Chain and Feather, 1/3
Title: Chain and Feather
Pairing: Adam/Kris
Word count: 24,300
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Sex without love is a compromise that’s rarely cost Adam more than fleeting regret. Love without sex, no surprise, isn’t in his nature at all.
Warnings: Angst, weed
Disclaimer: Pure imagination. No disrespect intended.
Author's note: anya7lee, if the title rings a bell, that's no coincidence, bb. <3 Additional notes at the end of the story.
Chain and Feather, Part One
Words Adam lives by: Chase only the things that will make you happy. A married man should’ve been an automatic exclusion to the rule, but then, Adam wasn’t the one who did the chasing. He only turned to meet Kris with outstretched arms, rather than running away.
Summer 2009
Adam holds Kris’s hand during the phone consultation with the lawyer and watches their happiness recede in Kris’s eyes. Eighteen months. That’s how long it takes to get a no-fault divorce in Arkansas. “Buckle of the Bible Belt,” Kris explains afterward. In this, he’s the worldly one, and Adam naïve as only a child of West Coast liberal parents can be. “Sanctity of marriage and all that.”
“Jesus. Sorry.”
“In a nutshell,” Kris agrees, unoffended. “Plan B, I let her file on grounds of adultery-- ”
“Which you haven’t actually committed,” Adam points out. Finally, their restraint counts for something. A thin layer of protection for Kris. One less juicy morsel for the tabloids, though less than a year of marriage and former worship leader will give them plenty to sink their teeth into.
Kris’s crooked grin means flippancy, but it means business, too. “That’s easy to fix.”
Too easy. Even now, Adam’s senses are all tied up in proximity. They’re alone in a hotel room, and Kris’s hair smells like complimentary lavender shampoo, and their knees are touching, and Kris’s leather cord bracelet is a lighter brown than the fine hairs on his forearm. Adam gives the only possible answer. “Unlike your career, which would be over before it began.”
“Yeah, probably.”
There’s no probably about it, but if Kris isn’t hellbent on blowing the opportunity of a lifetime, he isn’t ruling out that option, either. Adam is almost relieved by the intervention of a higher authority than the Ten Commandments. The combined forces of Jive and 19 hand down their own decree to their newly crowned American Idol: Thou shalt not tarnish thy marketable image with gay scandal.
“Here’s how we’re going to handle this,” the emergency briefing starts off. It’s a simple strategy: invisibility. No bromance, no love story, no blind items, no bribed hotel maids telling all, no paparazzi photos of Kris leaving Adam’s house in the same clothes he wore the night before. No contact in public. No contact in private, because there’s no such thing as private in the world Adam and Kris now inhabit.
Kris speaks up. “You mean I don’t get to come out on the cover of People?” Adam smiles, more at Kris’s force field of serenity than at the joke. The suits aren’t amused, and the glance Adam and Kris exchange across the table is clearly the biggest faux pas of all. Kris’s manager launches into a grim-faced lecture about middle-America record buyers, the conservative mentality of station managers, and the challenge of launching any new artist, never mind one with “extraordinary PR challenges.”
It’s not that Adam and Kris don’t understand. But compared to the challenges they’ll face behind the scenes--for two full years, now, under management’s plan--PR is nothing. Adam has an instinctive grasp of the image game, and Kris wins at not taking it seriously.
Kris fights back, though, when they insist that he keep wearing his wedding ring until the divorce is final, “to show respect.”
“You mean so people will think we might get back together,” Kris says flatly. “Look, I’m not pretending to be a saint here. Obviously. I’ll tell all the necessary lies. But I’m not going to-- ”
“It’s OK,” Adam interrupts, surprising himself. He’s still getting acquainted with the person love has made of him: a more generous Adam, softer, calmer; but a little ruthless, too, with a sharper knack for essentials. “It’s just a symbol. The only meaning is what you put into it.”
That settled, they’re dismissed to board a tour bus with six de facto chaperones and then, three months later, to part, as though the entwining of two people were any more reversible than an epiphany or a chemical reaction. Work is Adam’s salvation. But all the time not consumed by promotion, performing, and awards-show debacles is spent trying to convince his heart that there is such a thing as a temporary separation. It’s not forever. No reason to break.
“Surreal,” he sums up his new life for the media, picturing a bunch of executives huddled at a conference table, defusing his relationship like a bomb.
Summer 2010
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
You’re known for dreaming big, Aquarius. When you follow through with hard work and a positive attitude, there’s no such thing as an unattainable goal. Your current project is no exception. If that glittering vista on the horizon never seems to get any closer, take a look behind you. You might be surprised at how far you’ve come.
--
Conversation between them is easy, riffing and vibing, a rhythm they fell into almost as soon as they met. But now there are pauses once filled by the shortcut of a glance or the punctuation of a touch. Before, it all flowed together so naturally that Adam never realized how much of their communication was nonverbal--the gestures not necessary for understanding, but necessary nonetheless.
Snug in his sanctum at the back of the bus, Adam says, “Tell me something you did today.” If they were sharing this bed, he’d brace himself on one arm to look down into Kris’s face. To covet the lower lip that always looks like they’ve just made out for hours.
“I had an interview,” Kris begins. At this point he’d be pulling off his glasses--his sex glasses, Adam calls them, because he’s susceptible to them the way straight guys are susceptible to schoolgirl uniforms. “A radio station thing. The girl thought it would be cute to play a word association game.”
“I think I see where this is heading,” He would’ve picked up the clue of Kris’s raised eyebrow, a gesture borrowed from Adam himself. Raised eyebrows, actually. Kris has yet to master the single.
“I’m like, sure, and we’re moving along, Twizzlers, Simon Cowell, guitar, blah blah blah.” Kris would be tracing patterns on Adam’s chest, musical notes, maybe. “And then she hits me with, you guessed it, Adam Lambert.” Here Kris would lift his eyes dramatically to convey shocking plot twist. “Maybe I’m paranoid, but I could swear she was looking for a reaction. So the clock is ticking, and my mind is blank except for incriminating naked things. Finally, after about five minutes, I come up with-- ”
“Wait, let me guess. Eyeliner? No shame? Best kisser of your experience?”
“None of the above. Tall.”
Adam would break out what Kris refers to, in capital letters, as The Look. “Seriously? That’s . . . factual.”
“Boring is what we aim for, right? Nothing to see here. But before I knew your name, or heard you sing, I thought of you as the tall guy. Which to me meant the hot guy. Because I really noticed,” here the eyebrows would rise again, “that you were a lot taller than me. So maybe my subconscious fielded that one after all.”
“I’m liking this more and more,” Adam says, though by rights Kris’s hand should be trailing low on his stomach, making a good case for wrapping up story hour.
“OK, your turn,” Kris says from thousands of miles away. “Word association, Kris Allen. Go.”
Mine, he would say, leaning in for a kiss that allowed no argument. “I miss you so much,” he blurts out, the ache of it undiminished after eight months.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
--
Sex without love is a compromise that’s rarely cost Adam more than fleeting regret. Love without sex, no surprise, isn’t in his nature at all.
“You’re about to explode too, right?” he demands of Kris. “It better not just be me. If you’re a sex camel, I’m going to rethink our compatibility right now.”
“Sex camel? Is that a position from the gay Kama Sutra?”
Adam laughs. This is why he likes to vent, for the sake of their banter, the trade-off groove that makes him overflowingly happy in spite of everything. “It could be, for all I know. We’ll have to research that.”
“You’re harshing my fantasy life, man. I thought for sure you had that memorized. You being the master of pleasure and pain and all that.”
“Master of my right hand is more like it.”
As expected, Kris heaps on more snark rather than the sympathy Adam deserves. “We could make it our thing. Not having sex. Get matching purity rings.”
“Abstinence and accessories? Where do I sign up?”
“It is a pretty good deal, actually.” Tongue still in cheek, Kris takes the opportunity to further Adam’s religious education. “When they try to get you to take the pledge, they don’t just hit you with the sin angle. They tell you that the wait, the buildup, practically guarantees mind-blowing sex when you finally get to do it.”
The concept has a certain appeal. Desire in the bank, gathering interest. Still, Adam’s principles are at issue, so he turns the irony up to eleven. “I’m sure it would be the most incredible 30 seconds of your life.” Since Kris went there first, he adds, “But making a feast from crumbs is most definitely not my thing. Give me the whole cake.”
--
There’s no real doubt in Adam’s mind. Kris doesn’t initiate phone sex so much as make it impossible to avoid. “How do you deep throat?” he’ll ask, irrepressibly curious. “Can you come while you’re wearing a cock ring?” And Adam’s favorite, “Do you have to do all that stretching every time?” Adam achieves new heights of eloquence with that one (“ . . . or we could try a plug. I’d get it wet and press it in while I sucked you off, really gradually so you could feel yourself opening around it, give it a little twist to remind you it was there, a little pull while you were coming down my throat”), inspired by a secret fondness for giving lectures and an unabashed love of making Kris groan, “Adam, shit.”
And by a sense of responsibility. Kris has never been with a guy before. Adam will be the first--a thought that makes his heart drop ten stories in his chest, makes him impossibly hard, makes him want to growl. The only, as well, and this even bigger, the biggest thing he’s ever tried to get his head around--forsaking all others--a sublime dizzying mindfuck. Here, he thinks, he’s found his thing: a fetish for monogamy.
--
Talk to me. It’s their signal late at night, when they’re alone behind their separate closed doors, Kris resorting to his bus’s bathroom--“because some of us don’t get to travel in headliner luxury”--and the Do Not Disturb sign his grinning bandmates swiped from a Hilton. Talk to me, meaning Touch me.
The first of their firsts. And even though Adam has done this before, he hadn’t known how quite how devastating his voice can be when it’s not reaching and swooping and lingering like its own echo. The voice he reserves for Kris is rich persuasion on his tongue, Come closer, it’s ambiance, a lush deepening darkness like a velvet canopy thrown around them. Deeper yet is Kris’s counterpoint, a lower-register drawl that runs the words together in spoken cursive. Sometimes it catches with friction, that used post-show--post-blowjob, Adam’s imagination substitutes--texture. It gets rougher as Kris seeks out Adam’s responsive places, shows Adam what kind of duet theirs will be.
Kris mock-complains that he can no longer smell Pine-Sol without thinking about sex. “I’m going to buy a bottle for every room in our house,” Adam tells him.
--
“You’ve got it tuned to Kiss 97, today’s best mix, and this is Doug B., keeping it glam with Adam Lambert. We’ve got some listener questions for you, Adam.”
“Sure, fire away.”
“First, Marissa wants to know how you keep your look so, quote, on point all the time.”
“I have a great team of stylists and makeup artists. I’m lucky enough to have access to Photoshop 24/7, basically. But there are plenty of days when I just want to look like me.” The modesty is genuine--how can it not be, when Adam knows just how much smoke and how many mirrors are involved? But he’s sensitive, just a little, to the implication that he’s high maintenance. Which just makes him vain in a different way, he supposes.
“For those of you at home, he’s rocking a trucker hat and flip-flops in the studio right now,” Doug interjects cheerfully.
“This is pretty typical. I don’t walk down the street decked out in feathers and platform boots. Unless I feel like it.”
“OK, here’s one from Fatima.” Doug pronounces the name gingerly. “‘What grounds you?’”
“One thing is being surrounded by people who have my best interests at heart.” Beyond a quick flare of awareness, Adam doesn’t let himself think of Kris at moments like these. Kris belongs in a separate compartment, one that’ll be marked Off Limits even when they’re together openly. “My friends are like an extended family, truly. And my own desire to stay grounded, that’s probably the main thing.” It’s why he does his best to avoid parroting his own answers at these promo stops, or at least to summon first-time enthusiasm: fear of turning into an unappreciative douchebag.
“So we shouldn’t expect any coked-out mug shots from you? No jacking somebody else’s award at the VMAs?”
Just a little homewrecking scandal. Adam laughs to cover the mental slip. “Definitely not.”
“Excellent.” Doug consults his laptop screen. “OK, next up, Emily asks: Boxers, briefs or commando?”
This one is as predictable as Neil’s response to a creationist bumper sticker. “I’m not a fan of boxers. Other than that, I don’t mind changing things up a bit.”
And he doesn’t mind serving up this 20-proof version of himself--not bland by any means, but safely watered down. It only sends the pendulum swinging harder at night, when he gets to discover just how intoxicating he can be, how suggestive, brazen, enticing, silly, priapic, joyful; distilled Adam, potent raw moonshine, getting a couple of thousand people drunk and delirious and laid at once.
--
It starts with an adrenaline rush. The euphoria of falling in love, plus the steep climb of final-act suspense. Standing at the top of the stairs, he wonders how any drug can compete with reality, the end-of-the-universe high, the only game played for real money; and how he can possibly sing, literally breathless with anticipation as he is.
And then the spotlight falls on him, the expected reveal that shocks with drama. The manic lightness is gone, his flesh-and-blood substance restored. He opens his mouth; discipline takes over the workings of his lungs; and the first shining, assured notes soar out over the room.
Seducing the crowds is like getting into bed with a new partner every night. A different energy, different pleasure points to learn. You like it when I move like this? Here, let me do it again, or maybe I won’t, maybe I’ll make you beg for it. His own body exhilarates him, turns him on, if he’s honest, with a virtuosity and daring to rival his voice. It’s a one-night stand and he loves them all, the dancing boys in the balcony and the familiar faces in the front row, the hardcore addicts who follow him from city to city. They’re one in their desire, a desire Adam reciprocates for a single sped-up hour. When he leaves the stage, everyone is wrung out and gratified--the audience, the acted-upon, and Adam, the catalyst.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
Adam notices plenty of recurring names in his @replies. The devoted fans who greet him daily like an old friend, the less charming ones who barrage him with questions about his sex life or offers to bear his children. The disciples, who find something to analyze or applaud in his most idle thinking-out-loud comments. So much energy laser-pointed at one person, Adam thinks wryly; if it could be redirected, the world might see an end to wars and hunger, an effective hangover remedy, a condom that actually feels like nothing.
But none of it bothers him, not Good night, sweet prince or How big is it hard??? He’s not sure why this one, dependable as the view from his window isn’t, should be any different. I hope you ache the way I ache. It has the ring of a malevolent fortune cookie, or a curse.
The sender’s profile picture holds no clue--or maybe it does. It’s him, smoke and mirrors in full effect. Cool gray stare a blast of Bitch, please, skin too silicone-doll perfect to be human, let alone his. Arms crossed over his chest, forbidding; and on his sleeve, not his heart, but literal armor.
What Adam sees isn’t someone who thinks he’s invulnerable, but an object lesson in transformation. A stunt based on the contrast with who he really is--open, flawed, and far from immune to aches. Artifice that isn’t meant to deceive. Anyone who follows him, on Twitter or in real life, should realize that it’s not even skin deep.
--
And what do the boys in the bars see, the boys who flock to him, the same boys who once might’ve beckoned at most? Not his looks, personality or potential in bed so much as the aura of fame, that sheen that doesn’t scrub off no matter how hard he tries. To them, he’s an initiate into the world’s most exclusive club. In every proposition, he hears, Let me behind the curtain.
Maybe he’d believed the hype himself, once upon a time, before the L.A. hustle opened his eyes. But even then, he would’ve wanted access on his own terms. He wouldn’t have settled for notoriety as someone’s arm candy. The drive to make his own voice heard is such an integral part of him, such a motivating force, he can’t imagine anyone feeling complete without it.
But he’s glad of their shallowness; it saves him from temptation. Putting out a not-buying vibe only spurs a more determined sales pitch. In his miscast role as prey, he wonders if he were ever as clumsy a pursuer as these newly hungry boys. But no, he relied on straightforward friendliness, a smile and an introduction rather than lines like “Can your body match what your eyes can do?”
“I didn’t laugh,” he says later, in answer to Kris’s question. “He wasn’t obnoxious, just cheesy. But I did kind of leave him hanging while I tried to place the lyric.”
“Finger Eleven,” says Kris, who’s never met a lyric he couldn’t place. “I bet his scorned ass is dissing you on Twitter right now.”
Met @adamlambert at Seventh House. Not as nice as you’d think. “Probably. But I can’t take it seriously when guys try to pick me up.” Only one person ever succeeded in flipping the script on him, and that was because the two of them knocked it right off the table in their eagerness to get to one another.
“You took me seriously,” points out that person, smug little thing, and Adam longs to gather him up and lay him down and show him just how serious it is, this position he’s gotten himself into.
--
They had opportunities last summer, despite the hovering presence of handlers and the unrelenting schedule management devised to keep them apart. Nights in hotels and undisturbed hours backstage when they could’ve broken the abstinence pledge in a dozen ways--and walked out incandescent afterwards, no deniability left, no hope of passing for unlikely BFFs or the bromance of the year or anything other than what they were. It was already hard enough for Adam to rein in his gaze, with its homing instinct for Kris, to restrain his hands from seeking their natural habitat on Kris’s shoulder, his thigh, the soft nape of his neck.
He can’t regret passing up their last chance, in Detroit, both of them sick and silently agreed on not making a milestone out of their goodbye. Kris was hollow-eyed and withdrawn, already living in the aftermath. At Adam’s nudge toward the bed, he went along unresisting, and Adam pulled off most of their clothes so they could lie sticking together, feverish and hot, talking little and sleeping less. In the morning, Kris’s brave smile hurt Adam more than the unlacing of their fingers, twined under the cover of Adam’s jacket, when they reached the airport and the end.
--
The protest is a feeble showing. Just two guys, Wonder Bread-white, forgettable features, not young, not old. Belted denim shorts, flat expressions to match the drone of the taller one. Do they take turns, Adam wonders, or is this a fundamentalist Penn & Teller act?
There’s no passion in them, not in Penn’s monologue, not in their stance on the sidewalk--entrenched, but without belligerence. They’re not throwing down a gauntlet so much as littering, strewing junk words like those flyers that show up on the windshield of your parked car to be crumpled in swift irritation. The signs they hold do their shouting for them, SIN, REPENT, felt-tip letters bleeding with the conviction of the zealot.
“They’re not from that group in Kansas, are they?” Adam has too much respect for precision to use the word church.
“No, it’s not Westboro.” Neil is reporting from the bus window, his fingers visibly itching to blog. “Just a couple of homegrown assholes. Quintessential Wal-Mart shoppers. Parodies of the small-town American tourist, come to gawk at the godlessness of the big city, which we get to personify today. Tomorrow they’ll be back in front of the local Planned Parenthood.” For someone whose default setting is harangue, Neil has no shortage of sensitivity. The well-meaning subtext is clear: Don’t take it personally.
Adam matches his sociologist’s tone. “Hate tourism. Who knew it was a thing?”
When he steps outside, he lifts one hand in a peaceable wave. They’re unlikely to recognize a real-life demonstration of turning the other cheek, but they can’t miss their own insignificance writ large in his non-reaction. Go ahead, confront the sodomite. He gives them a good look at his faintly quizzical smile, at the interest too fleeting to preserve a memory as he goes on his way, unchastened.
--
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
With Mercury moving into your house of relationships, closeness with loved ones becomes paramount. Communication, always your strong suit, will flow more easily than ever. Time shared with a romantic partner should find the two of you gratifyingly in sync.
--
“Adam.” Kris enunciates his name as though patting it down it for extra syllables.
Adam can guess what Kris has in store for him. Entertainment, for one thing. He closes the door to his hideaway and stretches out on the bed to enjoy. “A little tipsy, are we?”
“Went out to this . . . bar? After the show. Had a few beers.”
“A few, hmm?”
“Yeah, and there was karaoke. Cale screwed up the words. Streetlight people, livin’ just to find emotion,” Kris sings, lapsing into perfect lucidity for ten seconds. “Not a notion. Who even thinks that? I’d rather talk to you. Talk,” he repeats significantly.
“Frisky, too.”
A rustling interval ends in a sigh of happy discovery. “I’m not too trashed. You?”
Adam palms himself through his jeans. It’s not going to be one of their more polished collaborations, obviously, but he’s up for it. “I have no idea why this is making me hot, but it is.”
Taking a drunk continuity leap, Kris volunteers, “I knew a guy at U of A who bought Viagra off the internet and took it just for fun. He said it was really . . . fun.”
“Are you suggesting that we do recreational drugs, Kris?”
“Well, maybe. But you kind of are Viagra, so. How many times do you think we can? In a row?” The prospect of breaking records has Kris sounding more alert.
If Adam can stifle laughter and maintain an erection at the same time, anything is possible. “As many times as you want. There are always . . . alternatives.”
“Rimming,” Kris says consideringly. “What does that feel like, anyway?”
“Um, almost ticklish?” Not the most compelling endorsement. Adam can do better. “Intense, just on the right side of too much. Decadent and slippery and filthy.”
Kris groans, just the way Adam is sure he would if he were getting a demonstration. “God, I want . . . I’m so jealous of your hand right now. Rub over the head, is it wet?”
“Yeah, it’s . . . ” Adam’s concentration is starting to fade out. “Slick, there‘s enough so that my thumb is . . . gliding in it. It feels good.”
“What does it taste like?”
Fuck. “You tell me, Kris. Open your mouth for me and suck it clean. Show me how much you love it, look up at me and let me see it in your face-- ”
“Oh God, your eyes while you’re-- ” Kris breaks off, that whiplashing full stop that means only one thing, and Adam’s cock is jerking before he realizes what’s happening, his own drawn-out oh distant in his ears, falling away in a rollercoaster drop before he can catch up.
Whatever image did it for Kris, it probably wasn’t this--Adam holding his cock like he doesn’t know quite what to do with it, wearing the last of an ambushed expression. It’s too much; Adam can’t help himself. He giggles.
“Oops,” Kris says, sheepish, and Adam loses it, again.
--
Adam knows Kris has been stalking him on YouTube when he gets random, deadpan-dirty texts at odd hours of the day. You looked extra good in the dick pants, or I liked that bendy thing you did. After Brooke, grinding in recklessly close quarters, lands a hip shot to his balls, any lingering twinge is dispelled by Kris’s Better get a cup, I have plans for those.
The critics’ reviews are less of an event. Lane collects them for him, though he suspects her of suppressing a few that praise him at Kris’s expense. Endearing, but unnecessary; he doesn’t bother to read the ones that harp on the Idol angle, either to dismiss him or to condescendingly allow that he’s transcended reality TV. The others are a mostly favorable mix--some wholeheartedly on board, a few snobbishly underwhelmed, and an occasional curveball.
Lambert elevated his sometimes pedestrian pop tunes with stratospheric vocals and funhouse spectacle.
Pop entertainment that melts in your mouth like cotton candy, substance-free but irresistible.
Lambert has swagger in abundance, but it’s a friendly swagger--this is a man who’ll show you a hell of a good time and cuddle with you afterwards.
The eclectic set spanned the intrigue-laden “Voodoo,” the emotional “Sleepwalker,” and the arch “Fever” with nary a jarring note.
Mr. Lambert, no believer in too much of a good thing, sustains an excess that starts to wear well before the 60 minutes are up.
Lambert owned the stage, wearing unapologetic sexuality as impeccably as he wears leather.
Lambert makes a respectable case for himself as an heir to the showmanship of legendary ringmasters like Freddie Mercury and David Bowie.
For all the punch of his personality, Lambert is also a blank screen on which we project our desires, our preconceptions, even our fears. He presses our buttons, as individuals and as a society, whether he sets out to do it or not.
He’s not a symbol. He can smile and shrug at the rest of it, but he resists the notion that he’s the embodiment of a cultural movement or moment. He’s nothing more, or less, than himself. But like being recognized in the grocery store, being taken out of context is a part of the package he can’t politely decline. All he can do is to keep insisting on his noisy, nonconforming, individual humanity.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
--
“I’ve been getting these weird-ass twats,” he tells Kris, after it’s been going on for a while.
Kris’s snort is expressive enough to make the “You? Really?” redundant.
“This is a little different. She’s not asking for my man-seed or trying to get me to accept Christ as my personal savior. ‘I hope you ache the way I ache,’” Adam recites from memory. “The same thing, every day.”
“Isn’t that Courtney Love?”
“Courtney Love is harassing me on Twitter?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her, but I meant it’s from a song by Hole. I don’t remember the name.” Kris downshifts into a croon. “Someday, you will ache like I ache . . . Not quite the same.”
Adam considers this saner alternative to . . . whatever. “Yeah, I don’t think I buy that theory. The vibe I get is more personal.”
“I don’t know how you can go in there.” Anyone listening would think Kris is referring to a boarded-up house oozing black mold, rather than Adam’s @replies. It’s a familiar refrain. “You do realize you don’t have to?”
Amused, Adam gives his usual reassurance. “I like to keep tabs on what people are saying. It’s not that bad.” And it’s not, mostly. He can handle the relentless adoration and the occasional venom. Only the intensity unnerves him.
Keep your Pandora’s Box shut, lady. I’m not into that kind of thing.
--
Adam’s costumes are roomier now, after weeks of dancing and overprocessed convenience food that he can’t bring himself to eat. Still, there’s a technique to removing sweaty leather pants, a deliberate tug-and-peel. If he tries to rush the process, they’ll take anything underneath down with them. “Fuck it,” he announces the third time, to an appreciative whoop from Terrance and Taylor. “No supporting act tonight.”
Walking around the house unconstrained is an everyday thing; bouncing and gyrating onstage without a net turns out to be a special occasion. The freedom of movement feels a little wrong, but naughty-wrong, getting-away-with-innuendo-wrong. And the audience definitely--deafeningly--doesn’t mind a little playful exhibitionism. He trades hip thrusts for ecstatic shrieks and shoots a grin to a girl who raises a hand to her forehead, miming faintness. Blows an extra kiss after the second encore, because it was good for him too.
Wardrobe malfunction huh?
Adam is puzzling over how Kris manages to convey a barely suppressed smirk via touch screen when he gets the follow-up: Or was it a choice to whip around like the minute hand of a horny clock?
Smiling, he texts back, Guess there’s a video up already. Zoomed in on the goods?
It shows your face, but I’m not looking at it. Too hypnotized.
Dickmatized? :)
If I’m supposed to be getting sleepy, it’s not working.
--
Adolescent puns aside, Kris’s fascination is no secret. He cops to it without embarrassment--and why should he be embarrassed, when it brings both of them so much pleasure? “I want to sit down on it,” he’ll say, voice gone dreamy, more to himself than Adam. “Just feel it, maybe squeeze a little . . . ” And Adam, voyeur and star, will intrude on the scene quietly, so as not to break the spell. “If I put my hands on you, and lifted you up--almost all the way off--and pulled you back down, and kept doing it--you wouldn’t stop me, Kris.”
“I couldn’t,” Kris agrees, like it’s the same thing, and maybe it is.
It’s a beautiful thing, the bloom of Kris’s sensuality, the boyishness he brought to Hollywood Week shed for the assurance of a man who’s discovered what his body is for. It’s bittersweet, when Adam can see his own fingerprints all over the change without being able to touch, really touch.
--
More than a month since the last time they were in the same room, backstage at a concert in Boston. Five minutes alone, with Adam’s back braced against the dressing-room door and Kris trying to climb him like a rope ladder. Given a few more, they could’ve gotten off right there, just from that famished kiss. The thwarting knock made Adam too angry even to echo Kris’s uncharacteristic, explosive “Fuck!” It was painful to balance on that throbbing edge, so close, every inch of skin tight and sore to the touch.
He tore himself away. Nothing else he could do, except . . . There was just enough time for him to twist off the smallest of his rings, an etched silver band, and slide it onto Kris’s right middle finger, loose but secure, and take the look on Kris’s face as everything he needed in return.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
--
“Talk to me, Kris.”
“I watched you last night,” Kris says readily. “In my bunk, with the sound off, after everyone else was asleep. At least I hope they were asleep.”
“Kris, sometimes it’s OK to say, ‘I’m not just a guy in the band, without me there would be no band, and I need a real bed to do my solo thing.’”
“Says the guy with a total of two items on his rider. Two boring items.”
“Hey, we can play pot and kettle all night-- ”
“Let’s not. So anyway, when you’re dancing, and the vest thing rides up, there’s this strip of skin that shows above your pants. Especially now that they’re falling off,” Kris says as an aside, chiding. “So you were moving in this really, um, dominating way--I think toppy is the word I’m looking for. Like a demonstration of what you can do in bed. But I wasn’t looking at your hips or your dick--mostly. I kept looking out for that little peek of skin. And it was so pale, so . . . you didn’t mean to show it, it wasn’t part of what you were giving to the audience, it was this secret thing . . . and I came so hard, imagining licking that spot, just there, while you still have all your clothes on, until we’re both dying for me to go lower.” He pauses. Adam can see the neat curve of his half-smile. “Does that count as phone sex?”
“It held my attention, believe me. I just wish-- ” I wish you could show me. Adam traces a delicate line above the sweats that are his concession to the bus’s frigid climate, raising shivers the way Kris’s tongue would do.
“I will. It’s all going to happen.”
Desire in the bank, still multiplying. Talk doesn’t count as an early withdrawal. It doesn’t even touch the interest.
--
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
A stressful outlook at work may put your physical and emotional resilience to the test, Aquarius. Now is the time to shore up your resources. Keep your eyes on the prize, but don’t neglect the status quo--or your own well-being.
--
“Come join us, boss man,” Sasha coaxes. “See the world from the other side of a bus window. Have some authentic Cuban food. Or we can find a vegetarian place, get you a nice big bowl of healthy greens.”
“Dude, no,” comes Tommy’s plaintive protest.
“Thanks, baby girl, but I could use the alone time.” Adam pulls Sasha into a quick one-armed hug. He’s warmed by the family feeling among his crew, even if it’s disconcerting to be watched over and occasionally scolded when he considers himself the big brother. “Maybe I’ll catch a nap.”
“Eat something, OK? Look how loose those jeans have gotten.”
The others chime in with their own admonitions, and Adam protests good-naturedly, “They’re supposed to be loose. These are the latest Diesel collection, I’ll have you know.” This prompts a tart editorial from Neil on the subject of rock stars who pay hundreds of dollars to have their jeans ripped for them at minimum wage. Adam tunes out as soon as he hears the word privilege.
Finally they organize themselves out the door, still reminding him to eat even if he’s not hungry--“How’re you going to shake that ass if you don’t fuel up?”--and telling him how much he’ll be missed, with only the tiniest of guilt trips laid on.
He’s not turning antisocial, he assures himself as he retreats to the back. Just conserving his energy until showtime.
It doesn’t count as staying in bed all day if he occupies himself while he lies there, so he picks a DVD at random. As vampires fuck their human groupies in blood and abandon on the screen, he flashes on a more potent image: Kris onstage at his most impassioned, overtaken by his music. Would he bare his neck for a bite that promised the same transcendence?
When Adam first saw that eager yielding, he couldn’t help but speculate, even though it could only drive him to distraction, even though Kris could never be his. What would he be like, would he let me, if I backed him up, out of the bounds of his safe little life, and showed him what I know, showed him where he belongs? And now he has the answers, and it’s maddening what his hands and mouth have yet to discover, the mysteries he has yet to penetrate.
Adam closes his eyes on the TV in favor of the fantasy--holding Kris in thrall, inflicting not pain, never pain, but a delicious helplessness. Kris melting into it. He holds onto the image until sleep dissolves it, Kris’s face lifted devoutly, lips parting on a gasp, offering and offering.
--
“It’s Jess from Mix 107.9, here with Adam Lambert, whose Glam Nation tour stops at the Landmark tonight. Adam, are you planning any tongue-surfing for us?”
By now, answering this question is like chewing a week-old piece of gum. Adam laughs anyway. “Tongue-diving? That’s what I call it.” The tongue part isn’t strictly accurate either, but why ruin a good publicity hook? “That may have been a one-time thing, but who knows. We’ll see.”
“Some people are saying that once was too much, that making out with members of your audience is going too far. I mean, I don’t get that.” Jess nudges his arm in harmless flirtation. “I’d be throwing elbows right and left to get to the front. But the conservative brigade says you’ve upped the shock factor too high.”
If they ever stop saying it, he hasn’t noticed. “People are awfully easy to shock, in my opinion. Which I suppose is a good thing. I enjoy kissing. I wouldn’t enjoy, say, spitting fake blood.”
“Oh, Gene Simmons is feeling that burn. So you are out to shock?”
“Yeah, a little. Not in an offensive way. In a fun way.”
--
It starts with provocation. The byplay with Tommy, guy-on-guy action and D&s and conversion fantasy all in one; Tommy loving it, the subversive girl-bait of it, and trying to smear red lipstick all over him, the little shit.
And then the bump-and-grind interlude with Brooke, another dalliance with perception. Perception, his dream dance partner, so flexible, up for anything. A taste of wish fulfillment? Easy. I can be straight, I can be yours--for as long as you can believe your eyes. As soon as she skips away, he’s shifting, striking a new pose, trying out feminine allure for himself, sinuous grace and eyes that belong above a veil.
I can be whatever I want. There will always be those who miss the point of the demonstration, mistake fluidity of image for fluid sexuality. He can live with that. Perception doesn’t always bend to his will, but the ride is worth the occasional loss of control.
--
“It’s not that you want attention,” Kris said suddenly. Adam was experimenting with a new purchase, MAC’s kohl liner in Smolder, while his roommate of three weeks perched on the vanity to keep him company. It was already a comfortable routine, Kris’s interest no longer a surprise. “Although you’re fine with that, obviously. You want people to pay attention, which isn’t the same thing. That’s why you’re so big on eye contact. And that’s one reason why you love this stuff.”
Adam turned away from the mirror, and Kris continued, as though reasoning it out for himself, “You’re making it harder for people to look away before you’ve had your say. I don’t think they would. Your eyes . . . They speak loud and clear even without the-- ” He made a drawing motion above his own lid. “The smudging and smokiness. But it looks good, it’s you.”
Adam was sure his brows couldn’t climb any higher, but then Kris drew a fingertip over his right wrist, where the Eye of Horus was still a work in progress. “I can see why this would appeal to you. It’s not just about the mythology, is it?”
Stunned, Adam set the pencil down on the counter. “Wow, Kris. I’m not sure what to say.” Not sure how to halt their dangerous momentum. Being read like that . . . It was giving him ideas that Kris’s warm brown eyes were doing nothing to dispel. Too late to look away now. “You’re very perceptive. It must come from writing and performing your own music. Working out your own way of getting your point across.”
“No,” Kris said thoughtfully. “I don’t think that’s where it comes from.”
--
Now that everyone’s looking, Adam wouldn’t mind borrowing an invisibility cloak once in a while. He’d known, of course, that attention comes with the job, but not that it is the job, to bask in that pitiless heatlamp glare. He hadn’t known it would make him feel less like a singer than an ambassador from a country of one, endlessly touting his own points of interest.
“I could get sick of myself,” he confesses to Kris.
“It’s an occupational hazard,” Kris says knowingly. “When someone’s always asking about your favorite cereal or your worst subject in high school or the color of your underwear. Like, why would they even care-- ”
“Yep, exactly. Me, me, me. And there’s a lot of me to begin with.” He pauses obligingly so Kris can snicker. “Stop, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“That’s good, though. Maybe someday I might actually get enough of you.”
“Someday we’re going to dedicate a week, minimum, to fulfilling that goal. And I do mean it like that.” Before Kris, Adam might've bought into the romance of a constant craving, but now he knows better. Satiation is the ideal. “So,” he says, sly, tipping off Kris to the fact that he’s being undressed through the phone. “What color are those boxer briefs, anyway?”
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
It’s turned into a staring contest. Maybe he’s too attached to his most stubborn trait, an unwillingness to take crap from anyone. He could spare himself a daily dose of pointless aggravation by heeding Kris’s advice. But he wades doggedly through his replies, checking for the message. Courtney never blinks either.
The name has stuck, and with it the personality he’s sketched from her brief profile: Virgo, dreamer, believer. All is love --Adam Lambert. Moody and compulsive is more like it, he thinks uncharitably. One of those Virgos. Self-dramatizing, thrives on dysfunctional relationships, aspires to crazy-beautiful. Cries to get her way, writes bad poetry. Past the age of excusable emo.
He’s being fanciful. She could be an attention-starved teenage boy, for all he knows. Either way, he should let it go. Stop trying to take a stand against entitlement in the form of one faceless stranger. Accept that he’s not satisfied with merely being heard, that he wants to be understood, too--and accept that it’s never going to happen.
Part Two
Pairing: Adam/Kris
Word count: 24,300
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Sex without love is a compromise that’s rarely cost Adam more than fleeting regret. Love without sex, no surprise, isn’t in his nature at all.
Warnings: Angst, weed
Disclaimer: Pure imagination. No disrespect intended.
Author's note: anya7lee, if the title rings a bell, that's no coincidence, bb. <3 Additional notes at the end of the story.
Chain and Feather, Part One
Words Adam lives by: Chase only the things that will make you happy. A married man should’ve been an automatic exclusion to the rule, but then, Adam wasn’t the one who did the chasing. He only turned to meet Kris with outstretched arms, rather than running away.
Summer 2009
Adam holds Kris’s hand during the phone consultation with the lawyer and watches their happiness recede in Kris’s eyes. Eighteen months. That’s how long it takes to get a no-fault divorce in Arkansas. “Buckle of the Bible Belt,” Kris explains afterward. In this, he’s the worldly one, and Adam naïve as only a child of West Coast liberal parents can be. “Sanctity of marriage and all that.”
“Jesus. Sorry.”
“In a nutshell,” Kris agrees, unoffended. “Plan B, I let her file on grounds of adultery-- ”
“Which you haven’t actually committed,” Adam points out. Finally, their restraint counts for something. A thin layer of protection for Kris. One less juicy morsel for the tabloids, though less than a year of marriage and former worship leader will give them plenty to sink their teeth into.
Kris’s crooked grin means flippancy, but it means business, too. “That’s easy to fix.”
Too easy. Even now, Adam’s senses are all tied up in proximity. They’re alone in a hotel room, and Kris’s hair smells like complimentary lavender shampoo, and their knees are touching, and Kris’s leather cord bracelet is a lighter brown than the fine hairs on his forearm. Adam gives the only possible answer. “Unlike your career, which would be over before it began.”
“Yeah, probably.”
There’s no probably about it, but if Kris isn’t hellbent on blowing the opportunity of a lifetime, he isn’t ruling out that option, either. Adam is almost relieved by the intervention of a higher authority than the Ten Commandments. The combined forces of Jive and 19 hand down their own decree to their newly crowned American Idol: Thou shalt not tarnish thy marketable image with gay scandal.
“Here’s how we’re going to handle this,” the emergency briefing starts off. It’s a simple strategy: invisibility. No bromance, no love story, no blind items, no bribed hotel maids telling all, no paparazzi photos of Kris leaving Adam’s house in the same clothes he wore the night before. No contact in public. No contact in private, because there’s no such thing as private in the world Adam and Kris now inhabit.
Kris speaks up. “You mean I don’t get to come out on the cover of People?” Adam smiles, more at Kris’s force field of serenity than at the joke. The suits aren’t amused, and the glance Adam and Kris exchange across the table is clearly the biggest faux pas of all. Kris’s manager launches into a grim-faced lecture about middle-America record buyers, the conservative mentality of station managers, and the challenge of launching any new artist, never mind one with “extraordinary PR challenges.”
It’s not that Adam and Kris don’t understand. But compared to the challenges they’ll face behind the scenes--for two full years, now, under management’s plan--PR is nothing. Adam has an instinctive grasp of the image game, and Kris wins at not taking it seriously.
Kris fights back, though, when they insist that he keep wearing his wedding ring until the divorce is final, “to show respect.”
“You mean so people will think we might get back together,” Kris says flatly. “Look, I’m not pretending to be a saint here. Obviously. I’ll tell all the necessary lies. But I’m not going to-- ”
“It’s OK,” Adam interrupts, surprising himself. He’s still getting acquainted with the person love has made of him: a more generous Adam, softer, calmer; but a little ruthless, too, with a sharper knack for essentials. “It’s just a symbol. The only meaning is what you put into it.”
That settled, they’re dismissed to board a tour bus with six de facto chaperones and then, three months later, to part, as though the entwining of two people were any more reversible than an epiphany or a chemical reaction. Work is Adam’s salvation. But all the time not consumed by promotion, performing, and awards-show debacles is spent trying to convince his heart that there is such a thing as a temporary separation. It’s not forever. No reason to break.
“Surreal,” he sums up his new life for the media, picturing a bunch of executives huddled at a conference table, defusing his relationship like a bomb.
Summer 2010
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
You’re known for dreaming big, Aquarius. When you follow through with hard work and a positive attitude, there’s no such thing as an unattainable goal. Your current project is no exception. If that glittering vista on the horizon never seems to get any closer, take a look behind you. You might be surprised at how far you’ve come.
--
Conversation between them is easy, riffing and vibing, a rhythm they fell into almost as soon as they met. But now there are pauses once filled by the shortcut of a glance or the punctuation of a touch. Before, it all flowed together so naturally that Adam never realized how much of their communication was nonverbal--the gestures not necessary for understanding, but necessary nonetheless.
Snug in his sanctum at the back of the bus, Adam says, “Tell me something you did today.” If they were sharing this bed, he’d brace himself on one arm to look down into Kris’s face. To covet the lower lip that always looks like they’ve just made out for hours.
“I had an interview,” Kris begins. At this point he’d be pulling off his glasses--his sex glasses, Adam calls them, because he’s susceptible to them the way straight guys are susceptible to schoolgirl uniforms. “A radio station thing. The girl thought it would be cute to play a word association game.”
“I think I see where this is heading,” He would’ve picked up the clue of Kris’s raised eyebrow, a gesture borrowed from Adam himself. Raised eyebrows, actually. Kris has yet to master the single.
“I’m like, sure, and we’re moving along, Twizzlers, Simon Cowell, guitar, blah blah blah.” Kris would be tracing patterns on Adam’s chest, musical notes, maybe. “And then she hits me with, you guessed it, Adam Lambert.” Here Kris would lift his eyes dramatically to convey shocking plot twist. “Maybe I’m paranoid, but I could swear she was looking for a reaction. So the clock is ticking, and my mind is blank except for incriminating naked things. Finally, after about five minutes, I come up with-- ”
“Wait, let me guess. Eyeliner? No shame? Best kisser of your experience?”
“None of the above. Tall.”
Adam would break out what Kris refers to, in capital letters, as The Look. “Seriously? That’s . . . factual.”
“Boring is what we aim for, right? Nothing to see here. But before I knew your name, or heard you sing, I thought of you as the tall guy. Which to me meant the hot guy. Because I really noticed,” here the eyebrows would rise again, “that you were a lot taller than me. So maybe my subconscious fielded that one after all.”
“I’m liking this more and more,” Adam says, though by rights Kris’s hand should be trailing low on his stomach, making a good case for wrapping up story hour.
“OK, your turn,” Kris says from thousands of miles away. “Word association, Kris Allen. Go.”
Mine, he would say, leaning in for a kiss that allowed no argument. “I miss you so much,” he blurts out, the ache of it undiminished after eight months.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
--
Sex without love is a compromise that’s rarely cost Adam more than fleeting regret. Love without sex, no surprise, isn’t in his nature at all.
“You’re about to explode too, right?” he demands of Kris. “It better not just be me. If you’re a sex camel, I’m going to rethink our compatibility right now.”
“Sex camel? Is that a position from the gay Kama Sutra?”
Adam laughs. This is why he likes to vent, for the sake of their banter, the trade-off groove that makes him overflowingly happy in spite of everything. “It could be, for all I know. We’ll have to research that.”
“You’re harshing my fantasy life, man. I thought for sure you had that memorized. You being the master of pleasure and pain and all that.”
“Master of my right hand is more like it.”
As expected, Kris heaps on more snark rather than the sympathy Adam deserves. “We could make it our thing. Not having sex. Get matching purity rings.”
“Abstinence and accessories? Where do I sign up?”
“It is a pretty good deal, actually.” Tongue still in cheek, Kris takes the opportunity to further Adam’s religious education. “When they try to get you to take the pledge, they don’t just hit you with the sin angle. They tell you that the wait, the buildup, practically guarantees mind-blowing sex when you finally get to do it.”
The concept has a certain appeal. Desire in the bank, gathering interest. Still, Adam’s principles are at issue, so he turns the irony up to eleven. “I’m sure it would be the most incredible 30 seconds of your life.” Since Kris went there first, he adds, “But making a feast from crumbs is most definitely not my thing. Give me the whole cake.”
--
There’s no real doubt in Adam’s mind. Kris doesn’t initiate phone sex so much as make it impossible to avoid. “How do you deep throat?” he’ll ask, irrepressibly curious. “Can you come while you’re wearing a cock ring?” And Adam’s favorite, “Do you have to do all that stretching every time?” Adam achieves new heights of eloquence with that one (“ . . . or we could try a plug. I’d get it wet and press it in while I sucked you off, really gradually so you could feel yourself opening around it, give it a little twist to remind you it was there, a little pull while you were coming down my throat”), inspired by a secret fondness for giving lectures and an unabashed love of making Kris groan, “Adam, shit.”
And by a sense of responsibility. Kris has never been with a guy before. Adam will be the first--a thought that makes his heart drop ten stories in his chest, makes him impossibly hard, makes him want to growl. The only, as well, and this even bigger, the biggest thing he’s ever tried to get his head around--forsaking all others--a sublime dizzying mindfuck. Here, he thinks, he’s found his thing: a fetish for monogamy.
--
Talk to me. It’s their signal late at night, when they’re alone behind their separate closed doors, Kris resorting to his bus’s bathroom--“because some of us don’t get to travel in headliner luxury”--and the Do Not Disturb sign his grinning bandmates swiped from a Hilton. Talk to me, meaning Touch me.
The first of their firsts. And even though Adam has done this before, he hadn’t known how quite how devastating his voice can be when it’s not reaching and swooping and lingering like its own echo. The voice he reserves for Kris is rich persuasion on his tongue, Come closer, it’s ambiance, a lush deepening darkness like a velvet canopy thrown around them. Deeper yet is Kris’s counterpoint, a lower-register drawl that runs the words together in spoken cursive. Sometimes it catches with friction, that used post-show--post-blowjob, Adam’s imagination substitutes--texture. It gets rougher as Kris seeks out Adam’s responsive places, shows Adam what kind of duet theirs will be.
Kris mock-complains that he can no longer smell Pine-Sol without thinking about sex. “I’m going to buy a bottle for every room in our house,” Adam tells him.
--
“You’ve got it tuned to Kiss 97, today’s best mix, and this is Doug B., keeping it glam with Adam Lambert. We’ve got some listener questions for you, Adam.”
“Sure, fire away.”
“First, Marissa wants to know how you keep your look so, quote, on point all the time.”
“I have a great team of stylists and makeup artists. I’m lucky enough to have access to Photoshop 24/7, basically. But there are plenty of days when I just want to look like me.” The modesty is genuine--how can it not be, when Adam knows just how much smoke and how many mirrors are involved? But he’s sensitive, just a little, to the implication that he’s high maintenance. Which just makes him vain in a different way, he supposes.
“For those of you at home, he’s rocking a trucker hat and flip-flops in the studio right now,” Doug interjects cheerfully.
“This is pretty typical. I don’t walk down the street decked out in feathers and platform boots. Unless I feel like it.”
“OK, here’s one from Fatima.” Doug pronounces the name gingerly. “‘What grounds you?’”
“One thing is being surrounded by people who have my best interests at heart.” Beyond a quick flare of awareness, Adam doesn’t let himself think of Kris at moments like these. Kris belongs in a separate compartment, one that’ll be marked Off Limits even when they’re together openly. “My friends are like an extended family, truly. And my own desire to stay grounded, that’s probably the main thing.” It’s why he does his best to avoid parroting his own answers at these promo stops, or at least to summon first-time enthusiasm: fear of turning into an unappreciative douchebag.
“So we shouldn’t expect any coked-out mug shots from you? No jacking somebody else’s award at the VMAs?”
Just a little homewrecking scandal. Adam laughs to cover the mental slip. “Definitely not.”
“Excellent.” Doug consults his laptop screen. “OK, next up, Emily asks: Boxers, briefs or commando?”
This one is as predictable as Neil’s response to a creationist bumper sticker. “I’m not a fan of boxers. Other than that, I don’t mind changing things up a bit.”
And he doesn’t mind serving up this 20-proof version of himself--not bland by any means, but safely watered down. It only sends the pendulum swinging harder at night, when he gets to discover just how intoxicating he can be, how suggestive, brazen, enticing, silly, priapic, joyful; distilled Adam, potent raw moonshine, getting a couple of thousand people drunk and delirious and laid at once.
--
It starts with an adrenaline rush. The euphoria of falling in love, plus the steep climb of final-act suspense. Standing at the top of the stairs, he wonders how any drug can compete with reality, the end-of-the-universe high, the only game played for real money; and how he can possibly sing, literally breathless with anticipation as he is.
And then the spotlight falls on him, the expected reveal that shocks with drama. The manic lightness is gone, his flesh-and-blood substance restored. He opens his mouth; discipline takes over the workings of his lungs; and the first shining, assured notes soar out over the room.
Seducing the crowds is like getting into bed with a new partner every night. A different energy, different pleasure points to learn. You like it when I move like this? Here, let me do it again, or maybe I won’t, maybe I’ll make you beg for it. His own body exhilarates him, turns him on, if he’s honest, with a virtuosity and daring to rival his voice. It’s a one-night stand and he loves them all, the dancing boys in the balcony and the familiar faces in the front row, the hardcore addicts who follow him from city to city. They’re one in their desire, a desire Adam reciprocates for a single sped-up hour. When he leaves the stage, everyone is wrung out and gratified--the audience, the acted-upon, and Adam, the catalyst.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
Adam notices plenty of recurring names in his @replies. The devoted fans who greet him daily like an old friend, the less charming ones who barrage him with questions about his sex life or offers to bear his children. The disciples, who find something to analyze or applaud in his most idle thinking-out-loud comments. So much energy laser-pointed at one person, Adam thinks wryly; if it could be redirected, the world might see an end to wars and hunger, an effective hangover remedy, a condom that actually feels like nothing.
But none of it bothers him, not Good night, sweet prince or How big is it hard??? He’s not sure why this one, dependable as the view from his window isn’t, should be any different. I hope you ache the way I ache. It has the ring of a malevolent fortune cookie, or a curse.
The sender’s profile picture holds no clue--or maybe it does. It’s him, smoke and mirrors in full effect. Cool gray stare a blast of Bitch, please, skin too silicone-doll perfect to be human, let alone his. Arms crossed over his chest, forbidding; and on his sleeve, not his heart, but literal armor.
What Adam sees isn’t someone who thinks he’s invulnerable, but an object lesson in transformation. A stunt based on the contrast with who he really is--open, flawed, and far from immune to aches. Artifice that isn’t meant to deceive. Anyone who follows him, on Twitter or in real life, should realize that it’s not even skin deep.
--
And what do the boys in the bars see, the boys who flock to him, the same boys who once might’ve beckoned at most? Not his looks, personality or potential in bed so much as the aura of fame, that sheen that doesn’t scrub off no matter how hard he tries. To them, he’s an initiate into the world’s most exclusive club. In every proposition, he hears, Let me behind the curtain.
Maybe he’d believed the hype himself, once upon a time, before the L.A. hustle opened his eyes. But even then, he would’ve wanted access on his own terms. He wouldn’t have settled for notoriety as someone’s arm candy. The drive to make his own voice heard is such an integral part of him, such a motivating force, he can’t imagine anyone feeling complete without it.
But he’s glad of their shallowness; it saves him from temptation. Putting out a not-buying vibe only spurs a more determined sales pitch. In his miscast role as prey, he wonders if he were ever as clumsy a pursuer as these newly hungry boys. But no, he relied on straightforward friendliness, a smile and an introduction rather than lines like “Can your body match what your eyes can do?”
“I didn’t laugh,” he says later, in answer to Kris’s question. “He wasn’t obnoxious, just cheesy. But I did kind of leave him hanging while I tried to place the lyric.”
“Finger Eleven,” says Kris, who’s never met a lyric he couldn’t place. “I bet his scorned ass is dissing you on Twitter right now.”
Met @adamlambert at Seventh House. Not as nice as you’d think. “Probably. But I can’t take it seriously when guys try to pick me up.” Only one person ever succeeded in flipping the script on him, and that was because the two of them knocked it right off the table in their eagerness to get to one another.
“You took me seriously,” points out that person, smug little thing, and Adam longs to gather him up and lay him down and show him just how serious it is, this position he’s gotten himself into.
--
They had opportunities last summer, despite the hovering presence of handlers and the unrelenting schedule management devised to keep them apart. Nights in hotels and undisturbed hours backstage when they could’ve broken the abstinence pledge in a dozen ways--and walked out incandescent afterwards, no deniability left, no hope of passing for unlikely BFFs or the bromance of the year or anything other than what they were. It was already hard enough for Adam to rein in his gaze, with its homing instinct for Kris, to restrain his hands from seeking their natural habitat on Kris’s shoulder, his thigh, the soft nape of his neck.
He can’t regret passing up their last chance, in Detroit, both of them sick and silently agreed on not making a milestone out of their goodbye. Kris was hollow-eyed and withdrawn, already living in the aftermath. At Adam’s nudge toward the bed, he went along unresisting, and Adam pulled off most of their clothes so they could lie sticking together, feverish and hot, talking little and sleeping less. In the morning, Kris’s brave smile hurt Adam more than the unlacing of their fingers, twined under the cover of Adam’s jacket, when they reached the airport and the end.
--
The protest is a feeble showing. Just two guys, Wonder Bread-white, forgettable features, not young, not old. Belted denim shorts, flat expressions to match the drone of the taller one. Do they take turns, Adam wonders, or is this a fundamentalist Penn & Teller act?
There’s no passion in them, not in Penn’s monologue, not in their stance on the sidewalk--entrenched, but without belligerence. They’re not throwing down a gauntlet so much as littering, strewing junk words like those flyers that show up on the windshield of your parked car to be crumpled in swift irritation. The signs they hold do their shouting for them, SIN, REPENT, felt-tip letters bleeding with the conviction of the zealot.
“They’re not from that group in Kansas, are they?” Adam has too much respect for precision to use the word church.
“No, it’s not Westboro.” Neil is reporting from the bus window, his fingers visibly itching to blog. “Just a couple of homegrown assholes. Quintessential Wal-Mart shoppers. Parodies of the small-town American tourist, come to gawk at the godlessness of the big city, which we get to personify today. Tomorrow they’ll be back in front of the local Planned Parenthood.” For someone whose default setting is harangue, Neil has no shortage of sensitivity. The well-meaning subtext is clear: Don’t take it personally.
Adam matches his sociologist’s tone. “Hate tourism. Who knew it was a thing?”
When he steps outside, he lifts one hand in a peaceable wave. They’re unlikely to recognize a real-life demonstration of turning the other cheek, but they can’t miss their own insignificance writ large in his non-reaction. Go ahead, confront the sodomite. He gives them a good look at his faintly quizzical smile, at the interest too fleeting to preserve a memory as he goes on his way, unchastened.
--
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
With Mercury moving into your house of relationships, closeness with loved ones becomes paramount. Communication, always your strong suit, will flow more easily than ever. Time shared with a romantic partner should find the two of you gratifyingly in sync.
--
“Adam.” Kris enunciates his name as though patting it down it for extra syllables.
Adam can guess what Kris has in store for him. Entertainment, for one thing. He closes the door to his hideaway and stretches out on the bed to enjoy. “A little tipsy, are we?”
“Went out to this . . . bar? After the show. Had a few beers.”
“A few, hmm?”
“Yeah, and there was karaoke. Cale screwed up the words. Streetlight people, livin’ just to find emotion,” Kris sings, lapsing into perfect lucidity for ten seconds. “Not a notion. Who even thinks that? I’d rather talk to you. Talk,” he repeats significantly.
“Frisky, too.”
A rustling interval ends in a sigh of happy discovery. “I’m not too trashed. You?”
Adam palms himself through his jeans. It’s not going to be one of their more polished collaborations, obviously, but he’s up for it. “I have no idea why this is making me hot, but it is.”
Taking a drunk continuity leap, Kris volunteers, “I knew a guy at U of A who bought Viagra off the internet and took it just for fun. He said it was really . . . fun.”
“Are you suggesting that we do recreational drugs, Kris?”
“Well, maybe. But you kind of are Viagra, so. How many times do you think we can? In a row?” The prospect of breaking records has Kris sounding more alert.
If Adam can stifle laughter and maintain an erection at the same time, anything is possible. “As many times as you want. There are always . . . alternatives.”
“Rimming,” Kris says consideringly. “What does that feel like, anyway?”
“Um, almost ticklish?” Not the most compelling endorsement. Adam can do better. “Intense, just on the right side of too much. Decadent and slippery and filthy.”
Kris groans, just the way Adam is sure he would if he were getting a demonstration. “God, I want . . . I’m so jealous of your hand right now. Rub over the head, is it wet?”
“Yeah, it’s . . . ” Adam’s concentration is starting to fade out. “Slick, there‘s enough so that my thumb is . . . gliding in it. It feels good.”
“What does it taste like?”
Fuck. “You tell me, Kris. Open your mouth for me and suck it clean. Show me how much you love it, look up at me and let me see it in your face-- ”
“Oh God, your eyes while you’re-- ” Kris breaks off, that whiplashing full stop that means only one thing, and Adam’s cock is jerking before he realizes what’s happening, his own drawn-out oh distant in his ears, falling away in a rollercoaster drop before he can catch up.
Whatever image did it for Kris, it probably wasn’t this--Adam holding his cock like he doesn’t know quite what to do with it, wearing the last of an ambushed expression. It’s too much; Adam can’t help himself. He giggles.
“Oops,” Kris says, sheepish, and Adam loses it, again.
--
Adam knows Kris has been stalking him on YouTube when he gets random, deadpan-dirty texts at odd hours of the day. You looked extra good in the dick pants, or I liked that bendy thing you did. After Brooke, grinding in recklessly close quarters, lands a hip shot to his balls, any lingering twinge is dispelled by Kris’s Better get a cup, I have plans for those.
The critics’ reviews are less of an event. Lane collects them for him, though he suspects her of suppressing a few that praise him at Kris’s expense. Endearing, but unnecessary; he doesn’t bother to read the ones that harp on the Idol angle, either to dismiss him or to condescendingly allow that he’s transcended reality TV. The others are a mostly favorable mix--some wholeheartedly on board, a few snobbishly underwhelmed, and an occasional curveball.
Lambert elevated his sometimes pedestrian pop tunes with stratospheric vocals and funhouse spectacle.
Pop entertainment that melts in your mouth like cotton candy, substance-free but irresistible.
Lambert has swagger in abundance, but it’s a friendly swagger--this is a man who’ll show you a hell of a good time and cuddle with you afterwards.
The eclectic set spanned the intrigue-laden “Voodoo,” the emotional “Sleepwalker,” and the arch “Fever” with nary a jarring note.
Mr. Lambert, no believer in too much of a good thing, sustains an excess that starts to wear well before the 60 minutes are up.
Lambert owned the stage, wearing unapologetic sexuality as impeccably as he wears leather.
Lambert makes a respectable case for himself as an heir to the showmanship of legendary ringmasters like Freddie Mercury and David Bowie.
For all the punch of his personality, Lambert is also a blank screen on which we project our desires, our preconceptions, even our fears. He presses our buttons, as individuals and as a society, whether he sets out to do it or not.
He’s not a symbol. He can smile and shrug at the rest of it, but he resists the notion that he’s the embodiment of a cultural movement or moment. He’s nothing more, or less, than himself. But like being recognized in the grocery store, being taken out of context is a part of the package he can’t politely decline. All he can do is to keep insisting on his noisy, nonconforming, individual humanity.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
--
“I’ve been getting these weird-ass twats,” he tells Kris, after it’s been going on for a while.
Kris’s snort is expressive enough to make the “You? Really?” redundant.
“This is a little different. She’s not asking for my man-seed or trying to get me to accept Christ as my personal savior. ‘I hope you ache the way I ache,’” Adam recites from memory. “The same thing, every day.”
“Isn’t that Courtney Love?”
“Courtney Love is harassing me on Twitter?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her, but I meant it’s from a song by Hole. I don’t remember the name.” Kris downshifts into a croon. “Someday, you will ache like I ache . . . Not quite the same.”
Adam considers this saner alternative to . . . whatever. “Yeah, I don’t think I buy that theory. The vibe I get is more personal.”
“I don’t know how you can go in there.” Anyone listening would think Kris is referring to a boarded-up house oozing black mold, rather than Adam’s @replies. It’s a familiar refrain. “You do realize you don’t have to?”
Amused, Adam gives his usual reassurance. “I like to keep tabs on what people are saying. It’s not that bad.” And it’s not, mostly. He can handle the relentless adoration and the occasional venom. Only the intensity unnerves him.
Keep your Pandora’s Box shut, lady. I’m not into that kind of thing.
--
Adam’s costumes are roomier now, after weeks of dancing and overprocessed convenience food that he can’t bring himself to eat. Still, there’s a technique to removing sweaty leather pants, a deliberate tug-and-peel. If he tries to rush the process, they’ll take anything underneath down with them. “Fuck it,” he announces the third time, to an appreciative whoop from Terrance and Taylor. “No supporting act tonight.”
Walking around the house unconstrained is an everyday thing; bouncing and gyrating onstage without a net turns out to be a special occasion. The freedom of movement feels a little wrong, but naughty-wrong, getting-away-with-innuendo-wrong. And the audience definitely--deafeningly--doesn’t mind a little playful exhibitionism. He trades hip thrusts for ecstatic shrieks and shoots a grin to a girl who raises a hand to her forehead, miming faintness. Blows an extra kiss after the second encore, because it was good for him too.
Wardrobe malfunction huh?
Adam is puzzling over how Kris manages to convey a barely suppressed smirk via touch screen when he gets the follow-up: Or was it a choice to whip around like the minute hand of a horny clock?
Smiling, he texts back, Guess there’s a video up already. Zoomed in on the goods?
It shows your face, but I’m not looking at it. Too hypnotized.
Dickmatized? :)
If I’m supposed to be getting sleepy, it’s not working.
--
Adolescent puns aside, Kris’s fascination is no secret. He cops to it without embarrassment--and why should he be embarrassed, when it brings both of them so much pleasure? “I want to sit down on it,” he’ll say, voice gone dreamy, more to himself than Adam. “Just feel it, maybe squeeze a little . . . ” And Adam, voyeur and star, will intrude on the scene quietly, so as not to break the spell. “If I put my hands on you, and lifted you up--almost all the way off--and pulled you back down, and kept doing it--you wouldn’t stop me, Kris.”
“I couldn’t,” Kris agrees, like it’s the same thing, and maybe it is.
It’s a beautiful thing, the bloom of Kris’s sensuality, the boyishness he brought to Hollywood Week shed for the assurance of a man who’s discovered what his body is for. It’s bittersweet, when Adam can see his own fingerprints all over the change without being able to touch, really touch.
--
More than a month since the last time they were in the same room, backstage at a concert in Boston. Five minutes alone, with Adam’s back braced against the dressing-room door and Kris trying to climb him like a rope ladder. Given a few more, they could’ve gotten off right there, just from that famished kiss. The thwarting knock made Adam too angry even to echo Kris’s uncharacteristic, explosive “Fuck!” It was painful to balance on that throbbing edge, so close, every inch of skin tight and sore to the touch.
He tore himself away. Nothing else he could do, except . . . There was just enough time for him to twist off the smallest of his rings, an etched silver band, and slide it onto Kris’s right middle finger, loose but secure, and take the look on Kris’s face as everything he needed in return.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
--
“Talk to me, Kris.”
“I watched you last night,” Kris says readily. “In my bunk, with the sound off, after everyone else was asleep. At least I hope they were asleep.”
“Kris, sometimes it’s OK to say, ‘I’m not just a guy in the band, without me there would be no band, and I need a real bed to do my solo thing.’”
“Says the guy with a total of two items on his rider. Two boring items.”
“Hey, we can play pot and kettle all night-- ”
“Let’s not. So anyway, when you’re dancing, and the vest thing rides up, there’s this strip of skin that shows above your pants. Especially now that they’re falling off,” Kris says as an aside, chiding. “So you were moving in this really, um, dominating way--I think toppy is the word I’m looking for. Like a demonstration of what you can do in bed. But I wasn’t looking at your hips or your dick--mostly. I kept looking out for that little peek of skin. And it was so pale, so . . . you didn’t mean to show it, it wasn’t part of what you were giving to the audience, it was this secret thing . . . and I came so hard, imagining licking that spot, just there, while you still have all your clothes on, until we’re both dying for me to go lower.” He pauses. Adam can see the neat curve of his half-smile. “Does that count as phone sex?”
“It held my attention, believe me. I just wish-- ” I wish you could show me. Adam traces a delicate line above the sweats that are his concession to the bus’s frigid climate, raising shivers the way Kris’s tongue would do.
“I will. It’s all going to happen.”
Desire in the bank, still multiplying. Talk doesn’t count as an early withdrawal. It doesn’t even touch the interest.
--
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
A stressful outlook at work may put your physical and emotional resilience to the test, Aquarius. Now is the time to shore up your resources. Keep your eyes on the prize, but don’t neglect the status quo--or your own well-being.
--
“Come join us, boss man,” Sasha coaxes. “See the world from the other side of a bus window. Have some authentic Cuban food. Or we can find a vegetarian place, get you a nice big bowl of healthy greens.”
“Dude, no,” comes Tommy’s plaintive protest.
“Thanks, baby girl, but I could use the alone time.” Adam pulls Sasha into a quick one-armed hug. He’s warmed by the family feeling among his crew, even if it’s disconcerting to be watched over and occasionally scolded when he considers himself the big brother. “Maybe I’ll catch a nap.”
“Eat something, OK? Look how loose those jeans have gotten.”
The others chime in with their own admonitions, and Adam protests good-naturedly, “They’re supposed to be loose. These are the latest Diesel collection, I’ll have you know.” This prompts a tart editorial from Neil on the subject of rock stars who pay hundreds of dollars to have their jeans ripped for them at minimum wage. Adam tunes out as soon as he hears the word privilege.
Finally they organize themselves out the door, still reminding him to eat even if he’s not hungry--“How’re you going to shake that ass if you don’t fuel up?”--and telling him how much he’ll be missed, with only the tiniest of guilt trips laid on.
He’s not turning antisocial, he assures himself as he retreats to the back. Just conserving his energy until showtime.
It doesn’t count as staying in bed all day if he occupies himself while he lies there, so he picks a DVD at random. As vampires fuck their human groupies in blood and abandon on the screen, he flashes on a more potent image: Kris onstage at his most impassioned, overtaken by his music. Would he bare his neck for a bite that promised the same transcendence?
When Adam first saw that eager yielding, he couldn’t help but speculate, even though it could only drive him to distraction, even though Kris could never be his. What would he be like, would he let me, if I backed him up, out of the bounds of his safe little life, and showed him what I know, showed him where he belongs? And now he has the answers, and it’s maddening what his hands and mouth have yet to discover, the mysteries he has yet to penetrate.
Adam closes his eyes on the TV in favor of the fantasy--holding Kris in thrall, inflicting not pain, never pain, but a delicious helplessness. Kris melting into it. He holds onto the image until sleep dissolves it, Kris’s face lifted devoutly, lips parting on a gasp, offering and offering.
--
“It’s Jess from Mix 107.9, here with Adam Lambert, whose Glam Nation tour stops at the Landmark tonight. Adam, are you planning any tongue-surfing for us?”
By now, answering this question is like chewing a week-old piece of gum. Adam laughs anyway. “Tongue-diving? That’s what I call it.” The tongue part isn’t strictly accurate either, but why ruin a good publicity hook? “That may have been a one-time thing, but who knows. We’ll see.”
“Some people are saying that once was too much, that making out with members of your audience is going too far. I mean, I don’t get that.” Jess nudges his arm in harmless flirtation. “I’d be throwing elbows right and left to get to the front. But the conservative brigade says you’ve upped the shock factor too high.”
If they ever stop saying it, he hasn’t noticed. “People are awfully easy to shock, in my opinion. Which I suppose is a good thing. I enjoy kissing. I wouldn’t enjoy, say, spitting fake blood.”
“Oh, Gene Simmons is feeling that burn. So you are out to shock?”
“Yeah, a little. Not in an offensive way. In a fun way.”
--
It starts with provocation. The byplay with Tommy, guy-on-guy action and D&s and conversion fantasy all in one; Tommy loving it, the subversive girl-bait of it, and trying to smear red lipstick all over him, the little shit.
And then the bump-and-grind interlude with Brooke, another dalliance with perception. Perception, his dream dance partner, so flexible, up for anything. A taste of wish fulfillment? Easy. I can be straight, I can be yours--for as long as you can believe your eyes. As soon as she skips away, he’s shifting, striking a new pose, trying out feminine allure for himself, sinuous grace and eyes that belong above a veil.
I can be whatever I want. There will always be those who miss the point of the demonstration, mistake fluidity of image for fluid sexuality. He can live with that. Perception doesn’t always bend to his will, but the ride is worth the occasional loss of control.
--
“It’s not that you want attention,” Kris said suddenly. Adam was experimenting with a new purchase, MAC’s kohl liner in Smolder, while his roommate of three weeks perched on the vanity to keep him company. It was already a comfortable routine, Kris’s interest no longer a surprise. “Although you’re fine with that, obviously. You want people to pay attention, which isn’t the same thing. That’s why you’re so big on eye contact. And that’s one reason why you love this stuff.”
Adam turned away from the mirror, and Kris continued, as though reasoning it out for himself, “You’re making it harder for people to look away before you’ve had your say. I don’t think they would. Your eyes . . . They speak loud and clear even without the-- ” He made a drawing motion above his own lid. “The smudging and smokiness. But it looks good, it’s you.”
Adam was sure his brows couldn’t climb any higher, but then Kris drew a fingertip over his right wrist, where the Eye of Horus was still a work in progress. “I can see why this would appeal to you. It’s not just about the mythology, is it?”
Stunned, Adam set the pencil down on the counter. “Wow, Kris. I’m not sure what to say.” Not sure how to halt their dangerous momentum. Being read like that . . . It was giving him ideas that Kris’s warm brown eyes were doing nothing to dispel. Too late to look away now. “You’re very perceptive. It must come from writing and performing your own music. Working out your own way of getting your point across.”
“No,” Kris said thoughtfully. “I don’t think that’s where it comes from.”
--
Now that everyone’s looking, Adam wouldn’t mind borrowing an invisibility cloak once in a while. He’d known, of course, that attention comes with the job, but not that it is the job, to bask in that pitiless heatlamp glare. He hadn’t known it would make him feel less like a singer than an ambassador from a country of one, endlessly touting his own points of interest.
“I could get sick of myself,” he confesses to Kris.
“It’s an occupational hazard,” Kris says knowingly. “When someone’s always asking about your favorite cereal or your worst subject in high school or the color of your underwear. Like, why would they even care-- ”
“Yep, exactly. Me, me, me. And there’s a lot of me to begin with.” He pauses obligingly so Kris can snicker. “Stop, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“That’s good, though. Maybe someday I might actually get enough of you.”
“Someday we’re going to dedicate a week, minimum, to fulfilling that goal. And I do mean it like that.” Before Kris, Adam might've bought into the romance of a constant craving, but now he knows better. Satiation is the ideal. “So,” he says, sly, tipping off Kris to the fact that he’s being undressed through the phone. “What color are those boxer briefs, anyway?”
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
It’s turned into a staring contest. Maybe he’s too attached to his most stubborn trait, an unwillingness to take crap from anyone. He could spare himself a daily dose of pointless aggravation by heeding Kris’s advice. But he wades doggedly through his replies, checking for the message. Courtney never blinks either.
The name has stuck, and with it the personality he’s sketched from her brief profile: Virgo, dreamer, believer. All is love --Adam Lambert. Moody and compulsive is more like it, he thinks uncharitably. One of those Virgos. Self-dramatizing, thrives on dysfunctional relationships, aspires to crazy-beautiful. Cries to get her way, writes bad poetry. Past the age of excusable emo.
He’s being fanciful. She could be an attention-starved teenage boy, for all he knows. Either way, he should let it go. Stop trying to take a stand against entitlement in the form of one faceless stranger. Accept that he’s not satisfied with merely being heard, that he wants to be understood, too--and accept that it’s never going to happen.
Part Two