fic: cadenza.
title: cadenza.
author: conditionelle
pairing: Kris/Adam.
rating: PG-13, for language.
summary: don't think about blue, a blue he can drown in, Pacific-ocean-blue and the precise hue of a pool-on-loan one sun-dappled April day - too late.
notes: for this prompt: Katy finds out and makes Kris choose between her and Adam. This is terribly vague, and most likely not at all what you wanted. My apologies.
If you love me you wouldn't do this.
She snorts in disbelief and he bites his tongue, fuck fuck fuck what did I just say why did I just say that, reaches out to try and soften the blow of his own selfishness/hypocrisy but his hand inevitably recoils before she even reaches out to brush his empty gesture away, a challenge he can't meet so he disappoints her twice. Her eyes are like stone, a sphinx's eyes hiding a woman's secrets, hard and inscrutable, hazel against translucent china-white (don't think about blue, a blue he can drown in, Pacific-ocean-blue and the precise hue of a pool-on-loan one sun-dappled April day - too late).
He swallows, voice gone south for the holidays, feels the waves of her love-hate-heartbreak tear more jagged edges at his self-loathing, never thought it'd be possible to hate himself so much. Feels small, a little boy playing house with his little sweetheart and these can't be real consequences, this can't be real, she's not asking him to choose (does that mean she could forgive him if - if! it'd be so simple! - but how does that even work, how does she love him that much and how does he get out of this without hurting her any more) and he's not hurting her again. He knows that much. He can't do this to her again. He can't and he won't and-
-and he's still doing it by hesitating and she should be in his arms and he should be on his knees apologizing, declaring his love, promising, never again. But I'm sorry isn't good enough. I'm sorry is:
I don't deserve you
you're going to hate me
I wish I could be the man you think I am
you can't actually want to hear me say the words
It's a nightmare scenario. It's not at all the way this was supposed to go.
(What'd you expect?)
And Kris gasps awake at 5AM in his car, guitar case in the backseat and Adam's too-large leather jacket over his shoulders. Instinctively he nuzzles in deeper as the world settles into place, wishes as soon as it does so that he's anywhere but here (twenty minutes away from Little Rock National) and pretends he can smell California lurking somewhere beneath the heady overtones of worn leather.
It's not a decision he makes. It's a decision that he walks into, a foregone conclusion with only the semblance of choice in his hands.
(Last night is five hours and forty-seven minutes behind him and Adam is one phone call away; if there is one thing the competition has taught him, it's to not look back and dwell.)
When it stops hurting (when he stops hating himself) this much, when he can think of what to say (when his teeth stop chattering from anything and everything but the cold), he knows what he'll do: he'll dial the numbers etched into the whorls of his fingertips. He'll thank Katy for making it easier to let her go (by not needing to be held) even now, and love Adam a little bit more for making him come home and face the music one way or another.
If it makes him less of the man that he had hoped he could be, then he's just going to have to learn how to live with that. He knows where he's going, and he's the only one who knows how - and when - he'll get there.
If he's to be absolutely honest with himself - Kris wouldn't have it any other way.
author: conditionelle
pairing: Kris/Adam.
rating: PG-13, for language.
summary: don't think about blue, a blue he can drown in, Pacific-ocean-blue and the precise hue of a pool-on-loan one sun-dappled April day - too late.
notes: for this prompt: Katy finds out and makes Kris choose between her and Adam. This is terribly vague, and most likely not at all what you wanted. My apologies.
If you love me you wouldn't do this.
She snorts in disbelief and he bites his tongue, fuck fuck fuck what did I just say why did I just say that, reaches out to try and soften the blow of his own selfishness/hypocrisy but his hand inevitably recoils before she even reaches out to brush his empty gesture away, a challenge he can't meet so he disappoints her twice. Her eyes are like stone, a sphinx's eyes hiding a woman's secrets, hard and inscrutable, hazel against translucent china-white (don't think about blue, a blue he can drown in, Pacific-ocean-blue and the precise hue of a pool-on-loan one sun-dappled April day - too late).
He swallows, voice gone south for the holidays, feels the waves of her love-hate-heartbreak tear more jagged edges at his self-loathing, never thought it'd be possible to hate himself so much. Feels small, a little boy playing house with his little sweetheart and these can't be real consequences, this can't be real, she's not asking him to choose (does that mean she could forgive him if - if! it'd be so simple! - but how does that even work, how does she love him that much and how does he get out of this without hurting her any more) and he's not hurting her again. He knows that much. He can't do this to her again. He can't and he won't and-
-and he's still doing it by hesitating and she should be in his arms and he should be on his knees apologizing, declaring his love, promising, never again. But I'm sorry isn't good enough. I'm sorry is:
I don't deserve you
you're going to hate me
I wish I could be the man you think I am
you can't actually want to hear me say the words
It's a nightmare scenario. It's not at all the way this was supposed to go.
(What'd you expect?)
And Kris gasps awake at 5AM in his car, guitar case in the backseat and Adam's too-large leather jacket over his shoulders. Instinctively he nuzzles in deeper as the world settles into place, wishes as soon as it does so that he's anywhere but here (twenty minutes away from Little Rock National) and pretends he can smell California lurking somewhere beneath the heady overtones of worn leather.
It's not a decision he makes. It's a decision that he walks into, a foregone conclusion with only the semblance of choice in his hands.
(Last night is five hours and forty-seven minutes behind him and Adam is one phone call away; if there is one thing the competition has taught him, it's to not look back and dwell.)
When it stops hurting (when he stops hating himself) this much, when he can think of what to say (when his teeth stop chattering from anything and everything but the cold), he knows what he'll do: he'll dial the numbers etched into the whorls of his fingertips. He'll thank Katy for making it easier to let her go (by not needing to be held) even now, and love Adam a little bit more for making him come home and face the music one way or another.
If it makes him less of the man that he had hoped he could be, then he's just going to have to learn how to live with that. He knows where he's going, and he's the only one who knows how - and when - he'll get there.
If he's to be absolutely honest with himself - Kris wouldn't have it any other way.