fic: oh, love is real (andrew/jesse, prompt 16)
Title: oh, love is real (it’s not just in poetry and stories)
Recipient: na_shao
Prompt Number: 16
Characters/Pairings: Andrew/Jesse
Rating/Warnings: PG, methinks. And, umm, I don’t know, ridiculously long sentences and a possible diabetes risk.
Word Count: 1,525
Disclaimer: This fanwork portrays fictional representations of real actors involved in The Social Network. These are not true accounts or meant to imply anything about these real people.
Summary: Andrew loves his Sunday mornings with Jesse, loves them with all his heart.
Notes: I hope this is what you wanted, love. Also, all my thanks to K for listening to my constant whining and self-deprecating feels, and the lovely mods for putting up with me. Thank you so much. Oh, and the title is from Love Is Real by Jason Mraz.
***
Mornings are always light blue in Jesse’s apartment. The bright rays of early morning sunshine always find their way through the indigo curtains - the fabric is thin, covered with specks of dust, ripped here and there by razor-sharp cat claws - and paint the bedroom walls blue. They paint Jesse’s skin blue, too, and Andrew’s, with invisible brushstrokes that can’t be felt, and it’s beautiful. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world to wake up to.
Jesse is still asleep, curled up into a ball like one of his cats, only with less grace, and breathing calmly. Andrew’s right hand rests on Jesse’s hip, his nose is pressed into the back of Jesse’s neck, his chest not quite touching Jesse’s back. Their legs are a tangled mess under the sheets, all cold toes and bony ankles. Andrew smiles, fingertips dancing lightly on Jesse’s skin and the fabric of his underwear. He almost feels like a schoolboy, waking up in another boy’s bed for the first time, frightened and so fucking amazed. Maybe it’s a little bit ridiculous on his part, since he’s not a blushing schoolboy anymore and this is not the first time he wakes up next to Jesse, but that almost-frightening feeling of wonder is there nonetheless. He thinks it’s been there for a long time now - maybe since the first time Andrew squeezed Jesse’s shoulder during a press conference, maybe since their awkward first kiss, maybe since the moment Andrew realised that most of his clothes had somehow sneaked their way into Jesse’s closet - and that feeling will probably stay in his chest for good, forever, a familiar warmth under his ribs. Because things like that are permanent, things like that are etched into your soul and written all over your heart (not with pencil but with ink, Andrew thinks, kissing Jesse’s hair, smiling into the unruly curls).
Andrew loves his Sunday mornings with Jesse, loves them with all his heart. There’s only one person in the entire world, the entire universe, who gets to wake up next to Jesse - gets to kiss him when he wakes up, gets to see the morning light on his naked skin, gets to ruffle his sleep-tousled hair - and Andrew is that person, the only person in the whole wide world to have this very rare kind of happiness, and he thinks it’s amazing. It’s really fucking insanely incredibly entirely amazing.
“You’re miraculous,” he says, voice still rough with sleep, drawing circles and labyrinths on Jesse’s back with his fingertips. Miraculous, he writes, fingers sliding over the smooth skin between Jesse’s shoulder blades, leaving goose bumps in their wake. Andrew wishes the word would sink through the skin and straight into Jesse’s bones, find a home there, make Jesse love himself as much as Andrew loves him.
Jesse turns over, still asleep, the tip of his nose brushing Andrew’s. He makes a soft sound, not really a snore but not really anything else either, and Andrew touches the corner of Jesse’s mouth with a fingertip and wonders if someday in the future someone will come up with a way to capture moments like this. He wants to have this forever: he wants the bedroom, full of blue light and looking like the inside of an aquarium; he wants the dusty indigo curtains with holes in them; he wants the cold toes pressing into his ankle under the sheets. And he wants the soft sounds Jesse makes in his sleep, wants to play them over and over in his head and make them the soundtrack of his life.
Andrew gets away with thoughts like this in the early hours of the morning, when Jesse is fast asleep and thus unable to call him a ridiculous human being or throw pillows at him, and the rest of the world doesn’t even exist. He can write invisible words on Jesse’s skin - miraculous, he thinks with a smile - or hum sappy 80’s power ballads while playing with Jesse’s hair (everyone knows Faithfully is a classic), or scribble Love Actually and Notting Hill quotes on post-its and tuck them in between the pages of whatever book happens to be resting on Jesse’s nightstand. (Three months ago Jesse found a to me, you are perfect post-it, in between pages 125 and 126 of A Tale of Two Cities, and, after a moment of silence, he smiled so brightly that Andrew forgot to breathe. The following morning Andrew woke up early on purpose, just to stick a you are lovelier this morning than you have ever been post-it on page 25 of The Count of Monte Cristo.) Obviously he can’t always wake up before Jesse does, but that’s fine, too. No, it’s lovely, actually, because sometimes Jesse wakes him up by rolling on top of him and pushing his fingers into Andrew’s hair and Andrew digs his fingers into Jesse’s back and pulls him closer and it’s perfect. Sometimes they just lie in bed, staring at each other, holding each other’s gazes for the longest of whiles, and that’s perfect, too. It’s perfect.
Jesse mumbles something in his sleep, soft and quiet, and Andrew feels nothing but love.
“You’re the best thing I’ve ever had,” he whispers, tracing the lines of Jesse’s palm.
“You’re beautiful and I’m so incredibly lucky to have you.” He puts two fingers on Jesse’s wrist, soft, featherlight touches, where the skin is warm and he can feel the calm beat of the best heart he knows. Andrew cherishes that heartbeat; he’s held Jesse’s wrist during panic attacks, when the heart beats far too fast and the skin feels like it could break and Andrew’s fingers tremble almost as much as Jesse’s, so he cherishes the heartbeat when it’s steady and calm. “You’re the most amazing person I know,” he continues, rubbing his thumb over Jesse’s wrist bone.
And then there’s a soft noise somewhere near Andrew’s ear, followed by tiny cat toes pressing into his shoulder blade. Andrew kisses Jesse’s nose one more time, gently, careful not to wake him up, before sitting up and letting the cat crawl into his lap. It’s a scrawny little thing, this one, with skinny legs and golden eyes.
“Hi, bed intruder,” Andrew says, fitting his fingers carefully around the cat, lifting her up. “Everything the light touches is our kingdom,” he whispers, pointing at the window and the floor and the pile of old books on Jesse’s nightstand, before letting the cat disappear into the tangled sheets.
“We need to do something about your early morning Disney references. I’m pretty sure it’s a fatal condition,” Jesse mumbles into his pillow, rubbing his eyes. He sits up, too, leaning against the headboard, wrappings his arms around his legs, yawning.
There are three freckles on Jesse’s right shoulder, where the sunscreen hasn’t protected the precious skin well enough, and Andrew leans closer and kisses that spot. When Andrew was a child and had freckles on his arms, his mother told him that people get freckles because the sunlight is jealous of them. The sunlight tries to ruin your skin because you’re such a beautiful boy, but the freckles only manage to make you even more beautiful, she’d said before kissing his forehead and ruffling his hair. Andrew never believed her back then, but now, looking at Jesse, he thinks it might not be such a stupid story, after all.
“You are all things bright and beautiful,” he says, leaning back and smiling fondly at the blush creeping across Jesse’s face. “Also, I should warn you, there might be a cat in here.” Jesse’s eyes widen a bit at that, like he’s wondering if the cat will ever find her way out of the sheet labyrinth, and Andrew is so incredibly in love with him.
He touches Jesse’s chin with his thumb, the rest of his fingers resting on Jesse’s neck and feeling that glorious heartbeat grow faster. Jesse smiles, and, fuck, Andrew will never get tired of those eyes: they’re so bright and endlessly deep, the shades of blue changing when the light hits them differently, calm and stormy at the same time, like the Mediterranean sea, like watercolours mixing together on a piece of paper. Watercolour eyes, Andrew thinks, and, yeah, okay, maybe he feels like a schoolboy again, but he doesn’t really care about that when his lips are almost brushing Jesse’s and he has Jesse’s heartbeat thrumming under his fingertips.
“Hey,” Jesse breathes into Andrew’s mouth. “You’re-you’re the best thing I’ve ever had, too,” he whispers, a bit breathless, and Andrew doesn’t even have time to process that before Jesse closes the remaining distance between them and kisses him, and, well, then Andrew’s not thinking anything except I love you because Jesse makes a soft sound, like a sigh but not quite, and slides his tongue into Andrew’s mouth.
Andrew grabs Jesse’s hand, his fingers fitting perfectly in the spaces between Jesse’s, and, god, he feels so incredibly lucky, blessed, to have this, to be here, with his boy with the watercolour eyes, in an apartment where cats disappear into tangled sheets and the mornings are always, always blue.
Recipient: na_shao
Prompt Number: 16
Characters/Pairings: Andrew/Jesse
Rating/Warnings: PG, methinks. And, umm, I don’t know, ridiculously long sentences and a possible diabetes risk.
Word Count: 1,525
Disclaimer: This fanwork portrays fictional representations of real actors involved in The Social Network. These are not true accounts or meant to imply anything about these real people.
Summary: Andrew loves his Sunday mornings with Jesse, loves them with all his heart.
Notes: I hope this is what you wanted, love. Also, all my thanks to K for listening to my constant whining and self-deprecating feels, and the lovely mods for putting up with me. Thank you so much. Oh, and the title is from Love Is Real by Jason Mraz.
***
Mornings are always light blue in Jesse’s apartment. The bright rays of early morning sunshine always find their way through the indigo curtains - the fabric is thin, covered with specks of dust, ripped here and there by razor-sharp cat claws - and paint the bedroom walls blue. They paint Jesse’s skin blue, too, and Andrew’s, with invisible brushstrokes that can’t be felt, and it’s beautiful. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world to wake up to.
Jesse is still asleep, curled up into a ball like one of his cats, only with less grace, and breathing calmly. Andrew’s right hand rests on Jesse’s hip, his nose is pressed into the back of Jesse’s neck, his chest not quite touching Jesse’s back. Their legs are a tangled mess under the sheets, all cold toes and bony ankles. Andrew smiles, fingertips dancing lightly on Jesse’s skin and the fabric of his underwear. He almost feels like a schoolboy, waking up in another boy’s bed for the first time, frightened and so fucking amazed. Maybe it’s a little bit ridiculous on his part, since he’s not a blushing schoolboy anymore and this is not the first time he wakes up next to Jesse, but that almost-frightening feeling of wonder is there nonetheless. He thinks it’s been there for a long time now - maybe since the first time Andrew squeezed Jesse’s shoulder during a press conference, maybe since their awkward first kiss, maybe since the moment Andrew realised that most of his clothes had somehow sneaked their way into Jesse’s closet - and that feeling will probably stay in his chest for good, forever, a familiar warmth under his ribs. Because things like that are permanent, things like that are etched into your soul and written all over your heart (not with pencil but with ink, Andrew thinks, kissing Jesse’s hair, smiling into the unruly curls).
Andrew loves his Sunday mornings with Jesse, loves them with all his heart. There’s only one person in the entire world, the entire universe, who gets to wake up next to Jesse - gets to kiss him when he wakes up, gets to see the morning light on his naked skin, gets to ruffle his sleep-tousled hair - and Andrew is that person, the only person in the whole wide world to have this very rare kind of happiness, and he thinks it’s amazing. It’s really fucking insanely incredibly entirely amazing.
“You’re miraculous,” he says, voice still rough with sleep, drawing circles and labyrinths on Jesse’s back with his fingertips. Miraculous, he writes, fingers sliding over the smooth skin between Jesse’s shoulder blades, leaving goose bumps in their wake. Andrew wishes the word would sink through the skin and straight into Jesse’s bones, find a home there, make Jesse love himself as much as Andrew loves him.
Jesse turns over, still asleep, the tip of his nose brushing Andrew’s. He makes a soft sound, not really a snore but not really anything else either, and Andrew touches the corner of Jesse’s mouth with a fingertip and wonders if someday in the future someone will come up with a way to capture moments like this. He wants to have this forever: he wants the bedroom, full of blue light and looking like the inside of an aquarium; he wants the dusty indigo curtains with holes in them; he wants the cold toes pressing into his ankle under the sheets. And he wants the soft sounds Jesse makes in his sleep, wants to play them over and over in his head and make them the soundtrack of his life.
Andrew gets away with thoughts like this in the early hours of the morning, when Jesse is fast asleep and thus unable to call him a ridiculous human being or throw pillows at him, and the rest of the world doesn’t even exist. He can write invisible words on Jesse’s skin - miraculous, he thinks with a smile - or hum sappy 80’s power ballads while playing with Jesse’s hair (everyone knows Faithfully is a classic), or scribble Love Actually and Notting Hill quotes on post-its and tuck them in between the pages of whatever book happens to be resting on Jesse’s nightstand. (Three months ago Jesse found a to me, you are perfect post-it, in between pages 125 and 126 of A Tale of Two Cities, and, after a moment of silence, he smiled so brightly that Andrew forgot to breathe. The following morning Andrew woke up early on purpose, just to stick a you are lovelier this morning than you have ever been post-it on page 25 of The Count of Monte Cristo.) Obviously he can’t always wake up before Jesse does, but that’s fine, too. No, it’s lovely, actually, because sometimes Jesse wakes him up by rolling on top of him and pushing his fingers into Andrew’s hair and Andrew digs his fingers into Jesse’s back and pulls him closer and it’s perfect. Sometimes they just lie in bed, staring at each other, holding each other’s gazes for the longest of whiles, and that’s perfect, too. It’s perfect.
Jesse mumbles something in his sleep, soft and quiet, and Andrew feels nothing but love.
“You’re the best thing I’ve ever had,” he whispers, tracing the lines of Jesse’s palm.
“You’re beautiful and I’m so incredibly lucky to have you.” He puts two fingers on Jesse’s wrist, soft, featherlight touches, where the skin is warm and he can feel the calm beat of the best heart he knows. Andrew cherishes that heartbeat; he’s held Jesse’s wrist during panic attacks, when the heart beats far too fast and the skin feels like it could break and Andrew’s fingers tremble almost as much as Jesse’s, so he cherishes the heartbeat when it’s steady and calm. “You’re the most amazing person I know,” he continues, rubbing his thumb over Jesse’s wrist bone.
And then there’s a soft noise somewhere near Andrew’s ear, followed by tiny cat toes pressing into his shoulder blade. Andrew kisses Jesse’s nose one more time, gently, careful not to wake him up, before sitting up and letting the cat crawl into his lap. It’s a scrawny little thing, this one, with skinny legs and golden eyes.
“Hi, bed intruder,” Andrew says, fitting his fingers carefully around the cat, lifting her up. “Everything the light touches is our kingdom,” he whispers, pointing at the window and the floor and the pile of old books on Jesse’s nightstand, before letting the cat disappear into the tangled sheets.
“We need to do something about your early morning Disney references. I’m pretty sure it’s a fatal condition,” Jesse mumbles into his pillow, rubbing his eyes. He sits up, too, leaning against the headboard, wrappings his arms around his legs, yawning.
There are three freckles on Jesse’s right shoulder, where the sunscreen hasn’t protected the precious skin well enough, and Andrew leans closer and kisses that spot. When Andrew was a child and had freckles on his arms, his mother told him that people get freckles because the sunlight is jealous of them. The sunlight tries to ruin your skin because you’re such a beautiful boy, but the freckles only manage to make you even more beautiful, she’d said before kissing his forehead and ruffling his hair. Andrew never believed her back then, but now, looking at Jesse, he thinks it might not be such a stupid story, after all.
“You are all things bright and beautiful,” he says, leaning back and smiling fondly at the blush creeping across Jesse’s face. “Also, I should warn you, there might be a cat in here.” Jesse’s eyes widen a bit at that, like he’s wondering if the cat will ever find her way out of the sheet labyrinth, and Andrew is so incredibly in love with him.
He touches Jesse’s chin with his thumb, the rest of his fingers resting on Jesse’s neck and feeling that glorious heartbeat grow faster. Jesse smiles, and, fuck, Andrew will never get tired of those eyes: they’re so bright and endlessly deep, the shades of blue changing when the light hits them differently, calm and stormy at the same time, like the Mediterranean sea, like watercolours mixing together on a piece of paper. Watercolour eyes, Andrew thinks, and, yeah, okay, maybe he feels like a schoolboy again, but he doesn’t really care about that when his lips are almost brushing Jesse’s and he has Jesse’s heartbeat thrumming under his fingertips.
“Hey,” Jesse breathes into Andrew’s mouth. “You’re-you’re the best thing I’ve ever had, too,” he whispers, a bit breathless, and Andrew doesn’t even have time to process that before Jesse closes the remaining distance between them and kisses him, and, well, then Andrew’s not thinking anything except I love you because Jesse makes a soft sound, like a sigh but not quite, and slides his tongue into Andrew’s mouth.
Andrew grabs Jesse’s hand, his fingers fitting perfectly in the spaces between Jesse’s, and, god, he feels so incredibly lucky, blessed, to have this, to be here, with his boy with the watercolour eyes, in an apartment where cats disappear into tangled sheets and the mornings are always, always blue.