fic: It takes two [Adam & Kris, incomplete]
i think it's only fair to admit i'm never going to finish this story about adam and kris being on idol tour. the idea was every scene would be either adam having sex or telling kris about having sex, until of course inevitably they'd be unable to keep their hands off each other any more.
so: here's a collection of complete scenes from an incomplete story.
previously posted scenes from this story:
+ le menage marmont
+ sixteen going on seventeen
ETA: i went ahead and folded those scenes back into this post so they're now all in one place!
+
It takes two
It’s up to me and you to prove it
-the gossip
"No," Adam says. "I'm not gay. Not anymore."
Kris strums steadily, tilting his head. Freeways are always shitty and uneven and Adam braces himself with one hand against a cabinet as the bus bumps along.
"For me to be gay, I'd have to actually have sex again. With another guy. Good, filthy, down and dirty gay fucking. And instead all I do is answer dumb questions about what it means instead of going out and actually being gay."
He flings himself down on the other half of the couch, and Kris obligingly lifts the neck of his guitar to make room.
"That's not true," Kris says. "Somebody can be gay and not have done anything about it. You were gay before you did anything with anyone."
Matt walks up from the back lounge and says, "You were the gayest baby in the maternity ward, Lambert, don't lie."
"I could have had rhinestones on my blanket, it still wouldn't mean I'm getting laid."
"Dude," Matt says, and he's holding his stomach he's laughing so hard. "If I can get laid every night of this tour, so can you."
+
Adam can get laid every night if he wants to. He could fuck one guy after another, from the minute he steps off the bus until the moment he has to climb back on it.
Except for how they're all trying way too hard to look cute, to look sweet and crooked-mouthed and checkered-shirted.
"I didn't say you were my only type!" Adam complains as they settle in to their first hotel night. They have adjoining rooms, which is either worse or better than what Adam was hoping for but he's trying not to think too much about that.
Kris laughs, and it sounds evil.
"People can have more than one type," Adam says, and Kris just rolls his eyes and says, "Duh."
"I like a lot of kinds of guys! I like hot dancer guys with perfect bodies and --"
"Did you watch this week's Dance without me?"
"No!" Kris is very serious about his So You Think You Can Dance. "It's saved on the DVR still."
"Good," Kris says. "Katy says you're gonna love Brandon's outfit."
"Does that mean he's shirtless again?"
"She wouldn't elaborate."
"I don't have any problem at all hooking up with Brandon or any guy who looks like that."
"Thanks for the bulletin," Kris says. "Can't you post a sign somewhere? Or put it in the program, one of those little paper inserts. Tonight the role of Adam's hookup will be played by a muscular, young, preferably black dancer. Apply backstage."
Adam throws a pillow at Kris' head but misses. "Shut up. I'm not jumping some guy who looks just like you. It's just creepy."
Kris shrugs. "It's not that creepy." He grins. "Kinda desperate, maybe, but -- oooof."
They stay on separate beds for the pillow fight, launching missiles across the gap but never crossing the unacknowledged no-fly zone. Adam wakes up with a stray feather stuck to his lip.
+
He breaks his losing streak in Sacramento with a radio station intern who trails after his boss all day, a diligent helper who is quiet right up until the moment he asks Adam if he can please suck his cock.
Adam spins around the deserted hallway, fingers rising to his ear automatically as if somehow there's still a monitor there with someone's dirty phone sex voice on the other end.
"I want to," the guy says, "please." He puts his hand on Adam's forearm. "You were so great up there tonight," he adds, and Adam shoves him against a wall and kisses him before he can say anything to change Adam's mind.
There's a bathroom on the lower level of the concourse and they don't even bother to latch the door of the handicapped stall. He comes fast and he could explain it away, he's been on stage and it's been days, almost a week, but instead he just drops to his knees and deep-throats the guy until he almost cries.
Two pissed off tour managers meet him at the bus door with a pointed reminder that fans have expectations and one of those expectations is at least the chance of an autograph after the show. Adam nods and apologizes and tries to look contrite.
"What are you so happy about?" Kris says the minute Adam steps on board, and he stops trying not to smile. "Ah," Kris says. "I see. The prodigal son returns."
Adam stretches out on the bench, kicking his boots onto the tiny table. "I gave him every inch of my love." He tips his head back and sighs. This is the rock star life. Fucking finally.
"That's it?" Kris asks, and Adam raises his head a little. "You've been bitching for a week about your epic blue balls and that's all you're gonna say now that you finally got some?"
"I think you get the picture," Adam says. "You don't really want me to regale you with every detail."
Kris leans his hip against the table and the bus rumbles to life. "I want you to say whatever you'd say to anybody else. I'm not gonna, it's not gonna freak me out or anything. You know that."
Adam knows that. Kris has heard plenty out of him already, sex and drugs and more sex and more drugs and there's still a difference between knowing somebody enjoys quite a bit of both and doing a dramatic reenactment. But it's like all the questions about the two of them, all the reporters who still can't quite believe Kris isn't secretly praying himself to sleep at night with hopes of Adam's repentance, even though they both know it's bullshit -- it's gotten under Kris' skin a little, made him careful to tell Adam in another dozen ways how much it doesn't matter.
"That cute kid, the one from the radio station with the blond hair," Adam says.
"With the Yellow Submarine t-shirt."
Adam grins. "There's a semen joke in there somewhere," he says, and Kris barks a laugh. "I don't have any idea what his name was."
"I am the walrus," Kris sings. "Coo-coo-ka-choo."
+
"Nice hat," Kris says as Adam climbs into the town car.
Even the soft, plush leather seats can't stop Adam's entire body from aching. "I feel like I got hit by a truck."
"A glitter truck? What have I told you about jaywalking across the yellow brick road?"
"Oh my God," Adam says, and pinches the bridge of his nose. "It is too early for --" He waves his hand weakly. Too early for Kris making Wizard of Oz jokes. For the tinted windows that still don't block out the fucking sun. The lack of brunch-appropriate drinks to soothe his pain.
"It's afternoon, and seriously, who dressed you? I'm a little concerned about the company you're keeping if this is how they send you out the door."
Adam pulls the hat down further. "I didn't plan on having to sneak out of Lindsay Lohan's room."
"You slept with Lindsay Lohan."
"You could try to sound a little less dubious."
"But she and Sam are back together. I thought."
Kris reads Us Weekly more regularly and seriously than anyone Adam has ever met. "If those two wound up with anyone it was Matt," Adam says. "Did you see them?"
"I took off somewhere around the third time they said he was to piano what John Mayer is to guitar? I don't know, man, I was in my bed by one."
"Well I can promise you they didn't end up in Lindsay's room."
"Ah," Kris says. "So who was the lucky winner?"
Brad and Cassidy were both still sleeping when he left, a long strip of empty bed between them, sun pouring through the windows over their bare skin. He stood at the door and stared and stared and wished this was a world where he could take a picture to keep with him, pinned into his bunk, proof positive that there was something pure and good still left no matter what bullshit he had to conquer to get through any given day.
Kris says, "Sooooooooo?"
"Let's just say it was a draw."
Kris' forehead scrunches up in confusion for just a second before he figures it out. He holds up a finger. "Let me guess."
"Be my guest." Adam sits back and closes his eyes as the car pulls onto the crowded freeway. He's trying to hold on to how he felt at the door watching them sleep, but he can feel it slipping away already, hammered down by a tour that's barely started and another ribbon to cut. That's what people who think there's something wrong with sex just don't get, the way giving in and letting yourself feel something, letting someone else make you feel something -- it makes it possible to give yourself more wholly to everyone else.
Kris says, "Brad?"
Adam nods.
"Yeah, he certainly looked...determined."
Adam smirks. It was Brad's trying but trying not to to look like he's trying look. But he showed up, stood and clapped and stretched his hands out towards Adam at the end of the last song, like they were still trying to reach something together.
"That was the easy half," Kris admits. And he's right, though Adam's done his best to stay out of Brad's bed. "So, hmm, you and Brad and..."
Kris kicks at Adam's hi-top.
"The guy who made your jacket. Cassidy."
Adam opens his eyes. "Well done," he says.
"He's totally your type. And I saw the two of them hanging out in the holding pen, they were in the corner and I thought they were planning something." Kris scoffs a low laugh. "I don't know what I thought they were planning."
Adam holds his stomach, queasy and not just from the hangover. "If I'd known they were going to stick everyone in that awful room with no drinks and no smoking I would have thought out my guest list a little more carefully."
"Are there any guys you've slept with who actually hate your guts? Just out of curiosity."
"Brad. But only when he's feeling ignored."
"So wouldn't --" Kris stops, tugging at his shirt a little and biting his lip like he does when he's thinking of how to ask something.
Adam loves to let him stutter through it. It's pretty cute.
"Just, how do you do that without somebody feeling ignored?"
Adam shrugs. "Somebody usually does. Everybody does, I think, at some point. Especially if you're doing it for the wrong reasons, which it's easy to do."
"What's the right reason?"
"'Cause you all want to, and 'cause it feels good. More mouths, more hands, more --"
Kris rolls his eyes and Adam lets him off the hook. This time.
At first it hadn't seemed right at all, it was like Brad and Cassidy were trying to prove something to him or each other, acting out some bullshit they'd gotten into last year and taken forever to let go. It really wasn't a fair fight. He'd had so long with Brad, a couple of lazy afternoons with Cassidy, and he was relatively sure the two of them had never shared more than a drunken make-out.
"They were men on a mission," he says.
They'd stuck to his side all night, even when he ducked out into the hotel's garden to get some fresh air. He leaned against an arched entryway, listening to all the parties, in the lounge, in the nearby cottages, and then Brad had pressed himself against Adam's hip, kissing him. It wasn't Brad's kiss just to kiss kiss, it was motivated, urgent, and Adam thought, good, we can do this.
And then a hand on his face, a taller build fit to his other shoulder, Cassidy's sharp cologne and his tongue on Adam's throat, his jaw, turning his face until they kissed and Brad slid his hand up Adam's shirt to scratch at his nipple.
Which was when Lindsay had walked by, jacket in hand, and thrown her room key right at Adam. He caught it one-handed against his chest, barely managing to untangle himself in time. "Room 61," she said. "All yours, I'm not coming back tonight." Brad slid a finger through the key ring and Cassidy steered Adam by his belt loops into the cottage, out of his clothes and onto the bed.
Before it had always been him and two boys, pretty and bitchy and bossy, still somehow surprised when Adam knew things they didn't. And he and his friend Jason had shared a guy a couple times, taking turns or whatever the kid's overdeveloped porn fantasies demanded. Because they wanted to, and it felt good.
He'd never had a three-way where he was the main course, where he wasn't ever sure what would happen next. He let them hold him down and suck him, lick him head to toe. When he wanted a cock in his mouth, Brad climbed onto his chest and dipped down in between Adam's lips, taunting and teasing until finally he rose up on his knees and fucked Adam's face, holding onto the headboard and squealing every time Cassidy slapped his ass hard.
Then Cassidy wanted to fuck Adam, so Brad curled along Adam's side to watch, wide-eyed. Neither of them would touch Adam's cock while Cassidy had him bent up in two, and only after Cassidy came and lowered Adam's thighs back to the mattress did Brad finally ride him hard and fast and focused.
But then Brad was the one after who stopped Cassidy from leaving, a sticky hand on his stomach and a whispered, "Sleep with us." Even that was staking a claim of sorts, Brad declaring himself Adam's post-coital social secretary, but Adam didn't mind. He wanted one good night with his two beautiful boys. Just one night where everything was easy.
"Must be nice," Kris says, "having friends like that." His voice is a little tight, and he's slouched against the window, hidden behind sunglasses and trying to disappear inside his second shirt.
Adam leans forward, touching Kris' knee. "You sleep okay?"
"I told you, I was back at the hotel by one."
"Did you take the minibar to bed?"
Kris smiles, but it's weak, watery. Adam holds his knee, lets the warmth of it make his palm tingle against Kris' jeans. "Not everybody can finish their night with threesomes at the Chateau Marmont."
"Not everybody has what you have," Adam says, sitting back. He pulls the hat down as low as he can. "Wake me when they're ready to give us the keys."
+
In Missouri he meets up with Mandy, a girl Neil brought home from Santa Cruz once for Thanksgiving, one of his "not every girl friend I have has to be a girlfriend" girls. She had some of the best weed Adam has ever smoked.
Backstage, Mandy hugs him hard and asks if he's in the mood for more pumpkin pie, patting the outside pocket of her purse. They commandeer a smaller dressing room, grab Matt and Megan and Anoop and smoke their fucking faces off. It feels amazing.
"How do you get shit this good in the middle of the Midwest?" he asks. "Do you grow it yourself?"
"Oh shit," she says, "I forgot to call Tyson, he's gonna kill me."
"So call Tyson," Adam says, and packs another bowl.
The carpet feels scratchy against his back where his shirt's ridden up, and when Mandy hands him her cell and security asks about letting another person backstage, Adam says yeah and then closes his eyes again.
"This is Tyson," Mandy says, and Adam covers his face before squinting his eyes open. He has to blink because for a second he sees Kris standing there, and though Adam has big dreams of getting high with Kris at some point it hasn't happened yet and usually he goes off and calls Katy or works on a song while Adam's making the best of his limited supply and this is just fucking random.
"He's studying agriculture," Mandy says.
Adam sits up slowly. "I'm a fan of your work," he says, and fuck if Tyson doesn't have a lopsided, lazy grin to go with his pretty little face and aw-shucks shrug.
He's not one of those guys who won't smoke what he grows, and he sits right next to Adam with their backs against the couch, his flannel sleeves smooth and soft on Adam's bare arms. He cranes his neck, wisps of smoke around his mouth, and Adam pulls him closer and seals their lips. He's not made of steel.
Tyson gasps a little, twisting around until their chests are pressed together, and though it feels like pushing up through quicksand, Adam manages to get on his feet and drag Tyson up with him. There's a tiny bathroom on the far side of room and he can hear Matt say, "I guess we should be glad they made it that far," but he ignores it and locks the door and pushes Tyson up against the sink.
It's all a little weird, maybe because Adam is so stoned his skin is tingling, maybe because he'll close his eyes and look down and expect to see Kris staring up from around his cock but it never is, it's never quite what he's convincing himself it could be. It's not really the same at all.
+
"But how do you know he's trying to --"
"Shhh," Adam says, because Kris really sucks at remembering when they have body mics on.
"What?"
Adam rolls his eyes and points at his lapel.
"You can...feel it in your heart?"
"Oh my god," Adam says.
The sound tech pops out from behind a set piece that probably hasn't been updated since the early '80s. "You," he says, at Kris. "Your feed's crackling." It's all the warning Kris gets before the guy's hand snakes up his shirt, wiggling the wire.
"I just don't get how that translates," Kris says, raising one arm as the tech reaches around his back to fiddle with the mic pack. "Like, he says 'hey,' and you say 'hey,' and then that's it?"
There are only so many ways to explain cruising and Adam has been through them all already. The tech steps back, waving a hand at the control room. "Say something, both of y'all."
"It never worked like that with girls," Kris says.
"Kris," Adam hisses, and the tech nods curtly.
"Gotcha loud and clear," he says.
After the interview, after a different sound guy has put his hand up both their shirts and Kris has continued to interrogate Adam about how it's possible to get laid without actually saying you want to, they sit around a different part of the same building, waiting to do a radio thing.
The couch is old, cushions squeaking every time they shift around. Adam bounces up and down a couple times and Kris lets out a fake moan. When Adam slaps him in the shoulder, Kris bites down on another laugh, burying his face in his own plaid-covered shoulder. Kris twists back around to grab his guitar and Adam can see a little chest hair, the flat brown skin of the top of his nipple.
"You missed a button," Adam says.
"Nah," says Kris. "I'm good."
+
Kris finds him sitting in the hall.
"What's wrong? Alli said you were freaking out and wouldn't tell her why and -- what's wrong?"
Adam pulls his hat down farther over his ears, his forehead, his eyebrows. Eventually, Kris slides down the wall beside him.
"Adam, man. You're freaking me out here."
Adam sighs, and tries to speak, and swallows down another wave of panic, and sighs again. He knows he's acting like a fucking drama queen but for once in his life it's not an act. "When -- it's funny, when the Rolling Stone story came out I was a little -- I mean I knew what I was saying, and it's Rolling Stone, of course they're going to write about drugs, right? But it was still a little out there, it was like everything was all there in black and white."
Kris says, "yeah," so soft it's like a change in the wind.
"But Neil said, this is great, you're totally scandal proof now. He said, unless they catch you with a needle in your arm or a kid in your bed, you're golden."
He can feel Kris look down, the change in his weight against Adam's side as he looks down the length of Adam's bare arms. It's cold in the hotel hall and Adam hugs himself in his t-shirt.
"He had a drink in his hand," he says, and his voice sounds flat, lifeless. "He was drinking, and he asked me if I wanted one, and he asked if I was staying nearby, and he said if he'd known he was going to run into me he would've worn a nicer shirt. And he wasn't some crazy fan, you know? He wasn't some kid." Adam tilts his head back against the wall. "He didn't look sixteen, Kris, I swear --"
"Oh shit," Kris says.
"Yeah."
Kris is sitting cross-legged, his little sneakers tucked up under him. He doesn't look much older than sixteen himself. He puts a hand on Adam's wrist, his palm warm and instantly reassuring. "Man, I am so far out of my league right now --"
"Just. Tell me it's going to be okay. Or -- I don't know. Tell me to go call somebody and make them fix it. Tell me what I'm supposed to do."
"Was --" Kris nudges at Adam's knuckles until he turns his hand over, then wedges his fingers between Adam's. "Was he into it though? I mean. How did you find out?"
Adam touches his chin to his chest and lets himself laugh, low from his diaphragm so he can feel it vibrate all the way up his ribcage. "He said he had a teacher who talked about me in school, his social studies teacher, I think. They had some kind of debate in class."
It sounds so fucking ridiculous when he says it like that. He laughs again, higher up in his chest this time. Kris holds it in for a second but then bends over, shoulders shaking. "Wow," he says between giggles.
"When I was sixteen I could barely make eye contact with a guy. I certainly wasn't marching up to them in hotel bars and offering sex!"
Kris says, "When I was sixteen I could barely walk down the hall without getting an erection."
"Apparently we were underachievers. He didn't even get why I was upset! He kept saying, 'it doesn't matter to me, why should it matter to you?'"
"So maybe," Kris says, "maybe he won't tell anybody, or if he tells anybody they won't even believe him."
"You think?"
"Yeah, maybe it's over now. It doesn't have to be like, you know, all Queer as Folk or something. It's not like you're going to date this guy, right?"
Adam blinks. "Wait," he says. "What are you talking about?"
Kris stares blankly at him for a second, then says, "You know, when the blond one -- Justin? Totally obsesses over Brian and Brian has like, way too much of an ego to just cut the kid loose?"
"Are you -- are you narrating the plot of Queer as Folk? When did you --"
Kris shrugs. "Katy watched them all on cable. It was kind of --" He waves his free hand back and forth.
"Gay?"
"Well, yeah. I was gonna say cheezy. Way better than General Hospital, though."
+
He's dreaming about a family of koala bears when someone roughly grabs his shoulder.
"Adam, man, come on."
It's Kris, so Adam only wants to kill him a little.
"You gotta wake up, come on. Bus call in twenty."
Adam rolls onto his back, groaning.
"Aw, man, you slept in your clothes?"
"Unghhh," Adam contributes. His eyes won't really open.
"Come on. Up and at 'em, into the shower." He tugs at Adam's shoulder, then yanks on one wrist while sliding his arm around Adam's lower back, angling him into a seated position.
"I hate you," Adam says.
"You're a mess," Kris says, and Adam nods. "Where's your bag?"
"I don't know." He hiccups. "I think I might still be drunk."
When Adam squints his eyes open he can see Kris laughing. "Oh really? What gave that away?"
"I never fall asleep in my clothes." Adam picks at the fabric of his shirt, which is scratchy. "Ugg, and that little twink came on me."
"Kids these days," Kris says. "It's like they have no manners."
"I know, right?"
"Of course I hear sex is actually the kind of thing that works better without your clothes. Come on, stand up."
Adam lets Kris pull him to his feet. "I would have been happy to get naked, believe me. This guy, it was like -- so we get up here, and he practically throws me on the bed and starts sucking me off, right?"
Kris pushes Adam a step closer to the bathroom and goes "uh-huh" low, under his breath where Adam has to lean in to hear him.
"And then, he doesn't even finish, he just, he pulls off, takes off his fucking pants, and climbs on top of me. Like he was totally ready to go. Like he'd been, I don't know -- waiting, like that, all night, wet and open and, I mean, he just starts riding me. And I told him not to come all over my shirt."
The bathroom light is so awful, yellow and uneven. Adam does his best not to look in the mirror.
"And he didn't even stay. I mean, I have a bed, we could have done it again. There's nothing wrong with wanting to spread someone out naked and lick them all over and take your time a little, man. Just take it easy." He hums a little as Kris turns on the water. "Sloooooow ride," he sings, but not too loud because everything is so loud, especially in the echoey bathroom. "Take it eeeeeasy."
Kris leans Adam against a sliver of wall and says, "Get undressed."
"And then he said his ride was waiting. Like, he'd left some friend downstairs with the car and come up to fuck me? Who does that?"
"C'mon," Kris says, plucking at Adam's collar. "This part's on you."
Adam stares down at his chest. So many buttons. Buttons and cum stains and why is he always doing things like this? "Why am I always doing things like this?" he asks, and Kris sighs heavily and starts in on the hundreds of buttons.
"He was cute," Kris offers.
"Not that cute! And fuck, what do I have to do to be a guy you stick around for?"
Kris pushes Adam's shirt off his shoulders and it flutters down to the floor. "Plenty of them stick around," Kris says, "especially when you don't want them to. Like that guy in Arizona --"
Adam groans. "Don't remind me. Ughhh."
He really needs to rest his head for a minute. Now that he doesn't have a gross cum-stained shirt on he can hug Kris properly. Kris is warm against Adam's bare chest, even through his t-shirt, and his shoulder isn't too pointy for Adam to close his eyes against.
"How in the world are you so drunk?" Kris asks, and his breath puffs against Adam's neck.
"Vodka. He left his bottle of vodka and -- he left, Kris, like he was just done with me." He closes his eyes and tries to stand straight up, with a little help from the wall. "They'll all be done with me, eventually. I'm too old already and --"
"Oh my god, Adam, take off your pants and get in the damn shower before you drown in your own misery."
Adam thumbs open the button on his jeans and pushes them down over his hips. There's a cool swish of air across his body and when he looks again, Kris has stepped back. He shakes his head like he can't believe it or he's got something more to say, but all he does is turn away and push open the shower door.
When the hot spray hits him square in the face it's like a slap, but the good kind, the kind that only exists in movies. "I'm ready for my close-up," he yells, and Kris pokes his head back into the bathroom.
"Other people in this hotel are sleeping. And we're late, so can you cut the Sunset Boulevard routine in half maybe?"
Adam flicks a few drops of water over the door. "Coffee? Cause you love me?"
+
so: here's a collection of complete scenes from an incomplete story.
previously posted scenes from this story:
+ le menage marmont
+ sixteen going on seventeen
ETA: i went ahead and folded those scenes back into this post so they're now all in one place!
+
It takes two
It’s up to me and you to prove it
-the gossip
"No," Adam says. "I'm not gay. Not anymore."
Kris strums steadily, tilting his head. Freeways are always shitty and uneven and Adam braces himself with one hand against a cabinet as the bus bumps along.
"For me to be gay, I'd have to actually have sex again. With another guy. Good, filthy, down and dirty gay fucking. And instead all I do is answer dumb questions about what it means instead of going out and actually being gay."
He flings himself down on the other half of the couch, and Kris obligingly lifts the neck of his guitar to make room.
"That's not true," Kris says. "Somebody can be gay and not have done anything about it. You were gay before you did anything with anyone."
Matt walks up from the back lounge and says, "You were the gayest baby in the maternity ward, Lambert, don't lie."
"I could have had rhinestones on my blanket, it still wouldn't mean I'm getting laid."
"Dude," Matt says, and he's holding his stomach he's laughing so hard. "If I can get laid every night of this tour, so can you."
+
Adam can get laid every night if he wants to. He could fuck one guy after another, from the minute he steps off the bus until the moment he has to climb back on it.
Except for how they're all trying way too hard to look cute, to look sweet and crooked-mouthed and checkered-shirted.
"I didn't say you were my only type!" Adam complains as they settle in to their first hotel night. They have adjoining rooms, which is either worse or better than what Adam was hoping for but he's trying not to think too much about that.
Kris laughs, and it sounds evil.
"People can have more than one type," Adam says, and Kris just rolls his eyes and says, "Duh."
"I like a lot of kinds of guys! I like hot dancer guys with perfect bodies and --"
"Did you watch this week's Dance without me?"
"No!" Kris is very serious about his So You Think You Can Dance. "It's saved on the DVR still."
"Good," Kris says. "Katy says you're gonna love Brandon's outfit."
"Does that mean he's shirtless again?"
"She wouldn't elaborate."
"I don't have any problem at all hooking up with Brandon or any guy who looks like that."
"Thanks for the bulletin," Kris says. "Can't you post a sign somewhere? Or put it in the program, one of those little paper inserts. Tonight the role of Adam's hookup will be played by a muscular, young, preferably black dancer. Apply backstage."
Adam throws a pillow at Kris' head but misses. "Shut up. I'm not jumping some guy who looks just like you. It's just creepy."
Kris shrugs. "It's not that creepy." He grins. "Kinda desperate, maybe, but -- oooof."
They stay on separate beds for the pillow fight, launching missiles across the gap but never crossing the unacknowledged no-fly zone. Adam wakes up with a stray feather stuck to his lip.
+
He breaks his losing streak in Sacramento with a radio station intern who trails after his boss all day, a diligent helper who is quiet right up until the moment he asks Adam if he can please suck his cock.
Adam spins around the deserted hallway, fingers rising to his ear automatically as if somehow there's still a monitor there with someone's dirty phone sex voice on the other end.
"I want to," the guy says, "please." He puts his hand on Adam's forearm. "You were so great up there tonight," he adds, and Adam shoves him against a wall and kisses him before he can say anything to change Adam's mind.
There's a bathroom on the lower level of the concourse and they don't even bother to latch the door of the handicapped stall. He comes fast and he could explain it away, he's been on stage and it's been days, almost a week, but instead he just drops to his knees and deep-throats the guy until he almost cries.
Two pissed off tour managers meet him at the bus door with a pointed reminder that fans have expectations and one of those expectations is at least the chance of an autograph after the show. Adam nods and apologizes and tries to look contrite.
"What are you so happy about?" Kris says the minute Adam steps on board, and he stops trying not to smile. "Ah," Kris says. "I see. The prodigal son returns."
Adam stretches out on the bench, kicking his boots onto the tiny table. "I gave him every inch of my love." He tips his head back and sighs. This is the rock star life. Fucking finally.
"That's it?" Kris asks, and Adam raises his head a little. "You've been bitching for a week about your epic blue balls and that's all you're gonna say now that you finally got some?"
"I think you get the picture," Adam says. "You don't really want me to regale you with every detail."
Kris leans his hip against the table and the bus rumbles to life. "I want you to say whatever you'd say to anybody else. I'm not gonna, it's not gonna freak me out or anything. You know that."
Adam knows that. Kris has heard plenty out of him already, sex and drugs and more sex and more drugs and there's still a difference between knowing somebody enjoys quite a bit of both and doing a dramatic reenactment. But it's like all the questions about the two of them, all the reporters who still can't quite believe Kris isn't secretly praying himself to sleep at night with hopes of Adam's repentance, even though they both know it's bullshit -- it's gotten under Kris' skin a little, made him careful to tell Adam in another dozen ways how much it doesn't matter.
"That cute kid, the one from the radio station with the blond hair," Adam says.
"With the Yellow Submarine t-shirt."
Adam grins. "There's a semen joke in there somewhere," he says, and Kris barks a laugh. "I don't have any idea what his name was."
"I am the walrus," Kris sings. "Coo-coo-ka-choo."
+
"Nice hat," Kris says as Adam climbs into the town car.
Even the soft, plush leather seats can't stop Adam's entire body from aching. "I feel like I got hit by a truck."
"A glitter truck? What have I told you about jaywalking across the yellow brick road?"
"Oh my God," Adam says, and pinches the bridge of his nose. "It is too early for --" He waves his hand weakly. Too early for Kris making Wizard of Oz jokes. For the tinted windows that still don't block out the fucking sun. The lack of brunch-appropriate drinks to soothe his pain.
"It's afternoon, and seriously, who dressed you? I'm a little concerned about the company you're keeping if this is how they send you out the door."
Adam pulls the hat down further. "I didn't plan on having to sneak out of Lindsay Lohan's room."
"You slept with Lindsay Lohan."
"You could try to sound a little less dubious."
"But she and Sam are back together. I thought."
Kris reads Us Weekly more regularly and seriously than anyone Adam has ever met. "If those two wound up with anyone it was Matt," Adam says. "Did you see them?"
"I took off somewhere around the third time they said he was to piano what John Mayer is to guitar? I don't know, man, I was in my bed by one."
"Well I can promise you they didn't end up in Lindsay's room."
"Ah," Kris says. "So who was the lucky winner?"
Brad and Cassidy were both still sleeping when he left, a long strip of empty bed between them, sun pouring through the windows over their bare skin. He stood at the door and stared and stared and wished this was a world where he could take a picture to keep with him, pinned into his bunk, proof positive that there was something pure and good still left no matter what bullshit he had to conquer to get through any given day.
Kris says, "Sooooooooo?"
"Let's just say it was a draw."
Kris' forehead scrunches up in confusion for just a second before he figures it out. He holds up a finger. "Let me guess."
"Be my guest." Adam sits back and closes his eyes as the car pulls onto the crowded freeway. He's trying to hold on to how he felt at the door watching them sleep, but he can feel it slipping away already, hammered down by a tour that's barely started and another ribbon to cut. That's what people who think there's something wrong with sex just don't get, the way giving in and letting yourself feel something, letting someone else make you feel something -- it makes it possible to give yourself more wholly to everyone else.
Kris says, "Brad?"
Adam nods.
"Yeah, he certainly looked...determined."
Adam smirks. It was Brad's trying but trying not to to look like he's trying look. But he showed up, stood and clapped and stretched his hands out towards Adam at the end of the last song, like they were still trying to reach something together.
"That was the easy half," Kris admits. And he's right, though Adam's done his best to stay out of Brad's bed. "So, hmm, you and Brad and..."
Kris kicks at Adam's hi-top.
"The guy who made your jacket. Cassidy."
Adam opens his eyes. "Well done," he says.
"He's totally your type. And I saw the two of them hanging out in the holding pen, they were in the corner and I thought they were planning something." Kris scoffs a low laugh. "I don't know what I thought they were planning."
Adam holds his stomach, queasy and not just from the hangover. "If I'd known they were going to stick everyone in that awful room with no drinks and no smoking I would have thought out my guest list a little more carefully."
"Are there any guys you've slept with who actually hate your guts? Just out of curiosity."
"Brad. But only when he's feeling ignored."
"So wouldn't --" Kris stops, tugging at his shirt a little and biting his lip like he does when he's thinking of how to ask something.
Adam loves to let him stutter through it. It's pretty cute.
"Just, how do you do that without somebody feeling ignored?"
Adam shrugs. "Somebody usually does. Everybody does, I think, at some point. Especially if you're doing it for the wrong reasons, which it's easy to do."
"What's the right reason?"
"'Cause you all want to, and 'cause it feels good. More mouths, more hands, more --"
Kris rolls his eyes and Adam lets him off the hook. This time.
At first it hadn't seemed right at all, it was like Brad and Cassidy were trying to prove something to him or each other, acting out some bullshit they'd gotten into last year and taken forever to let go. It really wasn't a fair fight. He'd had so long with Brad, a couple of lazy afternoons with Cassidy, and he was relatively sure the two of them had never shared more than a drunken make-out.
"They were men on a mission," he says.
They'd stuck to his side all night, even when he ducked out into the hotel's garden to get some fresh air. He leaned against an arched entryway, listening to all the parties, in the lounge, in the nearby cottages, and then Brad had pressed himself against Adam's hip, kissing him. It wasn't Brad's kiss just to kiss kiss, it was motivated, urgent, and Adam thought, good, we can do this.
And then a hand on his face, a taller build fit to his other shoulder, Cassidy's sharp cologne and his tongue on Adam's throat, his jaw, turning his face until they kissed and Brad slid his hand up Adam's shirt to scratch at his nipple.
Which was when Lindsay had walked by, jacket in hand, and thrown her room key right at Adam. He caught it one-handed against his chest, barely managing to untangle himself in time. "Room 61," she said. "All yours, I'm not coming back tonight." Brad slid a finger through the key ring and Cassidy steered Adam by his belt loops into the cottage, out of his clothes and onto the bed.
Before it had always been him and two boys, pretty and bitchy and bossy, still somehow surprised when Adam knew things they didn't. And he and his friend Jason had shared a guy a couple times, taking turns or whatever the kid's overdeveloped porn fantasies demanded. Because they wanted to, and it felt good.
He'd never had a three-way where he was the main course, where he wasn't ever sure what would happen next. He let them hold him down and suck him, lick him head to toe. When he wanted a cock in his mouth, Brad climbed onto his chest and dipped down in between Adam's lips, taunting and teasing until finally he rose up on his knees and fucked Adam's face, holding onto the headboard and squealing every time Cassidy slapped his ass hard.
Then Cassidy wanted to fuck Adam, so Brad curled along Adam's side to watch, wide-eyed. Neither of them would touch Adam's cock while Cassidy had him bent up in two, and only after Cassidy came and lowered Adam's thighs back to the mattress did Brad finally ride him hard and fast and focused.
But then Brad was the one after who stopped Cassidy from leaving, a sticky hand on his stomach and a whispered, "Sleep with us." Even that was staking a claim of sorts, Brad declaring himself Adam's post-coital social secretary, but Adam didn't mind. He wanted one good night with his two beautiful boys. Just one night where everything was easy.
"Must be nice," Kris says, "having friends like that." His voice is a little tight, and he's slouched against the window, hidden behind sunglasses and trying to disappear inside his second shirt.
Adam leans forward, touching Kris' knee. "You sleep okay?"
"I told you, I was back at the hotel by one."
"Did you take the minibar to bed?"
Kris smiles, but it's weak, watery. Adam holds his knee, lets the warmth of it make his palm tingle against Kris' jeans. "Not everybody can finish their night with threesomes at the Chateau Marmont."
"Not everybody has what you have," Adam says, sitting back. He pulls the hat down as low as he can. "Wake me when they're ready to give us the keys."
+
In Missouri he meets up with Mandy, a girl Neil brought home from Santa Cruz once for Thanksgiving, one of his "not every girl friend I have has to be a girlfriend" girls. She had some of the best weed Adam has ever smoked.
Backstage, Mandy hugs him hard and asks if he's in the mood for more pumpkin pie, patting the outside pocket of her purse. They commandeer a smaller dressing room, grab Matt and Megan and Anoop and smoke their fucking faces off. It feels amazing.
"How do you get shit this good in the middle of the Midwest?" he asks. "Do you grow it yourself?"
"Oh shit," she says, "I forgot to call Tyson, he's gonna kill me."
"So call Tyson," Adam says, and packs another bowl.
The carpet feels scratchy against his back where his shirt's ridden up, and when Mandy hands him her cell and security asks about letting another person backstage, Adam says yeah and then closes his eyes again.
"This is Tyson," Mandy says, and Adam covers his face before squinting his eyes open. He has to blink because for a second he sees Kris standing there, and though Adam has big dreams of getting high with Kris at some point it hasn't happened yet and usually he goes off and calls Katy or works on a song while Adam's making the best of his limited supply and this is just fucking random.
"He's studying agriculture," Mandy says.
Adam sits up slowly. "I'm a fan of your work," he says, and fuck if Tyson doesn't have a lopsided, lazy grin to go with his pretty little face and aw-shucks shrug.
He's not one of those guys who won't smoke what he grows, and he sits right next to Adam with their backs against the couch, his flannel sleeves smooth and soft on Adam's bare arms. He cranes his neck, wisps of smoke around his mouth, and Adam pulls him closer and seals their lips. He's not made of steel.
Tyson gasps a little, twisting around until their chests are pressed together, and though it feels like pushing up through quicksand, Adam manages to get on his feet and drag Tyson up with him. There's a tiny bathroom on the far side of room and he can hear Matt say, "I guess we should be glad they made it that far," but he ignores it and locks the door and pushes Tyson up against the sink.
It's all a little weird, maybe because Adam is so stoned his skin is tingling, maybe because he'll close his eyes and look down and expect to see Kris staring up from around his cock but it never is, it's never quite what he's convincing himself it could be. It's not really the same at all.
+
"But how do you know he's trying to --"
"Shhh," Adam says, because Kris really sucks at remembering when they have body mics on.
"What?"
Adam rolls his eyes and points at his lapel.
"You can...feel it in your heart?"
"Oh my god," Adam says.
The sound tech pops out from behind a set piece that probably hasn't been updated since the early '80s. "You," he says, at Kris. "Your feed's crackling." It's all the warning Kris gets before the guy's hand snakes up his shirt, wiggling the wire.
"I just don't get how that translates," Kris says, raising one arm as the tech reaches around his back to fiddle with the mic pack. "Like, he says 'hey,' and you say 'hey,' and then that's it?"
There are only so many ways to explain cruising and Adam has been through them all already. The tech steps back, waving a hand at the control room. "Say something, both of y'all."
"It never worked like that with girls," Kris says.
"Kris," Adam hisses, and the tech nods curtly.
"Gotcha loud and clear," he says.
After the interview, after a different sound guy has put his hand up both their shirts and Kris has continued to interrogate Adam about how it's possible to get laid without actually saying you want to, they sit around a different part of the same building, waiting to do a radio thing.
The couch is old, cushions squeaking every time they shift around. Adam bounces up and down a couple times and Kris lets out a fake moan. When Adam slaps him in the shoulder, Kris bites down on another laugh, burying his face in his own plaid-covered shoulder. Kris twists back around to grab his guitar and Adam can see a little chest hair, the flat brown skin of the top of his nipple.
"You missed a button," Adam says.
"Nah," says Kris. "I'm good."
+
Kris finds him sitting in the hall.
"What's wrong? Alli said you were freaking out and wouldn't tell her why and -- what's wrong?"
Adam pulls his hat down farther over his ears, his forehead, his eyebrows. Eventually, Kris slides down the wall beside him.
"Adam, man. You're freaking me out here."
Adam sighs, and tries to speak, and swallows down another wave of panic, and sighs again. He knows he's acting like a fucking drama queen but for once in his life it's not an act. "When -- it's funny, when the Rolling Stone story came out I was a little -- I mean I knew what I was saying, and it's Rolling Stone, of course they're going to write about drugs, right? But it was still a little out there, it was like everything was all there in black and white."
Kris says, "yeah," so soft it's like a change in the wind.
"But Neil said, this is great, you're totally scandal proof now. He said, unless they catch you with a needle in your arm or a kid in your bed, you're golden."
He can feel Kris look down, the change in his weight against Adam's side as he looks down the length of Adam's bare arms. It's cold in the hotel hall and Adam hugs himself in his t-shirt.
"He had a drink in his hand," he says, and his voice sounds flat, lifeless. "He was drinking, and he asked me if I wanted one, and he asked if I was staying nearby, and he said if he'd known he was going to run into me he would've worn a nicer shirt. And he wasn't some crazy fan, you know? He wasn't some kid." Adam tilts his head back against the wall. "He didn't look sixteen, Kris, I swear --"
"Oh shit," Kris says.
"Yeah."
Kris is sitting cross-legged, his little sneakers tucked up under him. He doesn't look much older than sixteen himself. He puts a hand on Adam's wrist, his palm warm and instantly reassuring. "Man, I am so far out of my league right now --"
"Just. Tell me it's going to be okay. Or -- I don't know. Tell me to go call somebody and make them fix it. Tell me what I'm supposed to do."
"Was --" Kris nudges at Adam's knuckles until he turns his hand over, then wedges his fingers between Adam's. "Was he into it though? I mean. How did you find out?"
Adam touches his chin to his chest and lets himself laugh, low from his diaphragm so he can feel it vibrate all the way up his ribcage. "He said he had a teacher who talked about me in school, his social studies teacher, I think. They had some kind of debate in class."
It sounds so fucking ridiculous when he says it like that. He laughs again, higher up in his chest this time. Kris holds it in for a second but then bends over, shoulders shaking. "Wow," he says between giggles.
"When I was sixteen I could barely make eye contact with a guy. I certainly wasn't marching up to them in hotel bars and offering sex!"
Kris says, "When I was sixteen I could barely walk down the hall without getting an erection."
"Apparently we were underachievers. He didn't even get why I was upset! He kept saying, 'it doesn't matter to me, why should it matter to you?'"
"So maybe," Kris says, "maybe he won't tell anybody, or if he tells anybody they won't even believe him."
"You think?"
"Yeah, maybe it's over now. It doesn't have to be like, you know, all Queer as Folk or something. It's not like you're going to date this guy, right?"
Adam blinks. "Wait," he says. "What are you talking about?"
Kris stares blankly at him for a second, then says, "You know, when the blond one -- Justin? Totally obsesses over Brian and Brian has like, way too much of an ego to just cut the kid loose?"
"Are you -- are you narrating the plot of Queer as Folk? When did you --"
Kris shrugs. "Katy watched them all on cable. It was kind of --" He waves his free hand back and forth.
"Gay?"
"Well, yeah. I was gonna say cheezy. Way better than General Hospital, though."
+
He's dreaming about a family of koala bears when someone roughly grabs his shoulder.
"Adam, man, come on."
It's Kris, so Adam only wants to kill him a little.
"You gotta wake up, come on. Bus call in twenty."
Adam rolls onto his back, groaning.
"Aw, man, you slept in your clothes?"
"Unghhh," Adam contributes. His eyes won't really open.
"Come on. Up and at 'em, into the shower." He tugs at Adam's shoulder, then yanks on one wrist while sliding his arm around Adam's lower back, angling him into a seated position.
"I hate you," Adam says.
"You're a mess," Kris says, and Adam nods. "Where's your bag?"
"I don't know." He hiccups. "I think I might still be drunk."
When Adam squints his eyes open he can see Kris laughing. "Oh really? What gave that away?"
"I never fall asleep in my clothes." Adam picks at the fabric of his shirt, which is scratchy. "Ugg, and that little twink came on me."
"Kids these days," Kris says. "It's like they have no manners."
"I know, right?"
"Of course I hear sex is actually the kind of thing that works better without your clothes. Come on, stand up."
Adam lets Kris pull him to his feet. "I would have been happy to get naked, believe me. This guy, it was like -- so we get up here, and he practically throws me on the bed and starts sucking me off, right?"
Kris pushes Adam a step closer to the bathroom and goes "uh-huh" low, under his breath where Adam has to lean in to hear him.
"And then, he doesn't even finish, he just, he pulls off, takes off his fucking pants, and climbs on top of me. Like he was totally ready to go. Like he'd been, I don't know -- waiting, like that, all night, wet and open and, I mean, he just starts riding me. And I told him not to come all over my shirt."
The bathroom light is so awful, yellow and uneven. Adam does his best not to look in the mirror.
"And he didn't even stay. I mean, I have a bed, we could have done it again. There's nothing wrong with wanting to spread someone out naked and lick them all over and take your time a little, man. Just take it easy." He hums a little as Kris turns on the water. "Sloooooow ride," he sings, but not too loud because everything is so loud, especially in the echoey bathroom. "Take it eeeeeasy."
Kris leans Adam against a sliver of wall and says, "Get undressed."
"And then he said his ride was waiting. Like, he'd left some friend downstairs with the car and come up to fuck me? Who does that?"
"C'mon," Kris says, plucking at Adam's collar. "This part's on you."
Adam stares down at his chest. So many buttons. Buttons and cum stains and why is he always doing things like this? "Why am I always doing things like this?" he asks, and Kris sighs heavily and starts in on the hundreds of buttons.
"He was cute," Kris offers.
"Not that cute! And fuck, what do I have to do to be a guy you stick around for?"
Kris pushes Adam's shirt off his shoulders and it flutters down to the floor. "Plenty of them stick around," Kris says, "especially when you don't want them to. Like that guy in Arizona --"
Adam groans. "Don't remind me. Ughhh."
He really needs to rest his head for a minute. Now that he doesn't have a gross cum-stained shirt on he can hug Kris properly. Kris is warm against Adam's bare chest, even through his t-shirt, and his shoulder isn't too pointy for Adam to close his eyes against.
"How in the world are you so drunk?" Kris asks, and his breath puffs against Adam's neck.
"Vodka. He left his bottle of vodka and -- he left, Kris, like he was just done with me." He closes his eyes and tries to stand straight up, with a little help from the wall. "They'll all be done with me, eventually. I'm too old already and --"
"Oh my god, Adam, take off your pants and get in the damn shower before you drown in your own misery."
Adam thumbs open the button on his jeans and pushes them down over his hips. There's a cool swish of air across his body and when he looks again, Kris has stepped back. He shakes his head like he can't believe it or he's got something more to say, but all he does is turn away and push open the shower door.
When the hot spray hits him square in the face it's like a slap, but the good kind, the kind that only exists in movies. "I'm ready for my close-up," he yells, and Kris pokes his head back into the bathroom.
"Other people in this hotel are sleeping. And we're late, so can you cut the Sunset Boulevard routine in half maybe?"
Adam flicks a few drops of water over the door. "Coffee? Cause you love me?"
+