A/N: Okay, I've decided to stop apologizing for the lengths of these chapters. It just seems like this fic will be the longest fanfic with the longest chapters I've ever written… But you still like me, don't you? Anyway, my darlings, read on…

10: Velvet, Water, Crumbling Walls

Adam is asleep.

He's asleep and he's pale and cold and ruffled and soft and beautiful, when he's asleep and can't clench his jaw and flutter his gaze, he's beautiful, he's so terribly beautiful.

Lawrence looks at him. It was almost eleven when he woke up, and then, Adam was still sound asleep next to him. So small. So thin and defenseless and so beautiful that it almost hurts, it almost physically hurts to look at him.

Lawrence strokes some of those soft, dark strands of hair away from Adam's temple, pressing his lips to the soft flesh there.

God, Lawrence thinks, since he actually has thoughts he can control, and not just a sadistic little headvoice that wants to hurt him. I haven't even heard the song 'Beautiful Disaster,' but it has to be a song about Adam. Whichever teenage superstar that made that must've seen Adam walk by on the street with that chequered outside shirt and headphones and one of those damn cigarettes in the corner of his mouth, and thought: "I want to write a song about that kid."

Because that's what Adam is, isn't it? Isn't Adam the only one who can be so broken, so damaged, with so thick layers of armor around himself, and still be so awfully much more beautiful than Allison ever was?

Faggot, a tiny voice in his head still says.

Lawrence smiles weakly and moves his hand from Adam's hair to his cheek, caresses the smooth, pale skin there, too.

Maybe he knows, on some level, that he's seizing a rare opportunity. That if he did this on Adam when he was awake, he'd pull away, avoid those warm, searching fingers. So he does it now.

Adam lets his guard down when he's sleeping. Never otherwise.

And then, Lawrence does the one thing he can never do, the thing that would make Adam punch him in the face if he hadn't slept well for the first time in a year, the thing that's sacrilege and wrong and so very, very forbidden: He slowly lifts the covers away from Adam's body and pulls, so carefully as possible, since all the nights when he's fallen asleep on Adam's couch with his head in his lap have taught him that his friend sleeps pretty lightly, up the white t-shirt Adam's fallen asleep in.

And just like when Adam did it himself a few months ago, Lawrence has to put a hand over his mouth to keep himself from crying out.

Adam is broken.

There's no better way to put it. He's broken, simply broken, all the hits he's gotten without wanting to acknowledge them have blown a big part of his stomach away, and the only thing that's left is a completely flat, empty surface with a navel on the bottom, and pale, visible, so dreadfully fucking visible ribs that looks like the sea when it's dried, when the waves themselves have stiffened to a stationary plane.

Lawrence lays his hand on that stomach. Lets his fingertips fumble over the ribs, bites his bottom lip when he sees what his hand touches.

Little Adam, he thinks. You're suffering. I can see it. Even before today, I could see it, I saw your face when I came to your place with a pizza, I saw the dark marks under your eyes and how your t-shirts hanged way too loosely around your body. And I want to help you, I just want to help you, can't you see…

And almost like he's heard him, Adam turns in his sleep, and Lawrence hurriedly takes his hand away from his stomach. Adam yawns widely and rubs his closed eyes, and Lawrence suddenly feels the same kind of big, warm, almost overwhelming tenderness that he usually feels for Diana, fill him inside and out when Adam hazily opens his eyes and smiles sleepily.

"Hey there," he mumbles, and even though Lawrence is so worried that he almost has to hold himself down to keep from clubbing Adam over the head and drag him to a hospital, he has to smile back.

"Morning," he says and lifts his hand again to stroke Adam's cheek. "Sleep well?"

"Better than you, apparently," Adam says and stretches himself. "Where you awake looking at me all night?"

"Who'd be able to sleep with you right next to them?" Lawrence says, really only half joking, and sits at the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry, Adam, but I have to go. I have Diana today."

"Okay," Adam says in a slurred voice and rolls over to his side to look at Lawrence's back. "You're coming over later?"

"Well," Lawrence says and gets up, "I still have Diana then, but you can come to my place. She'll be there, but if you don't have any plans…"

"Sure," Adam says and smiles again when Lawrence walks over to his side of the bed. "Around seven?"

"Whenever you want," Lawrence says and lays his hand back down on his cheek. "I'll see you then."

He knows he should stay. That he should make sure Adam keeps the promise he made yesterday, the promise he probably barely remembers making and that they both know he wouldn't keep even if he did.

But he'll give Adam a chance. A chance to keep that stupid pride that he clutches to so desperately. A chance to have breakfast without anyone looking over his shoulder.

A chance to get by without help.

So instead of staying, he leans over the skinny little person beneath him.

Adam wasn't going to do it. He thought Lawrence wanted to feel like somewhat of a good role model when he's going to pick up his daughter from his ex wife, but when Lawrence leans down over him, engulfs him in a cloud of his scent, dazes him, embraces him, makes him drunk, he still can't think anymore, then, his hands go up to Lawrence's waist by themselves as Lawrence kisses him, warmly and softly, calmer than yesterday.

Adam goes back to sleep as soon as he hears the door closing. He sleeps underneath the blanket that's still warm from Lawrence. And for once, it's not cold just because he's alone.

xxxxxxxxxxx

"Aren't you going to eat something?" Diana asks later that night when she, Lawrence and Adam sit in Lawrence's little couch with a big bowl of spaghetti in front of them on the coffee table.

Adam smiles uncertainly. He's not sure how to explain to an eight year-old what you can't explain to her father, but Lawrence saves him as he shovels some spaghetti onto his daughter's plate.

"Honey, it's bad enough that I put you through my cooking," he says and smiles at Diana. "Adam doesn't like eating at all, but in this case, I understand him."

Adam pretends not to hear him, pretends to doesn't feel the familiar panic that builds up inside of him, and takes a sip of his beer, and Diana giggles and spins some spaghetti onto her fork.

"Don't you like to eat, Adam?" She asks with her mouth full, and Adam glances over at her and starts fidgeting with the label on his bottle.

"You won't, either," he says with a small smile. "In just six or seven years, some mean girls in your class will say you're fat, even though you're so damn beautiful, and then, you won't want to eat."

Diana widens her eyes in childish compassion.

"Has anyone called you fat?"

Has anyone done that, Adam? The cold little voice says. Has anyone done that beside yourself?

"No," he says and takes another sip of his beer. "And come to think of it, no one will do that do you, either, because all the stupid teenage girls you'll meat in your day will know that me and Lawrence'll beat the crap out of them if they're mean to you. So they'll watch it."

Diana laughs again.

Lawrence drinks some of his own beer, looks at his best friend talking to his daughter, and he thinks that he loves to see them together. Diana looks at Adam like he's a clown, funny, yes, but oh-how-wise underneath that rough shell.

Because that's what he is. Diana can look beneath all those walls Adam hides behind, see his amazing, sarcastic, true self. And admire him for it.

Adam, on the other hand, looks at Diana in a way that he doesn't even look at Lawrence. He looks at Lawrence with uncertain admiration, with awkward love. His blue eyes turn into a beautiful, rolling ocean when he looks at Lawrence, warm and kind, and when his sarcasms come, they're like a flatfish you've stepped on that tickles your feet.

But when he looks at Diana, his eyes turn into velvet. Soft, gentle velvet, because Diana is the first one ever to admire him. The first one that could've had any male role model besides Lawrence, but that still wants to have him for it.

Lawrence cares about Adam. Adam is his best friend and more than that, and he wants to tear down the walls he has around him and close his arms around him, whisper in his ear that he's perfect the way he is. But he doesn't admire him. He can't.

"Jesus Christ," Adam suddenly says and leans forward as Shakira shows up on the TV-screen in a music video. "I'd love to eat her. Look at that rack!"

Lawrence sends Adam a fake murdering gaze over Diana's head, and Diana looks at Adam in surprise.

"What's a rack?" She asks curiously and furrows her brows, as if she tries to search her memory for an occasion when she's heard that word.

Adam grins and takes a sip of his beer. Shakira disappears from the screen and he can lay those velvet eyes on Diana again.

"That, young lady, I'll explain to you when you get older," he says and glances over at Lawrence, and Lawrence feels that gaze landing on his stomach, laying there, softly vibrating.

He wants him.

Just one look was needed to make him realize that. Again.

He wants him.

"And when your dad isn't around," Adam adds and sends Lawrence a crooked smile. "He'd tear my head off."

Diana laughs. Adam keeps smiling, but he doesn't take his gaze off Lawrence. It stays in his, keeps vibrating, teasing, like a soft hand that pulls over his cheek, down over his chest, his stomach, down to the steady beginnings of an erection that Adam's eyes just increases.

He's still a man, Lawrence, his headvoice mutters in displease.

Yes. Adam is a man. He's a man that barely can pay his rent, a man that's so damn proud that he can't admit that he's anorexic even to himself, and, if we are to be completely honest, a man that can be very annoying, and it doesn't make sense, but Lawrence doesn't have the energy to care. He doesn't manage to question the boiling lust that Adam can make him feel with just one look, he doesn't manage to push Adam away, hell, he barely manages to wait until Diana's gone to bed.

The funny thing is that even though Adam seems at least as turned on as Lawrence, neither one of them gets anything from the other tonight.

Lawrence smiles to himself as he sees Diana close her eyes a bit too long for it to count as a blink. Her head falls down for a second before she startles and opens her eyes again.

"Diana, honey," Lawrence says and lays a hand on her back. "Are you tired?"

"No," Diana says and tries to suppress a yawn with her hand, and Lawrence chuckles.

"Yeah, you are."

"No."

Lawrence smiles, and a warm, funny feeling that he's so familiar with, since he now feels it for two people, fills him as he takes Diana's shoulder and pushes her head down on his lap.

It isn't until he actually looks at Adam that he sees that his head is hanging, his chin is pressed against his chest and his deep breaths travel all the way over Diana and mix with her own, and Lawrence laughs again.

Just as childish…

Adam is asleep. Again.

"Okay," Lawrence says and lifts Diana's head up, "Here we go…"

He gets up as quietly as possible and lays Diana's head down on the couch. She doesn't even flinch. Her face is just as relaxed, just as sleeping and just as heart-wrenchingly beautiful as Adam's.

When Diana's safe on the couch, Lawrence pads over to Adam, grabs his shoulder and pushes him down. His loose-limbed body tenses for a brief second, and his water eyes are opened but close down quickly again, his hanging head finally winds up on Diana's hip when Lawrence lifts his legs up and places them folded on the couch.

Lawrence picks up a blanket that lies over the back on the couch and spreads it over Adam. He tells himself that Diana doesn't need it as much, she has a grown man laying across her legs…

Stop it, Lawrence, his headvoice scoffs. Of course Diana doesn't need that blanket as much as Adam, since she, unlike some other people, has some fat on her body, and by this isn't cold all the time.

Lawrence knows he has to listen to it. That the voice is right, that Adam is anorexic, and it's him that has to pick him out of it.

But not now. Not tonight. Tonight, he wants to enjoy watching Adam shift slightly in his sleep, to stroke Adam's bangs aside and kiss his forehead, to mumble "Good night, Adam," without having to think about the graveness that lures under these words.

When he pulls back, Lawrence looks at the people in the couch. At Diana in her Barbie-shirt and Adam in his baggy jeans, and a thought pops up in his head and fills him with horror and joy at the same time:

My God. These are the two most important people in my life.

Yeah, the headvoice replies. Equally important, equally beautiful, equally light, equally defenseless. Adam is a child, Lawrence, and he has anorexia. You know he didn't have breakfast today, since if he had, he'd be able to stay awake. And you're a doctor, and more importantly, his best friend. So you know what you have to do, don't you?

Lawrence sighs and rakes a hand through his hair.

Yes. I know what I have to do.