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He’d been planning on pretending it never happened. Kris figured he’d call, Adam would pick up, they’d chat, and it would never be brought up again. It would just be this thing that happened, this weird blip that was perfectly fine and no big deal but that they’d never ever discuss.
Adam, it would seem, has other plans.
“So what was that about last night?” Adam says as soon as he picks up the phone, on the first ring too, like – and Kris is entirely too pleased by the idea – he was waiting for the call.
“Well hello to you too, Adam,” he says.
“Hiya, sunshine.”
“Not pulling any punches tonight, I see,” Kris says dryly.
“I’m taking a lesson from you,” Adam says. “Now spill. Exactly what’s going on?”
“Geez, I don’t know,” Kris says. He hadn’t intended to talk about this. Or maybe he had. Maybe that’s why he’s here in the living room with his cell phone at three in the morning instead of in bed with his patient, lovely wife. “Who says anything’s going on, anyway?”
“Kris,” Adam says, in his best, give me a break, voice. “Come on. How do you explain all that if nothing’s going on?”
“Hey, you’re the one who went in for a little self-love while we were on the phone. I had nothing to do with that.”
“Nothing?” Adam asks in disbelief.
“You started that all by yourself,” Kris says firmly.
“Oh, and you didn’t help me finish it?” When Kris can’t volley that, Adam lets out a triumphant, “Ha!”
“All right, I concede the point,” Kris says.
“Thank you,” Adam says. “Though as entertaining as that little interlude was, it wasn’t really what I was talking about.”
“The group marriage, spare bedroom, marry and fuck stuff,” Kris guesses. Though, honestly, it’s not much of a guess. He’s not kidding himself that Adam has been waiting all day to talk to him about why the bulldog wanted to go to the library or how he could possibly miss the smell of Sarver’s socks.
“Got it in one,” Adam says. Kris is quiet for a minute. It’s kind of weird when he thinks back on last night, the things he let himself say. He’s usually more of a physical person when it comes to expressing how he feels. Maybe he’s clumsy at doing it out loud. But no, he said exactly how he felt, and he’s always been prone to gushing about Adam anyway. Everything just seems to be bubbling close to the surface lately. The show and the tour were this crazy heightened situation, like studying abroad or taking a long road trip, or, hell, like going through a war together: fights were louder, jokes were funnier, conversations were deeper, bonds were stronger. Sometimes he forgets that he hasn’t known Adam for his entire life. That Adam doesn’t know where the scar on Kris’s knee came from, or that he wasn’t there for the Halloween party where Charles dressed up as a stop sign and they found all the living room furniture on the roof the next morning.
“Would you rather I pretend last night didn’t happen and that you didn’t say the things you did?” Adam asks after Kris still hasn’t spoken. His voice is infinitely more kind than Kris feels he deserves. It kind of makes Kris’s chest feel tight and achy. “Because I can. I’ll pretend you seemed happy as a clam and you didn’t sound so lonely and confused that it made me want to cry, if that’s what you need.” Kris considers going along with it. It’d be easier for everyone, honestly.
“No,” he says on a sigh.
“So what’s going on?”
“I just don’t know.” He pauses and tries to get a grip on the things that have been swirling around in his brain lately. “I mean… Okay, so you know how it feels, right? I mean, your life turned upside-down too, so you know how strange everything is. How nothing feels steady anymore and like you’ve got no gravity anymore and everything’s just floating and flying around, right?”
“Right.”
“And, like, you’re desperate to hold onto the things that hold you down, y’know? The things that make sense,” Kris continues, feeling a strange urgency now, a weird need to say everything percolating in his head. “And it’s always been my wife that holds me down but now it’s you too and I don’t know how that can work. I mean, what are you going to do, uproot your life and live in my rumpus room forever so that I don’t feel so alone and lost all the damned time? Or do I dump my wife and move to LA and buy a lot of feathers and glitter and try not to think about how much I miss her? Or do I get the fuck over all of it because I’m a grown man who should be able to live life without his big gay security blankie?” He’s been talking faster and faster and by the time he winds up, he’s almost out of breath. He breaks off, inhales. Adam is unnaturally quiet on the other end.
“You have a rumpus room?” he finally says after a long silence. Kris releases the breath he didn’t realize he was holding on a laugh.
“Shut up,” he says.
“Kris, I just… I don’t know. I don’t know what I can say.” Adam’s voice is sad, almost anguished on the other end of the line.
“Man, what is wrong with me?” Kris asks, rubbing his eyes hard, until he sees sparks and everything goes sort of paisley. “Meeting you was one of the best things that ever happened to me, so how could I have been happier when I didn’t know you? My life used to be enough for me and it’s not anymore and I don’t understand why or what to do about it and I really don’t understand why it is enough for you.”
“What the hell makes you think this is enough for me?” Adam says, and it stops Kris cold.
“It isn’t?” he says cautiously.
“You think I don’t wish things could be different? You think I don’t miss you every fucking day? You think my friends aren’t completely sick of me talking about you and telling stories about you and mooning around like a lovesick calf over you? ‘Cause I’ll tell you what, they really really are.” Some small part of Kris’s mind realizes the significance of all this, of the things they’re saying: big things, life-changing things. But nothing concrete, nothing that can’t be explained away, dismissed, smoothed over at some later date if things get strange. It’s just that Kris isn’t sure he really wants to be able to smooth these things away.
“That just makes me more confused,” he says, even though his pulse is racing, his mind is reeling with the weight of what’s being said.
“You’re the only one who can figure it out, Kris,” Adam says gently. “I know you like to prod people until they make the decision for you sometimes, but that’s not going to work with this. This isn’t something you can react to, you’ve got to do the acting yourself.” If it weren’t so late, Kris might feel defensive about it, he might deny it. But then he’d have to remember how it was his wife who kept him from giving up on music, that it was his brother who made him get in the car and drive to Louisville for the auditions. That he spent most of the show and the tour teasing and provoking Adam – making suggestive jokes, feeding the Kradam fire in interviews – as a way to deal with all the things he wanted but couldn’t ask for.
“When did you turn into Dr. Phil?” he grumbles. It’s his way of acknowledging that he knows Adam’s right. Adam hums sympathetically. Kris knows it means he understands. He always understands. Kris rubs the back of his neck with his hand. It’s stiff and sore, the symptom of too many restless nights of too little sleep. He wishes Katy were awake to rub it for him. But the tension of the call seems to have broken, like a fever peaking and then subsiding. He laughs a little. “This sure is a lot heavier than last night’s phone call.”
“Hey, don’t blame me, I took one for the team last night,” Adam says. “It’s not my fault you’re a prude.”
“I am not a prude! Just because I don’t have my own collection of whips…”
“Says the guy who eagerly investigated every single one of those whips.”
“I’m not some blushing schoolgirl, Adam. I could totally masturbate on the phone with you.” Adam’s laughter peals out high and bright, the way it does when something particularly delights him.
“Oh, sweetie, it’s cute that you think that.”
“You don’t know, I might!”
“Kristopher, I know you,” Adam says patiently. “You are not gonna jack off to my voice.”
“I could, I would do it,” Kris insists. “I have hidden depths. I’m a sex machine.”
“Oh yeah? Well, I dare you,” Adam says evenly. Kris can practically hear his eyebrow arching over the phone. “No, strike that, I triple dog dare you. Come on, sex machine, let me have it.” He’s sure Kris won’t do it. That’s what makes it so irresistible to screw with him. That and the fact that this teasing, this easy flirtation that’s always between them makes him feel about a hundred times better than the unhappy indecision he’d been feeling before.
“How do you know I’m not doing it right now?” Kris asks, putting on his most seductive tone. If Adam can play, so can he.
“Hmmm, are you then?”
“Oh yeah,” Kris says. “Completely. Hand down my pants as we speak.”
“Prove it,” Adam says, the challenge clear in his voice. “I wanna hear you.”
“Hear me?”
“That’s right, I’m an untrusting bastard and I need audible proof. Unless you want to tweet some pictures instead...”
“Oh, ooh, Adam, you’re making me so hard,” Kris answers immediately. No need to cause a scandal just to prove a point. Adam snorts.
“Oh, I know you can do better than that.” His voice gets low and sinuous, it slides over Kris like an outright caress. How the hell does he do that? “I know those noises you make.” Kris freezes.
“Noises…?” he ventures. Adam purrs at him – there’s no other word for it, it’s a flat-out purr, and there’s no good reason for it to be hot instead of silly, but it is. Involuntarily, Kris’s eyes are drawn down to his crotch, which is definitely showing signs of interest in the conversation. Quiet, you, he thinks at his dick. Doesn’t work.
“You think I didn’t hear you in the middle of the night?” Adam’s saying. “Those sexy little whimpers you made when you thought I was asleep and it was safe for you to go south?”
Oh geez. “You heard that? You never said-”
“Unlike you, I know how to be discreet and subtle,” Adam interrupts. “Besides, if I’d said something, would you have stopped?”
“Well…yeah,” Kris admits.
“There you go. Like I wanted to give up my evening entertainment?” Okay, this…this conversation they’re having, this thing, it’s insane. It’s got Kris humming like a plucked guitar string. “So give me some of that and maybe I’ll believe you.”
Kris thinks for a second. Usually he’s not paying much attention when he’s making those sorts of noises – sexy little whimpers, Adam called them, and that should make Kris laugh, not make him feel hot and cold all at once. He tightens his throat, forces air through his lips. He sounds like a dying kitten. Adam immediately starts laughing.
“Ohh, no no,” he says. “Not even close. Come on now, don’t you remember? You’d start breathing all heavy through your nose and then you’d make that noise, like this-” Adam thrums, his breath ragged. “And then you would-” Adam breaks off with a whimper, one that sounds like it was wrenched from the back of his throat. Kris’s whole body tightens in such a rush that it’s almost painful. This whole thing started as a joke, as a dare. How is it that he’s uncomfortably hard now? He reaches down to adjust himself, that’s all. Nothing fishy, just adjusting, just… Okay, totally not adjusting. Not at all adjusting. He palms himself through his pants. His lungs feel too big for his chest and without even realizing, he mimics Adam’s noise.
“That’s it,” Adam says approvingly. “There’s my good boy.” It only makes Kris harder.
“Adam,” Kris threatens, but it comes out weak and strangled.
“Oh, so teasing’s fine and dandy for you, but not for me?” Adam laughs. He’s got the upper hand and he knows it. “No way, sunshine, not this time. Now give me some more.” Kris groans. He’s moving the heel of his hand in long, firm strokes, almost unconsciously. He pauses, remembers Katy sleeping in their bedroom. Remembers how awkward he felt thinking of last night in the light of day and how Adam might feel the same way tomorrow. Remembers that he doesn’t do this sort of thing. All he wants to do is keep going, but…
“Maybe we should talk about something else,” he says. Even to him, it sounds sad and wistful and freakin’ pathetic. Adam makes a contemplative sound, like he’s deciding what to say, whether he should back off or keep pushing, and Kris honestly doesn’t know which he hopes Adam will do.
“Let me guess,” Adam says finally. “You’re manfully resisting your base urges right now. You’re justifying over the pants but drawing the line at really getting down to brass tacks because, I don’t know, it’s weird, I’m a dude, you’re married, you’re afraid you’ll go blind or grow hair on your palms, all of the above. So you’re telling yourself you should stop even though you’re not sure you want to stop. Even though you’re dying not to stop.”
“How did you…?”
“A, because I know you, and B, because I was in the exact same position last night.” Adam pauses, then continues. “Except my underwear wasn’t plaid.”
“I don’t even have plaid on,” Kris protests.
“Polka dots?”
“…shut up.”
“Maybe you should just give in,” Adam says, his voice gentling and turning serious. “You want to. It’s killing you not to. You can work on untying the knots later.” From anyone else it would sound ridiculously like peer pressure. From Adam it sounds like therapy. Still, Kris hesitates.
“What if the stuff I want isn’t good for me?” he asks.
“But what if it is?” Adam counters. “What if it’s the best thing in the world for you?” They’re not just talking about right now, anymore. Suddenly they’re talking about everything, the whole breadth of their lives, the expanse of their combined worlds narrowed down to the mouthpiece of a phone, to the palm of Kris’s hand, to the sound of their mingled breathing conducted by satellite.
Kris has tried, he’s tried so hard not to want this, not to need this. It’s like last night broke the barrier and all of his usual defenses are gone, breached by one phone call. It feels so good, so easy and uncomplicated, so unquestionably right, and he’s desperate for that. On a deep breath, he pushes his pants down just past his hips, frees himself from the fabric. He decides to compromise by closing his eyes. If he can’t see it, it’s not really happening. At the first touch of his hand, his body feels like it’s turning itself inside out and he can’t keep from making exactly the kind of noise Adam’s been talking about.
“Happy now?” Kris asks, his voice so low and throaty he sounds like he’s been smoking three packs a day since he was 11.
“Getting there,” Adam says, then chuckles when Kris can’t bite back another one of those sounds. “And it sounds like you are too.”
“I hate you,” Kris tells him.
“You love me.” Half of Kris wants to tell Adam to shut up. The other half wants to say, yes, yes, I do, of course I do, you know I do. Joke, truth, which does he pick? Instead he goes back to his fail-safe – he provokes.
“So what, you’ve been planning on getting me to do this for the last twenty-four hours, is that it?” He tilts his head back against the cushions of the couch, focusing only on the movement of his hand, on the tightness coiling in his belly with every stroke.
“You think I’ve only been planning this for twenty-four hours?” Adam laughs. “Oh Kristopher, how you underestimate me.” And there he is, turning the tables again. It’s a little strange. Kris is usually the one who’s reckless, the one who toes the line, while Adam plays the politician, the voice of caution, the mother hen.
“Did you?” Kris licks his suddenly dry lips. He drags his fingers up, squeezes on the way back down. “I mean, did you think of this? Of me…?”
“What do you want to hear?” That sinuous quality is back. Adam’s voice washes over Kris like silk. Even though it’s warm in the living room, he shivers, gooseflesh rising on his arms. “Do you want to hear that I watched you when you weren’t looking? That I wondered what you’d taste like? That sometimes I imagined you underneath me, around me, gorgeously coming apart for me?”
“Oh God,” Kris says. His hand is working almost frantically now, any thought of finesse or technique gone. He’s a randy teenager again, a 14-year-old kid with hormones coming out his ears and nowhere for them to go.
“That’s it, that’s right, baby.” Adam is almost crooning on the other end of the line. “Be a good boy for me.”
Kris’s whole body is a quivering ball of nerves and tension and want, all focused on that voice. He doesn’t even know what to do with himself. Was this what Adam felt like, last night? Like he was in a bubble and the only other thing in existence was Kris’s voice, sounding so close through the phone that he might as well have been right there, mouth against Adam’s ear? Did he feel wild and reckless and almost desperate like this?
“God, Adam,” Kris barely manages to get out. “I want… I want… unh, Adam.” He’s panting into the phone now; it’s downright pornographic.
“Tell me, baby.” Adam’s voice takes on an urgent, pleading tone. Like he’s just as desperate as Kris. “Tell me what you want. I’ll do it, whatever it is. Tell me and I’ll do it.” It’s enough to push Kris over the edge. He comes all over his stomach and shirt, his hand wringing out the last drops. Adam’s name is on his lips, he’s whispering it over and over like it’s a mantra, a talisman that will protect them both. Adam keeps up a steady stream of words and endearments, a sweet babble that Kris only halfway hears, but it still soothes him, gives him something to hold on to.
For a few minutes Kris can only breathe, drawing lungfuls of air through his nostrils and releasing them from his mouth. Blood ticks through his veins, his body clicks and pops like a car engine cooling down. Adam waits, quiet on the other end, so quiet Kris starts to worry.
“Are you there?” he asks.
“Always,” Adam says immediately, and it is flat-out ridiculous the relief Kris feels at that.
“Well, we’ve certainly reached some new frontiers in our friendship,” he says, his tone light to counter the lurching that his heart is doing.
“We’re pioneers, all right,” Adam laughs, then he sighs. “God, you don’t even know, Kris, the things I could do to you,” he says wistfully, sadly.
“Please don’t tell me,” Kris begs. “I don’t think I could handle it. I already feel like I’m either going to have a heart attack or burst into tears.”
“Maybe we can save that for the next phone call,” Adam jokes. “Though at the rate we’re going, we’re going to get ourselves in a lot of trouble with any more calls.”
“I think I already have,” Kris says. “I just… I don’t know what I’m going to say to Katy.”
“Kris,” Adam starts, but he doesn’t seem to know what to say.
“I’m a fucking asshole,” Kris says, his voice savage.
“You’re killing me, Kris,” Adam says unhappily, and it really does sound like it, even from thousands of miles away. He sounds just like Kris feels, like he picks up where Kris leaves off. Kris supposes that’s always been the way between them. Only trouble is, where does that leave his wife? He feels like the three of them are a great big Venn diagram and that spot in the middle where they all come together is as far away as the North Pole. As far away as the moon.
“What are we going to do?” He sounds plaintive, like a lost little boy.
“I don’t know,” Adam says. And there’s a big part of Kris that’s heartened at Adam’s unflinching acceptance of we in this scenario.
“Look, I should go,” Kris says, even though it’s the last thing he wants to do right now. But he needs to think. He needs to sort through everything in his head, file it all neatly into drawers so he can figure out what the hell he’s doing.
“Okay.”
“Do you-” Kris breaks off, swallows and starts again. “Should I call again tomorrow night? I mean, do you want me to?”
“Of course I do,” Adam says. “Kris, we’ve both always known what I want. You’re the variable here, not me.” Kris nods, even though Adam can’t see him.
“I’ll call,” he says firmly. Adam sounds relieved when he says okay, when they say goodnight to each other. It feels good to put the phone down. Kris’s fingers feel cramped and stiff from holding it so long and so tightly.
It’s an odd hour of the night, too late to get much sleep, but not early enough to wake up. He naps on the couch for a while, dozing fitfully on and off before jerking awake at some strange noise or another: the drip of the kitchen faucet, the refrigerator humming to life, the thump of the paperboy throwing their nextdoor neighbor's paper a little too forcefully. When the birds in the tree outside the window start chirping, he gives in and gets up. He still hasn’t figured anything out. Though maybe it was optimistic to think that he would.
He ends up making Katy a ridiculously complicated breakfast – waffles, eggs, fresh orange juice from the few oranges they have left (he only has to use a tiny bit of water to get a full glass, he figures she won’t even notice), way more bacon than any one person should ever eat in a single sitting. He goes outside and furtively snips some peonies from Mrs. Murtaugh’s front yard next door, arranging them carefully in the vase he knows Katy likes best when he comes back inside. Maybe he’s making such a production of it because he’s putting off having to look his wife in the face after he jacked off to another man’s voice. Or maybe it’s to make up for it.
She’s half-awake when he carries the tray into their bedroom, toeing the door open and catching it with his heel before it bangs against the wall. It’s always taken her a while to get going in the morning. When the alarm goes off, Kris is up, but Katy will hit the snooze button ten times to get another half hour of semi-sleep in three-minute increments.
“Good morning,” she says sleepily, pushing her hair out of her eyes with one forearm. “What’s that you have there?”
“Breakfast. Come on, sit up.” He carefully climbs onto the bed, crawling on his knees as he balances the tray in both hands. Obediently, she scoots up in the bed, leaning back against the headboard and straightening both legs. He sets the tray on her lap, fusses over the peonies a little. He wonders if she’ll look at him and just know. But she smiles and touches the flowers with one fingertip, exclaims over the food. Conflicting feelings flood through him: he’s not even sure if he doesn’t want her to know or if he’s desperate for her to know.
“Aren’t you going to have any?” she asks, oblivious to the existential breakdown he’s having right there in their bed, sitting next to a tray of waffles and bacon and orange juice. He shakes his head.
“It’s for you,” he says.
“Come on, share,” she coaxes, setting the tray between them. “You know I couldn’t possibly eat this much by myself.” He relents, takes the fork with a chunk of waffle speared on the end as she passes it to him.
“You okay?” she asks. Her tone is casual, but he can see the way she’s sizing him up, her eyebrows knitting together a bit in concern. He opens his mouth to tell her he’s fine, but the words won’t come out. Instead he exhales and wobbles his head from side to side in an indeterminate gesture. She nods. She’s always been good about letting him do things in his own time. Her fingertips on his cheek are feather-soft. They ghost over his eyebrows, the bridge of his nose. A frown plays on her face when she skims them across the shadows under his eyes.
“I feel like I could sleep for days,” he says in answer to her unspoken question. She tilts his chin up and searches his eyes. Then she takes the fork from him, waffle still on the end, uneaten. She places it carefully on the plate, sets the tray on the nightstand. Slides down lower under the covers and pats the mattress next to her in invitation.
“I could stay in bed a little longer.” She smiles at him, the smile that made him fall in love with her back when they were just gawky, barely-formed kids on a band field trip. It’s a reprieve. Maybe an unfairly earned one, but he’ll take it all the same.
He’s never gotten over how easily they fit together, all of the cylinders clicking into place. Everything about her is so familiar – the feel of her body against his, the smell of her skin, the steady drum of her heartbeat under his cheek, the gravity of her presence in his life. He closes his eyes and lets his breathing even and slow, lets his body sink into the mattress. For right now, it’s enough.
title from “Blue Sky” by Patty Griffin