Work Text:
it's just an inch from me to you
depending on what map you use
There’s a traffic light at the crossing of Kendall & Oak that happens to be Andrew’s arch-nemesis. It’s the only light along his route to work and it’s red every day that he is late, as well as every day that he’s on-time. It’s pretty much constantly red, actually. Andrew uses the time to check his mobile, because it’s more useful than staring at his place of work, which is literally across the street, or staring at light itself, which is hateful in its mockery.
He has no messages, but he sends one off to Joe: i’m coming i’m coming!!! sry!
Joe’s reply comes just as the light changes to green (tmi, dude) and then Andrew winds up feeling slightly guilty about being distracted while driving.
There are three bicycles chained to the rack on the shop’s patio, one of them black and familiar, which makes Andrew’s stomach do an aborted little flip into his throat and then back out again. He rushes into the back room without taking the time to scan the lobby and nearly runs straight into Joe, who laughs and steps out of the way, bowing exaggeratedly as Andrew passes.
Emma’s sitting on the desk with a clipboard on her lap and a pen between her teeth, which she removes in order to grin terrifyingly. “Andrew!” she sing-songs, “Your lover boy is here!”
Andrew ducks his head while he grabs for an apron, intent on tying it back just so. “Emma no, he is not my lover boy.”
“Uh-huh.”
When Joe has finally left the bar to Andrew and Emma is still a safe distance away in the back room, Andrew hides behind the espresso machine and scans the lobby. At the third table along the left wall – his usual spot – is a familiar regular: one that Andrew calls Jesse and that everyone else calls “Andrew’s lover boy,” even though it is most certainly and unfortunately not true.
The list of things that Andrew knows about Jesse is short: he has curly hair, he cycles, he drinks decaf unless he’s having a bad day, and he’s a teacher. The last one Andrew isn’t entirely sure about, but he’s right if the stacks of essays that Jesse carries to the shop in his overstuffed backpack are anything to go by.
Andrew hates missing it when Jesse comes in. It’s easy to nudge Emma or Brenda or whoever else he might be working with out of the way of the till so that he can have his two minutes of conversation before Jesse buries himself in work, but if Jesse’s already there when he arrives for his shift, well.
At present it is late morning and so the shop is in its slow, just-before-lunch period of the day. Andrew taps his fingers against the warm metal of the espresso machine and peers through the windows at the empty car park, leans back to check that Emma is still busy in the back, and makes his move.
He approaches Jesse’s table and says “Hey!” in the way that you would greet that one person you sit across from on the bus every day – enough friendliness to acknowledge that your lives intersect at this point and, thus, you share something, but not enough to insinuate that you are or should be friends. “Can I get you a refill?”
“Oh.” Jesse looks up at Andrew’s smile and fingers the handle of his mug thoughtfully, like he’s just remembered it was there. “Thanks, um, it’s –”
“Decaf, I remember.”
This is the second part of Andrew’s acquaintanceship with Jesse: being the good barista, otherwise known as using his perfectly legitimate excuse to interact with a customer by offering them a free refill. Jesse smiles politely, Andrew grabs his mug, and then the bell rings above the door.
“You,” Emma says, emerging from the back at the exact moment that Andrew returns behind the counter with Jesse’s empty mug, “are going to talk to that boy when you bring that coffee back – don’t look at me like that, Garfield, I know your ways – or you’re fired. Got it?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not a sackable offence,” Andrew counters, but he knows that’s a pretty useless argument to use against someone who hired him based on his accent alone.
Emma takes care of the harried-looking woman who had bustled in the door while Andrew adds soy to Jesse’s decaf and carries it back, setting it carefully on the edge of Jesse’s table.
“Thanks,” says Jesse politely, and this is usually where Andrew flashes him a grin that he hopes shows more charm than murderous glee, as Emma puts it, before high-tailing it back to the bar.
Today, though – today has been nothing short of awful. The kind of things that are mildly irritating become exhausting when strung together, happening all at once: the dryer in his apartment building had broken down on him before his clothes were dry, so Andrew had had to wriggle into slightly-damp, admittedly tight jeans. Then his Vespa refused to start and he had to practically beg Stefan in apartment 308 to let him borrow the broken down jalopy that he calls a car, and then he’d been caught at the damn red light.
Not to mention the letter he’d gotten in the post moments before running down to the laundry room, the thought of which makes Andrew grimace.
So instead of leaving, Andrew leans over as if he’s trying to get a look at whatever Jesse is writing, slim fingers wrapped around a blue pen, scrawling something illegibly in the margin of somebody’s essay.
“Lots of papers to mark, huh?” Andrew asks clumsily, holding his breath after as if he can stop more words from coming.
“It’s my penance for wanting higher education,” Jesse says, which doesn’t make any sense to Andrew. “Did you – um, Andrew, right?”
He seems to have just noticed what is happening here, looking from his fresh mug of coffee to Andrew, fidgeting now with his pen.
“You remembered!”
“Yes. And it’s on your nametag,” Jesse says, gesturing to the pin on Andrew’s apron. Of course. Yes.
“Right, right,” Andrew says, “how boring.” He deliberates for a second before deciding that no, it can’t be construed as stalkerish that he remembers Jesse’s name; he’s a barista, he’s supposed to know his regulars. And he does. He’s good with names. He doesn’t have to mention that he read Jesse’s off his credit card the day before Andrew first introduced himself at the counter out of guilt, hoping for a proper introduction. “And you’re decaf-in-a-mug, otherwise known as Jesse, right?”
“Yeah, I’m. Jesse, yes.” Jesse looks surprised to be remembered, which Andrew thinks is a bit silly; he remembers customers he barely sees. Of course he’s going to remember Jesse. “Thanks for, you know, for the coffee.”
“Any time,” Andrew grins, as if it’s not his job, as if he wouldn’t fetch someone like Jesse a mug of coffee at any time, although he’d prefer to make a pot of tea maybe, and share it, and -- he leaves quickly, before any of this shows on his face.
\\
At break time, Andrew pulls out the spare chair at Jesse’s table, sliding a plate onto the tabletop as he sits. “Here, you look hungry.”
“Oh, um.” Jesse eyes the apple fritter, warm and smelling deliciously like pastry and refined sugar.
“It’s on the house, really.”
Jesse pulls the plate closer to him. “Thanks, but if this is a bribe for sexual favors I think you’ll be disappointed.”
There’s a beat in which Andrew stares at him open-mouthed and Jesse’s cheeks pink a little as he realizes what he just said, but then Andrew’s laughing so hard the awkwardness flees. Jesse smiles, forking pastry into his mouth, careful not to get icing on the paper he’s marking up.
“That stack of papers is twice as large as it was yesterday, why are you torturing your students?” Andrew asks once he’s breathing normally again.
“Revisions. I grade them on how well they take my advice”
“Do they?”
Jesse taps the end of his pen against the page, going for his coffee mug. “Mostly. The ones who really need it never bother,” he says, and frowns as he takes a drink.
“So sad, today’s youth,” Andrew sighs. Jesse nods into his mug.
“Except -- wait, no, I was never one of them.”
“One of today’s youth?”
“Not really, no.”
Andrew considers this and nods along, thinking of secondary school, of not belonging and waiting to grow up. He thinks maybe he has, now.
“Listen, I --” Andrew starts, then closes his mouth again, deliberating. Jesse is looking at him now and Andrew can’t read his face. “Will you be back? Tomorrow?”
“Um, well,” says Jesse, gesturing towards the stack of as-yet-unmarked essays.
“Right! Uh, good?” Jesse’s expression is bemused, now, definitely... bemused, which is better than packing up his stuff and leaving. “I don’t know where I’m going with this,” Andrew admits, laughing.
“I think -- it’s safe to assume you’ll be here as well, considering you, you know, you work here.”
“Ah, that’s where I was going with this,” Andrew grins. Jesse smiles back politely.
He leaves before Andrew’s shift is over, dropping his empty cup off at the front counter. He hesitates, fingers nervously playing with the strap on his bag. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says, and goes, leaving Andrew smiling, humming to himself for the rest of his shift.
//
“So, the accent. I don’t claim to be cultured, but it’s definitely not New York or Jersey.” Jesse’s stack of papers is considerably smaller today, which he had shoved aside when Andrew sat down. At his elbow is a rather thick, possibly-boring looking book.
Andrew laughs. “Everyone asks eventually.”
He is, essentially, a walking cliché; Andrew tells Jesse about growing up in Surrey and spending summer hols with his Aunt in LA, doing community theatre projects. “I fell in love with it, you know?And now I’m here, starving in the big city.” It’s not entirely true, but having traded his college fund on living expenses just to hold him over until he made it big -- well, he never made it big.
He’s rambling off something about not finding a theatre company to call home in New York, (half-jokingly, of course, because he’s really thinking about his lack of breakthrough-roles) when Jesse opens his mouth to say-- Andrew won’t know what he means to say because he closes it again, biting his lip absently, and okay, that’s distracting. You are far too lovely, Andrew thinks, but aloud he asks in kind about Jesse’s background.
“I grew up across the river,” he says simply, and that’s the end of that.
Andrew nods sagely, as if there’s something coded in that information that he’s supposed to be aware of, but isn’t. He tips his chair out of its balanced position, a nervous habit, and the legs thump gently back onto the floor. Nobody is obligated to share their life story with him, Andrew knows; Jesse owes him nothing in return for Andrew running his own mouth off. Jesse goes back to marking papers while Andrew traces back to his monologue, wondering where the conversation derailed.
They’ve somehow found an awkward silence. Andrew watches Jesse write for a minute, then becomes aware that he’s staring and abruptly can’t sit still any longer. He snatches Jesse’s book off the table, staring blankly at the cover, confused at the title. The words are not English.
“Polish.”
Andrew looks between Jesse and the book uncomprehendingly. “Not cultured, eh?”
“Well,” Jesse shrugs. “My own culture, and I don’t actually know anything about Poland, not, not yet.”
“Do you read Polish novels in your spare time?”
Jesse shakes his head, but he’s smiling now. “That’s not a novel, it’s a history. My area of concentration. I’m, um.” He gestures vaguely at the book. “I’m not fluent, I’m learning though.”
Andrew is in the middle of formulating a reply, unable to settle on any one question, when Jesse taps his pen again nervously on the table, then sets it down neatly. “I’m doing a study abroad this summer, research for my thesis.”
“In Poland?”
“In Poland.”
Andrew forces a smile. “That’s -- Jesse, that’s amazing. I’ve never been to Poland, I don’t, um.” He laughs nervously. “I’m not going to bore you with the things I don’t know about Poland.”
It’s the middle of May. It’s the middle of May and Andrew has had months, months to sit down and talk with Jesse, but now it’s very nearly summer and Andrew has spent the last two days letting his mind wander away from him, and he hasn’t even thought to rein it in, or considered that this tentative friendship, whatever it is, might mean, well, nothing.
“When do you leave?” he asks lightly.
“Um, June 2nd? So that’s... eighteen days.”
“Oh.”
Emma calls out to him; apparently his break is over. He stands up and pushes the chair back in, folds his hands over the back of it. Andrew is a lot of things, but sensible is not one of them.
“Thursday is my day off, do you -- would you want to meet up, maybe?”
Jesse is biting his lip again. “I’ll be gone for three months,” is what he says.
“Okay! Okay, no, I don’t mean it has to be, you know a date or whatever, just. I like you, and I like to be with the people I like, you know?”
Jesse is most certainly laughing at him right now, that is what that expression means. See? Andrew is learning already.
“Not a date, okay,” Jesse says mostly to himself, but they exchange numbers, and Emma steals Andrew’s phone later to change the contact name to ‘Lover Boy’, which Andrew swears he’ll change back. Eventually.
\\
When it comes to the actual definitely-not-a-date, though, neither of them seem to have any good ideas. Meeting for coffee is out, of course, because that’s what they’ve been doing for the last few days as it is, and nothing about it changes whether Andrew is wearing an apron or not. So he suggests the cinema, which is how he learns that Jesse doesn’t watch movies or even own a television, and in an un-ironic way which Andrew is incredibly endeared to.
“You can come over and watch mine, it will be a novelty!”
Jesse hmms disbelievingly into the phone, but it’s not a declining sound either; these are more things that Andrew is learning.
In any case, that’s how Jesse ends up knocking on his door the following evening, Andrew tripping over himself as he tries to pull on socks and make his way to the front of the room all at once.
It’s freezing in his flat, which is something Andrew should probably have warned Jesse about, he thinks idly. He’s having a moment here, trying to reconcile seeing Jesse somewhere besides the shop. It’s like running into a schoolteacher in the grocery, out of place and stranger for it.
He feels less guilty about his failure to properly warm his own flat because the couch is warm and Jesse is warmer, sitting close enough that his upper arm brushes Andrew’s, knees touching. Andrew watches Jesse more than he does the television, because Jesse is squinting at it adorably and making off-topic comments about how reality TV is a form of hyper-reality, which actually means it’s not real at all. Andrew is now a person who giggles helplessly at adverts because Jesse is right, they’re ridiculous, and he is becoming far too accustomed to Jesse sitting on his couch.
For someone who is definitely not allowing himself to get attached, Jesse sits awfully close to him. It’s dangerous to think about, though: how easy it is to lean into him, how addictively comfortable feels, how even Jesse’s nervous hands calm down after a couple of hours.
So when Jesse leaves, promising that he’ll be at the shop tomorrow during Andrew’s shift, Andrew doesn’t try to kiss him, doesn’t consider kissing him anyway, and definitely doesn’t regret not kissing him once he’s gone.
\\
Andrew insists, despite Jesse’s half-hearted protests, on finding out everything can about him, compiling it away and ignoring the fact that he shouldn’t. When you name a pet you become attached; when you learn about a person, who they are, where they came, from, well.
His mother, in her motherly wisdom, has on more than one occasion given Andrew a pat on the head and told him, “Honey, you love too easily.” He doesn’t consider this a flaw.
Jesse shakes his head at Andrew when he presses about school, asks about his hobbies. “I’m not interesting, really,” he says, but Andrew is fascinated. He tries, shamefully to find some reason that Jesse isn’t actually the kind of person he want to associate with, but comes up empty.
They spend most days at the shop, which is another thing entirely. Because Jesse doesn’t want to get attached either, but he shows up even after the semester has officially ended, bringing a book for show but ignoring it in favor of leaning against the counter, just watching Andrew and whoever he’s working with. Jesse hits it off with Joe fairly quickly -- something about cats, which is a question for another day -- and he and Brenda regard each other as sort of unexplainable humans. (“You don’t even listen to the radio?” “Well, NPR.” “How boring.”)
They’re true to their no-dating agreement, but Andrew is sure -- pretty sure, almost definitely sure -- that he’s not the only one counting the days down sadly, watching the clock, keeping a careful distance.
\\
They’re lounging around at the counter, seven days left, just one tiny week -- but for now it’s the three of them, Andrew and Emma on one side of the counter, Jesse on the other -- when Andrew finally breaks the news. And isn’t it always the way things go: spur of the moment, words dropping heavy out of one’s mouth at the wrong time, just unable to stay safe in his head where they belong. Traitors.
It’s Emma’s fault. Jesse is the one talking about grad school, how much work it is, how necessary his TA job is even though it adds to his stress. He and Emma had launched into a conversation about post-undergrad life: Jesse deciding to get another degree, Emma holding out for her internship. It’s one she really wants, out in Seattle, and entire country away. Her voice always tightens when she mentions it -- the essays she wrote for it, the follow-ups, the interviews. All of this Andrew has heard before, but he’s content to watch Jesse and Emma chat, because it’s nice when the people you like like one another as well.
Andrew’s not even thinking about the letter, he’s thinking about Jesse muttering Polish phrases under his breath when they were downtown yesterday, and how much time he must spend marking up younger students’ essays instead of working on his own. So he’s not thinking about it, not really, but Emma looks at him sideways until Jesse notices, stops speaking.
Andrew looks between them. “What?”
Emma frowns. “You’re wearing that sad puppy look. Spill it, Garfield.”
“What? You’re ridiculous. Jesse, what were you saying? Ignore Emma, she’s got eyes like a hawk, it’s terrifying. I’ve -- I have nothing to say to you, Em, drop it. Come on. Drop it.”
“Andrew. Shush.” Emma straightens from her counter-lean to place her hands on Andrew’s biceps, small and firm. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“How am I supposed to shush and still – oh, fine.”
Andrew thinks back to the letter he received the day he finally spoke to Jesse, the way he had needed to just feel better about something, one tiny thing in his life, and how Jesse became so much more than that in just over a week.
He finds it easier to look at Emma when he says it. “I heard back from NYU. I’m not eligible for financial aid and I just, I couldn’t get enough scholarships scraped together, I can’t. I have to, I don’t know, figure something else out for now because I can’t --”
Emma drops a hand to touch lightly at his wrist. Andrew swallows, looks down at the counter.
“Hey, we’ll figure something out, all right? You’ll keep auditioning, you’ll get roles, Andrew, I swear it.”
Jesse is worringly silent and Andrew can’t bring himself to look at him properly, but he gently shakes Emma off and tries to regain some sort of equilibrium here. He’s had days to come to terms with this, but uncertainty is a scary thing, and Andrew doesn't want to think about going home, giving up, apologizing to his parents for throwing away his university fund --
The door opens and a group of teenagers come in. Emma gives his arm one last squeeze before moving off to take care of them.
“I should have told you,” he says to Jesse, who shakes his head. He’s right, there’s no need to unload on him, this new friend who might be nothing more than a stranger soon, a memory.
“Andrew,” Jesse starts, but Andrew shakes his head, preparing to smile and shake it off and get back to work, let Jesse get back to preparing for his thesis project. He doesn’t, though, because Jesse sighs and slides his arm forward until their hands just barely touch. He hooks two of their fingers together, squeezing lightly, and when Andrew looks up he’s sharing a small smile -- no condolences, just a small touch, one that that says I’m here.
Andrew tries hard not to think about how soon Jesse will be an ocean away, there for him perhaps but not there for him. He thinks instead of seven whole days and a slight chance for something better, because he needs something to hold on to, and for now, Jesse’s hesitant hand is going to have to be enough.
\\
Nobody mentions it for the next few days, so Andrew doesn’t worry about it. He’s working with Brenda when Jesse comes in and takes his break immediately, bringing Jesse’s coffee to him before he’s even settled into the table.
“I got you something,” Jesse says. The corner of his mouth is threatening a smile, eyes crinkled at the corners.
“Oh! You didn’t -- you don’t -- ah,” Andrew articulates. Jesse laughs and reaches into his bag, emerges holding some paper, which he holds out to Andrew proudly.
On top is a slightly rumpled sheet of paper with an address written across it in Jesse’s sprawling handwriting, an unfamiliar name -- Justin Bartha -- and a time. Andrew files it to the back of the small stack he’s holding and looks at the top sheet of the packet beneath it.
It’s a script. It’s not a play Andrew recognizes, but one of the names on the cast of characters is hightlighted, and when he looks back at Jesse in surprise, Jesse looks nervous again, wringing his hands.
“Here, let me -- explain. I should have mentioned it days and days ago, I’m sorry, I don’t know why I...”
“Jess?”
“I, when I was younger, I used to act. Like you, in community theatre. Justin, he’s a friend of mine, he stuck with it. He’s an assistant director now, and I called him and. It’s not a part, you still have to audition of course, but. You come highly recommended now.”
Andrew doesn’t know what to say. He gapes at Jesse. “You got me an audition?”
“That is what I said, yes, I believe so.”
“Jesse. You are amazing, you got me an audition.”
“It’s next week.”
“You’ve never even seen me act!”
Jesse shrugs. “If you’re awful they won’t cast you. But I’ve read the script, Andrew, you’re perfect for the part.”
Andrew doesn’t stop to think about what boundaries he might be crossing. Calmly he leans around Jesse, puts the script on the low table and steps in, wrapping his arms loosely around Jesse’s shoulders in a hug. “Thank you, thank you,” he says. Jesse shakes his head but his arms come up around Andrew, and they’re close enough that Andrew is sure Jesse can feel the thump of his pulse.
He’s hugging this boy he only met two weeks ago and wishing he could press a little closer, bury his face in his neck, because he had given up on acting months ago but now, now, he thinks he can do this.
Jesse’s hands settle lower until he’s gripping the back edges of Andrew’s apron lightly. He pulls back far enough that Andrew can see he’s smiling,and for a teetering, terrifying moment, Andrew thinks he might kiss him, he could do it, right here in the shop.
Jesse must see this written on his face, because his expression downturns, looking guilty and sorry. “I can’t,” he mutters.
Andrew sighs. “Yeah. Yeah, I know.” He settles his forehead momentarily against Jesse’s, feeling his fall of curls, and then pulls back. “You’ll help me run my lines though, right? For a few days?”
Jesse nods gratefully.
\\
The sun isn’t up when Andrew putters into work in the morning. Brenda shows up to unlock the door, still half-asleep, grunting a hello. The two of them open the store in silence. Andrew swears some days that just the smell of freshly ground coffee is a good enough wake-up call as any.
Maybe Jesse is a morning person. He thinks back to what he knows now and doesn’t remember seeing him before eleven in the morning, but that doesn’t prove anything. He glances involuntarily at the clock, lets the thought of three days drift through his sleep-muddled brain. They’re sour thoughts.
They have no plans today and Jesse doesn’t usually come in the mornings. Andrew spends his first break tapping on the edge of his phone, deliberating whether he should text and ask.
He doesn’t; resolves to hang around after his shift ends, maybe see if Emma needs any help with inventory, hope for Jesse to arrive.
There are ten minutes left on his shift when Emma arrives to relieve Brenda. She practically bursts through the backroom door and stops abruptly inside it when she sees Andrew; something in her expression makes his gut tighten. It takes a moment for him to realize that her wide-eyed stare is one of barely contained glee, at which time he notices that her hair is undone, she’s out of uniform, and she has no bag with her – there are nothing but keys and a mobile clutched in her right hand, which is shaking slightly.
“What—”
“I got it.” Her voice is small, hushed. “The internship. Andrew. I got it.”
In the space of five seconds Andrew feels things click into place, feels pride and something like elation skyrocket within him before the implications of what she just said fall into place, that feeling sticking somewhere in his throat.
The internship. The one thing Emma never jokes about, the one that will –
“Change everything, Andrew, can you believe it?”
The one that will take her away from him.
Forcing that aside, because Andrew is not going to ruin this moment for her, dammit, he takes two steps forward and something in his face seems to dislodge Emma from where she is frozen against the door. She’s bouncing a little in his arms when he hugs her and Andrew laughs, babbling congratulations and you deserve this so much, Emma, so much and not caring that her hair keeps getting caught on his lips.
Andrew met Emma on the day that he turned in his application, and she told him to return in two days to start his training.
“Hello,” he had said, “may I speak to a manager?” and she dropped an elbow onto the counter, propping her chin in her hand.
“You are.”
“Oh – hi then, I’m… uhm. My name is Andrew Garfield, I understand you’re hiring?”
“We were,” Emma replied, laughed politely at his reaction, then straightened and offered him her hand. “With that accent, customers will love you. Unless you’re secretly a serial killer or an illegal alien, you’re hired.”
“Oh, no! Uh. I’m legal.”
Also, fortunately, not a serial killer, but as he would explain to her in a few days’ time, as an actor he could be anything she wanted. Emma’s delight at that particular statement was the singular moment that Andrew knew he was going to have to hold onto this one.
And now he’s holding her against him, her face mashed in between his neck and shoulder, and he doesn’t want to let go.
And this isn’t – people don’t drift apart as easily as they once did, this isn’t secondary school or that time he left his entire family and all of his friends behind him to cross the ocean. Emma’s not disappearing on him. She is, in fact, holding on just as tightly right now, and Andrew soaks up some of that joy because this doesn’t have to be the end.
It doesn’t.
\\
Jesse doesn’t come in that day, or if he does, Andrew isn’t there. He doesn’t text Jesse, or phone him, but it’s a near thing. He wonders if this is Jesse finally pulling away, if maybe he’ll stop in the shop on the way to the airport and that will be that, or just text him goodbye; the thought of either even happening tightens Andrew’s throat. He feels a bit like a drowning man when he’s two inches from the surface of the water, so close to what he needs, when failure means death.
This goes on, he lets it go on for the rest of the night, and then he’s just done trying to form words to convince Jesse to just try, because nothing he composes in his head sounds logical. Desperate, and compulsive, but not smart and logical and --
But it’s been seventeen days, and Andrew knows better. Jesse isn’t stubborn, he’s -- he’s --
Andrew dials his number, and the answerphone picks up. “Jesse,” Andrews message says, “I need to see you. When you get this -- please, Jess, just. I have to see you, okay? I’ll talk to you soon.”
His mobile goes off halfway through lunch. Andrew abandons his sandwich, has to leap practically over his couch to get to the phone even though he knows he has plenty of time to get back to the kitchenette and answer it.
“Andrew?” Jesse says. “Are you okay?”
Shit. Oh, shit. “Yes! Hey, hi, I’m okay, I’m sorry to worry you. What are you, are you busy?”
“I’m -- packing.”
Packing. Of course. “Right, you are busy, you probably are, I know. But Jess, I need to see you before you leave, okay, I have something to say.”
There’s silence on the phone, muffled sounds on the other end.
“Okay,” Jesse finally says. Andrew breathes out. “I want to see you too, Andrew.”
He tries not to let that affect him, but Andrew’s heart is prone to soaring, and so it does. Jesse gives Andrew his address, makes him promise to wait twenty minutes. Andrew does.
//
Jesse answers the door to his flat and then stands there, fingers tapping the doorjamb.
“I should have warned you about the uh – the boxes and. Stuff,” he says, and he looks nervous, which is silly.
“Hey,” Andrew smiles, going for confident but if it comes out a little wistfully then he’ll be the first one to admit that he’s ridiculous, ridiculous over this boy he met seventeen days ago. “Can I come in?”
Jesse opens the door wider and yes, there are boxes, and two suitcases stacked alongside the couch, which Andrew pointedly ignores. A cat jumps out of the way when he enters, disappearing with a twitch of its tail into a narrow corridor past the kitchenette.
“It’s a mess, sorry.”
Andrew shrugs. “I like it. Jess. I do.”
Jesse meets his eyes for a fraction of a second and then ducks his head. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah. I – Andrew. I know what this is about and I – before you say anything I just wanted to—“
He takes in a breath and catches Andrew’s eye again, and when he speaks again the words tumble out in a rush.
“When I said that this wasn’t a good idea, I meant – and then you assumed I meant, you know, we shouldn’t -- because of Poland, and I shouldn’t have let that, allowed that deflection, I mean.” He stops, forces in a breath. “I mean yes, you should kiss me, and I’m pretty sure to kiss you back, and if you don’t I’m going to spend the next three months of my life regretting it –”
And Andrew doesn’t want to cut him off, he really doesn’t, but for all that Andrew was ready to jump into something with him, he never stopped to think that maybe Jesse was just nervous, unsure. In any case, it has just hit him that – “Wait. Are you saying? Do you mean that I could have been kissing you this whole time? For eighteen days, and it would have been okay?”
“Yes. Yeah.” Jesse chews on the inner edge of his lip, deliberating, and then just nods again. “I’m sorry.”
Andrew laughs, not at the apology, or because of the confused expression Jesse is now wearing, but because he could have been kissing Jesse this whole time and—“We’ve got a lot of catching up to do,” he says on a laugh.
Jesse’s expression clears into understanding a split second before Andrew leans in, so he is ready for it when Andrew finally,finally kisses him. He kisses back (as promised); laughs with Andrew when they draw apart. Jesse floats a hand onto Andrew’s ribcage and steadies himself between Andrew’s palms when they kiss again, this time longer, less hurried. A learning experience.
\\
Andrew is at work when he gets the first text: plane did not crash. good start.
i’m glad :) he types back, keeping an eye out for customers. pics?
Business picks up after that, Andrew humming along to the terrible Muzak, chatting about the weather. He’s good at that, he’s an expert on weather. His phone buzzes in his pocket and Emma just shakes her head sadly as he zips into the back room to check.
here’s a lovely representation of Poland, and there’s a picture attached. Andrew stifles a sound that is half laughter, half exasperation when it loads; it’s clearly been taken in the airport, a stand of American magazines set alongside cheap souvenirs.
He sends off a chastising text about wanting to see Jesse in Poland, not the Warsaw airport, but his shift wears on without a reply. Understandable, Andrew tells himself, Jesse has a lot to get done and he knows first hand the horrors of jet lag, but he’s still flooded with relief when his mobile buzzes again in his back pocket.
There’s another picture attached: the shop owner was kind enough to not steal my cell phone. The photo, when it loads, is of what is unmistakeably a coffee bar: it’s bright and open, with green walls and a light wooden table where Jesse sits, hands wrapped around a mug, smiling sort of apologetically; Andrew’s heart thumps embarrassingly and he laughs, delighted.
“Emma!” he calls after a moment of worrying at his thumbnail, looking thoughtfully at the photo, “I’m taking fifteen!”
“Of course you are,” floats her voice from up front.
Andrew momentarily pockets his phone and pours coffee in a paper cup, grabbing a Sharpie from behind the bar before he heads to Jesse’s usual table. With the marker he scribbles quickly on the cup, sets it down and snaps a photo.
When he checks the preview, it’s obvious where the picture was taken, the cup front and center and the words large and clear. Day 1, it says.
Sometimes endings can be beginnings. Andrew hits send.