title: if this ground gives way (i just hope that you’ll catch me). (4/4)
rating: nc-17. the internet is for porn, okay?
pairing: andrew/jesse
disclaimer: i don’t own them, i make no money, and this happened in an enchanted forest filled with talking woodland creatures which exists solely in my head.
summary: set during filming. in which there is sex. a lot of sex. (4,580 words)
note: part the fourth. oh god, i am endlessly and extremely sorry for the long delay. i came down with writer's block on this in the worst way, and i had to go away & do something else until i felt like i could come back to it. i'm honestly not sure how i feel about it-- but, it's finished!
The truth is that Jesse avoids sex because he doesn’t like to let go.
They’re in the car now, because Andrew had kissed him like a question and Jesse’s parted lips and soft sigh and hands pressed to the small of Andrew’s back had answered yesyesyes, at which point Andrew’s tongue, warm and eager against Jesse’s, had brought up the sort of questions they’re going to need a bed to answer.
The ride back to their apartment means time, and they’re not really talking, just glancing at each other constantly like they can’t quite believe this is real, reassuring one another with their own uncertainty. The air between them is thick and warm, humming with actuality and possibility, the electricity of what’s happened and, more importantly, what might happen next. The problem is that in the absence of conversation, Jesse’s racing thoughts are rapidly approaching fever pitch.
The point is that Jesse avoids sex because it requires letting go, only sex has got a thousand hues of anxiety attached to it to begin with, and the only way for Jesse to cope with that magnitude of anxiety is through exacting control, which completely precludes the entire concept of “letting go.” It’s not like he’s a virgin or anything; Jesse has in fact had sex, according to the technical definition, but not often and definitely not recently.
The frustrating part is that it’s not a lack of desire. (If anything, Jesse reflects wryly, the past few months have proven that.) When it comes to the act itself, though, he can never get out of his head long enough to stop panicking about basically everything, let alone relax enough to actually enjoy himself. Jesse is pretty sure most people don’t regard their sexual experiences as ordeals they’ve inexplicably managed to survive.
To be fair, it’s different this time. So far. Nothing about this feels forced; there’s no obligation or going through the motions or doing it because that’s what you do. When they kissed, Jesse’s thoughts actually went deafeningly silent; it was like the actuality of kissing Andrew momentarily blocked off every single synapse.
The thing is, Jesse is certain it won’t last. The newness will wear off, habit will set in, and given the anxiety Jesse experiences over the ordinary, everyday, textbook sex you see on TV and billboards, he can only imagine how much worse this is going to be. Here, in this parallel universe where the likelihood of having sex with Andrew is rapidly shifting from impossibility to, like, probability, and Jesse doesn’t have a single fucking clue what he’s doing.
“Hey.” Andrew’s hand comes to rest on Jesse’s thigh as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. “Are you okay?”
“I’m not good at this,” Jesse tells him, honestly.
Out of the corner of his eye, he catches the smile tugging at Andrew’s lips. “I assume you’re not referring to driving. Do you mean this, in the larger sense, or--”
“Sex,” Jesse finishes, keeping his eyes firmly on the road.
He expects surprise and possibly a token protest (which he’ll feel compelled to ignore because what exactly would Andrew know about Jesse’s sexual prowess, anyway), but gets neither, which just figures.
“Jesse,” Andrew says instead, soothingly. “Slow down.”
“I’m going the speed limit.” (Jesse is actually going five under, per usual.)
“That’s not what I’m-- look, pull over for a second. Please?”
Jesse does it, wordlessly. He puts the car in park and turns in his seat slightly, facing Andrew. “What did you mean?”
“I meant, slow down,” Andrew interrupts, tapping Jesse’s forehead lightly with one finger. “I kissed you, Jess, okay?”
“I noticed,” Jesse tells him-which, okay, he actually kind of wants to kick himself the moment the words are out, but Andrew just gives him this incredibly affectionate look like he’s not being difficult in the slightest.
“You kissed me back-to my extreme delight, I might add. We’re going home, where it’s my sincere hope that there will be more kissing. Maybe more, maybe not, I-look, just don’t go jumping ahead and getting scared, all right? Stay with me.” Andrew catches Jesse’s hand and squeezes it, tight, reassuring. “It’s just us, Jess. Still you and me.”
“With kissing.” Jesse can’t help himself.
“Right,” Andrew agrees. “Speaking of.”
He kisses Jesse again then, grounding him, and Jesse stops thinking about all the awful potentialities because the kiss pushes him in another direction entirely. Now, in addition to being severely distracted by the mind-boggling fact that he is, like, kissing Andrew, he’s thinking about Andrew’s off-key renditions of Britney’s greatest hits; his focused intensity that night they spent four hours discussing Mark and Eduardo over Red Vines and beer; his muffled noise of pleasure when Jesse’s fingers had tangled absently in his hair while they were curled up together watching Zombieland; and, especially, the way everything is different, better, with Andrew.
Maybe, Jesse thinks, just maybe this will be better, too.
*
“Talk to me.” It comes out sounding more like a plea than Jesse would have liked, but of all the things he’s worried about right now, his dignity is actually pretty far down the list.
They’re lying in Andrew’s bed, tangled together, kissing. Still fully clothed, except for Andrew’s shirt, but Andrew never wears a shirt, so Jesse has decided this doesn’t count. Given that ruling, the top two buttons of Jesse’s shirt are the only actual progress they’ve made in the direction of getting undressed.
“Okay,” Andrew is saying, kissing the inside of Jesse’s wrist. Andrew keeps doing this, finding places Jesse would never have registered as spots, like he’s trying to make the most of what little skin Jesse is willing to expose. “What do you want me to talk about?”
“Anything,” Jesse tells him, and it’s true, because it’s not the words, not really, it’s Andrew’s voice that lulls him. Andrew’s voice, with its familiar timbre and inflection; Andrew’s accent which gets thicker (and sexier, Jesse thinks, because he’s pretty sure he’s allowed to think that now without feeling guilty about it, although he probably will anyway) after the third drink or so and also, inexplicably, when he’s reading poetry.
“How stupidly gorgeous you are, then.”
“Anything but that,” Jesse suggests, and Andrew laughs, the warm, easy laughter that invariably makes Jesse want to kiss him.
It occurs to Jesse that he no longer needs to suppress that particular impulse, and so he doesn’t. Then he sort of forgets about the talking thing entirely for a few minutes, because the kissing is good, really good, and neither of them is in any hurry to pull back, although Andrew finally does manage to do it.
“I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time imagining what it would be like to kiss you,” he tells Jesse, tracing a slow line down Jesse’s cheek with the tip of his index finger, while the fingers of his other hand toy lightly with the third button of Jesse’s shirt. “Among other things.”
Jesse closes his eyes, focuses on the finger circling his cheek and not the ones working the button open. “You realize that actual me is probably not going to stack up to your imaginary version particularly well.”
“Actually,” and Andrew nips at Jesse’s mouth like it’s difficult to stop with the kissing long enough to carry on a conversation, although Jesse is probably just projecting, “thus far you’ve surpassed your imaginary counterpart in every possible way. And I have an extremely good imagination.”
“Andrew, I’m trying to tell you that I don’t, I mean, I’ve never-” Jesse exhales, trying for coherence, which is seriously complicated with Andrew pressed against him, all lips and fingers and stupidly large eyes. “I don’t exactly know what I’m doing here.”
“Jess. “Andrew drops his head to press a kiss into Jesse’s shoulder. “I know, okay, I get it,” and Andrew does, he has from the beginning, “but I need you to believe me when I tell you that it doesn’t matter.”
“Okay,” says Jesse, although he doesn’t, not quite.
This kiss is long, languid, stay with me, and Jesse eases into it, trying, which is actually easier than he expects because even though they’ve been at it for over an hour, kissing Andrew still feels like having the wind knocked out of him. In a good way. Which makes no sense, but Jesse is not particularly concerned with the accuracy of his internal metaphors right now. In fact, he lets himself get sucked so thoroughly into the kissing that he can’t really be bothered to protest when Andrew gets the last button loose and Jesse’s shirt falls open.
Andrew makes a little noise of triumph then, and it’s so comical that Jesse laughs into Andrew’s mouth and forgets to get anxious, except the laugh sort of cuts off into a gasp when Andrew’s fingers splay lightly across his stomach. It shouldn’t be sexy, not really, but it is, the way Andrew circles his palm tentatively, fingers skittering across Jesse’s skin, just low enough that Jesse is extremely conscious of where Andrew is not touching him.
Yet.
Andrew is planting kisses down Jesse’s jawline now, trailing them across his throat, one hand beginning to traverse Jesse’s chest while the other is steadily working Jesse’s shirt over his shoulders, and there is just way too much sensory input going on for Jesse to be able to think with any kind of clarity, which he decides is probably for the best.
His shirt ends up on the floor pretty quickly after that, and Andrew sort of cradles Jesse in his left arm while his right hand goes wandering over Jesse’s body, across the planes of his chest, down into the slight dip of Jesse’s stomach and back up again, fingertips sometimes skimming, sometimes walking lightly, deliberately. And then there’s the kissing: unhurried, almost lazy in its ease. Jesse feels like new nerves are crackling to life with every flick of Andrew’s fingers, every brush of his lips, as if Andrew is slowly turning him electric.
Andrew is sucking a soft bruise into the hollow of Jesse’s neck when his fingers first graze a nipple, and Jesse sort of jumps and makes a startled noise because the jolt of it goes singing through his skin, making him want moremoremore. He shudders when Andrew teases the nipple lightly between his fingers, hips unconsciously rolling upward, surrendering, reacting. Andrew hums against his throat, aware, pleased.
Andrew is learning him, he realizes, figuring out what works and what doesn’t, though it’s really all just degrees of good and better.
“Jesse,” Andrew says into Jesse’s shoulder a little while later, his hand coming to rest on Jesse’s stomach again, full circle.
“Yeah?” Jesse’s sort of impressed with himself, all things considered, that he can still put sounds together and cause those sounds to mean words.
“I’ve spent the past five minutes trying to come up with a smooth way to coax you out of your pants, but I absolutely cannot do it, so I’m just going to take them off now, if that’s okay?”
Jesse actually laughs, if a little weakly, because somehow Andrew is worried about being smooth while Jesse is embarrassingly close to defying the laws of physics and actually melting under his hands.
“I’m taking that as a yes,” Andrew tells him, and Jesse nods through a kiss, anticipation darting here and there all over his skin.
Things begin to fade in and out, after that. Jesse is in his head only enough to register how much he is not in his head, which probably has more than a little to do with Andrew’s apparent mission to thoroughly investigate every inch of Jesse’s skin. He appears to be cataloguing Jesse’s every shift and sigh as he goes, mapping him, and Jesse envisions his own topography according to Andrew, a constellation of action and reaction.
He’s vaguely conscious of Andrew moving down his body, slowly but with sort of unmistakable intent, until Andrew is hovering just over Jesse’s hips, his fingers in the waistband of Jesse’s boxers, his eyes all questions when he looks up.
“Jess,” he says, “can I-?”
Jesse’s brain comes abruptly back to life, because there is kissing, and there is touching, but this is something else entirely. Maybe it’s a little ridiculous to argue that it’s not sex yet, not really, just because there’s this thin stretch of material separating them, but still, this feels like crossing a line. Even if said line is arbitrary and exists only in Jesse’s head, which is suddenly beginning to get loud again.
He wants this, god, does he want it; Jesse has, in fact, pictured this exact scenario more times than he’s ever going to admit in this lifetime, but the thought of actually letting himself have it is… a lot to process.
Andrew is circling Jesse’s hipbone with a fingertip, and Jesse closes his eyes, lets his focus narrow to that point of contact. It feels as though things are shifting too rapidly to catch hold, but Andrew is constant, and it’s enough to make Jesse want to try.
“Yeah, okay,” he says, opening his eyes and meeting Andrew’s, “but just-- I don’t know if it’ll work. I mean, I want you to, I really do, but I might think too much, I’m already thinking too much, and-- why are you smiling?”
“Jesse,” Andrew says seriously, “if that’s what you’re worried about-well, I’m going to feel deeply inadequate if you’re still able to think at all about fifteen seconds from now.”
Jesse isn’t, as it turns out.
Not even slightly.
*
Jesse has had blowjobs before, okay, but he has never, ever had one like this. If this is how it’s supposed to be, if this is what it’s like when it’s good-well, now he understands what all the fuss is about.
Andrew had started off licking him long and slow, flicking his tongue occasionally and making Jesse shudder. He’d teased the head of Jesse’s dick until Jesse was fisting the sheets, hips twisting restlessly, and then he’d done something wicked with his tongue which was almost definitely designed to elicit a scream, except Jesse wasn’t quite there yet and so he’d bitten his lip instead, so hard it’s still bleeding slightly. Then, finally, Andrew had taken Jesse in his mouth in earnest, and since then it’s been a torturously slow burn. Jesse’s come close once or twice already, but each time Andrew picks up on it and backs off immediately, deliberately, so Jesse can’t quite get there.
For the last few minutes Andrew has been teasing Jesse’s hole with one wet fingertip while he sucks him, and Jesse’s thoughts have sort of disintegrated to the point that they’re basically unintelligible. He’s been quiet up to now, but the pressure right fucking there draws a whine from his throat, and he can’t hold back a strangled moan when Andrew pushes the finger inside and lets him feel it, just the tip. It is so, so good, but it’s also like tripping a switch and it sort of distantly occurs to Jesse that while he could absolutely get off this way, this isn’t quite what he wants; it’s not enough, not now.
“Andrew,” Jesse breathes, and Andrew hums around him in response, making him gasp. “Stop, I want--”
Andrew pulls off immediately at the word stop. He looks up at Jesse, eyes wide and dark behind his lashes, and his hair is sticking up sort of wildly but Jesse barely notices and he is not even actually looking at that because, oh god, Andrew’s mouth. His lips are deep red and full and wet, and just then he runs his tongue lightly over his bottom lip and Jesse nearly stops breathing. He can’t, he literally cannot speak, not that it matters because he’s forgotten the words, if in fact he ever knew them in the first place.
“Tell me.” Andrew’s breath is warm against the inside of Jesse’s thigh. “What is it?”
Words, Jesse instructs himself, make words, but he really, really can’t, his brain is misfiring all over the place every time he looks at Andrew, which is problematic because he can’t seem to stop looking at Andrew, and Jesse feels like maybe his best option is just to lie there and try not to spontaneously combust.
“Tell me, Jess,” Andrew says again, low. “Tell me what you want.”
It’s half command, half plea, a surprisingly fine line between the two.
“I want you to fuck me,” Jesse manages, and he blushes furiously when he says it and sort of wants to crawl under the bed immediately after, except-- except, god, the look on Andrew’s face when he hears those words. He goes a little slack-jawed and his eyes get very, very dark, and Jesse has never in his life been someone who says things in bed, certainly not things like fuck me, but right this second he thinks he could bring himself to say just about anything if it makes Andrew look at him like that.
“Jess,” Andrew says, and his voice is entirely new. Then he’s back up at the head of the bed, and they’re kissing again, chests flush against one another, points of contact starting tiny fires under Jesse’s skin, and Andrew is saying are you sure and Jesse is telling him, over and over again, yes.
*
Andrew has two fingers inside him and Jesse is incoherent.
He feels like he’s coming apart. He’s gone from half-suppressed moans to Andrew and fuck and yes, and Jesse’s sort of dimly aware that he is really fucking loud, but it’s not even a conscious thing, the words are just spilling out as Andrew fucks him slowly, deliberately, with his fingers.
Andrew presses into his prostate and Jesse’s entire body shudders and comes up off the bed, suspended for half an instant before Andrew catches him by the hip, pushes him back down and holds him so Jesse can only writhe beneath him, twisting against Andrew’s fingers with increasing desperation.
“More,” Jesse hears himself begging in a voice that can’t possibly be his own, “please, Andrew,” and there’s the tip of a third finger easing into him. It’s enough of a stretch that Jesse has to get hold of himself for a few seconds, to breathe and force his muscles to relax while Andrew teases him even further open, but then-then he is so full, and it is so good.
“God,” Jesse groans, “yeah, fuck, yeah,” and he lets his head fall back while he thrusts against Andrew in a slow, stuttering rhythm.
“Christ, Jess.” Andrew sounds a little strangled. Jesse cracks an eye open and sees that Andrew’s face is flushed, his eyes wide and practically black, his gaze shifting rapidly between Jesse’s face and what his own fingers are doing. It’s gorgeous, he’s gorgeous, and Jesse will absolutely and categorically never understand it, but it’s sort of undeniable at this point that he is the reason Andrew looks that way, which is… incredible, and he really needs Andrew to be a whole lot closer right now.
Jesse manages to push himself up on one elbow, gets the other hand around Andrew’s neck and drags him down for a kiss. Andrew makes a surprised noise, but then he’s kissing back, rough and wet, three fingers in Jesse up to the knuckle, and it feels raw and dirty and unbelievably good. Andrew still has his jeans on but his erection is pressed against Jesse’s hip, and Jesse can’t resist pushing up against it a little bit, just to see what happens.
What happens is that Andrew groans into his mouth and grinds down, hard. There’s way too much between them, Jesse decides, and he reaches down blindly, finds the button and yanks it open, drags the zipper down. Andrew wriggles his hips impatiently, and the angle is awkward but Jesse manages to get the jeans down far enough that he can cup Andrew through just the filmy cotton of his boxers, which makes Andrew shudder.
Andrew’s fingers have gone still inside him, which means Jesse can focus enough to experiment a little bit, stroking Andrew’s dick through the material. He thumbs the head and Andrew groans into his ear, says things like fuck yes and so good and just like that as Jesse slides his hand under the elastic and begins to jerk Andrew off in earnest, rocking himself back and forth ever so slightly on Andrew’s hand at the same time.
The next thing he knows Andrew’s rolling off of him, easing his fingers out one at a time, making Jesse whimper-- partly at the loss but mostly because he knows what’s next and, well, finally. The lube is sitting on the nightstand and Andrew turns over and reaches for it, only he’s in such a hurry that he knocks over his alarm clock, which crashes to the floor and immediately starts going off. Andrew dives for it, cursing, leaving Jesse on the bed to convulse with helpless laughter. Which is good, actually, because once the alarm is turned off Andrew laughs with him, and Jesse looks up at him and suddenly he isn’t nervous anymore. It’s just us, Andrew had said, still you and me, and it is.
He watches, heavy-lidded, as Andrew rolls the condom on, and then Andrew’s kneeling between his legs and the lube is warm from his fingers. “Okay?” he asks softly, watching Jesse’s face carefully, and a nod is honest to God the most Jesse can possibly manage, especially when Andrew slips two fingers inside him again, scissoring gently. It’s good, but it’s nothing like enough.
“Andrew,” Jesse says urgently, “I’m ready, come on, please,” and Andrew doesn’t make him ask again.
*
It’s different, afterward.
Normally, Jesse gets a little manic after sex. He counts the minutes until he can get in the shower, because much as he’d physically like to just curl up and fall asleep, there’s no possible way that’s going to happen without clean hair, clean clothes, and especially a change of sheets. It’s been the same routine for years, and he actually finds it sort of comforting-the act of putting things back in order, restoring them to familiarity.
Now, though? Jesse’s sweaty and sticky, his hair is a mess, his clothes and Andrew’s are strewn all around the bed, and the sheets might be beyond redemption, but while it’s not like Jesse hasn’t noticed all of this, the thing is that right now, he doesn’t care. He’s got his head on Andrew’s chest, Andrew is rubbing his lower back in slow, relaxing circles, and Jesse is just… calm, and at ease, so much so that he’s seriously considering putting off a shower entirely until morning.
He can wait a while longer, anyway. For now, Jesse’s content to be exactly where he is, playing back images of Andrew moving above him, looking up into Andrew’s eyes and feeling Andrew inside him, their fingers twined together, the way Andrew had shifted halfway through and suddenly everything had turned bright and electric and Jesse had arched up saying there, right there, Andrew saying his name when he came-- quickly, but Jesse had been right on the verge, too, after everything else, and taking their time had sort of got lost under how much they both wanted and needed.
They’ll take it slower next time, Jesse decides, assuming both that there will be a next time (this, he thinks, is a relatively safe bet) and that he will ever be able to move his legs again (this is less so).
“Jess.”
“Hm?” Jesse shifts to look up at Andrew, noting with satisfaction that he looks as sated and relaxed as Jesse feels.
“Well.” Andrew hesitates. “We haven’t, strictly speaking, talked. About this, I mean, about-”
“Us,” Jesse finishes without thinking, then immediately wishes he could take it back because maybe, probably, it’s too soon for that.
“Is there an us, then?” Andrew asks, carefully, and Jesse bites his lip because Andrew’s expression gives nothing away, but what the hell, he’s already in so far over his head, there’s really nothing left but the truth.
“I want there to be,” he says. “An us, I mean,” and this makes no sense, grammatical or otherwise, but Andrew quite clearly gets it because his face breaks into this enormous, ridiculous grin.
“Thank God,” he says with feeling, pulling Jesse up for a kiss. “You’d have broken my heart if you said no.”
Which is just.
Well.
Jesse can’t really get his head around that, at all.
“I was trying to say it back at the set,” he tells Andrew, “but then you, well, with the kissing, and-”
“And the really fantastic sex,” Andrew supplies, grinning wickedly, and Jesse has to laugh because, well, yeah, but there’s more and he figures he’d better get it all out there, since he is apparently saying things now.
“I also wanted to tell you, I think I’m,” he begins, stops abruptly, shakes his head-- because he doesn't think, he knows. “Forget I said that. Start over.”
“Okay,” Andrew agrees, unfazed, which is exactly the point.
It’s like this: not only does Andrew get it, not only does Andrew like Jesse, but the thing that’s become obvious (though no less inexplicable) over the past several months is that Andrew does not like Jesse anyway, or in spite of anything. He just likes him, messiness and neuroses and shampoo fixation and all; he finds these things appealing simply because they are part of Jesse. Jesse understands this because he feels the same way; because he can’t find a single thing about Andrew that he doesn’t like, maybe even-
“That,” Jesse says. “It’s that.”
“Jess.” Andrew looks a little puzzled, a lot affectionate. “I like to think I understand you pretty well,” and Jesse’s chest tightens like his heart is suddenly too big for its allotted space, “but I’m going to need you to elaborate on that one just a bit, okay?”
“What you did, right then,” Jesse tries to explain. “It’s why I-you really do. Understand, I mean. I’m a mess, and you-Andrew?” His voice goes up like it’s a question, only it’s not really, because he doesn’t wait for a response. “What I’m trying to say is that I love you, I’m in love with you, and I have been for, um, a while, and you don’t have to say it back or anything, I realize it’s sort of a thing, like, a big thing, but I-am going to stop talking now,” he concludes helplessly, because he hasn’t actually managed to explain himself at all.
It doesn’t matter, not really.
It doesn’t matter because he’s said the important part, and when he says it Andrew’s eyes get wide and bright and his smile goes all soft around the edges, and when Jesse stops talking Andrew pulls him close, draws him in until their foreheads are touching.
Then, into the small space between them, very quietly, Andrew says this:
“You perfect, adorable, ridiculous thing. I love you, too.”
They’re kissing then, and it’s a damp tangle of limbs and still-warm skin and hands in each other’s hair, and Jesse feels fragile in too many ways too much of the time except that now, in this moment, he thinks it might be okay. It might even be right.
It might be everything.