ANTIQUE (ENTR'ACTE AND CHAPTER 3)
Antique (ENTR'ACTE/PART 3)
AU. "...You've been in there for two years, dropped at least twenty thousand into loans. You have a year and a half's worth of credits at least. You have a scholarship...And you're dropping all of that because a damn DOLL told you to?"
Rating: PG-13 (language, implied sexual situations)
Pairings: Kradam, Kraty, friendship!Kris/David C.
Notes: The initial idea was inspired by the antique shop in "Whispers of the Heart" (which if you haven't seen, you should, cause it's probably one of the best Studio Ghibli movies ever), but that's where the similarities end
ENTR'ACTE
I. MID-FEBRUARY 2006, CONWAY ARKANSAS
Kris held the figurine in his hands, his heart flooded with guilt and hope all at the same time as he stared at the dirty blonde woman. It was clear that the woman knew what Kris was about to ask, because when he tried to hand Adam back to her, she pushed him away, shaking her head.
"You deserve him, Kris. Grandpa would have wanted it that way."
"But you were the one who bought him..."
"You were the one who gave him life." Kris silently questioned her, his hands shaking as he wondered what she had meant by that.
II. THE NEXT DAY, CONWAY, ARKANSAS
"I think I love him," Kris confessed half-jokingly, placing Adam down on his desk.
"He's beautiful, Kris," Katy said. "I think I might love him too." Katy looked back over at Kris, stroking his shoulder, hoping to get his attention anytime soon. No matter how hard she tried though, she couldn't snap him out of it. The way Kris's face was glowing even just after having just given the figurine a new home, it was as if...Adam were whispering sweet nothings to Kris right now, and it really irked her. "Do you want to go out?"
"Not yet."
III. THAT NIGHT, KRIS'S DREAMS
"I never thought I'd see you again, Adam!"
Kris buried his face into the man's shoulder, letting the scent of musk permeate his nostrils as he cherished this moment. He could feel Adam stroking his hair and leaving a kiss on his ear, and then eventually just leaning his head into Kris's.
"Adam?"
"What's the matter?"
"Now that you're here..." Kris trailed off, pulling away. He knew that Adam was expecting an answer from him, and he tried to find the words, but every time he thought he had found the right ones, they dissolved before he could express them.
CHAPTER 3
3a. MARCH 2006, CONWAY, ARKANSAS
Adam sat on Kris's desk, gazing at him from across the room while Kris finished up his psychology homework. Honestly, Kris's elbows were incredibly sore from keeping an uncomfortable position on his stiff, thin mattress, but if he even moved an inch, he would be distracted enough never to touch his homework again. His grades were sliding as it was anyway. He was failing half of his classes and had part of his scholarship money yanked because of it.
The most frustrating part of all of this was that Kris couldn't even bring himself to tell Katy about any of this. He couldn't tell her that he was actually thinking of taking David's advice, that he was actually thinking of dropping out of college and pursuing his music. It's not like he didn't have anything up his sleeve. He already had written a couple of finalized songs for a possible album.
He groaned, finally giving his elbows relief as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and gazed at Adam, reveling in the fact that it was so quiet in the dorms right now. It was times like this that he was glad he lived in a single. He valued his solitude. Nobody usually poked their heads in to bug him outside neither. They knew that Kris valued his privacy, and they let him keep to himself because of this.
While the privacy was nice though, sometimes the quiet got to be too much for him. That was where Adam came in to his life. Kris had been surprised when David Cook's granddaughter, the dirty blonde from the funeral, told him that David had written in his will that Kris was the to receive the figurine after his death. The young man had insisted that she keep Adam since she was the one who bought the doll in the first place, but she wouldn't have it any other way. The whole matter was of such grave importance to Kris then, but now it all just seemed so trivial. He didn't even remember the granddaughter's name.
All he remembered was how strange having Adam in the same room as him was in the beginning. Every morning, Kris would wake up and the first image he would see was the rising sun hitting the statue's gem eyes. Kris couldn't help but feel that Adam was spying on him as he woke up and it unnerved him. He was even tempted to cover the figurine's face with a sweatshirt or one of the many papers crumpled up and scattered on his desk. He just couldn't bring himself to do it though. He always felt like he was kicking a puppy when he did it, and after all the trouble Adam went through after being sold all those years ago, Kris figured he'd suffered enough trauma in his lifetime.
"Adam, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. I've been telling myself I shouldn't drop out, but I'm beginning to think..." Kris trailed off, his eyes bulging out of their sockets when he realized he was talking to an inanimate object again. He flopped back onto the bed, staring at the speckled ceiling.
He had started a habit of talking to Adam about everything. He told him about his song ideas, about his childhood, about his recollections of the visit to the antique shop, David, Katy...everything and nothing. Hell, he told him about when he lost his virginity to Katy in their senior year of high school the week before graduation, how awkward that was and how they just looked back on it and laughed now.
Thankfully nobody had caught Kris talking to Adam yet, or they both would have gotten strange looks It was bad enough that Kris stayed cooped up in his dorm half of the time ever since David's death. The last thing he needed was people making up rumors that he was going batshit insane.
"I probably should tell her about my grades at least, Adam, but I don't know how she's going to take it. When should I...?"
Adam sat there, unblinking. What was Kris thinking asking for advice? It was one thing to tell the figurine about his problems. It was another thing entirely to ask for advice from it. What kind of answer would it give anyway? It's not like it had a voice...but what kind of voice would Adam have if he could talk?
Before Kris could contemplate that thought, his cell phone rang loudly.
Of course it was Katy.
"Hey, K--"
"Kris, I've been waiting in the quad for a half an hour. Where are you?"
"What?"
Kris's eyes darted over to the alarm clock at his bedside table.
"Our date was supposed to start at three-thirty. It's now four o'clock."
"...Shit."
"Shit is right, Kristopher Neil." Katy wasn't exactly yelling at him, but Kris could tell by her tone of voice that she meant business. "This is the second time you've bummed out on me this week alone! What's the excuse today? Still too absorbed by Adam to come down to see your girlfriend?"
"No, no of course not." Kris gazed at Adam, noticing the glazed look in the figurine's eyes. He couldn't help but feel that Adam would have chucked his top hat at the student in annoyance if he could. "I'll meet you over there in five."
"Really?"
"I promise."
The call simply dropped, and Kris numbly shoved his cell into his back pocket. He quickly recovered his wallet from under a pile of dirty laundry and kissed Adam softly on the head as he left the room, locking the door tightly behind him. He couldn't simply leave Adam unprotected after all. He would simply be worrying about him if he hadn't locked the door like that time he rushed out the door for a test and had thoughtlessly left his door cracked open half an inch.
Adam sat there on Kris's desk in a silent monologue, stone cold as he suffered the breeze ambushing him from the student's open window.
3b. LATER THAT AFTERNOON, CONWAY, ARKANSAS
It was weird, but Kris really missed Adam. Words kept coming out of Katy's mouth in a language that he couldn't understand. The two of them weren't really anywhere right now. People were blurs in the background, the lights along the bar were mere spots and the New York style cheesecake sitting in front of him tasted like chalk. Nothing else really seemed to matter at the moment and that alone made him feel weird. And that was just the least of his problems. Katy had sensed that something was up with Kris and he hadn't been gifted with the gall to tell her that
'Kris, are you even listening to me?" Katy demanded crossly, leaning over the table at her boyfriend. He leaned back in his chair, holding up his hands in self defense.
"I was," he lied, his voice lower than a mumble. He dropped his fork onto the ceramic plate in front of him, pushing away his half-eaten cheesecake in disgust. He wanted to hurl right now and he had no idea why. If it weren't for the fact he had been talking to Katy, he probably would have run away by now. "I was listening..."
"Then what was I talking about?" Katy twirled her fork around impatiently, leaning her face into her free hand.
"Something about...school?"
Katy practically threw her fork down as she bolted up, hunched over the table. "Are you serious? I was talking about my grandmother." Kris found himself rising to her level, staring off into her leafy green eyes, his fingers shaking as he clutched the edge of the table.
"I've had a lot on my mind." Neither of them were yelling yet, but they might as well have been with the stares they got from the other patrons of the cafe.
"Then why haven't you told me anything for the last few hours we've been together?" The two of them gathered their things, quickly striding out of the front door. "All you've been doing is staring off into the distance. Do you know how excruciating it is for me to see you like this? I know you've been bummed since David died, but death happens, Kris."
"You don't think I know that?" Kris's voice was quietly laced with a venom that he quickly regretted, shown in his attempt to place a hand on Katy's shoulder. She rebuked him, jerking away under his touch and crossing her arms. "I am sad that I lost my old friend, but there's...there's more to it..."
"What else is going on then?" she sighed, stomping up the street towards the nearest bus stop. "You know you can tell me anything, Kris. You know you can."
Kris reeled, abruptly stopping in the middle of the empty sidewalk. Katy looked as if she was ready to break up with him at this point though. What if he never got the chance to tell her what was really on his mind? She was walking away so fast though. It was as if she wanted an answer now or she wouldn't even bother stopping to listen.
"I'm dropping out."
Katy stopped dead in her tracks.
"Who told you to do that? Adam?" She turned back towards Kris, her breath hitched in her throat as her feet began to lead her the wrong way. "Did Adam tell you to drop out, Kris? You've been in there for two years, dropped at least twenty thousand into loans. You have a year and a half's worth of credits at least. You have a scholarship...And you're dropping all of that because a damn DOLL told you to?"
The young man laughed bitterly, rolling his doe eyes. "Are you serious?" His feet were heavy with each step back towards Katy on the sidewalk. "I'm dropping out because I don't want to be in business anymore, Katy. I'm failing all of my classes this semester. I wasn't even that happy last semester neither."
"You weren't so unhappy when you were screwing me last week, were you?" Treating her words as if they were tainted, Katy slapped a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide. Kris wasn't mad at her. He wasn't screaming like she expected him to...He was just standing there, distant as he was at the beginning of this conversation. "Kris, I am so sorry, I didn't mean that."
The young man took flight down the street, his sneakers thudding as he sprinted. The lights and the people around him became speed lines. Katy's voice became a dragon shrieking at him as he rounded the corner, bounding off of the flickering light pole. His way-too-large jacket was a hinderance at the moment, sliding off of him as he ran. He nearly stumbled over his untied shoe, but momentum kept him tumbling forward, away from his pursuer.
"Kris, I'm so sorry!" Katy repeated as Kris ran across the crosswalk. She was about to catch up, but then the cars blocked her path. "I'm so sorry." Her eyes glazed over and she wiped them, refusing to turn this into a bigger drama than it had to be. "I just said that without thinking, I don't know what I was thinking saying that." The cars stopped and the walking signal came on for the crosswalk.
Kris had disappeared.
That's what always happened when they got into a fight.
3c. LATER THAN NIGHT, KRIS'S DREAMS/CONWAY, ARKANSAS
Kris had no idea where he was right now, nor did he know where he was going despite the fact that he had been in this place many times. He just knew that he had to move ahead before the smell of smoke killed him and his poor lungs. His hands brushed along the clammy brick walls towards the light at the end of the tunnel. He wanted to pull away, the walls feeling slimy at his fingertips, yet he couldn't because he would have gotten himself lost down the straight line.
He was so scared. His whole body as shaking as he came closer to the light. He could hear voices ahead, none of whom he recognized. Their sounds echoed as he first stepped through the doorway, but he couldn't focus enough to make out anything of what they were saying because he found himself being blinded. At first the light began recede, revealing the faces of various photographers. Their cameras were gargantuan, 1950s styled.
Kris tried to force his way through the photographers, but everywhere he went, they tracked him down as if he were a mouse and they were hawks. They weren't just a mob of photographers, they were a sea. He was almost ready to faint because he couldn't escape the madness. He thought he was going to pass out from no air and way too many lights. He wasn't even able to make out anything else now. All he could see were rainbow spots.
"Please, let me through!" Kris begged, gently shoving his way through the first layer of photographers. Nobody listened to him though. If anything, it got harder to escape this human death trap. More and more he found himself tripping over their feet, tripping over his own feet, as he struggled to push any further.
"Let him out," a familiar voice ordered.
The photographers, however, wouldn't relent and Kris couldn't take it anymore. To his horror, he found himself falling, fainting. The murky puddle on the pavement was meeting his face and he couldn't stop it soon enough, his brunette locks soon getting soaked with the alcohol and bile scented water. He would have tried to push himself back up, but the crowd was closing in on him. Everywhere he saw feet trampling around him, knocking gravel and dust in his eyes.
At that point, Kris nearly gave up.
They wouldn't stop. They wouldn't have mercy on him. Kris couldn't even push himself back up, because the photographers would simply walk over him every time he tried, or they would laugh at him, taunt him. He even thought he was going to die when he felt their boots digging into his back and their lights burning his pale skin.
"Get off of him!"
The pressure off of Kris's back began to lighten and water and air began to fill his lungs again as a hand ran through his hair. He tried to push himself back up, but his elbows snapped and gave way, making fall back down. There was a shaky breath above him as Kris found someone lifting him up, an arm supporting his back as he limped his way out of the crowd around him. Their lights still went off, but this time Kris found that his face was being buried into someone's shoulder.
"Who are you?" Kris murmured into the person's shoulder.
Kris didn't get a response. He only found himself being held tighter as they finally made their way out of the photographers and down a dank alleyway. It took a couple of moments to shake the last of the beasts off, but once they got away, Kris found that his eyes were finally healing from the extreme light of the cameras.
"Are you fine now?" the voice asked, its arm slowly releasing its support from under the young man.
"I think I'll be able to stand now," Kris noted, starting to get in better balance on his own two feet. "Thank you for what you did back there."
"Don't worry about it, Kris. It's not like I could have just left anyone there to die in front of those damn beasts." Kris perked up as he forced his eyes to focus on the person who just saved him. Who were they exactly?
"How do you know my name?" Kris snapped, pulling back. His eyes were able to focus enough to make out a black coat and heavy eye make-up caked on the figure's lids. "Where have we met?"
"Calm down," the person begged, grabbing the young man's hands into his own. "It's me. It's Adam."
Kris couldn't help but to reach forward, touch Adam's cheek and trace down his jaw...It was him, he was sure of it, as hard as it was to believe, because he had touched this face before. There was no mistaking it. While he may have felt it only in inanimate form before, it still had the same shape in flesh and blood.
"It is you..." Kris trailed off, realizing that the bright spots weren't leaving anytime soon. He was practically blind as far as he was concerned and it scared him, but not because he couldn't see where he was going nor was it because he couldn't walk...it was because he couldn't see Adam. It made his stomach drop and as much as he wanted to admit it, he couldn't really tell Adam that. Was he even supposed to feel this way?
"What's the matter?"
Tears were forming in the back of Kris's eyes and he didn't want to admit it.
"I can't see you." Kris's hands traveled over Adam's shoulders, brushing the rough material of his coat. "Adam, I can't see you." His teeth were gritted as he attempted not to cry, his fingers grabbing onto the material around the other man's shoulders.
"It's probably better that you don't see me right now anyway," Adam said, holding Kris's head to his chest as the other man began to panic even more. "I've had days where I've looked better."
"I don't care. I feel so lost in this place without you." Kris couldn't even stop the tears from rolling down his face as his throat closed up.
"Those monsters did a number on you." Adam held Kris's head close, stroking his hair as he hummed a melancholy melody softly into his ear. "Just calm down. It'll wear off in a few minutes."
"I can't see you...I can't see you..."
Everything began to dissolve as Kris abruptly sat up in his bed, moonlight poking through the window shades and sweat dripping down his forehead. He was freezing, having been saturated in sweat and the fan blowing at him on max. Numbly, he reached over and shut it off before slumping over to his desk in a panic, shoving papers aside. He nearly knocked over a stapler and a cup full of sharpened pencils, but he forgot about all of that when his fingers wrapped around Adam.
"It really was all a dream..." the student trailed off, tracing his finger along Adam's face. He closed his eyes again, keeping the figurine close to his heart as he started humming quietly, trying to block out the unfathomable relief he felt from knowing that he hadn't lost Adam.
3d. EARLY MAY 2006, CONWAY, ARKANSAS
"You know, Kris, if you hadn't let your room get to be such a mess, packing would have been so much easier," Katy politely pointed out as she put his stack of unused paper in the egg crate with the other school supplies.
Kris evaluated the room in front of him. It looked so empty now that everything else had been packed away, especially since he let his usual level of cleanliness slip. He normally was anal about keeping his books tucked away on the shelf and his papers kept in a perfectly rectangular stack, but then again, nothing was normal about this semester. It wasn't everyday that a friend passed away and willed a figurine to him.
As much as Kris would miss the past though, it was time he thought more about his future now that he had made the official decision to drop out of school. He had told Katy that if he passed his exams and raised his grades back up to a C-average, he would stay. What he didn't tell her though, was that he had secretly skipped half of his exams in order to compose music and perform music gigs at the local bars and restaurants.
It was just as well too. He smiled to himself at the thought of his songs tucked away in the manilla folder. He couldn't wait to pull them out again and to perform them. He couldn't wait until he fully got over his shyness. That's when he would start to try forcing his music more on people and make money off of something that he loved.
Kris just hoped Katy would love it as much as he did, because he'd have to relocate in order to get into the music business more easily. Arkansas was a good place to live, and it would always be a little piece of his home on Earth, but Kris couldn't help but feel that he would have been trapped had he decided to try recording music back there.
He looked at his guitar case lying on his bed, shaking his head.
"Ready to start moving all of this?"
"Definitely." Kris pulled out his cell phone, dialing his mother's number. "I'll get the car to pull up around the side of the quad and then we can start loading up."
"Anything I can do?"
Kris thumb, nibbling his lip as he stared around at the piles of crates. He even double-checked his desk, seeing that Adam had been packed away earlier. "Could you just make sure I have all of my books over there?" he asked, pointing towards the egg crate below the office supplies.
"Of course I can do that," Katy said, moving the crate on top of the crate of books while her boyfriend stepped outside the room on his phone.
She peered at the books he had purchased that semester, shocked at the small amount of them. He had five classes this semester that all required textbooks. He hated traveling out to the library to borrow the books, so he always bought them instead at the university bookstore. So why were there only three textbooks in here then that looked related to his business major? She thumbed through the other books in the crate, spotting a copy of Interpreter of Maladies, two booklets with intermediate and advanced guitar songs for practice and a tourist's book of Los Angeles.
Katy did a double take, pulling out the advanced guitar booklet and the Los Angeles book. She couldn't help but wonder what Kris was thinking about as she flipped through the Los Angeles book, noting the pen marks all over a map tucked in there and the highlighted sections noting different museums and scenic spots in the city.
She carefully put the tourist booklet and its map back into the crate where it belonged next to the accounting textbook, moving on to the advanced guitar booklet. She knew Kris had been practicing his guitar more frequently this last semester, but she had no idea how much he had improved in that small amount of time. The booklet had a page that was dog-eared all the way in the last fourth of the booklet with a particularly difficult looking composition that took up two pages.
What really caught her eye though, was a manilla folder poking out from behind some of the last pages of the book. She flipped to it cautiously, her hands trembling. She didn't know why she was so nervous because there couldn't really have been anything scandalous in one of Kris's guitar booklets. She opened the folder, smiling to herself as she browsed Kris's lyrics. She spotted the list of guitar chords written off to the side, as if he couldn't decide what chords he wanted to use in the song.
She shuffled further through the papers, browsing song after song, thinking about what it'd be like to finally get Kris to sing an original song to her. As she furthered the bottom of the small stack though, her thoughts began to drift from songs to confusion. There were at least half a dozen apartment advertisements printed out, some marked up, some crossed out, but all of them from Los Angeles.
The blonde narrowed her eyes as she reorganized the guitar booklet and put it back with the other books, trying hard not to get mad. She couldn't really make any judgement after all. Maybe Kris was just comparing what it would be like to live in a place like Los Angeles with here. She didn't really know what he was thinking about. For all she knew, this probably meant absolutely nothing and he had nothing else that he needed to tell her. No use getting mad over nothing, right?
She finished putting every back just in time for Kris to show up in the door way with his mother.
"All your books are there, Kris," Katy announced quietly, standing up and walking out of the room.
3e. A WEEK LATER, THE RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. ALLEN, ARKANSAS
"Are you insane? Los Angeles is expensive, Kris. How do you expect to make ends meet out there?" Mr. Allen snapped, his fist smacking the table. "And on top of your student loans no less. When your mother and I agreed to pay for half of your college education this was never what we had in mind...MUSIC, Kris, really? MUSIC?"
Kris nearly jumped out of his seat. He wasn't used to seeing his old man this upset, if ever. Mrs. Allen shook her head as she attempted to placate her husband. "I won't be able to do it here. I know it's not going to be cheap, but I have to do this."
"Please listen to your father, Kris. I know that you really want to make music, we both do, but there are your student loans to take into consideration."
"Please give me more credit," Kris sighed, leaning his head onto his hands. "It's not like I'm going to move out there right away." Both his parents reeled, looking at one another as Kris continued talking, tapping his nails on the maple table. "I probably wouldn't even be moving out there until this fall. That would at least give me enough time to set some money aside for an apartment."
"THIS FALL? It's worse than I thought!" Mr. Allen blurted, stomping out of the kitchen. Mrs. Allen looked at door her husband just went through, her lips pursing in thought as she placed a hand on Kris's shoulder, attempting to smile reassuringly at her son.
"Kris, I know it seems like we're against you doing this...we're really not," she said, her eyebrows arching up in concern. "Your father is just shocked. I'm sure he'll come around to it eventually. We both know that you're a great singer..." she trailed off, her hand falling off of his shoulder as she backed away. "You can do whatever you want, Kris. We just want you to be happy." She backed further away, her hand at the doorknob beginning to turn it. "I love you."
"I love you too."
The kitchen emptied out except for Kris, whose face fell flat onto the table. He simply sat there, numb, unsure what he should really do at the moment. If it weren't for the fact that Adam was back in his old room he would be talking to him right now, ranting...
Somehow he imagined that his parents would actually be happy for him because he was going to start pursuing his real dream, or at least that his mother would have a better poker face as she was lying to him.
3f. LATE-AUGUST 2006, THE RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. ALLEN, ARKANSAS
"Kris, pick up the phone. I know you're there," Katy came on the voice mail on Kris's cell phone.
Loudly.
"Let me guess, you're busy again? Is that what they call it now?" she continued. Kris rolled over on his bed, gazing at Adam sitting on his dresser. Kris kind of half pointed towards the phone, pointing to the source of the sound as if the figurine was just as terrified as he was at the moment. "Your parents say that outside of your summer job you've been out at late hours in the night. They say you come back smelling like puke and beer. They say that when you do get home, they wake up in the middle of the night because you talk to that stupid doll." Kris shook his head, rolling off of the bed and picking up his wallet from the floor. "And me? You haven't even visited me in months, Kris. MONTHS."
Kris hated to admit it, but he still hadn't gotten the balls to tell Katy the truth yet, about moving to Los Angeles. He was afraid that she would react the same way his parents did, if not worse. It was as if everyone was trying to keep him here, trying to keep him in a cage. Even after Kris's mother had tried talking to his father after that argument a few months ago, there was a tension that never really left the Allen home.
"Damn it, Kris, at least text me or something. I'm going insane...I miss you." She audibly sighed, and then there was just a click.
"Adam, she didn't mean it when she called you stupid," Kris lied reassuringly, kissing the figurine as he left the bedroom.
3g. THAT NIGHT, KRIS'S DREAMS
The room was pitch black, give or take a couple of candles on the floor. Kris and Adam were lying on the floor next to each other, staring in the nothingness. Kris thought it was strange that Adam insisted on keeping the lights off, but he was glad just to see him again. Lately he had been plagued with debt and moving trucks. At least this way he got a break from all of that.
"You didn't have to lie to me, Kris."
"Yes I did."
"Why?"
"Because I had to protect you. It's the only way I can."
"...No."
3h. EARLY SEPTEMBER 2006, THE RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. ALLEN, ARKANSAS
Kris opened the front door nonchalant, however his heart dropped when he saw who was there...He let Katy in without any kind of exchange, not even bothering to close the door behind them. He kind of had a feeling about what she was here for, but he didn't want to hear it. He had been trying to avoid it, even when he had tried to make more of an effort to spend time with her.
He had packed everything else back up for his move...except, Adam.
He was still on Kris's dresser the last time he checked.
"Anything I can help with, Kris?" Katy asked, not really meaning it. She followed him up the stairs into his room, watching him as he stopped in front of his dresser.
"...Adam's gone."
Katy groaned, grabbing Kris's shoulder and turning around. "I'm here and the first thing you worry about is that TOY?" The young man was speechless, jerking away bewilderedly, wondering if she was really here or if he was having some kind of a nightmare. She rolled her eyes, backing away and keeping a tight grip on her purse. "I wanted to talk to you, but it looks like you're too busy."
"What did you want to talk to me about?" Kris's lips remained parted, the breath rippling in and out from his lips, his rib cage visibly moving in a panic. He forced himself not to turn away, to not start ripping the boxes open for Adam uselessly.
Katy stammered, running a hand into her blonde in exasperation. "You know, you still haven't told me where you're going, Kris. What IS all of this?" Her hands waved around, gesturing towards the cardboard boxes stacked up in his room and the suitcase on his bed. "I'm your girlfriend. I thought you told me everything."
Kris's hands ran across the tape of the top of one of the cardboard boxes. He had pushed this off for way too long and now he was beginning to regret it. Even now he couldn't completely figure out why he did it. He never really had a good reason to hide. At first he thought he was protecting Katy from worrying about him, but now he saw what an idiot he had been.
Yet he didn't find himself wanting to take it back. He couldn't believe it. Katy looked as if she was about to burst into tears and he felt nothing now. Well, maybe not exactly nothing. Kris felt sorry for her, like he had kicked a puppy, but not the way he felt a few months ago. Feelings had left him and he had not a clue when they did.
"Kris, I'm still here," Katy said, remained unmoved in the doorway. "Where are you going?"
He took a deep breath, turning away from his girlfriend. He knew it was cowardly, but he couldn't stand to look at her right now. It was time to stop making blunders and to face his mistakes, even with his back turned away from them.
"I already told you that I was going into music...and that I was moving away..." He bit his lip, realizing how hard it was to tell the truth and to be a good man. "What I didn't tell you though, Katy, was that...I'm moving to Los Angeles. I know it might seem like it was at the last minute, but I've been thinking about this for a long time. I've made plans to rent a single. I am going to try sending in a demo reel to some studios around there, see who bites." Kris shuffled his feet, sighing as he relieved himself of all his secrets. "I was going to tell you earlier, but I was afraid you'd react the same way my parents..."
Kris pivoted around.
Katy was already gone.
"...Good bye," he said quietly, reaching over on the empty top of his dresser in vain, wiping up nothing but dust.
AU. "...You've been in there for two years, dropped at least twenty thousand into loans. You have a year and a half's worth of credits at least. You have a scholarship...And you're dropping all of that because a damn DOLL told you to?"
Rating: PG-13 (language, implied sexual situations)
Pairings: Kradam, Kraty, friendship!Kris/David C.
Notes: The initial idea was inspired by the antique shop in "Whispers of the Heart" (which if you haven't seen, you should, cause it's probably one of the best Studio Ghibli movies ever), but that's where the similarities end
ENTR'ACTE
I. MID-FEBRUARY 2006, CONWAY ARKANSAS
Kris held the figurine in his hands, his heart flooded with guilt and hope all at the same time as he stared at the dirty blonde woman. It was clear that the woman knew what Kris was about to ask, because when he tried to hand Adam back to her, she pushed him away, shaking her head.
"You deserve him, Kris. Grandpa would have wanted it that way."
"But you were the one who bought him..."
"You were the one who gave him life." Kris silently questioned her, his hands shaking as he wondered what she had meant by that.
II. THE NEXT DAY, CONWAY, ARKANSAS
"I think I love him," Kris confessed half-jokingly, placing Adam down on his desk.
"He's beautiful, Kris," Katy said. "I think I might love him too." Katy looked back over at Kris, stroking his shoulder, hoping to get his attention anytime soon. No matter how hard she tried though, she couldn't snap him out of it. The way Kris's face was glowing even just after having just given the figurine a new home, it was as if...Adam were whispering sweet nothings to Kris right now, and it really irked her. "Do you want to go out?"
"Not yet."
III. THAT NIGHT, KRIS'S DREAMS
"I never thought I'd see you again, Adam!"
Kris buried his face into the man's shoulder, letting the scent of musk permeate his nostrils as he cherished this moment. He could feel Adam stroking his hair and leaving a kiss on his ear, and then eventually just leaning his head into Kris's.
"Adam?"
"What's the matter?"
"Now that you're here..." Kris trailed off, pulling away. He knew that Adam was expecting an answer from him, and he tried to find the words, but every time he thought he had found the right ones, they dissolved before he could express them.
CHAPTER 3
3a. MARCH 2006, CONWAY, ARKANSAS
Adam sat on Kris's desk, gazing at him from across the room while Kris finished up his psychology homework. Honestly, Kris's elbows were incredibly sore from keeping an uncomfortable position on his stiff, thin mattress, but if he even moved an inch, he would be distracted enough never to touch his homework again. His grades were sliding as it was anyway. He was failing half of his classes and had part of his scholarship money yanked because of it.
The most frustrating part of all of this was that Kris couldn't even bring himself to tell Katy about any of this. He couldn't tell her that he was actually thinking of taking David's advice, that he was actually thinking of dropping out of college and pursuing his music. It's not like he didn't have anything up his sleeve. He already had written a couple of finalized songs for a possible album.
He groaned, finally giving his elbows relief as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and gazed at Adam, reveling in the fact that it was so quiet in the dorms right now. It was times like this that he was glad he lived in a single. He valued his solitude. Nobody usually poked their heads in to bug him outside neither. They knew that Kris valued his privacy, and they let him keep to himself because of this.
While the privacy was nice though, sometimes the quiet got to be too much for him. That was where Adam came in to his life. Kris had been surprised when David Cook's granddaughter, the dirty blonde from the funeral, told him that David had written in his will that Kris was the to receive the figurine after his death. The young man had insisted that she keep Adam since she was the one who bought the doll in the first place, but she wouldn't have it any other way. The whole matter was of such grave importance to Kris then, but now it all just seemed so trivial. He didn't even remember the granddaughter's name.
All he remembered was how strange having Adam in the same room as him was in the beginning. Every morning, Kris would wake up and the first image he would see was the rising sun hitting the statue's gem eyes. Kris couldn't help but feel that Adam was spying on him as he woke up and it unnerved him. He was even tempted to cover the figurine's face with a sweatshirt or one of the many papers crumpled up and scattered on his desk. He just couldn't bring himself to do it though. He always felt like he was kicking a puppy when he did it, and after all the trouble Adam went through after being sold all those years ago, Kris figured he'd suffered enough trauma in his lifetime.
"Adam, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. I've been telling myself I shouldn't drop out, but I'm beginning to think..." Kris trailed off, his eyes bulging out of their sockets when he realized he was talking to an inanimate object again. He flopped back onto the bed, staring at the speckled ceiling.
He had started a habit of talking to Adam about everything. He told him about his song ideas, about his childhood, about his recollections of the visit to the antique shop, David, Katy...everything and nothing. Hell, he told him about when he lost his virginity to Katy in their senior year of high school the week before graduation, how awkward that was and how they just looked back on it and laughed now.
Thankfully nobody had caught Kris talking to Adam yet, or they both would have gotten strange looks It was bad enough that Kris stayed cooped up in his dorm half of the time ever since David's death. The last thing he needed was people making up rumors that he was going batshit insane.
"I probably should tell her about my grades at least, Adam, but I don't know how she's going to take it. When should I...?"
Adam sat there, unblinking. What was Kris thinking asking for advice? It was one thing to tell the figurine about his problems. It was another thing entirely to ask for advice from it. What kind of answer would it give anyway? It's not like it had a voice...but what kind of voice would Adam have if he could talk?
Before Kris could contemplate that thought, his cell phone rang loudly.
Of course it was Katy.
"Hey, K--"
"Kris, I've been waiting in the quad for a half an hour. Where are you?"
"What?"
Kris's eyes darted over to the alarm clock at his bedside table.
"Our date was supposed to start at three-thirty. It's now four o'clock."
"...Shit."
"Shit is right, Kristopher Neil." Katy wasn't exactly yelling at him, but Kris could tell by her tone of voice that she meant business. "This is the second time you've bummed out on me this week alone! What's the excuse today? Still too absorbed by Adam to come down to see your girlfriend?"
"No, no of course not." Kris gazed at Adam, noticing the glazed look in the figurine's eyes. He couldn't help but feel that Adam would have chucked his top hat at the student in annoyance if he could. "I'll meet you over there in five."
"Really?"
"I promise."
The call simply dropped, and Kris numbly shoved his cell into his back pocket. He quickly recovered his wallet from under a pile of dirty laundry and kissed Adam softly on the head as he left the room, locking the door tightly behind him. He couldn't simply leave Adam unprotected after all. He would simply be worrying about him if he hadn't locked the door like that time he rushed out the door for a test and had thoughtlessly left his door cracked open half an inch.
Adam sat there on Kris's desk in a silent monologue, stone cold as he suffered the breeze ambushing him from the student's open window.
3b. LATER THAT AFTERNOON, CONWAY, ARKANSAS
It was weird, but Kris really missed Adam. Words kept coming out of Katy's mouth in a language that he couldn't understand. The two of them weren't really anywhere right now. People were blurs in the background, the lights along the bar were mere spots and the New York style cheesecake sitting in front of him tasted like chalk. Nothing else really seemed to matter at the moment and that alone made him feel weird. And that was just the least of his problems. Katy had sensed that something was up with Kris and he hadn't been gifted with the gall to tell her that
'Kris, are you even listening to me?" Katy demanded crossly, leaning over the table at her boyfriend. He leaned back in his chair, holding up his hands in self defense.
"I was," he lied, his voice lower than a mumble. He dropped his fork onto the ceramic plate in front of him, pushing away his half-eaten cheesecake in disgust. He wanted to hurl right now and he had no idea why. If it weren't for the fact he had been talking to Katy, he probably would have run away by now. "I was listening..."
"Then what was I talking about?" Katy twirled her fork around impatiently, leaning her face into her free hand.
"Something about...school?"
Katy practically threw her fork down as she bolted up, hunched over the table. "Are you serious? I was talking about my grandmother." Kris found himself rising to her level, staring off into her leafy green eyes, his fingers shaking as he clutched the edge of the table.
"I've had a lot on my mind." Neither of them were yelling yet, but they might as well have been with the stares they got from the other patrons of the cafe.
"Then why haven't you told me anything for the last few hours we've been together?" The two of them gathered their things, quickly striding out of the front door. "All you've been doing is staring off into the distance. Do you know how excruciating it is for me to see you like this? I know you've been bummed since David died, but death happens, Kris."
"You don't think I know that?" Kris's voice was quietly laced with a venom that he quickly regretted, shown in his attempt to place a hand on Katy's shoulder. She rebuked him, jerking away under his touch and crossing her arms. "I am sad that I lost my old friend, but there's...there's more to it..."
"What else is going on then?" she sighed, stomping up the street towards the nearest bus stop. "You know you can tell me anything, Kris. You know you can."
Kris reeled, abruptly stopping in the middle of the empty sidewalk. Katy looked as if she was ready to break up with him at this point though. What if he never got the chance to tell her what was really on his mind? She was walking away so fast though. It was as if she wanted an answer now or she wouldn't even bother stopping to listen.
"I'm dropping out."
Katy stopped dead in her tracks.
"Who told you to do that? Adam?" She turned back towards Kris, her breath hitched in her throat as her feet began to lead her the wrong way. "Did Adam tell you to drop out, Kris? You've been in there for two years, dropped at least twenty thousand into loans. You have a year and a half's worth of credits at least. You have a scholarship...And you're dropping all of that because a damn DOLL told you to?"
The young man laughed bitterly, rolling his doe eyes. "Are you serious?" His feet were heavy with each step back towards Katy on the sidewalk. "I'm dropping out because I don't want to be in business anymore, Katy. I'm failing all of my classes this semester. I wasn't even that happy last semester neither."
"You weren't so unhappy when you were screwing me last week, were you?" Treating her words as if they were tainted, Katy slapped a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide. Kris wasn't mad at her. He wasn't screaming like she expected him to...He was just standing there, distant as he was at the beginning of this conversation. "Kris, I am so sorry, I didn't mean that."
The young man took flight down the street, his sneakers thudding as he sprinted. The lights and the people around him became speed lines. Katy's voice became a dragon shrieking at him as he rounded the corner, bounding off of the flickering light pole. His way-too-large jacket was a hinderance at the moment, sliding off of him as he ran. He nearly stumbled over his untied shoe, but momentum kept him tumbling forward, away from his pursuer.
"Kris, I'm so sorry!" Katy repeated as Kris ran across the crosswalk. She was about to catch up, but then the cars blocked her path. "I'm so sorry." Her eyes glazed over and she wiped them, refusing to turn this into a bigger drama than it had to be. "I just said that without thinking, I don't know what I was thinking saying that." The cars stopped and the walking signal came on for the crosswalk.
Kris had disappeared.
That's what always happened when they got into a fight.
3c. LATER THAN NIGHT, KRIS'S DREAMS/CONWAY, ARKANSAS
Kris had no idea where he was right now, nor did he know where he was going despite the fact that he had been in this place many times. He just knew that he had to move ahead before the smell of smoke killed him and his poor lungs. His hands brushed along the clammy brick walls towards the light at the end of the tunnel. He wanted to pull away, the walls feeling slimy at his fingertips, yet he couldn't because he would have gotten himself lost down the straight line.
He was so scared. His whole body as shaking as he came closer to the light. He could hear voices ahead, none of whom he recognized. Their sounds echoed as he first stepped through the doorway, but he couldn't focus enough to make out anything of what they were saying because he found himself being blinded. At first the light began recede, revealing the faces of various photographers. Their cameras were gargantuan, 1950s styled.
Kris tried to force his way through the photographers, but everywhere he went, they tracked him down as if he were a mouse and they were hawks. They weren't just a mob of photographers, they were a sea. He was almost ready to faint because he couldn't escape the madness. He thought he was going to pass out from no air and way too many lights. He wasn't even able to make out anything else now. All he could see were rainbow spots.
"Please, let me through!" Kris begged, gently shoving his way through the first layer of photographers. Nobody listened to him though. If anything, it got harder to escape this human death trap. More and more he found himself tripping over their feet, tripping over his own feet, as he struggled to push any further.
"Let him out," a familiar voice ordered.
The photographers, however, wouldn't relent and Kris couldn't take it anymore. To his horror, he found himself falling, fainting. The murky puddle on the pavement was meeting his face and he couldn't stop it soon enough, his brunette locks soon getting soaked with the alcohol and bile scented water. He would have tried to push himself back up, but the crowd was closing in on him. Everywhere he saw feet trampling around him, knocking gravel and dust in his eyes.
At that point, Kris nearly gave up.
They wouldn't stop. They wouldn't have mercy on him. Kris couldn't even push himself back up, because the photographers would simply walk over him every time he tried, or they would laugh at him, taunt him. He even thought he was going to die when he felt their boots digging into his back and their lights burning his pale skin.
"Get off of him!"
The pressure off of Kris's back began to lighten and water and air began to fill his lungs again as a hand ran through his hair. He tried to push himself back up, but his elbows snapped and gave way, making fall back down. There was a shaky breath above him as Kris found someone lifting him up, an arm supporting his back as he limped his way out of the crowd around him. Their lights still went off, but this time Kris found that his face was being buried into someone's shoulder.
"Who are you?" Kris murmured into the person's shoulder.
Kris didn't get a response. He only found himself being held tighter as they finally made their way out of the photographers and down a dank alleyway. It took a couple of moments to shake the last of the beasts off, but once they got away, Kris found that his eyes were finally healing from the extreme light of the cameras.
"Are you fine now?" the voice asked, its arm slowly releasing its support from under the young man.
"I think I'll be able to stand now," Kris noted, starting to get in better balance on his own two feet. "Thank you for what you did back there."
"Don't worry about it, Kris. It's not like I could have just left anyone there to die in front of those damn beasts." Kris perked up as he forced his eyes to focus on the person who just saved him. Who were they exactly?
"How do you know my name?" Kris snapped, pulling back. His eyes were able to focus enough to make out a black coat and heavy eye make-up caked on the figure's lids. "Where have we met?"
"Calm down," the person begged, grabbing the young man's hands into his own. "It's me. It's Adam."
Kris couldn't help but to reach forward, touch Adam's cheek and trace down his jaw...It was him, he was sure of it, as hard as it was to believe, because he had touched this face before. There was no mistaking it. While he may have felt it only in inanimate form before, it still had the same shape in flesh and blood.
"It is you..." Kris trailed off, realizing that the bright spots weren't leaving anytime soon. He was practically blind as far as he was concerned and it scared him, but not because he couldn't see where he was going nor was it because he couldn't walk...it was because he couldn't see Adam. It made his stomach drop and as much as he wanted to admit it, he couldn't really tell Adam that. Was he even supposed to feel this way?
"What's the matter?"
Tears were forming in the back of Kris's eyes and he didn't want to admit it.
"I can't see you." Kris's hands traveled over Adam's shoulders, brushing the rough material of his coat. "Adam, I can't see you." His teeth were gritted as he attempted not to cry, his fingers grabbing onto the material around the other man's shoulders.
"It's probably better that you don't see me right now anyway," Adam said, holding Kris's head to his chest as the other man began to panic even more. "I've had days where I've looked better."
"I don't care. I feel so lost in this place without you." Kris couldn't even stop the tears from rolling down his face as his throat closed up.
"Those monsters did a number on you." Adam held Kris's head close, stroking his hair as he hummed a melancholy melody softly into his ear. "Just calm down. It'll wear off in a few minutes."
"I can't see you...I can't see you..."
Everything began to dissolve as Kris abruptly sat up in his bed, moonlight poking through the window shades and sweat dripping down his forehead. He was freezing, having been saturated in sweat and the fan blowing at him on max. Numbly, he reached over and shut it off before slumping over to his desk in a panic, shoving papers aside. He nearly knocked over a stapler and a cup full of sharpened pencils, but he forgot about all of that when his fingers wrapped around Adam.
"It really was all a dream..." the student trailed off, tracing his finger along Adam's face. He closed his eyes again, keeping the figurine close to his heart as he started humming quietly, trying to block out the unfathomable relief he felt from knowing that he hadn't lost Adam.
3d. EARLY MAY 2006, CONWAY, ARKANSAS
"You know, Kris, if you hadn't let your room get to be such a mess, packing would have been so much easier," Katy politely pointed out as she put his stack of unused paper in the egg crate with the other school supplies.
Kris evaluated the room in front of him. It looked so empty now that everything else had been packed away, especially since he let his usual level of cleanliness slip. He normally was anal about keeping his books tucked away on the shelf and his papers kept in a perfectly rectangular stack, but then again, nothing was normal about this semester. It wasn't everyday that a friend passed away and willed a figurine to him.
As much as Kris would miss the past though, it was time he thought more about his future now that he had made the official decision to drop out of school. He had told Katy that if he passed his exams and raised his grades back up to a C-average, he would stay. What he didn't tell her though, was that he had secretly skipped half of his exams in order to compose music and perform music gigs at the local bars and restaurants.
It was just as well too. He smiled to himself at the thought of his songs tucked away in the manilla folder. He couldn't wait to pull them out again and to perform them. He couldn't wait until he fully got over his shyness. That's when he would start to try forcing his music more on people and make money off of something that he loved.
Kris just hoped Katy would love it as much as he did, because he'd have to relocate in order to get into the music business more easily. Arkansas was a good place to live, and it would always be a little piece of his home on Earth, but Kris couldn't help but feel that he would have been trapped had he decided to try recording music back there.
He looked at his guitar case lying on his bed, shaking his head.
"Ready to start moving all of this?"
"Definitely." Kris pulled out his cell phone, dialing his mother's number. "I'll get the car to pull up around the side of the quad and then we can start loading up."
"Anything I can do?"
Kris thumb, nibbling his lip as he stared around at the piles of crates. He even double-checked his desk, seeing that Adam had been packed away earlier. "Could you just make sure I have all of my books over there?" he asked, pointing towards the egg crate below the office supplies.
"Of course I can do that," Katy said, moving the crate on top of the crate of books while her boyfriend stepped outside the room on his phone.
She peered at the books he had purchased that semester, shocked at the small amount of them. He had five classes this semester that all required textbooks. He hated traveling out to the library to borrow the books, so he always bought them instead at the university bookstore. So why were there only three textbooks in here then that looked related to his business major? She thumbed through the other books in the crate, spotting a copy of Interpreter of Maladies, two booklets with intermediate and advanced guitar songs for practice and a tourist's book of Los Angeles.
Katy did a double take, pulling out the advanced guitar booklet and the Los Angeles book. She couldn't help but wonder what Kris was thinking about as she flipped through the Los Angeles book, noting the pen marks all over a map tucked in there and the highlighted sections noting different museums and scenic spots in the city.
She carefully put the tourist booklet and its map back into the crate where it belonged next to the accounting textbook, moving on to the advanced guitar booklet. She knew Kris had been practicing his guitar more frequently this last semester, but she had no idea how much he had improved in that small amount of time. The booklet had a page that was dog-eared all the way in the last fourth of the booklet with a particularly difficult looking composition that took up two pages.
What really caught her eye though, was a manilla folder poking out from behind some of the last pages of the book. She flipped to it cautiously, her hands trembling. She didn't know why she was so nervous because there couldn't really have been anything scandalous in one of Kris's guitar booklets. She opened the folder, smiling to herself as she browsed Kris's lyrics. She spotted the list of guitar chords written off to the side, as if he couldn't decide what chords he wanted to use in the song.
She shuffled further through the papers, browsing song after song, thinking about what it'd be like to finally get Kris to sing an original song to her. As she furthered the bottom of the small stack though, her thoughts began to drift from songs to confusion. There were at least half a dozen apartment advertisements printed out, some marked up, some crossed out, but all of them from Los Angeles.
The blonde narrowed her eyes as she reorganized the guitar booklet and put it back with the other books, trying hard not to get mad. She couldn't really make any judgement after all. Maybe Kris was just comparing what it would be like to live in a place like Los Angeles with here. She didn't really know what he was thinking about. For all she knew, this probably meant absolutely nothing and he had nothing else that he needed to tell her. No use getting mad over nothing, right?
She finished putting every back just in time for Kris to show up in the door way with his mother.
"All your books are there, Kris," Katy announced quietly, standing up and walking out of the room.
3e. A WEEK LATER, THE RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. ALLEN, ARKANSAS
"Are you insane? Los Angeles is expensive, Kris. How do you expect to make ends meet out there?" Mr. Allen snapped, his fist smacking the table. "And on top of your student loans no less. When your mother and I agreed to pay for half of your college education this was never what we had in mind...MUSIC, Kris, really? MUSIC?"
Kris nearly jumped out of his seat. He wasn't used to seeing his old man this upset, if ever. Mrs. Allen shook her head as she attempted to placate her husband. "I won't be able to do it here. I know it's not going to be cheap, but I have to do this."
"Please listen to your father, Kris. I know that you really want to make music, we both do, but there are your student loans to take into consideration."
"Please give me more credit," Kris sighed, leaning his head onto his hands. "It's not like I'm going to move out there right away." Both his parents reeled, looking at one another as Kris continued talking, tapping his nails on the maple table. "I probably wouldn't even be moving out there until this fall. That would at least give me enough time to set some money aside for an apartment."
"THIS FALL? It's worse than I thought!" Mr. Allen blurted, stomping out of the kitchen. Mrs. Allen looked at door her husband just went through, her lips pursing in thought as she placed a hand on Kris's shoulder, attempting to smile reassuringly at her son.
"Kris, I know it seems like we're against you doing this...we're really not," she said, her eyebrows arching up in concern. "Your father is just shocked. I'm sure he'll come around to it eventually. We both know that you're a great singer..." she trailed off, her hand falling off of his shoulder as she backed away. "You can do whatever you want, Kris. We just want you to be happy." She backed further away, her hand at the doorknob beginning to turn it. "I love you."
"I love you too."
The kitchen emptied out except for Kris, whose face fell flat onto the table. He simply sat there, numb, unsure what he should really do at the moment. If it weren't for the fact that Adam was back in his old room he would be talking to him right now, ranting...
Somehow he imagined that his parents would actually be happy for him because he was going to start pursuing his real dream, or at least that his mother would have a better poker face as she was lying to him.
3f. LATE-AUGUST 2006, THE RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. ALLEN, ARKANSAS
"Kris, pick up the phone. I know you're there," Katy came on the voice mail on Kris's cell phone.
Loudly.
"Let me guess, you're busy again? Is that what they call it now?" she continued. Kris rolled over on his bed, gazing at Adam sitting on his dresser. Kris kind of half pointed towards the phone, pointing to the source of the sound as if the figurine was just as terrified as he was at the moment. "Your parents say that outside of your summer job you've been out at late hours in the night. They say you come back smelling like puke and beer. They say that when you do get home, they wake up in the middle of the night because you talk to that stupid doll." Kris shook his head, rolling off of the bed and picking up his wallet from the floor. "And me? You haven't even visited me in months, Kris. MONTHS."
Kris hated to admit it, but he still hadn't gotten the balls to tell Katy the truth yet, about moving to Los Angeles. He was afraid that she would react the same way his parents did, if not worse. It was as if everyone was trying to keep him here, trying to keep him in a cage. Even after Kris's mother had tried talking to his father after that argument a few months ago, there was a tension that never really left the Allen home.
"Damn it, Kris, at least text me or something. I'm going insane...I miss you." She audibly sighed, and then there was just a click.
"Adam, she didn't mean it when she called you stupid," Kris lied reassuringly, kissing the figurine as he left the bedroom.
3g. THAT NIGHT, KRIS'S DREAMS
The room was pitch black, give or take a couple of candles on the floor. Kris and Adam were lying on the floor next to each other, staring in the nothingness. Kris thought it was strange that Adam insisted on keeping the lights off, but he was glad just to see him again. Lately he had been plagued with debt and moving trucks. At least this way he got a break from all of that.
"You didn't have to lie to me, Kris."
"Yes I did."
"Why?"
"Because I had to protect you. It's the only way I can."
"...No."
3h. EARLY SEPTEMBER 2006, THE RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. ALLEN, ARKANSAS
Kris opened the front door nonchalant, however his heart dropped when he saw who was there...He let Katy in without any kind of exchange, not even bothering to close the door behind them. He kind of had a feeling about what she was here for, but he didn't want to hear it. He had been trying to avoid it, even when he had tried to make more of an effort to spend time with her.
He had packed everything else back up for his move...except, Adam.
He was still on Kris's dresser the last time he checked.
"Anything I can help with, Kris?" Katy asked, not really meaning it. She followed him up the stairs into his room, watching him as he stopped in front of his dresser.
"...Adam's gone."
Katy groaned, grabbing Kris's shoulder and turning around. "I'm here and the first thing you worry about is that TOY?" The young man was speechless, jerking away bewilderedly, wondering if she was really here or if he was having some kind of a nightmare. She rolled her eyes, backing away and keeping a tight grip on her purse. "I wanted to talk to you, but it looks like you're too busy."
"What did you want to talk to me about?" Kris's lips remained parted, the breath rippling in and out from his lips, his rib cage visibly moving in a panic. He forced himself not to turn away, to not start ripping the boxes open for Adam uselessly.
Katy stammered, running a hand into her blonde in exasperation. "You know, you still haven't told me where you're going, Kris. What IS all of this?" Her hands waved around, gesturing towards the cardboard boxes stacked up in his room and the suitcase on his bed. "I'm your girlfriend. I thought you told me everything."
Kris's hands ran across the tape of the top of one of the cardboard boxes. He had pushed this off for way too long and now he was beginning to regret it. Even now he couldn't completely figure out why he did it. He never really had a good reason to hide. At first he thought he was protecting Katy from worrying about him, but now he saw what an idiot he had been.
Yet he didn't find himself wanting to take it back. He couldn't believe it. Katy looked as if she was about to burst into tears and he felt nothing now. Well, maybe not exactly nothing. Kris felt sorry for her, like he had kicked a puppy, but not the way he felt a few months ago. Feelings had left him and he had not a clue when they did.
"Kris, I'm still here," Katy said, remained unmoved in the doorway. "Where are you going?"
He took a deep breath, turning away from his girlfriend. He knew it was cowardly, but he couldn't stand to look at her right now. It was time to stop making blunders and to face his mistakes, even with his back turned away from them.
"I already told you that I was going into music...and that I was moving away..." He bit his lip, realizing how hard it was to tell the truth and to be a good man. "What I didn't tell you though, Katy, was that...I'm moving to Los Angeles. I know it might seem like it was at the last minute, but I've been thinking about this for a long time. I've made plans to rent a single. I am going to try sending in a demo reel to some studios around there, see who bites." Kris shuffled his feet, sighing as he relieved himself of all his secrets. "I was going to tell you earlier, but I was afraid you'd react the same way my parents..."
Kris pivoted around.
Katy was already gone.
"...Good bye," he said quietly, reaching over on the empty top of his dresser in vain, wiping up nothing but dust.