fic: carry you home (1/1)
Title: Carry You Home (1/1)
Author: Starlight_1985
Pairing: Kris Allen/Adam Lambert
Rating: PGish
Word Count: ~3,500
Disclaimer: Don’t know. Never happened. All fiction.
Notes: Yet another ficlet featuring dancer!Adam and singer/celebrity!Kris. Dancer!Adam requested a bit of drama (although I don’t think this was quite what he had in mind, the poor thing!), but don’t worry too much about that. This is part of the Until the Dance Becomes Your Own universe, so you should probably read that first for some background information before reading this. This is a little slice of life ficlet that is set after the end of the larger story. As always, comments and feedback are much appreciated!
Summary: When the unexpected happens, it’s up to Kris to hold it all together and help Adam through his worst nightmare.
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It takes eleven long months, but only one big fashion crisis for Adam to officially move in with Kris. Kris knows that the decision to wait is not because Adam fears commitment; hell, Adam has been practically living with Kris since the start of their relationship, if the piles of shiny clothing strewn across the floor of the bedroom and out into the hallway and the insane amount of product in the bathroom are any indication. It is a comfortable arrangement - Adam sharing the spacious rooms of Kris’ house in the Hills, waking up to Kris’ adorably crooked mouth, his half-lidded, chocolate brown eyes and his mused hair in the morning as the sunlight streams in from between the open blinds and falls in ribbons across the sharp lines of Kris’ back; and falling asleep wrapped up in Kris’ sweat-soaked, sated, and blissfully warm body at night as the darkness bathes their bodies in easy, moonlit shadows - only returning to his condo (which he has come to think of as more of the walk-in closet of his dreams than a home) when he needs additional clothing or accessories to get him through the week. Sure, he forgets some things on occasion, namely socks and clean underwear; but when he forgets something important - a thick, black, studded belt with a large glittery skull for a buckle - it is only logical that he puts his condo up for sale, packs up his fabulous wardrobe (along with a few other necessities) and makes the move official.
Kris can still remember the day Adam told him the news. He had come home from a particularly grueling day in the studio, deadlines and high expectations weighing heavily upon his shoulders, to find Adam kneeling by the entrance of his walk-in closet, tape measure held tight between his teeth and hair falling haphazardly into his eyes, as he scribbled on a piece of paper. Adam had been so focused on the job at hand that he did not even notice Kris until Kris rapped calloused hands lightly on the frame of the door to get his attention. Then, Adam had bounded excitedly across the room, his smile lighting the path from the closet to Kris, slid one hand to the back of Kris’ head and welcomed him home with the firm pressure of his tongue and the teasing nips of his teeth. Only after Adam had kissed him breathless, Kris’ head resting against the wall as he fought to recover, did Adam divulge that he owned way too many clothes for the six drawers that Kris had so generously given him.
“So, what does that mean?” Kris had asked. “Do you want another drawer?”
Adam had smirked back at him, clearly amused, his fingers extending to trace Kris’ sculpted jaw line as he leaned down to look Kris in the eyes. “No, honey. I want a key. My own key. And half of your walk-in closet,” Adam said, but then he paused, head tilting to the side as he reconsidered. “Possibly more. But we’ll talk about that later.”
The move had been easy enough and Kris found that Adam, partner and official occupant, was not much different from Adam, boyfriend and unofficial house dweller. There were only three things that Adam had insisted on: half of Kris’ humongous walk-in closet (which turned out to be more like three-quarters because Adam needed lots of space to hang his innumerable jackets, rhinestone-enhanced shirts and bedazzled pants, while Kris could squeeze his plaid shirts, blue jeans and Converse into compact piles on a couple of the shelves), 500-thread-count blue satin sheets (which Kris had to admit felt a lot more luxurious against his skin after a hard day of work or a wonderfully intense night of play with Adam than his own cotton blend), and a photograph of two famous male dancers hanging over the fireplace in the living room. Kris is still not sure about the photograph, but he knows that Adam loves it; he loves it so much that he refuses Kris’ suggestion to hang it in the bedroom, telling Kris that the work of art should hang in the living room because dancing is living; dancing is when Adam feels most alive and most empowered.
It is a photograph of the world-famous ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov and the talented Rob Besserer, taken on the beautiful Cumberland Island in the early 1990s by Annie Leibovitz. Although Kris does not really understand the meaning of the photograph or what Adam hints of the hidden messages veiled behind the figures at the forefront, he can appreciate the simple beauty of the work. The splendor of the ocean and the sky take a backseat to the magnificence of the two dancers in the black and white image. They are engaged in a dance, but the dance is not a complicated one; it is simple and understated. Whenever he glances at the picture, Kris’ eyes are automatically drawn to the lines the dancers create with their bodies, and he wonders at all of the individual positions of their body parts that, when put together to form a whole, make up the existence of dance. Baryshnikov appears in mid leap above Rob with his legs in opposition: the left is extended with Besserer holding onto the curve of his ankle, and the right is bent at the knee, his right foot curved inward towards his left knee with the natural grace and fluidity that only a dancer can possess. Baryshnikov’s left arm is pointed down towards the sand and his right is extended, bent at the elbow, his hand up and his fingers together. His expression is calm and controlled despite the ferocity of the pose, and his eyes are mostly closed as he peers down from his lashes at Besserer. Besserer’s head is tilted back, looking up at Baryshnikov, his hand firm on Baryshnikov’s ribcage, fingers splayed out and supporting, as he steadies one muscular leg solid against the sand and leans forward on the other to maintain his balance. If Kris squints hard enough, he can see the thin line of the ocean behind them, can barely make out the waves crashing to the shore, but he doesn’t need a magnifying glass to decipher the soggy footprints the dancers left in the sand from practicing the lift; the shadows created by their interwoven bodies in the foreground; and the light of the horizon, bright and promising, in the background.
One day Kris will remember to research the photograph to see if there are any explanations given for the seemingly deliberate pose.
But not today.
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Kris’ biology teacher once told him that life was unpredictable, change and evolution were inevitable and that sometimes only the strong would survive when confronted with such instability.
Oddly enough, it is the first thing that comes to mind as Kris watches the action unfold in slow motion. The dancers are on stage, rehearsing some intense, intricate new moves with Brian, and Kris is dividing his attention between the captivating bodies swaying and gliding across the stage and the insistent, grating voice of one of the stage hands in front of him. He smiles as he watches Adam and Megan leap high in the air, their bodies in gloriously perfect tandem, before he turns his eyes to the small, brown-haired girl in glasses and tries not to look too bored as she explains the advantages of having six spotlights over four. He can feel an embarrassingly large yawn coming on and he is just beginning to cover his mouth with the soft sleeve of his sweater when he hears the short, clipped scream of pain from an achingly familiar voice and the loud gasps that immediately follow. The encroaching yawn stills halfway between his throat and his lips, becoming more of an open-mouthed expression of shocked disbelief and agonizingly slow comprehension, as he whips his head around to look up at the stage. Frozen to his spot, his hands clench into fists at his sides, silently willing Anoop and Lil to move aside, as his eyes search the stage, desperately trying to discern the source of that heart-wrenchingly awful noise.
It’s pointless because he knows it before he sees it. As much as his heart would like to believe that the scream did not come from Adam and that Adam is perfectly okay, merely lost in the mass of bodies crowding the stage and murmuring to one another, his brain knows that Adam and Megan were the only two dancers practicing at the time he heard the scream and the voice certainly did not belong to a female. Although Kris mostly hears Adam yell in moments of ecstasy and passion, he would recognize the sound anywhere, and he has an irrational fear that such memories will be forever tainted now with the pain and hurt interlaced in the tone of Adam’s voice today.
His legs are carrying him across the room on their own accord before his brain even realizes that the conversation with the stage hand is over and Kris is on the move. Pure instinct and fear are motivating him now and it’s mere nanoseconds before he reaches the foot of the stage and looks up to see Lil’s wide brown eyes looking down at him in sadness, her mouth pinched shut in silent worry, and Anoop urging him up onto the stage with wild eyes and one shaking hand.
On stage, Kris sees a strange blur of faces - some familiar, some not - and an amalgamation of body parts: the hands that reach out to him, pulling him through the throngs of people gathered in a circle; the feet that trip and stumble blindly in their rush to get out of Kris’ way; and a knee, red and swelling before his very eyes, two familiar hands clutching it desperately. And oh. Those are Adam’s hands. That is Adam’s knee.
Kris slides to his own knees beside him, reaches a hand out to fold over the top of one of Adam’s hands, pulling it away from his knee and interlacing their fingers. Kris brings his other hand to Adam’s cheek, encouraging Adam to turn his head so he can see his face and, when Adam tilts his head to the side and meets Kris’ eyes, Kris cannot help the little gasp that forces its way from his mouth as he sees the grimace spread across Adam’s lips and the small lines of hurt and worry on his forehead. What makes it even worse are the tears filling up Adam’s eyes: a thin, vulnerable layer of crystal clear liquid clouding the sparkling blue irises and threatening to spill down over his lashes like tiny drops of rain. They are tears of pain, but there is something else there - something that scares Kris because he has never seen such an emotion reflected in Adam’s eyes: fear. And all at once Kris knows - even before the tour doctor arrives, clucking his tongue as he prods gently at Adam’s fluid-filled knee - that this is bad; it is Adam’s bad knee: the knee he had hurt while dancing at Juilliard.
Vaguely, Kris hears Megan telling the doctor that Adam’s knee just gave out in mid leap. He hears the doctor asking Adam if he heard a pop when he fell and he feels Adam’s hair brush across his cheek as he nods in response. When the doctor asks if he can bend his knee, Adam clutches Kris’ hand desperately as he tries, and his fingernails bite into Kris’ palm, a choked cry bubbling from his lips as a quick flash of pain shoots up his calf and settles into a sharp ache just behind his knee.
What is this? Kris thinks as he tries to reconcile the image of the fallen, incapacitated dancer on the floor with the image of the powerful and graceful dancer that twirls confidently across Kris’ stage and glides flirtatiously over the silken sheets in their bedroom to entwine his body with Kris’ own.
When the doctor insists that they take Adam to the hospital, Kris and Anoop help lift him to his feet, their arms wrapping around his back as they support his weight; Adam hunching over to prevent putting any pressure on his bad leg. Kris can’t help himself from brushing a lock of sweaty hair back from Adam’s forehead and placing a tender kiss against his temple as they slowly make their way off of the stage. When they reach the area where the black curtain separates the stage from the back, Adam tries to muster up enough energy to give Kris a reassuring smile, but Kris watches as it comes out more fragile and weary than Adam intended. Leave it to Adam Lambert to try to comfort those around him, even when he is so obviously in pain and deserving of comfort, himself.
They stop so Anoop can lift the edge of the curtain, and Adam twists his head to glance back at the rest of the dancers still milling about with the production team in stunned silence on the stage.
“Hey, bitches!” Adam calls. “Don’t start slacking off just because I won’t be here for the rest of practice. You better work!” Adam stumbles a bit, fighting to keep his balance on one leg as Kris and Anoop guide him through the curtain. “And don’t worry about me. I’ll be back tomorrow!”
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He is not back tomorrow.
He is not back the day after tomorrow, nor three weeks later.
A torn ACL is the official diagnosis; surgery and physical therapy the recommended treatments. Although Adam nods bravely at the prognosis, Kris detects residual apprehension in his eyes; watches the way he picks nervously at the remaining black polish on his fingernails; notices how his eyes shift from the emergency room doctor to Kris, before settling on the swollen joint that has failed him for a second time.
Outwardly Kris is calm, strong façade firmly in place as he holds Adam’s hand, telling him that everything is going to be alright as he brings Adam’s fingertips to his mouth and allows his lips to say what his voice cannot. But inside, Kris is an anxious, terrified mess, willing the doctor, the hospital, the universe to understand that Adam is dance. He lives it. He breathes it. It’s carved into his bones like the surgical scar marks engraved into Kris’ skin. Sure Adam, the person, is just as fabulous and just as wonderful as Adam, the dancer, and Kris’ love for him knows no limits. But Kris knows that Adam is happiest when he is dancing, a free spirit moving to the rhythm of the music without any regard for life’s constraints or presupposed boundaries. Without such a creative outlet of expression, the Adam whom Kris has come to know and love would fade away, his sparking existence dulled by a fog of unhappiness. Right then and there, Kris vows to never let this happen.
He uses every ounce of strength left inside of his small body and holds onto every last smidgen of lingering hope during the next several months to help Adam through the surgery and physical therapy. When Adam asks the doctor if he will ever be able to dance again and the doctor responds with a noncommittal, “Most people are able to dance again after the surgery and therapy, but there is always the chance that your knee will never be the same,” Kris watches the doctor leave the room before he turns to Adam and says, “Fuck him. He doesn’t know you, Adam. He doesn’t realize your strength and determination. Of course, you’ll dance again. You’ve defied the laws of gravity with your leaps and the laws of motion with your infinite revolutions. Why wouldn’t you defy the laws of science and medicine?”
When Adam has the surgery, Kris sneaks into the hospital room shortly after (even though Adam is not allowed visitors yet), dragging a familiar face with a shock of bright red hair behind him and he looks on as Adam’s eyelids flutter open and his mouth parts in surprise as Allison flings herself at him; and, when Adam’s arms are filled with Allison’s tiny body, Kris watches as Adam hooks his chin over her shoulder, blows a piece of thick, red hair out of the way and levels a look in Kris’ direction, silently mouthing an “I love you” across the room that makes all of Kris’ planning and sneaking around worthwhile.
When Adam has to wear the leg brace for several months, it’s Kris who suggests gluing some rhinestones and blue glitter to the plain, ugly, black supportive aid, adding some sparkle and pizzazz to the new fashion accessory that travels with them everywhere.
When Adam realizes that he will have to sit out for the remainder of the tour and Kris catches him sitting in front of the stage one day during rehearsals, his injured leg propped up on a chair in front of him and his lips silently counting the beats that Brian calls out to the dancers, Kris pulls Brian aside and asks if he could use an assistant choreographer: one who couldn’t exactly demonstrate the steps, but one who would put all of his creative energy and natural talent into developing one hell of a show.
When Adam decides that he cannot take the handholding anymore and blows up at anyone who tries to prevent him from walking - or, worse, tries to help him walk - Kris suggests a stroll through the backstage hallways, letting Adam set the pace as he follows slowly alongside him. He smiles when Adam stops walking, his hands maneuvering Kris back against the white wall, bracketing Kris’ body with his own. Their mouths meet desperately, Adam’s tongue plundering through Kris’ lips and sliding deliciously against Kris’ own tongue as their groans echo through the deserted hallway before Adam stumbles and Kris has to pull his mouth away and catch Adam underneath his arms, steadying him.
“I don’t need anyone…” Adam starts.
“I know,” says Kris, placating him.
“…But you,” finishes Adam. “You will catch me if I fall, won’t you?” He’s joking, but Kris can hear the underlying sincerity behind Adam’s comedic tone.
Kris quirks an eyebrow, looking up at him. “I just did,” he says, his smile gentle as he brings Adam’s mouth closer to his, pausing just as he feels Adam’s bottom lip brush warmly against his own and continues in a whisper, “And I always will.”
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Several months later, Kris returns from an appointment to see Adam cautiously practicing arabesques in their basement, extending one leg straight out behind him, as he balances on the other leg while extending his arms. Kris gazes at him quietly from the stairs; watches as Adam regains some of his lost confidence, becoming comfortable once again with the familiar body movements and positioning of his limbs. It is one of the most beautiful things that Kris has ever seen: Adam at home again after long, painful months of being separated from his craft and unsure whether such separation would result in reunification or divorce. Kris could stand in that very spot and watch Adam dance for hours, but he doesn’t because Adam notices him and his fluid movements grow shaky as he breaks from his formation, turning his attention to Kris.
“So I’m not there yet,” Adam says as he regains his balance, “But I will be soon.”
“I know,” smiles Kris.
And Kris does know. He knows that the stubborn, insistent, talented dancer will spend every waking hour relearning his body’s limitations; he will force his limbs to comply with the messages sent from his brain and he will get back on that stage, showing Kris (and the world) what a little determination and a whole lot of love can do.
That night, Kris watches as Adam passes by the Leibovitz photograph, smiling as his hands trace over the gold ridges of the frame surrounding the image, and Kris decides to pick up his laptop and search for information about the picture. The picture is so well known that it doesn’t take long for Kris to find what he is looking for - a short blurb that describes the image now burned behind his eyelids.
A favorite portrait of dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov. It was taken on the beach during rehearsals for a new dance by choreographer Mark Morris. Baryshnikov is posed as if in a leap, but is being held up by another dancer.
And, below the description, a quote from the photographer:
"What's beautiful about this photograph to me is Mark Morris was creating this dance for Baryshnikov," Leibovitz recalls. "Misha's knees were gone. His leaps were over. And it is such a beautiful thing that Mark gave Baryshnikov. He gave him Rob Besserer to pick him up and carry him across the stage."
Finally, Kris gets it.
Every Baryshnikov needs a little Besserer to support him when times get tough; to carry him home when his own legs cannot.
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*Author’s note: The picture by Annie Leibovitz of Baryshnikov and Besserer is real. You can view it here, if you want. The quote is also real, which is kind of funny because I had decided on the premise and the picture before I found the quote. Then, everything just came together. I love it when that happens.
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