FIC: Broken Open - Part 9a/9 (Adam/Tommy)
BROKEN OPEN - PART 9a
Author’s note: I’ve been struggling over the second half of this final part. It’s not right yet, needs more... something. Plus RL has been a swamp of late. So finally I decided to just post the first half of Part 9. Seriously, I’ll be finishing it up way soon.
“I’mma cuddle you to within an inch of your life, douchebag.”
“That’s my endearment, you don’t have permission to use it,” Tommy grouses.
Adam laughs.
He hasn’t pushed Tommy at all for five days now.
Tommy’s still trying to figure out what he is to Adam other than a pretty face attached to a willing body. He knows it can’t be just that but he wants to figure it out, preferably on his own. It’ll seem less real if he asks Adam; he’s afraid of a canned answer. He already asked once and the answer was nice, not gonna lie, but why is it love love, not just, you know, friend love? He doesn’t deny feeling it - he’s head over heels about Adam - but he can’t define the difference. Partly it’s Adam wanting him so much; but also it’s a weird feeling roiling around in his gut, not something that can be put in words. Sometimes he thinks he hears it in music, though.
While he’s trying to figure it out on his own, he’s also getting used to this thing between them. He’s pretty sure he caved in faster than he should have but that was out of fear that he’d lose Adam forever. Time heals; time can also separate. He still feels awkward in some ways, so he’s working his way through that. He can admit to himself now that he really wants and needs Adam. It’s just, he wants it to last. He doesn’t want them to burn through the relationship and then have it be over.
So they spend time together, not doing anything much. Adam snuggles him on the sofa while they watch stupid television shows, or experiments by making weird meals for them to pick over at night. Adam always shows up in the shower seconds after Tommy gets in, without an invitation, not that he needs one. At night in bed, he pushes and pulls at Tommy’s limbs until he’s got them slotted together the way he wants, tangled up like sleeping puppies.
They go to movies and restaurants and the beach; they walk the Griffith Park trails; they go to the Huntington Library and to small gigs at small venues where they can hide in the back; they play together at home, Tommy on the six-string acoustic and Adam just singing softly along. They re-finish the redwood patio and battle the bougainvillea that’s running amok over it. They make out on the sofa or by the pool.
They go off to their separate things, too, Adam out jogging in the morning or meeting with producers in the afternoon to work on the new album, Tommy tagging along with Monte to a new gig. He’s not ready to move in permanently even though Adam keeps hinting, but he is ready to bring over a couple more guitars. And some more clothes, even though he likes wearing Adam’s shirts around the house. He’s pretty sure Adam’s on board with that, too.
It’s all great, but the line is still there between them, micron-thin but unbroken. Tommy feels like he’s holding his breath, waiting for Adam to break that line. He’s not sure why it’s Adam’s job to break it, except for the fact that he himself can’t (or, he has to be honest with himself, won’t) figure it out. So Adam needs to be the one. Tommy’s used to being the dark star. Adam’s the supernova.
One night Tommy finishes up with the dishes and joins Adam, who’s slouching
on the sofa in the dark, feet on the coffee table, watching L.A. glitter far down the hill. Adam pulls him in close, snugged against his side. Tommy curls up and lays his head on Adam’s shoulder, shoving his good arm between Adam and the sofa and the other over Adam’s waist.
“Comfy?” asks Adam.
“Yep,” Tommy says quietly.
“Penny for your thoughts?”
“Only a penny?”
Adam lifts his hip and gets his wallet out of his back pocket. He takes out a crisp twenty and stuffs it into the front pocket of Tommy’s jeans and tosses the wallet on the table. “Twenty for your thoughts?”
Tommy snickers. “You’re so easy.”
“I am,” Adam agrees, pulling Tommy even closer as though that were possible. His fingers card through Tommy’s hair. “So can you talk? Just a little? For me?”
Tommy can’t say no; he knew this was coming. No matter how much he wants to, he can’t keep it inside. Let it out in the fresh air, Monte had said. So he takes a deep breath and says, “I was born.”
“Thank god for that,” Adam laughs. “But you can skip ahead. I’ll find out about your childhood from your mom one of these days. Bet she has photo albums.”
“Bastard.”
“Not according to my parents.”
“Ha ha. So in high school most of my friends were gay and I wanted to be gay. They were cool, they didn’t give a shit what people thought, they were outcasts and it was like a, you know that thing, a badge of honor.”
“Like Jillian?”
“Yeah. So I wanted to be like them, you know? I thought the Depeche Mode guys were gay for the longest time. I wanted to be cool like that. I thought it was something you could decide to be. Jillian used to call me an intellectual bisexual.”
“You gave it a go?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“It didn’t work?”
“Not like I expected. It felt odd. Not bad, just like… I maybe wasn’t going to fall in love with a boy. Like ever. Like it didn’t seem possible. So that made it seem wrong. Sex is nice but it’s supposed to end up with being in love someday.”
Adam pets Tommy’s hair some more. “It’s okay, you’re not the only one who went through that.”
“But it wasn’t okay, I hurt Skyler’s feelings, I acted like an asshole. He wasn’t one of the tough cool kids, he was in the closet. I hurt him.”
“Have you talked to him at all since?”
Tommy fidgets and curls up tighter. “Jillian made me. I said sorry to him.”
“Friends now?”
Tommy nods his head against Adam’s chest. “Me and Jillian are going down to San Diego in a few weeks to see him.”
Adam kisses the top of Tommy’s head and rubs a hand soothingly up and down Tommy’s arm. “You told me that you did fall in love once.”
Tommy thinks back. He remembers Adam asking if he had ever been in love and he’d responded yes. At the time he’d thought it was a huge admission but maybe Adam didn’t get it then, doesn’t get it now.
“So was it just once?” Adam prompts again.
“Yeah.”
“Did she break your heart?”
Oh god. What a mess. “Adam,” Tommy complains, “you weren’t listening.”
Adam’s hand goes still on Tommy’s arm. “Tommy? Are you saying… oh for crying out loud, am I an idiot?” Adam smacks himself on the forehead. “I need to listen better, don’t I?”
“You listen lots. Just not always.” Tommy releases his tight grip on Adam to snatch the twenty dollar bill from his pocket and stuff it into Adam’s. “Twenty for your thoughts.”
“My thoughts?” Adam laughs weakly. “Tommy, Tommy, Tommy Joe, why do you think I kept kissing you and grabbing your hair and cuddling you?”
“You thought I was cute.”
“No, doofus. Because I was falling for you, deeper and deeper all the fucking time. Right down the rabbit hole.”
Tommy shuffles around. “Well, ditto, why do you think I kept kissing you back? God, that last concert, I was so afraid you’d never kiss me again.” He’d felt so desperate back then; when he’d worked up the nerve to watch the footage later, he had looked desperate, too.
Adam leans away and puts a finger under Tommy’s chin, pushes his face up. Tommy prefers to stay hidden. He won’t stop Adam, though, because Adam deserves more than Tommy’s given him so far. Adam’s eyes are deep and soft, smudged with emotion. “Honey, is it having sex with a guy that’s the problem?”
Tommy chews on his lower lip. “If you’re born either gay or straight, how come you can want it with the wrong person?”
“I’m the wrong person?”
“No! That’s not what I mean. It just, kind of, it feels awkward and I don’t know why. I want it but I don’t understand it.”
“I believe it’s possible to be bi.”
Tommy frowns. “But they say that’s just an excuse for gay people who don’t want to admit it.”
“You do drive me insane, Tommy,” Adam says fondly and a little sadly. “It’s part of your charm.”
His charm is understated, Tommy thinks to himself. He hadn’t considered that his quiet charm could drive anyone, much less self-assured Adam, insane. He’s suffused with a feeling that’s heady and frightening at the same time. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand what love is supposed to be,” Tommy says.
“It’s a feeling, you know it inside.”
“Inside, yeah right,” Tommy says. “You can’t know what’s inside me. I don’t even know what’s inside me.”
“If we figured it all out too fast, we’d get bored. But I think I know what you mean even if I can’t see inside your brain, silly. We’re all alone in our heads, sure, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to open up to the people we love.”
That thought is pretty alarming. “Monte says I can keep some secrets.”
“Secrets are okay but not if you feel ashamed of them.”
“I’m not ashamed of this.” Tommy fists his hand in Adam’s shirt, crumples it. “I know I freaked out but I can’t describe why.” This is what’s been bothering him so much: why he ran. If he’s in love with Adam, then sex shouldn’t freak him out. Maybe… maybe he doesn’t trust his own feelings, doesn’t trust that he really is in love. Does he merely want to be in love? Although that’s crazy, too, because if he wants to be in love, why wouldn’t he go the easy route by choosing a girl? It’s easy to love Adam, but not so easy to be in love with him.
“You’re thinking too much,” Adam says, ruffling his hair. “Come on, share.”
“I think,” Tommy begins, halts. “I think maybe I left because I’m afraid of hurting you.”
Adam runs his fingertip along Tommy’s jaw. “I’m willing to take that chance so long as there’s the possibility that I get to keep you for the rest of my life.”
God almighty. Adam really does love him. Suddenly Tommy is less afraid of hurting Adam and more afraid that he’ll drive Adam insane, aka away. What if it doesn’t last? Tommy frowns. That would kill him for sure. “What if it’s not for that long?” he asks, just another one of those times he wishes he’d kept his mouth shut.
“What if it is? Do you want it to be?” Adam asks very seriously.
“Yes.”
Adam touches his lips to Tommy’s tenderly. “Then I’ll double down.”
“Your only exception?”
“The only one I ever want.”
Tommy relaxes marginally, watching Adam’s eyes, his soft smile. Something tight around his heart unfurls the smallest bit and it feels like freedom. Adam kisses him again, slowly, thoroughly, kitten licks and then deeply penetrating, one big hand covering his cheek, tilting his head. Tommy opens up, kisses back. It feels right. He’s not going to be scared. He won’t let himself do that anymore.
* * *
The next night Adam gets an emergency text from Monte: babysitter bailed. help!!
They show up at Casa Pittman within the hour. Monte apologizes for the short notice. “It’s important to Lisa’s parents, we gotta make a showing. Sure you two can handle the horde?”
“No worries, I can even change diapers,” Adam says reassuringly.
“Twice the diapers, twice the fun,” Lisa says, indicating the twins. “The girls are fed, the twins’ formula is ready in the fridge and here’s the feeding and bedtime schedule.”
“We’ve got it covered, we have both your cells, go enjoy.” Adam shoos them out the door.
Ariel and Aurora stretch out on the living room floor, crayons everywhere, drawing on big pads of paper. Beatrix crawls around the carpet busily. Bonzo the cat is perched on the top of a bookshelf, giving everyone in the room a filthy look.
“This is our house,” Ariel informs Tommy very seriously, as he sits down cross-legged next to her. She holds up the pad of paper. “This is our back yard and this is Bonzo and this is Mommy and this is Daddy.”
“Right, I can see the beard,” Tommy says. “Are you in there?”
“I’m gonna be,” she says, applying herself again to the drawing.
“Where’s Aurora?”
“She has her own house.”
Tommy ponders that one. “Sisters, huh?” he says. “Who needs ‘em?”
She picks out a dark blue crayon and hands it to Tommy. “You draw your house. Adam!”
“What, sweetie?” Adam says from the couch where he’s holding Atticus.
“Come draw your house!”
“Later, okay? I’m taking care of your brother.”
Tommy looks up to smile at Adam. His eyes shift to the baby. “He’s got the weirdest look on his tiny face.”
“He does?” Adam peers at the baby. “You okay, buddy?”
“It’s like a thousand-year stare. I didn’t know babies could do that.”
“Oops,” Adam says. “I think I know what it means. Get the Diaper Genie, quick!”
They opt to change him on a towel on the floor because they’re afraid of making a mess on one of the beds, where Ariel insists that Mommy usually does it. She gives them highly suspicious-sounding advice throughout the process. Tommy finds the Diaper Genie amazing at first and then disgusting when he has trouble getting the used and extremely noxious diaper in it properly.
Adam looks up from velcroing the fresh diaper in place. “Forget that! Beatrix is escaping!”
Tommy drops the contraption and just barely rescues the toddler before she wedges her head in the cat door. “Hey, little girl, doncha want to stay in with us? Cold out there! Also, that’s Bonzo’s door. He might get mad.”
It’s totally downhill from there, in terms of decorum. Tommy never does figure out how to get the Diaper Genie totally closed so of course it stinks and they hide it in the guest bathroom and close the door on it. Baby formula gets all over everything. Aurora steps on the Oreo bag and grinds crumbs into the carpet. She and Ariel refuse to get in their nightgowns for an hour. Then they refuse to let the lights be turned out until their three favorite storybooks are read in full, first by Adam and then by Tommy. Bonzo deposits a hairball in the middle of the foyer. Beatrix has a crying jag, and Atticus burps up on Tommy because he forgot to use a burp towel. “It’s even in my hair,” he says mournfully, patting the baby’s back and making a frowny face at Adam, who has the nerve to laugh.
Finally the babies are in their cribs and the girls’ door is closed with lights out. Tommy and Adam meet up again in the midst of the living room carpet, crawling around on hands and knees to pick up the stray crayons and Barbies and picture books and snack plates and building blocks and Fantanimals.
“Look at you,” says Adam.
“What? I have throw-up in my hair, don’t give me grief,” says Tommy.
Adam smiles affectionately. “How can you think you’re anything but amazing?”
Tommy tries to blow his stiff bangs out of his eyes. “Throw-up. In my hair.”
“I see it. You’re gorgeous.”
“It’s not my best look.”
Adam leans forward, balanced on his arms, and gives Tommy a quick kiss. “Gorgeous,” he repeats. “Also sweet and smart and creative and talented and loving.”
The baby monitor on the coffee table gurgles.
“Uh oh.”
Crying ratchets up from a gurgle to a scream.
“I’ll get her,” Adam offers, climbing to his feet.
* * *
Tommy wakes up on the couch, his head in Adam’s lap, Bonzo warming his feet, and Beatrix asleep on his chest while Adam’s arm curls protectively around both of them so she doesn’t fall off. The odor of baby poo hangs faintly in the air. He hears soft voices, male and female. “Adam? Yeesh, it smells like ass in here.”
“Hush, don’t wake up Beatrix. Let Lisa take her to bed.”
Lisa and Monte come in from the foyer (where Adam had cleaned up Bonzo’s little gift); they look tired but pleased. Apparently the sight of their living room, still covered in crap, doesn’t bother them.
“Looks like everyone survived,” Monte says quietly.
“Have a good time?” whispers Adam.
“It was wonderful,” Lisa murmurs. Monte takes her coat and she goes to the couch to lift Beatrix carefully from Tommy’s arms. “Thank you so much.” She heads for the bedroom wing.
Monte gives Tommy a hand up. “That was awesome of you guys, love ya both,” he says. He’s still watching them a bit warily, like he’s uncertain of the fragile rapport but heartily in favor of it. “Looks like you had some issues,” he adds, noticing Tommy’s shirt, pants and hair.
“I’m gonna make Adam do the laundry.”
“Hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”
“Nope. Ask anytime.”
Back at Adam’s house Tommy pulls a crayon and a folded drawing out of his pocket and sits at the kitchen island while Adam gets a beer from the fridge for him, popping it with an opener.
“Thanks,” says Tommy. He unhooks the elbow brace and leaves it on the counter, rubbing at his arm where the stupid thing has been itching like a mother. He picks up the crayon and starts to draw on a blank spot on the paper.
“What’s that?” asks Adam, taking a drink from his own glass of water while kicking off his shoes and socks.
“Ariel drew me,” Tommy says. “See?”
“Looks just like you.”
“Yeah. Pre-throw-up.”
“What’s this?” Adam points at the part that Tommy drew. It looks like a sun.
“That’s you,” says Tommy.
Adam grins. “I’m like the fucking Sun King? Sick!”
“You’re a supernova,” Tommy corrects. He draws a small round dot nearby. “That’s me, I’m a dark star.”
“Ooooh, dark star, nice,” Adam says. “Very mysterious.”
Tommy scrawls all over the small dot.
“What’s that?” Adam asks, puzzled.
“That’s the supernova’s shadow.”
Adam frowns. He looks worried. “Are you telling me something?”
Tommy sees the look and is horrified that he put it there. That wasn’t what he meant to do. “No, I like it there, Adam.”
“In the dark?”
“It’s not dark,” Tommy says. “See? It’s just a shadow. I like to hide just a little bit.”
Adam shakes his head. “You shouldn’t hide. You are so amazing, Tommy Joe, and everyone needs to know that.”
“Not everyone. Just you.” Tommy puts down the crayon and reaches his arm around Adam’s waist. Adam draws him in immediately, crushes Tommy to his chest, squeezes so hard Tommy thinks his ribs will crack. “You make me feel safe.”
“Oh god,” Adam blurts out. “I want to make love to you, Tommy. Please.”
Tommy takes a breath, releases it, tilts his head enough to press a kiss to Adam’s jaw. “How are you so cheesy.”
Cheesy or not, Tommy wants this. Wants it like burning. Speaking of cheesy.
“I’m serious, I’m gonna do it,” Adam warns, squeezing harder.
“Caveman,” says Tommy.
“You have no idea.” Adam shifts one arm beneath Tommy’s knees and picks him right up off the stool.
Oh. Now he's in for it. Thank fuck.
On to Part 9b/9