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Porcelina of the Vast Oceans - Jon/Anderson
Title: Porcelina of the Vast Oceans
Author: jamie_dakin
Pairing: Jon/Anderson (implied Jon/Stephen)
Rating: NC-17 (eek?)
Summery: Set post Katrina. Anderson comes home. Cue angst, sex and internal ramblings.
Warnings: This isn’t an AU and Jon is most definitely married here. If that ain’t your cuppa, don’t read.
A/N: I sent pomegranate_red (who was kind enough to agree to beta this before it ever really existed) all these random words and she sent it back as fic. Thanks so much for your patience and honesty.
This is… I’ve written RPS before but never like this and so I guess I would have been nervous (well, more nervous) about the whole first-time issue if I hadn’t already known how awesome this comm is.

Disclaimer: Any similarity between the fictional version of the person portrayed here and the actual person is purely coincidental. This is a work of fiction. This is not an attempt to defame the character of said person on the basis of libel, as the work is FICTIONAL (and NOT an intently false statement created with the express purpose of misleading others about the actual character of said person).
Any mention of 'The Daily Show', 'Viacom', any associated entites, or any copywrited material pertaining therein is reasonably protected by the Fair Use Rule of the United States Copyright Act of 1976, and is not intended to infringe upon any copywrited material.

‘Porcelina of the Vast Oceans’ is of course from the Smashing Pumpkins “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” album. If you don’t already own it then what are doing here reading RPS and not at your local record store?




Porcelina of the Vast Oceans

There's no rain the day Anderson comes home to New York.

Only warm skies and the best company car greet him as he exits JFK, and for a while his feet seem to question the dry concrete supporting them, unsure as they begin to forget the soppy marshlands of Louisiana.

He'd like to have dropped off the last of the footage himself, but apparently he's much too important these days, so he resigns himself the plush leather of the backseat, watching home steadily approach him.

He hesitates before tipping the company driver, but does it anyway.

His mom would approve.

The matching luggage is dropped unceremoniously near the door and he instinctively calls for Molly, though she's still at her doggie hotel.

He watches the soot and grime swirl around the drain as lazily adjusted scorching water pounds the back of his neck. It will take the entirety of his water tank for him to begin feeling marginally human again, and he wishes it were laughter and not that fucking lumpy sensation that rises in his throat when he turns over his palms and stares at his wrinkled fingertips. He had promised to leave that lump in the rotting streets of the south and not ever let it find its way to the upper west side. It has no place here, in this lavish apartment under a rapidly cooling stream with no starving children or forgotten domestic pets outside his door.

It's the sheer monochromatic nature of his closet that makes him sigh and rest his head against the heavy wooden frame.

Eventually he opts for the threadbare green Yale shirt that no one says matches his eyes.

He switches on the television set more out of habit than need, sees that the world is still in one relative piece after all and that "Desperate Housewives" gossip seems to be more important at the moment than any redundant visuals of muddy southern debris. There is a brief mental debate held regarding his desired venue of choice and he watches his thumb click to TCM instead of Comedy Central with the tiniest air of satisfaction.

As though he were making a point.

Like giving the silent treatment to the boy who picked on you in the jungle gym but who you secretly wanted to play with. But the boy doesn't even notice and then what are you more upset about really, the crime or the reaction to the punishment? That juvenile surge of anger and shame Anderson remembers so well courses through him again like ice water, splicing through everything adult and secure.

He figures it'll be at least three hours before Jon knocks at his door, three and a half maybe, if Jon hasn't worked up the nerve yet.

He picks up his discarded keys and on second (all right, third) thought leaves his blackberry behind and walks out the door, determined to resuscitate his refrigerator.

He makes it all the way into the elevator compartment before shaking his head in defeat and heading back out to retrieve his small, black, slightly battered but well loved, addiction.

He's lost a few down in Hades and the rice paper thin shirt sticks to his ribs as the wind whips at him outside the safety of the building door. He waits for the lights to change and thinks about going the whole nine yards and appeasing the 7 year old tucked away not quite that deep inside, the one who lives for a good silent treatment. He thinks about walking left to the corner liquor store and buying something pricey with a liquid anesthetic alcohol percentage. Maybe throw in a pack of Luckies just for the fuck of it.

Wait for Jon on his new couch, in his decidedly non-childproofed apartment, smelling of the cologne she doesn't let Jon wear and tasting of the double malt Jon promised to cut back on and the nicotine he still craves.

Anderson thinks of keeping on the shirt he's wearing now, maybe shift a bit on the aforementioned couch and let it ride up over the top of his jeans. Thinks maybe he'll stare a split second too long at the belly Jon's so embarrassed of. Make Sheppard call at some ungodly hour and pretend he's missing the fucking par-tay of the season to be there.

With him.

With the boy who won't even admit to playing after school with Anderson.

And fuck if there isn't an alarmingly large part of Anderson that wants so badly to do all that. That needs to do all that.

Needs to shove the life Jon didn't choose into his face, as though the slightest hint of regret on Jon's part might make everything change.

Just fucking finally, blissfully change.

Because who got to decide that the first person he ever fell in love with was this asshole, and that it would be now?

But Anderson doesn't take the left.

He swerves his heel right and picks up the dark beer that Jon favors and the flavored chips Anderson shouldn't encourage him to eat.

And when Jon finally walks through his door two hours later and looks at him like that, Anderson can't remember any of the things he had wanted to do.

Had wanted to say.

He never remembers the things he wants to say.

Jon advances slowly, approaching a wounded animal perhaps, never lets go of Anderson's eyes even though Anderson can tell that all he wants to do is develop a sudden unique fascination with his shoes and not ever let Anderson see anything. Anything of what Anderson is still trying not to see.

He’s a performer, Anderson tells himself. A performer.

But so is Anderson, though he’s not half as accomplished as Jon (“Big Daddy” did have its moments) because here he is failing miserably at the whole emotional blindness attempt. Failing at not seeing that Jon had missed him, that he had worried, that he had never watched so many straight hours of CNN in his life because just maybe…

That the prickly absence of phone calls and e-mails which had scraped Anderson’s fingertips was because Jon cared far too much and not too little.

That he’s here now and that it should mean something.

It should mean more than it does.

They should mean something more than they do.

Leaning back against the back of the couch Anderson removes his fingernail from the peril of his teeth and thinks his vocal cords just might snap under the strain necessary to control his voice, before he licks his bottom lip and finally says, "Hey."

"Hi." Jon's voice is low and gravelly, like maybe he's just woken up. But how the fuck would Anderson know that, when Jon's never spent the night.

"There's, um, beer in the… well, it should be cold by now…" says Anderson as he slips from between the couch and Jon and makes his way to the kitchen, his heart pulsing somewhere in the vicinity of his collarbones, gripping the refrigerator handle so hard his unbitten nails dig into the skin of his palm.

And Jon follows.

Anderson is suddenly horribly wondrously aware of how inside his personal space Jon is and how he's finally close enough to smell and how Anderson can feel the heat from Jon's body even through that goddamned suit.

Jon hates his suits; they make him feel old and responsible and any number of other things that he's fucking Anderson precisely to avoid feeling.

But he won't wear his real clothes to Anderson's house; he never has.

When Anderson closes his eyes and thinks about those clothes that he never sees, he wonders if Jon doesn't wear them because his sleeves are too heavy with their names.

Hers on the outside and his on the inside and Stephen's somewhere near the cuff and Anderson imagines the stitching scratching at Jon's skin.

Pretending to survey the contents on the shelves, Anderson had planned to be pleased with how steady his tone was as he leans his head into the fridge and casually says, "There's regular and um, I think there's your kind somewhere…" but Jon's touching him now and his voice peaks at the last word.

It’s just his palm around Anderson's bent elbow, his hand still clutching the fridge.

They stand there for a moment as Anderson's world narrows to just the point of contact with Jon's hand and the hard ice of the bottle he's got his own hand wrapped around. He regrets for a moment not having chosen a long sleeved shirt as the barely there presence of Jon's skin on his own begins to burn in a not wholly unpleasant tingling sensation. Though, Anderson doubts even the ridiculous red windbreaker could provide adequate protection. The glass of the bottle becomes slippery cool and Anderson fights the urge to pull his increasingly numb fingers away. Heat and cold collide and churn and crash again inside of him and isn't that sort of how destructive weather phenomena get started anyways?

It's unusually dark outside for a city night, and on a tile in the middle of the floor the light from the open fridge greets the weak moonbeams streaming in through the curtains Anderson's mother had made him put up.

He wonders if Jon has curtains above his kitchen window.

Wonders if they're bought or made and who hung them up.

Wonders if Jon hates them.

Blues and whites that make him think of Anderson? Browns and greens that make him think of Stephen?

Odd to think of Stephen, now. Or maybe not.

Anderson thinks of the drinks they shared after he'd done the show. Thinks of curious brown eyes that had followed his hands as Jon's flirting turned a little pathetic somewhere around round number three. Not jealous or sad really, not even particularly amused. Accepting, maybe.

Anderson had genuinely liked him off the bat, had wanted to sit and talk with him and keep talking to him or maybe not talk about anything at all. Just sit there and not have to explain what it does or does not feel like to lose fathers or brothers. Be openly half-jokingly jealous of Stephen’s hair, ask inappropriate questions about church and comedy and Jon. And if Anderson can only be honest with himself about one thing when it comes to this and them, it's that he's sorry to be planning on including Stephen in the big breakup-rant-of-death that’s due sometime later. Not tonight though. Maybe not even soon. But he already knows it will be sometime after.

After.

When they're lying exhausted and sated and Jon moves to gather his clothes.

Calm, cool and collected, Anderson will matter-of-factly inform him that this isn't some lame-ass workplace fumble and that if Jon wants a fuck buddy he should go back to bending Stephen over his office couch and when all is said and done (more done than said), they can each go their respective familial ways and still be home in time to kiss their kids and tend to their wives.

"This actually happens to be my life, thank-you-very-much, I'm not some footnote in your future best-fucking-selling autobiography." Anderson will say. He will lower his voice and recite his lines to his audience without stuttering. The bathroom mirror will have been just as silent when Anderson had told it that he deserves more than this, more than Jon.

But Jon already knows.

Knows all too well that Anderson could walk out right now and come back with some star struck undergrad, all smooth skin and pouty lips who will never crane his neck awkwardly at the bedside alarm clock mid-fuck to see how late he’ll be coming home.

"Anderson."

He's been staring at the refrigerator light bulb and the imprint explodes into a thousand fragments of light behind his eyelids when he closes them.

He lets go of the beer bottle and ignores the stiff feeling of heat rushing back into his fingers.

Shuts the door without unbending his elbow and presses ice cooled fingertips to Jon's wrist.

“Jonathan.”

No one's called him that since before Jon can remember. His mother maybe, when she was mad. He's only ever let Anderson call him that twice before and Anderson has a suspicion it had something to do with generous amounts of not quite tasteful nudity being involved.

But for more than anything else, Anderson just likes the name. Likes the taste and feel of it in his mouth, likes it on Jon. Likes the little glint he’d seen in Jon's eyes when Anderson had first said it, when Jon had been so far inside of him Anderson had had to stifle a stupid drunk giggle when a little voice in his head told him that he just might bruise a kidney.

He'd said the name and Jon had stopped moving, looked down at him and awkwardly kissed his forehead. The suddenly sober voice in Anderson's head then repeated the stupid joke, only telling Anderson that it was his heart he might bruise too, if he wasn't careful.

Jonathan Leibowitz. Says it like he believes it.

Says it like he wants Jon to think that he's the only one who's ever believed it.

Necromances a person long dead, a choice Jon Stewart didn't make.

And Anderson will think about him sometimes, Jonathan Leibowitz.

Thinks about the boy who was never allowed to become a man, about dark curls falling over grayer eyes than Jon has now, of muddy soccer uniforms and the smell of grass and sweat and youth. Thinks about Jon's lips curling into a smile at the side of Anderson’s neck as he wonders aloud whether nice Jewish boys were or were not supposed to do that and receiving a bit more teeth than expected later, his hand twisted in those curls as they moved up and down.

He thinks of the life Jon didn't choose and crashes back to his kitchen.

Their hands are in an uncomfortable state, and after a few moments of inwardly daring the other to move first Anderson pulls his hand from Jon's wrist and straightens the bent arm down his side. Jon seems unsure for a moment about where to place the hand left in mid-air, before he swallows resolutely and curls it around Anderson's arm, below the sleeve of his shirt.

"Andy." The lyric is somewhat vague – question, statement, curse maybe.

But the audio properties are not.

Hurt.

Hurting still. Hurting always.

"I, I, I…" that stutter Anderson used to replay adoringly in his mind scratches at his ears now, and
Anderson can tell that there are no words intended to follow.

Jon moves his hand up to Anderson's shoulder and squeezes firmly. Anderson battles the impulse to shrug it off; Jon's hand feels like it's going to burn right through the fabric and then Anderson will just have a green Yale shirt with a hand shaped hole on the shoulder.

With a Jon shaped hole over the front.

"You cut your hair.”

Anderson didn't really just say that, there is no chance in fuck that in the most powerful moment they've ever had he'd say that.

"It's too short," says Jon, hand finally leaving Anderson's shoulder, dragging down and across Anderson's
collarbone and fitting itself to his neck, thumb pressing slightly into the hollow of his throat. And in full spite of himself, Anderson lifts his head to allow Jon better access as his hand travels upwards, tracing Anderson's windpipe, the point of his chin, his jaw line, the corner of his lips.

Anderson’s eyes flutter close because he cannot continue to watch Jon stare at him with a misplaced sort of intensity, as though Anderson were some exotic punch line.

"I like it too short.”

"Yeah.”

Jon kisses him too softly at first and it makes Anderson think about a young and nervous Jon on his first date, trying to remember tips and tricks from an older cousin of his.

Polite and sweet and generally altogether perfect.

It kind of makes Anderson want to smack him upside the head.

Not like this, he thinks, I didn't come home from fucking hell for this.

Crashing the entire length of himself to Jon, Anderson shoves him up against the refrigerator door, feels him arch up away from the pressure of the handle at his back. Forces one thigh between Jon's legs and shoves upwards and forward again, his mouth covers Jon's again so fast and carelessly that their teeth click and Jon's lip gets bitten and - goddammit Jon, this is what it's like.

This is what it's fucking like.

He's going to sprain something if he doesn't let up soon, but he can't he can't, how can he possibly be thinking about pulling away from Jon when what he really wants is disappear inside of him, just crawl into Jon and settle somewhere in his chest cavity and never come out again. The tongue is the only muscle not connected at both ends, Anderson thinks to himself as he draws it roughly across Jon's teeth and then back against Jon's own tongue without any particular agility or grace.

Anderson pulls away without pulling away and feels what he thinks might be satisfaction when he listens to the mangled gulp of air drawn from between their mouths as the pressure is reluctantly alleviated.

Jon's eyes are closed and Anderson's are painfully open and he needs for Jon to be looking at him right now. And then Jon is looking at him and Anderson needs for Jon to not ever be looking at him again.

He needs to be brave enough to look away and endthisendthisnow.

The phone should ring, Molly should paw at Anderson's ankle for attention, some useless ceramic ornament should shatter in the living room.

Jon's hands rise slowly but they rise all the same, come to rest heavy and warm on Anderson's hips and the razor edged wings of whatever is still fluttering in Anderson's chest melt into heated liquid steel which traces the scratches and cuts made inside and seals them temporarily closed.

He fits his hand to the back of Jon's neck and holds a little too firmly as he tips his head forward and pushes his tongue back to meet Jon's without touching their lips to each other.

Jon makes a sound somewhere between a moan and an apology and bridges the remaining distance to Anderson's lips, closing them around their tongues.

Entertainment Weekly crowned brilliant mind finally getting with the program.

A challenge Anderson hadn't known he had issued is answered as Jon's tongue battles Anderson's back to Anderson's mouth and follows, firm slick softness flicking sharply against the roof of Anderson's mouth and the top of his tongue and Anderson feels like he’s being petted.

Jon pulls back and Anderson wants to cringe at the wet Hollywood smacking sounds that emanate from their parting lips. Anticipation trickles down his spine and a noticeable shiver follows as Jon just fucking stares at him when all Anderson is allowed to do is look.

Jon presses his head back against Anderson's fingers as Anderson fiddles with the edges of his too short haircut. Anderson thinks he maybe sees Jon's lips curving into a slight smirk before his arms twist Anderson around and now Anderson is the one arching away from the door handle, Jon's weight pressed against him in the most wonderfully uncomfortable manner.

He opens his mouth, to say something perhaps, but Jon covers it with his own before Anderson has anything even resembling a chance. His thumbs slip under the hem of Anderson's shirt and draw an achingly slow line across the waistband of his jeans, flattening against his hipbones with an impossible circular motion that makes Anderson hiss into Jon's mouth and grab blindly and too violently for Jon's tie. Jon slips his not-quite-warm-enough hands beneath Anderson's shirt and tugs it off with no cooperation from Anderson, who only knows it's off when the sudden ice of the refrigerator tingles at his back. Overpriced designer jeans give way to steady thick fingers which slip beyond the elastic of equally overpriced boxers and drag them both down, getting stuck mid thigh.

And then Jon leaves Anderson's mouth and does something akin to crashing to his knees, only, age-appropriate, tugging the jeans the rest of the way and pulling off Anderson's shoes without bothering with the laces.

And Anderson wishes he could bring himself to look down but the mere suggestion of watching Jon's tongue swirl around the head of his cock is prompting tiny spiked explosions in his ears.

An objective Anderson might have thought that it's really a rather ridiculous notion for him to be standing naked against his refrigerator with a fully suited Jon on his knees struggling to accommodate his own atypically neglected hard-on, but here is Jon's mouth like a glossy inferno around him and any thought in regards to the ridiculous scatter like a handful of thistles.

Jon hollows his cheeks and sucks almost too hard, while the hand not supporting Anderson's thigh wraps itself around the base of Anderson's cock and squeezes, hopelessly out of sync with Jon's mouth but maybe that's a kind of rhythm too. Then, maybe Jon gives up on the rhythm devoid of rhythm, because he moves his hand up the inside of Anderson's thigh almost apologetically, to cup Andersons' balls in his palm and stroke them clumsily because Jon's trying to deep throat him all at once and only manages to scrape Anderson's cock with a miscalculated angle and surprisingly sharp molar. He feels Jon slowing down with each unfortunate incident and wants badly for this to be months ago when he would have laughed and told Jon that if he was looking for a professional job he would have swung by downtown on his way home and Jon would continue with more heart than talent and Anderson would keep himself from saying that professional or not, he's never come so hard before. But instead, Anderson just brings his hand to grip Jon's hair and lets his head loll back and hit the fridge with a hollow thud that Anderson can't bring himself to feel.

He can't feel anything, he feels everything.

Jon's mouth and Jon's grip and the dried gel on Jon's hair breaking between his fingers and the metal fridge humming steadily behind him and the clock on the wall slowly tick-ticking him to insanity.
And Jon should stop, this should stop, it has to stop ithastostop.

Because Anderson doesn't know if there is an After to this, and he won't survive if it just ends now as it is, with Jon coughing a bit as he licks a thin band of heat along the underside of Anderson's cock with what Anderson tells himself is more talent than heart because talent he can replace.

His head is still tilted back against the fridge and he's staring up at the ceiling with both hands threaded through Jon's hair, gripping so hard it must be painful, but Anderson cannot yet bring himself to focus on anything but the pressure sweeping bittersweet in his belly and this can't end now, it can't itcan't.

The kitchen is silent save for the sounds of Jon giving him what Anderson thinks of as a resolutely serious blowjob- fellatio, if he wanted to be formal, or accurate. No teasing tongue barely running up and down and around the head of his cock, no game of vein hopping or sporadic soft kisses pressed to the juncture of his hip. Just Jon's mouth moving back and forward at a single constant and consistent pace, steady and solid andhere which is so much better and more important than there and Anderson half chokes when he finally looks down and watches, just watches and watches and feels and watches and feels and feels and he doesn't want to say "please" and he doesn't want to say "Jon" and more than anything else he doesn't want to say "Jon" and mean "please" and so he doesn't say anything at all and just watches Jon in his stupid suit on his stupid knees in Anderson's stupid kitchen with the stupid curtains he hates.

And he will later remember wanting to warn Jon, or at the very least thinking about it because he's going to come and come now and it's going to make remaining upright an Olympian feat, but despite all these things here is Jon on his knees in his suit on Anderson's kitchen floor and Jon is here and Anderson comes sogoodandsohardandyesyesandohgod-oh god–ohgodplease that he almost believes that it matters.

And Anderson wants for Jon to flinch back and he wants for Jon to turn his head and spit untidily into the wastebasket. He doesn't want for Jon to swallow it all like he believes it matters too and then kiss the much too sensitive not yet softening flesh of Anderson’s cock and nuzzle Anderson's hipbone and Anderson's belly and ribs and bite his right nipple and lick his collarbone and neck and his chin and just breathe warm and salty over his lips and kiss his nose and his forehead. He doesn’t want for Jon to pivot Anderson gently away from the cold fridge and wrap his arms around him in a devastating stupid hug.

And this is stupid, of course it is, because Anderson is pressed up against Jon's suit and he's still half hard and wet, sniffling miserably and he wants to say anything, say everything, move away from Jon and never let anyone ever touch him again, move his spent stripped body away from Jon, far away, the farthest that he can go.

But Anderson's never wanted anything more than just this in any moment of his life. And then he's getting entirely too much of it and everything comes spilling forward like rubble slipping down mud-spattered slopes and entire lives tumble and freewheel as though through fucking space, accelerating, always accelerating, towards something Anderson can’t see and again, he wants it to stop. But now, he doesn’t know if he even can, because Jon's arms are around him, Anderson’s are between them, and Jon’s holding him so completely and doesn't care that Anderson's making a mess of his suit or of his hair or that Anderson seems to be holding on too tight for oxygen to be reaching Jon’s brain (or maybe those are all interconnected). And Jon should care about that, he most certainly should not be rubbing Anderson's back without letting go of him even a bit, and he should not be pressing his lips repeatedly to the side of Anderson's neck or across his cheeks and eyelids, whispering please - because, why would Jon be saying please when he already has more than everything? And maybe Anderson never did understand before but now he might - Jon has missed him, terribly so and he was worried- still is, though he never meant to be and it frightens him.

“Let me, please let me,” Jon says, and Anderson doesn't want to let him because he can do this on his own, and he doesn't need Jon any more than he'd needed his dad to teach him how to drive, or his mother's bank account, or any bit or piece of the life he almost could have led.

If he lets Jon do this for him now, then what will he do when it ends and he gets broken again?
He opens his eyes and looks at Jon through the reddish-gray strained effort of holding everything back.

"Jon.”

And it means please and it means Jon and it means angry and it means it's too much, just too much.

It means love and it means I didn't mean to love.

Jon kisses him again, like he wouldn’t mind if everyone knew they played together after school and, even though he knows better, Anderson’s arms wrap themselves around Jon's neck like a grieving child. But maybe Jon knows what it's like to be that child, because Jon's arms refuse to loosen their grip on him. And maybe this is what home feels like, or is supposed to feel like. The weight of everything no torrent of water could wash away sinks them to the floor, and Anderson will return there hours later, after Jon has left.

He will rise from his bed where he had been tucked in after being clothed and kissed and stayed with until sleep, in its mercy, overcame him.

Anderson will strip off his shirt and sit on the tiled floor with his back pressed to the refrigerator door he now feels oddly intimate with, and the cold of the metal will sting and then fade with the absence of suited warmth pressed against his front.

The kitchen window curtains will be torn off before morning rises orange-gray and buttery outside.


fin.