Waiting For This Moment

aka the elevator fic

“I knew they were going to pull something like this. I knew it,” Adam says tiredly as soon as the shiny mahogany door of Arthur’s office closes behind the two of them.

Kris just sighs and picks up Adam’s suitcase. Having come here straight from the airport, they are both way too exhausted to get properly angry, and in any case, they both know any anger on their part would be completely useless. The suits will get what they want one way or another.

It’s not like they care that Adam (and Kris) has been living on a bus for three months now. They don’t know that Adam had to use three times the normal amount of concealer this morning to cover up the dark shadows under his eyes, or that he’s had a grand total of four hours of sleep the night before. Kris could tell them, but then again, he’s too tired to.

“It’ll be okay. Let’s just go home. You need to sleep.”

They stop in front of the elevator doors and Adam takes the suitcase from Kris’ hand, giving him a disapproving look. Kris rolls his eyes. Adam’s sense of chivalry is awesome and all, but it’s in Kris’ job description to carry Adam’s stuff around for him. He may be smaller than Adam, but that doesn’t mean he can’t handle one small suitcase—with wheels.

The doors open with a cheerful chime, drawing an almost pained sound from Adam. He has been squinting his eyes for hours; Kris knows he must have one hell of a headache by now. But short of stopping to give him an impromptu head massage (which also happens to be in his job description) Kris doesn’t have a solution for it. They’ll be home soon enough. A couple of hours in his own bed, and Adam will be good as new.

The lights in the elevator are way too bright and the mirrored walls are not helping at all. Kris watches the numbers change on the screen, counting down from 20, and wishes the car would go down faster… 19, 18, 17… until they stop with a jerk and the lights blink out, leaving them in total darkness. Adam lets out an incredulous sounding gasp and bumps into the back wall with a soft thud; in what Kris knows must have been a completely irrational attempt to escape from the little box of death—as Adam fondly calls all elevator cars.

Kris takes a deep breath and tells himself that it won’t help if he starts screaming in rage. The lights will be back on soon. Surely, there’s a backup generator or something. It’ll kick in. Any second now. Because there must be a limit to the number of things that can go wrong in one day, and he’s pretty sure they hit that at around 9 AM this morning.

~

Kris takes out his phone and uses its backlight to look at Adam. All he can see is a silhouette in the corner, but you don’t spend a year as Adam Lambert’s personal assistant and not learn to read his moods from his posture. Kris is pretty sure Adam is as close to throwing up as he was the time he tried drinking beer with a Malibu Rum chaser. Puke is just what this day needs—like it didn’t stink enough already.

“Adam, you okay?” Kris holds the phone closer to Adam’s face. Rapid breathing, clenched jaw, but no throwing up yet. That’s good.

“Fine,” Adam says, lying through his tightly clenched teeth.

“We’re gonna be okay. You just keep on breathing. I’m going to call Arthur.”

Adam makes a vaguely positive humming sound in his throat. Kris dials Arthur’s number, taking his anger out on the buttons of his phone. He is sick of these goddamn suits with their goddamn bullshit parties and their goddamn offices with their goddamn elevators—

“Hey. Is Arthur there?”

~

Having talked to Arthur’s assistant, his bodyguard, and a guy called Jerry from building security, Kris thinks it sounds like no one knows what the hell is going on, and there’s a good chance that he and Adam will be stuck in that elevator for a long, long time. Of course, he doesn’t tell that to Adam. Kris has been building his career on the little white lies he tells to and for Adam; he’s not about to stop at a time like this.

“They say the power will be back on soon,” he says calmly. “They’re working on it.”

Adam doesn’t reply, just keeps on wheezing, his breaths coming quicker with every passing second.

“You’re supposed to do it like—remember how Diane used to do it?”

“I’m not pregnant,” Adam bites out.

Kris can see nothing more than a vague shape in the dark, but he’s pretty sure Adam is glaring in his general direction. “Well, obviously not. I was just trying to help.”

Adam breathes, in and out. “Stop helping,” he snaps.

Kris rolls his eyes and leans back against the mirror to wait. He considers sitting down on the floor, but then decides against it. He may have to hold Adam’s hair back in a minute if he does end up getting sick.

“What are you going to wear tonight?” he asks Adam, keeping his voice carefully even. If there’s one thing that can get Adam’s mind off the current situation, it’s fashion.

The wheezing stops for a moment. “What?”

“Clothes,” Kris clarifies. “For the party you’ve been blackmailed into attending.”

“Oh,” Adam says, shuffling his feet. “I don’t know. Is it formal?” He doesn’t even pause before answering his own question. “It’s Arthur’s party, of course it’s formal. I probably have a suit I can wear.”

“You can wear the new Zegna,” Kris muses.

Adam makes a mmm sound, tapping his foot on the floor nervously. “With the green vest maybe.”

Kris shrugs. “You need a date?”

“God, no,” Adam says. “I’m just going to go, be seen by whoever the hell Arthur wants me to be seen by, and then I’m going back home to my bed. I don’t have the patience to deal with anything else.”

Kris doesn’t like the thought of Adam alone at a time like this. He’s going to be tired, and pissed, and in a room full of sharks. And if Kris knows Arthur, there’ll be about a million cameras on the way in and out. “I could call Steven?”

“Nah,” Adam says with a yawn. “Don’t bother him for something like this.”

“I’m sure—”

A hollow knocking sound comes from above them and Adam jumps with a soft gasp. Kris puts a hand on his arm instinctively and stands up straight to listen. “Hello?” he yells towards the door. “Anybody there?”

Kris waits, feeling Adam’s body rock with the tapping of his foot. No one answers.

“Damn.”

“I’m not climbing out,” Adam says in a hurry.

“What?” Kris turns to face him—not that he can see much.

Adam is shaking his head furiously. “If we’re between floors—I’m not climbing out.”

“Of course you’re not climbing out, are you crazy?”

“Oh.” The tapping slows down. “That—that’s good.”

Kris has been working for Adam for almost a year now. He lives with him, eats with him, breathes in sync with him; so he can say with confidence that aside from Adam’s family, he’s the one person who knows him the best.

Adam is full of contradictions. He’s very bright and intuitive about the things he cares about, and a complete dumbass about stuff he doesn’t. He’s levelheaded and good-natured, but he’s also prone to moments of complete irrationality. Kris has had to talk him down from his craziness many times before, so he knows how to handle him by now—though Adam would deny that claim if he ever heard Kris say it out loud—and the best way to get Adam under control is by getting in his personal space and giving him another presence to ground himself with.

It’s about respect and trust, Kris muses as he steps around the suitcase to get closer to Adam. As surprising as it is, those things go both ways between the two of them. Adam trusts Kris, and more importantly, he believes in Kris. All Kris has to do is make Adam focus long enough to listen and really hear what Kris is telling him.

Adam is wearing a leather jacket, it’s thick, with not much give, and Kris needs some kind of contact, so he slides his hand down Adam’s arm to his wrist and holds it in a firm grip. It would have helped if he could hold Adam’s gaze as well, but that’s obviously not happening in this case, so instead Kris settles for aligning their bodies closer together.

“Adam. Calm down.”

Adam nods.

“You’re fine here. We’re fine. We’re going to wait until the power comes back on, and then we’re going to get out.”

“Okay,” Adam says, his voice still coming out breathless.

“And no one’s going to be climbing anywhere.”

“Oka—”

There’s a sound like a distant explosion, and the car jerks up and down, as if it’s not sure which way to go. The lights flicker a couple of times, and Kris prays for them to stay on—come on, please, please—but of course they go out, and it’s back to the quiet darkness once again.

Adam whimpers.

Kris stops inwardly praying and cursing, and comes back to the moment to find Adam’s hands holding onto his arms, tight enough to hurt. Adam is strong—Kris would know, he spots for Adam when he works out—and his hands feel like iron bands around Kris’ biceps.

“Adam?” Kris says, keeping his voice low so as not to spook him any further.

“I hate elevators,” Adam says, sounding slightly hysterical. “They’re cramped and dangerous and—and—”

“Hey,” Kris says, closing the last half inch between the two of them and leaning his body against Adam’s. Adam is warm and comfortable as always, but right now, he also feels tense and twitchy. “Don’t think of that. Think of calming things. Wide open spaces. The ocean. Waves.”

“Waves aren’t calming,” Adam says, annoyed.

“Whatever.” Kris rolls his eyes. “Take a long, deep breath and think about whatever it is that calms you down.”

Adam does as Kris tells him—if only he was half as complying with Kris’ requests when he wasn’t panicked out of his mind—and his hands loosen their hold slowly.

“Good. Good. You’re doing—” Adam’s hands travel up Kris’ shoulders, brush the sides of his neck, and settle on his cheeks. “—good,” Kris finishes in a nasal voice, Adam’s hands squeezing his face.

“Calm,” Adam says, leaning his forehead against Kris’.

“Yeah,” Kris whispers inanely.

“Arizona,” Adam tells him decisively. “Remember that night—the stars, the breeze…”

Kris does remember. It was two months ago. Adam had a concert, a great crowd, and afterwards he was so high from the show, he couldn’t sleep. He woke Kris up at three in the morning and they had a picnic under the stars with the combined contents of their mini-bars. They ate a lot of peanuts.

“Yes, it was,” Kris agrees. He can almost feel the grass they laid on, and see the shooting stars Adam never quite managed to look up in time to catch.

“I’m in Arizona,” Adam whispers. His breath smells like the cucumbers he had on the plane. He leans down, closer, too close, and tilts his head a little to the side when their noses brush. “We’re in Arizona.”

Kris wants to say something, anything, but he’s afraid of what his lips will touch if he opens them now. Adam’s fingers are splayed out on his cheeks, fingertips brushing his ears, and one of Adam's thumbs is resting at the corner of his mouth. This was not exactly what Kris had in mind when he first touched Adam to calm him down.

“Stars,” Kris hears Adam mumble as he closes the distance between their mouths, sealing their lips in a dry and innocent kiss. Kris stops breathing completely at the touch—his heart is doing a drum roll in his chest to get his attention—and can’t draw in any more air until Adam pulls back. He manages a stuttering breath then, but Adam doesn’t go far enough to let him get reacquainted with oxygen. He nuzzles Kris’ cheek, whispers what sounds like, “yes,”—but Kris must be wrong about that one; he cannot, will not, let himself fall into that kind of delusion—and locks their lips together once again.

This second one is a real kiss, there's no denying that. It’s everything Kris thought kissing a guy—oh, who is he kidding?—kissing Adam would be like. Adam’s lips are sure and strong, no trace of the fear left, and he kisses Kris the way he sings Kris’ favorite songs. Kris hears the opening notes of Blackbird in Adam’s kiss, then Adam’s hands tighten, pulling him in closer, and it turns into Bohemian Rhapsody, and when Adam bites Kris’ bottom lip, making desperate little noises into his mouth, Kris’ heart starts thumping to the rhythm of Paint It Black.

Kris honestly doesn’t know if he would have pulled back from that kiss at all if it wasn’t for the whirring sound. He automatically takes a step back when the lights come on and the car starts moving down again. Adam keeps standing right where he is, but Kris can’t bring himself to look up to gauge Adam's reaction. He keeps his eyes firmly fixed on the ugly, red and green checkered carpeting, and refuses to look anywhere else until the doors open with the stupid, cheerful chime.

Grabbing Adam’s suitcase doesn’t require thought, and stepping out of the elevator is a relief. Kris stops two steps out, waits for Adam to catch up—now he wants to stay in the elevator?—and sighs when Adam reaches for the handle of the suitcase. He lets go, of course, there’s no use fighting Adam on this, but Adam’s fingers wrap around Kris’ hand instead of taking ahold of the grey and gold suitcase. And when Kris doesn’t react—he can’t, the part of his brain that reacts to strange happenings must have short-circuited with the elevator—Adam tugs at his hand impatiently and pulls him back in through the still open doors of the elevator.

The doors close behind them and Adam hits the stop button. Kris finds himself thinking that maybe it was Adam’s brain that short-circuited.

“Kris,” Adam says—packing more than Kris would’ve thought possible into a name. He takes Kris’ chin in his hand carefully—like Kris is made out of glass—and tilts his face up. Kris has nowhere to look but into Adam’s eyes; they are wide-open and shine a brilliant blue under the harsh fluorescent lights. “May I?”

Kris blinks repeatedly in an effort to clear his mind.

Adam stepped into the elevator. Again. To kiss Kris. Again. And he’s asking nicely now, as if he wasn’t the one who grabbed Kris and landed one on him just five minutes ago.

“You calm me down,” Adam says when Kris doesn’t answer.

“What?”

“You’re the thought that calms me down, not the stupid waves.”

Okay, Kris thinks, but his voice refuses to cooperate.

“But you also drive me mad,” Adam continues. “You—you make me want—”

Taking in the look in Adam’s eyes, the nervous set of his mouth, the clenched fists, Kris thinks, yes. Adam makes him want, too. He smiles, letting relief wash over him. Adam has been making him want for some time now—for almost a year, actually, but who’s counting?

Adam’s responding grin is breathtaking.

“May I?” Kris asks, letting one of his hands caress Adam’s cheek and make its way up into Adam’s hair. It’s getting longer, he thinks, carding his fingers through the locks of thick, black hair. They’ll have to do something about that.

Adam nods.

Kris pushes himself up on his toes to meet Adam’s lips. The kiss does nothing at all to calm them down.

The End

November 19th, 2009