The Giraffe Notes Things!
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Andrew POV. Set during. Andrew tracks Jesse down.
Jesse
Tracking down all the boys in their graduating class takes weeks. Andrew keeps a list in his laptop bag and whenever he has some free times he opens up google and slowly, painstakingly, researches each name on the list. He mentions it to his brother, during one of their many rambling conversations, and being the amazing person that he is, he offers to help. It goes considerably faster after that, because Ben has something Andrew doesn’t; a facebook account.
“Are you ever going to tell me what this is all about?” Ben asks one night, when the list has been narrowed down to seven people.
“I’m trying to find someone,” Andrew answers.
“Yeah, I can tell,” Ben says dryly. “I’m more interested in why.”
Andrew flushes and kicks his feet up on the coffee table, pressing the phone closer to his ear.
“There’s this boy,” he says reluctantly.
“Mouse?” Ben asks immediately, because he watched the Oscars too and Andrew showed him the notes years ago.
“I… uh… yeah.”
Ben laughs. “I should have figured,” he says. “But why now?”
Andrew hesitates. “We… uhm… we’ve been talking.”
Ben is silent for a moment. “Talking how?”
Andrew takes a deep breath and then he spills he whole story about the emails and the IMs and the texts and the phone calls. He doesn’t say anything about how Mouse makes his pulse speed up and his stomach clench, but he doesn’t think he has to, it’s probably obvious from the way he can’t stop talking once he’s started. It’s liberating to finally tell someone about the stranger that stole his heart, but also kind of terrifying, because the longer he talks the more obvious it becomes that this isn’t just a crush.
Ben is silent when Andrew stops speaking and Andrew holds his breath without really meaning to. He doesn’t think Ben will judge him too hard since sappy romanticism runs in the family but he kind of doesn’t want to be judged at all because Mouse is perfect and everyone should be in love with him.
“I think you’ve been going about this the wrong way,” Ben says when he finally speaks.
Andrew lets out a breath. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve narrowed the list down to seven names, but that doesn’t really mean anything, it could be either of those people.”
“Yeah,” Andrew says reluctantly. He doesn’t like thinking about the remaining names and how one of those names stands out to him as if it’d been highlighted because he could be wrong and then what?
“But only a very limited number of people have your email address and one of them obviously gave it out. If you discount family and your closest friend that leaves like, what? Five people?”
“Yeah,” Andrew mutters.
“Find that person,” Ben says calmly. “And you’ll find your man.”
Andrew flushes again and fidgets a bit. “So… uhm… you don’t think I’m ridiculous then?”
Ben laughs. “No,” he says. “I think you’re in love.”
He sounds happy, fond. He sounds like he wants this to work out too and Andrew smiles up at the pristine ceiling with butterflies fluttering around in his stomach. He’s going to find Mouse and once he does, he’s not going to let him go.
-
Justin folds like a house of cards in a hurricane the moment Andrew asks him, going on and on about this terrifyingly amazing woman that he hopes will agree to date him at some point. Andrew hums along, filing away the nuggets of actual information that spills out with Justin’s drunken ramblings; her name, her number and most importantly her workplace.
As soon as he hangs up Andrew digs the list out with trembling fingers, because he could be wrong, it could be just wishful thinking and muddled memories, but it isn’t. At the very top of the list is the first name Andrew looked up and scribbled next to it are all the pieces of information he could find. He trails an unsteady fingertip over the squished notes until he reaches the last one: works at Random House.
“Jesse,” Andrew murmurs, lips pulling into a helpless happy smile. “Jesse.”
-The End-
--
Jesse POV. Set after. Ridiculous schmoop.
Coming Home
The coffee table is overflowing with takeout containers and boxes, sprinkled with empty soda cans and dotted with dirty napkins. The culprit is fast asleep on the couch, mouth slightly open and one leg pulled up to rest along the couch back. It’s hard to tell (what with the cat obscuring most of his midsection) but his stomach looks slightly extended.
There’s a small pile of menus on the floor before the table, as if maybe they’ve been tipped to the floor by a stray container and Jesse bends down to pick them up, running his eyes over the topmost one. It’s for an Indian place and the vegetarian section is full of Andrew’s near unintelligible scribbles. (The same scribbles he left all over Jesse’s book manuscript, but then it was mostly exclamations of love and lopsided hearts.)
Jesse reads through them carefully with his lower lip stuck between his teeth and once he’s done with the first one he goes through the others only to find more of the same. (‘Looks foul. Tastes delish.’ ‘Jesse would love this.’ ‘Yuck.’ ‘Actually better than the place down the street that we don’t talk about.’)
I love you so much it might actually kill me, he thinks. Out loud he says, “I go away for one week and this is what you turn into?”
Andrew stirs, blinking his eyes open with a smile already breaking over his face. “Jesse,” he says, gently pushing Koala out of the way to clamber off the couch. “You’re home.”
Jesse finds himself swept up in Andrew’s arms and kissed breathless. He can’t say he minds.
-
It takes a while before Jesse’s able to bring up the menus because he’s busy being kissed and then undressed and then quite thoroughly fucked and then, because there needs to be a symmetry to these things, fucking, but eventually he does bring them up.
“So what’s this then?” he asks, spreading the greasy, wrinkled papers out over the blankets. “Did you get a new role that requires a twenty pound weight gain?”
Andrew snakes a hand around Jesse’s waist and presses a kiss to his lower back. “Would you still love me if I got fat?” he asks.
“Obviously,” Jesse answers, rolling his eyes. “How much you weigh have absolutely nothing to do with how much I love you.” He considers this for a moment, his brain going off on a tangent. “Actually you should gain weight to give me a better return on my emotional investment.”
Andrew hazards a guess. “Because there’d be more of me to love?”
“Yes, at your current weight the pound to love ratio is frankly abysmal.”
Andrew laughs and bites lightly at the fleshy part of Jesse’s right buttock. “I love you, you know that right?”
“I was hoping,” Jesse deadpans and Andrew bites him again.
-
“So about the menus,” Jesse tries again, much much later.
“What about them?” Andrew asks drowsily.
“What were you doing with them? Other than eating your body weight in Indian food?”
“What do you think I was doing?” Andrew counter asks, shifting so that Jesse can feel him shape the words against his skin.
Jesse bites down on his lower lip, even after all this time almost too shy to voice the assumption he made the moment he started reading Andrew’s comments.
“I think,” he says, curling his fingers into the blankets. “That you were trying to find us a new Indian place.”
“Correct,” Andrew murmurs, kissing Jesse’s shoulder. “Because?”
Jesse takes a deep breath. “Because you know how much I miss our old one.”
Jesse can feel Andrew smile against his skin; it takes the awkwardness out of the unwanted blush staining Jesse’s cheeks.
“And?” Andrew whispers.
Jesse turns around in his arms, shifting until he can hide his face against Andrew’s neck. “Because you love me very much,” he mutters.
They used to do this a lot in the beginning, as a part of Andrew’s grand plan to make Jesse accept his love as something solid and tangible and not a fleeting affection to be taken away at a whim. Weirdly enough, it’s still embarrassing to be the one putting those words in Andrew’s mouth.
Jesse trails his hand down Andrew’s side, putting his hand over the mouse tattoo on Andrew’s hip. For their one year anniversary Andrew added a small heart to his tattoo and for their two year anniversary Jesse got a small matching giraffe. When they kiss standing up their tattoos are at the exact location to have the mouse and the giraffe kissing too, it took Jesse months to figure that one out without Andrew getting suspicious but he thinks it’s a nice touch.
“I do love you very much,” Andrew says, curling a proprietary hand around Jesse’s hip.
“Same,” Jesse murmurs sleepily, breathing in the much missed scent of Andrew’s skin. “So very very much.”
- The End -
--
Anonymous asked: What do you guys usually do on a quiet day?
Anonymous asked: Can there be more pictures, pretty pretty please?
Anonymous asked: How did Andrew's crush on Jesse develop?
Anonymous asked: Wedding story and pictures? Pretty, pretty please.
--
Also, if you haven't seen it. tumbling-after made a lovely trailer for the fic. ♥ ♥
Untitled from WheretheSelf Resides on Vimeo.
--
Other little bits and pieces can be found at The Giraffe Notes tumblr. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! ♥
Andrew POV. Set during. Andrew tracks Jesse down.
Jesse
Tracking down all the boys in their graduating class takes weeks. Andrew keeps a list in his laptop bag and whenever he has some free times he opens up google and slowly, painstakingly, researches each name on the list. He mentions it to his brother, during one of their many rambling conversations, and being the amazing person that he is, he offers to help. It goes considerably faster after that, because Ben has something Andrew doesn’t; a facebook account.
“Are you ever going to tell me what this is all about?” Ben asks one night, when the list has been narrowed down to seven people.
“I’m trying to find someone,” Andrew answers.
“Yeah, I can tell,” Ben says dryly. “I’m more interested in why.”
Andrew flushes and kicks his feet up on the coffee table, pressing the phone closer to his ear.
“There’s this boy,” he says reluctantly.
“Mouse?” Ben asks immediately, because he watched the Oscars too and Andrew showed him the notes years ago.
“I… uh… yeah.”
Ben laughs. “I should have figured,” he says. “But why now?”
Andrew hesitates. “We… uhm… we’ve been talking.”
Ben is silent for a moment. “Talking how?”
Andrew takes a deep breath and then he spills he whole story about the emails and the IMs and the texts and the phone calls. He doesn’t say anything about how Mouse makes his pulse speed up and his stomach clench, but he doesn’t think he has to, it’s probably obvious from the way he can’t stop talking once he’s started. It’s liberating to finally tell someone about the stranger that stole his heart, but also kind of terrifying, because the longer he talks the more obvious it becomes that this isn’t just a crush.
Ben is silent when Andrew stops speaking and Andrew holds his breath without really meaning to. He doesn’t think Ben will judge him too hard since sappy romanticism runs in the family but he kind of doesn’t want to be judged at all because Mouse is perfect and everyone should be in love with him.
“I think you’ve been going about this the wrong way,” Ben says when he finally speaks.
Andrew lets out a breath. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve narrowed the list down to seven names, but that doesn’t really mean anything, it could be either of those people.”
“Yeah,” Andrew says reluctantly. He doesn’t like thinking about the remaining names and how one of those names stands out to him as if it’d been highlighted because he could be wrong and then what?
“But only a very limited number of people have your email address and one of them obviously gave it out. If you discount family and your closest friend that leaves like, what? Five people?”
“Yeah,” Andrew mutters.
“Find that person,” Ben says calmly. “And you’ll find your man.”
Andrew flushes again and fidgets a bit. “So… uhm… you don’t think I’m ridiculous then?”
Ben laughs. “No,” he says. “I think you’re in love.”
He sounds happy, fond. He sounds like he wants this to work out too and Andrew smiles up at the pristine ceiling with butterflies fluttering around in his stomach. He’s going to find Mouse and once he does, he’s not going to let him go.
-
Justin folds like a house of cards in a hurricane the moment Andrew asks him, going on and on about this terrifyingly amazing woman that he hopes will agree to date him at some point. Andrew hums along, filing away the nuggets of actual information that spills out with Justin’s drunken ramblings; her name, her number and most importantly her workplace.
As soon as he hangs up Andrew digs the list out with trembling fingers, because he could be wrong, it could be just wishful thinking and muddled memories, but it isn’t. At the very top of the list is the first name Andrew looked up and scribbled next to it are all the pieces of information he could find. He trails an unsteady fingertip over the squished notes until he reaches the last one: works at Random House.
“Jesse,” Andrew murmurs, lips pulling into a helpless happy smile. “Jesse.”
-The End-
--
Jesse POV. Set after. Ridiculous schmoop.
Coming Home
The coffee table is overflowing with takeout containers and boxes, sprinkled with empty soda cans and dotted with dirty napkins. The culprit is fast asleep on the couch, mouth slightly open and one leg pulled up to rest along the couch back. It’s hard to tell (what with the cat obscuring most of his midsection) but his stomach looks slightly extended.
There’s a small pile of menus on the floor before the table, as if maybe they’ve been tipped to the floor by a stray container and Jesse bends down to pick them up, running his eyes over the topmost one. It’s for an Indian place and the vegetarian section is full of Andrew’s near unintelligible scribbles. (The same scribbles he left all over Jesse’s book manuscript, but then it was mostly exclamations of love and lopsided hearts.)
Jesse reads through them carefully with his lower lip stuck between his teeth and once he’s done with the first one he goes through the others only to find more of the same. (‘Looks foul. Tastes delish.’ ‘Jesse would love this.’ ‘Yuck.’ ‘Actually better than the place down the street that we don’t talk about.’)
I love you so much it might actually kill me, he thinks. Out loud he says, “I go away for one week and this is what you turn into?”
Andrew stirs, blinking his eyes open with a smile already breaking over his face. “Jesse,” he says, gently pushing Koala out of the way to clamber off the couch. “You’re home.”
Jesse finds himself swept up in Andrew’s arms and kissed breathless. He can’t say he minds.
-
It takes a while before Jesse’s able to bring up the menus because he’s busy being kissed and then undressed and then quite thoroughly fucked and then, because there needs to be a symmetry to these things, fucking, but eventually he does bring them up.
“So what’s this then?” he asks, spreading the greasy, wrinkled papers out over the blankets. “Did you get a new role that requires a twenty pound weight gain?”
Andrew snakes a hand around Jesse’s waist and presses a kiss to his lower back. “Would you still love me if I got fat?” he asks.
“Obviously,” Jesse answers, rolling his eyes. “How much you weigh have absolutely nothing to do with how much I love you.” He considers this for a moment, his brain going off on a tangent. “Actually you should gain weight to give me a better return on my emotional investment.”
Andrew hazards a guess. “Because there’d be more of me to love?”
“Yes, at your current weight the pound to love ratio is frankly abysmal.”
Andrew laughs and bites lightly at the fleshy part of Jesse’s right buttock. “I love you, you know that right?”
“I was hoping,” Jesse deadpans and Andrew bites him again.
-
“So about the menus,” Jesse tries again, much much later.
“What about them?” Andrew asks drowsily.
“What were you doing with them? Other than eating your body weight in Indian food?”
“What do you think I was doing?” Andrew counter asks, shifting so that Jesse can feel him shape the words against his skin.
Jesse bites down on his lower lip, even after all this time almost too shy to voice the assumption he made the moment he started reading Andrew’s comments.
“I think,” he says, curling his fingers into the blankets. “That you were trying to find us a new Indian place.”
“Correct,” Andrew murmurs, kissing Jesse’s shoulder. “Because?”
Jesse takes a deep breath. “Because you know how much I miss our old one.”
Jesse can feel Andrew smile against his skin; it takes the awkwardness out of the unwanted blush staining Jesse’s cheeks.
“And?” Andrew whispers.
Jesse turns around in his arms, shifting until he can hide his face against Andrew’s neck. “Because you love me very much,” he mutters.
They used to do this a lot in the beginning, as a part of Andrew’s grand plan to make Jesse accept his love as something solid and tangible and not a fleeting affection to be taken away at a whim. Weirdly enough, it’s still embarrassing to be the one putting those words in Andrew’s mouth.
Jesse trails his hand down Andrew’s side, putting his hand over the mouse tattoo on Andrew’s hip. For their one year anniversary Andrew added a small heart to his tattoo and for their two year anniversary Jesse got a small matching giraffe. When they kiss standing up their tattoos are at the exact location to have the mouse and the giraffe kissing too, it took Jesse months to figure that one out without Andrew getting suspicious but he thinks it’s a nice touch.
“I do love you very much,” Andrew says, curling a proprietary hand around Jesse’s hip.
“Same,” Jesse murmurs sleepily, breathing in the much missed scent of Andrew’s skin. “So very very much.”
- The End -
--
Anonymous asked: What do you guys usually do on a quiet day?
Anonymous asked: Can there be more pictures, pretty pretty please?
Anonymous asked: How did Andrew's crush on Jesse develop?
Anonymous asked: Wedding story and pictures? Pretty, pretty please.
--
Also, if you haven't seen it. tumbling-after made a lovely trailer for the fic. ♥ ♥
You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com
Untitled from WheretheSelf Resides on Vimeo.
--
Other little bits and pieces can be found at The Giraffe Notes tumblr. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! ♥