Fic: The Rescue Blues | American Idol RPF | Kris/Adam | Adult | 1/2
The Rescue Blues
Fandom: AI8
Pairing: Kris/Adam
Rating: Adult
Comments: Many many MANY thanks to miss_begonia and madame_d for their help and patience with this story, and for fixing my many grammatical errors and plot holes. Written for the stori_telling challenge with the prompt Married to A Stranger: Jaclyn Smith plays an amnesiac who thinks she's only 16. Now she must decide between pursuing a dream to travel Europe or staying with her hubby and kid whom she doesn't even recognize! This story does not contain Jaclyn Smith or, well, most of the elements of that movie, but there is amnesia. And anarchists. I owe a debt of gratitude to callmesandy, who wrote the best amnesia fic ever, Your Life Is Now, and from which I had to concentrate very hard on not stealing. Also, there is a music mix in case you want to listen while you read.
Warnings: Recreational drug use, alcohol, and sex.
Summary: He was twenty-two years old, and the only thing he knew about himself for sure was that he was never getting on a motorcycle again, but he kind of wanted to write a song about it. He could already hear the melody in his head. Kris gets lost, and Adam finds him. An amnesia AU. OR IS IT.
Kris is lost.
He's kind of perpetually lost now, because that's just how amnesia feels--like being lost all the time, like walking through a fog that never lifts, because there's no context for anything, no categories or boxes, no way to filter the world down to a manageable size--but in this case, he's actually lost, and it's almost a relief. At least it's his entire body this time, instead of just his brain or whatever.
He's pretty sure he took the wrong exit off IH-35, and that's how he ended up parked in front of a coffee house set far back from the road next to a sign with a red glowing arrow that says "Caffeine Dealer" underneath. The coffee shop doesn't seem to have any other name, but next door there's a bookstore with the word 'Resistensia' stenciled in fading red letters on the front window, and across the street there's a very purple brick building with a neon purple sign glowing the word 'Sinsation' at him in rounded letters. It doesn't look like the best part of town, but Kris guesses it could be worse. He could be still be in Arkansas with a girlfriend who cries at least once every time they're together, and frustrated parents who ask every day if he's remembered anything yet. He hasn't. He's pretty sure his family loves him, but they talk about him sometimes like he died or something, and he maybe doesn't remember much beyond his name and how to read and count and play a guitar, but it still hurts. That's why he left. It just hurt too much to stay, and now he's somewhere in Austin on his way to California like the biggest starting-over cliche in existence. He's tired and lost and sweaty, but he's not in Arkansas anymore, and there's no one looking at him with that sad sort of anger in their eyes, like he just needs to try harder.
Trying harder doesn't work, it just gives him a headache. He gets out of the car and goes into the shop. He could use a coffee, anyway. It's important to think positive.
*
Six months ago he woke up in a hospital room in Little Rock, opened his eyes, and immediately wished he hadn't woken up at all. There was a woman who said she was his mother, but he couldn't remember her or the man who arrived a few hours later. He couldn't remember the pretty blond who was supposed to be his girlfriend, or his brother, or anything else. He knew his name was Kris, but he couldn't tell if he actually remembered that, or if he only knew it because that's what everyone told him.
There had been an accident. His mother said, "I should've never let you buy that damned motorcycle," and clutched his hand painfully tight with tears in her eyes. Kris couldn't remember buying a motorcycle and he didn't know what to say. His head hurt, and he wanted to go back to sleep.
The doctors said it was psychological. True amnesia was incredibly rare and the accident had been bad enough to cause brain damage, but nothing this significant. Nothing in the parts of his brain that make and store memories, and they had all sorts of pictures and slides to prove it. "There's no physical reason for this. His memories will come back when he's ready," they said, and Katy just stared at the scuffed linoleum floor and said, "So he's doing this to himself?"
He felt a little bad, but only a little. It was hard to feel bad about someone he couldn't remember.
He was twenty-two years old, and the only thing he knew about himself for sure was that he was never getting on a motorcycle again, but he kind of wanted to write a song about it. He could already hear the melody in his head.
*
Caffeine Dealer is empty aside from two old guys playing chess at one of the rough wooden tables scattered around the small shop and the guy behind the counter, who smiles wide and bright at Kris and says, "What'll it be?" in a happy voice, like they're already friends, like Kris isn't some sweaty stranger and the guy is genuinely glad to see him. His dark hair is streaked with magenta in front and he's wearing matching eyeshadow that shimmers a little in the sunlight streaming in through the front window. Kris likes the way it looks mostly because he knows this isn't something he should recognize. It's not something he's supposed to remember.
"I'm kind of lost," he says. He smiles back, and it feels right.
"Let's get you found, then," the guy says, but Kris looks around and thinks, maybe lost isn't so bad. Lost has a red velvet couch with fraying gold trim, a wall lined with bookcases filled with tattered paperbacks, and a display case of muffins and cookies and scones. Maybe being found is overrated.
*
The guy's name is Adam and he makes Kris the best and only iced mocha Kris can remember having. He draws Kris a map on the back of a napkin and leans across the counter, hair in his eyes as he explains how to get back to the highway and which branch to take to get headed back south. "It's pretty simple," he says, wrinkling his nose a little, "but why do you want to go to San Antonio? You don't seem like the touristy, remember-the-Alamo type to me."
Kris definitely doesn't remember the Alamo, but he's sure Adam is right. He shrugs. "I'm just driving, I guess. I don't really have a solid plan." It's hard to know where he wants to go when he doesn't remember where he's been. He has money from the insurance settlement from the guy in the SUV who hit him from behind. Kris doesn't remember the accident and he's pretty happy about that. It must've been bad if his brain won't let him remember anything else, either.
"You should stay here a few days," Adam says. "It's the only part of Texas worth seeing. One of my friends manages this hotel like a block away, and he can totally get you a discount room. We're all going out tonight to this insane burlesque drag show with free drinks and it's going to be amazing, you should totally come."
"You don't even know me," Kris says. He takes a sip from his iced mocha and thinks it would be stupid to stay. It's not the plan, it's not what he's supposed to be doing. The plan--driving to California, trying to make it in LA because the only thing he can remember how to do is make music--it's not much of a plan. He has brain damage, though, so he doesn't think it's his fault his plan sucks so much. Leaving was the important part, so at least he got that far in the lame non-plan. Maybe he could stay for a few days and make a better one, instead. He's still maybe lost, but he doesn't mind it so much right now. It doesn't have to be a bad thing.
Adam looks him right in the eyes, head cocked to the side and mouth turned up in the smallest of smiles, like he's really trying to see Kris, not like his mom or Katy, who look at him and try to find the person he used to be. This house just ain't no home, he thinks, and has to stop himself from asking Adam about it, because then he'd have to explain why he sometimes has random thoughts popping into his head that don't feel like they belong to him, and he just met Adam, he doesn't want to spill the crazy right away. No dramatic confessions about being a brain-damaged freak; he's saving that for the third date.
Adam says, "But I feel like I know you. I dunno, maybe you'll think this is cheesy, but I just think everything happens for a reason. Maybe you got lost because the universe wanted you to find my coffee shop and end up at the Kiss and Fly having the life-changing experience that a burlesque drag show is bound to be. Maybe you'll get drunk on free banana hammocks and meet the love of your life and nothing will ever be the same again."
"I guess the universe has big plans for me," Kris says, and Adam smiles.
"The universe is pretty amazing that way."
*
Kris doesn't meet the love of his life, but he does get drunk on free banana hammocks and ends up agreeing to sublet a room in some guy's apartment for the next month because "fucking Justin fucked off while I was out last night and he didn't even leave a fucking note. Just took all his shit and fucking left. Fucker stole my favorite pair of red and black converse, you know--the vintage ones with the rhinestones around the stars?--and now I don't have a couch or a spatula or a pasta strainer, and just. Fuck my life, this fucking sucks." It's a lot of 'fucks' and variations thereof. Kris doesn't even swear.
Kris is already pretty drunk by that point, because the drinks are free and Adam keeps handing him new ones and honestly, Kris feels like he needs to be at least a little drunk to be here. He gets the feeling this isn't something he's ever done before, or ever even thought of doing, especially when Adam picked him from the hotel that night, looked at his plaid button-down shirt and said, "You'll blend right in with the lesbians, honey." He smiled when he said it, though.
About seven and a half banana hammocks later, though--that's when the guy shows up with his scorned roommate tale, and Kris says, "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I have amnesia."
"Getting lost on the way to West Texas isn't amnesia, it's lucky," Adam says, and the scorned roommate guy snaps his fingers in Adam's face with an annoyed, "Hello."
"What the fuck am I going to do now?" the guy says. He grabs a drink off a passing waitress's tray that Kris is ninety-five percent sure is not meant for him and downs the entire thing in one long gulp. "I can't pay rent by myself. I'm so fucked. I'm beyond fucked. I am Jack's hysterical male pregnancy, that's how fucked I am. I'm David Hasselhoff in a roomful of German leather daddies. Must be fucking Tuesday."
"Maybe you should've warned Justin about the Herpes Bandit before he fucked him," Adam says, lips quirking upwards in a half smile. "Consideration, Brad. You could at least pretend to have it, occasionally. It's what separates men from machines, you know. Friends don't let friends fuck disease-ridden trollops."
"Who warns for herpes? Everyone has herpes. Virgins have herpes. If he didn't notice the Bandit's outbreak, he was way too wasted to be fucking in the first place. And he stole my shoes! Who does that?"
"They were cool shoes," Adam says. "Imminently stealable."
"Whatever. What's going on tonight?" The guy looks at Kris and sneers a little. "Who's the new project? Are you already that bored since we broke up?"
"Be nice. You were a project once, too, asshole," Adam says, grabbing Kris by the wrist and pulling him forward, a warm hand in the center of his back. "Brad, this is Kris. He's a musician from Arkansas who likes iced mochas and is on a road trip to LA to make it big. Kris, this is Brad. He's a movie theater slave at the Drafthouse whose sole desire is to someday meet Quentin Tarentino so he can tell him how much Jackie Brown sucked. And apparently he's such a complete bitch that he can't keep a roommate for more than two months."
"Fuck you," Brad says. "And fuck LA. LA is for losers. Just ask Adam--it's his losery point of origin. You should stay here. You could be my new roommate! I would totally warn you about the Herpes Bandit, pinkie swear."
Kris looks at Adam rolling his eyes and laughing into his hand, at the drag queen on stage in a black and red bustier lip syncing to a song inquiring whether Kris wishes his girlfriend was a freak like her, at his bright yellow drink with five cherries impaled on a pink plastic umbrella half-submerged in booze and purred bananas, and thinks, this is the first time he can remember having actual fun. This is the first time he can remember having a conversation that didn't feel like a minefield, like one wrong word or question might ruin everything. It feels easy, for once. It feels good. It feels like he can just be. Maybe just be himself, as soon as he figures out who that is.
He looks from Brad to Adam, shrugs and says, "My plan kinda sucked anyway," and decides to stay.
*
After the hospital but before he decided to leave, Kris went to therapy five days a week for three months, until he decided it was a waste of time sitting in some guy's office with a million degrees nailed to the walls being told over and over again that he could remember if he wanted to. "You have the capacity," Dr. Wissman would say, "you're just choosing not to use it." Being lectured and prodded for an hour every day didn't really make him want to do anything except punch the guy in the face. He was already doing all the shit they told him to do back at the hospital to jog his memory--spending time with his old friends, looking at photo albums and home movies, going to all the places he used to hang out at, listening to stories about himself and trying to recognize any little piece of all of it inside himself. He couldn't see how playing word-association games with a patronizing asshole could possibly help.
He used to be a pretty good person, or at least that's what the stories make it seem like. He was really into church and went on mission trips and didn't even really drink except for maybe a beer with his friends while watching football on TV or something. Now, he can't seem to understand the point of football at all, and Katy told him straight off, "We're both virgins and I plan on staying one until I get married, so don't get any ideas." She smiled like she was joking, but Kris was pretty sure she was deadly serious. He hadn't really thought about it, hadn't gotten any ideas about her at all, and it wasn't that she wasn't nice or pretty, because she was. She seemed like a really good person, too, like someone who cared about the people in her life more than anything else. She tried really hard, anyway; tried to pretend that nothing had changed, that he was still the same Kris she'd been in love with since the ninth grade, and Kris couldn't help thinking that maybe it was something wrong with him, because he just didn't think about her like that, and it seemed like he should. It seemed like he should have felt a lot of things, but instead there was just this hole inside him, sucking in all his shoulds and leaving a vaguely dissatisfied feeling of not-right behind. He never told Katy that, though. He maybe didn't have a lot of feelings about her one way or another, but she didn't deserve that. No one deserved that.
And she tried really hard even though Kris could tell she was frustrated as hell, but she couldn't ever seem to get past this idea that if he'd ever really loved her, he'd just snap out of it or something. Kris didn't know how these things worked--he barely knew how his mom's oven worked--but he was pretty sure love didn't have much to do with it. Everyone else thought it should be about them. Kris was the only one who didn't have a theory. It was hard enough just trying to get through day by day.
So he seemed like a really good guy, before, all church-going and helping people and saving himself for marriage and abstaining from anything that could even remotely be considered sinful. He seemed like a really good guy, and that makes Kris feel anxious and weird, now, because he's pretty sure he's not that good anymore. He doesn't even know if he believes in God; he went to church with his parents every Sunday but he never felt much of anything except bored and tired, and nothing he's seen since he woke up in Little Rock has convinced him that God is inside him and leading his life or whatever. Sometimes, he thinks there's nothing inside him at all except a vague sense of not-rightness and a constant headache.
It's kind of hard to believe that God's Plan is brain damage and a six month-long headache.
*
Brad isn't at the apartment when Adam takes Kris over to see the place and drop his stuff off. It's not a lot of stuff--a couple duffel bags of clothes, his guitar, and a box of old videos so he can practice becoming Kris Allen again. Adam goes through the box while Kris sits in the middle of the bare room with a notebook open in front of him on the dusty wood floor, making a list of everything he'll need. It's just for a month or two so he doesn't need a lot, but he has the money and he figures he can sell the stuff when he leaves or donate it to Goodwill or something. A bed and a new keyboard for sure, plus random things like a shower curtain and towels and sheets. He's trying to decide if he'll really need a bathmat or a dresser when Adam holds up the photo album he's been looking through and says, "Wow, is this your girlfriend? Because I'm so completely gay, but this girl is gorgeous times twelve."
Kris looks up from his list and frowns. It's a picture of him and Katy from a few years ago. He knows it was taken at cousin Laura's wedding because his mother carefully labeled every photo and quizzed him at the breakfast table like they were flashcards or something, like he was eight years old trying to learn his multiplication tables before the big math test. He can't remember who cousin Laura is, but he looks happy in the picture, staring at Katy like he's never seen anything so beautiful, Katy laughing and making a funny face at the camera. She really is gorgeous, and Kris feels a little pang, like a tightness in his throat, like he swallowed something too big and he thinks, this must be what regret feels like.
He doesn't regret leaving, but hurting her really kind of sucked. It's better this way, though, Kris thinks. He doesn't know how to be the person she loved. He doesn't even know if he wants to, and pretending seems more cruel than anything else. What would be the point in getting a start over if he turned his life into a lie, anyway?
Kris blinks and shakes his head. "Sorry. I'm just a little out of it today. I've never randomly decided to move in with a stranger before." He smiles a little and goes back to his list. "She's not my girlfriend. We--it didn't work out. We sort of. Grew apart." Understatement, Kris thinks. Major.
"That happens sometimes," Adam says, closing the album and setting it carefully back on top of the box, running his fingers over the raised gold lettering on the cover. "Sometimes people just want different things. Or you evolve at different paces and it feels too hard to catch up or slow down to meet them again." Kris isn't sure he could call psychological trauma-induced amnesia an evolution, but that sounds right, anyway. He maybe can't remember who he was anymore, but he's definitely not the same person. Sometimes he doesn't even feel like he's the same species.
Adam takes him to Goodwill for cooking utensils which he promises to teach Kris how to use when Kris explains that he doesn't even know how to boil water, and then to Target for sheets and towels and a shower curtain covered in a cartoonish drawing of a map of the world, "So you'll never be lost again," Adam tells him when he tosses it into the shopping cart. They go to Mattress Warehouse afterwards and Adam makes him lie down on every mattress to test them out until he finds one he likes. Kris isn't even sure what he likes in a mattress, but he does know that he likes Adam lying down next to him, bouncing up and down just enough to make the sales guy working the floor frown at them from across the store and saying things like, "This one's a little too firm, don't you think? It's a bed, not the Spanish Inquisition."
Back at the apartment--Kris's new apartment, and it's weird to think of that, to think he has a space that's just his now, that isn't filled with trophies and posters and framed pictures and memories from a life that he can't remember--Adam helps him unpack all the stuff he bought while they wait for the mattress to get delivered, sitting on the floor of the walk-in closet with a duffel bag open at his feet, sliding shirts onto hangers and handing them up to Kris to hang, setting aside pieces he decides need to be folded instead.
"Not that you have a dresser," Adam says, folding a pair of jeans into a neat square and setting them on top of the pile next to him, "but still. A boy's gotta have standards. Your clothes will only treat you as well as you treat them, you know. Like a needy boyfriend. Or girlfriend," he adds, glancing up at Kris with a small smile. "If you expect them to put out, you have to take care of their needs."
"I don't know if I'm that kind of guy," Kris says, taking a shirt from Adam and sliding it onto the rack. "The kind with, um. Expectations, or whatever."
"You mean you don't know?" Adam says, raising one eyebrow, and Kris can feel his cheeks turning red because somehow, he doesn't even know what they're talking about anymore, but it's probably not his wardrobe of plaid button-downs and white t-shirts. He doesn't answer and after a moment, Adam just shrugs and hands him another shirt. "It's not a big deal," he says softly, face tilted down to watch his hands as they fold a sweater so all Kris can see is the top of Adam's head where his roots are growing in a dirty red-blond color. "I've only had one boyfriend," Adam says, setting the sweater aside and looking up. "Only been in love once. Sometimes it's maybe better not to know. Like, better to just let something happen if it's going to happen, and not work so hard at fixing broken things. Maybe you broke them for a reason, you know?"
Kris knows. He thinks about Katy, about the way she stared at the floor in the hospital and couldn't meet his eyes and didn't talk directly to him for almost a week, just around him and about him, like he wasn't really there. And he wasn't, not to her. He was just some stranger wearing Kris's body and he still doesn't think he did it on purpose, he still doesn't think he's not remembering on purpose, that he's not trying or something--he doesn't blame himself for not being able to be the person she wants, but he knows he broke them anyway. Just because it's nobody's fault doesn't change anything. They're still broken.
Kris says, "It's like every Ryan Adams song ever," and he can hear it so clearly in his head, They'll charge you with the rescue blues. He doesn't know if it's a new memory or an old one, but he thinks it doesn't matter because Adam is grinning up at him, saying, "That's exactly what it's like. We can be bitter and broken together until we find former teen popstars to marry and give up our vices to write mediocre alt-country songs about how it's hard to write good alt-country when you're not drunk or high."
Kris just smiles back. He doesn't feel particularly bitter or broken and he's pretty sure he never wants to write a mediocre anything, but he thinks this must be what having a friend is like, and that's good enough for Kris.
*
Kris invents a routine for himself his first two weeks in Austin, because Dr. Wissman claimed that routines are instinctive and no matter where Kris went, he'd automatically fall into the same patterns that would hopefully begin to trigger memories. Kris still isn't sure how much of Dr. Wissman's bullshit he believes, but his mom reminded him about it gently over the telephone the night he moved into the apartment and he hated the disappointment that creeped into her voice whenever Kris questioned these things, so instead he decided to try. He had a routine in Arkansas, but somehow he doesn't think going to physical therapy and brain therapy and group therapy to talk to other nutjobs about things he couldn't remember counted as a real routine. It wasn't instinctual, that was for sure. Having his life planned out in forty-five minute therapy hour blocks was kind of the farthest thing from what his gut was telling him to do.
His guts said to run away. His guts said to leave, that he needed space and time and no one staring at him like the saddest freakshow they'd ever seen. His gut was right, because Austin feels like freedom. It feels like waking up from a dream so long and boring and confusing that even the sunburn he got over the weekend feels good in comparison. It feels like proof that he's alive. This is what he tells Matt at Resistensia on Monday.
"You're freaking insane," is Matt's response when Kris tells him that he doesn't mind the sunburn so much. "You're like some freaky anti-vampire. You love the sun and you probably drink like, rainbows instead of blood." Matt doesn't look up from his book, and Kris is kind of afraid to ask what Matt's reading now. The first time Kris ventured into Resistensia with Adam to see about a job (because work is the cornerstone of any routine, Dr. Wissman always said), Matt was reading Mein Kampf and ended up lecturing Kris for half an hour about the inability of knowledge and ideas and concepts to be evil. "People are evil," Matt told him. "Ideas have no allegiance."
Kris said, "But aren't good and evil just ideas, too?" and Matt looked him up and down from beneath the rim of his hat like he was maybe reconsidering his initial impression, looked at Adam asleep in one of the ugly, broken-down easy chairs on the other side of the store and said, "Fuck it, you're hired. Just don't try to engage the customers because we have a strict don't ask, don't tell no-liability policy around here, and tell Adam he owes me big time when he wakes up. You're way too nice to work here, but at least it's only temporary."
Kris thinks that Matt was probably right about him being too nice, but somehow he doesn't think a bookstore could pollute him or something, even one dedicated to providing anarchists with knowledge and a place to form plots. No one here is going to force him to watch the video of his eighth birthday party once a week until he has the damn thing memorized and the very thought of ice cream cake makes him want to puke, so Kris considers that a victory. He hasn't watched any of his home movies since he left Arkansas. He doesn't even know if Brad has a VCR.
"Completely insane," Matt repeats, shaking his head. Kris doesn't pretend to understand pretty much anything Matt says; Kris doesn't even really know what an anarchist bookstore is aside from the fact that no one seems to actually buy anything, but he likes the way Matt talks to him, bluntly and completely straight forward with no innuendo or guesswork required. It's almost relaxing, hanging out in the bookstore, because he never has to worry he might be doing or saying the wrong thing. When he makes a mistake, Matt just rolls his eyes and says, "You're doing it wrong," and shows him how to do it right.
So he works in the mornings with Matt, which is mostly a lot of talking--or well, Matt talking, anyway, and Kris nodding like he's paying attention--and not so much working, because not a lot of anarchists need to visit the bookstore from eight until noon, apparently, and the ones that do just browse the shelves or hover shadily by the windows like they're on the lookout. Kris walks over to Caffeine Dealer after he gets off work and eats lunch with Adam, sometimes in the coffee shop and sometimes not. There's a place down the street called the Soup Peddler, and Adam says he's on a mission to try every soup they make, even the kinds he normally hates. Kris finds out that he loves French onion and hates anything with mushrooms, and that if he brings Adam something from the Hey Cupcake airstream trailer right before Adam's shift ends, he'll get a bright smile and a kiss on the cheek, and sometimes Adam will walk back to Brad's apartment with him, even though it's a fifteen minute walk and Austin is really hot in July.
The high school girl who comes in to take over for Adam watches them with a funny smile on her face, like she knows exactly what Kris is doing, but he can't make himself care. He's not really sure what he's doing or what it looks like, he just knows that Adam is the first real friend he can remember having, and Kris likes making him happy. Cupcakes are easy. Cupcakes seem like the least Kris can do.
*
Kris can't actually remember what his other roommates were like when he was in college, before the accident, but he's pretty sure no one could be quite as terrible at the roommate thing as Brad, and Kris is sort of starting to understand why the Justin guy left in the first place. Even the shoe-stealing almost seems defendable. Probably, Kris thinks, it has a lot less to do with the Herpes Bandit and a lot more to do with, well. With Brad.
For one thing, he never wears pants. Even if he starts out wearing pants, even if they're just eating dinner in front of the television or watching a movie or listening to some new band Brad is suddenly obsessed with that Kris absolutely must hear right now or the world might end, the pants always manage to disappear very shortly into any activity Brad engages in. At first Kris tries to ignore the no pants thing, because he doesn't want to offend anyone and if he's being honest, Brad kind of scares him a little. Kris is pretty sure he could take the guy in a fight because Brad is skinny as hell, but Kris has a feeling that Brad fights dirty, and Kris already has brain damage. He's afraid to find out what else could be done to him if he makes someone like Brad viciously angry. He's seen Mean Girls (because Brad made him watch it his first night in the apartment), so he knows exactly how vicious people can be, no physical violence required. Not that Kris is afraid of his face smelling like foot cream or accidentally getting fat, but there are other things. Worse things. Things Brad could easily and joyfully sabotage if he wanted to. There's Adam.
So at first Kris tries to ignore it, but then he mentions it to Adam during lunch one day, and Adam laughs so hard that tomato basil soup comes out his nose. Kris doesn't think it's really that funny. It's kind of disturbing, actually. Brad's legs are really skinny, and sometimes his underwear is very small. Kris can only walk around the apartment with his eyes closed so much.
"You have to tell him to fuck off," Adam says, still laughing a little while he wipes his face off with a paper napkin. The Soup Peddler peddler stares at them with narrowed eyes, like she's not quite sure she should allow these sorts of soup-wasting shenanigans in her shop. They take their soup very seriously here. "He's doing it to fuck with you, and you can't let him get away with it."
"But won't he just get bored eventually?" Kris asks, stirring his split pea with a sigh. He should've gotten the tomato, too. Peas are really gross in soup. They should be banned from liquid form, Kris decides, pushing his bowl away and sitting back in his chair.
Adam points at Kris with his spoon. "Brad doesn't get bored. He escalates. If you don't take a stand now, sooner or later--probably sooner--he's going to take off his pants and not have anything underneath."
"He says he has a rule," Kris says. "A no pants rule! Something about pants being the symbol of the oppressor and gender role conformity or. Or something. I don't know. He could wear skirts! I wouldn't care, seriously. But sometimes he wears the same underwear two days in a row and it freaks me out that I have to know that."
Adam just shakes his head. "There's no rule. He doesn't give a shit about gender role conformity. Seriously, he's just messing with you. Tell him to fuck off. Or let me do it, at least." Adam leans forward and covers Kris's hand with his own, gives it a warm, comforting squeeze. "You shouldn't have to live like this. It's cruel and unusual."
Kris shivers a little as Adam's hand slides away, the tips of his fingers dragging gently against the back of Kris's hand, and then he forgets about the no pants thing entirely because Adam offers to switch him soups, and the tomato basil is really good, especially since his mouth still tastes like gross liquidy peas.
He forgets all about it, that is, until he walks into the apartment the next night and finds Brad pantsless, again, only this time, he's pantsless while sitting on Adam's lap on the couch that Kris got from Freecycle, and they're kissing, although to Kris it looks more like they're attacking each other with their mouths than any kissing he's seen before, which, granted, has only been on television and in movies, and once when he walked in on Brad asleep on the couch while gay porn played on the television, but even the porno guys didn't kiss like this. It's intense. It's kind of crazy. Kris is pretty sure one of Adam's hands is actually in Brad's underwear, and he feels simultaneously incredibly turned on and also like he wants to vomit. His body can't seem to decide which, so instead he just stands there with the door still hanging open, keys dangling uselessly from his fingers. Brad opens his eyes, sees Kris, and pulls away from Adam for a moment to say, "Were you raised in a barn, bitch? Shut the door. Honestly, what would the neighbors think!"
Kris opens his mouth to apologize for walking in on them, or interrupting, or maybe even for being turned on because that feels a little guilty, too--Adam is his friend, his best friend, and he shouldn't be equating that with sex, or at least that's what he's learned from watching Buffy reruns, because just look at what happened with Willow and Xander, and he doesn't want anyone ending up with a steel beam through their stomachs--but instead of anything remotely resembling an apology, Kris says, "Fuck off, and learn how to keep your damn pants on!"
Then he hides in his room and takes a cold shower and absolutely does not think about the fact that he can't even remember ever being kissed, except for how he can't stop wondering what it might be like now that he's seen it. What Adam might be like. Thinking about it hurts, though, like a heavy weight pressing down on his chest until he can't breath and he has to lie down on his bed with his music turned up loud enough to drown out any noise happening in the living room, counting breaths until he feels less like he's about to explode. It's like the time he and his roommate freshman year in college managed to convince a homeless guy to buy them whiskey in exchange for a bottle of his own and they snuck theirs into their dorm room inside Kenny's gym bag, taking turns from the bottle, lying side by side on the floor between their beds in case the RA decided to do a random room check. Kenny said, "I'm happy we're friends, man, you're like the best person I know," and Kris leaned over and kissed him, just because he wanted to, just because it felt right. They passed out on the floor and the next day Kenny pretended like he didn't remember, but Kris knew he did because he requested a room transfer for Spring semester. It hurt like this does, now, because Kris thought maybe he meant more to Kenny than that; he thought maybe their friendship meant more.
It's the first real thing Kris has remembered since the accident and he should be happy about it, should be excited that his brain suddenly decided to start spitting something back at him for once. But instead he kind of wishes he hadn't remembered at all, because it really sucks. It's not a good feeling, and this thing with Adam--it feels like that, just like that, but Adam is always saying that the secret to living a happy life is to turn negatives into positives and always be aware of the kind of energy you're putting out into the world, so Kris decides to write a song about it instead. He's halfway through, the words and the melody flowing so free that it's like he's not even writing at all, before he realizes that it's a song he's already written. It's a song he remembers, and that scares the shit out of him.
*
Kris never really knows what to expect from Brad, but waking him up with a Caffeine Dealer iced mocha and begging Kris to let Brad buy him breakfast at Magnolia is different. Kris doesn't really want to go. He doesn't really want to look at Brad at all right now, because looking at Brad makes him think of the night before, which makes him remember the thing he remembered about Kenny and the Whiskey Incident, which makes him feel weird and confused and just as lost as he did when he first came to Austin a month ago.
Maybe, Kris thinks as Brad drags him by the wrist over to an empty corner booth, it's time to leave. Staying was never the plan anyway.
Once they have waters and coffees and Kris is staring at the Elvis portrait made entirely of sequins hanging on the wall opposite because he's kind of afraid of what he'll do if he has to look at Brad's face, Brad says, "I know you're pissed and I'm really sorry about the pants and please don't leave, okay?" Kris stares at Sequin Elvis until he goes blurry and doesn't say anything. His brain feel emptier than it did when he woke up after the accident, because he knows if he starts thinking, he's not going to be able to stop. He just wants it to be quiet. He's so tired sometimes.
"Okay?" Brad says again, his foot nudging against Kris's under the table.
"No," Kris says. He blinks and looks at Brad, finally, and is only a little satisfied that Brad looks terrible. He should look terrible. He should feel terrible. Kris isn't really sure he wants to examine the whys of that, but he knows it's true, anyway.
"No?" Brad says. His hands tighten around his coffee mug until the knuckles go white. Kris shakes his head.
"It's not okay. But it's not about the pants. It's the--are you getting back together?"
"With who? Adam?" Brad rolls his eyes and takes a sip from his coffee, frowns and dumps another Sweet N Low in it. "Fuck no. Adam and I, we broke up for a really good reason. Okay, we broke up for a really stupid reason, which is basically that he wants a serious relationship and I want to be young and stupid while I'm still young and gorgeous. But that doesn't make it less valid. And it doesn't mean we can't fuck around when we're really desperate."
"Oh," Kris says. He feels kind of dumb now, like he's the stupid one, but that's sort of true, too. He doesn't know how these things work, and he's guessing that Brad's attempts to educate him in The OC and One Tree Hill haven't really given him a realistic view of how relationships are supposed to go. If Brad and Adam were Marissa and Ryan, they'd have already broken up and gotten back together five times since Kris moved in, and at least one of them would've ended up in prison or overdosing, maybe both. Kris only knows like three people, and the world is still so confusing. Sometimes he wonders if he'll ever stop feeling lost, or if eventually he'll accumulate enough memories to piece together some picture of who he used to be and where he's supposed to fit in the world. He's not sure how much it has to do with his memory, though, or if maybe he just always felt like this. Maybe it's not about how many people you know or how many experiences you have. Maybe some people are just lost. What he does know, the one thing he's really freaking clear on, is that it sucks. It sucks a lot.
Brad's just staring at him, head tilted to one side, eyes getting narrower and narrower until he gasps and presses his hand to his chest and says, "Oh my god, you're totally in love with Adam!"
Their waiter comes back at that moment to deliver their food, thank god, and Kris starts shoving breakfast taco in his mouth while he tries to come up with something to say that's not a lie. Brad barely looks at his French toast, just watches Kris eat and taps his fingers impatiently along the edge of the table. "Well?" he says when Kris doesn't respond. Kris chews and swallows and shrugs.
"I don't know," he says. It's true, at least. There are so many things he doesn't know, and he doesn't want to lie, not even to Brad, who maybe deserves it.
Brad huffs and his eyes go ceilingward like he's praying for patience. Kris thinks maybe Brad should pray more and harder and to something that might actually listen, because he's very impatient and he has many faults. "I thought you were straight. I thought you had some matching tiny blond girl back in Arkansas just waiting for you to realize the error of your ways, give up on your big Hollywood dreams and come home to her so you could shack up on a mountain somewhere and have a hundred perfect little babies."
"I don't know," Kris says again. He traces the pattern on the tabletop, little cowboys riding little horses, flattens his palm against them to blot them out. He went to summer camp one year with his brother and got thrown from his horse during a trail ride when his horse stopped short in front of a sink hole. Kris wasn't hanging onto the pommel where the reins were tied, or it wouldn't have been anything; he was staring off into the trees, wondering if he could maybe build a house there someday between the branches and watch everything happening below like in the weird cartoon with the monkeys with giant long tails, and then he was on the ground with the wind knocked out of him. These things always seem to come as a surprise, he thinks. "I never really--I don't know," Kris repeats. He knows it's lame, but he doesn't know what else to say when the truth isn't really an option.
"Bitch, you know. You might not want to admit it, but you know. Don't be an asshole. Don't fuck around with him just because--"
"Isn't that your job?" Kris says, and immediately wishes he could take it back. Kris is supposed to be a nice guy; he's supposed to be the guy that goes to Indonesia instead of Cabo during his Spring Break to help with Tsunami relief efforts, the guy who marries his childhood sweetheart and lives happily ever after, possibly on a mountain with a hundred babies. He is not the guy who calls people out and gets jealous and accidentally falls in love with his best friend without even knowing if he's gay or whatever. He's not that guy, except for how apparently he is. Kris never knew who he was to begin with, though, so that's one thing he can't be surprised by. Scared, though. He can definitely be scared.
Brad hisses through his teeth, a high-pitched half-whistle that makes Kris wince. "That's adorable, you're all defensive! You have claws after all. Seriously, though." He gives Kris a look over his coffee mug, like he's maybe rethinking everything he thought he knew about Kris. "You're not allowed to be an asshole. The pants rule, I admit, is totally made up, and if my underwear freaks you out that much, I'll start wearing pants again for as long as you keep paying rent. But the No Breaking Adam's Heart rule is deadly for real. It's non-negotiable, are we clear?" He smiles sharply and picks up his knife, spreads butter over his French toast in quick, efficient strokes. "Now eat your taco and don't say I never did anything for you, because that's the best advice you're ever gonna get."
*
Kris has a small collection of memories now, just little flashes that randomly come to him and once they're there, it's like he never forgot them in the first place. They mix and mingle with all his new memories until the only way he can tell them apart is by figuring out how old he was at the time. It shouldn't be confusing, he thinks. It should actually be completely obvious, but Kris's brain likes to pretend that he never forgot these things at all, and instead it feels a little bit like he's going crazy. Or maybe he was already crazy, and now he's going sane, plugging up the holes.
He can remember maybe an hour of his life from before, when he stacks all the memory flashes together and tries to count them up. "That's real good, baby," his mom says on the phone that night.
"It's just an hour. Just a couple little things, not even anything important," Kris says, but she just makes a clucking sound and tells him to hush.
"Every memory is important. It means you're making progress. I wasn't sure about you leaving, but I think it's been good. It's worth it if you're starting to remember things. I'm proud of you, Kris."
"Mama," he says, and then his throat tightens up and he thinks maybe he's going to start crying. Kris hasn't cried once since he woke up; his dad says he's just not a crier, and that proved Kris was still Kris, after all. It was the kind of not-joke that used to make Kris feel like a disappointment, like a robot with bad programming. But there's something in his mom's voice, a warmth that reminds him of the dry heat of summer in Conway, the grass in the backyard gone so brown and brittle in the sun that it almost burned his bare feet when he ran across the exposed strip of lawn between the shade and the safety of the patio where she sat at the picnic table waiting for him with lemonade and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
"I know," she says, and that's enough. Maybe he had to go away to come back to himself, and that scares him, too. He wonders what was so bad about his old life and his old self that his brain decided it needed a do-over. He worries about it, because it's kind of a big deal when your own mind rebels against you. It's a huge deal, actually, and there's no one he can really ask because everyone back in Arkansas seemed to think he was this perfect person, but he knows now that he wasn't. There was the thing with Kenny, not just the kiss, which really wasn't anything at all, but the whiskey, too, and the whole situation, really, because Kris wasn't supposed to be the kind of guy who got wasted on a Wednesday night on a bottle of cheap Early Times.
Daniel just says that Kris was a good guy and a good brother. Kris knows Daniel must have some kind of dirt on him, but Daniel won't say, and trying to force it out of him gives Kris a headache, so he doesn't try very hard. He wants to ask Katy because she knew him best, or at least that's what everyone else says. She was his best friend and his girlfriend and they were going to get married, which is why Kris can't find it in him to call her now, because he might be remembering some things, but nothing about her and nothing about them. He thinks if she was so important to him, he would remember something, and that just makes him feel guilty all over again for not being able to. He doesn't call her. It would be selfish and she would be hurt, and things are better this way. Maybe there really isn't anything to know.
So all together, he can remember about an hour of his life from before the accident, and he gets little flashes every day, sometimes just song lyrics or random thoughts--his favorite color is green, he wanted to learn violin but the school only had violas left by the time he signed up for orchestra, he hates grape-flavored anything, but loves grapes--but it's something, anyway. It's like the world is slowly coming into focus around him, and he may not know exactly where he is in it, but he's going in the right direction.
*
the continuing saga in: part 2
Fandom: AI8
Pairing: Kris/Adam
Rating: Adult
Comments: Many many MANY thanks to miss_begonia and madame_d for their help and patience with this story, and for fixing my many grammatical errors and plot holes. Written for the stori_telling challenge with the prompt Married to A Stranger: Jaclyn Smith plays an amnesiac who thinks she's only 16. Now she must decide between pursuing a dream to travel Europe or staying with her hubby and kid whom she doesn't even recognize! This story does not contain Jaclyn Smith or, well, most of the elements of that movie, but there is amnesia. And anarchists. I owe a debt of gratitude to callmesandy, who wrote the best amnesia fic ever, Your Life Is Now, and from which I had to concentrate very hard on not stealing. Also, there is a music mix in case you want to listen while you read.
Warnings: Recreational drug use, alcohol, and sex.
Summary: He was twenty-two years old, and the only thing he knew about himself for sure was that he was never getting on a motorcycle again, but he kind of wanted to write a song about it. He could already hear the melody in his head. Kris gets lost, and Adam finds him. An amnesia AU. OR IS IT.
Kris is lost.
He's kind of perpetually lost now, because that's just how amnesia feels--like being lost all the time, like walking through a fog that never lifts, because there's no context for anything, no categories or boxes, no way to filter the world down to a manageable size--but in this case, he's actually lost, and it's almost a relief. At least it's his entire body this time, instead of just his brain or whatever.
He's pretty sure he took the wrong exit off IH-35, and that's how he ended up parked in front of a coffee house set far back from the road next to a sign with a red glowing arrow that says "Caffeine Dealer" underneath. The coffee shop doesn't seem to have any other name, but next door there's a bookstore with the word 'Resistensia' stenciled in fading red letters on the front window, and across the street there's a very purple brick building with a neon purple sign glowing the word 'Sinsation' at him in rounded letters. It doesn't look like the best part of town, but Kris guesses it could be worse. He could be still be in Arkansas with a girlfriend who cries at least once every time they're together, and frustrated parents who ask every day if he's remembered anything yet. He hasn't. He's pretty sure his family loves him, but they talk about him sometimes like he died or something, and he maybe doesn't remember much beyond his name and how to read and count and play a guitar, but it still hurts. That's why he left. It just hurt too much to stay, and now he's somewhere in Austin on his way to California like the biggest starting-over cliche in existence. He's tired and lost and sweaty, but he's not in Arkansas anymore, and there's no one looking at him with that sad sort of anger in their eyes, like he just needs to try harder.
Trying harder doesn't work, it just gives him a headache. He gets out of the car and goes into the shop. He could use a coffee, anyway. It's important to think positive.
*
Six months ago he woke up in a hospital room in Little Rock, opened his eyes, and immediately wished he hadn't woken up at all. There was a woman who said she was his mother, but he couldn't remember her or the man who arrived a few hours later. He couldn't remember the pretty blond who was supposed to be his girlfriend, or his brother, or anything else. He knew his name was Kris, but he couldn't tell if he actually remembered that, or if he only knew it because that's what everyone told him.
There had been an accident. His mother said, "I should've never let you buy that damned motorcycle," and clutched his hand painfully tight with tears in her eyes. Kris couldn't remember buying a motorcycle and he didn't know what to say. His head hurt, and he wanted to go back to sleep.
The doctors said it was psychological. True amnesia was incredibly rare and the accident had been bad enough to cause brain damage, but nothing this significant. Nothing in the parts of his brain that make and store memories, and they had all sorts of pictures and slides to prove it. "There's no physical reason for this. His memories will come back when he's ready," they said, and Katy just stared at the scuffed linoleum floor and said, "So he's doing this to himself?"
He felt a little bad, but only a little. It was hard to feel bad about someone he couldn't remember.
He was twenty-two years old, and the only thing he knew about himself for sure was that he was never getting on a motorcycle again, but he kind of wanted to write a song about it. He could already hear the melody in his head.
*
Caffeine Dealer is empty aside from two old guys playing chess at one of the rough wooden tables scattered around the small shop and the guy behind the counter, who smiles wide and bright at Kris and says, "What'll it be?" in a happy voice, like they're already friends, like Kris isn't some sweaty stranger and the guy is genuinely glad to see him. His dark hair is streaked with magenta in front and he's wearing matching eyeshadow that shimmers a little in the sunlight streaming in through the front window. Kris likes the way it looks mostly because he knows this isn't something he should recognize. It's not something he's supposed to remember.
"I'm kind of lost," he says. He smiles back, and it feels right.
"Let's get you found, then," the guy says, but Kris looks around and thinks, maybe lost isn't so bad. Lost has a red velvet couch with fraying gold trim, a wall lined with bookcases filled with tattered paperbacks, and a display case of muffins and cookies and scones. Maybe being found is overrated.
*
The guy's name is Adam and he makes Kris the best and only iced mocha Kris can remember having. He draws Kris a map on the back of a napkin and leans across the counter, hair in his eyes as he explains how to get back to the highway and which branch to take to get headed back south. "It's pretty simple," he says, wrinkling his nose a little, "but why do you want to go to San Antonio? You don't seem like the touristy, remember-the-Alamo type to me."
Kris definitely doesn't remember the Alamo, but he's sure Adam is right. He shrugs. "I'm just driving, I guess. I don't really have a solid plan." It's hard to know where he wants to go when he doesn't remember where he's been. He has money from the insurance settlement from the guy in the SUV who hit him from behind. Kris doesn't remember the accident and he's pretty happy about that. It must've been bad if his brain won't let him remember anything else, either.
"You should stay here a few days," Adam says. "It's the only part of Texas worth seeing. One of my friends manages this hotel like a block away, and he can totally get you a discount room. We're all going out tonight to this insane burlesque drag show with free drinks and it's going to be amazing, you should totally come."
"You don't even know me," Kris says. He takes a sip from his iced mocha and thinks it would be stupid to stay. It's not the plan, it's not what he's supposed to be doing. The plan--driving to California, trying to make it in LA because the only thing he can remember how to do is make music--it's not much of a plan. He has brain damage, though, so he doesn't think it's his fault his plan sucks so much. Leaving was the important part, so at least he got that far in the lame non-plan. Maybe he could stay for a few days and make a better one, instead. He's still maybe lost, but he doesn't mind it so much right now. It doesn't have to be a bad thing.
Adam looks him right in the eyes, head cocked to the side and mouth turned up in the smallest of smiles, like he's really trying to see Kris, not like his mom or Katy, who look at him and try to find the person he used to be. This house just ain't no home, he thinks, and has to stop himself from asking Adam about it, because then he'd have to explain why he sometimes has random thoughts popping into his head that don't feel like they belong to him, and he just met Adam, he doesn't want to spill the crazy right away. No dramatic confessions about being a brain-damaged freak; he's saving that for the third date.
Adam says, "But I feel like I know you. I dunno, maybe you'll think this is cheesy, but I just think everything happens for a reason. Maybe you got lost because the universe wanted you to find my coffee shop and end up at the Kiss and Fly having the life-changing experience that a burlesque drag show is bound to be. Maybe you'll get drunk on free banana hammocks and meet the love of your life and nothing will ever be the same again."
"I guess the universe has big plans for me," Kris says, and Adam smiles.
"The universe is pretty amazing that way."
*
Kris doesn't meet the love of his life, but he does get drunk on free banana hammocks and ends up agreeing to sublet a room in some guy's apartment for the next month because "fucking Justin fucked off while I was out last night and he didn't even leave a fucking note. Just took all his shit and fucking left. Fucker stole my favorite pair of red and black converse, you know--the vintage ones with the rhinestones around the stars?--and now I don't have a couch or a spatula or a pasta strainer, and just. Fuck my life, this fucking sucks." It's a lot of 'fucks' and variations thereof. Kris doesn't even swear.
Kris is already pretty drunk by that point, because the drinks are free and Adam keeps handing him new ones and honestly, Kris feels like he needs to be at least a little drunk to be here. He gets the feeling this isn't something he's ever done before, or ever even thought of doing, especially when Adam picked him from the hotel that night, looked at his plaid button-down shirt and said, "You'll blend right in with the lesbians, honey." He smiled when he said it, though.
About seven and a half banana hammocks later, though--that's when the guy shows up with his scorned roommate tale, and Kris says, "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I have amnesia."
"Getting lost on the way to West Texas isn't amnesia, it's lucky," Adam says, and the scorned roommate guy snaps his fingers in Adam's face with an annoyed, "Hello."
"What the fuck am I going to do now?" the guy says. He grabs a drink off a passing waitress's tray that Kris is ninety-five percent sure is not meant for him and downs the entire thing in one long gulp. "I can't pay rent by myself. I'm so fucked. I'm beyond fucked. I am Jack's hysterical male pregnancy, that's how fucked I am. I'm David Hasselhoff in a roomful of German leather daddies. Must be fucking Tuesday."
"Maybe you should've warned Justin about the Herpes Bandit before he fucked him," Adam says, lips quirking upwards in a half smile. "Consideration, Brad. You could at least pretend to have it, occasionally. It's what separates men from machines, you know. Friends don't let friends fuck disease-ridden trollops."
"Who warns for herpes? Everyone has herpes. Virgins have herpes. If he didn't notice the Bandit's outbreak, he was way too wasted to be fucking in the first place. And he stole my shoes! Who does that?"
"They were cool shoes," Adam says. "Imminently stealable."
"Whatever. What's going on tonight?" The guy looks at Kris and sneers a little. "Who's the new project? Are you already that bored since we broke up?"
"Be nice. You were a project once, too, asshole," Adam says, grabbing Kris by the wrist and pulling him forward, a warm hand in the center of his back. "Brad, this is Kris. He's a musician from Arkansas who likes iced mochas and is on a road trip to LA to make it big. Kris, this is Brad. He's a movie theater slave at the Drafthouse whose sole desire is to someday meet Quentin Tarentino so he can tell him how much Jackie Brown sucked. And apparently he's such a complete bitch that he can't keep a roommate for more than two months."
"Fuck you," Brad says. "And fuck LA. LA is for losers. Just ask Adam--it's his losery point of origin. You should stay here. You could be my new roommate! I would totally warn you about the Herpes Bandit, pinkie swear."
Kris looks at Adam rolling his eyes and laughing into his hand, at the drag queen on stage in a black and red bustier lip syncing to a song inquiring whether Kris wishes his girlfriend was a freak like her, at his bright yellow drink with five cherries impaled on a pink plastic umbrella half-submerged in booze and purred bananas, and thinks, this is the first time he can remember having actual fun. This is the first time he can remember having a conversation that didn't feel like a minefield, like one wrong word or question might ruin everything. It feels easy, for once. It feels good. It feels like he can just be. Maybe just be himself, as soon as he figures out who that is.
He looks from Brad to Adam, shrugs and says, "My plan kinda sucked anyway," and decides to stay.
*
After the hospital but before he decided to leave, Kris went to therapy five days a week for three months, until he decided it was a waste of time sitting in some guy's office with a million degrees nailed to the walls being told over and over again that he could remember if he wanted to. "You have the capacity," Dr. Wissman would say, "you're just choosing not to use it." Being lectured and prodded for an hour every day didn't really make him want to do anything except punch the guy in the face. He was already doing all the shit they told him to do back at the hospital to jog his memory--spending time with his old friends, looking at photo albums and home movies, going to all the places he used to hang out at, listening to stories about himself and trying to recognize any little piece of all of it inside himself. He couldn't see how playing word-association games with a patronizing asshole could possibly help.
He used to be a pretty good person, or at least that's what the stories make it seem like. He was really into church and went on mission trips and didn't even really drink except for maybe a beer with his friends while watching football on TV or something. Now, he can't seem to understand the point of football at all, and Katy told him straight off, "We're both virgins and I plan on staying one until I get married, so don't get any ideas." She smiled like she was joking, but Kris was pretty sure she was deadly serious. He hadn't really thought about it, hadn't gotten any ideas about her at all, and it wasn't that she wasn't nice or pretty, because she was. She seemed like a really good person, too, like someone who cared about the people in her life more than anything else. She tried really hard, anyway; tried to pretend that nothing had changed, that he was still the same Kris she'd been in love with since the ninth grade, and Kris couldn't help thinking that maybe it was something wrong with him, because he just didn't think about her like that, and it seemed like he should. It seemed like he should have felt a lot of things, but instead there was just this hole inside him, sucking in all his shoulds and leaving a vaguely dissatisfied feeling of not-right behind. He never told Katy that, though. He maybe didn't have a lot of feelings about her one way or another, but she didn't deserve that. No one deserved that.
And she tried really hard even though Kris could tell she was frustrated as hell, but she couldn't ever seem to get past this idea that if he'd ever really loved her, he'd just snap out of it or something. Kris didn't know how these things worked--he barely knew how his mom's oven worked--but he was pretty sure love didn't have much to do with it. Everyone else thought it should be about them. Kris was the only one who didn't have a theory. It was hard enough just trying to get through day by day.
So he seemed like a really good guy, before, all church-going and helping people and saving himself for marriage and abstaining from anything that could even remotely be considered sinful. He seemed like a really good guy, and that makes Kris feel anxious and weird, now, because he's pretty sure he's not that good anymore. He doesn't even know if he believes in God; he went to church with his parents every Sunday but he never felt much of anything except bored and tired, and nothing he's seen since he woke up in Little Rock has convinced him that God is inside him and leading his life or whatever. Sometimes, he thinks there's nothing inside him at all except a vague sense of not-rightness and a constant headache.
It's kind of hard to believe that God's Plan is brain damage and a six month-long headache.
*
Brad isn't at the apartment when Adam takes Kris over to see the place and drop his stuff off. It's not a lot of stuff--a couple duffel bags of clothes, his guitar, and a box of old videos so he can practice becoming Kris Allen again. Adam goes through the box while Kris sits in the middle of the bare room with a notebook open in front of him on the dusty wood floor, making a list of everything he'll need. It's just for a month or two so he doesn't need a lot, but he has the money and he figures he can sell the stuff when he leaves or donate it to Goodwill or something. A bed and a new keyboard for sure, plus random things like a shower curtain and towels and sheets. He's trying to decide if he'll really need a bathmat or a dresser when Adam holds up the photo album he's been looking through and says, "Wow, is this your girlfriend? Because I'm so completely gay, but this girl is gorgeous times twelve."
Kris looks up from his list and frowns. It's a picture of him and Katy from a few years ago. He knows it was taken at cousin Laura's wedding because his mother carefully labeled every photo and quizzed him at the breakfast table like they were flashcards or something, like he was eight years old trying to learn his multiplication tables before the big math test. He can't remember who cousin Laura is, but he looks happy in the picture, staring at Katy like he's never seen anything so beautiful, Katy laughing and making a funny face at the camera. She really is gorgeous, and Kris feels a little pang, like a tightness in his throat, like he swallowed something too big and he thinks, this must be what regret feels like.
He doesn't regret leaving, but hurting her really kind of sucked. It's better this way, though, Kris thinks. He doesn't know how to be the person she loved. He doesn't even know if he wants to, and pretending seems more cruel than anything else. What would be the point in getting a start over if he turned his life into a lie, anyway?
Kris blinks and shakes his head. "Sorry. I'm just a little out of it today. I've never randomly decided to move in with a stranger before." He smiles a little and goes back to his list. "She's not my girlfriend. We--it didn't work out. We sort of. Grew apart." Understatement, Kris thinks. Major.
"That happens sometimes," Adam says, closing the album and setting it carefully back on top of the box, running his fingers over the raised gold lettering on the cover. "Sometimes people just want different things. Or you evolve at different paces and it feels too hard to catch up or slow down to meet them again." Kris isn't sure he could call psychological trauma-induced amnesia an evolution, but that sounds right, anyway. He maybe can't remember who he was anymore, but he's definitely not the same person. Sometimes he doesn't even feel like he's the same species.
Adam takes him to Goodwill for cooking utensils which he promises to teach Kris how to use when Kris explains that he doesn't even know how to boil water, and then to Target for sheets and towels and a shower curtain covered in a cartoonish drawing of a map of the world, "So you'll never be lost again," Adam tells him when he tosses it into the shopping cart. They go to Mattress Warehouse afterwards and Adam makes him lie down on every mattress to test them out until he finds one he likes. Kris isn't even sure what he likes in a mattress, but he does know that he likes Adam lying down next to him, bouncing up and down just enough to make the sales guy working the floor frown at them from across the store and saying things like, "This one's a little too firm, don't you think? It's a bed, not the Spanish Inquisition."
Back at the apartment--Kris's new apartment, and it's weird to think of that, to think he has a space that's just his now, that isn't filled with trophies and posters and framed pictures and memories from a life that he can't remember--Adam helps him unpack all the stuff he bought while they wait for the mattress to get delivered, sitting on the floor of the walk-in closet with a duffel bag open at his feet, sliding shirts onto hangers and handing them up to Kris to hang, setting aside pieces he decides need to be folded instead.
"Not that you have a dresser," Adam says, folding a pair of jeans into a neat square and setting them on top of the pile next to him, "but still. A boy's gotta have standards. Your clothes will only treat you as well as you treat them, you know. Like a needy boyfriend. Or girlfriend," he adds, glancing up at Kris with a small smile. "If you expect them to put out, you have to take care of their needs."
"I don't know if I'm that kind of guy," Kris says, taking a shirt from Adam and sliding it onto the rack. "The kind with, um. Expectations, or whatever."
"You mean you don't know?" Adam says, raising one eyebrow, and Kris can feel his cheeks turning red because somehow, he doesn't even know what they're talking about anymore, but it's probably not his wardrobe of plaid button-downs and white t-shirts. He doesn't answer and after a moment, Adam just shrugs and hands him another shirt. "It's not a big deal," he says softly, face tilted down to watch his hands as they fold a sweater so all Kris can see is the top of Adam's head where his roots are growing in a dirty red-blond color. "I've only had one boyfriend," Adam says, setting the sweater aside and looking up. "Only been in love once. Sometimes it's maybe better not to know. Like, better to just let something happen if it's going to happen, and not work so hard at fixing broken things. Maybe you broke them for a reason, you know?"
Kris knows. He thinks about Katy, about the way she stared at the floor in the hospital and couldn't meet his eyes and didn't talk directly to him for almost a week, just around him and about him, like he wasn't really there. And he wasn't, not to her. He was just some stranger wearing Kris's body and he still doesn't think he did it on purpose, he still doesn't think he's not remembering on purpose, that he's not trying or something--he doesn't blame himself for not being able to be the person she wants, but he knows he broke them anyway. Just because it's nobody's fault doesn't change anything. They're still broken.
Kris says, "It's like every Ryan Adams song ever," and he can hear it so clearly in his head, They'll charge you with the rescue blues. He doesn't know if it's a new memory or an old one, but he thinks it doesn't matter because Adam is grinning up at him, saying, "That's exactly what it's like. We can be bitter and broken together until we find former teen popstars to marry and give up our vices to write mediocre alt-country songs about how it's hard to write good alt-country when you're not drunk or high."
Kris just smiles back. He doesn't feel particularly bitter or broken and he's pretty sure he never wants to write a mediocre anything, but he thinks this must be what having a friend is like, and that's good enough for Kris.
*
Kris invents a routine for himself his first two weeks in Austin, because Dr. Wissman claimed that routines are instinctive and no matter where Kris went, he'd automatically fall into the same patterns that would hopefully begin to trigger memories. Kris still isn't sure how much of Dr. Wissman's bullshit he believes, but his mom reminded him about it gently over the telephone the night he moved into the apartment and he hated the disappointment that creeped into her voice whenever Kris questioned these things, so instead he decided to try. He had a routine in Arkansas, but somehow he doesn't think going to physical therapy and brain therapy and group therapy to talk to other nutjobs about things he couldn't remember counted as a real routine. It wasn't instinctual, that was for sure. Having his life planned out in forty-five minute therapy hour blocks was kind of the farthest thing from what his gut was telling him to do.
His guts said to run away. His guts said to leave, that he needed space and time and no one staring at him like the saddest freakshow they'd ever seen. His gut was right, because Austin feels like freedom. It feels like waking up from a dream so long and boring and confusing that even the sunburn he got over the weekend feels good in comparison. It feels like proof that he's alive. This is what he tells Matt at Resistensia on Monday.
"You're freaking insane," is Matt's response when Kris tells him that he doesn't mind the sunburn so much. "You're like some freaky anti-vampire. You love the sun and you probably drink like, rainbows instead of blood." Matt doesn't look up from his book, and Kris is kind of afraid to ask what Matt's reading now. The first time Kris ventured into Resistensia with Adam to see about a job (because work is the cornerstone of any routine, Dr. Wissman always said), Matt was reading Mein Kampf and ended up lecturing Kris for half an hour about the inability of knowledge and ideas and concepts to be evil. "People are evil," Matt told him. "Ideas have no allegiance."
Kris said, "But aren't good and evil just ideas, too?" and Matt looked him up and down from beneath the rim of his hat like he was maybe reconsidering his initial impression, looked at Adam asleep in one of the ugly, broken-down easy chairs on the other side of the store and said, "Fuck it, you're hired. Just don't try to engage the customers because we have a strict don't ask, don't tell no-liability policy around here, and tell Adam he owes me big time when he wakes up. You're way too nice to work here, but at least it's only temporary."
Kris thinks that Matt was probably right about him being too nice, but somehow he doesn't think a bookstore could pollute him or something, even one dedicated to providing anarchists with knowledge and a place to form plots. No one here is going to force him to watch the video of his eighth birthday party once a week until he has the damn thing memorized and the very thought of ice cream cake makes him want to puke, so Kris considers that a victory. He hasn't watched any of his home movies since he left Arkansas. He doesn't even know if Brad has a VCR.
"Completely insane," Matt repeats, shaking his head. Kris doesn't pretend to understand pretty much anything Matt says; Kris doesn't even really know what an anarchist bookstore is aside from the fact that no one seems to actually buy anything, but he likes the way Matt talks to him, bluntly and completely straight forward with no innuendo or guesswork required. It's almost relaxing, hanging out in the bookstore, because he never has to worry he might be doing or saying the wrong thing. When he makes a mistake, Matt just rolls his eyes and says, "You're doing it wrong," and shows him how to do it right.
So he works in the mornings with Matt, which is mostly a lot of talking--or well, Matt talking, anyway, and Kris nodding like he's paying attention--and not so much working, because not a lot of anarchists need to visit the bookstore from eight until noon, apparently, and the ones that do just browse the shelves or hover shadily by the windows like they're on the lookout. Kris walks over to Caffeine Dealer after he gets off work and eats lunch with Adam, sometimes in the coffee shop and sometimes not. There's a place down the street called the Soup Peddler, and Adam says he's on a mission to try every soup they make, even the kinds he normally hates. Kris finds out that he loves French onion and hates anything with mushrooms, and that if he brings Adam something from the Hey Cupcake airstream trailer right before Adam's shift ends, he'll get a bright smile and a kiss on the cheek, and sometimes Adam will walk back to Brad's apartment with him, even though it's a fifteen minute walk and Austin is really hot in July.
The high school girl who comes in to take over for Adam watches them with a funny smile on her face, like she knows exactly what Kris is doing, but he can't make himself care. He's not really sure what he's doing or what it looks like, he just knows that Adam is the first real friend he can remember having, and Kris likes making him happy. Cupcakes are easy. Cupcakes seem like the least Kris can do.
*
Kris can't actually remember what his other roommates were like when he was in college, before the accident, but he's pretty sure no one could be quite as terrible at the roommate thing as Brad, and Kris is sort of starting to understand why the Justin guy left in the first place. Even the shoe-stealing almost seems defendable. Probably, Kris thinks, it has a lot less to do with the Herpes Bandit and a lot more to do with, well. With Brad.
For one thing, he never wears pants. Even if he starts out wearing pants, even if they're just eating dinner in front of the television or watching a movie or listening to some new band Brad is suddenly obsessed with that Kris absolutely must hear right now or the world might end, the pants always manage to disappear very shortly into any activity Brad engages in. At first Kris tries to ignore the no pants thing, because he doesn't want to offend anyone and if he's being honest, Brad kind of scares him a little. Kris is pretty sure he could take the guy in a fight because Brad is skinny as hell, but Kris has a feeling that Brad fights dirty, and Kris already has brain damage. He's afraid to find out what else could be done to him if he makes someone like Brad viciously angry. He's seen Mean Girls (because Brad made him watch it his first night in the apartment), so he knows exactly how vicious people can be, no physical violence required. Not that Kris is afraid of his face smelling like foot cream or accidentally getting fat, but there are other things. Worse things. Things Brad could easily and joyfully sabotage if he wanted to. There's Adam.
So at first Kris tries to ignore it, but then he mentions it to Adam during lunch one day, and Adam laughs so hard that tomato basil soup comes out his nose. Kris doesn't think it's really that funny. It's kind of disturbing, actually. Brad's legs are really skinny, and sometimes his underwear is very small. Kris can only walk around the apartment with his eyes closed so much.
"You have to tell him to fuck off," Adam says, still laughing a little while he wipes his face off with a paper napkin. The Soup Peddler peddler stares at them with narrowed eyes, like she's not quite sure she should allow these sorts of soup-wasting shenanigans in her shop. They take their soup very seriously here. "He's doing it to fuck with you, and you can't let him get away with it."
"But won't he just get bored eventually?" Kris asks, stirring his split pea with a sigh. He should've gotten the tomato, too. Peas are really gross in soup. They should be banned from liquid form, Kris decides, pushing his bowl away and sitting back in his chair.
Adam points at Kris with his spoon. "Brad doesn't get bored. He escalates. If you don't take a stand now, sooner or later--probably sooner--he's going to take off his pants and not have anything underneath."
"He says he has a rule," Kris says. "A no pants rule! Something about pants being the symbol of the oppressor and gender role conformity or. Or something. I don't know. He could wear skirts! I wouldn't care, seriously. But sometimes he wears the same underwear two days in a row and it freaks me out that I have to know that."
Adam just shakes his head. "There's no rule. He doesn't give a shit about gender role conformity. Seriously, he's just messing with you. Tell him to fuck off. Or let me do it, at least." Adam leans forward and covers Kris's hand with his own, gives it a warm, comforting squeeze. "You shouldn't have to live like this. It's cruel and unusual."
Kris shivers a little as Adam's hand slides away, the tips of his fingers dragging gently against the back of Kris's hand, and then he forgets about the no pants thing entirely because Adam offers to switch him soups, and the tomato basil is really good, especially since his mouth still tastes like gross liquidy peas.
He forgets all about it, that is, until he walks into the apartment the next night and finds Brad pantsless, again, only this time, he's pantsless while sitting on Adam's lap on the couch that Kris got from Freecycle, and they're kissing, although to Kris it looks more like they're attacking each other with their mouths than any kissing he's seen before, which, granted, has only been on television and in movies, and once when he walked in on Brad asleep on the couch while gay porn played on the television, but even the porno guys didn't kiss like this. It's intense. It's kind of crazy. Kris is pretty sure one of Adam's hands is actually in Brad's underwear, and he feels simultaneously incredibly turned on and also like he wants to vomit. His body can't seem to decide which, so instead he just stands there with the door still hanging open, keys dangling uselessly from his fingers. Brad opens his eyes, sees Kris, and pulls away from Adam for a moment to say, "Were you raised in a barn, bitch? Shut the door. Honestly, what would the neighbors think!"
Kris opens his mouth to apologize for walking in on them, or interrupting, or maybe even for being turned on because that feels a little guilty, too--Adam is his friend, his best friend, and he shouldn't be equating that with sex, or at least that's what he's learned from watching Buffy reruns, because just look at what happened with Willow and Xander, and he doesn't want anyone ending up with a steel beam through their stomachs--but instead of anything remotely resembling an apology, Kris says, "Fuck off, and learn how to keep your damn pants on!"
Then he hides in his room and takes a cold shower and absolutely does not think about the fact that he can't even remember ever being kissed, except for how he can't stop wondering what it might be like now that he's seen it. What Adam might be like. Thinking about it hurts, though, like a heavy weight pressing down on his chest until he can't breath and he has to lie down on his bed with his music turned up loud enough to drown out any noise happening in the living room, counting breaths until he feels less like he's about to explode. It's like the time he and his roommate freshman year in college managed to convince a homeless guy to buy them whiskey in exchange for a bottle of his own and they snuck theirs into their dorm room inside Kenny's gym bag, taking turns from the bottle, lying side by side on the floor between their beds in case the RA decided to do a random room check. Kenny said, "I'm happy we're friends, man, you're like the best person I know," and Kris leaned over and kissed him, just because he wanted to, just because it felt right. They passed out on the floor and the next day Kenny pretended like he didn't remember, but Kris knew he did because he requested a room transfer for Spring semester. It hurt like this does, now, because Kris thought maybe he meant more to Kenny than that; he thought maybe their friendship meant more.
It's the first real thing Kris has remembered since the accident and he should be happy about it, should be excited that his brain suddenly decided to start spitting something back at him for once. But instead he kind of wishes he hadn't remembered at all, because it really sucks. It's not a good feeling, and this thing with Adam--it feels like that, just like that, but Adam is always saying that the secret to living a happy life is to turn negatives into positives and always be aware of the kind of energy you're putting out into the world, so Kris decides to write a song about it instead. He's halfway through, the words and the melody flowing so free that it's like he's not even writing at all, before he realizes that it's a song he's already written. It's a song he remembers, and that scares the shit out of him.
*
Kris never really knows what to expect from Brad, but waking him up with a Caffeine Dealer iced mocha and begging Kris to let Brad buy him breakfast at Magnolia is different. Kris doesn't really want to go. He doesn't really want to look at Brad at all right now, because looking at Brad makes him think of the night before, which makes him remember the thing he remembered about Kenny and the Whiskey Incident, which makes him feel weird and confused and just as lost as he did when he first came to Austin a month ago.
Maybe, Kris thinks as Brad drags him by the wrist over to an empty corner booth, it's time to leave. Staying was never the plan anyway.
Once they have waters and coffees and Kris is staring at the Elvis portrait made entirely of sequins hanging on the wall opposite because he's kind of afraid of what he'll do if he has to look at Brad's face, Brad says, "I know you're pissed and I'm really sorry about the pants and please don't leave, okay?" Kris stares at Sequin Elvis until he goes blurry and doesn't say anything. His brain feel emptier than it did when he woke up after the accident, because he knows if he starts thinking, he's not going to be able to stop. He just wants it to be quiet. He's so tired sometimes.
"Okay?" Brad says again, his foot nudging against Kris's under the table.
"No," Kris says. He blinks and looks at Brad, finally, and is only a little satisfied that Brad looks terrible. He should look terrible. He should feel terrible. Kris isn't really sure he wants to examine the whys of that, but he knows it's true, anyway.
"No?" Brad says. His hands tighten around his coffee mug until the knuckles go white. Kris shakes his head.
"It's not okay. But it's not about the pants. It's the--are you getting back together?"
"With who? Adam?" Brad rolls his eyes and takes a sip from his coffee, frowns and dumps another Sweet N Low in it. "Fuck no. Adam and I, we broke up for a really good reason. Okay, we broke up for a really stupid reason, which is basically that he wants a serious relationship and I want to be young and stupid while I'm still young and gorgeous. But that doesn't make it less valid. And it doesn't mean we can't fuck around when we're really desperate."
"Oh," Kris says. He feels kind of dumb now, like he's the stupid one, but that's sort of true, too. He doesn't know how these things work, and he's guessing that Brad's attempts to educate him in The OC and One Tree Hill haven't really given him a realistic view of how relationships are supposed to go. If Brad and Adam were Marissa and Ryan, they'd have already broken up and gotten back together five times since Kris moved in, and at least one of them would've ended up in prison or overdosing, maybe both. Kris only knows like three people, and the world is still so confusing. Sometimes he wonders if he'll ever stop feeling lost, or if eventually he'll accumulate enough memories to piece together some picture of who he used to be and where he's supposed to fit in the world. He's not sure how much it has to do with his memory, though, or if maybe he just always felt like this. Maybe it's not about how many people you know or how many experiences you have. Maybe some people are just lost. What he does know, the one thing he's really freaking clear on, is that it sucks. It sucks a lot.
Brad's just staring at him, head tilted to one side, eyes getting narrower and narrower until he gasps and presses his hand to his chest and says, "Oh my god, you're totally in love with Adam!"
Their waiter comes back at that moment to deliver their food, thank god, and Kris starts shoving breakfast taco in his mouth while he tries to come up with something to say that's not a lie. Brad barely looks at his French toast, just watches Kris eat and taps his fingers impatiently along the edge of the table. "Well?" he says when Kris doesn't respond. Kris chews and swallows and shrugs.
"I don't know," he says. It's true, at least. There are so many things he doesn't know, and he doesn't want to lie, not even to Brad, who maybe deserves it.
Brad huffs and his eyes go ceilingward like he's praying for patience. Kris thinks maybe Brad should pray more and harder and to something that might actually listen, because he's very impatient and he has many faults. "I thought you were straight. I thought you had some matching tiny blond girl back in Arkansas just waiting for you to realize the error of your ways, give up on your big Hollywood dreams and come home to her so you could shack up on a mountain somewhere and have a hundred perfect little babies."
"I don't know," Kris says again. He traces the pattern on the tabletop, little cowboys riding little horses, flattens his palm against them to blot them out. He went to summer camp one year with his brother and got thrown from his horse during a trail ride when his horse stopped short in front of a sink hole. Kris wasn't hanging onto the pommel where the reins were tied, or it wouldn't have been anything; he was staring off into the trees, wondering if he could maybe build a house there someday between the branches and watch everything happening below like in the weird cartoon with the monkeys with giant long tails, and then he was on the ground with the wind knocked out of him. These things always seem to come as a surprise, he thinks. "I never really--I don't know," Kris repeats. He knows it's lame, but he doesn't know what else to say when the truth isn't really an option.
"Bitch, you know. You might not want to admit it, but you know. Don't be an asshole. Don't fuck around with him just because--"
"Isn't that your job?" Kris says, and immediately wishes he could take it back. Kris is supposed to be a nice guy; he's supposed to be the guy that goes to Indonesia instead of Cabo during his Spring Break to help with Tsunami relief efforts, the guy who marries his childhood sweetheart and lives happily ever after, possibly on a mountain with a hundred babies. He is not the guy who calls people out and gets jealous and accidentally falls in love with his best friend without even knowing if he's gay or whatever. He's not that guy, except for how apparently he is. Kris never knew who he was to begin with, though, so that's one thing he can't be surprised by. Scared, though. He can definitely be scared.
Brad hisses through his teeth, a high-pitched half-whistle that makes Kris wince. "That's adorable, you're all defensive! You have claws after all. Seriously, though." He gives Kris a look over his coffee mug, like he's maybe rethinking everything he thought he knew about Kris. "You're not allowed to be an asshole. The pants rule, I admit, is totally made up, and if my underwear freaks you out that much, I'll start wearing pants again for as long as you keep paying rent. But the No Breaking Adam's Heart rule is deadly for real. It's non-negotiable, are we clear?" He smiles sharply and picks up his knife, spreads butter over his French toast in quick, efficient strokes. "Now eat your taco and don't say I never did anything for you, because that's the best advice you're ever gonna get."
*
Kris has a small collection of memories now, just little flashes that randomly come to him and once they're there, it's like he never forgot them in the first place. They mix and mingle with all his new memories until the only way he can tell them apart is by figuring out how old he was at the time. It shouldn't be confusing, he thinks. It should actually be completely obvious, but Kris's brain likes to pretend that he never forgot these things at all, and instead it feels a little bit like he's going crazy. Or maybe he was already crazy, and now he's going sane, plugging up the holes.
He can remember maybe an hour of his life from before, when he stacks all the memory flashes together and tries to count them up. "That's real good, baby," his mom says on the phone that night.
"It's just an hour. Just a couple little things, not even anything important," Kris says, but she just makes a clucking sound and tells him to hush.
"Every memory is important. It means you're making progress. I wasn't sure about you leaving, but I think it's been good. It's worth it if you're starting to remember things. I'm proud of you, Kris."
"Mama," he says, and then his throat tightens up and he thinks maybe he's going to start crying. Kris hasn't cried once since he woke up; his dad says he's just not a crier, and that proved Kris was still Kris, after all. It was the kind of not-joke that used to make Kris feel like a disappointment, like a robot with bad programming. But there's something in his mom's voice, a warmth that reminds him of the dry heat of summer in Conway, the grass in the backyard gone so brown and brittle in the sun that it almost burned his bare feet when he ran across the exposed strip of lawn between the shade and the safety of the patio where she sat at the picnic table waiting for him with lemonade and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
"I know," she says, and that's enough. Maybe he had to go away to come back to himself, and that scares him, too. He wonders what was so bad about his old life and his old self that his brain decided it needed a do-over. He worries about it, because it's kind of a big deal when your own mind rebels against you. It's a huge deal, actually, and there's no one he can really ask because everyone back in Arkansas seemed to think he was this perfect person, but he knows now that he wasn't. There was the thing with Kenny, not just the kiss, which really wasn't anything at all, but the whiskey, too, and the whole situation, really, because Kris wasn't supposed to be the kind of guy who got wasted on a Wednesday night on a bottle of cheap Early Times.
Daniel just says that Kris was a good guy and a good brother. Kris knows Daniel must have some kind of dirt on him, but Daniel won't say, and trying to force it out of him gives Kris a headache, so he doesn't try very hard. He wants to ask Katy because she knew him best, or at least that's what everyone else says. She was his best friend and his girlfriend and they were going to get married, which is why Kris can't find it in him to call her now, because he might be remembering some things, but nothing about her and nothing about them. He thinks if she was so important to him, he would remember something, and that just makes him feel guilty all over again for not being able to. He doesn't call her. It would be selfish and she would be hurt, and things are better this way. Maybe there really isn't anything to know.
So all together, he can remember about an hour of his life from before the accident, and he gets little flashes every day, sometimes just song lyrics or random thoughts--his favorite color is green, he wanted to learn violin but the school only had violas left by the time he signed up for orchestra, he hates grape-flavored anything, but loves grapes--but it's something, anyway. It's like the world is slowly coming into focus around him, and he may not know exactly where he is in it, but he's going in the right direction.
*
the continuing saga in: part 2