A Rose by Any Other Name (4/?)
Title: A Rose by Any Other Name
Chapter: 4/?
Pairing: Kradam
Rating: R maybe? This one is G.
Summary: High school AU. What happens when Kris is kidnapped, and the police have given up the search after 2 years? And how do Adam Lambert and American Idol play into all of it?
Beta: My BFF Alex, who unforunately is not on LJ.
Disclamer: Unfortunately, I do not own Kris, Adam, or anyone else in this story. Nor do I own any of the songs, or anything recognizable from American Idol or Ford. I barely own the plotline, as its based on the show. Adam and Kris belong completely to themselves, and each other.
A week passed and I was going crazy. Everyday followed the same routine. I woke up and had breakfast with Lindsay, since by the time I woke up (usually around nine) Frank had already left for work. (Still not sure what he does, actually.) I usually stayed holed up in my room after that. Lindsay had taken me to a bookstore the day after I got here, so I had a large stack of books to keep me occupied, though it was dwindling every day.
The worst thing, though? I knew as soon as I stepped out of the house, and we started driving across town, that we weren’t in LA anymore. This foreign town was small. Really small. Normal to me was neon signs, large billboards, and crowds of people everywhere I looked. There was none of that here. Yeah, there was a neon sign over a couple of bars, but the signs weren’t lit up during the day. There were some billboards, but they seemed few and far between, like the people. I only found one crowd of people, if you could even call it a crowd. They were all gathered around a shelf of whatever the newest Harry Potter book was. Must’ve been magic because I was certain that the town barely held that many people.
People dressed way more casual than the people I grew up with. (Maybe I spent too much time in the theatre watching Adam...nah I’m pretty sure others in LA dress the same!) I’d always had a more casual style, but even my casual was a nice plaid shirt or polo with nice-looking jeans. Casual around here was a t-shirt and jeans that looked at least a few years old, minimum of 4. And I was pretty sure they weren’t the kind of "distressed" jeans that I always made fun of Katy for actually spending money on. Nope, those holes and paint-splatters were completely genuine. One of a kind!
Granted, I had originally hated the wardrobe left in my closet by whoever-the-hell James was, but I didn’t stick out as much as I would have if I’d been given my own choice of clothing. James’ clothing style consisted of basketball shorts and baseball, basketball, football, and track team t-shirts. There were some other shirts, slightly nicer t-shirts that looked like his mom had bought, but they still had the tags hanging out of the collars. Only two pairs of jeans were in the closet, and they were the same homemade-‘distressed’ kind that everyone else in this hole-in-the-wall town wore.
I had been more than willing to stay in the house after that twilight-zone experience. Nights formed their own habit, and those were the times I hated the worst. Two hours of nightmares every night before I’d even fallen asleep. Frank would come in at around midnight, so drunk that I could smell the alcohol on his breath from across the room. Not that he stayed across the room for very long.
Lying on my bed, I heard the slam of the door, the smell of alcohol one again preceding Frank. I waited two beats, just long enough for Frank to cross the room in two easy strides, and my eyes shut instinctively. The pain came after that. It was never enough to make me scream, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Never enough to break skin, for he was too precise and experienced for that. And never, ever on an area other than my chest, stomach, and back. Though Frank never told me, I knew it was because I was supposed to hide the bruises from Lindsay. It was a silently understood fact between us.
The beatings never lasted long. Only a couple of minutes, though it always felt like longer. Not a tear was shed while Frank stood over me. I wouldn’t let him see me break. Ever. It was only after the door snapped shut behind him, the last strip of light stolen from the room, that I would let myself feel. Let myself fear. Because every day, every minute, every moment that he didn’t see the fear, was a victory to me. He could do as much damage as he wanted, make it a little harder every day to walk without wincing, but it was a victory to me.
The door shut, and I pressed my face into one of the stupid decorative pillows that Lindsay insisted on putting on my bed. I missed my family. I missed my friends. I missed my school. I missed everything that made LA home. I didn’t want much, really, just enough to know that I was missed. Enough to let me know that home still existed. To have my mom pull me into a hug so tight I couldn’t breathe. To have Daniel laugh and ask why I got myself kidnapped, as though it had been my idea. To have Katy cry and hit me over the head, yelling at me about scaring her to death. To see that little smirk on Adam’s face, and watch his eyes silently ask, ‘What have you gone and gotten yourself into now?’
It felt so stupid now, all the months of having a crush on my older brother’s best friend. So stupid to think that was the biggest problem in my life. So idiotic to consider it the greatest tragedy in the world when Adam called me a kid. I made a promise to myself then and there that if, (when, my stupid, optimist side offered,) I got out of here and back to LA, no more time would be wasted. I wouldn’t sit around pining for Adam or anyone else. If I had the stamina to play this game of cat-and-mouse all the time with Frank, then I could damn well tell Adam that I like him, right? And besides, if pining after an unrequited like (cause I totally didn’t love him) was the worst thing I’d ever have to do again, I would gladly take on the challenge.
My breathing finally evened and I sat up, wiping my eyes on the back of my hand. I stared down at the pillow and solemnly ran my fingers over the tear stains in the fabric. They would dry by morning; the only proof of my weakness evaporated like a puddle of rainwater at the end of the driveway. Gone for now without a trace, but always to reappear at some time in the future.
-----------------------
The next day I stayed in my room again, but I decided to do a bit of snooping, since the room was mine now anyways. Nothing interesting came from the closet, just some old school books and notebooks with doodles on the covers. This James wasn’t a bad artist.
I went to the bed and pulled up the dark blue bed skirt (do people really still use these things?) and reached blindly underneath it. My hand fell on a hard cover and I pulled the book out, expecting another school book. I wasn’t too far off, really. It was a yearbook from 07-08.
Shifting so I could sit with my back against the wall, I opened it first to school pictures. First, I scanned the senior’s page, then kept going back until I finally reached the freshmen. There, the next to last name of all the freshmen, read ‘White, James.’ I followed my finger across the row of pictures until I found the one I was looking for. He didn’t look bad. Actually, he was kind of cute, in a different sort of way. Kind of scrawny, but not in a dorky way, and his hair looked like it was brown, though the picture was black and white.
Flipping to the back of the yearbook, I smiled when I realized that even though it was a small school, they still had a student index like my yearbooks always had. Their index was only three pages long, though, as opposed to the 13-15 page indexes in mine. I kept my finger in the page to mark it as I flipped back through the book to the first page he was listed on. It was a student activities page. I smiled a bit looking at it. With so many students in our yearbook, we never had pages that were added just to put random candid pictures of students doing things outside of school.
I found James in a picture near the bottom. He was shooting a basketball from the free throw line of some outdoor basketball court. A couple of other guys stood around, looking a bit bored. I flipped back to the index and found the next page. It was the page of school pictures, so I found another page. This one was of the yearbook staff. He was one of two guys in the fourteen-person group. Next, there was a group picture of everyone, and then James was in another picture, talking on the phone. Curious, I looked at the caption. Ad sales? Oh, so that explained who got all those businesses to put their ads in the back of the yearbooks.
The last page he was on was the homecoming page. He was dressed in a nice suit and was standing with a guy and two girls for the freshmen representatives. In another picture, he had his mouth open, talking to some friends at the homecoming dance, all five of them smiling and unaware of the camera.
Shifting my position again, I set the book aside and returned to the bed, looking under it again. There was a large something under it, but I couldn’t quite tell what it was. More curious than cautious, I reached under and my hand closed around something wooden. I pulled it towards me, slightly surprised when an old acoustic guitar came into the light, layers of dust coating it from who knew how many years of abandonment. Brushing off most of the dust, I strummed the strings a few times experimentally.
Before I could do much more than think that this would make for some good entertainment, I heard Lindsay’s voice from the kitchen. "James, dinner’s ready."
I wasn’t really sure if anyone else knew the guitar was here, or if they remembered it was, but I wanted to keep it as my own secret. So I pushed it back under the bed along with the yearbook and stood up, starting for the door, "Coming."
Chapter: 4/?
Pairing: Kradam
Rating: R maybe? This one is G.
Summary: High school AU. What happens when Kris is kidnapped, and the police have given up the search after 2 years? And how do Adam Lambert and American Idol play into all of it?
Beta: My BFF Alex, who unforunately is not on LJ.
Disclamer: Unfortunately, I do not own Kris, Adam, or anyone else in this story. Nor do I own any of the songs, or anything recognizable from American Idol or Ford. I barely own the plotline, as its based on the show. Adam and Kris belong completely to themselves, and each other.
A week passed and I was going crazy. Everyday followed the same routine. I woke up and had breakfast with Lindsay, since by the time I woke up (usually around nine) Frank had already left for work. (Still not sure what he does, actually.) I usually stayed holed up in my room after that. Lindsay had taken me to a bookstore the day after I got here, so I had a large stack of books to keep me occupied, though it was dwindling every day.
The worst thing, though? I knew as soon as I stepped out of the house, and we started driving across town, that we weren’t in LA anymore. This foreign town was small. Really small. Normal to me was neon signs, large billboards, and crowds of people everywhere I looked. There was none of that here. Yeah, there was a neon sign over a couple of bars, but the signs weren’t lit up during the day. There were some billboards, but they seemed few and far between, like the people. I only found one crowd of people, if you could even call it a crowd. They were all gathered around a shelf of whatever the newest Harry Potter book was. Must’ve been magic because I was certain that the town barely held that many people.
People dressed way more casual than the people I grew up with. (Maybe I spent too much time in the theatre watching Adam...nah I’m pretty sure others in LA dress the same!) I’d always had a more casual style, but even my casual was a nice plaid shirt or polo with nice-looking jeans. Casual around here was a t-shirt and jeans that looked at least a few years old, minimum of 4. And I was pretty sure they weren’t the kind of "distressed" jeans that I always made fun of Katy for actually spending money on. Nope, those holes and paint-splatters were completely genuine. One of a kind!
Granted, I had originally hated the wardrobe left in my closet by whoever-the-hell James was, but I didn’t stick out as much as I would have if I’d been given my own choice of clothing. James’ clothing style consisted of basketball shorts and baseball, basketball, football, and track team t-shirts. There were some other shirts, slightly nicer t-shirts that looked like his mom had bought, but they still had the tags hanging out of the collars. Only two pairs of jeans were in the closet, and they were the same homemade-‘distressed’ kind that everyone else in this hole-in-the-wall town wore.
I had been more than willing to stay in the house after that twilight-zone experience. Nights formed their own habit, and those were the times I hated the worst. Two hours of nightmares every night before I’d even fallen asleep. Frank would come in at around midnight, so drunk that I could smell the alcohol on his breath from across the room. Not that he stayed across the room for very long.
Lying on my bed, I heard the slam of the door, the smell of alcohol one again preceding Frank. I waited two beats, just long enough for Frank to cross the room in two easy strides, and my eyes shut instinctively. The pain came after that. It was never enough to make me scream, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Never enough to break skin, for he was too precise and experienced for that. And never, ever on an area other than my chest, stomach, and back. Though Frank never told me, I knew it was because I was supposed to hide the bruises from Lindsay. It was a silently understood fact between us.
The beatings never lasted long. Only a couple of minutes, though it always felt like longer. Not a tear was shed while Frank stood over me. I wouldn’t let him see me break. Ever. It was only after the door snapped shut behind him, the last strip of light stolen from the room, that I would let myself feel. Let myself fear. Because every day, every minute, every moment that he didn’t see the fear, was a victory to me. He could do as much damage as he wanted, make it a little harder every day to walk without wincing, but it was a victory to me.
The door shut, and I pressed my face into one of the stupid decorative pillows that Lindsay insisted on putting on my bed. I missed my family. I missed my friends. I missed my school. I missed everything that made LA home. I didn’t want much, really, just enough to know that I was missed. Enough to let me know that home still existed. To have my mom pull me into a hug so tight I couldn’t breathe. To have Daniel laugh and ask why I got myself kidnapped, as though it had been my idea. To have Katy cry and hit me over the head, yelling at me about scaring her to death. To see that little smirk on Adam’s face, and watch his eyes silently ask, ‘What have you gone and gotten yourself into now?’
It felt so stupid now, all the months of having a crush on my older brother’s best friend. So stupid to think that was the biggest problem in my life. So idiotic to consider it the greatest tragedy in the world when Adam called me a kid. I made a promise to myself then and there that if, (when, my stupid, optimist side offered,) I got out of here and back to LA, no more time would be wasted. I wouldn’t sit around pining for Adam or anyone else. If I had the stamina to play this game of cat-and-mouse all the time with Frank, then I could damn well tell Adam that I like him, right? And besides, if pining after an unrequited like (cause I totally didn’t love him) was the worst thing I’d ever have to do again, I would gladly take on the challenge.
My breathing finally evened and I sat up, wiping my eyes on the back of my hand. I stared down at the pillow and solemnly ran my fingers over the tear stains in the fabric. They would dry by morning; the only proof of my weakness evaporated like a puddle of rainwater at the end of the driveway. Gone for now without a trace, but always to reappear at some time in the future.
-----------------------
The next day I stayed in my room again, but I decided to do a bit of snooping, since the room was mine now anyways. Nothing interesting came from the closet, just some old school books and notebooks with doodles on the covers. This James wasn’t a bad artist.
I went to the bed and pulled up the dark blue bed skirt (do people really still use these things?) and reached blindly underneath it. My hand fell on a hard cover and I pulled the book out, expecting another school book. I wasn’t too far off, really. It was a yearbook from 07-08.
Shifting so I could sit with my back against the wall, I opened it first to school pictures. First, I scanned the senior’s page, then kept going back until I finally reached the freshmen. There, the next to last name of all the freshmen, read ‘White, James.’ I followed my finger across the row of pictures until I found the one I was looking for. He didn’t look bad. Actually, he was kind of cute, in a different sort of way. Kind of scrawny, but not in a dorky way, and his hair looked like it was brown, though the picture was black and white.
Flipping to the back of the yearbook, I smiled when I realized that even though it was a small school, they still had a student index like my yearbooks always had. Their index was only three pages long, though, as opposed to the 13-15 page indexes in mine. I kept my finger in the page to mark it as I flipped back through the book to the first page he was listed on. It was a student activities page. I smiled a bit looking at it. With so many students in our yearbook, we never had pages that were added just to put random candid pictures of students doing things outside of school.
I found James in a picture near the bottom. He was shooting a basketball from the free throw line of some outdoor basketball court. A couple of other guys stood around, looking a bit bored. I flipped back to the index and found the next page. It was the page of school pictures, so I found another page. This one was of the yearbook staff. He was one of two guys in the fourteen-person group. Next, there was a group picture of everyone, and then James was in another picture, talking on the phone. Curious, I looked at the caption. Ad sales? Oh, so that explained who got all those businesses to put their ads in the back of the yearbooks.
The last page he was on was the homecoming page. He was dressed in a nice suit and was standing with a guy and two girls for the freshmen representatives. In another picture, he had his mouth open, talking to some friends at the homecoming dance, all five of them smiling and unaware of the camera.
Shifting my position again, I set the book aside and returned to the bed, looking under it again. There was a large something under it, but I couldn’t quite tell what it was. More curious than cautious, I reached under and my hand closed around something wooden. I pulled it towards me, slightly surprised when an old acoustic guitar came into the light, layers of dust coating it from who knew how many years of abandonment. Brushing off most of the dust, I strummed the strings a few times experimentally.
Before I could do much more than think that this would make for some good entertainment, I heard Lindsay’s voice from the kitchen. "James, dinner’s ready."
I wasn’t really sure if anyone else knew the guitar was here, or if they remembered it was, but I wanted to keep it as my own secret. So I pushed it back under the bed along with the yearbook and stood up, starting for the door, "Coming."