TSN RPS - "Can't Hug Every Cat" - Andrew/Jesse [1/2]
Title: Can't Hug Every Cat (TSN BIG BANG 2012)
Fandom: The Social Network RPS
Pairing: Andrew Garfield/Jesse Eisenberg
Word Count: 12,000 words
Rating: M
Warnings: My love of Justin Timberlake is a serious hazard.
Summary: Jesse loves cats. He loves every type of cat. He just wants to hug all of them, but he can't. He can't hug every cat. He can, however, accidentally post a humiliating dating video that goes viral.
“I’m talking about an entire website full of fuzzy sweater-vested nerd dudes,” Joe enthused, lifting his cat, Speedy Gonzales, out of Jesse's arms, and glancing pointedly at the door.
“You say that like it's a good thing.” Jesse said, trying to resist the urge to take the cat back.
“For you,” Joe said, “it's a very good thing. A very, very good thing. Judging by the amount of fur floating in the backgrounds of their profile pictures, it is entirely feasible that there is a man out there with enough cats to satisfy even you.”
Jesse's frowned in confusion. “What are you doing on this site? You've got a girlfriend, and if I remember rightly, she's kind of a dog person-” Jesse lifted his brows in surprise. “Huh. Did you have something you wanted to tell me?”
Joe spluttered and put Speedy down on the kitchen lino, trapping him between his feet as he reached for the cat food on top of the fridge.
Jesse honeyed his words with sympathy and understanding, “You know I adore Emma, but if she's trying to get rid of Speedy, you should dump her. I'm here for him.”
He waited for Joe to turn around and pin him with an accusing stare before he grinned.
“And you, I suppose.”
Joe sniffed and poured out a dish of cat kibble, cursing when Speedy snatched a mouthful and escaped his prison between Joe's locked ankles, heading straight back to the sofa where he flounced into Jesse's lap again and proceeded to crunch kibble dust and cat spit all over Jesse's jeans.
“That's it, Eisenberg, get out of my house.” Joe announced, “I never want to see your cat loving face again. Or at least until you get yourself an equally cat loving boyfriend to tamp down on your cat debauchery.”
Jesse sighed and got up, pushing Speedy and his kibble fragment collection into the cushions beside him. “Shall I just mail you editorial corrections as I find them, then?”
“Yes,” Joe said, petulantly. “Every missing 's', and comma query deserves its own hand penned correspondence.”
“Very well,” Jesse nodded, collecting the scattered scrawls that had been Joe's manuscript a couple of hours prior. He tapped them on the coffee table decidedly and tucked them under his arm. “Good day, sir.”
“Check out that website, okay?”
“I said good day, sir,”Jesse replied with feeling, giving Speedy a last scratch under the chin before letting himself out.
“I better see some calligraphy, asshole!” Joe yelled after him.
Naturally, Joe had decided that his words had to be law (he sent an animated gif illustrating them as such), and he actually insisted on correspondence via only mail, although he relaxed his demands to include email, instant message, and occasionally text message - a medium for manuscript editing which frankly boggled Jesse's mind.
It was hard enough to take in Joe's fragmented leaps of topic when they were editing one on one - deciphering the keymash of numbers and autocorrect catastrophes that Joe bombarded him with had Jesse wondering whether he should maybetake a refresher class to ensure he could keep up with his younger writers.
Joe wasn't even into writing the kind of experimental fiction that could really bend the mind - those clients tended to send him emails in capital letters telling him EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED. Jesse could empathise with that. When something meant a lot to a person, there was nothing worse than someone misconstruing their meaning. Cats understood that too, at least better than any human Jesse knew. Maybe it was because humans didn't have claws.
At any rate, Jesse had a mounting stash of incomprehensible texts from Joe copied into his Notes function for later analysis, a spotless pet-free apartment, no immediate cat access, a tea appointment with Carey and her poetry at ten, and no boyfriend, let alone prospects.
Seeing as Joe's novel-in-the-making was currently his biggest and best-paying contract, and that finishing his manuscript meant the difference between finding a pricey new pet-friendly apartment, and having to eat chicken noodle soup for the next two weeks, Jesse decided he didn't really subscribe to a socially acceptable definition of desperate, and he looked up the website.
It wasn't terrible, he had to admit. Rather - it looked semi-professional, and non-threatening. And - there were a reassuringly large amount of young looking gentlemen with cats in their laps on the front page. There were a couple of friendly looking ladies with cats too, and Jesse took the opportunity to check a couple of options in the profile registration.
;
Jesse erased the penpals option, feeling ruthless, and then considered viciously unchecking the new friends option before deciding to let it lie. New friends with cats couldn't hurt. (He could almost feel Joe telepathically sensing that thought and glaring at him down their non-existent link.)
It looked a little cruel, that he only wanted friends and long term dating. He wondered whether he was being overly picky. Then he looked at the kitchen floor he'd buffed at eleven pm the night before, and decided that implicitly pre-warning people was probably a good idea.
He sat back and looked at the published profile, chewing his lip.
It was kinda scary, seeing it there, in bold type at the top of a webpage. It felt a little like accomplishment too, which was weird, seeing as all he'd done was click dropdown menus and turn himself into a target for online predators.
There was a little blinking box on the left of the screen that complained that Jesse had only completed sixty percent of his profile. “Write something about yourself to help people get to know you!” Jesse clicked it, and awkwardly followed further orders.
NYC cat lover, enjoys indoors pursuits, cat shelter charity, and criticising the grammar in the weekend newspaper. Seeking new friends, a steadier antihistamine supply, and tips on finding pet friendly apartments.
Thanks to a series of unfortunate non-cat-petting-related circumstances, my work clients will no longer allow me to pet their cats until I return with a boyfriend, or without what I consider a perfectly reasonable cat fixation. I rather like cats, so I have decided to work on the boyfriend criteria. I would appreciate meeting men, preferably with cats.
NB: In this case, cat is not a euphemism.
NB2: You really must love cats. This is as close to non-negotiable as I can get.
NB3: I am not Bridget Jones, and would like to apologise profusely to anyone who feels misled in this regard.
Jesse stared at his keysmash. He sounded psychotic. It was probably for the best. The blinking box was now demanding a profile picture, and there was no way Jesse was about to open that Pandora's Box of insecurity five minutes before work. He exited his tabs and put his laptop into sleep mode, double checking that he had Carey's folder of proofs in the pocket of his bag.
He glanced at the clock again. He was going to be almost an hour early.
His phone beeped shortly, indicating an email. He thumbed at the envelope icon, and waited for it to download, only to see it was from the dating site. He rolled his eyes, and almost hit the delete button on the spot, but missed and scrolled down enough to read the heading as it downloaded.
We are very pleased to report that you are in the top half of PuppyLove's most attractive users.
The scales recently tipped in your favor, and we thought you'd like to know...
Your new elite status comes with one important privilege:
You can now connect with others via our all new video bio function. The better and more true-to-life your video, the better matches you will make, and the more attention from potential perfect cuties you will receive!
Click here to access your new capabilities, and make a video now.
Jesse sat back down and opened his laptop again.
“How do I even-” Jesse muttered to himself, jabbing at the trackpad of his laptop. The webcam function had always be a bit of a mystery to him and these so-called 'ease-of-use' embedded functionalities on Facebook and other sites had done nothing but keep him ignorant. What exactly was difficult about a simple stop and go? What did a website care about the difference between a tap and a press?
In hindsight, twenty minutes before work might not have been the optimal time to start recording a video introduction for the dating site Joe had recommended. Actually, going to a website Joe had recommended was probably his first mistake. At any rate, Jesse had been the one to sit down and painstakingly type the horrifyingly pun-laden, misspelled abomination of a URL into his address bar.
He was in no position to point fingers.
After three false starts, Jesse managed to get the hang of the function buttons, and position the screen of the laptop so he could record his face instead of his crotch or the kitchen nook.
“Hello. My name is Jesse, and this is something like my fifth attempt at a video bio...thing. Also my first time trying online dating, so I'm somewhat....anxious. Which isn't particularly out of the ordinary, for me.” Jesse rubbed his chin, and abruptly stopped when he saw his LCD doppelganger do the same.
“So, I am a Masters of English Lit grad, and I work in the field. Uh. I also love cats? I can't actually have them here, due to the contract I signed when I moved into this apartment a couple of years ago, and I thought that was an okay compromise, but recently I've been thinking that I might have been wrong about that. So, obviously, I love cats,” Jesse repeated tremulously. “I love every kind of cat.” He blinked a few times, and rubbed his eyes. “Sorry, I've got an allergy.”
“Anyway, I am a cat lover, which we covered - and I love to read. Mostly Russian literature, but I'm not fussy. I really want to foster some cats one day, from the shelter nearby.” Jesse said, staring over the top of his laptop screen, wondering whether he could save this.
"I want to adopt all of them. Which is crazy,” Jesse added hurriedly. “But I just think about how many don't have a home, and how I should have them. Mange is a serious problem, you know, and, and - they need people to care for them. And their ears. And their whiskers, and their nose. Um.”
He snuffled a little, his rambling officially beyond the point of redemption. “I'm sorry, I can't, I just, I can't...” he apologized to the laptop, scrabbling for the end video button.
He got up and rummaged for the paper towels in the kitchen, scrubbing at his face before he looked at the time and swore. He shut the laptop and put it back in his bag. He'd have to run to make the appointment with Carey.
Carey was wonderfully understanding, and she'd already ordered Jesse's favourite tea, and a whole plate of tiny cakes from the organic end of the cafe cabinet. It was far too trendy a place for Jesse's tastes, but Carey seemed to know exactly what she was doing, when she pushed a couple of biscuits onto a saucer and slid them at him.
“I'm so sorry, Carey, it's been - a morning.”
Carey raised her eyebrows at that, but she just nodded and poured his tea out. “You do look a little worse for wear, Jess.”
He sank into the blissfully cushioned seat, and threw back the entire cup.
“We could reschedule, if you like?” She offered, refilling it for him immediately.
“No, no, no, no. It's fine. I want to get your opinion on the changes I sent about An Education. I think it's brilliant, by the way.”
Carey flushed.“You're nothing but a flatterer,” she said, but she waved at the waiter in the pink dress shoes, and asked for more tea, if you don't mind?
They spent a very pleasant couple of hours poring over Jesse's handwritten annotations, and adding new ones in Carey's inky green hand. The tea kept coming, and Jesse was feeling warm and well-fed when she made a suggestion about page presentation, and Jesse suggested they look at the more experimental layouts her publisher had previously okayed that featured on their website.
His laptop automatically restored his last session, a function Jesse had considered a godsend on more than one prior occasion. This time, however, seeing VIDEO SUBMISSION: SUCCESSFUL! did not exactly elicit a sigh of relief.
“Are you alright, Jesse?” Carey said. “Only, you've gone all pale...is your laptop alright?”
“Uh.” Jesse replied eloquently. “No, it's...working.”
He clicked around, only to find that there was a confirmation of submission success email in his inbox wishing him well in love, and that the video was indeed live on his puppylove profile, and had already racked up 378 views. He scrambled to find the delete button, letting out a rush of air when he hit the Yes, I'm Sure button on the delete screen.
“Alright?” Carey asked again, her face a picture of concern. She put a piece of the creamy russian fudge on his saucer, and pushed it at him. “Jess?”
Jesse closed the tab and opened Carey's publishing company's website, logging in with his staff account.
“Everything's fine now,” he told her, breathing deeply through his nose to calm his racing heart. He took the proffered fudge, and turned the laptop so she could see the page variations. “I think the second one would be almost perfect for a first time anthology, but the font isn't right, obviously.”
Carey smiled at him, reassured. “Obviously. Jesse knows best, after all.”
Jesse wished he could muster up a smile in return, but he had a creeping coldness in his belly that informed him that nothing was fine, at all. It was just his luck that he was always right about these things.
It took another couple of hours for them to compromise on a single sentence in Carey's latest verse for An Education, with Carey affectionately calling him a pedant, and Jesse trying to explain without explicitly admitting that he thought her poem was possibly the best piece of literature he'd ever had the privilege to proof.
Jesse ended up letting her have this one, and they wound up the meeting on a high point. Carey put on her white faux fur wrap, complete with matching mittens and Russian cap, and departed, cheeks pink with laughter as much as the cold air. Jesse waved off her offers of companionship, and took advantage of the rest of his tea and the free wifi to shoot off a couple of emails to their publisher and another nagging one to Joe, who was still withholding everything barring texts that featured incomprehensible memes, and whales made out of hyphens and periods.
He logged off the cafe's wifi and, feeling guilty about hogging their best table for the last six hours, picked up their teapot, balanced it and their teacups on the crumb laden plate, and delivered it to the counter.
The waiter in the pink shoes was sitting behind it, tapping rapidly at what Jesse recognised from Joe's procrastination techniques as Temple Run. He looked up briefly, and smiled. “Hey, thank you.”
He then did a double take, and stood up, almost knocking a stand of organic tea across the counter. “Oh my god, you're Jesse!”
“Thanks?” Jesse said, confused. It wasn't as if he was a regular, so this was unprecedented unless Carey was a lot more talkative than he'd ever thought possible.
“You're the guy from the thing-”
“The thing?” Jesse repeated, bemused.
“You love cats, right?” The kid said, positively gleeful.
“Oh.” Jesse said. His stomach began to sink. “And if - if I was to agree, how would you say that you know that?”
“You're famous! Oh wow, I loved you, you were great,” the waiter enthused. He pulled a pen out of his pocket, and offered up his order pad. “Please, I know it's rude, but would you consider giving me your autograph? I swear I wouldn't sell it, I just love this in-synching stuff fad.”
“Uhm, I don't really - do that.” Jesse said, mortified.
“Oh, no problem. Sorry, sir.” The waiter's expression implied however, that there very definitely was a problem.
Jesse decided it was probably time to leave.
The door rang, and a couple came in, two girls, holding hands, both in fluffy earmuffs. One had her iPhone in an enormously impractical Hello Kitty case, and she had the screen angled so her girlfriend could see. The tinny sound however, filled the coffeeshop. And Jesse could hear his voice.
“I'm so, so, sorry,” he said earnestly, grabbing for the phone.
The girlfriend gave him a hearty (and well deserved, he had to admit) shove, and snatched it back, but not before Jesse had gotten an eyeful of himself, obviously doctored, surrounded by cats, his voice distorted and set to repeat, reliving his shame over, and over, and over.
“Hey, aren't you-” the first girl said.
“I'm so sorry!” Jesse yelled. He jammed all of his papers into his laptop bag, and ran out of the coffee shop.
“Really! So, so, sorry, like you have no idea-” he repeated, wrestling the door open with half the fingers of one hand.
At that point Jesse could only assume that he had lost his mind and blanked out, because he found himself dropping papers all over his hallway as he one-handedly sent Joe a desperate and extremely unprofessional text message.
His phone pinged less than a minute later.
Jesse allowed himself a shortlivedmoment to feel smug about having somehow managed to shock Joe into a spasm of motivated writing.
He put the phone down on the coffee table and put his head between his knees for a couple of seconds, until he realised that it was extremely uncomfortable and possibly dangerous to be attempting contortion exercises in a tightly buttoned, too-small winter coat.
He got up and hung it on the hook where it belonged, unlaced his boots, and wiped up all the slush he'd managed to track into the living room. He was up to wringing out his soaked gloves and hat into the kitchen sink when the phone chimed again. Jesse almost dropped the phone in terror. He mashed out a response immediately.
And then, apologetically.
He put the phone down, deliberately out of reach, and pulled his laptop out of his bag instead, scrunching up his nose at the small scale rain shower that flew off the flap when he flicked it open. He glared at the tiny webcam eye as it booted up and steeled himself as he clicked open Chrome. It was not difficult to find the offending video when no less than seven of his friends and colleagues had emailed him with links and exclamation-studded commentary. He clicked the hyperlink, and froze the youtube player. One playthrough had definitely been enough for him.
His phone chimed and he could see that it was Joe's phone again.
He ignored her for now and checked out the summary section on the youtube page. It was easy enough to figure out who was to blame, and more than slightly infuriating to see that they were actually selling his autotuned misery on iTunes, of all places.
Spitefully, Jesse hit the Dislike button, and clicked to flag the video as inappropriate, though it was hard to choose exactly how to express 'these strangers have autotuned my weakest moment and are now ruining my life' through limited drop down options.
It wasn't particularly difficult to figure out from the blog on their website that the insingK production company worked out of an apartment in Manhattan. There was only one Andrew Garfield listed in the white pages, and he looked like he might be the right age. It was a long walk to his address, but it would give him time to think about what he was going to say. At least that's what Jesse hoped.
He found himself walking to the door and putting on his gloves before taking them off again three times before he committed to actually turning the knob. In the end, what got him over the threshold was his utter indignation at the fact that someone out there was cruel enough that they could, in good conscience, it seemed, take advantage of his lowest point.
He jammed his damp hat back onto his head and slammed the door as he left. If anything, somebody was about to get a piece of his mind.
EARLIER
Sometimes Andrew wondered what it would be like to have a real job, and not just a hobby internship that had grown out of control. He certainly couldn't complain about just how satisfying it felt to be able to look out from under his blinds at eleven in the morning and decide that the weather called for a day out in the sun. Or “fieldwork”, as Justin termed it, as he actually did the quotation marks with his fingers.
It was a stupid job, Andrew thought, most of the time. His mother made no secret that this was also her assessment of his occupation, but when she saw the new recording equipment and the halfway decent, non-sidewalk-poached sofa perched proudly in the background of his Skype videos she hmmed noncommittally at him when he mentioned job hunting.
“Sweetheart, you didn't graduate - not that there's anything wrong with that”, she said, “I know this hobby with Justin is at least earning you some pocket money. Why don't you just enjoy it while it lasts?”
Andrew bit the inside of his cheek to control the extent of his amusement. Translation: “Even Denny's won't hire you, Andrew Russel Garfield, so you had better ride this bubble till it pops.”
As it was, Justin, whilst possibly the worst person Andrew had ever met in his life, was at least one of the most financially honest guys he'd ever had to share his income with.
Justin lived with a girlfriend Andrew had never met, but he assumed must be imaginary, some kind of sociopath, or extremely sassy to put up with him.
“Business and pleasure,” Justin had said cryptically when he'd asked about his living situation, “and never the twain shall meet.”
So, either he lived rentfree, or he was sitting on some kind of trust fund, because Timberlake also insisted on paying half of Andrew's rent, seeing as they used his apartment as their office and business headquarters.
He'd had to draw the line at his suggestion to put a sign on the door. The body corporate killing him aside, Andrew didn't actually think the fact that he worked for an internet video spoof company that sounded like a nineties boyband needed to be the first thing potential girl or boyfriends knew about him when he took them back to his place.
If anything, it tended to polarize people's opinions of him rather quickly. Justin had pretty effectively already ensured that their reputation was that of a bunch of real assholes. Apparently it was asking a little too much of the internet to believe that there were a) only two of them and that b) Justin was the asshole. Andrew thought he was a pretty nice guy when he wasn't autotuning Justin's cruel rap arias and composing irritatingly catchy synth hooks.
It was one of those mornings where the hate-mail had been just enough to send Andrew back to his bed nest, but not so bad that he felt the need to rock back and forth in the foetal position. He settled for laying on his bed in sweats, idly rolling Snugglepuss onto his back every time he cuddled too close for comfort.
The name came with the cat, Andrew made great pains to point out. People liked to move out of the building and leave their cats behind, because they were awful, terrible people, and Justin was a monster who liked to pretend he was a responsible human being, so Andrew, in the absence of any backbone whatsoever, had somehow come to house a collection of cats who thought of him as little more than their janitor.
When Justin finally turned up, ever considerate, he slammed the front door open into the living room wall. Snugglepuss, already pretty pissed off about the rolling situation, bit Andrew spitefully on the forearm and ran into the living room, hopefully to give Justin the same treatment.
“Who's a good kitty, aww, here, McMuffin for you. Yes! Bacon. Yummy for Snuggles!”
Andrew moaned melodramatically, and flopped over far enough to give Justin the fisheye through his bedroom doorway. “Bacon,” he said, invoking a flurry of demon cats to emerge from their lair under the bed.
“Kill him, minions, and bring me the McMuffin,” he told them weakly.
In a predictable fit of mutiny, none of them returned, and instead he had to put up with listening to Justin throw jingle balls around the living room in between the familiar beeps and whirs of the editing suite booting up.
“Eurgh,” he said, and untangled himself from the sheets.
"You're up early,” he said to Justin, padding over to his computer. There were only about forty more sadly misspelled, yet completely justified hate messages in his inbox this time. He hit select all and dropped them into the “HATORZ” folder. Justin liked to print out the best ones.
Justin lobbed a rattling mouse into the bathroom to get Justin 2 off his feet, and sat down heavily in their only desk chair. He rolled himself at the nearest computer and pointed imperiously. “Take me to my inbox!”
“Fuck off.” Andrew said.
Justin shrugged, and ate the rest of the McMuffin. “So little appreciation..” he mumbled through the egg. “For that, you have to wait to see the project that is going to make us rich, successful playas.”
“Playas,” Andrew repeated.
“Playas,” Justin confirmed. “Also, rich and successful.”
“You have a girlfriend.”
“She wants to be a playa too.” Justin argued.
“Uh huh.” Andrew watched him open his gmail and click on a message without a subject line. It was both addressed to and from 'JAY TEE' (justinotherplayainthisgame42@gmail.com). Andrew was momentarily relieved that he had elected to deal with public relations, because as bad as he was at it, anything was better than Justin infecting potential VC's inboxes with his atrocious puns.
Justin did a couple of complicated right click menu navigation manoeuvres and then jammed his headphone jack into the port on the front of the CPU.
He shot Andrew a look of pure mischief that frankly sickened him to the core. No good could come of a face like that. When Justin not only minimized the window of the secret video he was watching in VLC, but actually turned the entire screen out of Andrews view, he gave up and took his laptop back to bed to read more hate-mail and feel deeply sorry for himself for a couple of hours.
Justin came out of Andrew's allegedly 'tricked out' wardrobe that doubled as a recording booth, bobbing his head and tapping the air in time with his humming. “High five, dude, I've just laid down another brick to our future.”
“A what to what?” Andrew asked, lifting his arm weakly to complete the slap from the bed.
“I'll put the final draft together now, and you can tweak the sound in a sec,” Justin said. “In the meantime check your bookmarks. I saved the online tour for the office we're looking at in Chrome.”
“Stay off my laptop.” Andrew said, opening a new tab.
“By the way, you should probably use Firefox or at least clear your browser history more often. I got a nice surprise the other day when I hit restore last session.”
“Justin,” Andrew groaned, hunching over his screen, as if he could retroactively erase Justin's snooping.
“I'm just saying, man. You gotta keep that shit under wraps. What if you finally got yourself a keeper, and they wanted to check their email the morning after? Talk about awkward...”
“Can we not talk about this, please?”
Justin snapped his headphones back over his ears and shrugged.
“Just saying, man.”
“Ugh.” Andrew said. He cleared his browser history, using the From the beginning of time option, just in case.
Justin stood up and shuffled over, a USB drive balanced in his cupped hands. “I need you to throw this together now,” he said, solemn. “Not in a second, not tonight, not at the end of your agenda for the week, right now.”
“Oh, of course your liege,” Andrew yawned, pulling at his sweats, and reaching for the drive.
Justin pulled it out of his reach, “Hey, I'm serious, man. I want this up and viral by one o'clock.”
“Are you serious?” Andrew blinked. He sat up and snatched the USB. “You want a video in thirty minutes?”
“I did most of it, I just need you to sharpen up the timing, and do the levels. Raw is good, raw looks grassroots. The sponsors like that right now.” Justin twisted the laptop around and hit the shortcut keys to open Andrew's editing suite.
Andrew plugged in the USB, and let Justin open the files for him. He took his own Dre Beats off and jammed them over Andrew's mane. “You'll get it,” he said. “Actually...” he grinned, shark-like. “Let me get you some tissues.”
“Gross, you wish.” Andrew protested, pushing Justin away with a sock-clad foot.
“You say that now,” Justin said, smacking at the space key from afar.
“Oh.” Andrew said, eyes widening, “he's...”
“I know, right.”
“And he's...”
“Yeah.”
Andrew doubled over slowly, and dragged the computer into his lap, “Erm, I think I can take it from here.”
Justin lifted his hands, and backed out of the bedroom, “Hey, man, take your time.” He paused in shutting the door, “as long as your time is less than twenty minutes.”
It was no hardship at all to have to amend Justin's heavy-handed drag and drop approach to video editing when it meant staring at this Jesse kid. Andrew would be the first to say that he was an ugly crier, and he'd seen Justin tear up, allegedly over one of his dogs (he wasn't sure how this fit in with the apparent cat obsession he'd observed), and it hadn't been a pretty sight. This guy, though - he was adorable.
Obviously, Justin's angle here was ridicule, as most of their editing work tended towards comedy and entertainment. Clearly Justin's brush with Andrew's...unusual.... taste in porn had culminated in this jibe of a project.
In-jokes aside, Andrew could see what Justin was getting at. This could, and would go viral. Fast. Devastatingly sweet-faced star aside, the guy had that edge of harmless crazy that viewers would just lick up. As usual, Justin's ear for a hook was undeniable. He'd even dragged in a folder of helpful dancing cat AVI files.
He set his jaw and sharpened up the beat, adding a couple of internet favourites to the video - a nyan cat, some repetitive cat dance moves, a hint of Maru and the boxes. When it was just barely polished enough to make his fingers itch for more plush effects and transitions, he hit the save, and converted the whole thing into an acceptable video file.
“Here,” he said, handing the drive back to Justin on his way to the bathroom, “god help us all.”
“Yesssss,” Justin said, spinning his chair back to his screen, where he'd already prepped the youtube upload screen.
Andrew shut the door and sat on the edge of the bath, face in his hands. Then he gave up, and jerked off fast, guilty strokes punctuated by Justin's knowing announcements of the upload progress.
He bit his lip as he came.
“One-hundred percent, you smug little Brit,” Justin called to him. He paused, and almost smothered a snigger, “Yeah, I bet that made you come.”
Andrew really hated Justin sometimes.
PRESENT
Justin took the last of Andrew's pathetic stash of cheap beers out of the back of his fridge, and they sat back and watched the hit count climb for a couple hours, occasionally shouting “REFRESH,” and slamming their bottles together as if they'd made their first million, instead of hitting a couple of thousand views on a youtube video.
It was getting dark and they were down to the last beer when the door buzzer went off.
“Did you order food?” Justin said, smacking the accept button on the phone next to him to automatically buzz them up.
“I don't think so?” Andrew said, pre-emptively rolling the right way up on the couch. The visitor knocked on the door, and he heaved himself up to answer.
It was the guy from the cat video.
He was sopping wet, and looked about as miserable as a wet cat too. His shoulders were hunched, the curls that peeped out from under his hat plastered to his forehead by rain.
“Sorry,” he said, as soon as Andrew opened the door. He seemed to shrink even more under Andrew's gaze.
“I'm so sorry, which is ridiculous, because you should be apologising to me if anything, even though I knew I shouldn't have been messing around on a dating site. I don't know what I was thinking, it was a phenomenally stupid idea - so I suppose this could be my comeuppance, but life isn't really literature, so I can't help but feel that this is unfair.”
He took a breath.
“Life isn't fair, obviously, but I just came here to ask you, politely, to stop. And don't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about because I looked you up in the whitepages, and you are the only Andrew R Garfield in all of New York state, and you're the right age, and your apartment is full of computers. So, if you don't mind, could you please stop ruining my life?”
He stopped talking and just kind of tucked his face into his shoulder as he cried.
“Er,” Andrew said, looking helplessly at Justin.
Justin was a degree or two of backwards lean from flipping the chair, but he seemed to process pretty fast. He stood up and lunged for Justin 2, missed, and managed to hook Catcat's collar as he sidled under the desk.
“Hug him,” he mouthed, prying claws out of his forearm.
“What?” Andrew mouthed back silently.
Justin managed to fold Catcat into an incredibly grumpy cat lump. “Hug him, and bring him in here, dumbass!” he hissed. “I'm awesome at crying girls.”
“That's really sexist,” the boy said disapprovingly, in between sniffs, and somehow this propelled Andrew into action.
He opened his arms and awkwardly wrapped them around the soggy guy, pointedly keeping his hips well clear.
Jesse, as Andrew supposed his name was, was stiff and unyielding, although his head smelled nice under the wet wool scent of his hat. He turned them awkwardly, and shuffled them into the living room.
Jesse shivered, and Andrew let go, concerned that he was crushing him, what with the crying and the boner, and the wet clothes, and such.
Justin, ever competent, grasped Jesse around the shoulders and steered him to the sofa. “Sit,” he said.
Jesse sat.
Andrew sat too, as if they were both about to get a stern talking to. He felt he deserved one, to be perfectly honest.
"Cats.” Justin demanded.
Andrew obediently fetched and dropped Justin 2 into Jesse's lap, and rather hoped there weren't about to be further tears. His sweats today were too small to hide anything. He surreptitiously put a cushion on his lap, just in case. Justin shot him an insufferably smug smirk, and pulled up a kitchen chair. He sat on it backwards, and considered Jesse.
“So, you're Jesse, the online dater, huh.”
Jesse scowled, and scrubbed at his face, embarrassed. “I'm Jesse, but the appellation is debatable.”
“I'm going to pretend I understand words bigger than three syllables,” Justin said, “if you tell us what you're doing at our office.”
Jesse looked around. “This isn't an office.”
“It is-” Justin objected.
“It's not really,” Andrew hedged, shifting uncomfortably.
“For now,” Justin compromised, with a glare.
Jesse shrugged. “But you guys are In-synch, right?”
“IN-SING-K,” Justin corrected him.
“I just said that,” Jesse said, confused.
“Don't start,” Andrew muttered.
“He didn't say the k,” Justin insisted. “He didn't appreciate the hidden word. These are things you have to care about, Garfield.”
“Whatever,” Jesse said, summing up Andrew's opinion. “The video I made was a mistake. It posted accidentally.”
Justin snorted. “Sure.”
“Really,” Jesse insisted. “I'm not good at...webcams and pressing the mouse on the laptop right. To me, a laptop is little more than a lightweight typewriter,” he confessed.
Justin gave him the up and down for which Andrew had seen him get slapped by girls in clubs. Actually, seeing Justin look at Jesse like that made him feel even more eager to slap Justin than usual.
“Yeah, okay, I can believe that,” Justin allowed. “You're a hopeless pen and paper kid if I ever saw one. I bet you were in drama club, god forbid you hang with your fellow nerds in AV club.”
“You were in AV club,” Andrew pointed out.
“You're a real dick.” Jesse said, needlessly, but with a note of horrified realisation that tugged at Andrew's conscience.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Andrew said, catching Justin's eye.
“Would it be, this is terribly rude, but--”
Andrew turned and stared as Jesse wrung his hands and spoke to the floor.
“Would it be completely inappropriate if I play with your cats?”
Part Two
Part Three