Chain and Feather, 2/3
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 Two
Adam is pretty sure that exercise-induced endorphins are a hoax, but twenty dutiful minutes on the stationary bike turns out to be a bigger boost than a grande mocha. “Really,” Kris says, in the same tone Adam’s bus mates use on him when he tells them he had yogurt for lunch and it was enough, thanks. It means, What’s gotten into you? “Whatever works,” Adam says dismissively. “When I start jogging more than once a month, go ahead and stage an intervention.”
Nowadays, if he doesn’t stay in motion, he’ll disappear into those contrail afternoons. Turn on the TV or reach for his headphones and drift for hours. It’s a strange day, no colors or shapes, no sound in my head, I forget who I am when I’m with you . . . Escape into the electronic ether, or into Kris’s new demos, all stripped honesty and shining eyes lifted to the future, songs better saved for two a.m., the acceptable hour to pine.
Brooke is always happy to teach him new moves, and that’s a lot more fun than plodding away on a piece of equipment. Popping and rolling like nobody’s looking, turning a boring interchangeable Tuesday on the bus into a Saturday night out, even Neil glancing up from Wonkette to smirk tolerantly at the freak-ass bunch of them. “My best student,” Brooke says with affection. “Most enthusiastic, maybe,” he demurs.
--
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
You’re the master of reinvention, Aquarius, your face a waiting canvas, a new reflection in your mirror every day. But behind your chameleon’s exterior lies a heart of rare constancy. Make the most of opportunities to express both sides of your nature.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
--
“Sorry to break the mood.” The regret in Kris’s still-husky voice brings Adam back from a place he’d rather linger in, even though it’s a long way from fucked-out lassitude. “But before I forget, I might not be able to call tomorrow night. Katy’s coming to the show, and we’re going out with Cale and Kate afterwards.”
Katy makes these appearances at Kris’s side to gloss their picture-perfect divorce--out of the goodness of her heart, someone less skeptical than Adam would assume. He’s not jealous; he can even play his side of the triangle for black humor, with mistress jokes and scarlet-lettered costumes. Most of the time. In his territorial lapses, he begrudges her the legitimacy that’s her one advantage over him. Soon-to-be ex or not, she’s free to meet Kris face to face, to sit next to him in a restaurant, to carry on like they never stopped being high school sweethearts.
Adam has every reason to be a gracious winner. He’s the one who puts the yearning in Kris’s voice, the one who fills those haunted spaces. It’s his ring Kris never takes off, flaunts, even, on the hand that cradles the microphone. He should find it in himself to be grateful.
“Give her my best,” he says, bitchy.
--
The dozens of radio stations, one for every city, blur together in Adam’s mind. Same cubicle feel, same Arctic blast of a/c, same set of questions. East Coast, Deep South, or Midwest, the DJs tend to be 40ish and boomingly friendly, often beer-bellied and sporting the kind of beard that’s less a grooming choice than an extended vacation from shaving.
Today’s Q&A is different. Taped, for one thing, and instead of greeting Ace or Corey or Bubba, Adam is shaking hands with Van (“as in Halen, my dad was a rabid fan. Better than Alice or Ozzy, right?”). “Eye candy” fits him even better. Enviably smooth brown skin, flash of candid hazel under the brim of a fedora--a near-twin to the one Adam’s wearing, they joke about that as they seat themselves on the couch--elegantly crossed legs in hipster jeans. Adam won’t have any trouble staying awake for this one, even if it’s all about eyeliner tricks and boxers vs. briefs.
It’s not. “So you’ve been unattached for a while now,” Van ventures, after they’ve established where Adam is playing tonight and how Star FM listeners can request his single.
Adam isn’t fazed by this line of questioning. Sound chatty and confiding enough, he’s learned, and no one notices that you’re revealing nothing. “Yeah, I’m so busy . . . This phase of my life is all about working and traveling. I get out and mingle when I can, but I’m not going to meet the love of my life in a bar.” He spins it slightly regretful, what-can-you-do.
“Well, you never know.” Van’s smile displays even white teeth. “Stranger things, right? Like going on American Idol and finishing in second place.”
Adam doesn’t have to force the laugh. “You’ve got a point.”
“If you were to meet him, what would he look like? Can you describe your ideal man for us?”
“Hmm. You know, the older I get, the less I believe in having a checklist. I think you find the right person, and they become the ideal. But creative, open-minded, strong sense of humor--those are some non-negotiables. Cute is a plus.”
“Physical attraction? Fireworks?”
“That’s a big one, yeah.” Van is working a distinct theme here. With all due humility, Adam is starting to suspect a personal motive.
“I’m sure you’ve never had any trouble in that department. I mean, come on.” Van is definitely giving him the eye. “Are you making the most of that single status? Enjoying the buffet, let’s say?”
Slutting it up, Adam translates, but he takes it as the compliment Van intends. “Hey, if it looks good, sometimes you’ve got to sample, even if you won’t be coming back for seconds.” Laugh and lay on the innuendo, and no one notices that you’re lying your ass off.
“Your hit song ‘If I Had You’ is this high-energy, let’s-dance-and-party track. And the video is like a lollipop laced with LSD, by the way. But there’s an underlying message about what’s really important, about how life can feel hollow without love. Does that reflect your own experience?”
“What, the LSD?” They both laugh. “Absolutely. I’ve been through some things, I’ve had my heart broken. It’s not easy for anyone out there. But as an artist, it’s something you can draw on to feed your creativity,” he finishes, to indicate that the subject of his private life is closed.
Van picks up the cue, shifting the topic to Adam’s songwriting process. The remaining ten minutes pass almost too quickly. When the camera blinks off, Van says, direct and sincere, no overreaching flattery, “I enjoyed this a lot. Can I give you my number? Maybe we can do it off the record sometime.”
It shouldn’t catch Adam off guard, but it does. He’s slow to respond, caught between loyalty and sudden loss of social dexterity. No thanks is too cold, I can’t too cryptic. “I’d like that,” he says at last, and Van holds his gaze as he answers, “I hope you’ll use it.”
There’s no chance he ever would. That’s not why he deletes it as soon as he gets in the car. Because he would have, if things were different, maybe.
--
“--and there was a live band, sort of a seventies-funky retro-soul vibe. You know, that massive Earth Wind & Fire horn section sound? The whole club--this murky Frenchmen Street kind of place--was jamming. I owe Monte and Tommy for dragging me out of my cave, especially since it wasn’t really their scene. As you’ve probably gathered, Tommy was the only one there wearing a Ride The Lightning t-shirt.”
“Sounds cool.”
Adam is monopolizing the conversation tonight--not by choice. He’s on the verge of asking what’s on Kris’s mind when Kris breaks his latest preoccupied silence. “Um. Are you still getting the creepy messages? From Courtney?”
“Yep. Do you think she’d quit if I replied? ‘You win, you’ve cursed me, I’m never going to get laid again’?”
A particularly painful pause, and then Kris mumbles, barely audible, “About that. I’ve been thinking. If you have to-- You can do whatever you need to do. Just, I don’t want to hear about it.”
It catches Adam like a slap across the face. “What-- ” Reeling, he tries again. “Don’t ask, don’t tell? Or am I the only one who gets a free pass?” He’s not proud to have that withering tone in his repertoire, but he’ll use it in self-defense.
“Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t-- ” Now Kris sounds like a kid who’s broken his mom’s favorite vase. “I didn’t mean it like . . . however you’re taking it. Don’t be mad.”
“You’re nobly giving me permission to fuck other guys, and I’m supposed to say cool, thanks? I don’t need you to-- ” To remind me of the temptation. “To make some big self-sacrificing gesture for me. Do you think I could live with myself if I took advantage of you like that? If I cheapened what we have like that?” Adam’s temper is a deceptive thing, compressing to forgettable size, expanding tenfold outside the box. Ripping off the lid would be a release almost as satisfying as sex--for a few minutes. After that, a bitter taste in his mouth and a trampled mess in the one inviolate space in his life.
“But if you have to-- ”
“Sexual frustration never killed anyone, Kris.” There, that sounded like a civilized exchange rather than a fight. “Sure, I bitch and moan about it, probably too much, but I’ll survive.”
“But you’ve changed.” Kris gathers strength and urgency as he forges ahead. “I can hear it, and I can see it in pictures--you don’t smile as much, you’ve lost weight, you’ve lost--it’s corny, but I want to say you’ve lost your sparkle. That thing you have. The only time I’ve ever seen you like this was last fall, when we were both having such a rough time. I thought--I hoped--we’d gotten past that.”
So that’s where this is coming from. Adam’s anger deflates. “It’s not like last fall. It’s not-- ” To say grief would be to revisit that bleak limbo.
Kris isn’t done. “And if it’s because of me, because of everything you’re giving up for me, then I should-- If I care about you, I should-- ”
“No, you shouldn’t.” How long has Kris’s guilt been whispering this poison to him? Empathy clutches in Adam’s stomach. “You know how insane my life is right now. When I’m on stage, everyone’s counting on me to be this larger-than-life version of myself. The rest of the time, I have to tone it down, consider how everything I say might be misconstrued. And in the midst of all that, I’ve got to make sure I stay me.” It’s the truth, if not the whole truth.
“I know how hard it is, because I’ve been watching you walk that line since last November.” The AMAs shitstorm, so educational for both of them. It taught Kris to be acutely aware of the difference between his own fame and Adam’s more polarizing variety. More guilt, Adam thinks, sick. “And then on top of that, you have to deal with our situation.”
Here’s another line to walk, between acknowledgment and denial. Adam treads more carefully than in any interview. “It’s worth it, Kris. Always. Even in the hardest moments, I’ve never questioned that it’s worth it. Yeah, I feel like my hands are tied sometimes, and it makes me-- But the answer isn’t casual sex. Adulterous sex.”
“Some people would say it’s not technically cheating when you and I aren’t . . . official yet.”
Only the lack of conviction in the words saves Adam from getting furious all over again. “Those people would be full of shit. I’m not interested in, excuse me, getting off on a technicality. And in what world are we not official? It’s the commitment between us that counts, nothing else. What the fuck does it matter if we’re on Perez or not?” In spite of his earlier resolve, he’s approaching fight volume.
“You know I feel the same way,” Kris says softly, conciliatory. “I’m just playing devil’s advocate, I guess.”
“Well, stop it. I’d be yelling at you if I thought you actually wanted to win this argument.” Better late than never, Adam says the first thing that should’ve come out of his mouth, the thing too obvious not to overlook. “I don’t want anyone but you, Kris.”
“I know,” Kris says again, matter-of-factly this time, as though Adam just told him that Arkansas is hot in summer. “And you did yell, a little.”
“Not as much as I wanted to, believe me.”
“Yeah, this was inspired.” The droll tone signifies some fidgety gesture, Kris’s sneakered feet knocking together or his hand rising unconsciously to the back of his neck. His face scrunching in winning self-deprecation. “I hope you won’t get mad if I say . . . you don’t always have to be the one who gives more.”
“Fuck, Kris.” They’re so transparent to one another. Early on, Adam used to lapse into old self-protective habits of good behavior, modulate his personality. It seemed too good to be true--that Kris could see right through the screen, that he’d already stepped through it with the confidence of an owner.
Encompassing as it is, that acceptance still sneaks up on Adam sometimes. He wipes his eyes on his sleeve. “I don’t think I’ve even been giving my fair share. It’s always you propping me up lately.”
“I like it.” This is Kris’s invitation to leave seriousness behind. “Makes me feel like a man.”
“I can see you flexing those guns from here.” But Adam can’t let it go, not quite yet. “Kris. Can you honestly say you’d feel the same about me if I wasn’t faithful to you?”
“Yes . . . I don’t know.”
“An arrangement like that might work for some people, but that’s not who we are. You would hate it, even if you didn’t end up hating me. I would hate myself for doing that to you. I’m not going to risk us, not for an hour of stress relief, not for anything.”
“OK,” Kris says simply, and Adam doesn’t miss the unspoken Thank God.
--
There’s a framed quote on the wall: Everyone gets the tattoo they deserve. To Adam, it has an ominous ring, like the Chinese proverb about living in interesting times. But he hopes it’s true.
He’d had vague plans for more ink, maybe an Aquarius glyph or a lightning bolt, something dynamic, a boost of restorative energy to carry with him everywhere. Instead he’s chosen a promise. Promises are cheap, he has no illusions about that, and the shallow burn of the needle small change. But this one is backed by his conscience, which would never stop making him pay.
He watches as it takes shape, a piece of permanence for a half-hour investment. No one would ever accuse him of minimalism, but he likes the essentialness of it, likes the aesthetics of a form that carries its weight in meaning.
When it’s done, he raises his forearm for Sasha’s camera, any suggestion of I solemnly swear not accidental. For all its simplicity, the infinity loop is barely more subtle than their initials in a heart.
“Now who’s making grand gestures?” Kris says, glib, but with an underlying note Adam has no trouble identifying as gloating. Not for the first time, he thinks that the two of them are a lot more alike than anyone imagines.
Forever. It’s a touchstone, but not a talisman. It doesn’t blind him to the pretty boys in the audience, whose upturned faces evoke tenderness as well as desire, or to the pretty boys in the clubs who size him up blatantly as a stepping stone or a fuck. It doesn’t obscure the fact that he could have any of them, with only the effort of saying yes. Sex without love, nothing to do with touching and being touched, just the expression and the release that his body doesn’t know it shouldn’t want. Easy as taking his eyes off forever.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
--
Sometimes talk is enough, a way for them to have each other. Sometimes it’s more a reminder of what they don’t have. Appetizing and futile, like ordering from the menu of a restaurant that hasn’t opened yet. I’ll start with a blowjob, giving, please, and then I’d like you spread out under me, and for dessert . . . it all looks so good, but I’ll go with your mouth, your sweet mouth.
“Talk to me,” Kris says drowsily. “Tell me something from the future.”
“Hmm, let me take a look into my crystal ball.” Willing away the poignancy, Adam unties the drawstring at his waist and curls around a Kris-shaped space. He projects himself not forward but sideways, into a reality more plausible than this one. “OK, I see . . . This is the third time, I think. We’re so loose and lazy, we could’ve just fallen asleep spooned up together--and the spooning isn’t optional, by the way, I don’t care how sweaty we get. But I’m not done with you. I’m not done wanting that perfect ass of yours, and you want to give it up to me again. You’re rocking back, rubbing up on me. I can take a hint. But we’ve taken all the edge off, so we can just let it happen. Like a dream. I don’t even push my cock into you. You’re wet and open from before and it just slides in, slow and easy--but not too easy, because you wouldn’t like that, would you?”
Kris’s wordless assent has a faraway quality, as though Adam’s cock really does have hypnotic powers.
“I don’t jerk you off hard. You’re too sensitive from everything we’ve already done. I just barely circle my fingers around your cock after I’ve gotten them slippery with lube. Let you fuck into them while I fuck you, let you set the pace, however you want it, Kris . . . ”
And he goes on, tantalizing himself with what he can’t taste.
--
“It’s 99.7 The Link, Trev and Tara back with you on your Thursday morning. Our guest today is rocker Adam Lambert. We’ve got a few more e-mail questions for you, Adam. Here’s one that might make you blush a little.”
“I don’t blush. Not without makeup. But you’re welcome to give it a shot.”
“OK, here goes. Alicia writes, ‘Adam, with all that hotness you’re packing, why not spare some for the ladies? You can’t say you don’t like peaches when you’ve never tried anything but bananas.’”
The DJ and his cohost pile on the ooh la las while Adam censors his automatic retort. Isn’t that the ultimate in entitlement--expecting someone to fuck you just because you want them to? Even if I could get it up for you, you’d be disappointed, because I’m not some mythical cock god. Why not just enjoy the fantasy?
Trev’s patter rolls on, sparing him the need for tact. “That was just one indecent proposal out of many. There were a few we can’t read on the air. Women are all up on you, dude. Is that kind of overwhelming? Kind of weird?”
“It’s very flattering, actually.” As long as you don’t brandish your vagina like a switchblade. “I think I get it. My performances can be pretty sexually . . . overt, and sex is something everyone relates to. Male or female, gay or straight, we can all partake in, revel in, that energy. But one on one, the charge comes from chemistry, connection. And I only make that kind of connection”--Adam hard-sells the double entendre--“with a guy, sorry.”
--
As far as he’s concerned, he’s withholding nothing. Maybe he’s created a desire machine, tuned and tweaked with atmosphere and costumes and choreography, but it works both ways. He gives value in return for the hunger he feeds on, not just entertainment but a free-objectification zone. When his back arches and his hand wanders, when he goes there, he really goes there. He offers himself up. Go ahead, imagine what I can do with all this.
It’s a tease, but not a taunt. A sharing in good faith. Guilelessness is as much a part of it as glamour: a knowing wink to lighten the mystique, a smile after the simulated sex. He’s not interested in sustaining the illusion. If others insist on trying to live in it, he doesn’t blame himself, not after he’s debunked it at every turn.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
“Superstition ain’t the way,” Adam sings under his breath. He’s not superstitious; of course he doesn’t believe in curses. Toxic energy is something else.
If it’s getting to him, he’s the one at fault for opening a window to this puff of ill wind every day. Courtney--or rather, what she represents to him--isn’t the kind of adversary he can meet head-on. If he’s smart, he’ll put down his phone before be becomes as fixated as she is.
--
It starts with a plunge. Into the thick of the crowd, into the chaos of reaching, grasping hands; none too bold below the waist, but it’s only a matter of time. Transgressing his own boundaries is fun with a nervy edge, the way public sex is fun, the way bungee jumping is fun. Not his usual idea of a good time, but a bigger rush for that.
He pushes further, into euphoria, where it’s louder and hotter and the touching turns to tearing. And then the orgiastic peak, a wash of cool air on bare skin, the fastening of his vest giving way from top to bottom. Time to retreat.
Back on stage, he’s not done toying with that dividing line. The odds are calculated now, the game strategic. He takes hold of the open halves of the vest--to close it, to remove it? Neither; that would be ending the suspense. It’s more exciting to draw it out, more of a high, just more. The line is still in sight but blurred from his position on his knees, from the floor, his back bowing and his head tipping as he sinks further, lies nearly flat. Stretches the limits of his body and the audience’s endurance, cheers coalescing into a collective gasp as the vest finally falls open, falls off his shoulders and halfway down his arms.
The next play is obvious. Balancing, he slides one gloved hand from chest to torso, traces the faint down-arrow of hair there, and continues on.
The response from the crowd is a roar, primal as blood thirst, as he works to earn the review he gets from the local paper the next day: “Vocally and visually, Adam Lambert’s Glam Nation extravaganza can be summed up in three words: Subtle it ain’t.”
I saw your nipples on the internet, Kris puts in. Little barbell things and all.
Y/N/Should’ve gone for a Prince A. instead?
Pretty. Rather not share them w/everyone.
Adam is erasing a passive-aggressive reply about shirtless photo ops in the Bahamas when a new bubble appears on the screen. Sorry for being an ass. I’ll take your nipples any way I can get them.
You get sole rights to lift my barbells w/your tongue, Adam excuses him.
--
“Talk to me, Adam.”
“Any special requests?”
“The tattoo . . . ” It sounds more like a question.
“You like seeing your mark on me? You want to mark me up yourself?”
“Yeah . . . ”
“Tell me where, baby.”
“Your shoulders.” The answer comes fast enough to raise both of Adam’s eyebrows. He slips into the voice that’s just for them. “While I’m fucking you? Maybe we have to be quiet. Or maybe you just can’t help yourself.”
“Maybe you make me crazy,” Kris says almost accusingly. “Maybe I don’t want you to pull out even halfway.”
“I’ll put it back in, I promise. Maybe slowly, though. Maybe I like making you crazy. Maybe I like it when you sink your teeth in hard enough to leave prints. You’ll be sorry later, won’t you? You’ll lick it better.”
Kris gasps out something that might be shit.
“If you ask nicely--pout at me with your pretty cocksucking mouth--I’ll roll over and let you spank me.”
Adam is moving his hand steadily on his cock, but Kris is going to finish him off with that little hitch in his breathing. “You don’t have to hold back. You can make it sting.”
“Your skin’s so white-- ”
“It’ll show up so clearly. Your handprint on my ass. You can do it until I’m red and sore, and then rub your cock all over the burn you made. You can jerk off on me and I’ll feel it, the splashes of it will feel so hot on my ass when you come-- ”
Afterward, Kris says, “I don’t get it. That’s not in my top 10, or even my top 20, probably.”
“Mine either,” Adam admits. “But I don’t think it’s about the specifics. It’s all in the concept.” Ownership.
--
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
Opinionated and outspoken as you are, you’re used to opposition--but maybe not as much as you’re facing lately. Don’t be discouraged. In standing up for yourself, you might not change others’ beliefs, but you’ll reaffirm your own.
--
“Hey, wait, you’re going over there?” Catching on to Adam’s change in direction, away from the venue entrance, Neil hurries after him.
“Going to say hi to my haters,” Adam tosses back, with a cheekiness he doesn’t feel. He can’t explain the impulsive detour even to himself. As he crosses the street, flanked closely by disapproving bodyguards, he notices that one of the signs calls him a sexual predator. 19 will want to get the lawyers on that.
At his approach, the crowd of protesters shuffles as one, regrouping. Uneasiness, hostility, excitement? For once, Adam’s initiative falters. Somehow their ordinariness forestalls any question he might ask: What are you hoping to accomplish here? or simply, Why? They’re so obviously a herd, followers who’ve never questioned anything they’ve been told. With their pasty faces and colorful t-shirts advertising hate, they’re every cliché about the banality of evil come to life. He’d rather believe that they’re misguided, redeemable.
The silence is broken by a single word, flung at him like a stone. In another age, it would’ve been a stone. He flinches in involuntary denial. By the time the sense of it reaches him, the fans lined up in front of the box office are returning a volley of jeering laughter. “Wrong band, guys,” he says coolly, composure restored. “Some great tunes, though. Cute lead singer.”
Their eyes aren’t ordinary. That’s the impression that stays with him as security leads him away--unblinking, unreachable stares. At his side, Neil is muttering, warming up for a rant. “Jesus H. Macy. They make your glam cult look like amateur night at the batshit crazy cabaret. Incubus, are you fucking shitting me?”
Theater of the absurd is how Adam presents it to Kris. “It was pretty medieval. Close ranks, shun the infidel. Am I that threatening?”
“Definitely. Threatening like a cupcake. A really sparkly, fluffy cupcake.”
“Oh, well. Whatever. Neil is right, there’s no point in trying to psychoanalyze them.”
“They’re more pathetic than anything, when you think about it,” Kris says seriously. “They make a religion out of hate because it’s the one thing they let themselves have. You’ve got to be pretty messed up to say ‘No thanks’ to everything that makes life worthwhile.”
“Ass-fucking? Getting blazed?”
“Yeah, those,” Kris says, indulgent. “And love, and . . . just, faith that the world is basically a good place. Not that I’d waste any sympathy on them. When I think about them spewing their crap at you-- ”
Adam opens his mouth to deny that it stuck. What comes out is, “They looked at me like I was some kind of monster.”
“Adam-- Shit. Now I just want to beat their asses for them.”
With Kris’s solid weight at his back, Adam finally feels the tension ebb away. Their trick of touching long distance works to soothe, too; he leans into the silence, and Kris’s answering gesture is there for him, a well-remembered brush of fingers through his hair. His eyes drift shut. “I looked it up on Wikipedia,” he says eventually.
“Incubus? Some kind of sex demon, right?” Kris doesn’t quite suppress a chuckle. “Sorry, it’s just so . . . ”
“It is ridiculous. An incubus is a demon that sucks the vitality out of humans--both guys and girls, demons are bi, I guess--by sexing them up in their sleep.”
Kris says soberly, “I’ll leave the door open for you when I go to bed,” and they crack up like they used to, when Kris would drive home the punchline with a shoulder bump and Adam’s arm would encircle him automatically.
--
Blind Items
This proudly gay star, B list with B+ name recognition, claims he’s still looking for “the one.” Fans would be surprised to learn that he’s hooking up with the one who won’t come out for him, a C+ lister with a lot to lose. Wonder how the closeted life agrees with him?
It’s so vague it could be--not anyone, the “proudly gay” part narrows it down a lot--but a number of people. Adam thinks it sounds like that TV actor, the one who used to be on the sci-fi show. More to the point, it doesn’t sound like him. Like them.
Except it does, apparently, to gossip-blog readers. Only a handful of them have dusted off Kradam, that mostly forgotten fangirl favorite, but that’s enough to put management on the offense. “You know how they get when the media mentions us together, even as friends,” Kris says, sounding tired after a crisis briefing via conference call. Adam still has his own briefing to look forward to. “This is on another level.”
“Do they actually think it’s about us?”
“There was some talk about possible leaks--like we’re a CIA file or something--but not much. They even said that most of this crap is made up. Doesn’t matter, though, if people believe it’s true.”
Perception, that fickle bitch. “What do they expect us to do about it?” Adam can’t keep the brittleness out of his voice. “What’s left? No more phone calls? No watching each other on YouTube? Are they going to check our browser histories? Maybe they can plant a few rumors about you hooking up with groupies. Female, naturally.”
“That’s pretty much what they wanted to do.” Kris laughs mirthlessly. “Not groupies, just--someone convenient. But then there’s the whole wedding ring, showing respect thing.”
Convenient rings the alarm. “So the rumors are going to be about you and-- ” Adam has a childish aversion to saying her name. Today he lets it slide. “About a reconciliation.”
“I tried to-- ”
“I know. Don’t take this on yourself.” To spare Kris more misplaced guilt, Adam will lie to him if necessary, put all his considerable bullshitting skills up against Kris’s ability to see through him. He’ll tell any reporter who asks, They’re a great couple, I’m rooting for them, if that’s what it takes to make this a nonissue. “It’s just a blip. Next week there’ll be a new celebrity sex tape or shocking outfit or something, and it’ll go away.”
“Yeah. But even before this, I've wondered . . . Do you feel like you’re in the closet?” It’s the question Adam’s been dreading, but he’s unprepared for the defeat in it, the image of Kris slumped and small.
“No, baby. Fuck no. Keeping us . . . private isn’t the same as pretending to be something I’m not. If I wasn’t one hundred percent me, would I be pissing off the moral majority every night?” Right now, Adam would trade his glittering platform for the chance to lift Kris’s chin and tell him with eyes as well as words, “I’m more myself than I’ve ever been, and it’s not just because of what I get to do. It’s because of what you’ve unlocked in me. It was there, waiting, but you had the key. You are the key, Kris.”
That’s not the end of it, or the worst. Under the second half of management’s plan, Adam gets the privilege of starting own rumors hands-on. They make it sound simple: be seen, take pictures, send Twitter into speculation overdrive, and let the gossip sites take it from there. Make the rounds of the bars, browse the buffet he’s been avoiding, face the fact that he’s hungry, that his cock is amoral even if he isn’t. Put on a believable show of slutting it up--extra points for Method acting.
“So I’ll collect some phone numbers,” he says breezily to Kris. “I’ll use them to play the lottery, and when I’m disgustingly rich, I’ll buy you your own Chik-fil-A franchise. No, the whole company, how does that sound?”
It’s nobody’s fault. Just the ground crumbling under his feet. After the initial blow, two years, and then the wrench of last fall, he’d thought there could be no sacrifices left to make. But now he’s watching another vital piece slip away, another bit of control stolen from his dwindling supply.
It’s just circumstances colliding. Just the stars aligning against him.
Kris is a good sport about it. “How many digits did you rack up tonight?” he’ll ask carelessly, before they get down to the business of what’s real. Each time, Adam finds it a little harder to answer in kind.
--
Tommy is, no question, Brooke’s worst student. So bad, Adam thought he must be faking woodenness to get her hands on his hips, reinforcing her instruction, “C’mon, babe, you’ve got to loosen these up.” But he’s no looser in the wild.
“Those clunky-ass boots must be fucking with your center of gravity,” Adam shouts over the music, as Tommy busts out his best bob and weave. Although blood alcohol level is a likely factor too. “No musician is that lacking in rhythm.”
The proof is wobbling right there in front of him, but Tommy makes up for it in loyalty. He’s joined Adam on the dance floor to run interference, all five-and-a-half-feet-with-boots of him. Though for once Adam isn’t getting mobbed, just hemmed in like everybody else, the better to soak up the energy of bodies moving with a common goal, Give it to me baby like boom boom boom, reclaiming the part of himself that knows how to have an uncomplicated good time.
“Come here rude boy, boy, is you big enough . . . ” Tommy’s metronomic half-headbang has his Aqua Net collapsing in slow defeat. “Hey, we exist. We’re a rare breed, like unicorns, or gay guys in Ed Hardy.” He mixes things up by humping Adam’s leg, and that’s throwing down. Adam fits a hand to the small of his back and macks on him outrageously until they’re both laughing out of control, no rhythm at all.
Adam could stay out here for the rest of the night, but Tommy’s already gone beyond the call of duty. “Break for refreshment?”
“Fuck yeah.” Tommy hooks onto Adam’s belt gratefully as they squeeze their way through the crowd.
“Bacardi and Coke?”
“I love you, man.” A sloppy head-butt demonstrates Tommy’s affection. “Those dickwads can kiss my ass.” Those dickwads being Monte and Neil, who never miss a chance to rag on pussy drinks or tell the bartender to put in a bunch of cherries. (“It’s not Diet Coke,” Tommy always counters reasonably.) “They wish they were that secure in their manhood,” Adam is about to say, when company joins them at the bar.
“You looked good out there.” It’s a cute guy Adam noticed earlier, currently flashing an opening-gambit smile. He’s even cuter up close. Slight build, Chace Crawford eyelashes. “You and your . . . boyfriend?”
Tommy does a quick check-in, ready to run interference here too. When Adam telegraphs not necessary, he says cheerfully, “Nah, I’m just his . . . what’s the opposite of a wingman?”
Cute guy clearly regards the question as rhetorical and the field as open. “I’m Ethan,” he says, to Adam rather than the both of them.
“Adam.” To stave off celebrity douchedom, Adam always introduces himself, even if someone’s already addressed him by name, or done that shrill Oh my God, you’re Adam Lambert thing that makes him hunch inwardly.
“Yeah, I know.” The smile is a little predatory now, if Adam’s any judge. “No mistaking that . . . face.” As Tommy rolls his eyes behind Ethan’s back, Ethan ups the subtlety quotient by grazing Adam’s zipper with the backs of four fingers. It’s the most glancing of touches, but undeniably a grope.
“Whoa, watch the hand.” Adam keeps his tone pleasant, but he lets the warning show in his eyes.
“Sorry,” Ethan says, shapely mouth not so cute with that contradicting smirk on it. He turns back to his beer, conceding defeat, Adam dares to hope. The bartender is setting down their drinks; the prospect of escape is looking even better than a dry martini. Adam steps up to the bar--and up against a cupped palm.
He has a split second to be startled by the violence of his own reaction before he’s clamping down on Ethan’s wrist. “I told you to watch the hand,” he says, low and deadly, crowding in with a threat that looks enough like mating behavior to fool any curious onlookers or camera phones.
It elicits only a shrug. “Thought you’d go for that.”
Tommy pipes up, “Yeah, because getting pawed by some drunk asshole is the one thing that’s been missing from his life. Your game needs work. Asshole.”
Adam still hasn’t let go, fingers easily spanning the guy’s wrist as he looms over his smaller body, chest pressing up against narrow shoulder blades. He wants to teach the arrogant fucker a lesson, he wants to . . . Tommy pulls at his arm, speaking quietly but insistently. “Come on, man. Forget him.”
The clear liquid shivers in Adam’s glass, adrenaline crash setting in like a sudden chill. The martini calms the tremor, though two would be better and three better yet. He’s lost his desire to dance. “I think I’ll head back, Tommy Joe. Let’s go find Cam and Sasha, in case you need help staying vertical in those things.”
“Nah, I’ll stick with you.”
Tommy dozes in the taxi, leaving Adam alone to process the ugliness--not a stranger’s casual violation, but his own response. His temper isn’t usually so close to the surface, and it’s always separate from . . . It’s never tripped other switches, never lit up the whole aggression board. Hate fuck is the term he’s trying to avoid.
“A cockblocker.” Tommy jolts awake, triumphant. “That’s the opposite of a wingman. Hey, boss, don’t look so sad.” Secure in his manhood as he is, he takes Adam’s hand and holds it all the way back to the hotel.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
No message today. It’s like an unexpected piece of good news, or the cancellation of bad news. His single staying in rotation after all, or a sore throat going away overnight. Disproportionately relieved, Adam scrolls again, just to be sure, and there it is. She’s changed her profile picture, that’s all.
In this one, his gaze is averted from the camera, his expression soft and distant. Defenses down, no trace of bitch-please Adam. He recognizes the embroidered collar of his “Sleepwalker” coat. The photographer captured the pensive moment that always holds him before he emerges from the song. Someday my prince will come is the obvious caption.
What does it mean? She’s realized that he’s a three-dimensional human being? She thinks she’s winning? Stop. He powers off his phone decisively and stashes it in his backpack. Out of sight, hopefully out of mind.
--
“The Truth” About Kris Allen: Back Off The Market?
Exclusive: Is American Idol Season 8 winner Kris Allen calling off his divorce from Paranormal High School actress Katy O’Connell?
The pair have remained on good terms since splitting in June 2009 after less than a year of marriage. Now things seem to be heating up, with O’Connell, 24, turning up at several dates on Allen’s summer tour, including last month’s L.A. opener for Rob Thomas. In recent weeks, they’ve been spotted out and about together on several occasions, “looking cozy,” according to eyewitnesses.
“She’ll always be important to me,” Allen, 25, said last year. “We’re still great friends.”
Reached for comment, Allen’s rep would say only, “We wish them all the best.”
--
It’s the music Adam’s body is responding to, heavy shuddering beats like the waves of an orgasm or a migraine, some subsuming thing. Not the press of a stranger’s arm in the high-backed booth, or the breath of words conspiratorial inches from his ear. Adam only nods, conceding nothing, and drinks the cocktails as they appear in front of him, first Belvedere martinis and then some lethal house specialty made with apple-infused scotch.
The owner of Agenda has delusions of grandeur, a palpable I’ve-got-this cockiness. Any minute now he’s going to ask if Adam wants to take this somewhere else, confident that the answer will be yes--confident, probably, that Adam will bottom for him. And Adam will tell him, maybe diplomatically, maybe not, that there is no this. Until then, Adam is not-himself enough to pursue this experiment in letting someone pursue him.
The electronic pulse picks up, pacing the beat under his skin, calling to a part of him that’s wide awake and restless. There’s nothing to appease it here, no sexual current running live through the heat, only a desire to fuck his famous name for bragging rights. A form of desire that’s useless to him.
The club owner’s hand settles on his thigh, and Adam raises an eyebrow to let him know he’s on sufferance. Inside, he’s straining to move with the music, against it.
--
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
Your gift for drawing admirers and making friends is second to none, but even personable Aquarius can’t be the life of every party. Why not forgo the social whirl for a change? Meditate, or read a book. If you’re trying to escape to a place outside yourself, consider that solitude is sometimes the wiser route.
--
The front of house engineer is shit at his job, or else he’s falling asleep at the controls. Whatever the reason, Adam’s voice keeps dropping out of the mix. He can’t really blame the audience for their limp response, lukewarm cheers and apathy in their seats like they’re killing time in a Holiday Inn lounge, but he resents them for it. He needs this. He needs more, not less, with the battery perpetually low, draining faster than ever. Unless he gets that euphoric charge, he’s going to wake up tired tomorrow morning, dense cotton clouds in his head, low-blood-sugar lethargy lasting all day.
He cuts the second encore and changes clothes hurriedly, glitter and turquoise shadow streaking his clean shirt. At the barricades, it’s the usual controlled frenzy. He lets it engulf him, leaving security struggling to follow as the current pulls him deeper. His senses are scraped raw, every overheard comment a crackle of static electricity, a teasing rasp. God, he makes me wish I had a dick . . . I would suck the freckles right off that lower lip . . . Did you see the way he worked those hips, he’s got to be the best fuck ever.
There’s no question of not going out afterwards. He needs to go on losing himself, in noise and movement and a glass if nothing else.
--
Ben, last name something like Bryson, stands out in the crowd at Rising Sign, and not just because he’s taller than Adam by a couple of inches. He’s shy. His genuine if stammering niceness sets him apart from the circling opportunists, even if he’s got a perma-tan and an Ed Hardy knockoff t-shirt--Adam will have to remember to tell Tommy--to overcompensate for it.
Adam’s adept enough for both of them, and soon Ben’s more at ease, opening up about his major in business--Adam blocks the association before it can form--and his favorite local bands. He’d have to be straight to be further from Adam’s type, chunky steel watch, caveman cologne, a Scorpio, no less. Safe for phone-number roulette.
When he asks, ducking his head at his own daring, if Adam wants to join a group of his friends back at his apartment, Adam says yes. Not because he’s drunk more than he should, or intends more than he should. Just to remind himself what normal feels like.
They’re all young. Not in the fresh way that appeals to him, just unfinished. Their rowdiness and ironically popped collars conspire with the bare white walls and IKEA couch to make him feel like the only adult in the room. After a few beers--Bud Light Lime, naturally--he’s less inclined to notice. He retains enough self-preservation to pass on the party favors and to keep his hands in his lap when the cameras come out. Ben slings a heavy arm around his shoulders, stiff, and that might even be drugstore body spray he’s wearing. But despite the alcohol buffer, Adam can no longer deny . . . not intent, still not that, but the possibility of intent.
He points his chin to five o’clock and conjures his red-carpet smile. Never too drunk to forget my best angles, he mocks himself. He’s no less cold-blooded than the starfuckers in the clubs. He doesn’t even want to fuck Ben--has chosen him, in a masterpiece of twisted reasoning, because he doesn’t want to fuck him, as though that would lessen the betrayal. But he wants, he craves the act, the outlet, the catharsis. The stage is just a tease now, all priming and no follow-through, no matter how hard he goads himself or the audience. It’s no substitute for consummation, for grappling with the need in hard sweaty close combat, for fucking it into submission.
He hasn’t crossed any lines yet. All his options are open, including an innocent handshake and a blameless goodnight. At this point, he’s just watching out for a sign--a loaded glance, a not-so-accidental touch. He’s sober enough to remember his early lobby call; he’s covertly checking the time on his phone as he waits. And then Ben is thanking him for coming over, telling him stiltedly what a memorable night it’s been.
The shutdown serves him right for assuming, like a proper narcissistic rock star, that everyone is angling to get in his pants. Among other reasons. He swallows a sudden nausea along with the last mouthful of Bud. Wouldn’t that be the perfect denouement, having to blunder to the bathroom in front of five avid amateur reporters, all probably logged in to Twitter already. Hanging w/@adamlambert at Ben’s, can u believe it? Dude is shit wasted.
Not wasted enough. Since he can’t purge the evening literally, he has to do it the hard way. Constructive angst.
He crawls under the cool sheets and pushes through the sensory interference--the high-ceilinged emptiness of the suite, the lurch of queasiness, the gauze-wrapped quality of his thoughts. To center his mind, he fixes on the tattoos on his wrist. He tries to read himself there, to reconnect with the Adam who deserves to love himself.
Symbols, sacred and transformative in the presence of belief, merely decorative without. The unbroken loop, the completed circuit he and Kris make; the balance and the sum of their personalities, magically greater than the two of them separately. And above, the eye that means protection. Can it protect him from his own weakness?
He’s rarely wrong when it comes to reading people. Tonight was probably no exception; probably unconscious self-sabotage. Even if he’d gotten a green light, he wouldn’t have gone through with it. He’s almost sure. Eighty percent sure.
The margin of error has him dialing Kris before he remembers it’s the middle of the night, even on the West Coast. Kris answers immediately. “Adam, what’s wrong?”
Do you remember that conversation where I got so mad? Did you see this coming and try to pardon me in advance? “Nothing’s wrong,” Adam says placatingly, undone by the premonition in Kris’s voice. The instinct to cherish overrides the urge to unburden himself. “I just called to sing you to sleep.”
Kris isn’t fooled. “Rough night?”
“Some sound issues. The FOH was fucked. Whatever the audience was hearing, they weren’t into it.”
“That always sucks. You went out after?”
“Yeah.” Adam can own at least a portion of his guilt. “There were fake-orange people and frat-boy booze. A lot of superficial . . . superficial-ness. I was the most superficial of all. I let them treat me like the special guest star of their evening. Remember what we promised each other?”
“The night before we won?” Kris has a blithe way of rewriting history. “There were a couple of things, but I know which one you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, that one.” No matter how successful we get, we’ll never turn into celebrities. “Want to give me the smackdown I deserve?”
“I’m going to sing you to sleep, how about that instead? Good thing I’m not on the bus tonight,” Kris adds with a laugh. “I’d never hear the end of it from the guys.”
“Good thing for me you feel all soft and squishy about me,” Adam manages to say.
“You ain’t heard nothing yet. Are you comfortable? I’m going to lie down with you, going to sing right in your ear.” Kris clears his throat. “When the rain is blowin’ in your face . . . ”
Twenty percent uncertainty is enough for a conviction in Adam’s own mind. He takes his punishment silently, listening.
Part Three
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 Two
Adam is pretty sure that exercise-induced endorphins are a hoax, but twenty dutiful minutes on the stationary bike turns out to be a bigger boost than a grande mocha. “Really,” Kris says, in the same tone Adam’s bus mates use on him when he tells them he had yogurt for lunch and it was enough, thanks. It means, What’s gotten into you? “Whatever works,” Adam says dismissively. “When I start jogging more than once a month, go ahead and stage an intervention.”
Nowadays, if he doesn’t stay in motion, he’ll disappear into those contrail afternoons. Turn on the TV or reach for his headphones and drift for hours. It’s a strange day, no colors or shapes, no sound in my head, I forget who I am when I’m with you . . . Escape into the electronic ether, or into Kris’s new demos, all stripped honesty and shining eyes lifted to the future, songs better saved for two a.m., the acceptable hour to pine.
Brooke is always happy to teach him new moves, and that’s a lot more fun than plodding away on a piece of equipment. Popping and rolling like nobody’s looking, turning a boring interchangeable Tuesday on the bus into a Saturday night out, even Neil glancing up from Wonkette to smirk tolerantly at the freak-ass bunch of them. “My best student,” Brooke says with affection. “Most enthusiastic, maybe,” he demurs.
--
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
You’re the master of reinvention, Aquarius, your face a waiting canvas, a new reflection in your mirror every day. But behind your chameleon’s exterior lies a heart of rare constancy. Make the most of opportunities to express both sides of your nature.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
--
“Sorry to break the mood.” The regret in Kris’s still-husky voice brings Adam back from a place he’d rather linger in, even though it’s a long way from fucked-out lassitude. “But before I forget, I might not be able to call tomorrow night. Katy’s coming to the show, and we’re going out with Cale and Kate afterwards.”
Katy makes these appearances at Kris’s side to gloss their picture-perfect divorce--out of the goodness of her heart, someone less skeptical than Adam would assume. He’s not jealous; he can even play his side of the triangle for black humor, with mistress jokes and scarlet-lettered costumes. Most of the time. In his territorial lapses, he begrudges her the legitimacy that’s her one advantage over him. Soon-to-be ex or not, she’s free to meet Kris face to face, to sit next to him in a restaurant, to carry on like they never stopped being high school sweethearts.
Adam has every reason to be a gracious winner. He’s the one who puts the yearning in Kris’s voice, the one who fills those haunted spaces. It’s his ring Kris never takes off, flaunts, even, on the hand that cradles the microphone. He should find it in himself to be grateful.
“Give her my best,” he says, bitchy.
--
The dozens of radio stations, one for every city, blur together in Adam’s mind. Same cubicle feel, same Arctic blast of a/c, same set of questions. East Coast, Deep South, or Midwest, the DJs tend to be 40ish and boomingly friendly, often beer-bellied and sporting the kind of beard that’s less a grooming choice than an extended vacation from shaving.
Today’s Q&A is different. Taped, for one thing, and instead of greeting Ace or Corey or Bubba, Adam is shaking hands with Van (“as in Halen, my dad was a rabid fan. Better than Alice or Ozzy, right?”). “Eye candy” fits him even better. Enviably smooth brown skin, flash of candid hazel under the brim of a fedora--a near-twin to the one Adam’s wearing, they joke about that as they seat themselves on the couch--elegantly crossed legs in hipster jeans. Adam won’t have any trouble staying awake for this one, even if it’s all about eyeliner tricks and boxers vs. briefs.
It’s not. “So you’ve been unattached for a while now,” Van ventures, after they’ve established where Adam is playing tonight and how Star FM listeners can request his single.
Adam isn’t fazed by this line of questioning. Sound chatty and confiding enough, he’s learned, and no one notices that you’re revealing nothing. “Yeah, I’m so busy . . . This phase of my life is all about working and traveling. I get out and mingle when I can, but I’m not going to meet the love of my life in a bar.” He spins it slightly regretful, what-can-you-do.
“Well, you never know.” Van’s smile displays even white teeth. “Stranger things, right? Like going on American Idol and finishing in second place.”
Adam doesn’t have to force the laugh. “You’ve got a point.”
“If you were to meet him, what would he look like? Can you describe your ideal man for us?”
“Hmm. You know, the older I get, the less I believe in having a checklist. I think you find the right person, and they become the ideal. But creative, open-minded, strong sense of humor--those are some non-negotiables. Cute is a plus.”
“Physical attraction? Fireworks?”
“That’s a big one, yeah.” Van is working a distinct theme here. With all due humility, Adam is starting to suspect a personal motive.
“I’m sure you’ve never had any trouble in that department. I mean, come on.” Van is definitely giving him the eye. “Are you making the most of that single status? Enjoying the buffet, let’s say?”
Slutting it up, Adam translates, but he takes it as the compliment Van intends. “Hey, if it looks good, sometimes you’ve got to sample, even if you won’t be coming back for seconds.” Laugh and lay on the innuendo, and no one notices that you’re lying your ass off.
“Your hit song ‘If I Had You’ is this high-energy, let’s-dance-and-party track. And the video is like a lollipop laced with LSD, by the way. But there’s an underlying message about what’s really important, about how life can feel hollow without love. Does that reflect your own experience?”
“What, the LSD?” They both laugh. “Absolutely. I’ve been through some things, I’ve had my heart broken. It’s not easy for anyone out there. But as an artist, it’s something you can draw on to feed your creativity,” he finishes, to indicate that the subject of his private life is closed.
Van picks up the cue, shifting the topic to Adam’s songwriting process. The remaining ten minutes pass almost too quickly. When the camera blinks off, Van says, direct and sincere, no overreaching flattery, “I enjoyed this a lot. Can I give you my number? Maybe we can do it off the record sometime.”
It shouldn’t catch Adam off guard, but it does. He’s slow to respond, caught between loyalty and sudden loss of social dexterity. No thanks is too cold, I can’t too cryptic. “I’d like that,” he says at last, and Van holds his gaze as he answers, “I hope you’ll use it.”
There’s no chance he ever would. That’s not why he deletes it as soon as he gets in the car. Because he would have, if things were different, maybe.
--
“--and there was a live band, sort of a seventies-funky retro-soul vibe. You know, that massive Earth Wind & Fire horn section sound? The whole club--this murky Frenchmen Street kind of place--was jamming. I owe Monte and Tommy for dragging me out of my cave, especially since it wasn’t really their scene. As you’ve probably gathered, Tommy was the only one there wearing a Ride The Lightning t-shirt.”
“Sounds cool.”
Adam is monopolizing the conversation tonight--not by choice. He’s on the verge of asking what’s on Kris’s mind when Kris breaks his latest preoccupied silence. “Um. Are you still getting the creepy messages? From Courtney?”
“Yep. Do you think she’d quit if I replied? ‘You win, you’ve cursed me, I’m never going to get laid again’?”
A particularly painful pause, and then Kris mumbles, barely audible, “About that. I’ve been thinking. If you have to-- You can do whatever you need to do. Just, I don’t want to hear about it.”
It catches Adam like a slap across the face. “What-- ” Reeling, he tries again. “Don’t ask, don’t tell? Or am I the only one who gets a free pass?” He’s not proud to have that withering tone in his repertoire, but he’ll use it in self-defense.
“Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t-- ” Now Kris sounds like a kid who’s broken his mom’s favorite vase. “I didn’t mean it like . . . however you’re taking it. Don’t be mad.”
“You’re nobly giving me permission to fuck other guys, and I’m supposed to say cool, thanks? I don’t need you to-- ” To remind me of the temptation. “To make some big self-sacrificing gesture for me. Do you think I could live with myself if I took advantage of you like that? If I cheapened what we have like that?” Adam’s temper is a deceptive thing, compressing to forgettable size, expanding tenfold outside the box. Ripping off the lid would be a release almost as satisfying as sex--for a few minutes. After that, a bitter taste in his mouth and a trampled mess in the one inviolate space in his life.
“But if you have to-- ”
“Sexual frustration never killed anyone, Kris.” There, that sounded like a civilized exchange rather than a fight. “Sure, I bitch and moan about it, probably too much, but I’ll survive.”
“But you’ve changed.” Kris gathers strength and urgency as he forges ahead. “I can hear it, and I can see it in pictures--you don’t smile as much, you’ve lost weight, you’ve lost--it’s corny, but I want to say you’ve lost your sparkle. That thing you have. The only time I’ve ever seen you like this was last fall, when we were both having such a rough time. I thought--I hoped--we’d gotten past that.”
So that’s where this is coming from. Adam’s anger deflates. “It’s not like last fall. It’s not-- ” To say grief would be to revisit that bleak limbo.
Kris isn’t done. “And if it’s because of me, because of everything you’re giving up for me, then I should-- If I care about you, I should-- ”
“No, you shouldn’t.” How long has Kris’s guilt been whispering this poison to him? Empathy clutches in Adam’s stomach. “You know how insane my life is right now. When I’m on stage, everyone’s counting on me to be this larger-than-life version of myself. The rest of the time, I have to tone it down, consider how everything I say might be misconstrued. And in the midst of all that, I’ve got to make sure I stay me.” It’s the truth, if not the whole truth.
“I know how hard it is, because I’ve been watching you walk that line since last November.” The AMAs shitstorm, so educational for both of them. It taught Kris to be acutely aware of the difference between his own fame and Adam’s more polarizing variety. More guilt, Adam thinks, sick. “And then on top of that, you have to deal with our situation.”
Here’s another line to walk, between acknowledgment and denial. Adam treads more carefully than in any interview. “It’s worth it, Kris. Always. Even in the hardest moments, I’ve never questioned that it’s worth it. Yeah, I feel like my hands are tied sometimes, and it makes me-- But the answer isn’t casual sex. Adulterous sex.”
“Some people would say it’s not technically cheating when you and I aren’t . . . official yet.”
Only the lack of conviction in the words saves Adam from getting furious all over again. “Those people would be full of shit. I’m not interested in, excuse me, getting off on a technicality. And in what world are we not official? It’s the commitment between us that counts, nothing else. What the fuck does it matter if we’re on Perez or not?” In spite of his earlier resolve, he’s approaching fight volume.
“You know I feel the same way,” Kris says softly, conciliatory. “I’m just playing devil’s advocate, I guess.”
“Well, stop it. I’d be yelling at you if I thought you actually wanted to win this argument.” Better late than never, Adam says the first thing that should’ve come out of his mouth, the thing too obvious not to overlook. “I don’t want anyone but you, Kris.”
“I know,” Kris says again, matter-of-factly this time, as though Adam just told him that Arkansas is hot in summer. “And you did yell, a little.”
“Not as much as I wanted to, believe me.”
“Yeah, this was inspired.” The droll tone signifies some fidgety gesture, Kris’s sneakered feet knocking together or his hand rising unconsciously to the back of his neck. His face scrunching in winning self-deprecation. “I hope you won’t get mad if I say . . . you don’t always have to be the one who gives more.”
“Fuck, Kris.” They’re so transparent to one another. Early on, Adam used to lapse into old self-protective habits of good behavior, modulate his personality. It seemed too good to be true--that Kris could see right through the screen, that he’d already stepped through it with the confidence of an owner.
Encompassing as it is, that acceptance still sneaks up on Adam sometimes. He wipes his eyes on his sleeve. “I don’t think I’ve even been giving my fair share. It’s always you propping me up lately.”
“I like it.” This is Kris’s invitation to leave seriousness behind. “Makes me feel like a man.”
“I can see you flexing those guns from here.” But Adam can’t let it go, not quite yet. “Kris. Can you honestly say you’d feel the same about me if I wasn’t faithful to you?”
“Yes . . . I don’t know.”
“An arrangement like that might work for some people, but that’s not who we are. You would hate it, even if you didn’t end up hating me. I would hate myself for doing that to you. I’m not going to risk us, not for an hour of stress relief, not for anything.”
“OK,” Kris says simply, and Adam doesn’t miss the unspoken Thank God.
--
There’s a framed quote on the wall: Everyone gets the tattoo they deserve. To Adam, it has an ominous ring, like the Chinese proverb about living in interesting times. But he hopes it’s true.
He’d had vague plans for more ink, maybe an Aquarius glyph or a lightning bolt, something dynamic, a boost of restorative energy to carry with him everywhere. Instead he’s chosen a promise. Promises are cheap, he has no illusions about that, and the shallow burn of the needle small change. But this one is backed by his conscience, which would never stop making him pay.
He watches as it takes shape, a piece of permanence for a half-hour investment. No one would ever accuse him of minimalism, but he likes the essentialness of it, likes the aesthetics of a form that carries its weight in meaning.
When it’s done, he raises his forearm for Sasha’s camera, any suggestion of I solemnly swear not accidental. For all its simplicity, the infinity loop is barely more subtle than their initials in a heart.
“Now who’s making grand gestures?” Kris says, glib, but with an underlying note Adam has no trouble identifying as gloating. Not for the first time, he thinks that the two of them are a lot more alike than anyone imagines.
Forever. It’s a touchstone, but not a talisman. It doesn’t blind him to the pretty boys in the audience, whose upturned faces evoke tenderness as well as desire, or to the pretty boys in the clubs who size him up blatantly as a stepping stone or a fuck. It doesn’t obscure the fact that he could have any of them, with only the effort of saying yes. Sex without love, nothing to do with touching and being touched, just the expression and the release that his body doesn’t know it shouldn’t want. Easy as taking his eyes off forever.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
--
Sometimes talk is enough, a way for them to have each other. Sometimes it’s more a reminder of what they don’t have. Appetizing and futile, like ordering from the menu of a restaurant that hasn’t opened yet. I’ll start with a blowjob, giving, please, and then I’d like you spread out under me, and for dessert . . . it all looks so good, but I’ll go with your mouth, your sweet mouth.
“Talk to me,” Kris says drowsily. “Tell me something from the future.”
“Hmm, let me take a look into my crystal ball.” Willing away the poignancy, Adam unties the drawstring at his waist and curls around a Kris-shaped space. He projects himself not forward but sideways, into a reality more plausible than this one. “OK, I see . . . This is the third time, I think. We’re so loose and lazy, we could’ve just fallen asleep spooned up together--and the spooning isn’t optional, by the way, I don’t care how sweaty we get. But I’m not done with you. I’m not done wanting that perfect ass of yours, and you want to give it up to me again. You’re rocking back, rubbing up on me. I can take a hint. But we’ve taken all the edge off, so we can just let it happen. Like a dream. I don’t even push my cock into you. You’re wet and open from before and it just slides in, slow and easy--but not too easy, because you wouldn’t like that, would you?”
Kris’s wordless assent has a faraway quality, as though Adam’s cock really does have hypnotic powers.
“I don’t jerk you off hard. You’re too sensitive from everything we’ve already done. I just barely circle my fingers around your cock after I’ve gotten them slippery with lube. Let you fuck into them while I fuck you, let you set the pace, however you want it, Kris . . . ”
And he goes on, tantalizing himself with what he can’t taste.
--
“It’s 99.7 The Link, Trev and Tara back with you on your Thursday morning. Our guest today is rocker Adam Lambert. We’ve got a few more e-mail questions for you, Adam. Here’s one that might make you blush a little.”
“I don’t blush. Not without makeup. But you’re welcome to give it a shot.”
“OK, here goes. Alicia writes, ‘Adam, with all that hotness you’re packing, why not spare some for the ladies? You can’t say you don’t like peaches when you’ve never tried anything but bananas.’”
The DJ and his cohost pile on the ooh la las while Adam censors his automatic retort. Isn’t that the ultimate in entitlement--expecting someone to fuck you just because you want them to? Even if I could get it up for you, you’d be disappointed, because I’m not some mythical cock god. Why not just enjoy the fantasy?
Trev’s patter rolls on, sparing him the need for tact. “That was just one indecent proposal out of many. There were a few we can’t read on the air. Women are all up on you, dude. Is that kind of overwhelming? Kind of weird?”
“It’s very flattering, actually.” As long as you don’t brandish your vagina like a switchblade. “I think I get it. My performances can be pretty sexually . . . overt, and sex is something everyone relates to. Male or female, gay or straight, we can all partake in, revel in, that energy. But one on one, the charge comes from chemistry, connection. And I only make that kind of connection”--Adam hard-sells the double entendre--“with a guy, sorry.”
--
As far as he’s concerned, he’s withholding nothing. Maybe he’s created a desire machine, tuned and tweaked with atmosphere and costumes and choreography, but it works both ways. He gives value in return for the hunger he feeds on, not just entertainment but a free-objectification zone. When his back arches and his hand wanders, when he goes there, he really goes there. He offers himself up. Go ahead, imagine what I can do with all this.
It’s a tease, but not a taunt. A sharing in good faith. Guilelessness is as much a part of it as glamour: a knowing wink to lighten the mystique, a smile after the simulated sex. He’s not interested in sustaining the illusion. If others insist on trying to live in it, he doesn’t blame himself, not after he’s debunked it at every turn.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
“Superstition ain’t the way,” Adam sings under his breath. He’s not superstitious; of course he doesn’t believe in curses. Toxic energy is something else.
If it’s getting to him, he’s the one at fault for opening a window to this puff of ill wind every day. Courtney--or rather, what she represents to him--isn’t the kind of adversary he can meet head-on. If he’s smart, he’ll put down his phone before be becomes as fixated as she is.
--
It starts with a plunge. Into the thick of the crowd, into the chaos of reaching, grasping hands; none too bold below the waist, but it’s only a matter of time. Transgressing his own boundaries is fun with a nervy edge, the way public sex is fun, the way bungee jumping is fun. Not his usual idea of a good time, but a bigger rush for that.
He pushes further, into euphoria, where it’s louder and hotter and the touching turns to tearing. And then the orgiastic peak, a wash of cool air on bare skin, the fastening of his vest giving way from top to bottom. Time to retreat.
Back on stage, he’s not done toying with that dividing line. The odds are calculated now, the game strategic. He takes hold of the open halves of the vest--to close it, to remove it? Neither; that would be ending the suspense. It’s more exciting to draw it out, more of a high, just more. The line is still in sight but blurred from his position on his knees, from the floor, his back bowing and his head tipping as he sinks further, lies nearly flat. Stretches the limits of his body and the audience’s endurance, cheers coalescing into a collective gasp as the vest finally falls open, falls off his shoulders and halfway down his arms.
The next play is obvious. Balancing, he slides one gloved hand from chest to torso, traces the faint down-arrow of hair there, and continues on.
The response from the crowd is a roar, primal as blood thirst, as he works to earn the review he gets from the local paper the next day: “Vocally and visually, Adam Lambert’s Glam Nation extravaganza can be summed up in three words: Subtle it ain’t.”
I saw your nipples on the internet, Kris puts in. Little barbell things and all.
Y/N/Should’ve gone for a Prince A. instead?
Pretty. Rather not share them w/everyone.
Adam is erasing a passive-aggressive reply about shirtless photo ops in the Bahamas when a new bubble appears on the screen. Sorry for being an ass. I’ll take your nipples any way I can get them.
You get sole rights to lift my barbells w/your tongue, Adam excuses him.
--
“Talk to me, Adam.”
“Any special requests?”
“The tattoo . . . ” It sounds more like a question.
“You like seeing your mark on me? You want to mark me up yourself?”
“Yeah . . . ”
“Tell me where, baby.”
“Your shoulders.” The answer comes fast enough to raise both of Adam’s eyebrows. He slips into the voice that’s just for them. “While I’m fucking you? Maybe we have to be quiet. Or maybe you just can’t help yourself.”
“Maybe you make me crazy,” Kris says almost accusingly. “Maybe I don’t want you to pull out even halfway.”
“I’ll put it back in, I promise. Maybe slowly, though. Maybe I like making you crazy. Maybe I like it when you sink your teeth in hard enough to leave prints. You’ll be sorry later, won’t you? You’ll lick it better.”
Kris gasps out something that might be shit.
“If you ask nicely--pout at me with your pretty cocksucking mouth--I’ll roll over and let you spank me.”
Adam is moving his hand steadily on his cock, but Kris is going to finish him off with that little hitch in his breathing. “You don’t have to hold back. You can make it sting.”
“Your skin’s so white-- ”
“It’ll show up so clearly. Your handprint on my ass. You can do it until I’m red and sore, and then rub your cock all over the burn you made. You can jerk off on me and I’ll feel it, the splashes of it will feel so hot on my ass when you come-- ”
Afterward, Kris says, “I don’t get it. That’s not in my top 10, or even my top 20, probably.”
“Mine either,” Adam admits. “But I don’t think it’s about the specifics. It’s all in the concept.” Ownership.
--
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
Opinionated and outspoken as you are, you’re used to opposition--but maybe not as much as you’re facing lately. Don’t be discouraged. In standing up for yourself, you might not change others’ beliefs, but you’ll reaffirm your own.
--
“Hey, wait, you’re going over there?” Catching on to Adam’s change in direction, away from the venue entrance, Neil hurries after him.
“Going to say hi to my haters,” Adam tosses back, with a cheekiness he doesn’t feel. He can’t explain the impulsive detour even to himself. As he crosses the street, flanked closely by disapproving bodyguards, he notices that one of the signs calls him a sexual predator. 19 will want to get the lawyers on that.
At his approach, the crowd of protesters shuffles as one, regrouping. Uneasiness, hostility, excitement? For once, Adam’s initiative falters. Somehow their ordinariness forestalls any question he might ask: What are you hoping to accomplish here? or simply, Why? They’re so obviously a herd, followers who’ve never questioned anything they’ve been told. With their pasty faces and colorful t-shirts advertising hate, they’re every cliché about the banality of evil come to life. He’d rather believe that they’re misguided, redeemable.
The silence is broken by a single word, flung at him like a stone. In another age, it would’ve been a stone. He flinches in involuntary denial. By the time the sense of it reaches him, the fans lined up in front of the box office are returning a volley of jeering laughter. “Wrong band, guys,” he says coolly, composure restored. “Some great tunes, though. Cute lead singer.”
Their eyes aren’t ordinary. That’s the impression that stays with him as security leads him away--unblinking, unreachable stares. At his side, Neil is muttering, warming up for a rant. “Jesus H. Macy. They make your glam cult look like amateur night at the batshit crazy cabaret. Incubus, are you fucking shitting me?”
Theater of the absurd is how Adam presents it to Kris. “It was pretty medieval. Close ranks, shun the infidel. Am I that threatening?”
“Definitely. Threatening like a cupcake. A really sparkly, fluffy cupcake.”
“Oh, well. Whatever. Neil is right, there’s no point in trying to psychoanalyze them.”
“They’re more pathetic than anything, when you think about it,” Kris says seriously. “They make a religion out of hate because it’s the one thing they let themselves have. You’ve got to be pretty messed up to say ‘No thanks’ to everything that makes life worthwhile.”
“Ass-fucking? Getting blazed?”
“Yeah, those,” Kris says, indulgent. “And love, and . . . just, faith that the world is basically a good place. Not that I’d waste any sympathy on them. When I think about them spewing their crap at you-- ”
Adam opens his mouth to deny that it stuck. What comes out is, “They looked at me like I was some kind of monster.”
“Adam-- Shit. Now I just want to beat their asses for them.”
With Kris’s solid weight at his back, Adam finally feels the tension ebb away. Their trick of touching long distance works to soothe, too; he leans into the silence, and Kris’s answering gesture is there for him, a well-remembered brush of fingers through his hair. His eyes drift shut. “I looked it up on Wikipedia,” he says eventually.
“Incubus? Some kind of sex demon, right?” Kris doesn’t quite suppress a chuckle. “Sorry, it’s just so . . . ”
“It is ridiculous. An incubus is a demon that sucks the vitality out of humans--both guys and girls, demons are bi, I guess--by sexing them up in their sleep.”
Kris says soberly, “I’ll leave the door open for you when I go to bed,” and they crack up like they used to, when Kris would drive home the punchline with a shoulder bump and Adam’s arm would encircle him automatically.
--
Blind Items
This proudly gay star, B list with B+ name recognition, claims he’s still looking for “the one.” Fans would be surprised to learn that he’s hooking up with the one who won’t come out for him, a C+ lister with a lot to lose. Wonder how the closeted life agrees with him?
It’s so vague it could be--not anyone, the “proudly gay” part narrows it down a lot--but a number of people. Adam thinks it sounds like that TV actor, the one who used to be on the sci-fi show. More to the point, it doesn’t sound like him. Like them.
Except it does, apparently, to gossip-blog readers. Only a handful of them have dusted off Kradam, that mostly forgotten fangirl favorite, but that’s enough to put management on the offense. “You know how they get when the media mentions us together, even as friends,” Kris says, sounding tired after a crisis briefing via conference call. Adam still has his own briefing to look forward to. “This is on another level.”
“Do they actually think it’s about us?”
“There was some talk about possible leaks--like we’re a CIA file or something--but not much. They even said that most of this crap is made up. Doesn’t matter, though, if people believe it’s true.”
Perception, that fickle bitch. “What do they expect us to do about it?” Adam can’t keep the brittleness out of his voice. “What’s left? No more phone calls? No watching each other on YouTube? Are they going to check our browser histories? Maybe they can plant a few rumors about you hooking up with groupies. Female, naturally.”
“That’s pretty much what they wanted to do.” Kris laughs mirthlessly. “Not groupies, just--someone convenient. But then there’s the whole wedding ring, showing respect thing.”
Convenient rings the alarm. “So the rumors are going to be about you and-- ” Adam has a childish aversion to saying her name. Today he lets it slide. “About a reconciliation.”
“I tried to-- ”
“I know. Don’t take this on yourself.” To spare Kris more misplaced guilt, Adam will lie to him if necessary, put all his considerable bullshitting skills up against Kris’s ability to see through him. He’ll tell any reporter who asks, They’re a great couple, I’m rooting for them, if that’s what it takes to make this a nonissue. “It’s just a blip. Next week there’ll be a new celebrity sex tape or shocking outfit or something, and it’ll go away.”
“Yeah. But even before this, I've wondered . . . Do you feel like you’re in the closet?” It’s the question Adam’s been dreading, but he’s unprepared for the defeat in it, the image of Kris slumped and small.
“No, baby. Fuck no. Keeping us . . . private isn’t the same as pretending to be something I’m not. If I wasn’t one hundred percent me, would I be pissing off the moral majority every night?” Right now, Adam would trade his glittering platform for the chance to lift Kris’s chin and tell him with eyes as well as words, “I’m more myself than I’ve ever been, and it’s not just because of what I get to do. It’s because of what you’ve unlocked in me. It was there, waiting, but you had the key. You are the key, Kris.”
That’s not the end of it, or the worst. Under the second half of management’s plan, Adam gets the privilege of starting own rumors hands-on. They make it sound simple: be seen, take pictures, send Twitter into speculation overdrive, and let the gossip sites take it from there. Make the rounds of the bars, browse the buffet he’s been avoiding, face the fact that he’s hungry, that his cock is amoral even if he isn’t. Put on a believable show of slutting it up--extra points for Method acting.
“So I’ll collect some phone numbers,” he says breezily to Kris. “I’ll use them to play the lottery, and when I’m disgustingly rich, I’ll buy you your own Chik-fil-A franchise. No, the whole company, how does that sound?”
It’s nobody’s fault. Just the ground crumbling under his feet. After the initial blow, two years, and then the wrench of last fall, he’d thought there could be no sacrifices left to make. But now he’s watching another vital piece slip away, another bit of control stolen from his dwindling supply.
It’s just circumstances colliding. Just the stars aligning against him.
Kris is a good sport about it. “How many digits did you rack up tonight?” he’ll ask carelessly, before they get down to the business of what’s real. Each time, Adam finds it a little harder to answer in kind.
--
Tommy is, no question, Brooke’s worst student. So bad, Adam thought he must be faking woodenness to get her hands on his hips, reinforcing her instruction, “C’mon, babe, you’ve got to loosen these up.” But he’s no looser in the wild.
“Those clunky-ass boots must be fucking with your center of gravity,” Adam shouts over the music, as Tommy busts out his best bob and weave. Although blood alcohol level is a likely factor too. “No musician is that lacking in rhythm.”
The proof is wobbling right there in front of him, but Tommy makes up for it in loyalty. He’s joined Adam on the dance floor to run interference, all five-and-a-half-feet-with-boots of him. Though for once Adam isn’t getting mobbed, just hemmed in like everybody else, the better to soak up the energy of bodies moving with a common goal, Give it to me baby like boom boom boom, reclaiming the part of himself that knows how to have an uncomplicated good time.
“Come here rude boy, boy, is you big enough . . . ” Tommy’s metronomic half-headbang has his Aqua Net collapsing in slow defeat. “Hey, we exist. We’re a rare breed, like unicorns, or gay guys in Ed Hardy.” He mixes things up by humping Adam’s leg, and that’s throwing down. Adam fits a hand to the small of his back and macks on him outrageously until they’re both laughing out of control, no rhythm at all.
Adam could stay out here for the rest of the night, but Tommy’s already gone beyond the call of duty. “Break for refreshment?”
“Fuck yeah.” Tommy hooks onto Adam’s belt gratefully as they squeeze their way through the crowd.
“Bacardi and Coke?”
“I love you, man.” A sloppy head-butt demonstrates Tommy’s affection. “Those dickwads can kiss my ass.” Those dickwads being Monte and Neil, who never miss a chance to rag on pussy drinks or tell the bartender to put in a bunch of cherries. (“It’s not Diet Coke,” Tommy always counters reasonably.) “They wish they were that secure in their manhood,” Adam is about to say, when company joins them at the bar.
“You looked good out there.” It’s a cute guy Adam noticed earlier, currently flashing an opening-gambit smile. He’s even cuter up close. Slight build, Chace Crawford eyelashes. “You and your . . . boyfriend?”
Tommy does a quick check-in, ready to run interference here too. When Adam telegraphs not necessary, he says cheerfully, “Nah, I’m just his . . . what’s the opposite of a wingman?”
Cute guy clearly regards the question as rhetorical and the field as open. “I’m Ethan,” he says, to Adam rather than the both of them.
“Adam.” To stave off celebrity douchedom, Adam always introduces himself, even if someone’s already addressed him by name, or done that shrill Oh my God, you’re Adam Lambert thing that makes him hunch inwardly.
“Yeah, I know.” The smile is a little predatory now, if Adam’s any judge. “No mistaking that . . . face.” As Tommy rolls his eyes behind Ethan’s back, Ethan ups the subtlety quotient by grazing Adam’s zipper with the backs of four fingers. It’s the most glancing of touches, but undeniably a grope.
“Whoa, watch the hand.” Adam keeps his tone pleasant, but he lets the warning show in his eyes.
“Sorry,” Ethan says, shapely mouth not so cute with that contradicting smirk on it. He turns back to his beer, conceding defeat, Adam dares to hope. The bartender is setting down their drinks; the prospect of escape is looking even better than a dry martini. Adam steps up to the bar--and up against a cupped palm.
He has a split second to be startled by the violence of his own reaction before he’s clamping down on Ethan’s wrist. “I told you to watch the hand,” he says, low and deadly, crowding in with a threat that looks enough like mating behavior to fool any curious onlookers or camera phones.
It elicits only a shrug. “Thought you’d go for that.”
Tommy pipes up, “Yeah, because getting pawed by some drunk asshole is the one thing that’s been missing from his life. Your game needs work. Asshole.”
Adam still hasn’t let go, fingers easily spanning the guy’s wrist as he looms over his smaller body, chest pressing up against narrow shoulder blades. He wants to teach the arrogant fucker a lesson, he wants to . . . Tommy pulls at his arm, speaking quietly but insistently. “Come on, man. Forget him.”
The clear liquid shivers in Adam’s glass, adrenaline crash setting in like a sudden chill. The martini calms the tremor, though two would be better and three better yet. He’s lost his desire to dance. “I think I’ll head back, Tommy Joe. Let’s go find Cam and Sasha, in case you need help staying vertical in those things.”
“Nah, I’ll stick with you.”
Tommy dozes in the taxi, leaving Adam alone to process the ugliness--not a stranger’s casual violation, but his own response. His temper isn’t usually so close to the surface, and it’s always separate from . . . It’s never tripped other switches, never lit up the whole aggression board. Hate fuck is the term he’s trying to avoid.
“A cockblocker.” Tommy jolts awake, triumphant. “That’s the opposite of a wingman. Hey, boss, don’t look so sad.” Secure in his manhood as he is, he takes Adam’s hand and holds it all the way back to the hotel.
--
@everblue4adam: @adamlambert I hope you ache the way I ache.
No message today. It’s like an unexpected piece of good news, or the cancellation of bad news. His single staying in rotation after all, or a sore throat going away overnight. Disproportionately relieved, Adam scrolls again, just to be sure, and there it is. She’s changed her profile picture, that’s all.
In this one, his gaze is averted from the camera, his expression soft and distant. Defenses down, no trace of bitch-please Adam. He recognizes the embroidered collar of his “Sleepwalker” coat. The photographer captured the pensive moment that always holds him before he emerges from the song. Someday my prince will come is the obvious caption.
What does it mean? She’s realized that he’s a three-dimensional human being? She thinks she’s winning? Stop. He powers off his phone decisively and stashes it in his backpack. Out of sight, hopefully out of mind.
--
“The Truth” About Kris Allen: Back Off The Market?
Exclusive: Is American Idol Season 8 winner Kris Allen calling off his divorce from Paranormal High School actress Katy O’Connell?
The pair have remained on good terms since splitting in June 2009 after less than a year of marriage. Now things seem to be heating up, with O’Connell, 24, turning up at several dates on Allen’s summer tour, including last month’s L.A. opener for Rob Thomas. In recent weeks, they’ve been spotted out and about together on several occasions, “looking cozy,” according to eyewitnesses.
“She’ll always be important to me,” Allen, 25, said last year. “We’re still great friends.”
Reached for comment, Allen’s rep would say only, “We wish them all the best.”
--
It’s the music Adam’s body is responding to, heavy shuddering beats like the waves of an orgasm or a migraine, some subsuming thing. Not the press of a stranger’s arm in the high-backed booth, or the breath of words conspiratorial inches from his ear. Adam only nods, conceding nothing, and drinks the cocktails as they appear in front of him, first Belvedere martinis and then some lethal house specialty made with apple-infused scotch.
The owner of Agenda has delusions of grandeur, a palpable I’ve-got-this cockiness. Any minute now he’s going to ask if Adam wants to take this somewhere else, confident that the answer will be yes--confident, probably, that Adam will bottom for him. And Adam will tell him, maybe diplomatically, maybe not, that there is no this. Until then, Adam is not-himself enough to pursue this experiment in letting someone pursue him.
The electronic pulse picks up, pacing the beat under his skin, calling to a part of him that’s wide awake and restless. There’s nothing to appease it here, no sexual current running live through the heat, only a desire to fuck his famous name for bragging rights. A form of desire that’s useless to him.
The club owner’s hand settles on his thigh, and Adam raises an eyebrow to let him know he’s on sufferance. Inside, he’s straining to move with the music, against it.
--
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
Your gift for drawing admirers and making friends is second to none, but even personable Aquarius can’t be the life of every party. Why not forgo the social whirl for a change? Meditate, or read a book. If you’re trying to escape to a place outside yourself, consider that solitude is sometimes the wiser route.
--
The front of house engineer is shit at his job, or else he’s falling asleep at the controls. Whatever the reason, Adam’s voice keeps dropping out of the mix. He can’t really blame the audience for their limp response, lukewarm cheers and apathy in their seats like they’re killing time in a Holiday Inn lounge, but he resents them for it. He needs this. He needs more, not less, with the battery perpetually low, draining faster than ever. Unless he gets that euphoric charge, he’s going to wake up tired tomorrow morning, dense cotton clouds in his head, low-blood-sugar lethargy lasting all day.
He cuts the second encore and changes clothes hurriedly, glitter and turquoise shadow streaking his clean shirt. At the barricades, it’s the usual controlled frenzy. He lets it engulf him, leaving security struggling to follow as the current pulls him deeper. His senses are scraped raw, every overheard comment a crackle of static electricity, a teasing rasp. God, he makes me wish I had a dick . . . I would suck the freckles right off that lower lip . . . Did you see the way he worked those hips, he’s got to be the best fuck ever.
There’s no question of not going out afterwards. He needs to go on losing himself, in noise and movement and a glass if nothing else.
--
Ben, last name something like Bryson, stands out in the crowd at Rising Sign, and not just because he’s taller than Adam by a couple of inches. He’s shy. His genuine if stammering niceness sets him apart from the circling opportunists, even if he’s got a perma-tan and an Ed Hardy knockoff t-shirt--Adam will have to remember to tell Tommy--to overcompensate for it.
Adam’s adept enough for both of them, and soon Ben’s more at ease, opening up about his major in business--Adam blocks the association before it can form--and his favorite local bands. He’d have to be straight to be further from Adam’s type, chunky steel watch, caveman cologne, a Scorpio, no less. Safe for phone-number roulette.
When he asks, ducking his head at his own daring, if Adam wants to join a group of his friends back at his apartment, Adam says yes. Not because he’s drunk more than he should, or intends more than he should. Just to remind himself what normal feels like.
They’re all young. Not in the fresh way that appeals to him, just unfinished. Their rowdiness and ironically popped collars conspire with the bare white walls and IKEA couch to make him feel like the only adult in the room. After a few beers--Bud Light Lime, naturally--he’s less inclined to notice. He retains enough self-preservation to pass on the party favors and to keep his hands in his lap when the cameras come out. Ben slings a heavy arm around his shoulders, stiff, and that might even be drugstore body spray he’s wearing. But despite the alcohol buffer, Adam can no longer deny . . . not intent, still not that, but the possibility of intent.
He points his chin to five o’clock and conjures his red-carpet smile. Never too drunk to forget my best angles, he mocks himself. He’s no less cold-blooded than the starfuckers in the clubs. He doesn’t even want to fuck Ben--has chosen him, in a masterpiece of twisted reasoning, because he doesn’t want to fuck him, as though that would lessen the betrayal. But he wants, he craves the act, the outlet, the catharsis. The stage is just a tease now, all priming and no follow-through, no matter how hard he goads himself or the audience. It’s no substitute for consummation, for grappling with the need in hard sweaty close combat, for fucking it into submission.
He hasn’t crossed any lines yet. All his options are open, including an innocent handshake and a blameless goodnight. At this point, he’s just watching out for a sign--a loaded glance, a not-so-accidental touch. He’s sober enough to remember his early lobby call; he’s covertly checking the time on his phone as he waits. And then Ben is thanking him for coming over, telling him stiltedly what a memorable night it’s been.
The shutdown serves him right for assuming, like a proper narcissistic rock star, that everyone is angling to get in his pants. Among other reasons. He swallows a sudden nausea along with the last mouthful of Bud. Wouldn’t that be the perfect denouement, having to blunder to the bathroom in front of five avid amateur reporters, all probably logged in to Twitter already. Hanging w/@adamlambert at Ben’s, can u believe it? Dude is shit wasted.
Not wasted enough. Since he can’t purge the evening literally, he has to do it the hard way. Constructive angst.
He crawls under the cool sheets and pushes through the sensory interference--the high-ceilinged emptiness of the suite, the lurch of queasiness, the gauze-wrapped quality of his thoughts. To center his mind, he fixes on the tattoos on his wrist. He tries to read himself there, to reconnect with the Adam who deserves to love himself.
Symbols, sacred and transformative in the presence of belief, merely decorative without. The unbroken loop, the completed circuit he and Kris make; the balance and the sum of their personalities, magically greater than the two of them separately. And above, the eye that means protection. Can it protect him from his own weakness?
He’s rarely wrong when it comes to reading people. Tonight was probably no exception; probably unconscious self-sabotage. Even if he’d gotten a green light, he wouldn’t have gone through with it. He’s almost sure. Eighty percent sure.
The margin of error has him dialing Kris before he remembers it’s the middle of the night, even on the West Coast. Kris answers immediately. “Adam, what’s wrong?”
Do you remember that conversation where I got so mad? Did you see this coming and try to pardon me in advance? “Nothing’s wrong,” Adam says placatingly, undone by the premonition in Kris’s voice. The instinct to cherish overrides the urge to unburden himself. “I just called to sing you to sleep.”
Kris isn’t fooled. “Rough night?”
“Some sound issues. The FOH was fucked. Whatever the audience was hearing, they weren’t into it.”
“That always sucks. You went out after?”
“Yeah.” Adam can own at least a portion of his guilt. “There were fake-orange people and frat-boy booze. A lot of superficial . . . superficial-ness. I was the most superficial of all. I let them treat me like the special guest star of their evening. Remember what we promised each other?”
“The night before we won?” Kris has a blithe way of rewriting history. “There were a couple of things, but I know which one you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, that one.” No matter how successful we get, we’ll never turn into celebrities. “Want to give me the smackdown I deserve?”
“I’m going to sing you to sleep, how about that instead? Good thing I’m not on the bus tonight,” Kris adds with a laugh. “I’d never hear the end of it from the guys.”
“Good thing for me you feel all soft and squishy about me,” Adam manages to say.
“You ain’t heard nothing yet. Are you comfortable? I’m going to lie down with you, going to sing right in your ear.” Kris clears his throat. “When the rain is blowin’ in your face . . . ”
Twenty percent uncertainty is enough for a conviction in Adam’s own mind. He takes his punishment silently, listening.
Part Three