HOW DO I LOVE THEE? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS ♥

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:00:03 GMT

COMMENT HERE WITH YOUR USERNAMES AND I SHALL GIVE YOU MY LOVE <3

BECAUSE YOU DESERVE IT. EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU.

Fic: Close Quarters; Kris/Adam (AI); Rating: PG-15

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:20:01 GMT

Pairing: Kris/Adam

Genre: Romance/Humour

Rating: PG-15

A/N: 1. Written for the lovely jetaimerai, inspired by her idea. I’m not sure if this is what you had in mind, but here it is, anyway. :)

2. Kris is not married in this story.

3. This is no-holds-barred cheesy waffle that I needed to get out of my system. Yay for ends to year-and-a-half-long writer's blocks <3

Close Quarters

“Foxtrot,” Adam muttered as he typed feverishly into the Google toolbar, “basic techniques.” He drummed his fingers on his laptop keyboard as the page loaded, fidgeting with the sheet of paper spread out on his lap.

“You’ve been keeping busy, I see.”

Adam jerked up his head. Kris was leaning against the door, hands in pockets, smiling his lop-sided smile. He still had on that close-fitting chain thing with brown beads strung on that he had taken to wearing recently, and that Adam never failed to find excruciatingly distracting. He absently drew out the pencil he had stuck behind his ear, then realized with a jolt that saying something, at the very least, was urgently in order.

“Kill me now, please?” He said, slumping back in his chair, and passing a hand over his forehead. “Didn’t you see Ryan’s text?”

The Idols had all been informed that afternoon that there was going to be a ball in honour of Idol Gives Back, the first of its kind, and the top ten would be attending, along with a number of celebrities and past contestants. They had been at lunch when the news arrived; the thought of Megan and Michael returning, and the general fun that was sure to ensue generated an instant surge of good cheer. Adam couldn’t join in, even more so because of the news that he would be opening the dance with Megan, an arrangement he was not pleased with at all.

“I mean, have you ever seen this stuff?” He waved a Dancing With The Stars DVD at Kris. “Just who are these people?”

Kris frowned and walked up behind him and bent over to see what Adam had been so conscientiously examining on his laptop screen. Did he have to, Adam thought irritably, rest his chin on his shoulder and place his cheek next to his own in the process?

Kris’ breath whistled past Adam’s face as he waited, prayed and waited for his roommate to remove himself to anywhere beyond the three mile distance that ought, in Adam’s opinion, to separate them at all times; failing which, either party was in grave and imminent danger. Adam himself was in danger of succumbing to what he liked to call The Urges, that gripped him every time the pretty twenty-three-year-old was in grabbing distance, while Kris was, well, in danger of the Very Bad Things that Adam intended to do to him, given the chance.

After what, as all such tortuous moments in our lives seem, felt like an eternity, Kris spoke.

“You,” he pronounced, “are undeniably the biggest idiot in the history of the everything. No competition.”

Adam took the opportunity to get up, swiftly moving away from Kris. “And what, exactly, makes you say that?” he said, skillfully masking The Urges. Really, he was starting to get rather good at the thing.

“You’ve got me as your roommate, and you’re looking up ballroom dance techniques on Wikipedia?”

“You—dance?” Adam yelped incredulously.

“Sure,” Kris shrugged. “My mom’s a ballroom dance instructor, so yeah, I do know a thing or two about it.”

Adam stared at him; then burst out laughing. An image of Kris waltzing with a woman a foot taller than him, had suddenly popped into his brain.

“You might laugh,” Kris said loftily, dropping the lid of Adam’s laptop shut with a soft snap and walking towards the door, hips swaying slightly in a way that made Adam shut up at once, “But you know I’m your only hope. And anyway,” he added, “ballroom dancing might just start growing on you. I’m sure you don’t know too much about—it’s fun, romantic, and very, very sexy.”

Adam could feel the blood draining away from his face. This was going to be bad. Very, very bad.

“So then,” said Kris briskly, as the CD player he had borrowed from the girls’ room began to sound the tuneful strains of an orchestra, “this is the foxtrot. Chances are, they’ll be opening with this. Now as happens right—” he motioned to the player, “now,” and the music turned suddenly faster, more upbeat, “the music to a foxtrot changes from slow to fast, rapidly. Right, so put your hand around my waist.”

Adam swallowed. “Um, what…?” he mumbled stupidly.

Kris rolled his eyes; walking up quickly close to Adam, he brought Adam’s around his waist, and pressed up against him. The whole process took place so quickly, and Kris took Adam so suddenly by surprise, that at the end of two seconds, Adam had the Object of every one of all his varied Urges closer to him than he had ever, ever wanted him to be, unless it were in some alternate universe, where he was allowed to launch himself at his roommate whenever he pleased.

“Follow my lead now,” Kris told him, with an authoritative edge to his voice, steering him along, “step—glide—step—pause … no, no, chin up, shoulders back …” He gave Adam’s shoulders an abrupt push back, and Adam felt every past of his body in contact with Kris begin to thrum in a most unpleasant way.

There is nothing kinky in this, Adam Lambert, the Voice of Reason rumbled in his head, there is nothing remotely sexually suggestive in the way Kris is taking control and leading you on—he’s the one who knows the whole ballroom shebang and this is how it’s done, he takes the trouble to help you out —but fie, for shame, you repay him with a lump beneath your belt!

Adam glanced down, alarmed—yes, there it was, horribly real, perfectly pronounced.

“I don’t know why you’re so stiff,” Kris sighed, ten minutes later, as the music ended and he took up the remote to switch to a different piece, “You’re into theatre; granted, it isn’t ballroom dancing, but you can move your body, right?”

Adam rolled his eyes. Wow, I have no idea. Maybe it’s the minor of issue of having the guy you’re absolutely crazy about stuck to you at the time?

A different kind of music started to play just then; slower, more tender. Kris walked up to him again.

“I told you,” he murmured, taking Adam’s hand, “how ballroom dance can be a glorious expression—” he pressed his body flush against Adam’s, and passed a hand around his neck, “of romantic love.” He paused a few moments. “It’s not about technique any more,” he continued, still in that low, husky tenor, “it’s more what you feel about the person you’ve got in your arms.”

Adam uncertainly wound an arm around his roommate. How did he ever get drawn into a situation like this?

“This will come on most probably when all the other dancers will have come on to the stage, so it’ll take the attention of you for a while,” Kris went on. They were dancing very, very close. Kris buried his nose in Adam’s shoulder, and laughed suddenly.

“What?” Adam croaked. His mouth felt drier than the Gobi desert.

“Do you really think anyone will be able to take their eyes off you, when you’re all dressed up in a tuxedo?” Kris’ voice sounded amused, as languid as a hot summer’s noon, almost a purr. “They hate to, even otherwise.” He looked up at him, cocked his head to a side, and smiling slightly, bit his lip. “Classy and handsome, just like Paula said.”

Was it normal that every word Kris was saying was sending him into paroxysms like a hormonal thirteen-year-old? They continued dancing for a while; Kris lowered his eyes, and Adam took the opportunity to shamelessly study every inch of his face, something he would probably never get the chance to do again from such close quarters. Kris’ ears had the quaintest of shapes, he noticed, and there was a tiny mole beneath his left eye that he decided he would really, really, like to kiss.

“Who will you be dancing with, though?” Adam ventured to ask, when it had been a long time since he’d said anything coherent..

“I dunno. They didn’t pair me up with anyone. I guess I’ll be getting my cousin along. She’s fourteen, and a massive fan of yours.”

Adam threw his head back and laughed. “So even Allison is taller than you?” he said.

Kris punched him lightly on the shoulder. Adam relaxed a little; this was how it should be between them.

“You and Megan, Danny and Allison, and Matt and Lil were the only ones that were told they’d be going together, and last time I checked, Anoop was way taller than Danny. It’s got nothing to do with height!”

Adam groaned. “I always knew Megan would come back from elimination land to haunt me. She used to try to get fresh with me enough without close dancing involved. I shudder to think what she’ll try.”

“You’d rather have gone with Allison or Lil?”

“Um—let’s put it this way—I’m not really used to having a pair of knockers up against my chest?”

“What about me?”

They were back to where they’d started, Adam realized with horror, glancing down at Kris. Could he really answer that, when Kris was looking at him like that—in that way, which he couldn’t even attempt to describe, and it was all he could do to prevent himself from kissing those moist, half-parted lips, centimetres from his own?

And yet—and yet, there was Kris Allen again, straightening up, as the music ended, smoothening out his shirt, and then—whyohwhy—Adam’s too, and his hair, looking for all the world, as if he could have been at a supermarket, smoothing out the creases on the clothes modeled by a dummy which he had accidentally knocked by!

“How do you do this?” Adam blurted out.

“What?”

“This. Um. Being able to hold your pee so long?”

Kris blinked.

“I need to use the washroom.” He had just realized the bulge beneath his trousers had acquired unacceptable proportions. Then he bolted.

The corridor was deserted, as he hurried down the carpeted hallway, towards the bathroom. As he neared it, a seventy-something janitor emerged, hitching up his trousers.

“You, too?” he said, casting an approving look at Adam’s trousers, and went his way chuckling at some private joke.

Creepy? Adam focused on banishing that incident from his mind as he entered the bathroom, and leant over the basin, staring at his reflection in the mirror opposite. He looked as haggard as if he had just wrestled with something big and really mean, and his kohl-rimmed eyes were red.

For a long time, he just stood there, staring at his reflection, while his reflection stared back at him, head completely blank. What had just happened?

Before he could even begin to try making sense of the tangle of thoughts in his brain, the door creaked open.

Fuck.

Kris.

“Hey,” Adam said, turning to face him and starting to speak very, very fast. “I think I was feeling a little giddy after the dancing? I’m done peeing, though.”

“You’re avoiding me.” It wasn’t a question.

Adam exhaled. Out with it, then.

“Look,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “thing is, the whole idea of a dancing with a guylikeyou, for me, isn’t what it is, probably, to you. I swing the other way, okay? I can’t deal with holding a guy close and having him say the kind of stuff you were saying back there without sensing a sort of—sexual undercurrent to it … You know what I mean? I’m sorry. I really am. You offered to help me out, and god, I’m such a wanker. I’m the biggest, fucked up—”

“Why didn’t you do anything to me?” Kris said quietly, cutting in.

“Do…um… what?” Adam mumbled, sounding like a cretin, even to himself.

“Well, I know you’re not the kind of guy that sets store by inhibitions too much. So why didn’t you just—you know, step up and do something, if you sensed so much—er, sexual undercurrent?”

Adam swallowed. “Well, you’re straight, right? You’re the wholesome small-town kind of guy that’s got this childhood sweetheart waiting for him back home, and that’s—that’s worlds apart from what I am…”

“Oh, you’ve corrupted enough good little Church boys in your time, I’m sure,” Kris laughed, waving aside the explanation. “Why not me?”

If all this was a little odd coming from Kris, Adam didn’t notice just then. “Maybe,” he said slowly, as much to himself as to Kris, “maybe there is something different this time. Maybe I know that it’s always going to remain an impossibility, yet somehow, I don’t want to face actual, convincing proof that it is, in fact, an—”

“Does it have to be?”

“What?”

“An impossibility?”

“Um, yes?”

“Hypothetically?”

“Well, if you say ‘hypothetically’, now, that always leaves a chance, I suppose…”

He looked at Kris. Kris looked back at him.

“But no,” he said. Kris moved closer. “You’re the straight, wholesome guy.” A few inches more. “The small-town kid.” And more. “Childhood sweetheart?” Kris’ eyelashes were dark smudges against his cheekbones.

The kiss was passionate, and clumsy, and wet, all noses and teeth colliding, and hands fumbling, needy for contact. Adam could tell it was the first time Kris was kissing another man; he didn’t seem too sure what to do with his tongue, or who should take control, and suddenly, nor did he.

When air became an issue, they broke apart, and the world had changed. Kris’ eyes were wide, soft, as they looked up at him; almost nothing remained of the cocky playfulness that had been dancing in them all evening.

“Wow,” Adam whispered. “Just…wow.”

“Look what you’ve done, Mr. Allen,” his—boyfriend?—smiled, “brought the Mr. Lambert to his knees.”

Adam kissed him again, on the mouth and then his hair, his cheek, ears, and eyes, not forgetting that tiny mole he had spied during the dance, and down his neck, scrunching up the back of his shirt in his fist. Drawing low, adorable whimpers from Kris as he pressed feather light kisses along his clavicle, he tentatively fingered the hem of his shirt, only to have his hand slapped away.
He stopped, and pouted down at Kris.
"Mmm," Kris murmured, "you have no idea how sexy you look when you do that." He drew both his arms around Adam's neck and placed his cheek against his. "Oh, and for the record, I don't really think you're the slut I made you out to be. Or the corrupter of innocent minds. That was just for effect, you know."
"Little tease," Adam growled. He half-lifted Kris up; drawing Kris' legs around him, he pushed him roughly against the wall and kissed him, thrillingly hard.
Vengeance had never tasted so sweet.

your eyes are burning holes through me

HOW DO I LOVE THEE? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS ♥

Fic: Close Quarters; Kris/Adam (AI); Rating: PG-15