marriage of convenience only.
Adam slants him a look and another wicked smile. "Oh believe me, honey, a sexless marriage was not what I had in mind. If you say yes and we do this, then it's for real."
Kris blinks and licks his lips reflexively. "I… uh… "
"You don't have to answer right now," Adam says, patting Kris's knee. "Just think about it, okay?"
"Uhm… yeah," Kris says, swallowing thickly. "I will." He highly doubts he will be able to stop thinking about it even if he wants to.
*
Everyone, from Kris's dad to his ex-fiancée, tells Kris he's insane for even considering it, but Kris can't stop thinking about Adam's offer. Maybe he doesn't really know Adam all that well and maybe marrying him will put Kris rather uncomfortably in Adam's debt, but it will save the winery and it's not like Kris is completely opposed to the idea of having sex with Adam.
Kris had always figured he wasn't exactly one hundred percent straight - in fact he wonders if such a thing even exists - and Adam's not the first man Kris has had confused feelings about. There was never anything romantic about their interactions during their time on Idol, or after, but it's not like Kris never thought about it. Adam has his own force field and it's practically impossible not to think about having sex with him when you see him perform - sexuality is such a large part of his stage persona.
For a week he goes back and forth between yes and no, changing his mind about three times a day. The thing is that when he thinks about turning Adam down, he feels as if he's making a huge mistake, but when he thinks about saying yes, he's scared shitless…but it doesn't feel wrong. His brother says it's probably because saying yes would save the winery, but Kris doesn't think that's the whole story.
He and Adam had just clicked from the first moment they met, and when Kris stopped returning Adam's calls it had nothing to do with jealousy, or resentment. It was simply because he didn't want to suck even a moment of joy out of Adam's life with his own misery. If he's honest with himself there was more than one night after things got difficult with Katy that he considered calling Adam and asking to meet just to get one of Adam's full body hugs, but he always stopped himself because he didn't want to be that guy and because he kind of thought that maybe Adam had moved on from their friendship once he stopped pushing.
Kris had given himself a week to think, but when he wakes up, way too early, on the morning of his last day, he still doesn't have an answer. He pulls on boxers and a t-shirt and heads to the kitchen to make himself some coffee only to find his mom already there.
"Morning, sweetie," she says without turning around when Kris enters, even though Kris can swear his bare feet didn't make a sound against the tiles. "Want some coffee?"
"Yeah," he says, gratefully accepting the cup when she holds it out. "What are you doing up?"
She smiles at him, reaching out to ruffle his hair. "I figured you'd be up early so I thought I'd be sneaky to get a chance to talk to you alone."
"Oh." He flushes slightly and sips from his cup. His mom is the only one that has yet to give her input on the situation. He thought that meant she wanted him to make up his own mind, but now he realizes she was just waiting for the time when her opinion would have most impact. He's got to give it to her, when it comes to mothering she surely has no rival in the known universe.
"Come, let's go outside," she says nodding towards the patio doors.
Kris follows her with a vague sense of trepidation. The thing about his mother is that she gives excellent advice, even if it's not at all what you want to hear. She was the one who told him to wait to get married until after Idol, and as much as he loathed it at the time, she was right. Even with him dropping out, he and Katy hadn’t made it, and he thinks that in her mysterious mother way she’d known they wouldn't last.
"Did you make up your mind yet?" she asks when they're seated in the hammock, swinging gently back and forth.
Kris shakes his head and sips at his coffee. He still isn't sure. She sighs and pats his knee.
"I'm not going to tell you what to do," she says softly. "I think you need to figure this one out on your own. I just wanted to tell you that it's okay to want it."
Kris blinks, turning his head to look at her.
"I know you," she says softly. "You'll always be my baby and I think that a large part of your struggle right now is the thought of what people might think when they find out you actually want it."
Kris flushes and looks down into his cup. "I like him," he says weakly. "I mean… I don't know if this is a good idea but…"
He trails off - it's almost impossible to explain the weird churn of emotions he experiences when Adam is near, because he doesn't understand them himself.
"Music was always such a huge part of your life," she says, running a hand through his hair. "But until this last week I haven't seen you touch your guitar in a year. I missed that part of you and if Adam brings music back into your life, then maybe he's the one you need to be with."
"I think that counts as telling me what to do," Kris says, slanting her a look.
She laughs. "And I thought I was being so sneaky."
He puts his head down on her shoulder and sighs. "I just don't know if I want my life all over the tabloids," he says. "You know they'll make this into a huge thing."
"A marriage is a huge thing dear," she says. "Besides, if you ever want to be a recording artist in your own right then you’d better get used to it."
Kris smiles and rubs his cheeks against the soft cotton of her shirt. She smells just right, like cinnamon and apples and lazy summer days.
"I'm going to say yes," he whispers.
"I knew you would, baby," she answers, patting his back. "I knew you would."
*
Kris sends Adam a text, he's too chicken to call in case Adam changed his mind, but despite it still being too fricking early in the morning, Adam calls within two minutes.
"Really?" he asks, sounding shell-shocked and ecstatic at the same time. "Really? You'll marry me?"
Kris laughs, and his stomach flutters weirdly. "Yeah, you loon. I dipped my fries in crazy sauce, okay? Let's do this."
Adam laughs too, obviously delighted, and Kris can almost see him before his inner eye. Adam has a great laugh.
"Okay," he says. "Okay, okay… So wow, uhm… fuck. I thought for sure you'd tell me to fuck off."
Kris snorts. "Yeah, well…" he says, "I guess you're stuck with me now."
It feels weird to say it out loud and he experiences a sudden case of vertigo that could be the start of a panic attack, but he's not exactly scared.
"I'll be good to you," Adam says, suddenly serious, as if he can sense Kris's discomfort. "I'll make it work."
"I believe you," Kris whispers, and strangely enough he does.
If someone had told him two weeks ago that he would be getting married to a man, Kris would most likely have told them to fuck off, but right now it doesn't seem so weird. There was always something boundary-breaking about his friendship with Adam and maybe, if Kris hadn't dropped out of Idol and then cut their ties, it would have grown into something more a lot earlier.
"There's so much to plan," Adam says and he sounds way too happy about it. "We need a wedding planner, and a location and clothes and oh my God where do you want to go for our honeymoon?"
"I… uh…"
"How about Greece? One of the islands? I don't think too many people there have heard of me yet." Adam laughs. "We'll talk about it later, okay? Oh and do you have a preference for a date? I'll be out of town for the next two weeks doing some international promo, but we’d better get this show on the road if we want to get married before next year. "
Kris's head is buzzing and he flails a little trying to come up with a proper response to Adam's flow of words, but luckily Adam doesn't really seem to need his input. He just goes on and on about flowers and clothes and bridesmaids and groomsmen in a way that makes Kris think he’s put a lot of thought into this.
"Oh," Adam says, sobering suddenly. "How are you doing… uhm… financially? Is there something that needs to be taken care of right now?"
Adam sounds kind of embarrassed to even be asking and Kris flushes, staring down at his bare feet on the floorboards.
"No, we're… uhm… we're good right now." They won't be for long, but Kris can't bring himself to say it. "I'll… uhm… I'll talk to the bank again."
The thing is that Kris might not even need Adam's money. The promise of a financially stable backer will probably be enough to give them the respite they need. The winery itself is producing well and they will have money coming in eventually, it's just been a really shitty year of bad timing, and unnecessary costs with his dad's medical bills to top it all off, and much like Adam's record company, the bank felt like they had to draw the line somewhere. They've been more than forthcoming for the last few months, but they're a business and at the end of the day it's all about money.
"Yeah, okay…" Adam hesitates for a moment. "Just… if you need anything tell me okay? It's not a big deal. I couldn't care less about the money."
Kris wonders what Adam would have said if Kris had turned him down and then asked for a loan. Somehow he thinks that Adam would have given him the money anyway and suddenly the whole marriage deal makes even less sense. Not that Kris is going to back down now, but it's food for thought.
"So when are you leaving and when do you come back?" Kris asks, because he kind of thought he'd get to see Adam again soon and maybe, just maybe, he was looking forward to it.
"Tomorrow morning, but if it's okay with you, I'll come by this afternoon."
"Yeah," Kris says relieved. "Yeah, that's okay."
"I thought… Well, my friend Jade is a wedding planner. She has her own business and I thought that maybe if it's okay with you that she could plan it. She just started and she could really use a high profile client to get the business rolling, but if you have someone else that's fine too."
"No," Kris says, rolling his eyes at the thought that he'd have a wedding planner lined up. "Sounds good to me."
"Great. I'll bring her along then."
"Okay," Kris says, squashing down the tiny pinprick of disappointment. They're about to get married, he's sure he'll have plenty of alone time with Adam in the future. "Will you be staying for dinner?"
"If you want me to," Adam says, sounding a bit tense all of a sudden.
"You don't have to if you’ve got things to do before you leave… I just thought that maybe you'd like to meet my family again."
"Of course," Adam says, way too fast and Kris smiles, suddenly realizing Adam's nervous. Serves him right, he's been far too composed about this thing.
"See you later then," Kris says cheerfully. "Dinner's around seven."
"Yeah… Okay. See you." Adam sounds nauseous and Kris can't stop grinning. Maybe it's incredibly mean of him, but he wants Adam to be nervous. It puts them on more even footing.
*
Jade doesn't look anything like Kris imagined a wedding planner would look like, but she does look very much like one of Adam's friends, and that's really all the qualification she needs in Kris's book. She's tall, taller than Kris anyway, and brightly colored tattoos climb up both of her bare arms. She's wearing a white tank top, baggy jeans and flip flops and her rainbow colored dreads are pulled back into a messy ponytail, but the card she gives Kris looks professional and the intimidating stack of folders and magazines she's carrying under her arm says she means business.
Kris is impressed and more than a little intimidated by her ability to take notes on her iPhone while walking and juggling her huge stack of things. Adam trails behind them with an amused look on his face while Kris tries to answer all her million and one questions about preferences. How is he supposed to know what he prefers? He's never gotten married before and some of the questions just don't make any sense.
Besides it's hard to focus with Adam so close, because whenever Kris looks at him he doesn't see a friend, or even a rockstar, he sees his future husband, and that's enough to make his heart stutter. After dumping all her things on the dining room table Jade demands a tour, and Kris gives her the same one he gave Adam a week ago, while Adam and Jade discuss venues in a way that makes Kris think they've talked about this before.
Every now and then one of them will ask him what he thinks, and he'll hem and haw and agree with whatever Adam's saying in the vaguest way possible. To his untrained ear all the venues on their approved list seem far too large and intimidating. He figured there'd be a certain amount of show involved in the proceedings, but do they really need a locale that seats two thousand people?
"We could always get married here," he says distractedly when they're walking back towards the house.
His parents and his grandparents before them all got married on the property, exchanging their vows underneath the great oak trees that sprawl towards the sky at the lower edge of the vineyard, and they've hosted other wedding parties as well, for friends of the family and distant relatives. Kris always thought he'd get married here, but that was before he said yes to Adam, of course. It takes him a moment to realize that he lost his companions and when he turns around he finds them staring at him as if he's grown a second head.
"It was just a suggestion," he says petulantly. He's one of the grooms, he should be allowed to make suggestions.
Adam tilts his head to the side and his eyes take on this soft edge that Kris would be sure he just imagined if Adam's voice hadn't been pitched to match them. "Do you want to get married here?" he asks.
Kris shrugs, breaking eye contact to look out over the estate. This is where he got his roots and if he's honest with himself this is where he wants to get married.
"I guess," he murmurs, flushing slightly. He's sure it doesn't mesh with whatever plans Adam and Jade have for the nuptials, but he also doesn't want to start the proceedings off with a lie. He looks up at Adam and Jade through his bangs to find Adam smiling at him and Jade looking around with a calculating look on her face.
"Okay," Adam says. "Then we'll get married here."
"Just like that?" Kris asks with a frown.
"You want to get married here," Adam says as if that explains everything and starts walking again, tugging Jade along by the arm.
"I… uh… thank you," Kris says when Adam catches up to him.
Adam just grins and slings an arm across Kris's shoulders, pulling him into Adam's side.
"I told you I'd make you happy," he says.
Kris doesn't recall Adam saying any such thing, but he appreciates the sentiment. He tangles his fingers in the back of Adam's t-shirt and allows himself to just be content. Maybe this will actually work out.
*
Jade leaves before dinner claiming she's got a previous engagement, so it's just Adam and Kris that sit down to dinner with Kris's family. Adam is quite obviously nervous, fidgeting with his napkin and bouncing his knee against Kris's under the table, but he answers all the questions directed his way with his usual easy charm.
Kris had told his dad and Daniel about his decision this morning, and while they weren't exactly happy about it, they didn't give him any grief either. He's kind of surprised about how much he wants them to like Adam and he can tell by the end of the night that at least Daniel has been completely won over by Adam's wit and his wild tales. It makes him happy because he would hate for things to get tense with his family over this.
After dinner Kris walks Adam out to his car and it's the first time they're alone together all day. The sun is setting, painting the sky a bright orange and Kris feels oddly nervous.
"You okay?" Adam asks, bumping their shoulders together and Kris shrugs.
"Just overwhelmed, I think," he answers.
Adam smiles and pulls his keys out of his pocket, resting a hand lightly on the roof of his car.
"It'll be okay," he says, twisting the long strands of the whip on his key chain around his fingers.
Kris looks up at him, captivated by the way the dying light illuminates Adam's face. He can't help but wonder what Adam's really getting out of this besides a concession to his record company. There must have been tons of other people Adam could have asked that would more than happily have taken Adam up on his offer.
"I… uh… I guess we'll talk while you're away?" Kris says, worrying at the hem of his shirt with nervous fingers.
"Of course," Adam says. "I have to warn you though, I suck at figuring out time zones so chances are I'll call you in the middle of the night."
"It's okay," Kris says. He figures that if they're to get married he'll have to get used to that sort of thing. The thought makes him feel warm inside and he reaches out to touch Adam's arm.
"I…" He cuts himself off, worrying at his lower lip. There are so many things he wants to say to Adam, but he doesn't even know how to begin. "I'm happy you asked me," he finally says, more than aware that his cheeks are turning pink.
Adam's smile makes the embarrassment worth it and when Adam reaches out to cup his face, Kris realizes this is what he's been waiting for all night. Adam bends forward slowly, obviously hesitant, and in the end it's Kris that locks their lips together, pushing himself up on his toes to reach, which ends with him crashing into Adam's chest caught off balance. Adam laughs, steadying Kris with his hands on Kris's shoulders.
"Easy," he says, smiling wide.
Kris would be affronted but then Adam bends down, kissing him again, and he forgets all about his bruised ego. Kris hasn't kissed a lot of people in his life, in fact he can count them on one hand with Katy being the most recent, and none of them even come close to Adam. It's overwhelming to be kissed with such determination, and Kris finds himself letting Adam take the lead without even meaning to.
Whenever he thought about this (and they were confused jumbled thoughts that never failed to make him blush even in the privacy of his own room) he figured that kissing another man would be weird, but it's really not at all. Adam's lips are more demanding than a woman's and the way he just takes charge is unfamiliar, but it isn't weird. It feels right.
Adam pulls back after one last lingering kiss with a soft smile on his face. "Was that okay?" he asks, and Kris nods in response because he doesn't trust his voice.
He's confused and turned on and a little scared, but somehow it feels good, as if this is exactly how he's supposed to be feeling. He reaches out to touch Adam's lips that are still slick with spit and slightly parted. He doesn't know why but the way Adam nips at his fingertip makes him shiver.
"I should go," Adam says, taking half a step back.
Kris follows, eyes focused on Adam's reddened lips.
"I have things to do."
Kris touches Adam's cheek, rubbing his thumb against the corner of Adam's mouth.
"I need to pack."
Kris moves his other hand to curl around Adam's shoulder, keeping him still.
"Uh… your dad is watching us from the front porch."
Kris whips his head around to find that Adam's telling the truth. His dad is watching them from the shadows by the front door and Kris's face heats up with embarrassment. He drops his hands from Adam's body and watches Adam's face drop with them. Adam masks it quickly with the flash of a smile and a head toss, but Kris still feels like shit.
"I'm sorry," he murmurs, ducking his head. "It's… I mean…"
"It's okay," Adam says quickly. "I understand."
Adam turns to open the car door, but Kris stops him with a hand to his arm. He doesn't know why, but it feels important to do this right.
"No," Kris says, nervous but determined. "It's not okay."
Adam turns back to him with a frown and Kris kisses him. It's just a quick peck on the lips but it's a statement and the way Adam smiles against his mouth makes it worth it.
"Have a good trip," Kris murmurs, hoping that the waning light hides his blush. "Call me."
"Believe me," Adam answers. "I will."
Adam squeezes his hand briefly and then he's opening the door and sliding into the car. Kris watches as Adam pulls out of the parking lot and he keeps on watching until Adam's car disappears out of sight before going back to the house. He thinks he needs to talk to his dad.
*
Kris finds his dad in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher with more clanging than is strictly necessary.
"Are you mad at me?" Kris asks, taking a seat at the table without looking at his dad.
The clanging continues uninterrupted and Kris sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face.
"I got close to Adam on Idol," he says. "Too close maybe, I don't know, and when things started getting difficult with Katy I thought that maybe Adam was a part of that."
The clanging stops, but Kris doesn't look up. He’s never told anyone this, he’s barely admitted it to himself, but maybe his dad needs to hear it.
"So I stopped returning his calls and I stopped answering his texts and even after I broke up with Katy I didn't initiate contact again, because I was afraid that if I did it would mean something. Something about who I am and what I want that I wasn't quite ready to accept." Kris licks his lips, trying to find a way to formulate his thoughts that doesn't sound crass.
"You wanted him." The statement is tired, but not surprised, and Kris finally looks up to find his dad watching him, eyes dark and intense in the dim light.
"I…" Kris bites down on his lip. "Yes. Yes, I did. I didn't want to, but I did."
Neil nods, bracing his hands on the counter behind him. "And now?"
Kris flushes, looking down on his hands. He’d never imagined he would have to come out to his dad, especially not after he agreed to marry another man. "I still do," he murmurs, the back of his neck heating up. "I love this place and I'd do just about anything to save it, but that's not why I said yes."
He jumps when a hand lands on his shoulder, and looks up to find his dad smiling at him. "Now that wasn't so hard, was it?" he says, and Kris almost chokes on his tongue. "I can't say I fully understand, but you'll always be my son and I'll support you no matter what you do."
Kris’s eyes feels suspiciously wet and he bites down on his lower lip. "I love you dad," he whispers, voice rough, and finds himself pulled out of the chair and manhandled into a tight hug.
"I love you too, son," Neil says. "I really, really do."
Kris buries his face against his dad's neck and hugs back hard. He didn't realize how much his dad's approval would mean to him and now that he has it, it feels as if a great weight has been lifted from his shoulders. He knows Neil wasn't happy about the way his accident changed the course of Kris's life and maybe this is his way of giving back. He can't go back in time and change the events of that fateful night over a year ago, but he can give Kris this, an opportunity to turn onto a new road without the guilt of having his father's disapproval hanging over his head. Whatever his reasons are, Kris is grateful.
*
Adam wasn't lying about not being able to figure out time zones. After the first couple of times he wakes Kris up in the middle of the night, Kris gives him his own ringtone and the sound of phone no longer gives him a heart attack. They have the most random conversations and Kris starts looking forward to his wake up calls even if they leave him sleep-deprived. They talk about everything and nothing, sometimes about the wedding, but mostly just about life.
They do however manage to set a date in mid-August and with some help from Jade, his mom and Katy, Kris manages to decide on an invitation design without freaking out too much about what Adam will think. Adam says that he trusts Kris to make the decision and Jade has a complete list of everyone to be invited, but Kris still freaks out a little. The fact that Adam trusts him with it just makes it worse somehow. Adam laughs when Kris tells him about it, but Kris can tell that it's a pleased laugh. He's got a pretty extensive catalogue of Adam's different laughs by now.
Three days into Adam's trip the first package arrives via FedEx, and Kris thinks it's something that has to do with the wedding, but it's not. It's a light blue t-shirt with My Boyfriend Went To London And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt printed across the chest. It surprises a laugh out of him and he can't stop smiling for the rest of the day, wearing it around the house. The next one arrives a couple of days after that, boasting the same message but this time it’s an odd shade of green, and from Berlin.
Before the two weeks are up Kris has four more t-shirts with the same message from Madrid, Stockholm, Paris and Oslo. They're in different colors too, ranging from black to a really obnoxious yellow. It takes almost a week before Kris can wear them without blushing every time someone comments, but he considers it his coming out and despite the few snide looks he gets around the winery, most people are actually nice about it.
Adam gets kind of quiet when Kris tells him about it and says that he didn't have to do that, which is just stupid. It's going to be all over the tabloids as soon as the news leak and Kris actually prefers to give the people he's known his entire life some warning before they catch it on the news.
All in all it's probably the weirdest two weeks of Kris's life, even more overwhelming than his time on Idol and the excruciating disappointment when he had to leave. There's just so much going on all the time with the winery, the wedding, and the never-ending process of coming out to everyone he knows. It's weird and dizziness-inducing and whenever he tries to just stop and breathe Adam calls, or there's some emergency that needs his attention.
When Adam finally comes home, Kris is so sleep-deprived he's nauseous with it and more than ready to hand over the wedding planning to someone that actually cares about what colors the bridesmaids wear. When Adam shows up he doesn't even stop to think, he just walks right into him, making Adam stagger backwards with his weight.
"Hey," Adam says, wrapping his arms around Kris's back. "Are you okay?"
"I just don't care if they wear green or blue," Kris whines into Adam's neck. "I really don't."
"We're going with blue," Adam says firmly and something in Kris's chest unwinds, making him feel like he can breathe properly for the first time in a week.
"Thank you," he murmurs, inhaling deeply. Adam smells nice - Kris didn't even know he knew what Adam smelled like, but he smells like leather, skin, sun and Dior Homme and Kris has missed it.
Adam chuckles and pats Kris's back. "Sometimes you're such a guy," he says.
Kris snorts and tilts his head back to look up at Adam. "Would you rather have me be a girl?"
Adam shakes his head with a smile curling his lips.
"Yeah, thought so," Kris says, smiling against Adam's mouth when Adam bends down to kiss him.
They're interrupted by Jade who shouts at them to come inside and help out. Kris is not sure how it happened but Jade has more or less moved in, setting up camp in the rarely used dining room, and now everyone is involved in the planning. He was grateful for the support in the beginning but after two weeks of every woman he's ever known nagging him about making decisions - not so much.
Adam makes all the difference though, and within an hour they suddenly have a color and a design for the bridesmaid dresses, a complete list of bridesmaids, a date for them to have their measurements taken and about three hundred other tiny, but apparently important, details ironed out. Kris's input mostly consists in serving everyone coffee and holding Adam's hand. He feels that’s more fitting to his skills when it comes to wedding planning and Adam's hands are really nice.
Sometime during Adam's absence Kris had decided to stop thinking so much and just go with the flow. Analyzing every little thing only gave him a headache, and he was tired of headaches. Now, sitting here in his dining room with Adam's fingers entwined with his, Kris not only doesn’t have a headache, he feels comfortable. It's really easy to imagine that this is the conclusion of a much longer courtship.
Adam stays for dinner again and by the time Kris follows him out to his car he's so beyond tired he hangs on Adam's arm to even keep upright. Jade had left about an hour ago, promising to come back early tomorrow morning, and Kris is of half a mind to ask Adam to stay. He probably would if the thought of being alone with Adam in his room didn't scare him nearly to death.
"What are the plans for tomorrow?" Adam asks, pulling Kris in with his free arm until Kris crashes into his chest.
"I have a meeting with the bank," Kris murmurs into the soft cotton of Adam's shirt. "And I guess we'll be doing some more planning?"
"I'll come with you," Adam says, running a hand down Kris's back letting it come to rest just above the swell of Kris's ass. "To the bank, I mean."
Kris wants to protest, but to be honest he's pretty sure Adam's presence will make his meeting with the bank go much smoother. He lets his eyes slip shut, resting his cheek against Adam's shoulder. He doesn't want to think about the bank, or the part of this wedding deal that entails saving the winery. It makes him feel cheap, as if his ‘yes’ doesn't mean anything when he's coming to realize that it probably means everything.
"I set up a meeting with my PR for tomorrow afternoon," Adam says, worming his fingers in under the edge of Kris's t-shirt to touch skin. "We need to start talking about how to handle the press, and I want you to meet my handler."
"Okay," Kris murmurs, even if the mere thought makes his stomach drop.
"And I was thinking maybe you could stay with me for a couple of days? There's a lot of people I want you to meet, you know, friends and family."
Kris hums in agreement. Adam's fingers are painting circles against his skin and Kris would pretty much agree to anything right now just to have Adam stay right where he is. Adam sighs, pulling Kris closer.
"I should go," he says.
Kris makes a sound of protest, tightening his hold on Adam's waist. "I missed you," he whispers, even if admitting it out loud makes his cheeks burn.
"Yeah?" Adam asks, sliding one of his hands up to tangle in Kris's hair, forcing him to look up. "I missed you too."
Kris is pretty sure neither of them makes a conscious effort to initiate the kiss, they just fall into it. He doesn't know how long they stay like that mouths sliding slick against each other and tongues tangling, but when he finally pulls back to suck in a breath, his pulse is whooshing in his ears and he's hard in his jeans.
He can't really see Adam's eyes in the dark, the lights outside the front door don’t reach across the yard and Kris forgot to turn on the lights by the parking lot, but he can see the slick glitter of Adam's lips curling into a smile that makes his breath catch in his throat.
"I'll see you tomorrow," Adam says, touching a hand to Kris's face. "Okay?"
"Yeah," Kris breathes. "Okay."
Letting Adam go is much harder than it should be, and he makes Adam promise that he'll text when he's home. The thought of Adam driving back to LA alone makes him nervous, but Adam doesn't ask to stay and Kris is too scared to offer. It's not until he's curled up in bed with the confirmation on his phone screen that Adam got home safely that he realizes he’s agreed to stay with Adam for a couple of days. The thought makes his heart trip all over itself and he falls asleep somewhere between being scared witless and elated.
Continued.