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Adam’s always been bad at being alone. He gets into trouble when he’s left to his own devices: questionable substances, ill-advised hook-ups, poor decisions. Brad always used to joke that Adam needed a wrangler, someone to steer him onto the straight and narrow path, no pun intended. Of course, Brad steered him directly off the straight and narrow path often enough, but they did it together and it was more of an adventure that way than a problem.
And then for a long time now, it’s been practically impossible to be alone. From the second the show started airing, there was always another contestant nearby, a PA, a producer, a driver, a cameraman. Then once the tour started they were crammed into tour buses like sardines, with only a coffin-sized space to call their own for days at a time. So it’s almost a shock to the system now to be back in Los Angeles by himself, no tour dates, no press, no overnight bus trips to points east.
At first the solitude is a luxury, a novelty. Adam stays up all night, wearing non-binding clothes and eating ice cream out of the carton and watching every single terrible movie that’s on HBO between the hours of 10pm and 4am. He sleeps as long as he wants to, gets up whenever he feels like. But by the third night, he’s starting to get a little restless. By the fourth night he’s worried he’s going insane.
“Adam, we are too old for this shit,” Scarlett moans when his call wakes her sometime between Yentl and Mystic Pizza. “I am not going out to a club when I’ve already been in bed for two hours.” Alisan, Brad, and Dani are no better. They’re worse, actually. They don’t even bother answering their phones in the first place.
It’s the second showing in a row of Mystic Pizza that makes him text Kris, even though Adam knows he’s probably fast asleep. “Driving myself crazy, I have tour Stockholm Syndrome, I kind of miss the bus,” he types into his phone and hits send. He’s so surprised when his phone buzzes seconds later that he almost drops it.
“What r u doing up, freako?” the text says. Adam’s about to reply when the phone rings, causing him to actually drop it this time.
“You should be in bed,” Kris’s voice greets him when he recovers the phone from the floor.
“I could say the same of you,” Adam points out. “Actually, I could have said the same of you five hours ago.”
“Can’t sleep,” Kris says. He manages to pack a lot of meaning into the two words, somehow. Or maybe it’s just because Adam’s got the same problem. It’s hard now to fall asleep without the rumble of the engine under your head, the exhaustion of performing dragging you down into a dark place without dreams. It’s weird not to worry about making sure your feet are pointing towards the front of the bus in case of any unexpected stops, a lesson they all figured out real fast on the first night when the driver braked to avoid a deer and Matt practically concussed himself against the front wall of his bunk. It’s lonely to turn around and expect someone to be right there even though you know he won’t be.
Adam hits the mute button on the remote, leaving Julia Roberts to move silently across the screen. He reaches over to switch off the lamp next to the couch. The room goes dark, illuminated only by the flickering light from the television.
“How’s Arkansas treating you?”
“Oh, you know,” Kris says. “Fine. It’s nice to be home. Katy’s already asking when you’re coming to visit.”
Adam smiles. “That’s my girl. Is she over the moon to have you home?”
Kris laughs on the other end. “She didn’t even let me leave the house the first couple of days.” It’s about the closest Kris gets to racy.
“Kristopher Allen, you minx,” Adam says, amused, impressed. “Did she bust out the handcuffs? Or was it just silk scarves?” He expects Kris to laugh it off, to tell Adam he’s a pervert. Their normal routine. But Kris just clears his throat and laughs a little, an uncomfortable exhalation of breath.
Well, then.
Kris changes the subject, starts asking Adam if he’s done any more recording, then barrels on to talk about his own work without letting Adam answer. Which is well enough. Adam’s busy grappling with the idea of Kris tied up. Or in handcuffs, Katy hanging the key just out of reach. It’s not something Adam’s particularly into, though he’ll try just about anything once, twice if the person doing the asking is cute. But the image seems burned in his brain. It’s a little weird. Usually his own sexlife is more than enough to occupy his brain; he doesn’t spend much time thinking about anyone else’s. But now he can’t stop wondering exactly what Kris and Katy do, exactly how he touches her, exactly how he sounds when she touches him.
He’s half-hard already. He gets all the way there when Kris abruptly stops mid-sentence and sighs, saying, “God, I miss you. This is so weird without you.”
Maybe it’s because it’s late and darkness is pressing in on the windows like a living thing, making it seem like they’re the only two people left in the world. Maybe Adam’s just lonely and horny and feeling kind of lost in so much freedom. Maybe it’s the low timbre of Kris’s voice, so familiar and reassuring, rumbling through the phone and into Adam’s ear in the hush of his living room. His dick doesn’t distinguish between any of those reasons, though. He firmly tells himself he’s not going to do anything about it. It definitely crosses some sort of line to jerk off to Kris’s voice.
“I miss you, too,” Adam all but whispers into the phone. There’s no need to be quiet, and it’s certainly not anything that he hasn’t said to or about Kris before, but something about it feels different this time, more personal. More vulnerable.
“You know what the weirdest thing is?” Kris asks, his voice even lower now, like he’s saying something he doesn’t want Katy to hear, even though she’s probably asleep and in no position to overhear. “It smells too nice. I spent four months complaining about Sarver’s disgusting socks and that awful take-out Scott always got and the bus fumes and now I can’t handle how nice things smell here. I even miss that cologne you wore too much of.”
“I didn’t wear too much of it,” Adam says lazily, singing his old refrain to Kris’ chorus. “Some of us prefer something more sophisticated than Eau du Tide.” They fall back into their old banter so easily. Adam can practically hear Kris’s grin through the phone.
“Seriously, some guy downtown was wearing it yesterday and I almost chased him down the street and tackled him before my rational brain kicked in and I realized it couldn’t be you.” Well his hard-on certainly isn’t going away now. Adam flutters his free hand behind his head, slides it along the arm of the couch, unsure where to put it. Stomach. That’s a safe place.
“I keep seeing plaid shirts and thinking they’re you,” he admits in return. He doesn’t tell Kris that one of his shirts got mixed in with Adam’s clothes when they were packing. He found it when he was finally emptying his suitcases this morning. It’s hanging in Adam’s closet now. He likes the way it looks next to his solids and stripes, in among his leather jackets and the scarves hanging from hooks on the back of the door. He’ll give it to Kris when he comes to visit.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if you could come live here?” Kris muses thoughtfully. “You could stay in my spare bedroom.”
Adam makes a murmuring sound of assent. He slides his right hand down and scratches a spot on the opposite thigh, allowing the underside of his wrist to press down on his erection. Fuck, he must really be lonely, because even that barest touch almost sets him off like a rocket. He leaves his hand where it is, pushes down a little harder. Resists the urge to arch his hips up off the couch into the pressure.
“Remember when we were on the road to Newark?” Kris asks abruptly. His voice sounds insistent. A little slurry around the edges. Adam wonders if he’s had anything to drink.
“Um,” Adam says. He shifts his hips, the fabric of his pants catches and slides under his wrist, making him suck in his breath on a little hiss. He moves his hand over to his dick. He’s not doing anything, he’s just…adjusting. That’s all. No big. “What about it?”
“When we were playing that game, the marrying and killing one.” Adam stifles a laugh. Kris still can’t bring himself to say, “Marry, Fuck, Kill.” Adam and Allison could have used one of the non-profane variations of the name when they played, but it was too funny watching Kris blush and get uncomfortable.
“The game you refused to play when we were doing Idol people because you didn’t want to kill anyone on the tour,” Adam reminds him. He and Allison never had that problem. Between the two of them, they’d killed Michael and Danny about fifty times. Scott fared better, but not by much.
“Well, that, and I thought it would be weird if I picked you for both marry and. The other. Fuck.” Adam would be impressed at Kris cussing, however hesitantly, if he weren’t still processing the content of the sentence.
“You would have chosen me for marry and fuck?” Adam asks.
“That would have been weird, right?” Kris asks. “Plus against the rules.”
“Sort of,” Adam answers faintly. When did this phone call get so surreal? He squeezes his hand over his crotch. Closes his eyes and lets the tension in his stomach radiate out through the rest of his body. He tells himself he won’t move his hand, he won’t. But he does, and then again, and fucking hell, this is such a bad idea.
“It’s too bad polygamy’s illegal,” Kris laughs. “You could marry me and Katy. We could have a big happy group marriage.” Then his voice turns teasing, a tone that Adam always convinces himself he’s used to even though he’s completely not. “Maybe she could share the handcuffs.”
Fuck fuck fuck. Adam gives up the ghost completely, slides his hand inside his pants and wraps it around his dick. “That’d be fun,” he says, trying to keep his voice as breezy as possible.
“Are you okay?” Kris asks. “You sound kind of funny.” Adam swivels the phone away from his mouth for a second, takes a deep breath and holds it until he can release it steadily.
“I’m fine,” he says. “Everything’s fine.” The phone feels sweaty and clammy; it’s starting to hurt where it’s pressed against the top of his ear, but Adam ignores it. His eyes are still closed, he twists his hand at the top of each stroke, the ache coiling in his guts.
“Are you falling asleep over there? Should I hit numbers to keep you up?” The phone beeps in Adam’s ear then, too loud after the hush of Kris’s voice.
“Har har,” he gets out after Kris has stopped.
“If you’re tired I can hang up, Adam,” Kris says more seriously. “I can call back some other time.” There’s no good explanation for the panic that shoots through Adam’s system at the thought of Kris hanging up.
“I’m not tired,” Adam says. “I don’t want you to hang up.” He’s trying to keep his voice casual, but something about it must sound strained, must sound…significant, because Kris inhales suddenly.
“Adam…” he says after a long moment, his voice low and rough. Adam’s not sure what he’s going to say, he doesn’t know if Kris has realized what Adam is doing or not and he doesn’t quite want to know, he just needs Kris to keep talking.
“Don’t hang up, Kris,” he says, his voice frankly pleading.
“Okay,” Kris answers. “Okay, I won’t.”
“Just keep talking.” Adam slouches down lower in the couch, letting the pillows surround him. His hand works steadily. He bites his lip.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know, anything,” Adam says. He has to lick his lips to continue; his mouth has gone dry. “Tell me you dream about me every night.” Funny, that was supposed to sound way more like a joke than it ended up sounding…
“I did have a dream about you, actually.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, we were in some weird city somewhere. Like, in Spain, I think. And all the buildings looked like Dr. Seuss type of stuff. And you insisted we had to find a soft pretzel and I kept telling you they didn’t have soft pretzels in Spain, but you wouldn’t give up.”
“I do love a good soft pretzel,” Adam says on a sigh. He moves his hand faster now. The weird thing is, he’s not really thinking of Kris doing this to him. Not that he hasn’t thought of Kris doing something like this him before, because hello, Adam’s only human and Kris is adorable and a total tease and come on, of course Adam’s had some fantasies about him. But this is more about hearing his voice, knowing he’s there on the other end of the phone.
“And then this dog came up and asked us for directions,” Kris continues.
“A dog?” Adam’s getting close. He pushes with his toes against the coffee table, arching his feet and canting his hips off the couch. It’s a good thing the house came with curtains, otherwise he’d be putting on quite a show right now.
“A bulldog,” Kris clarifies. “He had an English accent. He wanted to go to the library.”
“Of course he did,” Adam says.
“And then you and I had sex.”
“What?!”
“And it was amazing, Adam. Your tongue is-”
“Fuck, Kris.” Adam manages to grab the tshirt he’d tossed aside earlier and use it to keep from making a mess of himself and the couch, but just barely. He can feel the dampness spread under the fabric of the shirt, sticky and hot between his skin and the cotton. His breath is coming fast and heavy from his nostrils. He sounds like a fucking racehorse. Kris waits patiently on the other end. If Adam weren’t so spent, the idea that Kris almost certainly knows exactly what Adam was doing – was, in fact, egging him on – might be enough to get him hard again.
“You did that on purpose,” Adam accuses when he gets his breath back.
“Would you prefer me to say yes or no?”
“Let’s not get into what I’d prefer right now,” Adam suggests tartly. Kris surprises him by sighing heavily. Almost unhappily.
“We probably shouldn’t,” he says.
“Kris-”
“The sun’s coming up here,” he says, interrupting Adam. “Katy’ll be up soon, I should go.” Adam inhales, considers an attempt to make Kris stay on the phone. At least until he can figure out what the hell is going on here.
Instead he says, “Yeah, we should both get to bed.”
“’Night, Adam,” Kris says. “Be good.”
“Never,” Adam replies. Kris chuckles.
“There’s the boy I love,” he says. And, oh fuck, that makes something in Adam’s chest close up tight like a fist. He clenches his teeth as if to keep the words he wants to say from escaping.
“Go make breakfast for your lady,” he says finally, keeping his voice light and easy. He’s about to hang up when Kris speaks again.
“Oh, Adam?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll call again tomorrow night,” Kris says, supressed laughter in his voice. “I know how you have needs.” The phone beeps as the call ends. Adam keeps it pressed to his ear longer than he needs to. Unbelievably, he feels himself harden under the tshirt he still has in his lap. With a groan, he pushes himself off the couch and heads to the shower. At least this time he won’t have to worry about clean-up.
title from “It Won’t Be Long” by Corey Chisel & the Wandering Sons