Jake came back.
He did. He came back. He left California. He looked at Amir across the office and pulled him into his arms and told him he's his boy and he came back.
Sometimes it's still easy to forget.
He opens his eyes and he's alone. He's laying in bed and he's alone, and when he reaches for Jake his side of the bed is cold. The fear sets in his veins immediately; no Jake, just like he thought. It was a dream, probably, and Jake never even came back. He's still in California now, not thinking about Amir, working with other people and kissing with other people and Amir imagined the whole thing up in his head. It wouldn't be the first time; he gets confused, he mixes up his dreams with what actually happened, his brain choosing on its own what he gets to believe. He feels the tears burning his eyes before they fall, and reaches for his bear— the bear Jake got him, a real present— and cradles it to his chest, trying to stifle his cries. There's no one to hear, anyway; Jake is gone, he was never here, he left and he left and he didn't stay—
There's hands on him, reaching to cradle his face, and when he looks up through his teary eyes Jake is right there, rubbing a thumb across his cheek.
“What's wrong, Mir?” He asks, eyes soft and worried, voice heavy with concern.
He's still crying, reaching up to hold on to Jake, to feel the study warmth of his body underneath his fingertips. He's real, and he's here, and Amir grabs onto him just to be sure, to show himself that this isn't a dream, this isn't a Jake his mind has made up. He's real and solid under Amir's hands, eyes wide and mouth hanging open, just a little.
“Jake,” he cries, words too loud for the quiet of the night, and Jake hushes him, runs his fingers through his hair until he starts to calm down, “Jake, I was so scared—”
He feels real, his face close and his hands firm and his breath warm against Amir's face. He feels real, like he's here, and not some image from Amir's fragmented imagination, but he doesn't know, and the uncertainty burns like frostbite through his system. He feels sick, but Jake is right there, cradling him through it, his touch grounding as his cries to slow sniffles.
Jake is talking to him, just filling the room with hushed reassurances. “Hey, you're okay, you're fine, man, I'm here, it's okay, Mir, you're okay.”
He nods, slowly, feeling the buzzing in his brain and the fear making his hands shake start to slow. Jake is still looking at him, and Amir wishes he could hold onto it forever. He wishes Jake would keep looking at him for the rest of his life.
“I uh,” he says, teary, voice still scratchy from crying, “I just— I got scared.”
Jake's eyes go soft, pulling Amir into his arms. He leans into it, burying his face in the crook of Jake's neck, breathing Jake in and savoring the smell of him, making him feel more real. He smells like sweat, and their bedding, and Amir tries to hold onto it, tries to catalogue it in his mind like he does every sliver of information he can learn about Jake.
Jake strokes his hair, holding him tight. “Did you have a nightmare?”
He hesitates, shaking his head. “No,” he sniffles, still teary, “I got scared when I woke up and you weren't here.”
Jake lets out a breath, pulling him tighter in his arms, turning to press a kiss against the side of his head. “Oh, Mir.”
“And— and— and then I thought maybe the whole thing was a dream, and you didn't come back, and— and you were still in California.”
“I'm here,” he says, words whispered right next to his ear, “I'm here, Mir. I came back. It's real. It's not a dream, I'm here. I'm not gonna leave.”
“I'm sorry, Jake,” the tears are threatening to fall again, and he clings to Jake like a lifeline, “I'm sorry about everything. Please don't leave.”
He can't see Jake's face, too busy hiding his eyes, but he feels the way Jake's grip on him tenses, flexing for a second before he pulls back. Jake holds Amir's face in his hands again, eyes roaming, taking in every inch of him. When he meets Amir's eyes he looks guilty, maybe, and Amir can see the way his throat moves as he swallows.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Mir,” he says, then winces, “well, maybe not nothing. But— you don't have to be sorry. I'm sorry. I never should have left. I don't want you to be scared. I don't want you to ever wake up alone again.”
“Jakey...” Amir's eyes are still watery, but the anxiety has faded, mostly, Jake's words easing the painful tightness in his chest.
Jake leans forward, slowly, letting Amir follow his movements, and presses their lips together gently, moving a hand around to stroke his hair. Amir lets out a breath he didn't realise he was holding. Jake always knows how to get him to let go of all the tension he finds building up inside him, even when he doesn't notice it happening; sometimes he doesn't realise he needs it until Jake comes along and shows him. Jake sighs, kissing him deeper, like maybe Amir wasn't the only one who needed the reassurance.
Amir pulls back, just a little, just far enough to speak, still close enough that he can feel Jake's breath on his lips. “Where were you?”
He goes quiet, eyes shifting. Amir's dedicated his whole life to understanding Jake, to reading the minutiae of his every expression; he can see the weight on his shoulders, the cloud of his expression. He's— something. Sad, maybe.
“I couldn't sleep,” he says, and Amir nods, brow furrowed.
“Oh. Why?”
“It's complicated,” he says, and he looks so hurt that Amir leans forward to kiss him again. It hurts his heart to see Jake upset.
“Okay?” He shrugs.
Jake goes quiet again, for a second. Amir can practically hear him thinking, turning over what he wants to say in his head. Jake thinks about everything so much. It seems exhausting.
He lifts a hand to Jake's shoulder, curling in the fabric of his pajama shirt, and Jake leans forward to just rest his face against Amir's, nuzzling against his cheek. Jake's different with him, now, ever since he got back from California. In some ways, that's obvious; their relationship is different now. They're still the same, mostly, their dynamic still as intertwined as ever, but now there's more; they kiss, and they fuck, and they sleep tangled together in the same bed. Amir always hoped against hope that maybe one day he could have Jake like that, and now that he does, it's everything he dreamed it could be. It's better than he imagined when he'd write it in his diary, or draw hearts into his scrapbook. It's not like he didn't know he loved Jake, but it's more than he expected, now that it's real. His heart hurts for him, even when he's right there. He can never be close enough for Amir to be satisfied. He wants to crawl inside Jake's chest and fall asleep there.
It's the other stuff that's caught him the most off guard, though. Jake is— soft with him, these days. Only sometimes; late at night, or in a stolen moment, when they're alone and there's no outside forces acting on them. Jake cares a lot about outside forces. He cares a lot what other people think, that's why he's so mean to him at work and sometimes in private, too, if he's feeling particularly insecure, or if Amir has done something particularly annoying.
Amir likes Jake when he's like this. He likes Jake all the time, obviously, every second of every day, but there's something about the way he gets these days, quiet and tactile and still, that stops Amir's hands from itching to cause problems.
“I'm sorry I left,” he mumbles into his skin, so quiet Amir maybe wouldn't even have heard him if he wasn't deeply attuned to Jake's every movement, “I’m sorry I didn't know what I had until I missed you.”
“It's okay, Jake. We're gullies again. It all worked out.”
“Yeah,” Jake presses in closer, ducks his head to press a kiss against Amir's neck, “I almost blew it, though. I almost lost you just because I couldn't—”
He cuts himself off like he doesn't have the words, doesn't know the right thing to say, but Amir nods anyway. He gets it. He always knows what Jake is trying to say.
“You came back,” he shrugs, “right?”
Jake nods, and Amir swallows hard at the anxiety that churns in his chest again as he remembers the fear, the loneliness twisting in his gut.
“You did come back, right, Jake?”
Jake laughs, soft and breathy, and he feels so real under Amir's hands that he shakes off most of the feeling. “Of course I did, Mir. I could never stay away from you, and I really tried.”
“I love you,” he says, because the feeling is overwhelming. It wants to bubble out of him like a shaken up Coke. He loves him more than he has room in his heart to hold it.
Jake strokes his cheek, eyes soft, and kisses him softly. “You're my boy,” he whispers against Amir's lips. Jake doesn't do I love you, but Amir doesn't need to hear it. He's always saying it in his own way, if you know where to look. Amir always knows where to look when it comes to Jake.
“Promise you're real?” Amir smiles, and Jake pulls him into his arms properly, laying them down and turning off the lights.
He kisses the top of his head, holding him tight against his chest, and Amir can already feel himself getting sleepy again. “I promise.”