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It's St. Patrick's Day when Christina suggests it, The Voice: A Christmas Spectacular, and Adam's pretty sure she's drunk off her ass, so he blows it off and suggests A Christina Aguilera Cleavage Spectacular instead. Since he gets one later that night, he figures that's the end of it.
They all do, even though he's the only one that gets to come in her cleavage as far as he knows. But someone, and he suspects Cee-Lo, must've encouraged her, because there's a shooting schedule and a special guest line-up on his trailer door on April 1.
Blake, the stupid asshole, asks her if it's a prank. She sizes him up, gives him that ice queen smile, laughs that completely fake laugh, tells him yes, and three hours later, there's a new shooting schedule. Blake's got all the a.m. calls, all the kids and animal numbers. Cee-Lo gets the Muppets, which Adam's kind of bummed about, because singing with Animal would catapult him to rock god status like yesterday, but Adam gets duets with Christina and Mary J. which is almost as good.
This time, before Blake can ask her if she's out of her mind, Adam grabs him and shoves him back up the steps to his trailer. "I am not doing a creche scene with live animals, Adam," Blake drawls, steely when he adds, "She can kiss my--"
"Shut up, man. Seriously. Don't fucking tempt fate. She's got ears everywhere."
When Adam glances back over his shoulder as he shuts the door, that creepy cat of Cee-Lo's is sitting on a pile of cushions, smug and staring.
~*~
"What do you want if you win?" Blake leans in, leering a little.
Adam rolls his eyes and smacks him in the chest. "Save it for the cameras, loverboy."
Next time, he's totally asking for a blow job, because it goes down exactly like he said it would. Including Christina's hat (and the trim around her cleavage and her thighs). He's just that good.
A little later, Blake comes up behind him while they're doing the confessionals. "What'll you give me if I ask her if she has any Turkish Delight?" Adam can seriously hear him smirking.
His eyebrow lifts when he looks back at Blake. "A sparkly dunce cap."
Blake pats both his shoulders, grinning that shit-eating grin of his. "Relax, man. I'm not gonna piss off your girlfriend."
"My what?." But there's that flash of white again, this time he swears the cat's carrying something green in its teeth. "Did you see that, man? I think Purrfect's stalking me."
"Hey, look over there! It's Adam Levine trying to dodge a relationship."
Adam sighs. It's totally not even worth it. "Good one, Blake," he says with about as much enthusiasm as Christina showed for Loren.
~*~
He ends up eating with Cee-Lo, which is awesome. People think he's all costumes and drama, but they're completely missing the point. This guy is the real deal. All heart. When he tears up over a performance, it's nothing but the truth, and Adam admires the hell out of it.
They're joking around about the whole Muppets thing and how Cee-Lo talked Kermit into a reprise of "It's Not Easy Being Green," when Cee-Lo grabs his arm hard enough to haul him out of stride. "Stay right where you are, my friend. Don't move another--"
Adam shifts sidewise and lifts his feet extra high to avoid the camel shit or whatever Cee-Lo's seeing that he's not. And then suddenly, somehow, he's stuck, frozen in place, and if this is Shelton's idea of a prank, Adam's going to kick his fine country ass.
"Step," Cee-Lo finishes, shaking his head, even though he's wearing that big, wide smile that lights up the room. "Adam, my brother, you know what? You know I love you, right?"
"Uhhh." Adam's gaze narrows, brow tightens. "Yeah, of course, man. You're not, like, dying or anything?"
"Not at all, not at all."
The next thing he knows, Cee-Lo's kissing him, and not in brotherly way. There's, like, tongue and spit and if Adam weren't so damned shocked, it would probably be a hell of a good kiss. But he's too busy reeling backwards, hands up, to enjoy it (or notice he's moving again). "Whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn't think you meant it like that!"
Cee-Lo claps a hand over his chest. "You're hurting me, Adam. I feel it in my heart, you know what I'm saying?"
It's so sincere, Adam's still trying to figure out how to apologize when Cee-Lo laughs this bright booming laugh. Adam shoves him in the shoulder, and that's when he notices the mistletoe over his head. "Man...not on. That is so not on."
Neither is the noise from around the corner that sounds suspiciously like a purr.
~*~
Not that he was getting it on with Cee-Lo, or close to getting it on, or even thinking about getting it on with the man. It's not his size or anything like that. It'd just be like banging Elvis or Michael Jackson, a musical fairy godfather. Wrong on some deep emotional level.
"Hey, man," Shelton booms as he comes striding over with those long-ass legs of his. "Congratulations. You and Cee-Lo. Who knew?"
"I swear to god if you call him my boyfriend--" Adam spins out, taking a couple of careful steps back, and all the while Cee-Lo's watching from where he's sitting on the arm of the red couch in the middle of the trailers, grinning. "I'm going to get wardrobe to give you pigtails."
Blake follows him, of course he does, and his drawled, "Well, shit, Adam, if you didn't go around kissing him," cuts off with a frown and the beetling of his brows. He tries to move and can't.
Adam smiles, Cheshire, and crosses his arms. "Not so funny when it's you, now, is it?"
Blake's trying to lift up his feet and he can't. It's a pretty good trick, actually, and Adam wants to know how he did it, but he's not going to ask. No way.
"The hell are you talking about?"
"Oh, give it a rest, Blake." He points one finger, inchworms it Blake-style, upward at the mistletoe, but there's not even a hint of recognition. Huh. Blake's usually a shitty liar.
"Guess you're stuck then," Adam taunts and backs out of reach.
When Blake's still standing there five minutes later, Adam has to give in and admit it's not Blake's prank. But with Blake being A, pissed as hell, and B, not half as secure in his masculinity as he claims he is, Adam's thinking discretion's the better part of not getting punched and lets Cee-Lo do the honors. Especially since he's not even sure how the trap works.
Cee-Lo grins, all teeth, when he strolls up to Blake and Adam's just close enough to hear. "Blake, my brother. It pains me, deep in my heart, to see you in such a sorry situation."
"Can the crap, Cee-Lo," Blake spits out, sharp and spiky. "Just let me go. I've gotta be in robes riding a damned camel in ten minutes."
It'd serve him right if Cee-Lo left him there, but Cee-Lo's not that guy. He curls his hand around Blake's arm and says something Adam doesn't hear, kind of low, that keeps Blake from pulling his arm away. And when Cee-Lo leans way the hell up to plant one on Blake, Adam feels a burn, a tightness in the pit of his gut.
He's secure enough in his masculinity to admit that maybe, maybe, he's a little bit jealous of anyone but Miranda kissing Blake. So he turns his head away, doesn't watch (much), and aims his scowl at Cee-Lo's evil cat.
~*~
By the time he finds her -- no, not stuck in front of craft food services, asshole bloggers (he's so over them calling her fat, he's just looking for someone to beat up for it) -- at the edge of the stage, she's sitting down, curled around her knees, and fuming. Seriously, he can see the cartoon storm clouds over her head.
Making her shatter glass with his tongue in her twat maybe earns him a little slack when she's in a mood, but not a mood like this. Not when the ends of her braids and her fingers and her pupils are on fire (he's only exaggerating a little; she's terrifying, like worse than Maleficent, terrifying), though. When she's breathing fire, everyone leaves that to Cee-Lo.
He ducks out of the way to go get him, but the quick movement must catch her eye because she hisses, "You better hope I don't find out you did this, Levine." Shit. "I'll castrate you so hard your ancestors are eunuchs."
"Come on," he tries, pouring on the sweet and sexy and giving her a little smile. Do you have any idea how hard it is to seduce a woman when your dick's crawled up inside your stomach cavity? "I don't need to trap you to kiss you under the mistletoe." And if he was going to kiss her under the mistletoe, there'd be a dark corner or even better, a bed, involved.
She just glares at him.
Fortunately, Cee-Lo steps into a pool of light, like the angel he is, carrying Purrfect, and soothes her, "Christina, sweetness. You know I love and respect you--"
Adam sings a not-so-quiet, "Hal-le-lujah," that makes her glare more and Purrfect hisses, tail lashing when Cee-Lo sets it down on the stage.
"And you know Adam loves and respects you--"
"Blake did this? I'm going to shove his--"
"Christina, mama, I need you to hear me when I tell you, respectfully--" He ducks down and meets her gaze, smiles at her. "You need to take a breath and chill the fuck out."
Adam covers his jewels but Christina laughs. Laughs. "How the hell do you do that, man?" he murmurs, too low (he hopes) for Christina to hear him.
She leans forward and wraps a hand around his neck, pulling him in. "Mistletoe, right? So as long as I'm stuck here..." The dragon's gone and the woman's left, smoking hot still, but just a woman when she kisses Cee-Lo.
Maybe not just a woman. She is the Divine Christina, after all, and Cee-Lo pulls away fanning himself with the fan he snagged out of her hand. She laughs again and Adam finds himself smiling when Cee-Lo reaches a hand down to help her up.
That is, right up until he feels the claws in his ankle. "Goddamnit, Purrfect!" he snarls and pulls back his leg to fling the vile beast.
Somehow, Cee-Lo's right fucking there, breathing down his neck. "Levine, you know I love you, but I will beat your scrawny ass if you kick my cat."
~*~
He turns (that much he's figured out by watching everyone else, they can move, but within a severely limited radius), but no sunglasses or glint of gold chains adorn the guy in the chair one over. It's just that beady-eyed little monster.
"Hell no. No. I will stay here for the rest of my fucking life before I french your cat, Cee-Lo. It's not happening."
Purrfect hisses, gets up, turns around, and shows its ass before sitting back down, facing Christina's chair.
Ten minutes go by, and no Cee-Lo. Adam calls out to Carson, who says he'll try to find him, but looks suspiciously like he's too drunk to remember. Adam sighs and folds his head down over his arms. "Cee-Lo," he whines. "Not funny, dude."
He has no idea how long he's been resting like that. He might even have fallen asleep when he feels fingers in his hair. Familiar fingers, and the press of a breast against his arm. That doesn't narrow it down much, since he's banged, like, a dozen women who might be around, but the perfume, and the way those fingers actually feel soothing on the back of his neck...
Adam snakes an arm out and pulls her into his lap.
Christina laughs, soft, and swats him, but if he's stuck here under some freaky techno-magic mistletoe, he might as well enjoy it. He draws his finger along the trim of her top (now this white fur, he's perfectly happy to pet or french) and tugs it aside to check out the bra.
"Damn," he says, playful, and presses his lips to the shell of her ear. "Silver. I bet on red."
"Poor baby." She's running her fingers through his hair again, and if Blake sees them, he's so screwed. But it feels good, it's been a long day, and he really doesn't care. "If you're a good boy, I'll put on something red for you later."
"If you're a bad girl, I'll take it off you."
Her eyes flash. "Deal," she agrees with a wicked, wicked purr, and now she is too heavy for his lap, but only because his dick is hard and trapped under her ass. Christina fixes that a few seconds later when she seals their deal with a long, slow kiss; it doesn't make his dick any less hard, but he cares about it a lot less.
Usually, they keep their FWB fling away from the show, but everyone's kissed someone today and the same everyone knows he's kind of a slut. So he's not even a little shy about kissing her back.
"Now, I'll go get Cee-Lo," she teases when she pulls back and her mouth's still shiny and wet.
She gets up, he reaches for her again, and promptly falls out of his seat.
Purrfect sneezes and hops off Cee-Lo's chair. It sneezes again, and Adam swears it's laughing at him.
~*~
She rolls hers right back at him, but her hand flies up to cover her mouth when she sees where the mistletoe's trapped Shelton. That's what convinces him she didn't do it. He knows when she's faking it (not from their extracurriculars; she'd hand him a strap-on before he'd let him not get her off) and that's not it. You can tell by the real crinkles at the corners of her eyes and the lift of her diaphragm under his hand (hey, he's a singer, he notices these things! Also, her rack's the only thing he can see for, like, ten seconds.)
When he stops staring, he snorts at Blake. "Ride 'em, cowboy." Only Blake could get himself stuck in the saddle.
"Man, fuck you--"
"And the horse you rode in on?"
Christina groans and hides her eyes behind her hand. Blake gives him death-glare, but Adam just grins, because Christina's laughing again, kind of hanging off his shoulder. He side-eyes her, but ignores the possibility of a your girlfriend crack from Shelton in favor of, "You better hope that horse doesn't need kissing, bro, that's all I'm saying."
"What?" Blake drawls and for a split-second, Adam worries, tongue caught against his teeth about the Christina the Great horse joke Blake's totally capable of making (I'm just a country singer, my ass). Bullshit aside, Blake loves her, but he's the mean big brother, the one who forgets that Beautiful didn't come from nowhere, and she gets insecure, especially when they're screwing around with each other. But Blake doesn't fuck it up, just smirks, curls his fist and makes the crude wrist flick instead. "You worried about people making comparisons?"
"Lame, Blake," he says, you're boring me in his voice, at the same time as Christina's piping in, "You know the horse can't cover his with a hoof," and he side-eyes her again. "Seriously, Christina? You're going there?"
"You got nothing, man." Blake stretches his hand forward to pat the horse's neck. Adam doesn't know dick about horses but it's ears are back and it looks kinda pissed. "At least your girlfriend's not making stupid horse puns."
Stupid horse… oh. Lame. Before he can answer, Christina's climbing the little prop fence and he's too busy checking out her ass for the, "She's not my girlfriend," to be convincing.
When Blake doesn't fire back and Christina doesn't say anything either, he lifts his eyes enough to notice they're kissing. A, that's kind of hot. He's never actually thought about the two of them before, but now he will. B, he's kind of jealous, but he's not sure whether it's Christina kissing Blake or Blake kissing Christina (and the way they're eating at each other's mouths, if it weren't for Miranda's shotgun, he'd say grudge-sex would be a real possibility).
After a minute, he decides it's hotter than he is jealous and taunts, "Whose girlfriend?"
They come up for air, Christina still leaning on Blake's thigh, and both of them give him the eyes of shut up, Adam.
He's willing to brave it, though, and starts in with, "I mean it, bro--" but before he can get around to Miranda, something white streaks across the top of the fence. The horse makes some spooked horse-y kind of noise and for a few minutes, Adam's too busy catching Christina and Blake's too busy calming the horse for the bullshit banter to matter.
Dude, he hates that cat, but he's starting to think it's the evil genius.
~*~
It doesn't help any damned thing when he complains to Christina about it and she says, "Someone's jealous," in an evil little purr that's worthy of the damned cat. "Or maybe he just reminds you a little too much of yourself, hmm?"
"Kiss my ass," he grumbles at her, shoves out of his chair and shrugs when she lifts both eyebrows at him. He needs to walk this off.
"Maybe later," she says, winks, and lets him go.
He knows he's in a foul mood when that doesn't even spawn dirty fantasies for their red lingerie date.
It only takes a half an hour and one Shelton-sighting to make him see the problem. Since they figured out Cee-Lo doesn't have to kiss you to release you, Blake's kissed everyone in the building over the age of consent.
Everyone except him.
Of course, now that he's figured it out, he can't find any mistletoe to get stuck under. Figures. But Adam's in no mood not to get what he wants. After all, this might be his one and only Miranda-won't-shoot-me chance to find out what Blake tastes like. So he asks himself, what would Christina do? Surprisingly, that doesn't pay off for him, so he tries out what would Purrfect do?
Ten minutes later, he's fake-stuck in the door of his trailer under some mistletoe he swiped from props. Instead of hollering, he leans in the doorway like he wants to be there, waiting til Blake shows up again.
Blake cocks his head, tips his chin at him. You stuck, bro?
Adam shrugs, flips out a hand, open palm. Yeah.
The look on Blake's face is all kinds of well, shit, but they've hit the part of week where they talk in grunts unless words are necessary.
Thing is, Adam knows Blake's thought about it. He talks about it when he's drunk and forgets about it later, tells Adam, he's totally secure enough in his masculinity to get it on with him if it weren't for Miranda. Adam's pretty sure he'd chicken out at blow jobs, but a kiss? Sure. He just needs a little shove.
So, words. "Throat's too sore for screaming." Another shrug, lashes drop, hands in pockets, he wets his lips (sue him, he fucks a lot of models, and Christina). "Just grab Christina for me, man?"
Blake gets this mulish look on his face. "Screw that," he snaps, and stalks Adam's trailer like it's a ten-point elk or whatever.
Score.
Adam manages to hide his grin when Blake's one-step below him, all up in his face. "What, I don't have tits, I'm not good enough for you?"
"You have a wife with a shotgun," Adam corrects him, but he's already got his fist tangled in Blake's dumb-ass plaid shirt.
"It's magic mistletoe. She'll get over it. Besides, with how much she hates Christina, she'd probably shove me at you to 'save you from the vampire'," Blake drawls, and Adam's not sure whether to laugh or swat him.
"It's really fucked up we're talking about your wife when you're about to stick your tongue down my throat," he manages instead.
"Then quit talking."
Blake doesn't give him a choice after that. He locks his hand around the back of Adam's neck and, for a second, Adam's too caught up in the feel of guitar callus against his skin and imagining it on his dick to notice the breath on his lips is actually lips on his lips. His brain catches up about a half-beat later, and his body's already there, growl rising from low in his throat when the kiss 'sets him free'.
He tugs Blake up another step, spins him around and rides him up against the door of his trailer. It doesn't cave in, none of the team starts applauding, there's no cameras, and Miranda's shotgun's nowhere in sight. It's just Adam and Blake, tongues lashing inside each others' mouths the way they usually do from afar. Seriously, Adam can almost hear the, where'd you learn to kiss, a convent school? and the, learn how to tell a joke, Shelton. One guy, school full of girls, you work that out and the answering screw you, man that Adam's kissing deep enough to answer, in a heartbeat.
They can't actually keep this up for the rest of the night, no matter how much Adam wants to open the door to his trailer and fall in on top of Blake, but they manage to get from snappish kisses and sheepish ones to the I love you, man kind that tastes like lemonade and lazy afternoons or some other country bullshit Blake would make up.
To Adam they taste like missed opportunity, but by the time he hears Christina clearing her throat and saying, "It's about time, boys," Adam's back to smiling again.
Blake's the color of a ripe tomato, when he steps back and hitches up his jeans. "Tell your girlfriend, I'm not interested in a threesome."
Adam runs his hand down Blake's chest, affectionate, then steps away before that hand finds itself molded over his inseam. "Tell her yourself, man."
"What do you think I'm stupid?" he drawls, stepping past Adam, but then he does something good. Something really good, and Adam's pretty proud of him. He kisses Christina on the cheek, and she smiles super-bright when he says, "I'm just joshing you, Christina. You know I love you."
And if maybe he was looking at Adam a little more than Christina when he said it, that's okay, because Christina's definitely looking at him more than Blake when she says, "I love you, too, jackass."
Blake laughs, Adam smiles, Christina blows him a kiss and he tells her he'll see her in ten, and then lets himself into his trailer. Sure enough, he's not even surprised, when the damned sack of white fluff with a bad attitude's curled up on his bed and waiting.
"You know what? I don't even care," he tells the cat. "You stick around as long as you want, you evil little monster. You know why?" Adam pulls off his shirt and tosses it on the pile. "Because--" He leans down and scratches the cat behind its ears. "I win."
The cat wheezes, and its definitely laughing, but so what? Sucking it up, he smooths down Purrfect's fur, then picks it up and kisses its head. "Shut up, cat. I win."