Hands Down (This is the Best Day I Can Ever Remember)

aka the hand porn

It starts on a red carpet, at one of the first events Kris attends after his divorce. There's a woman with way too much make-up who just won't let go of Kris' arm, insistently shoving a microphone in his face, asking about Katy, the divorce, loneliness, girlfriends; Kris is pretty sure he's spluttering and flushing a worrying red all over.

Adam comes out of nowhere.

Adam has a date with him – white suit, white blond hair – but the guy seems friendly enough, and doesn't say a word when Adam grabs Kris' hand and saves him from the evil reporter.

They walk the rest of the way hand in hand.

After that, it becomes sort of a thing.

Adam has always been protective of his friends, Kris knows that much. And yeah, so Kris is sulky and feels like crying some days, but that's only normal so soon after a breakup. That the combination of their conditions brings about a very touchy-feely friendship is neither here nor there.

Harmless, Kris figures. It’s simply some warmth and care from someone who loves him and isn’t afraid to show it. Kris lets himself soak up the easy affection. God knows it’s rare enough in L.A.

Six months later, he realizes that it was never as simple as he had assumed.

Kris is home, watching TV and eating chips, when a shot of Adam coming out of a club appears on the screen. (E! News: Kris should have known better than to watch that.) Adam is holding hands with a sharply dressed, long-haired guy. The image burns into Kris' retinas – like something very disturbing that you just can't unsee: a bloody accident, a road kill, your parents having sex.

By the time Kris makes his way to bed that night, he's started biting his lips nervously, and when he wakes up the next morning, he's in a terrible mood.

Kris chalks the whole thing up to eating too much. He doesn't mention it to Adam.

(And he’s very careful to never ask who that long-haired guy was.)

The reason this whole thing blindsides Kris is that Kris has never really been the jealous type. He’s always very honest and open in his relationships, always completely sure about the other person – that's how it should be; for him, there is no other way. But with Adam, there’s no relationship, not the kind you'd be jealous over anyway, so Kris doesn't connect what he's feeling with jealousy for a very long time.

Then – the mushroom sauce happens.

Kris’ apartment is modest, lacking in all the glamour and luxury of Adam’s house, but once a week at the very least, Adam shows up at his door – holding a bottle of wine, a DVD, a box of cupcakes... something small and stupid.

Tonight, it’s wild mushrooms.

Kris has pasta – he approves of food that doesn’t go bad – so they Google a recipe and set out to make a garlic mushroom sauce. Adam likes chopping things – he tends to leave the rest of the cooking to Kris and monopolize the chopping board – and with the pasta boiling away, Kris finds himself free to sit down, grab a glass of whatever pretentious wine Adam brought him God knows when, and watch Adam’s hands.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with watching someone chop wild mushrooms, Kris used to watch his mom back in the day as well, what’s bothersome is that when the timer goes off, Kris realizes he’s spent exactly twelve minutes contemplating who might have been touching Adam’s hands aside from him.

He tries to blink it away, but Adam’s hands are dripping tomato juice right now – Kris has apparently blanked through the mushrooms, the garlic, and the tomatoes – and Kris wants to touch them. He wants to feel them, and he wants to lick them clean, and he never ever wants anyone else to even see Adam’s hands like that. The tomato juice is theirs, just like the DVD nights are theirs, just like the hand-holding is theirs, just like—

Just like Adam is his.

“What’s wrong?” Adam says, a crease forming between his eyebrows. He’s clearly been calling Kris’ name for a while now. “Kris, what? You’re scaring me.”

Kris shakes his head. “Nothing. Nothing,” he says. Then he changes his mind. “Actually...”

He could swear that he wasn’t controlling his own hands as he watches them approach Adam’s, slowly but surely. He feels the tomato juice against his skin and the warmth of Adam beneath it, and runs his fingertips over the lines of Adam’s hands, committing them to memory. This should disturb him, freak him out, but it doesn’t. It feels right. It feels like it should have happened long ago.

“Kris?”

“Yes?”

“Can I have my hand back?” Adam says, chuckling nervously.

That’s what they’ve been doing, ever since the day they met. They’ve been downplaying the attraction, laughing away any hint of it turning into something more, but Kris is not sure why now. He knows why they started doing it, but he doesn’t understand why they still play along. Why settle for second best? Why let this get away?

“No,” he says, holding onto Adam’s hand. “You can’t.”

“Ooo-kay,” Adam says, pulling out the chair next to Kris’ and sitting down. “Gonna tell me what’s happening?”

Kris smiles. “I’m either having an epiphany or a nervous breakdown,” he says. “Haven’t decided which yet.”

Adam nods. “All right.” He scoots his chair closer. “Can I help?”

Kris looks at him; so close, always so close to Kris, the way his make-up is smeared under his eyes so familiar. There’s nothing to even think about here. It’ll upend Kris’ life completely, but it’s not like Kris would mind if anything breaks. He hasn’t even begun to put his life back together after Katy. Let the pieces break into even smaller ones this time; that’ll make it easier to build something new out of them later.

He remembers the day he asked Katy to marry him. He remembers how happy and nervous he’d been. He remembers exactly what it felt like, how Katy’s face looked. Now, as he feels the words leave his lips, he’s pretty sure his face looks nothing like that.

“I’ve been in love with you for a long time, haven’t I?”

Adam’s face falls; his eyes grow worried. “Kris, what—”

“I must have been,” Kris insists. “How I felt about you didn’t change. We got too close too fast and we were always together back then, I...” He tries to smile; he doesn’t understand why this conversation is so heavy. “It’s so different from me and Katy, but... I love you.”

Adam pulls his hand out of Kris’ grasp. “You’re lonely,” he says, looking away. “Don’t do this now.”

Kris chuckles. “No, I’m not. I have you. I always have you.”

Adam huffs. His shoulders are stiff; he looks ready to bolt.

If he does, Kris is definitely chasing him.

“I guess that was a mistake,” Adam says.

“Hey,” Kris warns him, “your bitchiness doesn’t work on me.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “This isn’t the time to make life-changing decisions.”

“But you see,” Kris says, leaning forward, “it’s exactly the time. I’m at a crossroads right now.” He places his hands on the table to symbolize the two roads he can follow. “I can either choose to do what’s expected, try to replicate what I’ve had, or I can go in the opposite direction. Towards something I want, and fuck the expectations.”

Kris is a little bit breathless already, from the possibilities more than anything else, and when Adam gets up with a scrape of his chair, his heart jumps up and lodges in his throat.

But Adam doesn’t go towards the door as Kris had feared. He walks to the stove instead and turns it off.

“Let’s say you are in love with me. It doesn’t mean a relationship between us would work.” He leans against the counter and crosses his arms. “You’re not gay, Kris.”

Kris throws his arms open. “How do you know that? I don’t know that!”

Adam sighs, raises an eyebrow. “Look, it’s not like a stupid Katy Perry song. It’s not—” He flails with one tomato juice covered hand. “—kissing a cute guy and experimenting. It’s about a dick in your ass, and trust me, that’s something straight guys usually have a problem with.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Kris says, “because that hadn’t occurred to me.”

“Kris...” Adam's shoulders drop and his face falls; he looks tired and unhappy. “What do you want from me?”

Kris gets up and faceplants into Adam’s chest. “Now I just wanna hug,” he mumbles.

He feels Adam’s chest go up and down with a heaving sigh. “You can have as many hugs as you want,” Adam says, wrapping his arms around Kris.

Kris snuggles in.

~

It’s so comfortable.

Kris’ brain just won’t stop pointing out how they fit together so well. It draws parallels with Katy, with Kris’ other girlfriends – with his friends even, the ones who had fit with him just fine, but never made him want more.

It makes a very convincing argument.

“Look,” Kris says, “I’m not gonna lie and say I’m all okay with the sex – I mean, your dick is kind of scary, man—”

Adam snorts, nose buried in Kris’ hair.

“—but come on, you know this isn’t nothing. Don’t you wanna know? Aren’t you even curious?”

“I’m not going to be your mistake,” Adam says.

“Okay, wait.” Kris braces his hands on Adam’s chest and pushes himself back. “So we both agree that we’d make a great couple.”

Adam makes an ‘I’m humoring you’ face and nods.

“All right. How about you give me one kiss? You can call it a friendly kiss – you kiss your friends; I’ve seen you kiss your friends – and if it doesn’t work, then we can stay as best friends with too much chemistry. Would that be okay?”

For a moment, it looks like Adam’s going to shake his head, but then his expression turns determined and he nods. “Okay.”

Kris’ whole body trembles with excitement – and possibly fear, but he’s ignoring that. “Okay,” he says, licks his lips, and rises up on his toes.

Adam meets him halfway.

~

There are no words in the English language to describe what it’s like to kiss Adam Lambert. At least none that Kris knows.

Kris feels confident in saying that he has never before in his life been kissed like this.

Like Adam is sucking the life out of him and giving it back in an electrifying loop.

Like he’s being melted and molded and reshaped to fit better – fit perfectly – against Adam’s lips.

Like it’s something out of a fairytale, with true love and happily ever after, blue birds flying over their heads – except definitely not rated PG, not if Kris has anything to say about it.

When Adam draws back, breathless, Kris feels wobbly on his feet. “Is it always like this?” he asks, feeling slow and drunk. Has he been kissing wrong all this time or what?

Adam groans and captures Kris’ lips again.

~

“Holy fuck,” Adam says some twenty minutes later. By then, Kris’ shirt is half off, and his jeans are undone – which is a good thing, because he’s so hard, it’s starting to hurt.

“I think that went well,” Kris comments, holding onto the counter with one hand, clutching at Adam’s arm with the other.

Adam glares at him. “If you freak out about my dick, I’m going to kill you.”

Kris swallows hard, nods. “You just keep kissing me and we’ll be fine.”

Adam growls at him as he gets down on his knees and licks Kris’ stomach.

“Or that,” Kris says. “That also works.”

~

Fifteen minutes – or possibly a couple of months – later, Kris is lying naked on the couch, olive oil seeping from places he never thought he’d have olive oil in, Adam’s come mixed with his own cooling on his stomach, and every muscle, including the ones he never knew existed, twitching.

“It was an epiphany,” he tells Adam.

Adam sighs. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t,” Kris says. “You love me. You love cooking with me, you love hanging out with me, you love kissing me, and you love having sex with me. Admit it, you want to be my boyfriend. You even want to adopt my dog.”

Adam bites Kris’ arm, warning.

Kris smiles wide enough for it to be disturbing. “And my parents love you. It’s so perfect.”

“Just so you know,” Adam says, “I’m reconsidering this whole thing right now.”

Kris lets the smile retreat to its natural proportions. “But seriously, just tell me—this is good, right? It’s not just me? Because I thought it was—”

Adam silences him with a kiss.

“It’s good,” he says. “It’s amazing. And I do love you. Now shut up and let me enjoy this, okay?”

Kris buries his face in Adam’s neck to hide his manic grin and says, “Okay.”

Adam laces their fingers together, and they sleep.

The End

December 6th, 2010