Hold

aka the fluffy prison au

Kris watches in awe as the sea of orange magically parts to let Lambert through. No one touches him, not even by accident, though they clearly feel no such compunction with Kris. After the third elbow he takes to the ribs, Kris quickens his steps and stops trying to pull free of Lambert’s grip on his wrist.

“You can have the bottom bunk,” Lambert says, pushing Kris unceremoniously into the cell. Then he smirks. “I like the top.”

“Uh.” Kris can only stare, mouth agape, at the picture the guy makes leaning against the bars. He’s . . . not what Kris would have expected from a cellmate, that’s for sure. His jumpsuit is open and pushed down around his hips, sleeves torn off from the looks of it, and Kris doesn’t think that took a lot of effort, judging by the biceps bulging out of Lambert’s wifebeater; he could probably tear someone’s arms off along with the sleeves.

He’s big, and strong, and even sort of scary—that part meets Kris’ expectations to a T; what throws him off are the boots.

“Are those . . . rhinestones?”

Lambert looks down at his boots and wiggles his feet. “Why, yes,” he says jovially. “You like them?”

“Oh. Um.” Kris wonders which answer would earn him a punch: yes or no? He has no frickin’ clue, so he goes with honesty and hopes for the best. “They’re nice. Different.”

Lambert beams at him, teeth pearly white. “I made them myself.”

~

Kris takes three days to gather his courage to ask, over the course of which he lets Adam push him around during the day and cuddle him at night.

“So. How come they leave you alone?”

“’Cause I’m scary,” Adam says, grinning around a bite of apple.

Kris rolls his eyes at him, careful to hide his face from the crowd. “You have rhinestones on your boots. You swish your hips when you walk—”

“Kristopher!” Adam says, delighted. “You’ve been checking me out!”

“I have not—”

“Oh, yes you have. You said it. You can’t take it back.”

Kris opens his mouth—but he honestly has no words. Adam’s eyes—so damn blue—are dancing with childish glee, and Kris’ gaze is caught by the way he’s licking the apple juice from his fingers—

But how . . . how doesn’t he get his ass kicked—or worse—in here?

“Magic,” Adam says, narrowing his eyes mysteriously at Kris, and making the apple core in his hand disappear—by throwing it over his shoulder to land in a bald guy’s lap.

The guy gets up, apple crushed menacingly in one hand, looks around the room, and then . . . sits back down without a word when Adam waves at him.

Adam makes a ‘ta da!’ gesture with his hands. “Like I said. Magic.”

~

Kris can’t lie; Adam Lambert is the best thing to happen to him since he heard that little girl’s voice calling for help. And it really shouldn’t surprise him that when something good finally happens, it comes in such an unexpected package. The world is completely upside down as it is. Why should this work any differently?

Two weeks in, Kris starts to believe that he just might survive this. Two months later, he’s almost comfortable.

“Cookie?” Adam says, holding a box out to him.

Kris peers inside. There really are cookies. Chocolate chip. His favorite. “Who the hell made these?”

“Your mom,” Adam says with a full mouth, sticking the box under Kris’ bed.

Kris stares at him, taken aback. Your mom jokes, while they suit the rest of the population in here perfectly, aren’t really Adam’s thing.

Adam swallows his cookie and takes a large bite from the one in Kris’ hand. “No, seriously,” he says. “Your mom sent them.”

And that’s how Kris finds out about the letters.

~

“So what?” Kris whispers, pacing the length of the cell. “She thinks you’re my—She thinks—”

“Kristopher,” Adam says calmly. “Sit down.”

“I’m not sitting down,” Kris whispers at him furiously. “You’ve been talking to my mother behind my back, telling her God knows what—And now she thinks—!”

Adam glares at him, crossing his arms over his chest. “She thinks—No, she knows that there’s someone in here taking care of you.”

“Taking care of me?” Kris spits out. “No one asked you to take care of me.” He points a finger at Adam, almost poking him in the eye. Adam doesn’t even flinch. “No one asked you to. I didn’t. Just like I didn’t ask you to talk to my goddamn mom!”

For a couple of minutes, Adam doesn’t say a word or move a muscle. The only sound in the cell is Kris’ breathing, heavy and labored.

“Fine,” Adam says finally, completely expressionless. “You’re right. You didn’t ask me to keep the thugs away, that was all me. And you never asked me to pretend-fuck you either. I guess that’s just how I get my kicks, huh?” He takes his boots off jerkily and throws them down, getting under the covers. “I won’t talk to your mom anymore, don’t worry.” He turns his back on Kris and pulls the covers over his head.

Kris paces for another three hours.

~

Adam stops talking to him cold turkey, just like that. At first, Kris is glad, because he’s too angry to speak anyway. But then two days pass, and Kris realizes that Adam was the only person to ever talk to him in here, and now that he doesn’t, it’s suddenly awfully quiet.

Not that that’s enough reason to cave. Kris is stubborn like a bull.

By the fourth day, though, others start noticing it as well. The leering gets worse, and once they see Adam isn’t pulling him around by the wrist anymore, everyone starts running into him, brushing against him, accidentally and not-so-accidentally grabbing him.

Kris holds his head up high and works out even more—though he knows it won’t make one bit of difference when the guys are twice his size and walk around in herds. It makes him feel better anyway. And time spent working out is time away from Adam, which is just awesome.

A week into the silent treatment, someone finally makes a move, and as Kris had predicted, they come as a herd. They pull him into the kitchen, which is miraculously empty, and one of them grabs Kris’ arms from behind as another grabs his hair to make him look up. The largest one—the ugliest, really—lands a solid blow to Kris’ stomach.

Kris gasps and tries to double over, but the other two keep him upright, and with no air left in his lungs, he finds that he can’t even cry out.

“Now, Krista,” the ugly one says with a sneer. “This is lesson number one—”

“I don’t think so,” someone says evenly.

Everyone looks up towards the door, and Kris squints through the haze of pain. It’s Adam, of course; Kris knew it would be. He feels elated and angry and nauseated all at once.

“Thought you weren’t interested, Lambert,” the mountainous, tattooed, ugly one says. Even his voice is ugly. He makes Kris’ stomach churn—or maybe that’s the punch?

“Touch him again,” Adam says pleasantly. “And we’ll see how I feel on the subject.”

The hands holding Kris up disappear suddenly, and Kris crumples to the floor. He lets out a grunt when his knee twists under him; his organs seem to shuffle a bit inside. But then the cool floor is against his skin, and it’s nice, really. Like a cold compress, it takes a bit of the pain away.

Kris doesn’t hear the guys leave, but they must have, because when Adam speaks again, his voice is completely different from the psychopath imitation he was doing a minute ago.

“Goddammit, Kris,” he says under his breath and wraps an arm around Kris’ waist. “Get up.”

Kris groans. “No.”

“Yes,” Adam says and drags him to his feet.

Kris passes out.

~

That night after lights out, Kris lies completely still in his bunk and tries to find something to say.

He’s not going to thank Adam. He won’t. For one thing, he’d rather pretend that he isn’t beginning to understand why everyone calls Adam a psycho bitch. He honestly doesn’t want to know whether the ice-cold glint of madness in Adam’s eyes had been an act or not. He just wants to ignore it and go back to thinking of Adam as a maddening and inexplicable anomaly.

And for another, he’s still pissed at Adam—his stupid boots and his stupid hair and his stupid goddamn savior complex.

“We’re doing this my way,” he hears Adam say, his voice scratchy.

“Your way?”

“Yes,” Adam says. The upper bunk creaks and his head comes into view over the side, upside-down. His hair, dry and sort of fluffy, falls messily around his face. “My way has less bleeding.”

“There was no bleeding!”

“Internal bleeding totally counts,” Adam says darkly. He disappears from Kris’ line of sight, and Kris hears him huff and punch his pillow irritably.

“You can’t just—” Kris tries to get up—because this childish act is really pissing him off, dammit—but his gut reminds him that hello, it did just get bruised all to hell. He gasps, falls back down, and feels all blood rush to his stomach, burning like flames licking his skin. “Fuck,” he says with feeling.

When he next opens his eyes, Adam is perched on the side of his bed, glaring at him.

“What?” Kris asks. It doesn’t come out daring like he means it to—it’s more whiny and breathless instead.

Adam doesn’t say anything. He just lifts the hem of Kris’ t-shirt carefully to reveal his stomach. Kris peers down. There’s not enough light to see the colors, but the bruising does seem extensive. He shivers when Adam’s finger traces the edges and tries not to tense up under his touch.

“I don’t care,” Adam says, softly, almost as if he’s speaking to himself—or possibly to Kris’ stomach. Then he raises his head, and his voice grows firmer. “I don’t care. I don’t care if your ego can’t take it; I don’t care if you don’t want your mother to know. I. Don’t. Care.”

Kris looks at him, really looks at him, and . . . Adam’s face doesn’t seem to agree with his words.

“If I have to spread you out and fuck you during lunch to keep you in one piece, then I’m gonna do it,” Adam threatens. “And you’re going to shut up and take it.” His fingers wrap around Kris’ wrist and squeeze. “I don’t care if that offends your sensibilities or whatever.”

“I don’t want—”

Adam puts a hand over Kris’ lips and halts him mid-sentence. “I don’t give a fuck about what you want.”

Kris pulls Adam’s hand away from his lips and twines their fingers together, which, he realizes, is something he has missed doing these last couple of days, since Adam stopped talking to him and started using his own bed at night. He missed the cuddling, the warmth of Adam along his back; he missed the way Adam smells, like hair gel and mint, and he missed the smiles, the silly ones, and the flirty ones, and definitely the fond ones—the ones that say Adam finds him cute and a little bit annoying.

“Yes, you do,” he tells Adam. They both know that. Adam cares about what Kris wants—a worrying amount, really. So much that sometimes Kris doesn’t know what to do with it.

“Not when you’re trying to get yourself killed,” Adam admits. Then the lines of his face soften, and he pleads, “Think of this place as—like, a reality show. You’re just going to have to pretend, to make it through. Just act. You can do that.”

“I’m not a good actor.”

Adam rolls his eyes, his thumb absently caressing the backs of Kris’ fingers. “I can act well enough for the both of us. I just need you to not do anything stupid. If you can manage it.” He smiles at Kris, trying to diffuse the tension, but Kris has another idea.

It’s probably a bad idea, but his last good idea had led him to prison, so he’s willing to try something different now.

He wraps a hand around Adam’s neck and tugs him down. The move doesn’t go as smoothly as he’d hoped; Adam gives him a weird look the whole way down, and then their lips don’t line up quite right. But Kris pushes on, determined to get it right, and after a couple of false starts, it finally works.

Adam’s tongue greets Kris’ like it’s been waiting for this moment a long time, and when they touch, Adam releases a long, drawn out moan—a moan that travels all the way down to Kris’ toes and tickles the soles of his feet.

Thanks to Kris’ screaming muscles, breathing becomes a problem sooner than expected, and Adam pulls back slightly, giving Kris room to pant against his lips. But then he makes a soft keening sound and is back in seconds stealing another kiss—and another, and another, and another.

“Really?” he asks finally, giving Kris a huge grin. “Like, seriously?”

Kris nods and shrugs, a little embarrassed at Adam’s enthusiasm. He’s suddenly thankful for the lack of proper lighting in the cell. Adam is practically vibrating, as if he can’t quite contain his excitement, and the sight of that makes something in Kris’ chest swell. Uncomfortably. Ridiculously.

Adam moves over him carefully, lying down between him and the wall, and Kris babbles at him, trying to school his features into something other than stupidly charmed. “This doesn’t mean you win. There will be no fucking of any kind at lunch. Don’t even think about it.”

Adam presses his face into Kris’ neck and hums against his skin.

“I mean it,” Kris says.

Adam kisses the back of his ear.

“Okay,” Kris says weakly, deciding to take that as agreement.

They lie in the dark, holding hands.

~

Three days later, the ugly guy breaks his leg in a freak work-out accident. Kris doesn’t ask.

A week later, Kris wakes up to find his sneakers decorated with a bunch of rhinestones.

Adam grins all day.

Kris doesn’t ask about that one either.

The End

June 30th, 2010