make me end where i begun - Jesse/Andrew - NC17
Title: make me end where i begun
Author: jeyhawk
Rating: NC17
Pairing: Jesse Eisenberg/Andrew Garfield (Jesse/Justin Bartha, Andrew/OMCs)
Beta: sbb23! <333
Word Count: ~9,000
Warning(s): Mentions of past abuse. Tense situations. Angst. Also, lethal amounts of schmoop.
Disclaimer: Not true. Not even a little bit. Not even at all.
Summary: AU. The one where Andrew has been in an abusive relationship and Jesse isn't sure about a lot of things, but is really sure about Andrew.
Notes: Italics within a parenthesis marks a scene set in the past. Title paraphrased from John Donne's A Valediction Forbidding Mourning. Additional notes and tidbits at the end.
Jesse is cleaning up in the history section when the bell above the front door chimes, loud over the hum of the air-conditioning. Sometimes the sound grates on his nerves and he climbs up on a chair to pull the bell from its hook, but today it makes his pulse speed up with an awkward kind of hope even before he hears Andrew's voice exchanging greetings with Emma behind the counter.
Within moments, the coffee machine starts chugging as Emma prepares whatever complicated coffee drink Andrew ordered today, but Jesse stays behind his shelf, methodically putting the books back in alphabetical order because running the alphabet on a loop through his head is better than thinking about anything else -- Abulafia before Freeman, Buergenthal before Margolius (obviously), but after Beckwith.
There are a limited number of books and eventually they're all in order with the gaping holes noted; jotted down in messy script in his ever present notebook, to be ordered later or brought out from storage. He takes a deep breath, decides to stop stalling, and walks out from behind the shelf, tucking the pen behind his ear and holding the notebook before him, as if it's a shield that will somehow protect his heart.
Andrew's in his favorite armchair by the window, a hideous brown thing that Jesse's thought about replacing so many times but somehow never gets around to, hands wrapped tight around his coffee cup. There's an untouched piece of pie on the table beside him, probably one of Emma's experiments -- the air is still heavy with the smell of baking apples -- fork forgotten beside it.
Andrew looks like shit, skin sallow and eyes sunken, hair even more of a mess than usual. His lips are swollen and red, but Jesse can't tell if it's because he's been biting them or something else. Probably something else and the notebook really doesn't work at all.
"Hey," he says, forcing himself to smile.
Andrew looks up, smiles tightly, and it's definitely something else -- that look is back in his eyes, the look it takes Jesse weeks, sometimes months, to banish.
"Hey," he says.
Andrew's voice is raw, hoarse, and Jesse's stomach hurts. He picks his way over - slow, careful - and sits down on the edge of the armrest. It only takes a moment for Andrew to fold forward, pressing his forehead against Jesse's bony back and Jesse exhales, exchanging a quick look with Emma. His skin feels warm where Andrew is touching him but his heart shivers, beating out of sync with his measured breaths.
He wonders what it was this time -- an audition gone awry, or a throw-away comment that landed wrong, or maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it never will.
("You're the best friend I ever had."
Andrew's eyes are huge, unguarded, full of things Jesse would never dare to name.
"Same," he mumbles, touching the back of his neck nervously.
Andrew looks away, swallows. "You're the only one that ever cares enough to put the pieces back together."
Jesse squeezes his eyes shut and reaches out blindly, curling his fingers around Andrew's fragile wrist. He wants to say something about how that's not true, something about how he's not half the man Andrew thinks he is, but for once he manages to keep his mouth shut, accepting the compliment for what it is.)
--
Andrew has a bruise just above his collarbone, purple and ugly, and Jesse can't stop staring at it. Andrew doesn't seem to notice, hands waving as he tells Jesse about his latest audition -- a disaster if Andrew is to be believed. Jesse doesn't believe him, he never does when it comes to these things, because within a week Andrew will get a callback and then he'll be gone -- for weeks or months, filming a movie or rehearsing a play -- and Jesse won't be able to read his moods from the tone of his voice. Andrew is a much better actor than he gives himself credit for.
Andrew cuts himself off suddenly, fingers fluttering near his lips. "Do I have something on my face?" he asks, thumb wiping at an imaginary smear.
"No," Jesse says quickly. "No, it's just…"
He lifts his hand to his own collarbone, touching it delicately and Andrew's eyes drop, cheeks pinking.
"Oh," he says, pulling on the neckline of his shirt, hiding the bruise from view. "That's just…" He trails off, fakes a smile. "Nothing, that's nothing."
"Yeah," Jesse says. "Of course."
And Jesse knows it's not like it used to be, he knows it's not like when he first met Andrew, but he wonders if Andrew knows that too, if Andrew realizes just how far he's come.
"I really want that part," Andrew says, fingers still toying with the neckline of his shirt. "It's… I really want it."
"I know," Jesse says, reaching across the table to pull Andrew's hand away from his neck.
"I think it would be good for me." Andrew looks out the window, fingers curling against the countertop. "I think it might… it might be my bookstore."
(Jesse stopped acting when people started to recognize him. He was never any good at drawing the line between private and public and he started to feel as if he had strangers watching him everywhere he went.
He bought a bookstore instead and wrote a novel and three plays. He goes to work every morning with a smile on his face and when people recognize him now he can laugh and look back with fond recollection -- write autographs without feeling like a poser.
Sometimes he thinks about going back. He's better now, less self-hating, more grounded. He thinks he could handle the pressure of recognition now, thinks he could live with being someone instead of anyone.
It took three years of intense therapy, of medication and meditation, but he landed on his feet and he learned a few valuable lessons about himself. It took a bookstore, an unlikely friend made in a back alley, and another one found on the roof of his apartment building, but he feels whole now, less fractured, as if all the pieces of his being are finally pulling in the same direction.)
--
Andrew makes a lot of independent movies, quirky things with small budgets; more often than not they're terribly depressing. Jesse knows because he watched each and every one of them, cried through most of them, laughed during a few. Andrew is an amazing actor, one of the best Jesse’s ever met, and he used to be in the business so he's met a few. It's inevitable, he thinks, that eventually someone will see Andrew's true potential and he'll be swept into a gigantic franchise, leaving Jesse behind.
It makes him feel bad that he's grateful for every day that no one sees that potential.
--
"I got the part." Andrew looks stunned, like he always does when good things happen to him. "They called this morning."
Jesse grins, hugs him quick and hard, doesn't let his hands linger. "That's awesome," he says.
The catalogue needs to be updated and the piles of books on the coffee tables need to be re-shelved, but instead Jesse pours two cups of coffee, heats two slices of Emma's blueberry pie and sits down with Andrew at one of the smaller tables.
"Broadway," Andrew says, shaking his head. "I can't believe it."
"That's okay," Jesse says around a forkful of pie and melting ice cream. "I believe enough for the both of us."
Andrew chuckles, and his eyes sparkle, and Jesse forgets how to breathe.
(The first time Jesse met Andrew was on the roof of his, their, apartment building, a chain-smoking skinny rake of a man with huge bruised eyes and unruly hair. He never imagined they would be friends. He never imagined he'd want more.)
--
Rehearsals start up in late May and Andrew sleeps on Jesse's couch every night for a week, clutching his script as if it's a teddy bear and not a huge chunk of papers and ink. It's a brilliant script, brilliant and heartbreaking and it hits too close to home.
They run lines in the evenings, trading someone else's words back and forth until Andrew's eyes start to look as if he believes and Jesse has to throw the script to the side and hug him hard. He's better with that now, with the kind of easy affection Andrew hands out so freely. He's learning to believe that his touch is wanted, appreciated. He's learning to believe that he helps.
In the mornings they have breakfast at Jesse's rickety kitchen table, long overdue for replacement. Coffee and juice and toast and eggs, sharing the paper between them, easy and comfortable as if they do this all the time, as if this could, maybe, be their future.
Neither of them mentions that Andrew's apartment is right next door.
("Do you believe in fate?" Andrew asked once with smoke curling from his lips and bruises in his eyes. His hands were shaking and his hair flat, the buttons of his shirt done up wrong and showing too much skin.
"I don't know," Jesse answered. It's the kind of thing he likes to think about, hours lost to the idle contemplation of a predetermined life where the choices he makes don't matter because there's already a road mapped out for him across the wild topography of life. "I think I believe mostly in free will. I like to think that my choices matter."
Andrew didn't answer, knees pulled up to his chest and eyes fixed at nothing. Jesse sighed, leaned back against the still warm brick of the wall, stretching his legs out before him and crossing them at the ankle.
"But I do believe that every once in a while the stars will align just right and the sun will smile and the moon will blush and if you're lucky enough to be at the exact right place in that exact moment something amazing will happen to you, something that would have never happened if it hadn't been for dumb luck and seemingly insignificant circumstances. Something that maybe won't look like much at first but that will turn out to be one of the most important things to ever happen to you, and if you'd just been ten minutes late, if you'd just waited for the coffee to stop running or read another chapter of your book, you would have missed it all together. I believe in that kind of fate."
Jesse cut off the word vomit, wished he could swallow it all back, the apology already forming at the back of his tongue.
"Like meeting a stranger on the roof of your apartment building and holding out a hand even when he tries to bite your head off?" Andrew asked.
Jesse exhaled, tried not to think and said:
"Yeah, like that.")
--
"He's in love with you," Emma says, swiping a rag across the counter as if she didn't just try to turn Jesse's entire world inside out and upside down.
"Don't be ridiculous," Jesse says sharply, fingers trembling around the cups he's picking out of the dishwasher.
He's seen the men Andrew goes out with - tall and broad with dark hair and hard eyes. The kind of men that bite bruises into his skin and push him up against the walls, freely taking what Jesse would never even dare to ask for.
"I'm not ridiculous," Emma says, pinning Jesse with a glare. "He just doesn’t think he deserves you."
Jesse snorts and goes back to stacking cups; blue smalls, green mediums, and red larges. He's had enough of Emma's brand of backyard therapy over the last couple of years to know that she's usually a pretty astute judge of character, but he can't afford to be wrong about this.
Emma huffs, as if she knows that he just dismissed her advice in his head. Her hair is red this week, pulled up into a messy bun, and her lips are painted to match. She looks like she should be on the cover of a magazine and not tucked behind the counter of Jesse's bookstore. He tells her that sometimes but she just laughs and ruffles his hair, as if he's five and she's his mother. She stopped going to auditions a while back. He pretends that he doesn't know that.
("Go away."
The girl, woman maybe, was small, nothing but skin to her bones and messed up make up all over her face, mascara down her cheeks and lipstick around her mouth. She was wearing a sundress, showing off a great expanse of skinny leg and too much bone.
Jesse looked at her, considered it, and then pulled off his worn hoodie, holding it out. "You look like you need this more than I do," he said.
"I don't need your pity," she said, angry, distrustful.
"You don't have it," he answered. "But if you want to, you can have my shirt and maybe… a cup of coffee?"
It sounded like a bad come-on even in his head, but she was lonely enough or maybe desperate enough to take a chance on a curly-haired stranger. Her name was Emma and she turned out to be one of the best friends he’s ever made.)
--
As rehearsals go on the play starts to get to Andrew, Jesse can tell. Maybe it's because it hits too close to home, or maybe it's because the character bleeds all over Andrew's skin. It doesn't matter because the result is the same. Andrew stops coming over at night and instead he goes out, coming home late or early in the morning with bruises like pearls on his skin and that dead look back in his eyes.
He's a good actor, but no one should have to be that good.
--
"Do you think I'm a terrible person?"
The question is honest in its stupidity, Andrew's trembling fingers wrapped hard around his cup. There's a hint of a bruise on his cheekbone and another one just visible where his sleeve is rucked up over his bicep.
"No," Jesse says.
Andrew's silent, sipping from his cup and staring out the window.
"I feel like a terrible person."
"Well, you're not, so stop that," Jesse says.
"You sound like my therapist," Andrew says, smiling faintly and Jesse shrugs.
"I like your therapist," he says.
And he does, because Andrew's therapist is also Jesse's therapist, and Andrew wouldn't be seeing her if Jesse hadn't made him. He thinks that maybe it's the most important thing he ever did for Andrew, more important than that night they never talk about.
(His name was Michael, Jesse knew that much, knew it before he even heard Andrew scream his name. He was bigger than Jesse, bigger than both of them, but somehow that didn't even matter.
Andrew gave him a key and Jesse thought -- when he barreled through the door -- that this was why. He hit Michael over the shoulder with a frying pan, too scared to aim for the head, but it was enough and he never had to listen to Andrew cry out in pain after that.
Andrew told him later that they were over long before he moved into Jesse's building. Jesse believed him, liked to think that that night was a misstep and not the norm.)
"It's not the same thing," Andrew says, as if he knows where Jesse's thoughts went.
"I know," Jesse responds.
--
There's a difference between liking it rough because you get off on pain and liking it rough because it's the only thing you think you deserve. Sometimes Jesse wonders if Andrew knows that.
--
Jesse doesn't date but he has a friend. His name is Justin and he comes over sometimes. They have dinner, or go to the movies, and afterwards they go back to Jesse's place and have sex. It's not a relationship, it never has been and never will be -- Justin is mostly straight (Jesse is the exception not the norm) and Jesse is terribly in love with his neighbor - but it's easy and familiar, comfortable even when they’re naked.
Andrew comes over one morning when Justin's there and it's not until Jesse sees Andrew's eyes widening with surprise that he realizes he never thought to mention Justin. (It didn't slip his mind, not really, but Andrew only ever asked if he was dating someone and he's not.)
Andrew's still in last night's clothes, smelling like cigarette smoke and someone else's cologne. His lips are dark, almost bruised, and Jesse pours him a cup of coffee and pushes him down on the couch.
Justin smirks when he kisses Jesse's cheek and says goodbye. Jesse promises to call later and he will, not to end it (he doesn't have to), but to be polite.
"You're seeing someone?" Andrew asks, eyes wide and hurt, when Jesse has closed the door on Justin's retreating back.
Jesse shakes his head and goes into the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee for himself. "We're not dating," he says, sitting down on the unoccupied end of the couch. "We're…" He hesitates, shrugs. "Friends."
Andrew holds his gaze for the longest of whiles. "Are you in love with him?" he asks.
Jesse snorts at the sheer incredulity of that question. "No."
Andrew's silent for another beat. "Good," he says, and he holds Jesse's gaze over the rim of his coffee cup.
Jesse imagines he can feel something shift and change in the air between them with the weight of Andrew's gaze and heat of his own blush. Then he tells himself to stop being ridiculous and gulps down too much coffee, reaching down to pet the cat twining around his legs.
--
(Andrew kissed Jesse once, pushed him back into the couch cushions and pressed their mouths together. Jesse said no, because he knew it didn't mean what he wanted it to.
Andrew never tried again.)
--
Jesse overhears Andrew and Emma talking one day. They don't know he's there -- he wasn't supposed to come in because he's had the flu and he still feels woozy when he stands up too fast - and he knows he should make himself known.
"Tell me about Justin," Andrew says, leaning his elbows against the counter.
"Jesse's friend?" Emma asks. "What about him?"
"I don't know." Andrew straightens up, shrugs. "Anything."
Emma shrugs too. "Why don't you ask Jesse?"
Andrew flushes and shrugs again, fingers tapping against the hardwood countertop. "Do you think he'd answer?"
Emma smiles, reaching over the counter to tweak Andrew's nose. "I think he'd try to bring you the moon if you asked for it."
Jesse inches back, letting himself out the same way he came in, through the backdoor. He wonders if Andrew will ever ask him about Justin. He wonders if Andrew will ever ask him for the moon.
--
Sometimes Jesse can't tell if he wants things because he's a good friend or if he wants them because he's helplessly in love. Sometimes he thinks it's a little bit of both.
"This has got to stop."
It comes out clear, confident, not the jumbled mess Jesse was expecting. His hands don't shake and he doesn't drop his gaze from Andrew's face.
Andrew snorts, drops his backpack on the floor and runs a hand through his hair. "There's nothing wrong with having some fun," he says -- bitingly defensive -- too much the man Jesse met on a roof two years ago.
Jesse nods and pushes himself off Andrew's uncomfortable couch. The backs of his arms stick to the shiny leather with his nervous sweat. He crosses the floor, stops in front of Andrew and reaches out to touch his arm, aligning his fingers with the bruises he finds there.
"Then why don't you look like you're having fun?" he asks.
Andrew shrugs out of his hold, averting his eyes, and Jesse walks past him, out of the apartment, away from the tension, seeking refuge from everything up on the roof. He probably shouldn't have said that, he probably shouldn't have done that, he probably shouldn't have waited on Andrew's couch with eyes burning from lack of sleep.
He shouldn't feel possessive of what he doesn't own. He shouldn't try to pretend it's about anything but jealousy. He should be a better friend. He should want a lot less.
--
"You were right," Andrew says two days later. They haven't talked since that morning and Jesse didn't expect to find Andrew on his couch now.
Jesse smiles and shrugs, as if it's no big deal, as if his heart isn't about to leap out of his chest and slobber all over Andrew's serious face.
"I just want you to be happy," he says and it's true. Mostly.
"Yeah, well… I'm pretty happy right here."
Andrew smiles, strokes his fingers down the back of the cat curled up on his lap. His script is open on the coffee table, takeout coffee in a Starbucks cup beside it. He looks like he belongs.
If Jesse was braver and a little better with words that aren't joking or self-deprecating he would say something profound, maybe even flirty, but instead he smiles some more, makes a mess out of his hair with nervous fingers and touches Andrew's shoulder on his way past the couch. It's not quite a declaration of love, but in Jesse-speak it means: Please, don't ever leave.
--
Sometimes Jesse finds Andrew on the couch in the morning, curled into a tight ball and fast asleep, face soft and unguarded. A cat, or two, curled up with him, or on him, a glass of water on the table, and his clothes in a careful pile beside it.
(It bothered him, the first time, it felt like a breach, an assault almost. The sanctity of his home compromised by this man with cartoon eyes and impossible hair.
Then Andrew woke up and apologized so many times Jesse lost count and he found himself saying that it was okay, that Andrew could use his key anytime, that Jesse wanted him there and the next time it happened he found that it was true, too true, and his life has never been quite the same since.)
Jesse is making breakfast when Andrew shuffles in to the kitchen, boxers riding low on his hips and Chekov hanging like a sack of potatoes in his arms, paws spilling everywhere. He never just hangs like that when Jesse picks him up, it seems even the cats aren't immune to Andrew's charm.
"Traitor," he tells Chekov, ruffling the fur between his calculating eyes. "You're supposed to pretend he doesn't charm the pants off of you."
Andrew yawns and bumps his head against Jesse's shoulder like an affectionate cat. "What can I say?" he asks. "I'm irresistible."
He puts Chekov down beside the food bowl and stretches out the kinks in his back. Jesse tries not to stare. Andrew drops his arms, yawns again, and gives Jesse's pajama pants a pointed look.
"You're still wearing pants," he says and he sounds almost grumpy about it.
"I feel that making breakfast without them would be terribly unhygienic," Jesse mutters, trying to not blush.
Andrew smiles and Jesse totally fails with the blushing thing, but it's okay because Andrew head bumps him again and murmurs, you are my favorite, against his shoulder.
--
Andrew invites Jesse to the dress rehearsal of his play and Jesse watches from the back row, feet propped up against the seat back before him and chin against his knees. It's a complicated story, dark and disturbing, about the terrible things people do to each other. At the end of it Jesse's shaking, tears running freely down his face, and if he had a frying pan he'd be brave enough to hit the entire world across the head.
He doesn't get the time to compose himself before Andrew's shrugging out of his dejected slump on the stage floor and making his way up the rows. He ends up crying helplessly into Andrew's shoulder, fingers digging hard into the small of Andrew's back, and Andrew just holds him, breathing ragged against Jesse's ear.
They go out drinking with Andrew's cast mates afterwards, and it takes Jesse three drinks to be able to even look at Armie, whose ham-like hands beat fake bruises into Andrew's skin. Andrew hovers, keeping Jesse grounded in the here and now with easy touches and quick smiles.
(Jesse read the script a hundred times. He played Armie's Jason and Carey's Mia, he pretend-raised his hand to Andrew's face over and over, but nothing prepared him for the real thing.)
At the end of the night Armie hugs him soft, like the gentle giant that he is, and apologizes even though he doesn't have to.
"It's good," Jesse says, drunk and earnest. "Really good. If it wasn't I wouldn't hate you like this."
Armie laughs, and clasps his shoulder, shaking him gently and Jesse doesn't hate him not really, because Andrew's smiling at him as if he's happy.
--
They kiss outside Jesse's door, long and slow and slick and perfect. Andrew curls his hands like anchors around Jesse's hips and Jesse buries his fingers into Andrew's soft-soft hair.
In the morning Andrew uses his key to bring Jesse breakfast in bed and Jesse throws it up all over the sheets. They don't talk about it again.
--
The reviews are glowing, like Jesse knew they would be and he carefully cuts them all out and puts them in a folder for Andrew to read later, once the run is over and he can, maybe, look at Andrew without blushing.
Andrew's busy anyway, with the play and interviews and auditions for new projects. Jesse only sees him every once in a while, but he replays their kiss in his head over and over, wondering if he missed his chance.
--
Jesse doesn't go to see the play again, he can't stomach it, but he sends huge bouquets of roses for Andrew, Armie and Carey on closing night. The morning after Jesse finds Andrew's roses in a vase on his kitchen table and a note from Andrew that says he's flying to LA for a table read. Jesse doesn't know if it's a rejection but it feels like one.
--
"Don't you ever talk?" Emma says, exasperated, and Jesse doesn't know what to say to that.
They talk but not about that.
"Well, I'm not talking to either of you until you've talked to each other," she says.
Her resolve doesn't last fifteen minutes, but Jesse thinks she's right. They should talk.
--
Andrew comes back from LA looking relaxed and happy, a tan tinting his cheekbones golden.
"I think doing that play was good for me, you know?" he says, over chicken dumplings and a bottle of beer. "Catharsis."
Jesse nods, picking delicately at his own veggie stir fry and staring blindly at the TV that he only ever bothers to turn on when Andrew's around. "It could have been you, but it wasn't," he says, proud of the way his voice doesn't break.
(Every other night, in his dreams, it is Andrew and Jesse's too late; the frying pan a dead weight by his side.)
Andrew reaches over, clasps the back of Jesse's neck gently. "I'm okay," he says.
"I know."
--
Andrew still goes out sometimes, but he never comes back bruised and that look is gone from his eyes. Jesse stares at the curve of his mouth in the mornings, trying to decipher the story it tells. Is it redder? Swollen? Did Andrew wrap his lips around someone else's dick? Did he kiss until his face felt numb?
Jesse wants Andrew to be happy. He does. He wants Andrew to go out with his friends and dance all night and do whatever else it is he does when he goes out. He wants Andrew to smile like he means it and let someone touch him gently. He wants to be the one that Andrew smiles at.
They still don't talk about it.
--
Michael shows up one night, head bowed low and feet scuffling. He's making amends he says. Jesse is proud of the way Andrew listens, but doesn't forgive, and he spends all night holding Andrew's trembling body on top of the covers.
"I don't hate him," Andrew says when dawn is breaking across the horizon.
"That's okay," Jesse answers, pressing his lips to Andrew's temple.
Andrew's silent for a long moment and Jesse almost thinks he drifted off to sleep, but then he stirs, raising his head to look at Jesse in the pre-dawn light. He's beautiful, even with his hair all messy and his lips bitten raw, maybe even more because of that.
"I love you," he whispers, smile trembling at the edges.
Jesse touches the curl of it, heart fluttering, and wonders if it means what he wants it to mean.
"You too," he says.
They could have kissed then, he thinks, but they don't and the moment slips even further away.
--
Andrew goes to LA again, comes back with a tacky souvenir and big bouquet of roses.
"I never said thanks," he says.
Jesse doesn't ask for what, he thinks he knows, and wonders if Andrew found more in LA than the set of his new movie.
(Probably not, Andrew sits as close as ever on the couch, touches Jesse gently, laughs with neck bared at Jesse's jokes. There's a joy in him that Jesse never saw before and a gentle kind of hope that makes Jesse hope too.)
--
Andrew flies away, to London this time, and Jesse has dinner with his mom every night for a week.
"I don't like to see you hurting," she says, ruffling his hair and adding more pie to his plate.
"I'm not hurting," he says and it's not quite a lie.
He feels distance, yes, but not a distance. He doesn't try to explain it. It sounds crazy even in his own head.
--
Jesse gets seven postcards, one for every day Andrew is away, delivered all at once when Andrew's already back in LA. He lines them up on the fridge, from Buckingham Palace to Underground, touching his fingers to the glossy surfaces. The back holds stray lines of poems and song lyrics, written in Andrew's loopy script and Jesse wonders if he's supposed to understand what they mean.
--
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
--
Andrew stays in LA for three weeks. They talk every day but Jesse doesn't ask about the postcards, aside from stuttering out an awkward thanks, and Andrew doesn't bring them up again. Jesse reads and rereads the poems every night, stacks of poetry books on his nightstand, Arcade Fire on repeat in his iPod, and he hopes so much his heart aches with it.
--
He has dinner one night with Justin. They don't go back to Jesse's and it isn't goodbye, they'll always be friends, but it's the end of an era and they both know it.
"I met a girl," Justin says and his smile is gentle.
"I'm in love with Andrew," Jesse says.
Justin laughs and reaches across the table to tweak Jesse's ear. "What else is new?" he asks and Jesse kicks him under the table.
--
Jesse goes thrift store shopping with Emma. He finds a miniature frying pan abandoned on a shelf, not even an inch long, and buys it on a whim. He puts it into a box with a note written on a torn piece of paper and mails it to Andrew's hotel.
"I'd take on the world for you with considerably less than this," the note reads. Jesse's quite proud of it.
("A frying pan," Andrew said, shaking his head. "So cliché."
"I'm sorry," Jesse muttered. "The next time I have to save your sorry ass I'll bring my chainsaw."
Andrew laughed and ducked his head and when he looked up his eyes were not quite as raw. "There won't be a next time," he said.
There wasn't.)
--
Emma shows Jesse a tabloid picture of Andrew going to some premiere with Carey. (Andrew told him about it, the movie was dreadful and the catering worse.) Andrew looks amazing in a black-trimmed light grey suit with a bowtie hanging open around his neck. The frying pan has been fixed with a pin and is dangling from his lapel.
Jesse stares and stares and stares, fingers crumpling the edges of the magazine. The picture is glossy, Carey is smiling and if they do this, if they really do this, that might be Jesse some day, caught in the public eye again. He finds that in his heart of hearts he doesn't care, in his heart of hearts he's so fucking ready to be Andrew's arm candy.
"I think…" he trails off, stares some more. "I think I need to…"
"Go," Emma says.
--
Nine hours later Jesse lands at LAX, carrying nothing but his wallet and his battered backpack. He's still wearing the jeans and hoodie he pulled on this morning, red Indiana cap tugged down over his unruly hair and his bag is packed with two pairs of underwear, his toothbrush, condoms, lube, and the postcards. He feels crazy, wired from too much coffee and not enough sleep with jitters beneath his skin.
He takes a cab straight from the airport to Andrew's hotel, feeling more like a hoodlum than usual when the cabbie asks for advance payment. He checks in with Emma on the way, it's the first time in years that he's not in the same city as his beloved shop, but Emma assures him that nothing's on fire and that she can handle the business on her own. He believes her and then spares a moment to feel proud over how far he's come from the neurotic mess he used to be, sneaking it in before he can start second guessing himself.
Andrew's hotel isn't the flashy monstrosity Jesse was expecting and no one spares him a glance when he walks right past the counter and heads for the elevators. A director once told him that -- "if you look like you know what you're doing people will rarely question you" -- and over the years Jesse's found it to be scarily true.
--
Andrew's room is at the end of a long narrow corridor with carpeted floors and more curved lamps along the walls than are strictly necessary. Jesse paces his breaths to his steps and tries really hard not to panic. He hasn't had a panic attack in years, not a real one, and damn if he's starting now. He balls his hands into tight fists before knocking and then immediately shoves them into his pockets so that Andrew won't be able to see them trembling.
A guy Jesse doesn't recognize opens the door; wide across the shoulders with dark blond hair and blue eyes, effortlessly good looking in a way Jesse will never be. The kind of guy that presses bruises into Andrew's skin and leaves them there like tacky stamps of possession on an item already discarded. The kind of guy that makes Andrew's eyes look dead and his mouth draw tight, even when he claims to love it. The kind of guy that Jesse hasn't seen close to Andrew in months.
Jesse takes a step back, and then another one, biting back his instinctual cry of dismay because he didn't make any claims, he didn't stamp Andrew's skin, and a frying pan pin is not the same thing as the discoloration of a bruise.
"Who is it?" Jesse hears Andrew call from inside the room.
The guy shrugs, tilts his head to the side and regales Jesse calmly. Jesse who has his back pressed up against the opposite wall by now, backpack digging into his shoulder blades and heart stuttering against his ribcage.
"Your boyfriend." The guy frowns. "I think."
"What?"" Andrew squeaks, voice reaching a pitch Jesse didn't think he was capable of, and then he's right there, shouldering the other guy to the side to peer out at Jesse.
"Jesse," he says, eyes huge, and Jesse can't tell if happy, or shocked, or apprehensive, or if it's a mix of everything. "Jess, what are you doing here?"
"I… uh…" Jesse flushes, glances up at the guy under the brim of his cap, and shrugs his shoulder. "I was… uh… in the neighborhood…"
He winces, trails off, looks down on his feet with flaming cheeks. Andrew's socks come into view, one red and one blue, and then he's reaching out, cupping Jesse's chin and making him look up.
"Jess," he whispers, soft and slow. "What are you doing here?"
Jesse sucks in a breath, helplessly caught in Andrew's warm gaze. He wants to let his eyes drop, he wants to scan Andrew's tanned skin for bruises, he wants to know if someone else staked his claim, but somehow it doesn't matter, because he's here and Andrew's here and they've been sidestepping this elephant for too long.
"I came for you," he says, voice breaking, lifting his hands to curl around Andrew's elbows. "Because… because I want to be with you. Because… because you kissed me and I said no and then you kissed me again and I didn't say yes loud enough. Because you brought me breakfast and helped me clean when I threw it up. Because you sent me postcards from London with… with amazing words on them… and because I'm so helplessly in love with you that I'd fly thousands of miles if I just knew you'd be there to kiss me when I arrived…"
Andrew squeezes his eyes shut, biting down hard on his lower lip. "You still think that even though you know how I've been." He hesitates. Breathes. "Where I've been."
"Yes," Jesse says, joyful now, pressing their mouths together. "Yes, god Andrew, a thousand times yes."
Andrew's lips tastes like tears and Jesse can't tell which one of them is crying, doesn't know if he cares. He just keeps whispering yes, over and over again in between kisses, burying his hands into the thick depths of Andrew's hair.
Somehow they manage to stumble the few steps into Andrew's room, slamming the door shut behind them. Whoever Andrew's friend was, he's long gone and Jesse finds that he doesn't even care enough to ask.
--
They end up on the couch, trading slow deep kisses and reverent touches, Jesse still with his backpack on. The sun is setting outside, casting shadows across the floor and Andrew's mouth tastes like peppermint and coffee.
The backpack clunks to the floor with Jesse's shoes and then his shirt, Andrew's golden hands spanning his ribcage like the wings of a phoenix. Andrew sucks a bruise into Jesse's neck, mouth greedy, and Jesse groans, clenching his fingers in Andrew's hair. He gets it now, does he ever; he wants to carry Andrew on his skin, he wants to be on Andrew's.
He wants to mark and claim and posses, but gentle, loving, and he wants to be marked in return. Andrew's chest is pale underneath his shirt, unmarred, and Jesse sucks on his collarbone, his neck, his chest; sucks and licks and kisses and bites, but soft -- kind and sweet. They kiss in between, slow, deep, needy -- kisses like air.
--
"I love you," Andrew breathes later, sliding two trembling fingers into Jesse's body, and Jesse gasps his name and returns the sentiment and needs so much he nearly squirms out of his skin.
--
"I love you," Andrew whispers again, when Jesse's broken open on his fingers, gasping and trembling, begging to filled.
--
"I love you," Jesse chokes out when Andrew finally finally takes him, pushing in deep and sure. "Oh god, I love you."
--
They don't talk after that, they kiss and gasp and share their moans between their mouths. Jesse paints bruises into Andrew's shoulder blades, not because he wants to, but because he has to, to stayed anchored in the moment with Andrew moving on top of him as unrelenting as the sea.
He thinks he screams when he comes, pulse thundering in his ears, and cock jerking against Andrew's stomach. He knows he sobs into Andrew's neck, oversensitive and far beyond happy when Andrew comes buried deep inside him, breathing Jesse's name like a prayer into his skin.
They don't move for the longest of whiles, Jesse's legs around Andrew's hips and Andrew softening inside him while they breathe in tandem, coming down from their high.
--
They kiss in the shower, slow and lazy without intent, and then later curled up on Andrew's bed, until they're both hard again and they do it all over again. Twice.
--
Jesse wakes up before the sun is fully up to an empty bed. For a terrifying moment he thinks that Andrew left, left him, then he hears the sound of the balcony doors sliding open and he rolls out of bed, wrapping the sheets around his waist in a too long toga.
Andrew is sitting with his back to the wall, long legs stretched out before him and a cigarette curling smoke from between his fingers. He smiles when he spots Jesse, patting the ground beside him and Jesse sinks down into an ungraceful sprawl, the sheet billowing around his legs.
Andrew doesn't say anything, taking a drag from his cigarette and blowing the smoke out slow. Jesse sneaks glances at him, at the bite marks on his neck and shoulders, at the chain of bruises Jesse left along his arms. He's not sorry.
"I'm still in love with you," Jesse says, reaching over to take Andrew's free hand. "In case you were wondering."
Andrew smiles, butting his head lightly against Jesse's shoulder. "You're not too sore?" he asks.
"To love you? Not really," Jesse answers. He's plenty sore, but it a good sore, a pleasant reminder.
Andrew laughs and squeezes Jesse's fingers. "You know what I mean," he says.
"No," Jesse says simply. "I'm not too sore."
Andrew takes another drag from the cigarette; Jesse watches the smoke billow from his lips. He hasn't seen Andrew smoke in a while, but he doesn't ask about it, knows it's a sensitive subject.
"It's not going to be easy," Andrew says, Adam's apple bobbing when he swallows. "I'm… People will know me now."
"Yeah," Jesse says. "I know."
Andrew's new movie has the potential of being a blockbuster, still small, still indie, but with a bigger budget and bigger names. Andrew sighs and puts his cigarette out.
"I'm gonna brush my teeth," he says.
"Okay."
Jesse stays on the balcony, tilting his head up to the sun, and listening to the sounds of Andrew moving around. He doesn't freak out, he doesn't even worry. He knows this is real. He's certain of very few things in life, but he's certain about this, about Andrew.
Andrew comes back and sinks down beside him. He's holding the cap Jesse must have dropped in the corridor yesterday. He turns it over between his fingers and looks up at the sky.
"I love you," he says.
"Yeah." Jesse smiles, leans his head against Andrew's shoulder. "I know."
--
NEXT
Author: jeyhawk
Rating: NC17
Pairing: Jesse Eisenberg/Andrew Garfield (Jesse/Justin Bartha, Andrew/OMCs)
Beta: sbb23! <333
Word Count: ~9,000
Warning(s): Mentions of past abuse. Tense situations. Angst. Also, lethal amounts of schmoop.
Disclaimer: Not true. Not even a little bit. Not even at all.
Summary: AU. The one where Andrew has been in an abusive relationship and Jesse isn't sure about a lot of things, but is really sure about Andrew.
Notes: Italics within a parenthesis marks a scene set in the past. Title paraphrased from John Donne's A Valediction Forbidding Mourning. Additional notes and tidbits at the end.
Jesse is cleaning up in the history section when the bell above the front door chimes, loud over the hum of the air-conditioning. Sometimes the sound grates on his nerves and he climbs up on a chair to pull the bell from its hook, but today it makes his pulse speed up with an awkward kind of hope even before he hears Andrew's voice exchanging greetings with Emma behind the counter.
Within moments, the coffee machine starts chugging as Emma prepares whatever complicated coffee drink Andrew ordered today, but Jesse stays behind his shelf, methodically putting the books back in alphabetical order because running the alphabet on a loop through his head is better than thinking about anything else -- Abulafia before Freeman, Buergenthal before Margolius (obviously), but after Beckwith.
There are a limited number of books and eventually they're all in order with the gaping holes noted; jotted down in messy script in his ever present notebook, to be ordered later or brought out from storage. He takes a deep breath, decides to stop stalling, and walks out from behind the shelf, tucking the pen behind his ear and holding the notebook before him, as if it's a shield that will somehow protect his heart.
Andrew's in his favorite armchair by the window, a hideous brown thing that Jesse's thought about replacing so many times but somehow never gets around to, hands wrapped tight around his coffee cup. There's an untouched piece of pie on the table beside him, probably one of Emma's experiments -- the air is still heavy with the smell of baking apples -- fork forgotten beside it.
Andrew looks like shit, skin sallow and eyes sunken, hair even more of a mess than usual. His lips are swollen and red, but Jesse can't tell if it's because he's been biting them or something else. Probably something else and the notebook really doesn't work at all.
"Hey," he says, forcing himself to smile.
Andrew looks up, smiles tightly, and it's definitely something else -- that look is back in his eyes, the look it takes Jesse weeks, sometimes months, to banish.
"Hey," he says.
Andrew's voice is raw, hoarse, and Jesse's stomach hurts. He picks his way over - slow, careful - and sits down on the edge of the armrest. It only takes a moment for Andrew to fold forward, pressing his forehead against Jesse's bony back and Jesse exhales, exchanging a quick look with Emma. His skin feels warm where Andrew is touching him but his heart shivers, beating out of sync with his measured breaths.
He wonders what it was this time -- an audition gone awry, or a throw-away comment that landed wrong, or maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it never will.
("You're the best friend I ever had."
Andrew's eyes are huge, unguarded, full of things Jesse would never dare to name.
"Same," he mumbles, touching the back of his neck nervously.
Andrew looks away, swallows. "You're the only one that ever cares enough to put the pieces back together."
Jesse squeezes his eyes shut and reaches out blindly, curling his fingers around Andrew's fragile wrist. He wants to say something about how that's not true, something about how he's not half the man Andrew thinks he is, but for once he manages to keep his mouth shut, accepting the compliment for what it is.)
--
Andrew has a bruise just above his collarbone, purple and ugly, and Jesse can't stop staring at it. Andrew doesn't seem to notice, hands waving as he tells Jesse about his latest audition -- a disaster if Andrew is to be believed. Jesse doesn't believe him, he never does when it comes to these things, because within a week Andrew will get a callback and then he'll be gone -- for weeks or months, filming a movie or rehearsing a play -- and Jesse won't be able to read his moods from the tone of his voice. Andrew is a much better actor than he gives himself credit for.
Andrew cuts himself off suddenly, fingers fluttering near his lips. "Do I have something on my face?" he asks, thumb wiping at an imaginary smear.
"No," Jesse says quickly. "No, it's just…"
He lifts his hand to his own collarbone, touching it delicately and Andrew's eyes drop, cheeks pinking.
"Oh," he says, pulling on the neckline of his shirt, hiding the bruise from view. "That's just…" He trails off, fakes a smile. "Nothing, that's nothing."
"Yeah," Jesse says. "Of course."
And Jesse knows it's not like it used to be, he knows it's not like when he first met Andrew, but he wonders if Andrew knows that too, if Andrew realizes just how far he's come.
"I really want that part," Andrew says, fingers still toying with the neckline of his shirt. "It's… I really want it."
"I know," Jesse says, reaching across the table to pull Andrew's hand away from his neck.
"I think it would be good for me." Andrew looks out the window, fingers curling against the countertop. "I think it might… it might be my bookstore."
(Jesse stopped acting when people started to recognize him. He was never any good at drawing the line between private and public and he started to feel as if he had strangers watching him everywhere he went.
He bought a bookstore instead and wrote a novel and three plays. He goes to work every morning with a smile on his face and when people recognize him now he can laugh and look back with fond recollection -- write autographs without feeling like a poser.
Sometimes he thinks about going back. He's better now, less self-hating, more grounded. He thinks he could handle the pressure of recognition now, thinks he could live with being someone instead of anyone.
It took three years of intense therapy, of medication and meditation, but he landed on his feet and he learned a few valuable lessons about himself. It took a bookstore, an unlikely friend made in a back alley, and another one found on the roof of his apartment building, but he feels whole now, less fractured, as if all the pieces of his being are finally pulling in the same direction.)
--
Andrew makes a lot of independent movies, quirky things with small budgets; more often than not they're terribly depressing. Jesse knows because he watched each and every one of them, cried through most of them, laughed during a few. Andrew is an amazing actor, one of the best Jesse’s ever met, and he used to be in the business so he's met a few. It's inevitable, he thinks, that eventually someone will see Andrew's true potential and he'll be swept into a gigantic franchise, leaving Jesse behind.
It makes him feel bad that he's grateful for every day that no one sees that potential.
--
"I got the part." Andrew looks stunned, like he always does when good things happen to him. "They called this morning."
Jesse grins, hugs him quick and hard, doesn't let his hands linger. "That's awesome," he says.
The catalogue needs to be updated and the piles of books on the coffee tables need to be re-shelved, but instead Jesse pours two cups of coffee, heats two slices of Emma's blueberry pie and sits down with Andrew at one of the smaller tables.
"Broadway," Andrew says, shaking his head. "I can't believe it."
"That's okay," Jesse says around a forkful of pie and melting ice cream. "I believe enough for the both of us."
Andrew chuckles, and his eyes sparkle, and Jesse forgets how to breathe.
(The first time Jesse met Andrew was on the roof of his, their, apartment building, a chain-smoking skinny rake of a man with huge bruised eyes and unruly hair. He never imagined they would be friends. He never imagined he'd want more.)
--
Rehearsals start up in late May and Andrew sleeps on Jesse's couch every night for a week, clutching his script as if it's a teddy bear and not a huge chunk of papers and ink. It's a brilliant script, brilliant and heartbreaking and it hits too close to home.
They run lines in the evenings, trading someone else's words back and forth until Andrew's eyes start to look as if he believes and Jesse has to throw the script to the side and hug him hard. He's better with that now, with the kind of easy affection Andrew hands out so freely. He's learning to believe that his touch is wanted, appreciated. He's learning to believe that he helps.
In the mornings they have breakfast at Jesse's rickety kitchen table, long overdue for replacement. Coffee and juice and toast and eggs, sharing the paper between them, easy and comfortable as if they do this all the time, as if this could, maybe, be their future.
Neither of them mentions that Andrew's apartment is right next door.
("Do you believe in fate?" Andrew asked once with smoke curling from his lips and bruises in his eyes. His hands were shaking and his hair flat, the buttons of his shirt done up wrong and showing too much skin.
"I don't know," Jesse answered. It's the kind of thing he likes to think about, hours lost to the idle contemplation of a predetermined life where the choices he makes don't matter because there's already a road mapped out for him across the wild topography of life. "I think I believe mostly in free will. I like to think that my choices matter."
Andrew didn't answer, knees pulled up to his chest and eyes fixed at nothing. Jesse sighed, leaned back against the still warm brick of the wall, stretching his legs out before him and crossing them at the ankle.
"But I do believe that every once in a while the stars will align just right and the sun will smile and the moon will blush and if you're lucky enough to be at the exact right place in that exact moment something amazing will happen to you, something that would have never happened if it hadn't been for dumb luck and seemingly insignificant circumstances. Something that maybe won't look like much at first but that will turn out to be one of the most important things to ever happen to you, and if you'd just been ten minutes late, if you'd just waited for the coffee to stop running or read another chapter of your book, you would have missed it all together. I believe in that kind of fate."
Jesse cut off the word vomit, wished he could swallow it all back, the apology already forming at the back of his tongue.
"Like meeting a stranger on the roof of your apartment building and holding out a hand even when he tries to bite your head off?" Andrew asked.
Jesse exhaled, tried not to think and said:
"Yeah, like that.")
--
"He's in love with you," Emma says, swiping a rag across the counter as if she didn't just try to turn Jesse's entire world inside out and upside down.
"Don't be ridiculous," Jesse says sharply, fingers trembling around the cups he's picking out of the dishwasher.
He's seen the men Andrew goes out with - tall and broad with dark hair and hard eyes. The kind of men that bite bruises into his skin and push him up against the walls, freely taking what Jesse would never even dare to ask for.
"I'm not ridiculous," Emma says, pinning Jesse with a glare. "He just doesn’t think he deserves you."
Jesse snorts and goes back to stacking cups; blue smalls, green mediums, and red larges. He's had enough of Emma's brand of backyard therapy over the last couple of years to know that she's usually a pretty astute judge of character, but he can't afford to be wrong about this.
Emma huffs, as if she knows that he just dismissed her advice in his head. Her hair is red this week, pulled up into a messy bun, and her lips are painted to match. She looks like she should be on the cover of a magazine and not tucked behind the counter of Jesse's bookstore. He tells her that sometimes but she just laughs and ruffles his hair, as if he's five and she's his mother. She stopped going to auditions a while back. He pretends that he doesn't know that.
("Go away."
The girl, woman maybe, was small, nothing but skin to her bones and messed up make up all over her face, mascara down her cheeks and lipstick around her mouth. She was wearing a sundress, showing off a great expanse of skinny leg and too much bone.
Jesse looked at her, considered it, and then pulled off his worn hoodie, holding it out. "You look like you need this more than I do," he said.
"I don't need your pity," she said, angry, distrustful.
"You don't have it," he answered. "But if you want to, you can have my shirt and maybe… a cup of coffee?"
It sounded like a bad come-on even in his head, but she was lonely enough or maybe desperate enough to take a chance on a curly-haired stranger. Her name was Emma and she turned out to be one of the best friends he’s ever made.)
--
As rehearsals go on the play starts to get to Andrew, Jesse can tell. Maybe it's because it hits too close to home, or maybe it's because the character bleeds all over Andrew's skin. It doesn't matter because the result is the same. Andrew stops coming over at night and instead he goes out, coming home late or early in the morning with bruises like pearls on his skin and that dead look back in his eyes.
He's a good actor, but no one should have to be that good.
--
"Do you think I'm a terrible person?"
The question is honest in its stupidity, Andrew's trembling fingers wrapped hard around his cup. There's a hint of a bruise on his cheekbone and another one just visible where his sleeve is rucked up over his bicep.
"No," Jesse says.
Andrew's silent, sipping from his cup and staring out the window.
"I feel like a terrible person."
"Well, you're not, so stop that," Jesse says.
"You sound like my therapist," Andrew says, smiling faintly and Jesse shrugs.
"I like your therapist," he says.
And he does, because Andrew's therapist is also Jesse's therapist, and Andrew wouldn't be seeing her if Jesse hadn't made him. He thinks that maybe it's the most important thing he ever did for Andrew, more important than that night they never talk about.
(His name was Michael, Jesse knew that much, knew it before he even heard Andrew scream his name. He was bigger than Jesse, bigger than both of them, but somehow that didn't even matter.
Andrew gave him a key and Jesse thought -- when he barreled through the door -- that this was why. He hit Michael over the shoulder with a frying pan, too scared to aim for the head, but it was enough and he never had to listen to Andrew cry out in pain after that.
Andrew told him later that they were over long before he moved into Jesse's building. Jesse believed him, liked to think that that night was a misstep and not the norm.)
"It's not the same thing," Andrew says, as if he knows where Jesse's thoughts went.
"I know," Jesse responds.
--
There's a difference between liking it rough because you get off on pain and liking it rough because it's the only thing you think you deserve. Sometimes Jesse wonders if Andrew knows that.
--
Jesse doesn't date but he has a friend. His name is Justin and he comes over sometimes. They have dinner, or go to the movies, and afterwards they go back to Jesse's place and have sex. It's not a relationship, it never has been and never will be -- Justin is mostly straight (Jesse is the exception not the norm) and Jesse is terribly in love with his neighbor - but it's easy and familiar, comfortable even when they’re naked.
Andrew comes over one morning when Justin's there and it's not until Jesse sees Andrew's eyes widening with surprise that he realizes he never thought to mention Justin. (It didn't slip his mind, not really, but Andrew only ever asked if he was dating someone and he's not.)
Andrew's still in last night's clothes, smelling like cigarette smoke and someone else's cologne. His lips are dark, almost bruised, and Jesse pours him a cup of coffee and pushes him down on the couch.
Justin smirks when he kisses Jesse's cheek and says goodbye. Jesse promises to call later and he will, not to end it (he doesn't have to), but to be polite.
"You're seeing someone?" Andrew asks, eyes wide and hurt, when Jesse has closed the door on Justin's retreating back.
Jesse shakes his head and goes into the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee for himself. "We're not dating," he says, sitting down on the unoccupied end of the couch. "We're…" He hesitates, shrugs. "Friends."
Andrew holds his gaze for the longest of whiles. "Are you in love with him?" he asks.
Jesse snorts at the sheer incredulity of that question. "No."
Andrew's silent for another beat. "Good," he says, and he holds Jesse's gaze over the rim of his coffee cup.
Jesse imagines he can feel something shift and change in the air between them with the weight of Andrew's gaze and heat of his own blush. Then he tells himself to stop being ridiculous and gulps down too much coffee, reaching down to pet the cat twining around his legs.
--
(Andrew kissed Jesse once, pushed him back into the couch cushions and pressed their mouths together. Jesse said no, because he knew it didn't mean what he wanted it to.
Andrew never tried again.)
--
Jesse overhears Andrew and Emma talking one day. They don't know he's there -- he wasn't supposed to come in because he's had the flu and he still feels woozy when he stands up too fast - and he knows he should make himself known.
"Tell me about Justin," Andrew says, leaning his elbows against the counter.
"Jesse's friend?" Emma asks. "What about him?"
"I don't know." Andrew straightens up, shrugs. "Anything."
Emma shrugs too. "Why don't you ask Jesse?"
Andrew flushes and shrugs again, fingers tapping against the hardwood countertop. "Do you think he'd answer?"
Emma smiles, reaching over the counter to tweak Andrew's nose. "I think he'd try to bring you the moon if you asked for it."
Jesse inches back, letting himself out the same way he came in, through the backdoor. He wonders if Andrew will ever ask him about Justin. He wonders if Andrew will ever ask him for the moon.
--
Sometimes Jesse can't tell if he wants things because he's a good friend or if he wants them because he's helplessly in love. Sometimes he thinks it's a little bit of both.
"This has got to stop."
It comes out clear, confident, not the jumbled mess Jesse was expecting. His hands don't shake and he doesn't drop his gaze from Andrew's face.
Andrew snorts, drops his backpack on the floor and runs a hand through his hair. "There's nothing wrong with having some fun," he says -- bitingly defensive -- too much the man Jesse met on a roof two years ago.
Jesse nods and pushes himself off Andrew's uncomfortable couch. The backs of his arms stick to the shiny leather with his nervous sweat. He crosses the floor, stops in front of Andrew and reaches out to touch his arm, aligning his fingers with the bruises he finds there.
"Then why don't you look like you're having fun?" he asks.
Andrew shrugs out of his hold, averting his eyes, and Jesse walks past him, out of the apartment, away from the tension, seeking refuge from everything up on the roof. He probably shouldn't have said that, he probably shouldn't have done that, he probably shouldn't have waited on Andrew's couch with eyes burning from lack of sleep.
He shouldn't feel possessive of what he doesn't own. He shouldn't try to pretend it's about anything but jealousy. He should be a better friend. He should want a lot less.
--
"You were right," Andrew says two days later. They haven't talked since that morning and Jesse didn't expect to find Andrew on his couch now.
Jesse smiles and shrugs, as if it's no big deal, as if his heart isn't about to leap out of his chest and slobber all over Andrew's serious face.
"I just want you to be happy," he says and it's true. Mostly.
"Yeah, well… I'm pretty happy right here."
Andrew smiles, strokes his fingers down the back of the cat curled up on his lap. His script is open on the coffee table, takeout coffee in a Starbucks cup beside it. He looks like he belongs.
If Jesse was braver and a little better with words that aren't joking or self-deprecating he would say something profound, maybe even flirty, but instead he smiles some more, makes a mess out of his hair with nervous fingers and touches Andrew's shoulder on his way past the couch. It's not quite a declaration of love, but in Jesse-speak it means: Please, don't ever leave.
--
Sometimes Jesse finds Andrew on the couch in the morning, curled into a tight ball and fast asleep, face soft and unguarded. A cat, or two, curled up with him, or on him, a glass of water on the table, and his clothes in a careful pile beside it.
(It bothered him, the first time, it felt like a breach, an assault almost. The sanctity of his home compromised by this man with cartoon eyes and impossible hair.
Then Andrew woke up and apologized so many times Jesse lost count and he found himself saying that it was okay, that Andrew could use his key anytime, that Jesse wanted him there and the next time it happened he found that it was true, too true, and his life has never been quite the same since.)
Jesse is making breakfast when Andrew shuffles in to the kitchen, boxers riding low on his hips and Chekov hanging like a sack of potatoes in his arms, paws spilling everywhere. He never just hangs like that when Jesse picks him up, it seems even the cats aren't immune to Andrew's charm.
"Traitor," he tells Chekov, ruffling the fur between his calculating eyes. "You're supposed to pretend he doesn't charm the pants off of you."
Andrew yawns and bumps his head against Jesse's shoulder like an affectionate cat. "What can I say?" he asks. "I'm irresistible."
He puts Chekov down beside the food bowl and stretches out the kinks in his back. Jesse tries not to stare. Andrew drops his arms, yawns again, and gives Jesse's pajama pants a pointed look.
"You're still wearing pants," he says and he sounds almost grumpy about it.
"I feel that making breakfast without them would be terribly unhygienic," Jesse mutters, trying to not blush.
Andrew smiles and Jesse totally fails with the blushing thing, but it's okay because Andrew head bumps him again and murmurs, you are my favorite, against his shoulder.
--
Andrew invites Jesse to the dress rehearsal of his play and Jesse watches from the back row, feet propped up against the seat back before him and chin against his knees. It's a complicated story, dark and disturbing, about the terrible things people do to each other. At the end of it Jesse's shaking, tears running freely down his face, and if he had a frying pan he'd be brave enough to hit the entire world across the head.
He doesn't get the time to compose himself before Andrew's shrugging out of his dejected slump on the stage floor and making his way up the rows. He ends up crying helplessly into Andrew's shoulder, fingers digging hard into the small of Andrew's back, and Andrew just holds him, breathing ragged against Jesse's ear.
They go out drinking with Andrew's cast mates afterwards, and it takes Jesse three drinks to be able to even look at Armie, whose ham-like hands beat fake bruises into Andrew's skin. Andrew hovers, keeping Jesse grounded in the here and now with easy touches and quick smiles.
(Jesse read the script a hundred times. He played Armie's Jason and Carey's Mia, he pretend-raised his hand to Andrew's face over and over, but nothing prepared him for the real thing.)
At the end of the night Armie hugs him soft, like the gentle giant that he is, and apologizes even though he doesn't have to.
"It's good," Jesse says, drunk and earnest. "Really good. If it wasn't I wouldn't hate you like this."
Armie laughs, and clasps his shoulder, shaking him gently and Jesse doesn't hate him not really, because Andrew's smiling at him as if he's happy.
--
They kiss outside Jesse's door, long and slow and slick and perfect. Andrew curls his hands like anchors around Jesse's hips and Jesse buries his fingers into Andrew's soft-soft hair.
In the morning Andrew uses his key to bring Jesse breakfast in bed and Jesse throws it up all over the sheets. They don't talk about it again.
--
The reviews are glowing, like Jesse knew they would be and he carefully cuts them all out and puts them in a folder for Andrew to read later, once the run is over and he can, maybe, look at Andrew without blushing.
Andrew's busy anyway, with the play and interviews and auditions for new projects. Jesse only sees him every once in a while, but he replays their kiss in his head over and over, wondering if he missed his chance.
--
Jesse doesn't go to see the play again, he can't stomach it, but he sends huge bouquets of roses for Andrew, Armie and Carey on closing night. The morning after Jesse finds Andrew's roses in a vase on his kitchen table and a note from Andrew that says he's flying to LA for a table read. Jesse doesn't know if it's a rejection but it feels like one.
--
"Don't you ever talk?" Emma says, exasperated, and Jesse doesn't know what to say to that.
They talk but not about that.
"Well, I'm not talking to either of you until you've talked to each other," she says.
Her resolve doesn't last fifteen minutes, but Jesse thinks she's right. They should talk.
--
Andrew comes back from LA looking relaxed and happy, a tan tinting his cheekbones golden.
"I think doing that play was good for me, you know?" he says, over chicken dumplings and a bottle of beer. "Catharsis."
Jesse nods, picking delicately at his own veggie stir fry and staring blindly at the TV that he only ever bothers to turn on when Andrew's around. "It could have been you, but it wasn't," he says, proud of the way his voice doesn't break.
(Every other night, in his dreams, it is Andrew and Jesse's too late; the frying pan a dead weight by his side.)
Andrew reaches over, clasps the back of Jesse's neck gently. "I'm okay," he says.
"I know."
--
Andrew still goes out sometimes, but he never comes back bruised and that look is gone from his eyes. Jesse stares at the curve of his mouth in the mornings, trying to decipher the story it tells. Is it redder? Swollen? Did Andrew wrap his lips around someone else's dick? Did he kiss until his face felt numb?
Jesse wants Andrew to be happy. He does. He wants Andrew to go out with his friends and dance all night and do whatever else it is he does when he goes out. He wants Andrew to smile like he means it and let someone touch him gently. He wants to be the one that Andrew smiles at.
They still don't talk about it.
--
Michael shows up one night, head bowed low and feet scuffling. He's making amends he says. Jesse is proud of the way Andrew listens, but doesn't forgive, and he spends all night holding Andrew's trembling body on top of the covers.
"I don't hate him," Andrew says when dawn is breaking across the horizon.
"That's okay," Jesse answers, pressing his lips to Andrew's temple.
Andrew's silent for a long moment and Jesse almost thinks he drifted off to sleep, but then he stirs, raising his head to look at Jesse in the pre-dawn light. He's beautiful, even with his hair all messy and his lips bitten raw, maybe even more because of that.
"I love you," he whispers, smile trembling at the edges.
Jesse touches the curl of it, heart fluttering, and wonders if it means what he wants it to mean.
"You too," he says.
They could have kissed then, he thinks, but they don't and the moment slips even further away.
--
Andrew goes to LA again, comes back with a tacky souvenir and big bouquet of roses.
"I never said thanks," he says.
Jesse doesn't ask for what, he thinks he knows, and wonders if Andrew found more in LA than the set of his new movie.
(Probably not, Andrew sits as close as ever on the couch, touches Jesse gently, laughs with neck bared at Jesse's jokes. There's a joy in him that Jesse never saw before and a gentle kind of hope that makes Jesse hope too.)
--
Andrew flies away, to London this time, and Jesse has dinner with his mom every night for a week.
"I don't like to see you hurting," she says, ruffling his hair and adding more pie to his plate.
"I'm not hurting," he says and it's not quite a lie.
He feels distance, yes, but not a distance. He doesn't try to explain it. It sounds crazy even in his own head.
--
Jesse gets seven postcards, one for every day Andrew is away, delivered all at once when Andrew's already back in LA. He lines them up on the fridge, from Buckingham Palace to Underground, touching his fingers to the glossy surfaces. The back holds stray lines of poems and song lyrics, written in Andrew's loopy script and Jesse wonders if he's supposed to understand what they mean.
--
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
--
Andrew stays in LA for three weeks. They talk every day but Jesse doesn't ask about the postcards, aside from stuttering out an awkward thanks, and Andrew doesn't bring them up again. Jesse reads and rereads the poems every night, stacks of poetry books on his nightstand, Arcade Fire on repeat in his iPod, and he hopes so much his heart aches with it.
--
He has dinner one night with Justin. They don't go back to Jesse's and it isn't goodbye, they'll always be friends, but it's the end of an era and they both know it.
"I met a girl," Justin says and his smile is gentle.
"I'm in love with Andrew," Jesse says.
Justin laughs and reaches across the table to tweak Jesse's ear. "What else is new?" he asks and Jesse kicks him under the table.
--
Jesse goes thrift store shopping with Emma. He finds a miniature frying pan abandoned on a shelf, not even an inch long, and buys it on a whim. He puts it into a box with a note written on a torn piece of paper and mails it to Andrew's hotel.
"I'd take on the world for you with considerably less than this," the note reads. Jesse's quite proud of it.
("A frying pan," Andrew said, shaking his head. "So cliché."
"I'm sorry," Jesse muttered. "The next time I have to save your sorry ass I'll bring my chainsaw."
Andrew laughed and ducked his head and when he looked up his eyes were not quite as raw. "There won't be a next time," he said.
There wasn't.)
--
Emma shows Jesse a tabloid picture of Andrew going to some premiere with Carey. (Andrew told him about it, the movie was dreadful and the catering worse.) Andrew looks amazing in a black-trimmed light grey suit with a bowtie hanging open around his neck. The frying pan has been fixed with a pin and is dangling from his lapel.
Jesse stares and stares and stares, fingers crumpling the edges of the magazine. The picture is glossy, Carey is smiling and if they do this, if they really do this, that might be Jesse some day, caught in the public eye again. He finds that in his heart of hearts he doesn't care, in his heart of hearts he's so fucking ready to be Andrew's arm candy.
"I think…" he trails off, stares some more. "I think I need to…"
"Go," Emma says.
--
Nine hours later Jesse lands at LAX, carrying nothing but his wallet and his battered backpack. He's still wearing the jeans and hoodie he pulled on this morning, red Indiana cap tugged down over his unruly hair and his bag is packed with two pairs of underwear, his toothbrush, condoms, lube, and the postcards. He feels crazy, wired from too much coffee and not enough sleep with jitters beneath his skin.
He takes a cab straight from the airport to Andrew's hotel, feeling more like a hoodlum than usual when the cabbie asks for advance payment. He checks in with Emma on the way, it's the first time in years that he's not in the same city as his beloved shop, but Emma assures him that nothing's on fire and that she can handle the business on her own. He believes her and then spares a moment to feel proud over how far he's come from the neurotic mess he used to be, sneaking it in before he can start second guessing himself.
Andrew's hotel isn't the flashy monstrosity Jesse was expecting and no one spares him a glance when he walks right past the counter and heads for the elevators. A director once told him that -- "if you look like you know what you're doing people will rarely question you" -- and over the years Jesse's found it to be scarily true.
--
Andrew's room is at the end of a long narrow corridor with carpeted floors and more curved lamps along the walls than are strictly necessary. Jesse paces his breaths to his steps and tries really hard not to panic. He hasn't had a panic attack in years, not a real one, and damn if he's starting now. He balls his hands into tight fists before knocking and then immediately shoves them into his pockets so that Andrew won't be able to see them trembling.
A guy Jesse doesn't recognize opens the door; wide across the shoulders with dark blond hair and blue eyes, effortlessly good looking in a way Jesse will never be. The kind of guy that presses bruises into Andrew's skin and leaves them there like tacky stamps of possession on an item already discarded. The kind of guy that makes Andrew's eyes look dead and his mouth draw tight, even when he claims to love it. The kind of guy that Jesse hasn't seen close to Andrew in months.
Jesse takes a step back, and then another one, biting back his instinctual cry of dismay because he didn't make any claims, he didn't stamp Andrew's skin, and a frying pan pin is not the same thing as the discoloration of a bruise.
"Who is it?" Jesse hears Andrew call from inside the room.
The guy shrugs, tilts his head to the side and regales Jesse calmly. Jesse who has his back pressed up against the opposite wall by now, backpack digging into his shoulder blades and heart stuttering against his ribcage.
"Your boyfriend." The guy frowns. "I think."
"What?"" Andrew squeaks, voice reaching a pitch Jesse didn't think he was capable of, and then he's right there, shouldering the other guy to the side to peer out at Jesse.
"Jesse," he says, eyes huge, and Jesse can't tell if happy, or shocked, or apprehensive, or if it's a mix of everything. "Jess, what are you doing here?"
"I… uh…" Jesse flushes, glances up at the guy under the brim of his cap, and shrugs his shoulder. "I was… uh… in the neighborhood…"
He winces, trails off, looks down on his feet with flaming cheeks. Andrew's socks come into view, one red and one blue, and then he's reaching out, cupping Jesse's chin and making him look up.
"Jess," he whispers, soft and slow. "What are you doing here?"
Jesse sucks in a breath, helplessly caught in Andrew's warm gaze. He wants to let his eyes drop, he wants to scan Andrew's tanned skin for bruises, he wants to know if someone else staked his claim, but somehow it doesn't matter, because he's here and Andrew's here and they've been sidestepping this elephant for too long.
"I came for you," he says, voice breaking, lifting his hands to curl around Andrew's elbows. "Because… because I want to be with you. Because… because you kissed me and I said no and then you kissed me again and I didn't say yes loud enough. Because you brought me breakfast and helped me clean when I threw it up. Because you sent me postcards from London with… with amazing words on them… and because I'm so helplessly in love with you that I'd fly thousands of miles if I just knew you'd be there to kiss me when I arrived…"
Andrew squeezes his eyes shut, biting down hard on his lower lip. "You still think that even though you know how I've been." He hesitates. Breathes. "Where I've been."
"Yes," Jesse says, joyful now, pressing their mouths together. "Yes, god Andrew, a thousand times yes."
Andrew's lips tastes like tears and Jesse can't tell which one of them is crying, doesn't know if he cares. He just keeps whispering yes, over and over again in between kisses, burying his hands into the thick depths of Andrew's hair.
Somehow they manage to stumble the few steps into Andrew's room, slamming the door shut behind them. Whoever Andrew's friend was, he's long gone and Jesse finds that he doesn't even care enough to ask.
--
They end up on the couch, trading slow deep kisses and reverent touches, Jesse still with his backpack on. The sun is setting outside, casting shadows across the floor and Andrew's mouth tastes like peppermint and coffee.
The backpack clunks to the floor with Jesse's shoes and then his shirt, Andrew's golden hands spanning his ribcage like the wings of a phoenix. Andrew sucks a bruise into Jesse's neck, mouth greedy, and Jesse groans, clenching his fingers in Andrew's hair. He gets it now, does he ever; he wants to carry Andrew on his skin, he wants to be on Andrew's.
He wants to mark and claim and posses, but gentle, loving, and he wants to be marked in return. Andrew's chest is pale underneath his shirt, unmarred, and Jesse sucks on his collarbone, his neck, his chest; sucks and licks and kisses and bites, but soft -- kind and sweet. They kiss in between, slow, deep, needy -- kisses like air.
--
"I love you," Andrew breathes later, sliding two trembling fingers into Jesse's body, and Jesse gasps his name and returns the sentiment and needs so much he nearly squirms out of his skin.
--
"I love you," Andrew whispers again, when Jesse's broken open on his fingers, gasping and trembling, begging to filled.
--
"I love you," Jesse chokes out when Andrew finally finally takes him, pushing in deep and sure. "Oh god, I love you."
--
They don't talk after that, they kiss and gasp and share their moans between their mouths. Jesse paints bruises into Andrew's shoulder blades, not because he wants to, but because he has to, to stayed anchored in the moment with Andrew moving on top of him as unrelenting as the sea.
He thinks he screams when he comes, pulse thundering in his ears, and cock jerking against Andrew's stomach. He knows he sobs into Andrew's neck, oversensitive and far beyond happy when Andrew comes buried deep inside him, breathing Jesse's name like a prayer into his skin.
They don't move for the longest of whiles, Jesse's legs around Andrew's hips and Andrew softening inside him while they breathe in tandem, coming down from their high.
--
They kiss in the shower, slow and lazy without intent, and then later curled up on Andrew's bed, until they're both hard again and they do it all over again. Twice.
--
Jesse wakes up before the sun is fully up to an empty bed. For a terrifying moment he thinks that Andrew left, left him, then he hears the sound of the balcony doors sliding open and he rolls out of bed, wrapping the sheets around his waist in a too long toga.
Andrew is sitting with his back to the wall, long legs stretched out before him and a cigarette curling smoke from between his fingers. He smiles when he spots Jesse, patting the ground beside him and Jesse sinks down into an ungraceful sprawl, the sheet billowing around his legs.
Andrew doesn't say anything, taking a drag from his cigarette and blowing the smoke out slow. Jesse sneaks glances at him, at the bite marks on his neck and shoulders, at the chain of bruises Jesse left along his arms. He's not sorry.
"I'm still in love with you," Jesse says, reaching over to take Andrew's free hand. "In case you were wondering."
Andrew smiles, butting his head lightly against Jesse's shoulder. "You're not too sore?" he asks.
"To love you? Not really," Jesse answers. He's plenty sore, but it a good sore, a pleasant reminder.
Andrew laughs and squeezes Jesse's fingers. "You know what I mean," he says.
"No," Jesse says simply. "I'm not too sore."
Andrew takes another drag from the cigarette; Jesse watches the smoke billow from his lips. He hasn't seen Andrew smoke in a while, but he doesn't ask about it, knows it's a sensitive subject.
"It's not going to be easy," Andrew says, Adam's apple bobbing when he swallows. "I'm… People will know me now."
"Yeah," Jesse says. "I know."
Andrew's new movie has the potential of being a blockbuster, still small, still indie, but with a bigger budget and bigger names. Andrew sighs and puts his cigarette out.
"I'm gonna brush my teeth," he says.
"Okay."
Jesse stays on the balcony, tilting his head up to the sun, and listening to the sounds of Andrew moving around. He doesn't freak out, he doesn't even worry. He knows this is real. He's certain of very few things in life, but he's certain about this, about Andrew.
Andrew comes back and sinks down beside him. He's holding the cap Jesse must have dropped in the corridor yesterday. He turns it over between his fingers and looks up at the sky.
"I love you," he says.
"Yeah." Jesse smiles, leans his head against Andrew's shoulder. "I know."
--
NEXT