Fic: Our Soundtrack
Kris Allen unlocked and opened the door to his room and promptly tripped over a random sneaker.
Cursing a little under his breath, he flicked on the lights and shut the door lightly behind him before crouching down to pick up the sneaker. It was old and crusted in dried dirt, a small rip beginning to form near the big toe area. Kris stared at it for a moment, trying to remember where it had came from or if it was even his shoe. Then he stood up and glanced at the closet next to him.
Which, of course, was open for once; the top shelf of the closet was crammed with random junk that Kris had brought with him to American Idol but had never actually used. Kris replaced the sneaker, carefully placing a dictionary in front of the shoe so that it wouldn’t fall again. As he shifted the dictionary, something square and plastic fell from on top of it.
Kris shut the closet and picked up the plastic square. It was a CD case. Written in bold permanent marker in all caps were the words, “To Kris - From Adam.”
Kris plopped down in his chair in front of his laptop, twirling the case in his hands. He had forgotten all about this CD, and he had never played it before - but now he was going to, despite the fact that he was supposed to be rehearsing for the finale tomorrow night.
He inserted the CD in his laptop’s drive and pressed “Play”, reclining back in his chair and closing his eyes. When the opening chords to “Our Song” by Taylor Swift began playing, Kris opened his eyes and sat up straight, frowning at his computer. Adam hated Taylor Swift.
And then he remembered.
---
It was early March, the first week of the finals, and the top 13 would be singing Michael Jackson songs in just two nights. Kris was in his room, sitting on his bed with his iPod in his ears, his back to the door, so he didn’t notice when his best friend and roommate, Adam Lambert, entered the room. That is, until Adam bent low by Kris’s right ear and whispered, “Boo.”
Which, of course, sent Kris ricocheting off the bed, shrieking; the iPod fell to the carpet with him. Adam chuckled and helped Kris up. “You’re such a girl,” he said, shaking his head.
Kris blushed. “At least I don’t wear makeup,” he muttered feebly; he was still embarrassed that Adam had been able to scare him so easily.
Adam laughed again, placing his hand on Kris’s shoulder. Kris tried not to twitch or change the emotion on his face, but God, Adam’s hand was so heavy and warm. “Anyway,” Adam continued, apparently not noticing Kris’s slightly shaking lips, “I didn’t come in here to scare you.”
“You didn’t?” Kris mumbled.
“Nope, I just did that because it was the perfect opportunity,” Adam said, smiling; his hand was still on Kris’s shoulder and Kris prayed he wouldn’t start sweating. “I came in here to give you this.”
Adam took his hand from Kris’s shoulder to produce a CD case from his sweatshirt pocket. He pressed the CD into Kris’s hand; Kris could feel Adam’s fingers barely tracing his palm, and he had to force himself not to shiver. He glanced at Adam’s CD - written on the front in permanent marker were the words, “To Kris - From Adam.”
“It’s a mix,” Adam clarified quickly. “I just wanted to make a mix of, you know, good songs, that highlight our relationship as roommates.”
“Uh…thanks,” Kris replied, grinning at Adam.
“No problem…but listen,” Adam said, sounding slightly nervous now, “I don’t want you to listen to it now. Or this month. Or maybe not until this competition’s over.”
“Why not?”
“It…well…I just want it to be a surprise,” Adam said hastily, although Kris was sure he was lying. Adam snatched the CD from Kris’s hand. “Here, let’s just…let’s put it up here for now, we never go in here,” he said, wrenching open the door to the closet and throwing it up on the top shelf. “There.” He went to leave the room, but turned around and said to Kris over his shoulder, “By the way, when you do finally listen to it…the first song might seem weird, but just listen, okay?”
Kris nodded, a little puzzled, but more intrigued by this man than ever before. “Alright,” he agreed.
---
So that was what the “weird song” was. As “Our Song” faded out, Kris grinned. The entire time he and Adam had been roommates, Adam had complained that the two of them didn’t have a “roommate song.”
“Looks like you found it,” Kris muttered, reclining in his chair again and waiting for the next song to begin playing.
It was “You Found Me” by The Fray. Kris knew immediately what this song signified to Adam.
---
Kris walked into his room, ready to vent to Adam about how, once again, Anoop had taken his lunch without asking. Kris stopped short, seeing Adam’s bed empty and the chair next to Adam’s laptop vacant.
“Adam?” he called hesitantly.
“In here,” came a muffled voice from the adjacent bathroom. Kris pushed open the door and found Adam sitting against the tiled wall, his head buried in his knees. Kris rushed inside and crouched down near Adam, carefully placing a hand on his shoulder. “Adam?” he asked again, much softer this time. “Are…are you alright?”
Adam didn’t look up. “I don’t know,” he said into his knees.
Kris was nervous; he had never seen his roommate so distraught and upset. “What happened?”
A heavy silence fell for a couple of minutes; Kris wondered whether his question had been to invasive. As he opened his mouth to apologize, however, Adam spoke up. “My ex-boyfriend called. Jayce. The one who I was with for almost five years, and the one who broke up with me over a text message because he’d been cheating on me,” Adam said, his bitter voice breaking.
Kris felt a surge of hatred pass through him. He tightened his grip on Adam’s shoulder a little. “What’d he call for?”
“He apologized. Said he wanted to start things up again.”
“What’d you say back?”
Adam looked up for the first time; Kris was surprised to see his face looked quite composed compared to his unsteady voice. “I told him…I said I had still been in love with him even after he broke up with me.”
“Ah,” Kris said shortly. He didn’t know why he felt so disappointed all of a sudden.
“But,” Adam continued, “then I told him I had met someone else, and that I had fallen for this someone else, and that I was pretty sure that if this someone else and I got together, that this someone else wouldn’t hurt me like he did. Then I accused him of wanting me back because I’m on T.V. now. He hung up on me,” Adam laughed. Then he sighed, “But then I got to thinking…what if this someone else doesn’t like me? What if I’m just grasping on straws? What if this someone else and I never became something? Would I be throwing away another chance with Jayce for a guy who might not even like me? It got me so miserable.”
He and Kris sat in silence for a moment; Kris’s mind was racing. He was thrilled and anxious and sad, all at the same time. Finally, he said, “I think someone would be crazy to not like you, Adam.”
Adam smiled. “Thank you,” he said softly.
---
Kris let himself become absorbed in the song’s final chorus, marveling at how well it related to that day in the bathroom. It was the first time, but certainly not the last, that he had seen normally-put-together-and-composed Adam as vulnerable and raw. He had almost liked that side of Adam, except that Adam had been so miserable, so upset.
That was the moment Kris knew he wanted to be the one who made Adam happy again.
The Fray faded out, and Parachute’s opening chords to “Under Control” faded in. It took Kris a moment to associate this song with Adam before he remembered top 8 week.
---
Kris was backstage, although technically he wasn’t allowed to be; only the sound crew was backstage, because the final performer of the night - Adam - was singing.
And God, he was singing. He was vocalizing “Mad World” so perfectly, so smoothly, and yet so effortlessly, pouring his emotions into the song so intricately that Kris could feel tears prickling behind his own eyes. He cheered enthusiastically with the audience when Simon gave Adam a standing ovation - Adam had more than deserved it with that performance.
When Adam returned backstage a few minutes later, he looked around before his eyes landed on Kris. His face burst into a smile. “Hey!” he said. “Did you see that? That was…holy shit. That was amazing. I think I’m going to faint.”
“Well, I’ll catch you if you do,” Kris laughed. Adam was staring at him now. He cleared his throat. “You really were amazing, by the-”
Adam had grabbed his arm. “Come on.”
“W-What?” Kris stuttered, caught off-guard by Adam’s sudden movement. Adam was half-leading, half-dragging him down a hallway.
“I wanna show you something,” Adam said vaguely. Kris allowed himself to be dragged back to their room.
“Adam…this is our room,” Kris remarked, mentally slapping himself for sounding so stupid.
Adam didn’t seem to notice; he had pushed Kris inside, shut the door, and before Kris knew what was happening, Adam’s lips were on his, still perfectly made up, those same lips that had just crafted “Mad World” so beautifully…before Kris could react, Adam had stumbled backwards as if someone had just pushed him.
“Oh, God. I can’t believe I just did that.”
Kris tried to articulate words, tried to get sentences past his still trembling tongue, but this was obviously an impossible thing for his mouth to do. Adam took this silence to mean rejection. “Shit. I’m so sorry, Kris. I just…forget it,” he sighed, running a hand through his hair and exiting the room as quickly as he had entered it.
Kris thought about running after him, telling him there was nothing to be sorry about, that that kiss had been the most wrong and perfect and amazing kiss he had ever experienced, but he couldn’t. He stayed frozen against the wall, his mind and heart racing at what seemed like a million miles an hour.
When it felt like his legs weren’t made of lead anymore, Kris made his way over to his bed, sitting on it. His eye caught a yellow post-it note stuck to his pillow, and, as if in a daze, he picked it up and read the words that matched the song playing from his computer right now -
“I might as well write the words right on my face, that all I want is you.”
---
That had been their first kiss. Kris ran his tongue over his lips now, pretending he could still remember what it tasted like seven weeks later. Each kiss he had shared with Adam since then had been slightly different - from the almost hesitant one Kris gave Adam later that very night, reassuring Adam that there was indeed nothing to worry about, to the deep and passionate kiss Adam had given Kris just last week, when they both made the finale.
And then the next song began playing - “Shut Me Up” by Mindless Self Indulgence - reminded Kris of his personal favorite kiss with Adam.
---
It was top 5 week, a few weeks after Adam had first kissed him and he had kissed Adam back. In the past weeks, the two had decided to keep their relationship - if sneaking kisses when no one was looking constituted as a relationship - a secret, not wanting it to change the other contestants’ or the “Idol” audience’s opinion of the two of them together. It was proving to be difficult, though; with every kiss Adam gave him, Kris wanted more, and Adam - who, unlike Kris, was more experienced with putting his relationships out in the open - had expressed more than once that he wanted everyone to know that the relationship between them was more than just roommates.
It was Sunday night, and they were free from rehearsal for once. Adam was sitting at his desk, idly painting his thumbnail over and over again with a different color of nail polish. Kris was seated on his own bed, flipping lazily through a magazine.
“Can you stop that?” he asked irritably. “That smell gives me a headache.”
Adam grinned and capped the five nail polish bottles. “Whatever you say, babe.” Kris blushed and inched the magazine higher to hide his own grin. This prevented him from seeing Adam walk over and plop down next to him on the bed.
“How about I paint one of your nails?” he whispered, his breath hot in Kris’s ear.
“No thanks, I like them clean,” Kris bantered.
“I bet you do,” Adam smirked. “Just think about it. If you let me take your nail-painting virginity, it’d symbolize our courtship.”
“Our courtship? Is that what you call it?”
Adam shrugged. “I don’t really know, actually. What do you call this?” he asked, kissing Kris on the cheek.
“I don’t really know what to call it either, Adam. I mean…I really like…I really like hanging out with you, and talking to you, and being close to you and kissing you…does that make me your boyfriend? I mean, we’re definitely not just friends or roommates anymore, but we haven’t made anything totally official, right? I mean, one part of me wants to call you my boyfriend all the time, and feel like you belong to me, but the other part doesn’t want to because you might get bored with me as your boyfriend, and making it official makes it that much more official if you leave. And how do you define a relationship anyway? What does that even mean? How can you…” Kris’s voice trailed off when he saw the bemused grin on Adam’s face. “I’m talking too much, aren’t I?”
Adam laughed. “Yeah, I’ve never heard you talk that much. You started rambling,” he teased.
“Why don’t you tell me to shut up, then?”
“Kris?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
And then he attacked Kris with his fiercest kiss yet, sending the magazine flying out of Kris’s hands. Adam pushed him against the bed, digging his lips deeper, running his hands through Kris’s hair before placing them around his neck. And Kris was kissing back harder, if that was even possible, letting his tongue wander around Adam’s mouth, and his face smelled like make up remover and cologne and hair gel, and now his arms were around his waist, and this felt so good -
The two heard footsteps and a split second later, Danny Gokey had opened the door. Adam hastily stood up and said, “There we go, it’s dead. God, that was a gross spider.” He quickly fixed his tussled hair before turning to Danny. “Hey man. What’s up?”
Danny either hadn’t noticed anything or was pretending so. “Hey guys. Matt and Allison and I are meeting up for dinner - you guys wanna come?”
Kris glanced at Adam, their eyes communicating. Adam replied, “No thanks, you all go ahead without us. We’re pretty beat.”
After Danny had left, Adam looked at Kris, a naughty glimmer in his eye. “So…where were we?”
---
Kris could still feel his cheeks redden at the thought of that memory. Nearly getting caught had only heightened the thrill of kissing Adam, and more than once Kris wondered if Danny knew what had gone on in their room - the looks he gave Kris when Adam was nearby were a little too understanding.
That had also been the same night Adam had slept in the same bed as Kris for the first time. They had fallen asleep in each other’s arms, Adam’s nose buried in his hair. When Kris had woken up the next morning, breathing in the scent of Adam’s t-shirt, he could only think of Adam as one thing: his boyfriend.
Kris grinned as the next song began playing. It was “Fight For Love” by Elliott Yamin, another fellow American Idol alumni and one of Adam’s personal favorites.
Just then, the door burst open, and Kris instinctively shoved the CD case into a drawer. When he saw the intruder was just Adam, he laughed and pulled the case out. “Hey. I found your CD and I decided to listen to it.”
Adam shut the door, walked over to Kris and kissed him on the forehead before replying, “Yeah? How do you like it?”
“I love it,” Kris said softly, grinning. “The songs…they fit perfectly. Just one question though…”
“Shoot,” Adam said, idly twirling some of Kris’s hair in his fingers.
“Well, when you made this CD…it was months ago, before you and I had even kissed or anything. How did you know these songs would fit?”
Adam smiled. “I didn’t. When I first gave you the CD, only the stupid Taylor Swift song was on it, because it meant that I wanted us to have a song. Then, as the weeks went by and we started getting closer, I added more songs when you weren’t around. That’s why I didn’t want you to listen to it until now.”
“You’re a genius,” Kris stated, looking up and kissing Adam. Adam grabbed Kris’s hand and slid next to him in the chair, holding him as the last chorus of the song played.
“Some people fight for love
They stick with it, just can’t quit it
Some people hide from love
They run from it, ‘cause they don't want it
When you got a love and it's good like it should be
Makes you never wanna give it up
‘Cause you know that some people die for love
And I believe it's true ‘cause I'd do the same for you.”
Cursing a little under his breath, he flicked on the lights and shut the door lightly behind him before crouching down to pick up the sneaker. It was old and crusted in dried dirt, a small rip beginning to form near the big toe area. Kris stared at it for a moment, trying to remember where it had came from or if it was even his shoe. Then he stood up and glanced at the closet next to him.
Which, of course, was open for once; the top shelf of the closet was crammed with random junk that Kris had brought with him to American Idol but had never actually used. Kris replaced the sneaker, carefully placing a dictionary in front of the shoe so that it wouldn’t fall again. As he shifted the dictionary, something square and plastic fell from on top of it.
Kris shut the closet and picked up the plastic square. It was a CD case. Written in bold permanent marker in all caps were the words, “To Kris - From Adam.”
Kris plopped down in his chair in front of his laptop, twirling the case in his hands. He had forgotten all about this CD, and he had never played it before - but now he was going to, despite the fact that he was supposed to be rehearsing for the finale tomorrow night.
He inserted the CD in his laptop’s drive and pressed “Play”, reclining back in his chair and closing his eyes. When the opening chords to “Our Song” by Taylor Swift began playing, Kris opened his eyes and sat up straight, frowning at his computer. Adam hated Taylor Swift.
And then he remembered.
---
It was early March, the first week of the finals, and the top 13 would be singing Michael Jackson songs in just two nights. Kris was in his room, sitting on his bed with his iPod in his ears, his back to the door, so he didn’t notice when his best friend and roommate, Adam Lambert, entered the room. That is, until Adam bent low by Kris’s right ear and whispered, “Boo.”
Which, of course, sent Kris ricocheting off the bed, shrieking; the iPod fell to the carpet with him. Adam chuckled and helped Kris up. “You’re such a girl,” he said, shaking his head.
Kris blushed. “At least I don’t wear makeup,” he muttered feebly; he was still embarrassed that Adam had been able to scare him so easily.
Adam laughed again, placing his hand on Kris’s shoulder. Kris tried not to twitch or change the emotion on his face, but God, Adam’s hand was so heavy and warm. “Anyway,” Adam continued, apparently not noticing Kris’s slightly shaking lips, “I didn’t come in here to scare you.”
“You didn’t?” Kris mumbled.
“Nope, I just did that because it was the perfect opportunity,” Adam said, smiling; his hand was still on Kris’s shoulder and Kris prayed he wouldn’t start sweating. “I came in here to give you this.”
Adam took his hand from Kris’s shoulder to produce a CD case from his sweatshirt pocket. He pressed the CD into Kris’s hand; Kris could feel Adam’s fingers barely tracing his palm, and he had to force himself not to shiver. He glanced at Adam’s CD - written on the front in permanent marker were the words, “To Kris - From Adam.”
“It’s a mix,” Adam clarified quickly. “I just wanted to make a mix of, you know, good songs, that highlight our relationship as roommates.”
“Uh…thanks,” Kris replied, grinning at Adam.
“No problem…but listen,” Adam said, sounding slightly nervous now, “I don’t want you to listen to it now. Or this month. Or maybe not until this competition’s over.”
“Why not?”
“It…well…I just want it to be a surprise,” Adam said hastily, although Kris was sure he was lying. Adam snatched the CD from Kris’s hand. “Here, let’s just…let’s put it up here for now, we never go in here,” he said, wrenching open the door to the closet and throwing it up on the top shelf. “There.” He went to leave the room, but turned around and said to Kris over his shoulder, “By the way, when you do finally listen to it…the first song might seem weird, but just listen, okay?”
Kris nodded, a little puzzled, but more intrigued by this man than ever before. “Alright,” he agreed.
---
So that was what the “weird song” was. As “Our Song” faded out, Kris grinned. The entire time he and Adam had been roommates, Adam had complained that the two of them didn’t have a “roommate song.”
“Looks like you found it,” Kris muttered, reclining in his chair again and waiting for the next song to begin playing.
It was “You Found Me” by The Fray. Kris knew immediately what this song signified to Adam.
---
Kris walked into his room, ready to vent to Adam about how, once again, Anoop had taken his lunch without asking. Kris stopped short, seeing Adam’s bed empty and the chair next to Adam’s laptop vacant.
“Adam?” he called hesitantly.
“In here,” came a muffled voice from the adjacent bathroom. Kris pushed open the door and found Adam sitting against the tiled wall, his head buried in his knees. Kris rushed inside and crouched down near Adam, carefully placing a hand on his shoulder. “Adam?” he asked again, much softer this time. “Are…are you alright?”
Adam didn’t look up. “I don’t know,” he said into his knees.
Kris was nervous; he had never seen his roommate so distraught and upset. “What happened?”
A heavy silence fell for a couple of minutes; Kris wondered whether his question had been to invasive. As he opened his mouth to apologize, however, Adam spoke up. “My ex-boyfriend called. Jayce. The one who I was with for almost five years, and the one who broke up with me over a text message because he’d been cheating on me,” Adam said, his bitter voice breaking.
Kris felt a surge of hatred pass through him. He tightened his grip on Adam’s shoulder a little. “What’d he call for?”
“He apologized. Said he wanted to start things up again.”
“What’d you say back?”
Adam looked up for the first time; Kris was surprised to see his face looked quite composed compared to his unsteady voice. “I told him…I said I had still been in love with him even after he broke up with me.”
“Ah,” Kris said shortly. He didn’t know why he felt so disappointed all of a sudden.
“But,” Adam continued, “then I told him I had met someone else, and that I had fallen for this someone else, and that I was pretty sure that if this someone else and I got together, that this someone else wouldn’t hurt me like he did. Then I accused him of wanting me back because I’m on T.V. now. He hung up on me,” Adam laughed. Then he sighed, “But then I got to thinking…what if this someone else doesn’t like me? What if I’m just grasping on straws? What if this someone else and I never became something? Would I be throwing away another chance with Jayce for a guy who might not even like me? It got me so miserable.”
He and Kris sat in silence for a moment; Kris’s mind was racing. He was thrilled and anxious and sad, all at the same time. Finally, he said, “I think someone would be crazy to not like you, Adam.”
Adam smiled. “Thank you,” he said softly.
---
Kris let himself become absorbed in the song’s final chorus, marveling at how well it related to that day in the bathroom. It was the first time, but certainly not the last, that he had seen normally-put-together-and-composed Adam as vulnerable and raw. He had almost liked that side of Adam, except that Adam had been so miserable, so upset.
That was the moment Kris knew he wanted to be the one who made Adam happy again.
The Fray faded out, and Parachute’s opening chords to “Under Control” faded in. It took Kris a moment to associate this song with Adam before he remembered top 8 week.
---
Kris was backstage, although technically he wasn’t allowed to be; only the sound crew was backstage, because the final performer of the night - Adam - was singing.
And God, he was singing. He was vocalizing “Mad World” so perfectly, so smoothly, and yet so effortlessly, pouring his emotions into the song so intricately that Kris could feel tears prickling behind his own eyes. He cheered enthusiastically with the audience when Simon gave Adam a standing ovation - Adam had more than deserved it with that performance.
When Adam returned backstage a few minutes later, he looked around before his eyes landed on Kris. His face burst into a smile. “Hey!” he said. “Did you see that? That was…holy shit. That was amazing. I think I’m going to faint.”
“Well, I’ll catch you if you do,” Kris laughed. Adam was staring at him now. He cleared his throat. “You really were amazing, by the-”
Adam had grabbed his arm. “Come on.”
“W-What?” Kris stuttered, caught off-guard by Adam’s sudden movement. Adam was half-leading, half-dragging him down a hallway.
“I wanna show you something,” Adam said vaguely. Kris allowed himself to be dragged back to their room.
“Adam…this is our room,” Kris remarked, mentally slapping himself for sounding so stupid.
Adam didn’t seem to notice; he had pushed Kris inside, shut the door, and before Kris knew what was happening, Adam’s lips were on his, still perfectly made up, those same lips that had just crafted “Mad World” so beautifully…before Kris could react, Adam had stumbled backwards as if someone had just pushed him.
“Oh, God. I can’t believe I just did that.”
Kris tried to articulate words, tried to get sentences past his still trembling tongue, but this was obviously an impossible thing for his mouth to do. Adam took this silence to mean rejection. “Shit. I’m so sorry, Kris. I just…forget it,” he sighed, running a hand through his hair and exiting the room as quickly as he had entered it.
Kris thought about running after him, telling him there was nothing to be sorry about, that that kiss had been the most wrong and perfect and amazing kiss he had ever experienced, but he couldn’t. He stayed frozen against the wall, his mind and heart racing at what seemed like a million miles an hour.
When it felt like his legs weren’t made of lead anymore, Kris made his way over to his bed, sitting on it. His eye caught a yellow post-it note stuck to his pillow, and, as if in a daze, he picked it up and read the words that matched the song playing from his computer right now -
“I might as well write the words right on my face, that all I want is you.”
---
That had been their first kiss. Kris ran his tongue over his lips now, pretending he could still remember what it tasted like seven weeks later. Each kiss he had shared with Adam since then had been slightly different - from the almost hesitant one Kris gave Adam later that very night, reassuring Adam that there was indeed nothing to worry about, to the deep and passionate kiss Adam had given Kris just last week, when they both made the finale.
And then the next song began playing - “Shut Me Up” by Mindless Self Indulgence - reminded Kris of his personal favorite kiss with Adam.
---
It was top 5 week, a few weeks after Adam had first kissed him and he had kissed Adam back. In the past weeks, the two had decided to keep their relationship - if sneaking kisses when no one was looking constituted as a relationship - a secret, not wanting it to change the other contestants’ or the “Idol” audience’s opinion of the two of them together. It was proving to be difficult, though; with every kiss Adam gave him, Kris wanted more, and Adam - who, unlike Kris, was more experienced with putting his relationships out in the open - had expressed more than once that he wanted everyone to know that the relationship between them was more than just roommates.
It was Sunday night, and they were free from rehearsal for once. Adam was sitting at his desk, idly painting his thumbnail over and over again with a different color of nail polish. Kris was seated on his own bed, flipping lazily through a magazine.
“Can you stop that?” he asked irritably. “That smell gives me a headache.”
Adam grinned and capped the five nail polish bottles. “Whatever you say, babe.” Kris blushed and inched the magazine higher to hide his own grin. This prevented him from seeing Adam walk over and plop down next to him on the bed.
“How about I paint one of your nails?” he whispered, his breath hot in Kris’s ear.
“No thanks, I like them clean,” Kris bantered.
“I bet you do,” Adam smirked. “Just think about it. If you let me take your nail-painting virginity, it’d symbolize our courtship.”
“Our courtship? Is that what you call it?”
Adam shrugged. “I don’t really know, actually. What do you call this?” he asked, kissing Kris on the cheek.
“I don’t really know what to call it either, Adam. I mean…I really like…I really like hanging out with you, and talking to you, and being close to you and kissing you…does that make me your boyfriend? I mean, we’re definitely not just friends or roommates anymore, but we haven’t made anything totally official, right? I mean, one part of me wants to call you my boyfriend all the time, and feel like you belong to me, but the other part doesn’t want to because you might get bored with me as your boyfriend, and making it official makes it that much more official if you leave. And how do you define a relationship anyway? What does that even mean? How can you…” Kris’s voice trailed off when he saw the bemused grin on Adam’s face. “I’m talking too much, aren’t I?”
Adam laughed. “Yeah, I’ve never heard you talk that much. You started rambling,” he teased.
“Why don’t you tell me to shut up, then?”
“Kris?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
And then he attacked Kris with his fiercest kiss yet, sending the magazine flying out of Kris’s hands. Adam pushed him against the bed, digging his lips deeper, running his hands through Kris’s hair before placing them around his neck. And Kris was kissing back harder, if that was even possible, letting his tongue wander around Adam’s mouth, and his face smelled like make up remover and cologne and hair gel, and now his arms were around his waist, and this felt so good -
The two heard footsteps and a split second later, Danny Gokey had opened the door. Adam hastily stood up and said, “There we go, it’s dead. God, that was a gross spider.” He quickly fixed his tussled hair before turning to Danny. “Hey man. What’s up?”
Danny either hadn’t noticed anything or was pretending so. “Hey guys. Matt and Allison and I are meeting up for dinner - you guys wanna come?”
Kris glanced at Adam, their eyes communicating. Adam replied, “No thanks, you all go ahead without us. We’re pretty beat.”
After Danny had left, Adam looked at Kris, a naughty glimmer in his eye. “So…where were we?”
---
Kris could still feel his cheeks redden at the thought of that memory. Nearly getting caught had only heightened the thrill of kissing Adam, and more than once Kris wondered if Danny knew what had gone on in their room - the looks he gave Kris when Adam was nearby were a little too understanding.
That had also been the same night Adam had slept in the same bed as Kris for the first time. They had fallen asleep in each other’s arms, Adam’s nose buried in his hair. When Kris had woken up the next morning, breathing in the scent of Adam’s t-shirt, he could only think of Adam as one thing: his boyfriend.
Kris grinned as the next song began playing. It was “Fight For Love” by Elliott Yamin, another fellow American Idol alumni and one of Adam’s personal favorites.
Just then, the door burst open, and Kris instinctively shoved the CD case into a drawer. When he saw the intruder was just Adam, he laughed and pulled the case out. “Hey. I found your CD and I decided to listen to it.”
Adam shut the door, walked over to Kris and kissed him on the forehead before replying, “Yeah? How do you like it?”
“I love it,” Kris said softly, grinning. “The songs…they fit perfectly. Just one question though…”
“Shoot,” Adam said, idly twirling some of Kris’s hair in his fingers.
“Well, when you made this CD…it was months ago, before you and I had even kissed or anything. How did you know these songs would fit?”
Adam smiled. “I didn’t. When I first gave you the CD, only the stupid Taylor Swift song was on it, because it meant that I wanted us to have a song. Then, as the weeks went by and we started getting closer, I added more songs when you weren’t around. That’s why I didn’t want you to listen to it until now.”
“You’re a genius,” Kris stated, looking up and kissing Adam. Adam grabbed Kris’s hand and slid next to him in the chair, holding him as the last chorus of the song played.
“Some people fight for love
They stick with it, just can’t quit it
Some people hide from love
They run from it, ‘cause they don't want it
When you got a love and it's good like it should be
Makes you never wanna give it up
‘Cause you know that some people die for love
And I believe it's true ‘cause I'd do the same for you.”