free your mind (and the rest will follow)
Title: free your mind (and the rest will follow)
Author: jeyhawk
Rating: PG13
Pairing: Jesse Eisenberg/Andrew Garfield
Beta: sbb23! <333
Word Count: 3,605
Disclaimer: Not true. Not even a little bit. Not even at all.
Summary: Andrew is seven years old the first time he hears someone's thoughts. He's twenty-nine when it stops.
Notes: For the Tumblr tsn-a-thon. #team albright
The first time it happens he's seven years old and standing by his grandmother's sickbed, tightly pressed against his mother's side. She tried to make him wait in the corridor, but the strange sounds and alien smells scared him, and she unwillingly let him come in the room. He's still terrified, of the machines, of the noise, and of how small his grandma looks among the white sheets. The air is prickly, hard to breathe and heavy with smells he doesn't understand but that aren't right, not like flowers, or rain or the heady perfume of freshly baked cookies.
A man in a white coat is talking to his mom, face lined and stern, and Andrew can feel the way his words hit home in the slight tremble of his mother's legs. He wants to hug her and tell her everything will be okay, but he doesn't understand the words the man is saying, they're long and complicated and foreign, as if he's using the language of the alien invaders in that movie he wasn't supposed to watch, the one that gave him nightmares every night for a week.
There's a nurse there too, like Andrew's school nurse but older, and she's dressed in a blue uniform that looks like pajamas but probably isn't because his mommy says you can't go out in your pajamas. She's fussing quietly with the machinery, straightening tubes and cables with hands that look steady and sure. Andrew likes her hands, they look like nice hands, the kind of hands that might sooth a fevered brow or put a plate of freshly baked cookies on the table. She brushes the back of one hand against his grandmother's cheek and Andrew, safe against his mother's side, reaches out a curious hand to touch her forearm.
I won't be long now, she says, loud and clear, but her lips are not moving.
Andrew bursts out crying and he doesn't stop for two days. He never tells anyone why.
--
The second time it happens he's fourteen and struggling to keep his head above the metaphorical surface. He's uncomfortable - in his skin, in his clothes, and in his own head. He's tired of being taunted, of being ridiculed, of never being enough, and of not fitting in. He keeps his head down and his few friends close and he wishes, so much, that he just knew why. Why him, why now, why anyone, really? Sometimes he just wants to tilt his head back and scream at the sky because there's so much noise in his head and he doesn't know why.
It's winter, the air is biting cold and the ground covered with more snow than Andrew's ever seen before, and Tom Haggard puts his hands on Andrew's shoulders, trying to push him into a snowdrift. His mouth forms words, terrible words, hurtful words, but then his hands land on Andrew's shoulders and what Andrew hears is no longer what Tom says.
I'm not like him, I'm not. I'm not that. I'm not a bloody fag. It's his fault, all his fault. I hate him. Hate him. Hate him.
Andrew's startled, startled enough that he stops resisting, and later he's not sure if it was real, or if the concussion scrambled his brain (but he remembers it so well, so very well, and it's terrifying).
--
It keeps happening after that, not all the time but often enough, until Andrew runs out of excuses and has to admit to the impossible; as crazy as it seems, he can read people's thoughts. Not all of them and maybe not very well, but always as clearly as if they'd been shouted in his ear. He never tells anyone, thinks that maybe he's crazy, but since it doesn't harm anyone (except maybe himself) he deals with it as best he can and goes on with his life.
He loses his virginity three weeks after his nineteenth birthday to Erica Emerson, who he's known since middle school, and it's pretty terrible, for both of them but probably more so for her, and when they say goodnight at her front door, he touches her shoulder and she thinks;
God, I never want to see him again,
and he never calls. He hears later, from a friend of a friend, that she tells everyone he's an asshole for not calling her and he wonders if maybe he heard that wrong, or if maybe he didn't hear it all, and it takes almost two years before he dares to sleep with anyone again.
--
It gets better, the sex at least, and he finds that people generally don't think that much when they're having sex. He goes through a phase and has all the sex he didn't have between nineteen and twenty-one with a bunch of random and not-so-random strangers and acquaintances, men and women alike.
It lasts for six months, then he meets a girl who makes his heart speed up and he dates her for a while. It's hard. Not being with her, because she's wonderful, but the fact that every now and then he will brush up against her and her thoughts will be in his head. It makes him feel bad, even when they're pointless and innocent, and the first time she pictures someone else when they have sex he breaks up with her. He feels bad about that too and stays celibate for months.
In the next two years he has three relationships. They all end the same way.
Then he meets Shannon and everything changes. Shannon is different. She's beautiful and special and kind and he can't hear her thoughts. He takes her on a date, and then another one, another one and another one, and the only thing he ever hears when he touches her is the sound of his hands brushing her skin and the soft whispers of their lips touching. Shannon is magical and he loves her so much.
He tries once, when they're lying in bed one lazy Sunday morning, maybe six months into their relationship. Her head is on his chest and his hands are in her hair and he just wants to know, so much, what she's thinking about. He never experimented with it before, never tried, but he does now, focusing all of his energy on being inside her head. It doesn't work, but it does strike him suddenly exactly what he's trying to do, and she looks very confused when he stumbles out of bed, into his clothes and right out of the apartment to 'get some air'.
He doesn't see her for a week. He feels the taint of his attempted invasion like filth on his skin and he doesn't know how to ever face her again. It was okay when it was never his doing, never his intent, but actively trying to read someone's mind unbidden, that's another story altogether. He misses her, though, and eventually he goes back, apologizes even though she doesn't know what for, and they last for another two years.
He's twenty-six when he leans over Shannon's shoulder to steal a piece of her toast and kiss her cheek before running off to work and he hears her thoughts for the first time.
I hate when he does that.
It's not the end, but it's the start of the downward spiral that leads to the end. Her thoughts start filtering through, sometimes nice, sometimes not, and he hates himself for not being able to shut them up. He wants to put earplugs on his brain because people's thoughts are supposed to be private and this is what ended his every relationship until this one. He can't do it, and in the end she breaks up with him, on a rainy day in late May, and he's surprisingly okay with it.
He's sad, of course, and he still loves her but it's hard to have a relationship with someone when you're constantly privy to their most intimate secrets. Some things are meant to stay hidden and no one needs to know everything about another human being.
---
Andrew is twenty-seven when he meets Jesse, and no matter what people say, he didn't run off to New York to get over his breakup. He just thought that a change of scenery would help somehow, as if maybe American minds would be harder to penetrate (they aren't).
Jesse is lovely. He has a bookstore, and three cats, and he writes plays in his free time. He's neurotic and strange and wonderful and they've known each other for three months the first time Andrew touches his hand.
He's so beautiful, Jesse thinks, and Andrew doesn't stop smiling for days.
Jesse doesn't do relationships, or physical contact, or anything like that really. Andrew once asks if he's asexual, but Jesse shakes his head with a small sad smile, saying:
"I'm just afraid it'll get too loud."
Andrew doesn't understand, not really, but he doesn't want to make Jesse uncomfortable so he doesn't ask again, but he wonders.
---
They've known each other for almost a year when Andrew has to move out of his apartment and Jesse invites him to stay with him, just for a while. Andrew says yes and not only because he's so helplessly in love with Jesse that he'd happily spend the rest of his life without sex if he just got to gaze adoringly at Jesse over the breakfast table. It isn't normal and it’s probably creepy, but Andrew can't help himself; Jesse is perfect just because he isn't.
"I always wanted to know what it would be like to live with someone," Jesse says three weeks later, cheeks flushing adorably.
"So I'm an experiment then?" Andrew asks, smiling so that Jesse will know he's joking.
"Maybe," Jesse says, but he smiles too, the adorable one with the dimples.
---
Andrew goes back to England for a couple of weeks over Christmas and his family teases him about the way every other sentence begins or ends with Jesse’s name.
"You got it bad," Ben says, jostling his shoulder. Andrew doesn't hear his thoughts, he never does.
"Yeah," he admits, jostling Ben right back. It'll probably never happen, but Andrew hopes, oh, how he hopes.
---
"I missed you," Jesse exclaims on Andrew's first night back, pulling Andrew into an awkward hug, their first. Andrew's head fills up with Jesse's jumbled thoughts and they're all beautiful.
"I missed you, too," he whispers, letting his face rest against Jesse's neck, just for a moment, before he makes himself pull back.
Jesse looks dazed afterwards and he keeps sneaking glances at Andrew while he helps him unpack. His hands are shaking, Andrew notices, and he wonders if the hug was too much.
---
It's another three weeks before they touch again, and this time Andrew doesn't hear anything, but Jesse's eyes go comically wide and his cheeks light up with color.
"Really?" he squeaks, but then he clamps a hand over his mouth and stares at Andrew with panic in his eyes.
"Oh," Andrew says, and in the span of a second his entire world tilts on its axis. "Heard that, did you?"
Jesse still looks as if he's about to shake apart at the seams but he nods jerkily, balling his hands into fists at his sides. Slowly, very slowly, Andrew reaches out, holding his hand out, palm up, and just as slowly, Jesse reaches out, too, putting his palm on top of Andrew's.
Don't be scared. Please, don't be scared, Andrew thinks as clearly as he can over the thunderous beat of his heart.
I can't help it, Jesse answers.
Jesse yanks his hand back and for the longest of whiles they just stare at each other.
"So," Andrew says, trying for a smile. "Sometimes I can read people's thoughts."
Jesse nods vigorously. "Yeah. Me, too."
It changes everything.
---
It doesn't happen all at once. They don't magically fall into each other's arms and profess their undying love (outside of Andrew's head, that is), but things do change. For the first time in his life Andrew can talk about it, freely, with someone who understands what it's like. They spend hours every day, in between work and obligations, just talking, like they've always done, only now it means more.
"I used to think I was supposed to do something with it," Jesse says one night. "I mean what's the point in…. What's the point?"
"Maybe there is no point," Andrew says, tilting his head back against the couch and closing his eyes. "Maybe it's… accidental."
He asked his mom once if he was ever dropped on his head as a child; she looked at him funny.
"Yeah," Jesse agrees. "Maybe."
Andrew hears rather than sees Jesse's hand creep across the couch cushions, but he feels the impact of their fingertips down to his toes. Jesse thoughts are as lightning quick as always and Andrew smiles up at the ceiling.
--
Jesse touches more freely with time and on Andrew's 29th birthday they kiss for the first time. It's just a kiss, there are no fireworks, just the slick slide of lips and tongues, and everything is quiet in Andrew's head.
When they pull apart, Jesse leans his forehead against Andrew's collarbone and breathes in shallow trembling gasps, hands fisted tightly into Andrew's shirt.
"I love you," Jesse whispers, tugging harder on Andrew's shirt, making the fabric pull tight across his back. "Please, don't ever leave."
Andrew thinks about his life, about the ups and downs, the wrong turns and the right ones. He thinks about keeping a secret for twenty-eight years, about keeping everyone's secrets for twenty-eight years, and how amazing it is that he no longer has to. He thinks about love and the people he’s loved, he thinks about fate and wonderful accidents. He thinks that he's never been happier than he's been in this tiny apartment with mismatched furniture and limping cats. He thinks that he's never been happier than he is with this curly-haired menace and his beautiful thoughts.
He slides his hands from Jesse's narrow waist, up over his too sharp shoulder blades, to the back of his delicate head, burying his fingers into the thick curls and making Jesse look up at him. Jesse's eyes are dark and his mouth trembles at the edges.
I love you, Andrew thinks, willing his thoughts to land in Jesse's beautiful mind. I love you so much it's stupid, since the second week of knowing you. Everything about you is weird and different and special and lovely and I can't imagine ever wanting to be with anyone else. You're the only one who ever knew me like this, the only one who ever will.
Jesse licks his lips, a flush dawning across his cheekbones. "I got you beat then," he says, smiling slightly. "It only took me two days."
It would be absolutely impossible to not kiss him again; Andrew doesn't even try to resist.
--
The last time it happens is on Jesse's 29th birthday. They're tangled together in Jesse's bed, still coming down from their high, breathing hard and slick with sweat.
"That was…" Jesse starts, but instead of finishing his sentence he grips for Andrew's hand and shows him.
Jesse's thoughts are bright and beautiful, overwhelmed, maybe even a bit nervous, but as calm as they've ever been. Andrew isn't sure what he gives back, but it's probably an endless litany of IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou. They fall asleep with their hands still tangled and their thoughts still mixed and in the morning everything is quiet.
It doesn't register at first, not when there are so many other things to marvel about; like Jesse's hair first thing in the morning and the adorable look of surprise on his face whenever Andrew makes him come. It doesn't register because Andrew no longer has to read Jesse's mind to know what he's thinking and other people's thoughts have never really been more than an unwanted invasion.
But then it's three weeks later and Andrew's crammed into an elevator with fifteen other people and not a single thought pours into his mind. He steps out of it, feeling as dazed and confused as he would have been if he'd heard all of them, and tries to pinpoint the last time he heard something someone wasn't telling him.
"Jesse's birthday," he murmurs to himself, smiling faintly at the perfect memory, and he doesn't know what to think about that.
He tries it out, over the course of the next few weeks, actively trying, for the first time since Shannon, to pick up what someone else is thinking. There's nothing there; for the first time in years Andrew's head is his own.
---
"I think it's gone," he says, two months later, when it’s almost Christmas and Jesse is smiling sweetly at him from three inches away.
"I know," Jesse responds, putting his hand on top of Andrew's between them. "It's wonderful."
Andrew smiles, inching forward to kiss Jesse's adorable lips. He supposes it is kind of wonderful; he never asked for it to begin with, but the silence is unnerving and he'll miss Jesse's thoughts for sure.
---
It is wonderful. Andrew’s head is his own but Jesse is still in it and everything is beautiful. They have their ups and downs, they fight and make up, they fuck and make love, and slowly, very slowly, Jesse breaks out of his shell. He starts touching more freely, he makes friends on his own, and on their one year anniversary they go to England and Andrew's family pretty much fall over each other to make Jesse like them. He does.
Andrew runs into Shannon, she's married now and expecting her first child. It's not awkward, even though maybe it should be.
"I'm happy that you're happy," she says, smiling.
"I was happy with you, too," Andrew counters, because it's not fair to diminish what they had even if he's happier now.
"To happiness," she says, rising her cup, and they toast in tea.
"You're so British it actually hurts," Jesse says and Andrew doesn't have to read his thoughts to know that Jesse thinks he's a dork, or that he loves him because of it.
--
"I'm happiest with you," Andrew says later with his lips against Jesse's ear. "You complete me."
"I'm happiest with you, too," Jesse responds, nudging his head in under Andrew's chin and settling down for the night with a hand curved around Andrew's ribs.
---
Maybe there was never a purpose, maybe it was completely accidental, but years later, looking back, Andrew can't help but think that maybe it was supposed to lead him to Jesse all along. Maybe not because they love each other and get along quite spectacularly, maybe not because kissing Jesse gives him a rush like nothing else, even after all these years, but because Jesse is amazing, and before they met and before their thoughts cancelled each other out, Jesse was trapped in an invisible shell, too afraid to reach for the things he wanted because he knew he'd hear the rejection even if it wasn't spoken.
And Jesse does good things, amazing things. Jesse writes plays about anxiety and superiority that reach out to touch the hearts of thousands of people. He writes young adult novels about being different and anxious that spend months on the bestseller lists, because there are so many people out there who are just like him and they all need to hear that it gets better and that they are good enough just the way they are.
Andrew is so proud of him that he might burst and deep down inside he can't help but think of himself as a catalyst. He can't help but think that while he isn't spectacular and amazing like that, he helped Jesse become that person and that's the greatest thing he could have ever asked for.
"Wrong," Jesse says fondly, pulling Andrew down for a sweet little kiss.
Andrew doesn't ask how Jesse knew what he was thinking because Jesse always knows, even though he can no longer hear.
"Yeah?" he asks, and maybe it makes him a bit sad, because he wants to be that person, okay?
"Yeah," Jesse confirms, pushing his face into its favorite resting spot against Andrew's neck. "You're so much more than that. I don't look at you and see the person who helped me realize my potential, I look at you and see the most brilliant person I've ever known."
"That's silly," Andrew murmurs, sinking a hand into Jesse's curls, still as thick and lovely as always. "I was just thinking that if there was a purpose, this must be it."
"Maybe," Jesse agrees, tilting his head back to smile up at Andrew. "But it goes both ways, you know?"
Andrew thinks about the man he used to be and the man he is today and thinks that maybe Jesse is right. Maybe Andrew doesn't reach out to thousands of people all at once, but he does reach out to them one at a time, and maybe he wouldn't be that person without Jesse, and maybe he wouldn't be that person if his head wasn't quiet.
He smiles, bending down to mingle his smile with Jesse's. Maybe there's more than one way to be great and maybe that's what love is all about, realizing each other's potential. Maybe they'll never know why, or if there even was a why, but it doesn't matter because he has this and this is worth everything.
The End
Author: jeyhawk
Rating: PG13
Pairing: Jesse Eisenberg/Andrew Garfield
Beta: sbb23! <333
Word Count: 3,605
Disclaimer: Not true. Not even a little bit. Not even at all.
Summary: Andrew is seven years old the first time he hears someone's thoughts. He's twenty-nine when it stops.
Notes: For the Tumblr tsn-a-thon. #team albright
The first time it happens he's seven years old and standing by his grandmother's sickbed, tightly pressed against his mother's side. She tried to make him wait in the corridor, but the strange sounds and alien smells scared him, and she unwillingly let him come in the room. He's still terrified, of the machines, of the noise, and of how small his grandma looks among the white sheets. The air is prickly, hard to breathe and heavy with smells he doesn't understand but that aren't right, not like flowers, or rain or the heady perfume of freshly baked cookies.
A man in a white coat is talking to his mom, face lined and stern, and Andrew can feel the way his words hit home in the slight tremble of his mother's legs. He wants to hug her and tell her everything will be okay, but he doesn't understand the words the man is saying, they're long and complicated and foreign, as if he's using the language of the alien invaders in that movie he wasn't supposed to watch, the one that gave him nightmares every night for a week.
There's a nurse there too, like Andrew's school nurse but older, and she's dressed in a blue uniform that looks like pajamas but probably isn't because his mommy says you can't go out in your pajamas. She's fussing quietly with the machinery, straightening tubes and cables with hands that look steady and sure. Andrew likes her hands, they look like nice hands, the kind of hands that might sooth a fevered brow or put a plate of freshly baked cookies on the table. She brushes the back of one hand against his grandmother's cheek and Andrew, safe against his mother's side, reaches out a curious hand to touch her forearm.
I won't be long now, she says, loud and clear, but her lips are not moving.
Andrew bursts out crying and he doesn't stop for two days. He never tells anyone why.
--
The second time it happens he's fourteen and struggling to keep his head above the metaphorical surface. He's uncomfortable - in his skin, in his clothes, and in his own head. He's tired of being taunted, of being ridiculed, of never being enough, and of not fitting in. He keeps his head down and his few friends close and he wishes, so much, that he just knew why. Why him, why now, why anyone, really? Sometimes he just wants to tilt his head back and scream at the sky because there's so much noise in his head and he doesn't know why.
It's winter, the air is biting cold and the ground covered with more snow than Andrew's ever seen before, and Tom Haggard puts his hands on Andrew's shoulders, trying to push him into a snowdrift. His mouth forms words, terrible words, hurtful words, but then his hands land on Andrew's shoulders and what Andrew hears is no longer what Tom says.
I'm not like him, I'm not. I'm not that. I'm not a bloody fag. It's his fault, all his fault. I hate him. Hate him. Hate him.
Andrew's startled, startled enough that he stops resisting, and later he's not sure if it was real, or if the concussion scrambled his brain (but he remembers it so well, so very well, and it's terrifying).
--
It keeps happening after that, not all the time but often enough, until Andrew runs out of excuses and has to admit to the impossible; as crazy as it seems, he can read people's thoughts. Not all of them and maybe not very well, but always as clearly as if they'd been shouted in his ear. He never tells anyone, thinks that maybe he's crazy, but since it doesn't harm anyone (except maybe himself) he deals with it as best he can and goes on with his life.
He loses his virginity three weeks after his nineteenth birthday to Erica Emerson, who he's known since middle school, and it's pretty terrible, for both of them but probably more so for her, and when they say goodnight at her front door, he touches her shoulder and she thinks;
God, I never want to see him again,
and he never calls. He hears later, from a friend of a friend, that she tells everyone he's an asshole for not calling her and he wonders if maybe he heard that wrong, or if maybe he didn't hear it all, and it takes almost two years before he dares to sleep with anyone again.
--
It gets better, the sex at least, and he finds that people generally don't think that much when they're having sex. He goes through a phase and has all the sex he didn't have between nineteen and twenty-one with a bunch of random and not-so-random strangers and acquaintances, men and women alike.
It lasts for six months, then he meets a girl who makes his heart speed up and he dates her for a while. It's hard. Not being with her, because she's wonderful, but the fact that every now and then he will brush up against her and her thoughts will be in his head. It makes him feel bad, even when they're pointless and innocent, and the first time she pictures someone else when they have sex he breaks up with her. He feels bad about that too and stays celibate for months.
In the next two years he has three relationships. They all end the same way.
Then he meets Shannon and everything changes. Shannon is different. She's beautiful and special and kind and he can't hear her thoughts. He takes her on a date, and then another one, another one and another one, and the only thing he ever hears when he touches her is the sound of his hands brushing her skin and the soft whispers of their lips touching. Shannon is magical and he loves her so much.
He tries once, when they're lying in bed one lazy Sunday morning, maybe six months into their relationship. Her head is on his chest and his hands are in her hair and he just wants to know, so much, what she's thinking about. He never experimented with it before, never tried, but he does now, focusing all of his energy on being inside her head. It doesn't work, but it does strike him suddenly exactly what he's trying to do, and she looks very confused when he stumbles out of bed, into his clothes and right out of the apartment to 'get some air'.
He doesn't see her for a week. He feels the taint of his attempted invasion like filth on his skin and he doesn't know how to ever face her again. It was okay when it was never his doing, never his intent, but actively trying to read someone's mind unbidden, that's another story altogether. He misses her, though, and eventually he goes back, apologizes even though she doesn't know what for, and they last for another two years.
He's twenty-six when he leans over Shannon's shoulder to steal a piece of her toast and kiss her cheek before running off to work and he hears her thoughts for the first time.
I hate when he does that.
It's not the end, but it's the start of the downward spiral that leads to the end. Her thoughts start filtering through, sometimes nice, sometimes not, and he hates himself for not being able to shut them up. He wants to put earplugs on his brain because people's thoughts are supposed to be private and this is what ended his every relationship until this one. He can't do it, and in the end she breaks up with him, on a rainy day in late May, and he's surprisingly okay with it.
He's sad, of course, and he still loves her but it's hard to have a relationship with someone when you're constantly privy to their most intimate secrets. Some things are meant to stay hidden and no one needs to know everything about another human being.
---
Andrew is twenty-seven when he meets Jesse, and no matter what people say, he didn't run off to New York to get over his breakup. He just thought that a change of scenery would help somehow, as if maybe American minds would be harder to penetrate (they aren't).
Jesse is lovely. He has a bookstore, and three cats, and he writes plays in his free time. He's neurotic and strange and wonderful and they've known each other for three months the first time Andrew touches his hand.
He's so beautiful, Jesse thinks, and Andrew doesn't stop smiling for days.
Jesse doesn't do relationships, or physical contact, or anything like that really. Andrew once asks if he's asexual, but Jesse shakes his head with a small sad smile, saying:
"I'm just afraid it'll get too loud."
Andrew doesn't understand, not really, but he doesn't want to make Jesse uncomfortable so he doesn't ask again, but he wonders.
---
They've known each other for almost a year when Andrew has to move out of his apartment and Jesse invites him to stay with him, just for a while. Andrew says yes and not only because he's so helplessly in love with Jesse that he'd happily spend the rest of his life without sex if he just got to gaze adoringly at Jesse over the breakfast table. It isn't normal and it’s probably creepy, but Andrew can't help himself; Jesse is perfect just because he isn't.
"I always wanted to know what it would be like to live with someone," Jesse says three weeks later, cheeks flushing adorably.
"So I'm an experiment then?" Andrew asks, smiling so that Jesse will know he's joking.
"Maybe," Jesse says, but he smiles too, the adorable one with the dimples.
---
Andrew goes back to England for a couple of weeks over Christmas and his family teases him about the way every other sentence begins or ends with Jesse’s name.
"You got it bad," Ben says, jostling his shoulder. Andrew doesn't hear his thoughts, he never does.
"Yeah," he admits, jostling Ben right back. It'll probably never happen, but Andrew hopes, oh, how he hopes.
---
"I missed you," Jesse exclaims on Andrew's first night back, pulling Andrew into an awkward hug, their first. Andrew's head fills up with Jesse's jumbled thoughts and they're all beautiful.
"I missed you, too," he whispers, letting his face rest against Jesse's neck, just for a moment, before he makes himself pull back.
Jesse looks dazed afterwards and he keeps sneaking glances at Andrew while he helps him unpack. His hands are shaking, Andrew notices, and he wonders if the hug was too much.
---
It's another three weeks before they touch again, and this time Andrew doesn't hear anything, but Jesse's eyes go comically wide and his cheeks light up with color.
"Really?" he squeaks, but then he clamps a hand over his mouth and stares at Andrew with panic in his eyes.
"Oh," Andrew says, and in the span of a second his entire world tilts on its axis. "Heard that, did you?"
Jesse still looks as if he's about to shake apart at the seams but he nods jerkily, balling his hands into fists at his sides. Slowly, very slowly, Andrew reaches out, holding his hand out, palm up, and just as slowly, Jesse reaches out, too, putting his palm on top of Andrew's.
Don't be scared. Please, don't be scared, Andrew thinks as clearly as he can over the thunderous beat of his heart.
I can't help it, Jesse answers.
Jesse yanks his hand back and for the longest of whiles they just stare at each other.
"So," Andrew says, trying for a smile. "Sometimes I can read people's thoughts."
Jesse nods vigorously. "Yeah. Me, too."
It changes everything.
---
It doesn't happen all at once. They don't magically fall into each other's arms and profess their undying love (outside of Andrew's head, that is), but things do change. For the first time in his life Andrew can talk about it, freely, with someone who understands what it's like. They spend hours every day, in between work and obligations, just talking, like they've always done, only now it means more.
"I used to think I was supposed to do something with it," Jesse says one night. "I mean what's the point in…. What's the point?"
"Maybe there is no point," Andrew says, tilting his head back against the couch and closing his eyes. "Maybe it's… accidental."
He asked his mom once if he was ever dropped on his head as a child; she looked at him funny.
"Yeah," Jesse agrees. "Maybe."
Andrew hears rather than sees Jesse's hand creep across the couch cushions, but he feels the impact of their fingertips down to his toes. Jesse thoughts are as lightning quick as always and Andrew smiles up at the ceiling.
--
Jesse touches more freely with time and on Andrew's 29th birthday they kiss for the first time. It's just a kiss, there are no fireworks, just the slick slide of lips and tongues, and everything is quiet in Andrew's head.
When they pull apart, Jesse leans his forehead against Andrew's collarbone and breathes in shallow trembling gasps, hands fisted tightly into Andrew's shirt.
"I love you," Jesse whispers, tugging harder on Andrew's shirt, making the fabric pull tight across his back. "Please, don't ever leave."
Andrew thinks about his life, about the ups and downs, the wrong turns and the right ones. He thinks about keeping a secret for twenty-eight years, about keeping everyone's secrets for twenty-eight years, and how amazing it is that he no longer has to. He thinks about love and the people he’s loved, he thinks about fate and wonderful accidents. He thinks that he's never been happier than he's been in this tiny apartment with mismatched furniture and limping cats. He thinks that he's never been happier than he is with this curly-haired menace and his beautiful thoughts.
He slides his hands from Jesse's narrow waist, up over his too sharp shoulder blades, to the back of his delicate head, burying his fingers into the thick curls and making Jesse look up at him. Jesse's eyes are dark and his mouth trembles at the edges.
I love you, Andrew thinks, willing his thoughts to land in Jesse's beautiful mind. I love you so much it's stupid, since the second week of knowing you. Everything about you is weird and different and special and lovely and I can't imagine ever wanting to be with anyone else. You're the only one who ever knew me like this, the only one who ever will.
Jesse licks his lips, a flush dawning across his cheekbones. "I got you beat then," he says, smiling slightly. "It only took me two days."
It would be absolutely impossible to not kiss him again; Andrew doesn't even try to resist.
--
The last time it happens is on Jesse's 29th birthday. They're tangled together in Jesse's bed, still coming down from their high, breathing hard and slick with sweat.
"That was…" Jesse starts, but instead of finishing his sentence he grips for Andrew's hand and shows him.
Jesse's thoughts are bright and beautiful, overwhelmed, maybe even a bit nervous, but as calm as they've ever been. Andrew isn't sure what he gives back, but it's probably an endless litany of IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou. They fall asleep with their hands still tangled and their thoughts still mixed and in the morning everything is quiet.
It doesn't register at first, not when there are so many other things to marvel about; like Jesse's hair first thing in the morning and the adorable look of surprise on his face whenever Andrew makes him come. It doesn't register because Andrew no longer has to read Jesse's mind to know what he's thinking and other people's thoughts have never really been more than an unwanted invasion.
But then it's three weeks later and Andrew's crammed into an elevator with fifteen other people and not a single thought pours into his mind. He steps out of it, feeling as dazed and confused as he would have been if he'd heard all of them, and tries to pinpoint the last time he heard something someone wasn't telling him.
"Jesse's birthday," he murmurs to himself, smiling faintly at the perfect memory, and he doesn't know what to think about that.
He tries it out, over the course of the next few weeks, actively trying, for the first time since Shannon, to pick up what someone else is thinking. There's nothing there; for the first time in years Andrew's head is his own.
---
"I think it's gone," he says, two months later, when it’s almost Christmas and Jesse is smiling sweetly at him from three inches away.
"I know," Jesse responds, putting his hand on top of Andrew's between them. "It's wonderful."
Andrew smiles, inching forward to kiss Jesse's adorable lips. He supposes it is kind of wonderful; he never asked for it to begin with, but the silence is unnerving and he'll miss Jesse's thoughts for sure.
---
It is wonderful. Andrew’s head is his own but Jesse is still in it and everything is beautiful. They have their ups and downs, they fight and make up, they fuck and make love, and slowly, very slowly, Jesse breaks out of his shell. He starts touching more freely, he makes friends on his own, and on their one year anniversary they go to England and Andrew's family pretty much fall over each other to make Jesse like them. He does.
Andrew runs into Shannon, she's married now and expecting her first child. It's not awkward, even though maybe it should be.
"I'm happy that you're happy," she says, smiling.
"I was happy with you, too," Andrew counters, because it's not fair to diminish what they had even if he's happier now.
"To happiness," she says, rising her cup, and they toast in tea.
"You're so British it actually hurts," Jesse says and Andrew doesn't have to read his thoughts to know that Jesse thinks he's a dork, or that he loves him because of it.
--
"I'm happiest with you," Andrew says later with his lips against Jesse's ear. "You complete me."
"I'm happiest with you, too," Jesse responds, nudging his head in under Andrew's chin and settling down for the night with a hand curved around Andrew's ribs.
---
Maybe there was never a purpose, maybe it was completely accidental, but years later, looking back, Andrew can't help but think that maybe it was supposed to lead him to Jesse all along. Maybe not because they love each other and get along quite spectacularly, maybe not because kissing Jesse gives him a rush like nothing else, even after all these years, but because Jesse is amazing, and before they met and before their thoughts cancelled each other out, Jesse was trapped in an invisible shell, too afraid to reach for the things he wanted because he knew he'd hear the rejection even if it wasn't spoken.
And Jesse does good things, amazing things. Jesse writes plays about anxiety and superiority that reach out to touch the hearts of thousands of people. He writes young adult novels about being different and anxious that spend months on the bestseller lists, because there are so many people out there who are just like him and they all need to hear that it gets better and that they are good enough just the way they are.
Andrew is so proud of him that he might burst and deep down inside he can't help but think of himself as a catalyst. He can't help but think that while he isn't spectacular and amazing like that, he helped Jesse become that person and that's the greatest thing he could have ever asked for.
"Wrong," Jesse says fondly, pulling Andrew down for a sweet little kiss.
Andrew doesn't ask how Jesse knew what he was thinking because Jesse always knows, even though he can no longer hear.
"Yeah?" he asks, and maybe it makes him a bit sad, because he wants to be that person, okay?
"Yeah," Jesse confirms, pushing his face into its favorite resting spot against Andrew's neck. "You're so much more than that. I don't look at you and see the person who helped me realize my potential, I look at you and see the most brilliant person I've ever known."
"That's silly," Andrew murmurs, sinking a hand into Jesse's curls, still as thick and lovely as always. "I was just thinking that if there was a purpose, this must be it."
"Maybe," Jesse agrees, tilting his head back to smile up at Andrew. "But it goes both ways, you know?"
Andrew thinks about the man he used to be and the man he is today and thinks that maybe Jesse is right. Maybe Andrew doesn't reach out to thousands of people all at once, but he does reach out to them one at a time, and maybe he wouldn't be that person without Jesse, and maybe he wouldn't be that person if his head wasn't quiet.
He smiles, bending down to mingle his smile with Jesse's. Maybe there's more than one way to be great and maybe that's what love is all about, realizing each other's potential. Maybe they'll never know why, or if there even was a why, but it doesn't matter because he has this and this is worth everything.
The End