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The one where Blake does not have Miranda
Adam takes a deep breath to steady his nerves. Beside him, Behati squeezes his hand, seemingly in reassurance and comfort. To Adam, it feels like she's lending him the strength he can't find within himself.
"I shouldn't be here," he blurts out as he turns to his wife in a sudden, unreasonable bout of panic. "I don't even know what I'm doing here!"
Behati only smiles serenely as she leans forward and touches her forehead to his, her hands tenderly grasping his face to still him. Adam closes his eyes and matches his breathing in time with hers, and he marvels, not for the first time, at her power over him, at how she can calm his rattled nerves with just her mere presence.
He feels her hands travel slowly downward to rest at his shoulders, and he opens his eyes to find her locking his gaze to hers. She can ignite the fire in his blood with just a heated look, and he'll be set ablaze within seconds, burning through her body like a forest fire, scalding her skin with hands and lips and teeth and tongue; but she can also temper the madness in his soul, silencing the growl of the monsters in his mind until they are nothing but dying embers in the wake of her touch.
And right now, he's grateful to her more than ever as he clings, his hands gripping her waist tightly like she is some kind of anchor, for he truly feels like he might go under if he lets go, because the voices are whispering again, telling him how he isn't good enough to do this, how he will never be enough for him—
"He needs you," her voice cuts through the waves threatening to drown him, and just like that, the voices fall silent.
"What can I do?" Adam asks quietly, helplessly.
Behati kisses him then, softly, tenderly. "That's why you're here," she says against his lips as she pulls back. "He needs you."
She steps back carefully and he swallows back a needy whine, because he really doesn't feel strong enough for this, but Behati's eyes clearly compel him that he is.
That he should be.
Adam nods, and Behati smiles. "I'll be waiting for you back at the hotel," she reassures him with a final, lingering caress on his arm. Then she turns around and walks back towards the car they had parked uphill, and even though it makes him feel strangely off-kilter without her by his side, Adam understands.
Behati knows that if she doesn't leave now, Adam will lose the last threads of courage he borrowed from her for him to do this.
He waits until his wife has climbed in and the engine of the car has revved up, and he watches closely until it has driven out of the gate safely.
Squaring his shoulders, with the leaves crunching under his feet, Adam walks down a path that's all-too-familiar to him by now, and he hates it.
He hates it with every fiber of his being.
It doesn't take long to find him. Tall, silent, and still, he can easily be mistaken for one of the stone sentinels standing guard all around them, and Adam's chest tightens at the haunting, devastating image before him.
Adam has never been a believer in religion, but this firmly convinces him that a God doesn't exist—no matter how many songs he has actually written about it—because Adam is sure that no benevolent, omnipotent, transcendent Divine Being will ever allow a good man like Blake Shelton to suffer like this.
Adam stops several feet away, hesitating. He wonders how long Blake has been standing there, and won't be surprised if he has been there since morning. Probably since the crack of dawn, because Adam doubts that Blake has been able to sleep at all. Adam knows him well enough to know that he never gets to sleep on this day every year, no matter how much alcohol he downs to try and forget.
Adam swallows. He can't even chastise Blake for his drinking problem without sounding like a hypocrite, not when he has so many vices of his own, vices that Behati has learned to accept instead of fight, in the same way that she has accepted—and cherished—every part of him, monsters and all.
Still... Adam wishes Blake has someone like that, for him.
Sensing that he is no longer alone, Blake turns his head and sees Adam, whose breath hitches a little in being caught watching. Surprise, confusion, and curiosity mingle and dance in those blue eyes, but otherwise there's no untoward reaction from Blake, so Adam shuffles forward, his hand scratching the back of his head bashfully. He opens his mouth, ready to come up with an offhand excuse as to why he's here, when Blake beats him to it.
"You've been here before."
Adam blinks. Blake motions to the bouquet of white lilies laid on the stone in front of them. "That's not from me," Blake says knowingly, "And anyone from our family would've left a letter along with it. It's kind of a tradition, writing to him."
He then looks at Adam, a small smile spreading across his features like the first ray of sunlight in the morning. "And even though this area is very secluded and private, you didn't get lost on your way here, so you seem to know exactly where you're headed... because you've been here before."
Adam can only nod mutely in affirmation. Blake never visits any time other than this day—the day of the car accident, so many years ago. The reminder of the tragedy is difficult enough for him to bear more often than once a year.
(Blake told him once that he suspects he will never, ever get over losing his brother, and Adam didn't deny the truth of it. They never talked about it again.)
And so for some reason that even he himself can't fathom, Adam takes it upon himself to visit on the days Blake doesn't. He may not be a believer in God, but oddly enough he's a believer in souls, because he's a singer, too, and he knows that the music comes from somewhere inside him, beyond his physical body—
And he knows, with a strange sense of certainty, that Blake isn't the only soul missing the presence of a brother.
"Thank you," Blake says softly, "For keeping Richie company."
Blake isn't looking at him, seemingly lost in his own thoughts, fingers reverently running over the soft, white petals, and it is this heartrending sight that suddenly makes Adam wish, more than anything in the world, that he is someone different, someone better, someone strong enough who can take Blake's grief from him and sing it for him instead.
But an angel like that doesn't exist in this lifetime.
Adam is flawed in every way a human being can be, but of the many things he has done wrong in his life, he is determined to do one thing right.
He may not be able to take Blake's grief from him, but he can make sure Blake is never alone when it gets too much.
And that's exactly what Adam does, today... and every year hereafter.
He still visits on the days Blake doesn't. But on the days Blake does, Adam is right there with him.
And Adam finds that on this day each year, the monsters in his head are silent.
The one where Adam does not have Behati
"What are you writing there, rock star?"
Adam nearly launches himself out of the couch at the unexpected sound of Blake's voice above and behind him.
"DUDE!" Adam yells as he quickly snaps his notebook close, "Ever heard of privacy, man? Jesus!" He tips his head back and glares up at the towering man looking down at him, and he tries to channel the righteous indignation he's feeling through his eyes. To his great annoyance, Blake looks unperturbed, and merely amused.
"It's not like I read over your shoulder or anything," Blake shrugs as he saunters around the couch in the coaches' common room and plops himself on the other side. "Besides," he points out with a smirk, "That's why I'm respecting your privacy by asking."
Blake raises his eyebrows, expectant, and Adam sighs, resigning himself to the fact that he won't be able to write in private now. Blake is the human equivalent of an oversized, overaged, overexcited puppy who seems naturally intent on following him around—and of course, like the natural reaction to an actual puppy, Adam finds that he can't shake him off.
And that he doesn't really want to.
"It's nothing," Adam mumbles as he opens his notebook.
Nothing like what you and Miranda have, is what he doesn't say.
Meeting Miranda in person for the first time earlier that day had thrown all his expectations about her out the window—because admittedly, like everyone else, he had been a little terrified of her. Yet as soon as she had seen him backstage, he barely had time to think of a decent opening line when he found himself being swept into her arms.
"There's the sexiest man alive," crooned a feminine, Southern drawl by his ear, the lilting tone equal parts friendly and impish, and Adam had laughed as he returned the embrace. He held her for a few seconds, burying his face in her hair and inhaling her subtle perfume that smelled equally sweet and spicy.
"Shouldn't you be saying that to your husband?" Adam had teased as he stepped back from her.
Miranda had looked at him as if he had sprouted another head. "No," she deadpanned.
Behind her, Blake had let out a booming laughter that seemed to shake the entire set. Adam had looked over at him in fond amusement before his gaze flickered back down to Miranda when she gently laid a hand on his cheek.
"You're special, rock star," she had softly said, inadvertently using Blake's same nickname for him, her dimpled smile endearingly mirroring her husband's, and Adam had felt his heart swell with affection for them both.
The warmth in his chest had merely blossomed when husband and wife took to the stage to perform a stripped down version of the song they had written together. A hypnotic hush had fallen over the studio as soon as Blake started strumming his guitar and Miranda began singing, her subdued voice powerfully overtaking the entire room. No one could take their eyes off them. Adam suspected no one could even breathe.
To the rest of the world, Miranda had been singing for their hometown, Oklahoma, which was devastated by the tornado.
But Adam had known better.
Adam had looked on as, before his eyes, all of Blake's masks had fallen away and his gaze had clung to his wife, his eyes shining with such fresh, raw pain that had physically hurt Adam to watch...
And Adam had known the truth.
Miranda had been singing for Blake.
And as his throat suddenly constricted with an emotion he couldn't quite name, Adam had watched as husband and wife put their hearts on the stage and thought...
This. This is what love looks like.
He hadn't expected the crippling despair that came over him out of nowhere. Because as he watched Blake and Miranda be simultaneously strong and vulnerable for each other up on that stage, selflessly lending each other the courage and support they needed, Adam had suddenly known for certain that he wasn't meant for a love like that.
Because he doesn't love like that.
And if he is being brutally honest with himself, he doubts that anyone is capable of being loved by him.
"Adam."
He is wrenched out of his own spiraling thoughts as Blake's voice pulls him back to the present. Adam blinks as his gaze refocuses on the man in front of him. The playfulness has dropped from Blake's countenance, his gaze turning thoughtful and serious, and oh how Adam hates it when Blake gets like that.
Because he can never, ever hide from Blake.
"Adam," he repeats quietly, "What's wrong?"
And Adam realizes... he doesn't really want to.
Wordlessly, he passes the notebook on to Blake. With furrowed brows and a questioning tilt of his head, Blake takes it and skims over the lines written on it... and his eyes widen.
Adam squares his shoulders and steels himself for Blake's reaction. Because this... this is how he loves.
His love is not gentle, warm, or nurturing. His love is obsessive, gritty, raw, possessive, mad, high-strung, and intense. He's a dangerous, masochistic hedonist, and his love is an addictive, destructive drug, the kind you never recover from.
This is the answer to Blake's question: the way he loves, for all intents and purposes, is wrong.
And the undeniable, irrefutable proof of it is written right there in the notebook Blake is holding, and Adam's heart is in his throat as he waits for Blake's judgment.
He almost wants to hear it. He almost needs the confirmation that his brand of love is not something people should aspire to—that he isn't someone people should want to love—because he'll only corrupt them, and even though he is painfully aware of this, he also knows that he won't stop until he gets under their skin, and that he can't, and won't, let go.
Finally, Blake tears his gaze from the paper he's been reading in stony silence and looks at Adam in the eye. "You know what's wrong with this, Adam?"
What's wrong, Adam thinks desperately, is that no one understands. This is who he is, and he doesn't need anyone to change him—he just needs someone to tame him, to reel him in when the wildness threatens to break the safe perimeter of his sanity.
But his Alpha doesn't exist in this lifetime.
"It needs a chorus."
... What?
Adam's impending panic attack comes to a grinding halt. "What?" he blurts out loud.
Blake raises his eyebrows. "This is a song you're writing, isn't it?"
That is the most unexpected response of someone who has just read one of the darkest passages of his journal. "No," Adam answers slowly, unsure of what to say now, "It's not."
"Well," Blake says with firm finality as he closes the notebook and hands it back to a thoroughly confused Adam, "It should be."
He stares unseeingly at the notebook in his hands as Blake gets up and stretches. "I guess we need to haul our asses back, we're live on air in a few minutes." Blake glances at him. "You coming? Your team's up next."
"In... In a minute, yeah. You go on ahead."
Blake walks back around the couch and opens the door.
"Blake, wait, I just want to ask—"
And Blake pauses, looking back at him patiently.
Adam swallows, and he knows Blake has absolutely no idea how important the answer to this question is.
"How can you... understand?"
Blake regards him for a long moment, and Adam would have given up all of his Grammys to know what Blake sees when he looks at him like that.
And then, Blake smiles.
"You forget, rock star," Blake tells him, "Back in Oklahoma, I'm a hunter, too."
And Adam is left staring at the door as Blake finally leaves.
"A hunter," he murmurs.
Preying on you, hunting you down, eating you alive...
Adam grabs his pen, opens his notebook, and begins scribbling furiously.
Several months later, the song somehow makes it into the album, although for reasons he doesn't divulge to the rest of his band, he refuses to release it as a single or make a video for it. But one of his edgier, cheekier team members suggests they perform it for the live shows, so he goes up there with the rest of his team for a special number.
And if he plays to Blake's side of the set more, he is simply finding comfort in the reminder that the characteristic of a good man is being incorruptible.
And if Blake's eyes glitter in response to his howl, he attributes it to a trick of the stage lights.
The one where they only have each other
"If you believe in the theory of multiple dimensions," Blake murmurs against his ear, and Adam shivers as Blake suckles on his earlobe, "There is at least one dimension where we're married to other people."
Adam can feel the vibrations of Blake's deep baritone down his spine as he lays against his chest. Blake's hands run ever so slowly down his arms, and Adam feels flushed all over, like he is burning from the inside with the most encompassing form of fever. "And what kind of people," Adam asks breathlessly, "do you think they might have been?"
"For you? It would've been someone young," Blake runs his thumb against the seam of Adam's jeans, and Adam's head falls back onto Blake's shoulder with a barely-suppressed moan as his hips buck up into the sensation, "who can keep up with your jet-setter lifestyle."
He whines hungrily as Blake's fingers dip inside the waistband of his jeans. "Someone foreign," Blake continues to whisper as his other hand sears across Adam's chest, "to satisfy your lavish, exotic tastes."
Adam feels Blake's fingers lightly caressing his hipbone, and he bites his lip, suddenly forgetting how to breathe. "And someone beautiful," Blake's lips are now moving against the sensitive spot behind Adam's ear, "with a drop-dead gorgeous body to match the so-called 'sexiest man alive.'"
Adam's laughter is choked back into a whimper as Blake's thumb brushes across his nipple at the same time his other hand curls at Adam's thigh, fingernails scratching at skin.
"That," Adam stutters and clutches at the sheets as Blake bites at his shirt-clad shoulder, "is an impossibly high standard you're describing there, cowboy."
Blake's mouth releases Adam's skin as he chuckles, burying his face at the juncture of Adam's neck and shoulder. "It wouldn't have surprised me, dipshit, if you actually had the balls to marry a Victoria's Secret Angel."
Adam laughs at this and shakes his head as Blake begins nuzzling him. Unwilling to be a passive partner, Adam deftly twists his body so that he is now facing and straddling Blake on their bed.
"And as for you," Adam returns, and it thrills him how he is the one towering over Blake for once. "It would've been a good ole country gal," he drawls, and Blake's entire body shakes with laughter at his horrible accent.
Adam smiles, his gaze turning feral as, without preamble, he sinks his teeth onto his favorite spot on Blake's neck, making him swallow back a surprised gasp. Adam savors the sweat-salty flavor across his tongue as his mouth glides wetly over Blake's jaw, making the other man clutch desperately at his shoulders.
"Sweet and tough like you," Adam whispers as he grinds his hips, letting Blake feel his heat and hardness, and drawing out a guttural groan from him, "Someone who loves dogs, but who also wouldn't hesitate to shoot a man who crosses her with a shotgun."
Adam leans back and notes with immense satisfaction how Blake's pupils are now blown and dilated, the blues of his eyes narrowing to mere rims, and it gratifies the wild possessiveness inherent in him to know how Blake, in this moment, is utterly and completely his.
"She sounds perfect," Blake muses as his hands absently caress Adam's thighs.
And that simple remark shouldn't have been laden with so much meaning, and it shouldn't have struck Adam as much as it does... but Adam knows better.
"She does," Adam agrees softly.
In an ideal world, Adam surmises, both of them would've ended up with perfect partners who might as well have been mirror personalities of themselves. He and Blake are polar opposites on so many levels—their backgrounds, their interests, even their values and ambitions—and they fight more often than they make up. Their ship seems fated to forever sail rocky waters, with no reprieve in sight.
Adam reaches over to grasp Blake's left hand in his and link their fingers together. Their matching rings chink and clink against each other as Blake holds on tightly.
"She sounds," Adam murmurs as he caresses his husband's knuckles with all the tenderness his heart can muster, and it shouldn't have been possible to feel so much for one person, like his body is full to bursting with it, "Like someone you might have met and performed with onstage and fallen in love with right then and there."
But Adam also knows, with an unshakeable certainty that comes from the very core of his soul, that no matter how many dimensions there are out there in their universe... in every single one of them, he will always choose to have this imperfect love with Blake, than to have a perfect life without him.
Blake's other hand comes up to rest against his husband's nape as he pushes himself up to rest his forehead against Adam's.
"Idiot," Blake says fondly, "In this lifetime... I already did."
And finally, finally... Blake leans in and seals his mouth over Adam's.
Sangria, Adam thinks dazedly as he melts into their wild, warm kiss, his lips taste like Sangria.