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It's summer, and there's a knock at Jesse's door while he's reading the Woody Allen script again, third time through. Coco, Jesse's oldest cat, black all over bar a shock of white on her nose, twines around his legs as he goes to let Andrew in.
"Can I stay?" Andrew had said, on the phone, the day before, a call out of the blue, and Jesse had agreed in minutes.
Andrew shook his hand on a New York street, a month or so ago, and Jesse biked home by himself. Here in the two-step width of Jesse's hallway, paparazzi-free, Andrew can fold himself around Jesse like Jesse is used to, nosing at the crook of his neck, familiar. Andrew's rucksack swings off his shoulder and bumps into Jesse's side; Jesse ignores it, hugs Andrew back.
"Hello," he says, after a long, self-conscious beat, and Andrew draws away a little sheepishly, pushes his bag back up into place. Jesse says, "You can put that down, if you're staying."
"Of course I'm staying," Andrew says.
"Okay then," says Jesse. "Mind the cats."
//
They get a take-out pizza because Jesse hasn't bought groceries in a couple days, and because Andrew is all long limbs and tired eyes, leaning out of Jesse's living room window to blow blue smoke curls into the New York night, because Jesse doesn't want to leave him alone now that he is there to be left. Jesse picks at his half, roasted peppers, slightly too many mushrooms, and watches Andrew lick some pizza sauce off his fingers, lean down to let Clement, the tabby, lick off the rest. Jesse asks if Andrew wants to talk about filming, stories Jesse hasn't heard yet, maybe, but Andrew shakes his head no. He's running his thumb distractedly over a scar on the inside of his left elbow, silver-pink, only just old enough not to hurt. It makes Jesse think about the Amazonian tribe with no linguistically-expressed abstract ideas of time, no I saw you last month, no twenty seven years old, no you got that scar since I last saw you. Jesse thinks about measuring life in scars, Andrew's stunt injuries and Jesse's cat scratches, about counting them like the rings of a tree.
Andrew puts a hand on his knee; Jesse startles, blinks his living room back into focus, threadbare comforter over Andrew's legs, the thumbed script on the coffee table, the cat staring through the window like Jesse does on bad days, looking out to see how high up he is when he's feeling low down.
"Hey," says Andrew, as Jesse licks his lower lip, a quick, nervous tick. His mouth tastes like pizza. "What were you thinking about?"
"Nothing important," says Jesse. "You?"
"Am I not important, then?" Andrew says, and Jesse says, "I didn't mean - I meant, what were you - "
"I know," says Andrew, and he squeezes Jesse's knee. "I was kidding."
How long does it take to fall out of sync? Jesse wonders whether it takes longer than for a scar to heal.
//
Jesse sleeps on the sofa that first night, puts his foot down when Andrew says he'll take it. Jesse does not put his foot down a lot, so maybe it's that that has Andrew acquiescing. They'll take it in turns, he promises, but Jesse has no intention of that happening. His apartment is small enough that when Andrew leaves the bedroom door open, Jesse can hear his breathing even out into sleep. Jesse does not feel particularly even, but the sound of Andrew in the next room still helps him feel less odd.
Coco butts at his arm until he shifts a little to let her curl up next to him, and Clement settles heavy on his legs. Jesse doesn't know where Cecil is, but the next morning, leaning against his kitchen counter with his hands round a mug of tea, fingers morning stiff, he sees him pad out of the bedroom door.
Andrew follows, a little rumpled from sleep, dropping a hip to lean against the doorframe.
"Morning," he says, rubbing his eyes, running a hand through his hair, and Jesse thinks about cold Boston mornings, Andrew with the comforter round his shoulders like a little boy in a cape.
//
They don't go out that day. Jesse digs a chessboard out of the bottom of one of his cupboards, and they sit opposite each other on the couch, balance the board on their feet, toes touching under the chequered squares.
("I do have a table," Jesse says.
"This way's more fun," Andrew says, settling down onto the sofa. "Let's live dangerously.")
They keep the windows thrown open, letting in New York noise, letting out the stale apartment air, and summer washes in and out on the breeze. Sirens blare stories below; inside Jesse's three room apartment, the cats stretch out in the lazy sprawl of sunlight, rolling on patches of carpet sun-bleached from days like this one, carefully letting the outside in.
Andrew isn't wearing socks; Jesse is, but he can feel the brush of Andrew's toes against his nonetheless. He breathes in deep, watches the dust motes in the air, each of them taking their time about their moves.
"Check," says Andrew, later, after a solid minute of frowning down at his white knight, and Jesse is taken off-guard. He has been watching Andrew's fingers poised above the chess piece, the frown lines between his eyes, has forgotten to be a tactician just for that moment.
"Check?" Jesse asks, and Andrew looks up to meet his gaze, nods.
Coco jumps onto the sofa and knocks the board to the floor; the pieces scatter across the carpet.
"Checkmate, then," Jesse says, scratching absently at the ruff of Coco's neck, the way she likes.
Andrew swallows, leans off the couch to pick up the chess pieces, the fallen board. Jesse watches the supple line of his back, thinks about how different his shoulders look now, strong under his shirt.
//
They get take-out again, Chinese this time, fighting off hungry cat noses to sit elbow-to-elbow on the sofa. The cushions are starting to protest so much company in so little time, like when Jesse had the flu a couple years back and the cushions started to match his shape.
Andrew digs his chopsticks into his mass of noodles with gusto. "This makes me feel really American," he says.
"You are American," Jesse points out, trying not to drop rice down the back of the sofa. He thinks there might be a sock down there, some spare change. It's the sort of place socks end up, a collection point, flotsam and jetsam of a life.
"Only half," Andrew says. He laughs, a funny little laugh, like nights driving back from set, more Eduardo than Andrew. "I do most things by halves." Jesse couldn't help then, too caught up in Mark to have a third point of view to worry about. He doesn't know if he can help now, too much himself to look out for anyone else.
"No, you don't," he says, which doesn't sound helpful, but it makes Andrew look up at him, sideways on. Jesse forces himself not to look down.
"Yeah?" Andrew says, like he hasn't noticed himself slipping into his characters, like he's not the same man that spent a night crying out in his sleep over an unfinished scene while Jesse didn't sleep at all, I want, I want, I need you out here, wrung out. Andrew doesn't do anything by halves, but Jesse understands feeling like you might.
"Yeah," he says, firmly, and Andrew bows his head to his noodles again, eating around a smile, soft as morning sun.
//
It's light pollution dark outside when Andrew yawns, stretches out so that his toes brush Jesse's thigh. He hasn't touched Jesse as much this time round, not like Boston. Jesse keeps catching himself looking at the silvery line on Andrew's elbow like it's an intruder, a time thread, spooling them apart.
Andrew doesn't say anything about taking the couch, and Jesse doesn't bring it up, already taking off his glasses when Andrew pauses in the bedroom doorway.
"Hey," he says, and Jesse glances up at him, just far enough away that he's out of focus. Hazy, ephemeral, out of Jesse's short-sighted spotlight, Andrew holds out a hand.
Jesse says, "Yeah," like Andrew had asked him the question, and they fall asleep pressed together in Jesse's old bed, the iron-barred headboard standing guard as Jesse presses his nose against the top of Andrew's spine, breathes in his sleep-warm smell. This is a first, for them, the farthest this has gone, but then again, they've just been their farthest apart.
//
Jesse hasn't touched his script since Andrew arrived but when he wakes up the next morning to an empty bed, stumbles through to the living room sleepy-eyed and sleepily anxious, he finds Andrew paging through it, smoking carefully out of the window. It's early enough that there's a slight chill to the humid air that drifts back into the room, swapping places with Andrew's cigarette smoke. Jesse shivers; Andrew looks over.
"It's good," he says, raising the script in Jesse's direction.
"I know," says Jesse, fidgeting. Andrew turns his attention back to the worn pages, holding it open on the palm of one hand. Jesse goes to find a sweater, something to throw on over his tee, feeds the cats. Andrew lights another cigarette, smokes that one through too, reads to the very last page. Jesse knows everyone's lines by now, learnt the rest to keep him a little longer from his own, getting into everyone's skin. The character's a little too close to the bone, maybe, teetering around satire, parody, but still recognisably him. He's told the story before about the director's note he was given, more Woody Harrelson, less Woody Allen, and it's true, he knows, neurotic New York Jew, or at least, it's truer than he'd like. He can feel himself feeling for the ticks he'll need, which edges he'll need to keep sharp; they're the same ones he's having therapy to smooth out, the ones rough in his mind every time he goes out, every time he stays in.
Having Andrew here has been like a breath of cold dawn air, breaking the dull night heat, a caesura before the verse of New York summer sun. Even this Andrew, drawn taut and smoking by the window, this Andrew can be enough to ease Jesse out of character lines, out of his own inked boundaries.
"It's really good, Jess," Andrew says, dropping the script back to the coffee table. "You'll be great."
"Mmm," says Jesse, non-committal, going back into the kitchen. "Tea?"
//
Andrew says he doesn't want to go out that day either, but he doesn't seem to know what it is he does want. Jesse pulls his feet up onto the couch and flicks through a worn Russian grammar, looks up from genitives to watch Andrew pace the small apartment, restless. He picks up magazines but doesn't finish them, can't settle to listen to the radio.
"Read me something, Jess?" he asks, around noon, lighting another cigarette, and Jesse dutifully reads out lines of foreign grammar, chanting out the rote. He stammers the first time he reaches a word in Russian, but Andrew tips his head back against the windowpane, eyes closed, and Jesse keeps going, breathing into it. It's like acting, learning languages: the same dalliance with variables, making the unfamiliar safe, working yourself into someone else's cadence, their borders.
Jesse breaks off from an explanation of imperfective verbs and time duration when Andrew's breath gets ragged around the end of the cigarette. "Okay?" he asks, not looking over.
"Okay," Andrew says, slowly, thankful, and Jesse starts reading again.
//
They go to buy groceries around five, Andrew tilting his face up to the early evening sun when they step out of the lobby. Jesse does the same, like seeing someone yawn, but it doesn't do anything for him. It's warm enough that neither of them is wearing jackets, and Jesse needs his Indiana cap to keep the sun out his eyes. Next to him, close enough that their shoulders brush, Andrew shivers.
Jesse tips his chin up again, because Andrew has his eyes closed like he's waiting for something, like he's letting something in. The sun beats down on Jesse's face and he can feel himself go pink, that easy, that quick, but he makes himself take a breath, close his eyes too. The noise of the city whirls around them, louder in the dark behind his eyelids, but Andrew is close enough that Jesse doesn't have to touch him to feel him by his side, and the sun is warm on his skin, and Jesse takes a breath in, lets it out slow.
"Okay?" says Andrew, when Jesse opens his eyes, like Jesse's the one fissured-through, but Jesse just nods, twice, says, "Okay."
//
They don't cook anything special, just pasta and sauce, but Andrew stands and stirs spaghetti sauce while Jesse bumps the drawer that sticks to get out cutlery.
"Taste this," Andrew urges, holding out the wooden spoon with his hand cupped underneath it, and Jesse leans in automatically, lets Andrew guide it into his mouth. "Good, right?"
"Good," Jesse agrees, running a thumb over his bottom lip where the edge of the spoon left a tomato stain, and Andrew smiles at him, licks the drops of sauce from his own palm.
Over dinner, they play I Spy. There isn't a lot to guess in the apartment, after Jesse has done B for Books and Andrew has done C for Cats, and Jesse has circled back to A for Andrew, making Andrew smile all in the corners of his mouth. The rules change somewhere around then, and Andrew plays T for Taj Mahal so Jesse does E for Eiffel Tower, and they travel the world on Jesse's secondhand sofa, cats in their laps. They don't get to the washing up before Andrew has said Z for Zebra, and it takes the rough side of the washing up sponge to get the sauce stain off the plates, Andrew knocking against Jesse's side every time he leans over with the dishtowel.
//
The night is tipping into morning again, both of them quiet and settled back on the couch, and Andrew looks on the edge of something. Jesse never looks in mirrors when he feels like Andrew looks, but he recognises the expression all the same. Two deep breaths, too deep breath, and Andrew could cry. Jesse takes a breath himself, looks away in case that is what Andrew needs him to do.
"Do you ever," Andrew asks, Jesse's less than digital radio crackling in the background, "Jess, do you ever feel like running?"
The obvious things to say here are where or why or from what, but Jesse doesn't think any of those things first. He thinks about the days he sits still in his apartment until he has to get on his bike and pedal until his legs don't work properly when he first slides off, the days he can't look out of his window at the lives other people are living, can't stay in with his own.
"I can't run," he says, which is embarrassingly true, "but sometimes I bike until I - can be with myself again."
He turns back in time to see Andrew nod.
"Okay," Andrew says, and Clement wiggles his way into the space on the couch between them, and the mood breaks.
//
Jesse wakes up to the sound of the shower running, and when he stumbles through into the kitchen to feed his cats, he trips over Andrew's sneakers in the bedroom doorway.
Andrew emerges ten minutes later, toweling his hair dry, and takes the cup of coffee Jesse passes him on his way to the sofa.
Jesse could say something banal and stupid, been for a run? you don't normally go running, and Andrew could say yeah, no, sometimes, but there doesn't seem much point. Instead, Jesse folds down next to Andrew on the sofa, elbowing Cecil gently out of the way, and picks up his script, and Andrew shifts in a little closer, close enough that Jesse can smell his own shampoo on the damp towel around Andrew's neck.
//
The morning concedes to afternoon and Jesse puts his script aside. Andrew looks up from the Russian grammar he's been reading through, following the words with his finger like a little kid learning to read. Jesse had said, halfway through the script, that he couldn't be getting anything out of it, and Andrew had shushed him fondly, and told him to get back to work.
Jesse feels fragile at the ends of scripts, not quite one person or another, and he leans his head back against the crease between the sofa arm and the back cushions, breathes in a couple times. Andrew watches him, brushes the tips of his fingers against the bent curve of Jesse's knee, lets him come back.
The sun is on its setting arc, west bound, and Jesse opens his eyes to see Andrew leaning forward over his own crossed legs.
"Hey," he says, smiling up at Jesse, and Jesse's heart hammers when he leans forward to meet the curve of Andrew's mouth with his own. Andrew waits for their mouths to touch before he brings up his hand to cup the side of Jesse's face, thumb easy along his jaw line, and they both give a shaky breath, Andrew out, Jesse in.
//
It's four am. Coco is curled up in the space in the bed sheets Jesse just vacated, Andrew's shoulders curving over her, a sleeping weeping willow. Jesse reaches out to shake him awake.
"Jess?" Andrew says, bleary-eyed, propping himself up on one elbow. "What is it?" His hair is wild, his chest is bare. He rubs his eyes with the inside curve of his fist, looks at Jesse while Jesse is holding his breath and looking back at him. He looks at the bag in Jesse's hand. "What are we doing?" he asks.
Jesse lets his breath out. "We're running."
//
They get in Jesse's battered four door and drive, Andrew in the passenger seat with his feet on the dash like Jesse has definitely heard about in one of the songs Andrew plays that all sound the same. It's the kind of morning dark outside that's deepening into blue at the horizon, an off black like an oil spill above the city, and Andrew falls asleep again as they near the state line, like he's been waiting for it.
Jesse sneaks looks at him when there's nothing ahead on the roads, sky opening out into deep enamel blue. Light sweeps over his face as they drive wave-break quiet past highway lights; Jesse reaches out two tentative fingers to brush back the hair from Andrew's forehead as they pull away from a tollbooth just into Pennsylvania, remembers doing the same thing under dim midnight lighting on the plane ride to Spain, Andrew's face slack in sleep against the grey seat headrest.
It's funny, driving at this time of day. There's a hush over everything, a peculiar kind of safety found in the car in the dark, like they might be the only ones left. Jesse starts, a couple times, when they drive past other cars. He doesn't turn on the radio in case it wakes Andrew up, and the only sound is the mutter of the engine, the sweep of passing cars like the curl of the ocean against the shore. Jesse drives; the sun stirs into the beginnings of its rise.
Jesse pulls into the forecourt of the first motel Pennsylvania offers him, replete with an all night reception and a walkway of rooms. He gets a room key and an eyebrow raise from the desk clerk before he leans through the passenger door to wake Andrew up, a hand on his shoulder, a whisper in his ear.
"Come on," he says, as Andrew focuses on him properly, swimming up out of New York. "Come on."
Andrew wraps his fingers around Jesse's as Jesse shoulders the hold-all and heads to their room, and Jesse shivers when Andrew bends to kiss the back of his neck, just above the fraying collar of his hoodie, fumbling the key in the lock.
They get inside, and Andrew crowds Jesse against the door at once, bumping him back against the door handle. Jesse swallows, grabs Andrew's hands where they've found the waist of his pants, because -- because Andrew is running because he can't be still, Jesse is still because he can't run, and summer has come like a pause in the year, and he can pause here, can take a deeper breath.
Andrew looks down at him like he thinks he's done something wrong, and Jesse shakes his head before he can ask. He reaches up to wrap a hand around the nape of Andrew's neck, tugging him down into a kiss, pulling him closer with his other hand palm-flat against Andrew's back, the bleed of his body heat through his rumpled plaid shirt.
"Jesse," Andrew says, breathing against Jesse's mouth as Jesse holds him in place, "Jesse."
"Andrew," says Jesse, back, and kisses him again, slow, not opening his mouth straight away. Andrew is shaking, a fine tremble working its way up his spine. Jesse can feel it under his open palm.
He hooks his fingers into Andrew's belt loops, tugs him methodically closer, hip to hip, chest to chest, kisses his way down Andrew's neck. Andrew's hands open and close on Jesse's hips, fluttering near the hem of his tee, longer than his old, grey hoodie.
"Easy," Jesse gentles, more confident than he feels, "okay, okay."
They end up pressed together on the bed, not even under the sheets, but it takes half an hour for them to get there, Jesse forcing himself to go slow, holding firm to Andrew's hands when they wander. Outside, it's morning proper, sunlight straining through the green motel curtains, but inside it still feels like dawn. Andrew is breathing hot and wet against the crook of Jesse's neck, Jesse getting him off as measuredly as he can, curling his hand slower each time. Andrew's hips stutter against Jesse's own, knocking their hands together, the backs of their wrists. Jesse is doing his damnedest to keep still, to concentrate on Andrew, but Andrew is concentrating on him, spare hand damp palm down around the back of Jesse's neck, and their foreheads are touching, and Jesse is losing focus.
"Jesse, I - " says Andrew, the first words he's said in a while, and Jesse says, "Yeah, okay, yeah," as Andrew shudders and comes, and Jesse watches him breathe through it. He takes a couple minutes, just panting against Jesse's skin, and then he starts moving again, the same pace, letting it build up through Jesse's toes, buzz through his veins. "Yeah," Jesse tells him, breathless, all the warning he can manage, and Andrew kisses the bridge of his nose, all he can reach, while Jesse closes his eyes and breathes him in deep, all it takes.
He wipes his hand on the bed sheets when he's a little less groggy, and Andrew is running his clean palm up and down Jesse's side, the valley dip of his waist between rib and hip.
"Okay?" says Andrew, the first time he's checked, and he sounds looser, a little less wrecked. Jesse feels like he could read all the scripts he's got waiting, like he could accept a compliment and mean it. When he opens his eyes, Andrew is smiling.
"Okay," Jesse says, "we're both okay."
Andrew kisses him again, a little press of mouths, and Jesse feels timeless, like he could stay here for days. They tangle their feet together, matching skinny pairs of ankles, and Andrew says, "Jess," in a breath that they're sharing, and they listen to the sound of the cars driving past outside, like it's water and they're finally free to float.
/end/