fic: Baby, There's No Other Superstar, 1/2
Baby, There's No Other Superstar
12,000 words, NC-17
Adam/Kris
"Are you actually joking around about this? Is this a joke to you? There are pictures of your dick in the National Enquirer!"
It was the leaked pictures of the threesome that constituted what Adam's publicist called "the final fucking straw, jesus fucking christ, you need to give me a raise right now or I swear to god…" and then the call cut off abruptly. There were still shards of Blackberry embedded in the wall of her office.
Perez had an absolute fucking field day, of course - ONE TWINK'S NOT ENOUGH FOR THE GLAMBERT?, proclaimed the title of the halfheartedly censored photos plastered across his ridiculous, childish blog that happened to get millions upon millions of hits every day.
"He's just pissed he wasn't invited," said Adam. His publicist stared at him.
"Are you actually joking around about this? Is this a joke to you? There are pictures of your dick in the National Enquirer."
"At least it's big?" offered Adam. Her stare got even scarier, if that was possible.
"The irresponsible rocker thing was fine when you were still in your twenties, Adam, but recently - that "wardrobe malfunction" at the Grammys, those pictures from Vegas, the hotel disaster in Miami, and now this - people are starting to think it's too much. You've established that you're not a role model, but you're turning yourself into a fucking asshole in the eyes of the public."
Adam was hungover and he had four more meetings to go to today and then a recording session until two am.
"I'm not going to tone myself down again," he said. "Fuck that. I did that after the AMAs and it fucking sucked. People got bored, anyway."
"Of course you're not going to tone yourself down. You just have to prove that you're mature and responsible, then you can do whatever the fuck you want onstage. Show your fucking dick at the Oscars, fuck your dancer onstage during tour, but keep it off Perez."
His publicist pulled out her brand-new Blackberry and punched a very angry email into it, muttering to herself.
She looked up at him again and smiled. The smile was perfunctory and terrifying.
"You're getting married."
:::
Three days later, Adam was still going around kind of hopelessly telling people that he didn't want to get married. No one was even listening to him, though - instead, everyone around him seemed to be planning a fucking wedding, calling caterers and booking hotels. One frightened intern kept coming to him with swatches of linen and asking him if he preferred cream or off-white for the tablecloths.
"I don't fucking want tablecloths!" Adam shouted. "I don't want a fucking wedding!" He grabbed the book of swatches and hurled it across the room. The intern ran after it, cringing, and Adam almost didn't even feel bad. Almost.
"I'm gay," Adam said, when they finally let him see his publicist (or "the sadistic bitch who's ruining your life," as he'd come to refer to her in his head.) "I'm not fucking getting married."
She rolled her eyes at him. "Obviously you're not marrying a girl," she said. "Anyway, people love that you're gay. It's totally in right now. What's even more in, though, is gay marriage. Ellen and Portia, Elton and David. I wish you had an "e" name, we could use that. Anyway, you're marrying a guy. In Connecticut, I think. Or Boston - no, Spain, we can do a bullfight theme, unless that's too much-"
She turned away and started babbling into her Bluetooth. Adam let himself fantasize briefly about her undergoing a completely mental breakdown where she talked to invisible people and had to be put away in an institution for life. It made him feel marginally better.
She was still there when he opened his eyes, though, so he tried again. "So I'm getting married in order to make myself more palatable to the American public? This is such hetero-normative bullshit."
"Of course it's heteronormative bullshit." His publicist sounded scornful. "I'm a professional bullshitter. And this is heteronormative bullshit that the public is going to gorge themselves fucking stupid on, okay? You want to be yourself, stop being a fucking celebrity. Do you think Angelina wanted to adopt the fucking UN of orphaned children? We had to do something about the vials of blood and the incest. Stop complaining, all you have to do is marry a hot guy."
"Do I even get to pick the guy?" asked Adam, in a small voice.
"We've done the market research and selected the option that will be best received by the record-buying public," she answered. Adam wanted to cry.
"This candidate combines your early celebrity history with his own complimentary brand of clean-cut fame, and we have a fuckton of research proving that people are absolutely wetting themselves over the idea of you two as a couple. Plus, you're friends, so it should be relatively easy to act courteous in public and to create a convincing romantic history."
"I'm not- are you saying what I think you're-" Adam gave up. This was all a dream, right? There was no way he was being forced into a publicity-stunt marriage in two days with-
"Kris Allen!" His publicist sounded triumphant, like an evil dictator or a cackling witch. "The return of Kradam! It's going to be in every magazine, it's all people will talk about for fucking months! I've already booked you on Oprah, for fuck's sake. You've got the covers of People and Star, and- Adam? Adam? Oh fuck, someone find me some smelling salts or some shit, he has a photoshoot in fifteen minutes, I don't have time for this-"
:::
Adam called Kris that night as soon as he got a chance. "Fuck, man, I'm so sorry about this!" he said. "I don't even seem to have a choice, but I feel horrible-what's their excuse for forcing you into this bullshit?"
There was a pause, and then Kris answered. "The uh, the divorce, it-apparently it hurt my "public image" because it seemed like, I don't know, a betrayal of my "values"? Although also my pr said something about being-too vanilla, I don't know, something about edgy and sharpening my image and scandalous relationships selling records. It was all very confusing, man."
"But you're okay with this?" Adam asked, incredulous. "I'm not even okay with this, and I'm gay! Maybe if you complain a lot, too, they'll back down."
Kris coughed. "Umm, yeah, maybe-listen, man, I got to go, okay? I guess I'll see you in a few days, at the, at the wedding." He sounded kind of distant.
"Kris, don't just give in-" Adam started, but the line was dead.
Adam flopped back onto his bed and stared at the ceiling. "Fuck!" he said, loudly. The worst part of this whole incredibly fucked-up situation was that he kind of would have really wanted to marry Kris, but only hypothetically, like, in his fantasies where Kris was gay and helplessly in love with him. This was not one of those fantasies, though, and he so did not want to be married to a guy he couldn't even fuck.
And what if he actually did want to get married for real, one day? To someone who wasn't Kris?
"Well, try to make it last a year, at least," Sheree--he was always surprised that his publicist's name wasn't actually Morticia or Cruella-told him when he called her. "After that you can marry whoever the fuck you want, as long as they aren't on the list-"
"What list?" asked Adam.
"The list of people that you aren't allowed to marry, obviously, Adam. I mean, come on, if you fall in love with a prostitute or Karl Rove, we aren't just going to allow that. Or worst of all, someone who isn't even famous-Julia didn't listen, and where is she now? Thank god she listened to us about invitro twins, or I don't know if she'd have gotten even an US Weekly cover out of that ridiculous relationship. So listen, while I have you on the phone, invitations- your parents are in, of course, but not your father's girlfriend because we want them to look like a couple, of course, and your brother needs to choose a date, I've already sent him a list with pictures, and can you please give me the names of no more than five of your pre-celebrity "buddies," or whatever? We need to focus on the famous. Now, we're playing up the Idol angle, but we don't want the taint of failure, so no Danny, but let's get Carrie and maybe Kelly, if she loses some weight-"
Adam hung up and opened a bottle of vodka.
After all the frantic preparation and even more frantically consumed alcohol, the wedding itself was almost a little bit of a letdown. Sheree found some house on Cape Cod that used to belong to the Kennedys or something like that-Adam had decided, by that point, that the best way to maintain his own sanity was to sing "No Boundaries" in his head, loudly, whenever she spoke, and as a result he missed a lot of the technical details-and when he arrived the minister and the rabbi were already waiting under a huge white canopy in the massive back yard.
The rows of seats were filled half with people he knew and half with random celebrities, which was actually really cool but also slightly terrifying, because honestly he'd never really stopped being starstruck around Madonna and now she was at his own fake wedding? holy shit. He didn't have time to really think about it though, because as soon as he got out of the limo Sheree straightened his bow tie and whispered in his ear, "remember, make it look real," and shoved him fairly violently off down the aisle.
"Wait, why I do have to be the bride-" was the last thing he had time to say before a string quartet started the wedding march and everyone turned around and looked at him.
Adam wasn't really looking at them, though, because at the end of the aisle Kris was waiting, wearing a criminally well-fitting suit-Adam was generally of the opinion that Kris's clothes should always, always be tighter, but in this case it was sort of distracting-and shifting nervously from foot to foot. When he got to the end of the aisle Kris looked up and smiled at him sort of timidly, and Adam smiled back in a way that was supposed to be reassuring but probably came out more seasick that anything else.
The minister said some words that Adam didn't listen to at all, and the then the rabbi chimed in with some Hebrew that Adam couldn't have understood if even if he'd tried, and then Kris was slipping a ring onto his finger. Adam looked down at his hand blankly, and there was an uncomfortable silence before Kris kind of nudged him and whispered "my ring, Adam?"-oh right, that-so he felt in his pocket and there was a ring there, luckily, and he took Kris's familiar, guitar-calloused hand and put the ring on him.
"You may now kiss the groom!" the rabbi and minister declared in unison, with what sounded like suspiciously more than professional excitement, and Kris was kind of closing his eyes and leaning forward and Adam wasn't exactly going to turn this kind of opportunity down-Kris could hardly get weird and end their friendship over one little kiss at their own wedding, right?-so he leaned forward and pressed his lips to Kris's, gently. He was planning on stopping there, but a little voice in his head that sounded disturbingly like Sheree hissed "I said REAL, Adam!" and at the same time Kris kind of parted his lips and sighed, and honestly there was nothing Adam could do except grab Kris's shoulders and deepen the kiss until they were both out of breath and Madonna was catcalling from the second row.
:::
They escaped inside the house to get ready for the reception, and as soon as Sheree had finished delivering a rapid-fire rundown of exactly how many minutes he was expected to spend speaking to which celebrities and which ones he was supposed to avoid speaking to entirely, he turned his brain back on and found himself alone in a room with Kris.
Kris was looking at the floor and blushing and not speaking at all, and Adam felt absolutely terrible.
"Look, I didn't want to have to do that," he started, and Kris looked up, confused. "Kiss you like that, I mean. It's just-Sheree told me to make it realistic, and, well, a lot of those people have seen me kiss before and so-"
Kris looked a little more normal, now, less red. "It's not-it's fine, Adam," he said, and smiled kind of sadly. "Don't worry about it."
"I just don't want this to be weird for you," Adam said. "I mean-obviously it's going to be weird, there's no way it couldn't be, I get that, but I'm not gonna, like, take advantage of you, or anything. This is just for a year or whatever. We're just best friends, living together for a year."
"Yeah, man," Kris said weakly, like he was still kind of coming to terms with it all. Adam could relate. "Best friends."
"Good," Adam said, relieved, and hugged him. Kris was stiff in his arms for a second before he relaxed all over, shuddering a little into Adam's chest and just breathing. Adam closed his eyes and let himself imagine for a second, just a second, that this was-that he was really holding his husband, not his best friend, that he could lean down and kiss Kris again-but then he forced his eyes open and sighed. Kris still wanted to hug him now, still wanted everything he could have from Adam except that, and that-that almost everything-was so much better than the alternative of nothing.
"C'mon, spouse," Adam said, ruffling Kris's hair, "let's go mingle with our guests."
:::
The first person Adam saw when he and Kris got back downstairs was his mother.
"Oh, Adam," she said, more than a little choked up, "I'm not forgiving you for not telling us-to have to hear this from your assistant is something I will not let you forget until I'm cold in the ground, okay-but I'm so happy for you, sweetie, you have no idea," and she grabbed him and cried some into his shoulder.
"Mom?" Adam said, worried. "Mom? The reason I didn't tell you is because this isn't-" but just at that moment Sheree appeared from behind an ice sculpture and grabbed him by the arm.
"Leila, I need to speak to your son for just a moment, I'm so sorry-Adam? Can you follow me, please?"
He kind of let himself be dragged off, dabbing morosely at the black streak his mother's melting eyeliner had left on his dress shirt.
Sheree pulled him around a corner, checked to see that no one was around, and hissed angrily, "Adam, you can't tell anyone that this isn't real, okay? That includes your mother. You may think you have a deep familial bond or whatever but she tells her one best friend from college and that best friend tells her neighbor who has a son who works for the Lower Bucksfield County Post and it's all over, and I can't do damage control on a fake wedding that itself is supposed to be damage control for your tabloid sexcapades, I swear to god."
"Okay, okay," Adam said. Her eyes were starting to creep him out a little. He was pretty sure she hadn't blinked once in the past minute.
"I won't tell anyone. Just-she's going to be so disappointed when we break up in a year, you know? She's so happy for me."
"Whatever," said Sheree, checking her Blackberry. "That's a touching story, it really is, but right now you need to go back out there and talk to Justin and Carrie but not, under any circumstances, Lindsay-I know you have a hard time with that one but I'm serious, Adam-and dance with Kris and feed him cake."
"I-what?" asked Adam. Sheree glared at him.
"You know what?" he amended. "Nevermind. I'll go-I'll go feed my straight best friend some wedding cake at our sham wedding, what the fuck ever."
"Good," said Sheree, and melted, suspiciously well, into the shadows.
:::
It turned out, though, that at formal weddings the first dance came before the cake, so first he had to waltz with Kris alone in the middle of the dance floor while Beyonce stood at the mike and sang "Halo."
"This isn't really a traditional wedding song, is it?" Adam whispered in Kris's ear. "It's from, like, 2009."
"Don't you like it, though?" Kris whispered back. He was resting his head against Adam's shoulder and following his lead, eyes closed. "You said in some interview that you thought it was amazing, right?"
Adam tightened his fingers where they were twined through Kris's. "I remember," he said. "You saw that?"
Kris looked up at him and smiled. "I heard your PA saying it was gonna be "A Moment Like This," for some horrible kind of Idol tie-in, and I knew you'd hate that so I called in a favor. I co-wrote like three of the songs on her last album," he continued, nodding towards the platform where Beyonce was singing, "so she totally owed me. Did I do good?"
"I swore I'd never fall again," B sang, "but this don't even feel like falling," and Adam sighed.
"Great," he whispered. Kris closed his eyes again and shifted closer, and out of the corner of his eye Adam saw his mom get more Kleenex out of her pocketbook.
It was kind of hard to deal with how adorable Kris was being-as if he wasn't constantly too adorable to deal with on a regular basis-especially in combination with the fact that everyone thought they were hopelessly in love, and it only got worse when two waiters wheeled out a huge four-foot-tall dark chocolate wedding cake.
"C'mon," Kris said, "we have to cut it now," and took Adam's hand and led him over to the table. They held hands to cut the cake, and then Adam broke off a piece and lifted it to Kris's mouth and Kris did the same for him. He tasted the sweet richness of the cake just as he felt Kris's lips close gently around his own fingers, and it was suddenly sort of difficult to swallow.
Kris's fingers fell from his lips and he cocked his head and examined Adam, just for a second, before leaning forward and replacing them with his mouth. His tongue licked out once, a hot flicker, and then he pulled back and blushed. Behind them, Adam thought he heard Jay-Z whistle.
"You had some chocolate on your lip," Kris whispered in Adam's ear, taking his hand again as the cameras of hired photographers flashed and people around them lined up for cake. Adam just nodded, suddenly completely exhausted.
:::
Four hours and two sneak-attacks by Sheree (he hadn't meant to go over and talk to Lindsay after he'd been told not to, but she was just so sparkly) later, the hired cleaners descended on the backyard and downstairs of the house. Adam stood with Kris at the top of the stairs, looking down.
"Wow, this wedding really involved a lot of flowers," Kris remarked. "And glitter, apparently."
"Don't look at me," said Adam, "I didn't plan it. They gave up after I threw swatches at an intern." Kris nodded, like that was perfectly reasonable.
He looked up at Adam like he was about to say something, but just then Sheree rounded the corner. Adam tried to duck into the laundry chute behind him but it was more of a Kris-sized hiding place, and when she reached him he just kind of froze, one leg still awkwardly jammed in the chute.
"I have things to deal with now," she said, "but I just wanted to run through this with you-you too, Kris, don't go anywhere-before I take off. The wedding pictures I've seen so far look great, so those'll be going to the highest bidder, probably People, and so you should chose a charity to give that too-we're totally taking the Brangelina route here, people love that shit-from the pre-approved list I gave you yesterday. There's paparazzi all around the perimeter of the compound so if you even think about walking out onto the balcony I want at least one kiss and tasteful nudity, do you understand? This is a honeymoon-or really, the start, we're sending you to the Bahamas tomorrow but this is the wedding night, so if there are any pictures you had both better look well-fucked."
"But-" Adam started. He wrenched his leg out of the laundry chute and ran after her, but she'd disappeared. "She's a fucking ninja, how does she do that?" he asked Kris.
Kris shrugged, but it looked like he hadn't really heard the question. He was looking at Adam kind of funny, and he walked right up and blushed and reached a hand out to sort of caress Adam's face, and then before he could do anything about it Kris's lips were on his, tentative but persistent, and warm and sweet and really fucking tempting.
Adam let himself lean into it for probably longer than he should have, but when Kris's lips parted under his and he let out a very startling sort of moan Adam snapped out of it and pulled back. Kris wobbled and swayed towards him and Adam put his hands on Kris's shoulders to steady him.
"Kris, what are you doing?" he asked. "The guests are gone, the photographers are gone, Sheree's gone-thank god for that-so, just don't-we don't have to pretend right now, okay? We're just us."
Kris blinked at him. "Sheree said, though, I mean-it's our wedding night, right? We should-it's important to-"
"Kris, we don't actually need to have sex just because my publicist told us to look well-fucked tomorrow, you know," Adam said, a little regretfully.
"Oh," said Kris. "Oh, right." He removed his hands from where they were clenched in Adam's shirt and took a step back, uncertain.
"We should just go to bed-separately," Adam said. "We have to go to the Bahamas tomorrow or whatever, it'll probably be a really long flight."
"Right, okay," said Kris, still sounding a little dazed. "Umm, what room are you-?"
"Uh," Adam said, looking around. "This one, I guess?" He pushed open the closest door. The bed inside was enormous, a four-poster California King piled with sinful-looking pillows and down comforters. Kris looked at it with hungry eyes and made a little sighing noise, then shuffled off down the hall in a resigned sort of way.
It wasn't like curling up in that bed with Kris wasn't exactly what Adam wanted in that moment, but Kris was getting weird ideas about marital obligation and it would be better to just-not, until they were over this hump and had settled into a marriage that was unambiguously platonic. Adam lay down on the massive bed and tried not to think about how empty it was, and it was a long time before he finally fell asleep.
:::
They were herded out of the house and onto the plane so early the next morning that Adam didn't even see Kris until they were somewhere over the ocean and the coffee had woken him up enough that he could finally open his eyes.
"Ugh," he groaned, and Kris made a similar noise in response. It was weird to be on a private jet without the band and most of his entourage. The cabin was still and silent and Kris, in the seat facing him, was pressing his forehead against the window and looking out. When he pulled back there was an angry red mark where the glass had pushed against his skin, and Adam wanted to reach out and rub it away but there was too much distance between their seats.
"What time is it?" Kris asked blearily, and Adam looked at his watch. It wasn't even seven yet, which meant that he must have woken up at five. "Too early," he said, and Kris laughed a little and closed his eyes.
"Should try to go back to sleep," he said, shifting in the seat. Adam nodded and closed his own eyes, but the leather was too slippery and the air conditioning was on too high and pretty soon he gave up and opened them again.
Kris's eyes were open, too, and he was looking at the empty seat next to Adam in a way that wasn't very subtle at all. "It's cold," Kris said, "and these blankets aren't really…"
Adam sighed. "Just come over here already," he said, and Kris hopped over and snuggled up next to him immediately, warm and heavy against his side. "This doesn't extend to beds, though," Adam said, but Kris's breathing was already slow and even and he didn't hear a word. He tightened his arm around Kris and looked out the small window at the endless blue and white of the sky, and the next thing he knew they were landing and his coffee had spilled all over his new leather boots.
:::
The resort was massive and gorgeous and surrounded by a furious perimeter of paparazzi. Just trying to get through the gates to check in, they were already being bombarded with questions, most of the worst ones directed to him.
"Hey Adam, is it true that you've been having a secret affair with -"
"Adam, Adam, what do you have to say to Kris's ex-wife-"
"Adam! Look over here!"
"Is Kris in there too, Adam? Can you confirm the rumors-"
"So how was the wedding night, Adam?"
"Hey, Adam, why did you cheat on Kris with that threesome-"
"What would be the point, otherwise?" Sheree asked. Adam was pretty sure there was one, but it was hard to remember with her eyes looking at him like that, all threats and sharp edges.
As soon as they'd checked in and Sheree had leaked the location of their bungalow to the right people, she took off her sunglasses and glared at them for a moment, then spoke. "I have to go now, I do have other clients," she said, "but if I don't see romantic beach pictures on the magazine rack when I go to buy my groceries in three days I will be back here. And you do not want that."
Adam was about to agree that he really, really did not want that, but by the time he opened his mouth she had disappeared.
"You're right, that is creepy," Kris said, gaping a little bit.
The bungalow had a huge all-white bedroom with one massive bed, which would also have been completely white if it wasn't covered with what looked like probably a billion blood red rose petals.
"Oh," said Kris, eyes huge, and Adam didn't know whether to laugh or cry so instead he grabbed a handful of the waxy, sweet-smelling things and dumped them over Kris's head.
Fifteen minutes later, the white of the bedroom was smeared with reddish stains and there were crumpled petals everywhere, and Adam felt immensely better. They unpacked-or rather, Kris unpacked and Adam sort of tossed his clothes around until the bedroom had a nice, lived-in feel to it-and then Adam walked to the door and looked out.
The bungalow had a balcony thing that hung right out over the water, and all Adam could see was blue skies and a disappearing edge of white sand, sun overhead and the softening green of tropical forests. He heard Kris step out onto the balcony, too, and felt him press up against his side and join him, just looking. They were both silent for a moment, and then Kris spoke.
"So, this isn't that bad, right? I mean, if we have to go on a forced honeymoon?"
"Yeah," Adam agreed, still looking out over the water. "Yeah, there are worse places to stay for a week."
It looked like the sun was already starting to set, even though it sort of felt like morning.
"We did sleep all day on the plane," Kris said. "Hey, are you hungry?"
Adam didn't want to go to a restaurant right now, because that would mean putting on makeup and real clothes and being looked at by people, and mostly he just wanted to never see anyone else again. At the same time, though, he didn't think he'd ever been hungrier.
"Call room service," he said, after a second. "I have an idea."
While Kris waited for the food to arrive, he gathered up all the pillows from the couch and two of the extra blankets from the closet and bundled them all together. He found flip-flops and the complimentary bottle of champagne in the bedroom-oh right, because they were on a honeymoon, and the rose petals alone clearly weren't enough-and threw all of his makeup onto the bathroom counter.
Kris came back with the food to find him washing out his industrial-sized makeup case.
"Put it in here," Adam said, and Kris just looked at him.
"If this is some weird stimulus-reversal diet regime, Adam," he started, looking concerned.
"That was one time," Adam said, exasperated, "and it was stimulus-replacement, at least try to get the names of things right when you yell at me for them-and anyways, this isn't a diet, it's a picnic!"
Kris grinned like a little kid, the kind of smile that Adam had to turn away from because it made him too happy to know that he had put it there, and he concentrated on fitting the food into all the different compartments.
:::
The beach was gorgeous and empty, and when most of the food was gone and it was getting too dark to see if there was sand in whatever was left, Adam lay back and looked up at the sky and the emerging stars.
"I used to think that stars were tiny holes in this huge dark blanket that dropped over the sun every night," Kris said quietly from beside him. "I was really afraid of the dark, when I was little. But thinking about it that way helped."
"I was afraid of the dark, too," said Adam, remembering. "Neil used to have this clown mask, one of those scary ones, you know? Anyway, he would put it on and sneak into my room and hide under my bed, then jump out at me when I came in after brushing my teeth. Scared the shit out of me."
"And yet you don't have a clown phobia," mused Kris.
"More like a Neil phobia, for a while," Adam laughed. "Or-well, we didn't get along that well. I think I resented him for taking the initiative to scare me, more than for actually doing it. Like, it always seemed like it should be an older-brother thing, to traumatize your sibling. Just added another layer to my endless childhood insecurities."
"Daniel and I just beat each other up a lot," said Kris. "I don't think we were creative enough for any psycho-trauma warfare. He got bigger than me pretty quick, though, so I see where you're coming from.
"Anyway, at least we're rich and famous now. Showed them." His voice was soft and sleepy, and Adam smiled into the darkness.
"Thanks, fake husband," he said. "For some reason, that actually makes me feel a lot better."
Kris reached over across the blanked and grabbed his hand.
"Anytime, darling," he said, and followed it up by yawning out loud. "Now let's go to bed."
Adam was a little apprehensive about that part, actually, because there was only one bed and if Kris got all clingy and puppy-dog when it came to sleeping together he really didn't think he had the strength to resist. By the time they walked back, though, Kris was pretty much asleep on his feet, and Adam nudged him into the bed and watched as he passed out.
He looked one more second at the way Kris was all curled up in a nest of pillows and petal debris, breathing these tiny puffs of breath that made the sheets flutter around his face, and let the longing rise up just a little before he turned back to the couch.
:::
"I want to learn to surf," was the first thing Kris said the next morning, looking bright-eyed and extremely well-rested. Adam felt like rocks had attacked him in the night; that couch was definitely more decorative than functional.
Still, he couldn't exactly say that to Kris, because then he'd just insist on sleeping in the same bed or taking the couch himself, and Adam wasn't okay with either option.
"Me, too!" is what he said instead.
"Learn" turned out to be something of a relative term, when it came to Kris and surfing-he was probably less of a natural at it than Adam was at playing guitar, which was saying something-but he wouldn't give up, just kept trying and falling and trying again.
"I can get it this time, Adam, come on," he said some time during the third hour, popping up with his brown hair dripping after one particularly spectacular wipeout.
"Fine," Adam said, content just to lie on his own board and watch Kris fail again, but this time Kris paddled over to him and grabbed his arm, using Adam to get enough leverage to climb back to his knees on his own board.
"You too, man, let's do it together," he said, laughing, and Adam couldn't say no, just hauled himself up onto his knees, too.
"Okay, fuck waves, we're just gonna try standing," Kris said, and braced himself on Adam again as he got to his feet. For a second it looked like he was actually doing it, really standing, and Adam would have clapped except that his hands were occupied with trying to keep himself steady on his own board-and then Kris leaned forward, just slightly in towards Adam, and his legs went out from under him.
He fell onto Adam in a flurry of windmilling arms and comically wide eyes, and the next thing Adam knew he was lying on his back on his surfboard with Kris on top of him. Water was dripping gently off the tip of Kris's nose onto Adam's forehead, and Kris was laughing softly.
"Guess that didn't work," he said, still laughing, and Adam opened his mouth to insist that they give up this ridiculous surfing attempt right now and head back to the resort, maybe for massages or yoga or something equally not-life-threatening, but before he could say anything Kris was looking at his lips with a sort of hungry expression, and then he rubbed his thumb along them gently, exploring, and Adam's stomach turned inside out.
"Kris," he tried to say, but his throat apparently wasn't working so well because nothing really came out. Kris's eyes didn't move from his mouth, and his thumb didn't move from Adam's bottom lip, and in a second this situation was going to cross a line because Kris was all pressed up along his whole body and these wetsuits were pretty much the definition of skintight, and his cock was really pretty interested in whatever Kris was doing with his thumb and his eyes and his perfect fucking body.
Kris's thumb sort of dipped in between his lips, then, and finally Adam gave up and sort of half-flailed, half-rolled-whatever it was, it was enough to capsize them all the way, and he closed his eyes and tried to clear his head as the cool water enveloped them both.
Kris was laughing again as he broke the surface, and whatever weird thing had just happened seemed to have been forgotten. By him, at least-Adam was having a harder time forgetting, and his frustration must have showed in his voice because when he said, "I'm tired, let's go back," Kris just nodded and got back on his board to paddle in towards shore.
:::
A massage and pedicure helped, though, and by the time dinner rolled around Adam was feeling a lot better. The food was good and the wine was better, and best of all was the fact that their waiter kept giving Adam that look, the one that said, "I know what you can give me that I'd like even more than a tip," and the waiter's ass was totally worth saving that 20%.
Kris sitting on the other side of the table from him all burnished gold in the candlelight wasn't doing much to distract him from the waiter's ass, either; on the contrary, the better Kris looked, the better the prospect of sex with someone who actually wanted him back, who wanted him for him-or, at least, for his physical attributes-not just for his PR status, looked.
Kris's ring glinted in the candlelight and a sudden, cold rush of anger shot though Adam. Not at Kris-he could be annoyed at Kris, sure, for being naïve and too willing and even for being straight, but he couldn't bring himself to be mad at Kris for those things, things he couldn't help. Still, the anger was there, and even if it wasn't directed at Kris it got worse when he looked at Kris, so he looked away, over to the waiter.
The waiter was slender and elfin and blond, and when he saw Adam looked he ran one hand through his golden hair and smiled slowly and winked, and that was it.
Adam finished the rest of his dessert and smiled at Kris and talked about plans for recording once they got back to L.A., and he told himself that it wasn't cheating when the marriage was fake to begin with, when he wasn't in love.
He paid the check and said, "I'm just gonna head to the bathroom, meet you back in the suite?" and Kris looked confused for a second but nodded and got up, just his back, straight and somehow small in his soft blue shirt, walking away.
Adam watched him until he couldn't see him anymore, and then he walked into the bathroom, and yeah, there was the waiter, leaning against the wall waiting for him like some kind of sex fruit all ripe for the plucking.
"I'm Luke," he said, "and let's go somewhere else because I think I want you to take your time with me," and he grabbed Adam's hand and led him out of the bathroom, through the back of the restaurant and past the kitchen into the parking lot behind the building.
He backed himself up against the wall, then, and put his arms around Adam's neck and leaned up, green eyes wide and lips parted just slightly. His hips shifted against Adam's and he was getting hard, already, but Adam wasn't, was the thing. Adam wasn't, and when he looked at the guy's gorgeous face and soft lips and sinful eyes he felt cold and hard inside, and angrier, the same anger from dinner and he'd thought this would make it go away but it was only making it sharper, worse, making it hurt.
"Oh, yeah," Luke murmured, and he reached up and touched his lips to Adam's, warm and slick, and Adam shuddered and pushed him away.
"The fuck-" Luke said, and Adam felt sick and dizzy. "I can't," he said, "I just can't, I'm-I'm married," and he turned away, stumbling.
"Duh, like I didn't know that," the guy said from behind him, "no one needs to know, come on, Adam, just let me blow you-" but Adam was inside, gone.
continue
12,000 words, NC-17
Adam/Kris
"Are you actually joking around about this? Is this a joke to you? There are pictures of your dick in the National Enquirer!"
It was the leaked pictures of the threesome that constituted what Adam's publicist called "the final fucking straw, jesus fucking christ, you need to give me a raise right now or I swear to god…" and then the call cut off abruptly. There were still shards of Blackberry embedded in the wall of her office.
Perez had an absolute fucking field day, of course - ONE TWINK'S NOT ENOUGH FOR THE GLAMBERT?, proclaimed the title of the halfheartedly censored photos plastered across his ridiculous, childish blog that happened to get millions upon millions of hits every day.
"He's just pissed he wasn't invited," said Adam. His publicist stared at him.
"Are you actually joking around about this? Is this a joke to you? There are pictures of your dick in the National Enquirer."
"At least it's big?" offered Adam. Her stare got even scarier, if that was possible.
"The irresponsible rocker thing was fine when you were still in your twenties, Adam, but recently - that "wardrobe malfunction" at the Grammys, those pictures from Vegas, the hotel disaster in Miami, and now this - people are starting to think it's too much. You've established that you're not a role model, but you're turning yourself into a fucking asshole in the eyes of the public."
Adam was hungover and he had four more meetings to go to today and then a recording session until two am.
"I'm not going to tone myself down again," he said. "Fuck that. I did that after the AMAs and it fucking sucked. People got bored, anyway."
"Of course you're not going to tone yourself down. You just have to prove that you're mature and responsible, then you can do whatever the fuck you want onstage. Show your fucking dick at the Oscars, fuck your dancer onstage during tour, but keep it off Perez."
His publicist pulled out her brand-new Blackberry and punched a very angry email into it, muttering to herself.
She looked up at him again and smiled. The smile was perfunctory and terrifying.
"You're getting married."
:::
Three days later, Adam was still going around kind of hopelessly telling people that he didn't want to get married. No one was even listening to him, though - instead, everyone around him seemed to be planning a fucking wedding, calling caterers and booking hotels. One frightened intern kept coming to him with swatches of linen and asking him if he preferred cream or off-white for the tablecloths.
"I don't fucking want tablecloths!" Adam shouted. "I don't want a fucking wedding!" He grabbed the book of swatches and hurled it across the room. The intern ran after it, cringing, and Adam almost didn't even feel bad. Almost.
"I'm gay," Adam said, when they finally let him see his publicist (or "the sadistic bitch who's ruining your life," as he'd come to refer to her in his head.) "I'm not fucking getting married."
She rolled her eyes at him. "Obviously you're not marrying a girl," she said. "Anyway, people love that you're gay. It's totally in right now. What's even more in, though, is gay marriage. Ellen and Portia, Elton and David. I wish you had an "e" name, we could use that. Anyway, you're marrying a guy. In Connecticut, I think. Or Boston - no, Spain, we can do a bullfight theme, unless that's too much-"
She turned away and started babbling into her Bluetooth. Adam let himself fantasize briefly about her undergoing a completely mental breakdown where she talked to invisible people and had to be put away in an institution for life. It made him feel marginally better.
She was still there when he opened his eyes, though, so he tried again. "So I'm getting married in order to make myself more palatable to the American public? This is such hetero-normative bullshit."
"Of course it's heteronormative bullshit." His publicist sounded scornful. "I'm a professional bullshitter. And this is heteronormative bullshit that the public is going to gorge themselves fucking stupid on, okay? You want to be yourself, stop being a fucking celebrity. Do you think Angelina wanted to adopt the fucking UN of orphaned children? We had to do something about the vials of blood and the incest. Stop complaining, all you have to do is marry a hot guy."
"Do I even get to pick the guy?" asked Adam, in a small voice.
"We've done the market research and selected the option that will be best received by the record-buying public," she answered. Adam wanted to cry.
"This candidate combines your early celebrity history with his own complimentary brand of clean-cut fame, and we have a fuckton of research proving that people are absolutely wetting themselves over the idea of you two as a couple. Plus, you're friends, so it should be relatively easy to act courteous in public and to create a convincing romantic history."
"I'm not- are you saying what I think you're-" Adam gave up. This was all a dream, right? There was no way he was being forced into a publicity-stunt marriage in two days with-
"Kris Allen!" His publicist sounded triumphant, like an evil dictator or a cackling witch. "The return of Kradam! It's going to be in every magazine, it's all people will talk about for fucking months! I've already booked you on Oprah, for fuck's sake. You've got the covers of People and Star, and- Adam? Adam? Oh fuck, someone find me some smelling salts or some shit, he has a photoshoot in fifteen minutes, I don't have time for this-"
:::
Adam called Kris that night as soon as he got a chance. "Fuck, man, I'm so sorry about this!" he said. "I don't even seem to have a choice, but I feel horrible-what's their excuse for forcing you into this bullshit?"
There was a pause, and then Kris answered. "The uh, the divorce, it-apparently it hurt my "public image" because it seemed like, I don't know, a betrayal of my "values"? Although also my pr said something about being-too vanilla, I don't know, something about edgy and sharpening my image and scandalous relationships selling records. It was all very confusing, man."
"But you're okay with this?" Adam asked, incredulous. "I'm not even okay with this, and I'm gay! Maybe if you complain a lot, too, they'll back down."
Kris coughed. "Umm, yeah, maybe-listen, man, I got to go, okay? I guess I'll see you in a few days, at the, at the wedding." He sounded kind of distant.
"Kris, don't just give in-" Adam started, but the line was dead.
Adam flopped back onto his bed and stared at the ceiling. "Fuck!" he said, loudly. The worst part of this whole incredibly fucked-up situation was that he kind of would have really wanted to marry Kris, but only hypothetically, like, in his fantasies where Kris was gay and helplessly in love with him. This was not one of those fantasies, though, and he so did not want to be married to a guy he couldn't even fuck.
And what if he actually did want to get married for real, one day? To someone who wasn't Kris?
"Well, try to make it last a year, at least," Sheree--he was always surprised that his publicist's name wasn't actually Morticia or Cruella-told him when he called her. "After that you can marry whoever the fuck you want, as long as they aren't on the list-"
"What list?" asked Adam.
"The list of people that you aren't allowed to marry, obviously, Adam. I mean, come on, if you fall in love with a prostitute or Karl Rove, we aren't just going to allow that. Or worst of all, someone who isn't even famous-Julia didn't listen, and where is she now? Thank god she listened to us about invitro twins, or I don't know if she'd have gotten even an US Weekly cover out of that ridiculous relationship. So listen, while I have you on the phone, invitations- your parents are in, of course, but not your father's girlfriend because we want them to look like a couple, of course, and your brother needs to choose a date, I've already sent him a list with pictures, and can you please give me the names of no more than five of your pre-celebrity "buddies," or whatever? We need to focus on the famous. Now, we're playing up the Idol angle, but we don't want the taint of failure, so no Danny, but let's get Carrie and maybe Kelly, if she loses some weight-"
Adam hung up and opened a bottle of vodka.
After all the frantic preparation and even more frantically consumed alcohol, the wedding itself was almost a little bit of a letdown. Sheree found some house on Cape Cod that used to belong to the Kennedys or something like that-Adam had decided, by that point, that the best way to maintain his own sanity was to sing "No Boundaries" in his head, loudly, whenever she spoke, and as a result he missed a lot of the technical details-and when he arrived the minister and the rabbi were already waiting under a huge white canopy in the massive back yard.
The rows of seats were filled half with people he knew and half with random celebrities, which was actually really cool but also slightly terrifying, because honestly he'd never really stopped being starstruck around Madonna and now she was at his own fake wedding? holy shit. He didn't have time to really think about it though, because as soon as he got out of the limo Sheree straightened his bow tie and whispered in his ear, "remember, make it look real," and shoved him fairly violently off down the aisle.
"Wait, why I do have to be the bride-" was the last thing he had time to say before a string quartet started the wedding march and everyone turned around and looked at him.
Adam wasn't really looking at them, though, because at the end of the aisle Kris was waiting, wearing a criminally well-fitting suit-Adam was generally of the opinion that Kris's clothes should always, always be tighter, but in this case it was sort of distracting-and shifting nervously from foot to foot. When he got to the end of the aisle Kris looked up and smiled at him sort of timidly, and Adam smiled back in a way that was supposed to be reassuring but probably came out more seasick that anything else.
The minister said some words that Adam didn't listen to at all, and the then the rabbi chimed in with some Hebrew that Adam couldn't have understood if even if he'd tried, and then Kris was slipping a ring onto his finger. Adam looked down at his hand blankly, and there was an uncomfortable silence before Kris kind of nudged him and whispered "my ring, Adam?"-oh right, that-so he felt in his pocket and there was a ring there, luckily, and he took Kris's familiar, guitar-calloused hand and put the ring on him.
"You may now kiss the groom!" the rabbi and minister declared in unison, with what sounded like suspiciously more than professional excitement, and Kris was kind of closing his eyes and leaning forward and Adam wasn't exactly going to turn this kind of opportunity down-Kris could hardly get weird and end their friendship over one little kiss at their own wedding, right?-so he leaned forward and pressed his lips to Kris's, gently. He was planning on stopping there, but a little voice in his head that sounded disturbingly like Sheree hissed "I said REAL, Adam!" and at the same time Kris kind of parted his lips and sighed, and honestly there was nothing Adam could do except grab Kris's shoulders and deepen the kiss until they were both out of breath and Madonna was catcalling from the second row.
:::
They escaped inside the house to get ready for the reception, and as soon as Sheree had finished delivering a rapid-fire rundown of exactly how many minutes he was expected to spend speaking to which celebrities and which ones he was supposed to avoid speaking to entirely, he turned his brain back on and found himself alone in a room with Kris.
Kris was looking at the floor and blushing and not speaking at all, and Adam felt absolutely terrible.
"Look, I didn't want to have to do that," he started, and Kris looked up, confused. "Kiss you like that, I mean. It's just-Sheree told me to make it realistic, and, well, a lot of those people have seen me kiss before and so-"
Kris looked a little more normal, now, less red. "It's not-it's fine, Adam," he said, and smiled kind of sadly. "Don't worry about it."
"I just don't want this to be weird for you," Adam said. "I mean-obviously it's going to be weird, there's no way it couldn't be, I get that, but I'm not gonna, like, take advantage of you, or anything. This is just for a year or whatever. We're just best friends, living together for a year."
"Yeah, man," Kris said weakly, like he was still kind of coming to terms with it all. Adam could relate. "Best friends."
"Good," Adam said, relieved, and hugged him. Kris was stiff in his arms for a second before he relaxed all over, shuddering a little into Adam's chest and just breathing. Adam closed his eyes and let himself imagine for a second, just a second, that this was-that he was really holding his husband, not his best friend, that he could lean down and kiss Kris again-but then he forced his eyes open and sighed. Kris still wanted to hug him now, still wanted everything he could have from Adam except that, and that-that almost everything-was so much better than the alternative of nothing.
"C'mon, spouse," Adam said, ruffling Kris's hair, "let's go mingle with our guests."
:::
The first person Adam saw when he and Kris got back downstairs was his mother.
"Oh, Adam," she said, more than a little choked up, "I'm not forgiving you for not telling us-to have to hear this from your assistant is something I will not let you forget until I'm cold in the ground, okay-but I'm so happy for you, sweetie, you have no idea," and she grabbed him and cried some into his shoulder.
"Mom?" Adam said, worried. "Mom? The reason I didn't tell you is because this isn't-" but just at that moment Sheree appeared from behind an ice sculpture and grabbed him by the arm.
"Leila, I need to speak to your son for just a moment, I'm so sorry-Adam? Can you follow me, please?"
He kind of let himself be dragged off, dabbing morosely at the black streak his mother's melting eyeliner had left on his dress shirt.
Sheree pulled him around a corner, checked to see that no one was around, and hissed angrily, "Adam, you can't tell anyone that this isn't real, okay? That includes your mother. You may think you have a deep familial bond or whatever but she tells her one best friend from college and that best friend tells her neighbor who has a son who works for the Lower Bucksfield County Post and it's all over, and I can't do damage control on a fake wedding that itself is supposed to be damage control for your tabloid sexcapades, I swear to god."
"Okay, okay," Adam said. Her eyes were starting to creep him out a little. He was pretty sure she hadn't blinked once in the past minute.
"I won't tell anyone. Just-she's going to be so disappointed when we break up in a year, you know? She's so happy for me."
"Whatever," said Sheree, checking her Blackberry. "That's a touching story, it really is, but right now you need to go back out there and talk to Justin and Carrie but not, under any circumstances, Lindsay-I know you have a hard time with that one but I'm serious, Adam-and dance with Kris and feed him cake."
"I-what?" asked Adam. Sheree glared at him.
"You know what?" he amended. "Nevermind. I'll go-I'll go feed my straight best friend some wedding cake at our sham wedding, what the fuck ever."
"Good," said Sheree, and melted, suspiciously well, into the shadows.
:::
It turned out, though, that at formal weddings the first dance came before the cake, so first he had to waltz with Kris alone in the middle of the dance floor while Beyonce stood at the mike and sang "Halo."
"This isn't really a traditional wedding song, is it?" Adam whispered in Kris's ear. "It's from, like, 2009."
"Don't you like it, though?" Kris whispered back. He was resting his head against Adam's shoulder and following his lead, eyes closed. "You said in some interview that you thought it was amazing, right?"
Adam tightened his fingers where they were twined through Kris's. "I remember," he said. "You saw that?"
Kris looked up at him and smiled. "I heard your PA saying it was gonna be "A Moment Like This," for some horrible kind of Idol tie-in, and I knew you'd hate that so I called in a favor. I co-wrote like three of the songs on her last album," he continued, nodding towards the platform where Beyonce was singing, "so she totally owed me. Did I do good?"
"I swore I'd never fall again," B sang, "but this don't even feel like falling," and Adam sighed.
"Great," he whispered. Kris closed his eyes again and shifted closer, and out of the corner of his eye Adam saw his mom get more Kleenex out of her pocketbook.
It was kind of hard to deal with how adorable Kris was being-as if he wasn't constantly too adorable to deal with on a regular basis-especially in combination with the fact that everyone thought they were hopelessly in love, and it only got worse when two waiters wheeled out a huge four-foot-tall dark chocolate wedding cake.
"C'mon," Kris said, "we have to cut it now," and took Adam's hand and led him over to the table. They held hands to cut the cake, and then Adam broke off a piece and lifted it to Kris's mouth and Kris did the same for him. He tasted the sweet richness of the cake just as he felt Kris's lips close gently around his own fingers, and it was suddenly sort of difficult to swallow.
Kris's fingers fell from his lips and he cocked his head and examined Adam, just for a second, before leaning forward and replacing them with his mouth. His tongue licked out once, a hot flicker, and then he pulled back and blushed. Behind them, Adam thought he heard Jay-Z whistle.
"You had some chocolate on your lip," Kris whispered in Adam's ear, taking his hand again as the cameras of hired photographers flashed and people around them lined up for cake. Adam just nodded, suddenly completely exhausted.
:::
Four hours and two sneak-attacks by Sheree (he hadn't meant to go over and talk to Lindsay after he'd been told not to, but she was just so sparkly) later, the hired cleaners descended on the backyard and downstairs of the house. Adam stood with Kris at the top of the stairs, looking down.
"Wow, this wedding really involved a lot of flowers," Kris remarked. "And glitter, apparently."
"Don't look at me," said Adam, "I didn't plan it. They gave up after I threw swatches at an intern." Kris nodded, like that was perfectly reasonable.
He looked up at Adam like he was about to say something, but just then Sheree rounded the corner. Adam tried to duck into the laundry chute behind him but it was more of a Kris-sized hiding place, and when she reached him he just kind of froze, one leg still awkwardly jammed in the chute.
"I have things to deal with now," she said, "but I just wanted to run through this with you-you too, Kris, don't go anywhere-before I take off. The wedding pictures I've seen so far look great, so those'll be going to the highest bidder, probably People, and so you should chose a charity to give that too-we're totally taking the Brangelina route here, people love that shit-from the pre-approved list I gave you yesterday. There's paparazzi all around the perimeter of the compound so if you even think about walking out onto the balcony I want at least one kiss and tasteful nudity, do you understand? This is a honeymoon-or really, the start, we're sending you to the Bahamas tomorrow but this is the wedding night, so if there are any pictures you had both better look well-fucked."
"But-" Adam started. He wrenched his leg out of the laundry chute and ran after her, but she'd disappeared. "She's a fucking ninja, how does she do that?" he asked Kris.
Kris shrugged, but it looked like he hadn't really heard the question. He was looking at Adam kind of funny, and he walked right up and blushed and reached a hand out to sort of caress Adam's face, and then before he could do anything about it Kris's lips were on his, tentative but persistent, and warm and sweet and really fucking tempting.
Adam let himself lean into it for probably longer than he should have, but when Kris's lips parted under his and he let out a very startling sort of moan Adam snapped out of it and pulled back. Kris wobbled and swayed towards him and Adam put his hands on Kris's shoulders to steady him.
"Kris, what are you doing?" he asked. "The guests are gone, the photographers are gone, Sheree's gone-thank god for that-so, just don't-we don't have to pretend right now, okay? We're just us."
Kris blinked at him. "Sheree said, though, I mean-it's our wedding night, right? We should-it's important to-"
"Kris, we don't actually need to have sex just because my publicist told us to look well-fucked tomorrow, you know," Adam said, a little regretfully.
"Oh," said Kris. "Oh, right." He removed his hands from where they were clenched in Adam's shirt and took a step back, uncertain.
"We should just go to bed-separately," Adam said. "We have to go to the Bahamas tomorrow or whatever, it'll probably be a really long flight."
"Right, okay," said Kris, still sounding a little dazed. "Umm, what room are you-?"
"Uh," Adam said, looking around. "This one, I guess?" He pushed open the closest door. The bed inside was enormous, a four-poster California King piled with sinful-looking pillows and down comforters. Kris looked at it with hungry eyes and made a little sighing noise, then shuffled off down the hall in a resigned sort of way.
It wasn't like curling up in that bed with Kris wasn't exactly what Adam wanted in that moment, but Kris was getting weird ideas about marital obligation and it would be better to just-not, until they were over this hump and had settled into a marriage that was unambiguously platonic. Adam lay down on the massive bed and tried not to think about how empty it was, and it was a long time before he finally fell asleep.
:::
They were herded out of the house and onto the plane so early the next morning that Adam didn't even see Kris until they were somewhere over the ocean and the coffee had woken him up enough that he could finally open his eyes.
"Ugh," he groaned, and Kris made a similar noise in response. It was weird to be on a private jet without the band and most of his entourage. The cabin was still and silent and Kris, in the seat facing him, was pressing his forehead against the window and looking out. When he pulled back there was an angry red mark where the glass had pushed against his skin, and Adam wanted to reach out and rub it away but there was too much distance between their seats.
"What time is it?" Kris asked blearily, and Adam looked at his watch. It wasn't even seven yet, which meant that he must have woken up at five. "Too early," he said, and Kris laughed a little and closed his eyes.
"Should try to go back to sleep," he said, shifting in the seat. Adam nodded and closed his own eyes, but the leather was too slippery and the air conditioning was on too high and pretty soon he gave up and opened them again.
Kris's eyes were open, too, and he was looking at the empty seat next to Adam in a way that wasn't very subtle at all. "It's cold," Kris said, "and these blankets aren't really…"
Adam sighed. "Just come over here already," he said, and Kris hopped over and snuggled up next to him immediately, warm and heavy against his side. "This doesn't extend to beds, though," Adam said, but Kris's breathing was already slow and even and he didn't hear a word. He tightened his arm around Kris and looked out the small window at the endless blue and white of the sky, and the next thing he knew they were landing and his coffee had spilled all over his new leather boots.
:::
The resort was massive and gorgeous and surrounded by a furious perimeter of paparazzi. Just trying to get through the gates to check in, they were already being bombarded with questions, most of the worst ones directed to him.
"Hey Adam, is it true that you've been having a secret affair with -"
"Adam, Adam, what do you have to say to Kris's ex-wife-"
"Adam! Look over here!"
"Is Kris in there too, Adam? Can you confirm the rumors-"
"So how was the wedding night, Adam?"
"Hey, Adam, why did you cheat on Kris with that threesome-"
"What would be the point, otherwise?" Sheree asked. Adam was pretty sure there was one, but it was hard to remember with her eyes looking at him like that, all threats and sharp edges.
As soon as they'd checked in and Sheree had leaked the location of their bungalow to the right people, she took off her sunglasses and glared at them for a moment, then spoke. "I have to go now, I do have other clients," she said, "but if I don't see romantic beach pictures on the magazine rack when I go to buy my groceries in three days I will be back here. And you do not want that."
Adam was about to agree that he really, really did not want that, but by the time he opened his mouth she had disappeared.
"You're right, that is creepy," Kris said, gaping a little bit.
The bungalow had a huge all-white bedroom with one massive bed, which would also have been completely white if it wasn't covered with what looked like probably a billion blood red rose petals.
"Oh," said Kris, eyes huge, and Adam didn't know whether to laugh or cry so instead he grabbed a handful of the waxy, sweet-smelling things and dumped them over Kris's head.
Fifteen minutes later, the white of the bedroom was smeared with reddish stains and there were crumpled petals everywhere, and Adam felt immensely better. They unpacked-or rather, Kris unpacked and Adam sort of tossed his clothes around until the bedroom had a nice, lived-in feel to it-and then Adam walked to the door and looked out.
The bungalow had a balcony thing that hung right out over the water, and all Adam could see was blue skies and a disappearing edge of white sand, sun overhead and the softening green of tropical forests. He heard Kris step out onto the balcony, too, and felt him press up against his side and join him, just looking. They were both silent for a moment, and then Kris spoke.
"So, this isn't that bad, right? I mean, if we have to go on a forced honeymoon?"
"Yeah," Adam agreed, still looking out over the water. "Yeah, there are worse places to stay for a week."
It looked like the sun was already starting to set, even though it sort of felt like morning.
"We did sleep all day on the plane," Kris said. "Hey, are you hungry?"
Adam didn't want to go to a restaurant right now, because that would mean putting on makeup and real clothes and being looked at by people, and mostly he just wanted to never see anyone else again. At the same time, though, he didn't think he'd ever been hungrier.
"Call room service," he said, after a second. "I have an idea."
While Kris waited for the food to arrive, he gathered up all the pillows from the couch and two of the extra blankets from the closet and bundled them all together. He found flip-flops and the complimentary bottle of champagne in the bedroom-oh right, because they were on a honeymoon, and the rose petals alone clearly weren't enough-and threw all of his makeup onto the bathroom counter.
Kris came back with the food to find him washing out his industrial-sized makeup case.
"Put it in here," Adam said, and Kris just looked at him.
"If this is some weird stimulus-reversal diet regime, Adam," he started, looking concerned.
"That was one time," Adam said, exasperated, "and it was stimulus-replacement, at least try to get the names of things right when you yell at me for them-and anyways, this isn't a diet, it's a picnic!"
Kris grinned like a little kid, the kind of smile that Adam had to turn away from because it made him too happy to know that he had put it there, and he concentrated on fitting the food into all the different compartments.
:::
The beach was gorgeous and empty, and when most of the food was gone and it was getting too dark to see if there was sand in whatever was left, Adam lay back and looked up at the sky and the emerging stars.
"I used to think that stars were tiny holes in this huge dark blanket that dropped over the sun every night," Kris said quietly from beside him. "I was really afraid of the dark, when I was little. But thinking about it that way helped."
"I was afraid of the dark, too," said Adam, remembering. "Neil used to have this clown mask, one of those scary ones, you know? Anyway, he would put it on and sneak into my room and hide under my bed, then jump out at me when I came in after brushing my teeth. Scared the shit out of me."
"And yet you don't have a clown phobia," mused Kris.
"More like a Neil phobia, for a while," Adam laughed. "Or-well, we didn't get along that well. I think I resented him for taking the initiative to scare me, more than for actually doing it. Like, it always seemed like it should be an older-brother thing, to traumatize your sibling. Just added another layer to my endless childhood insecurities."
"Daniel and I just beat each other up a lot," said Kris. "I don't think we were creative enough for any psycho-trauma warfare. He got bigger than me pretty quick, though, so I see where you're coming from.
"Anyway, at least we're rich and famous now. Showed them." His voice was soft and sleepy, and Adam smiled into the darkness.
"Thanks, fake husband," he said. "For some reason, that actually makes me feel a lot better."
Kris reached over across the blanked and grabbed his hand.
"Anytime, darling," he said, and followed it up by yawning out loud. "Now let's go to bed."
Adam was a little apprehensive about that part, actually, because there was only one bed and if Kris got all clingy and puppy-dog when it came to sleeping together he really didn't think he had the strength to resist. By the time they walked back, though, Kris was pretty much asleep on his feet, and Adam nudged him into the bed and watched as he passed out.
He looked one more second at the way Kris was all curled up in a nest of pillows and petal debris, breathing these tiny puffs of breath that made the sheets flutter around his face, and let the longing rise up just a little before he turned back to the couch.
:::
"I want to learn to surf," was the first thing Kris said the next morning, looking bright-eyed and extremely well-rested. Adam felt like rocks had attacked him in the night; that couch was definitely more decorative than functional.
Still, he couldn't exactly say that to Kris, because then he'd just insist on sleeping in the same bed or taking the couch himself, and Adam wasn't okay with either option.
"Me, too!" is what he said instead.
"Learn" turned out to be something of a relative term, when it came to Kris and surfing-he was probably less of a natural at it than Adam was at playing guitar, which was saying something-but he wouldn't give up, just kept trying and falling and trying again.
"I can get it this time, Adam, come on," he said some time during the third hour, popping up with his brown hair dripping after one particularly spectacular wipeout.
"Fine," Adam said, content just to lie on his own board and watch Kris fail again, but this time Kris paddled over to him and grabbed his arm, using Adam to get enough leverage to climb back to his knees on his own board.
"You too, man, let's do it together," he said, laughing, and Adam couldn't say no, just hauled himself up onto his knees, too.
"Okay, fuck waves, we're just gonna try standing," Kris said, and braced himself on Adam again as he got to his feet. For a second it looked like he was actually doing it, really standing, and Adam would have clapped except that his hands were occupied with trying to keep himself steady on his own board-and then Kris leaned forward, just slightly in towards Adam, and his legs went out from under him.
He fell onto Adam in a flurry of windmilling arms and comically wide eyes, and the next thing Adam knew he was lying on his back on his surfboard with Kris on top of him. Water was dripping gently off the tip of Kris's nose onto Adam's forehead, and Kris was laughing softly.
"Guess that didn't work," he said, still laughing, and Adam opened his mouth to insist that they give up this ridiculous surfing attempt right now and head back to the resort, maybe for massages or yoga or something equally not-life-threatening, but before he could say anything Kris was looking at his lips with a sort of hungry expression, and then he rubbed his thumb along them gently, exploring, and Adam's stomach turned inside out.
"Kris," he tried to say, but his throat apparently wasn't working so well because nothing really came out. Kris's eyes didn't move from his mouth, and his thumb didn't move from Adam's bottom lip, and in a second this situation was going to cross a line because Kris was all pressed up along his whole body and these wetsuits were pretty much the definition of skintight, and his cock was really pretty interested in whatever Kris was doing with his thumb and his eyes and his perfect fucking body.
Kris's thumb sort of dipped in between his lips, then, and finally Adam gave up and sort of half-flailed, half-rolled-whatever it was, it was enough to capsize them all the way, and he closed his eyes and tried to clear his head as the cool water enveloped them both.
Kris was laughing again as he broke the surface, and whatever weird thing had just happened seemed to have been forgotten. By him, at least-Adam was having a harder time forgetting, and his frustration must have showed in his voice because when he said, "I'm tired, let's go back," Kris just nodded and got back on his board to paddle in towards shore.
:::
A massage and pedicure helped, though, and by the time dinner rolled around Adam was feeling a lot better. The food was good and the wine was better, and best of all was the fact that their waiter kept giving Adam that look, the one that said, "I know what you can give me that I'd like even more than a tip," and the waiter's ass was totally worth saving that 20%.
Kris sitting on the other side of the table from him all burnished gold in the candlelight wasn't doing much to distract him from the waiter's ass, either; on the contrary, the better Kris looked, the better the prospect of sex with someone who actually wanted him back, who wanted him for him-or, at least, for his physical attributes-not just for his PR status, looked.
Kris's ring glinted in the candlelight and a sudden, cold rush of anger shot though Adam. Not at Kris-he could be annoyed at Kris, sure, for being naïve and too willing and even for being straight, but he couldn't bring himself to be mad at Kris for those things, things he couldn't help. Still, the anger was there, and even if it wasn't directed at Kris it got worse when he looked at Kris, so he looked away, over to the waiter.
The waiter was slender and elfin and blond, and when he saw Adam looked he ran one hand through his golden hair and smiled slowly and winked, and that was it.
Adam finished the rest of his dessert and smiled at Kris and talked about plans for recording once they got back to L.A., and he told himself that it wasn't cheating when the marriage was fake to begin with, when he wasn't in love.
He paid the check and said, "I'm just gonna head to the bathroom, meet you back in the suite?" and Kris looked confused for a second but nodded and got up, just his back, straight and somehow small in his soft blue shirt, walking away.
Adam watched him until he couldn't see him anymore, and then he walked into the bathroom, and yeah, there was the waiter, leaning against the wall waiting for him like some kind of sex fruit all ripe for the plucking.
"I'm Luke," he said, "and let's go somewhere else because I think I want you to take your time with me," and he grabbed Adam's hand and led him out of the bathroom, through the back of the restaurant and past the kitchen into the parking lot behind the building.
He backed himself up against the wall, then, and put his arms around Adam's neck and leaned up, green eyes wide and lips parted just slightly. His hips shifted against Adam's and he was getting hard, already, but Adam wasn't, was the thing. Adam wasn't, and when he looked at the guy's gorgeous face and soft lips and sinful eyes he felt cold and hard inside, and angrier, the same anger from dinner and he'd thought this would make it go away but it was only making it sharper, worse, making it hurt.
"Oh, yeah," Luke murmured, and he reached up and touched his lips to Adam's, warm and slick, and Adam shuddered and pushed him away.
"The fuck-" Luke said, and Adam felt sick and dizzy. "I can't," he said, "I just can't, I'm-I'm married," and he turned away, stumbling.
"Duh, like I didn't know that," the guy said from behind him, "no one needs to know, come on, Adam, just let me blow you-" but Adam was inside, gone.
continue