ouroboros

There's a job opening.

Jake's been keeping an eye out for openings at College Humor. He has an email alert set for it, but he checks almost every day anyway. It's been almost eight years since he was fired, and he's started to hope that maybe they've forgotten he ever worked there. Maybe they don't remember enough about him that they'll be willing to hire him back.

He scrambles across to his desk to grab his laptop, trying to submit his resume as fast as possible. It doesn't take him long; his shitty studio apartment is tiny enough that he can almost reach his computer from where he's been lying on his bed, scrolling blankly through job listings. He's just lost another shitty office job. He hated it anyway, so fuck them, but that's the the third job he's lost this year and it's only April. It's not been easy, finding a job he's qualified for, since he's not really qualified for anything. It's been even harder keeping the jobs he could get, since he generally has to lie on his application, and then ends up fucking up under pressure. Everything went wrong when he got fired from College Humor, and the only way he can think of to make things right is to get hired there again.

The job looks bad. It's advertised as an administrative assistant position, which Jake knows from experience is just a glorified way of saying secretary, but this job has way more responsibilities and even less pay. It's shit, but it's a start. It's a foot back in the door at the place he needs to be, even if it's not ideal. It's even in the New York office; Jake's current shithole of the month is in New Jersey, but he has enough cash saved from his last failed attempt at employment to move himself to Brooklyn.

That's if he even gets it. He probably won't. He's been applying to every open position there for the last six or so years with no luck. He just has to hope that eventually they get tired of rejecting him. Maybe they'll just forget who he is.

It wouldn't surprise him. College Humor has only gotten bigger in the time since he was let go; management is probably such a tangled web that he doubts many remaining employees would even recognise him. He didn't leave much of an impact, even though he was there for eight years. If anyone did remember, it would only be by association. A memory of him as half of a whole. He was never going to be as memorable as—

His laptop pings with a new email, and it shakes him from his thoughts of the past.

It's from College Humor.

He clicks on the blinking unread icon, heart in his throat, eyes scanning back and forth, jumping around to get the jist as fast as possible.

Another rejection. Of fucking course.

It was way too fast to be anything other than a hasty rejection email; probably sent in 10 seconds by some intern who's barely reading the applications. It doesn't say why, specifically, just the same thing they always say; something something underqualified, something something you do not meet the requirements for this role.

It's fine.

He shuts his laptop and closes his eyes. Another unlucky break. It's fine. It happens. He barely even lets himself get his hopes up anymore. It's been seven years of trying again and again, and every time is the same. Every fucking time is exactly the same.

Maybe next time.

Amir worms his way into Jake's head like he often does every time he thinks about the old College Humor days. He would still have his job if it wasn't for Amir's stupid ideas. He distracted him for eight years, and that's why he never got any work done. If it wasn't for Amir, he'd have been a showrunner by the time he was twenty six. He thinks about Amir, and how much worse he made his life, and how he's single and friendless because Amir drove everyone away. He thinks about his grating voice, and his annoying quirks, and his hands, and his lips, and—

His phone pings again, and Jake shakes his head, trying to distance himself from those thoughts. He hasn't seen Amir in years, and he left for a reason. It's no use dwelling on the past.

He checks his phone and almost drops it out of his hand. It's another email from College Humor.

They're offering him an interview.

Jake doesn't even stop to think; just starts throwing his stuff into a duffel bag and leaves without looking back.

He wakes up and the panic sets in.

It had been a blur of emotions and bombshells and booze. The premiere, Sam yelling, clearing out their desks at the office. Being fired, getting dinner, going out for a drink or three.

Winding up in Jake's bed and it feeling more right than he has the will to admit to himself.

He's throwing clothes into a duffel bag before he even stops to think it through. He can't do this. He can't. He has to get out now, or he never will.

Is he Sisyphus? Rolling his boulder up the hill, watching again and again as it rolls back down. Never stopping, never ending, getting more tired and frustrated every time. Maybe the only way to win the game is to not play. Maybe the only way to break the cycle is to leave.

He has no idea why he's stayed so long, anyway. It's been bad the whole time, and it's only gotten harder as the years wore on. 

Even as he tells himself it's true he knows it's a fucking lie. He knows exactly why he stayed so long. He chances a glance over towards him, where he's laid out peacefully, tangled in Jake's bedsheets; Amir looks so beautiful like this, safe and restful, smiling at something, face soft with sleep. There's something clawing at the back of his throat, words he can't bring himself to acknowledge, so he chokes it down with the rest of his half baked messy feelings and keeps moving. 

And he keeps moving all the way out of California.

When Amir keeps calling, he changes his number, and when Amir somehow gets hold of that one, he changes it again. Eventually, it starts to die down. Amir forgets, or moves on, or both, and Jake tells himself he's relieved over and over again until he starts to believe it, except that he never really does. 

CH has been on the up ever since Jake left. 

These days, it's almost unrecognisable; the small one room office that held most of his most treasured memories has been replaced with multiple floors of a towering skyscraper. It’s kind of a weird vibe. Before, their office was more functional than anything, a messy cluster of desks and cabinets and whatever other junk they managed to get their hands on. This place is a space that can’t decide what it wants to be; the aesthetic is somewhere between an Apple store and an Abercrombie, wood panels and sleek doorways and bright lights on dim corners, a mishmash of modern and rustic that makes Jake feel out of place.

He’s wearing his nice interview shirt and he still feels underdressed, watching the receptionist tap away at her computer with her manicured nails and sleek ponytail. He wasn’t expecting it to be so— upscale, even if he did know that the company had fallen on some good years. He asks the receptionist is he stuff his duffel bag under her desk until the interview is over, and she gives him a nod and a tight smile, so at least he doesn’t have to worry about that.

He has to wait a little while for someone to come and get him, and when she does it’s a young woman with a bright smile and shoes Jake knows cost more than his monthly rate.

“Jacob Hurwitz?” She asks with a smile, waving him in through the wide office doors with one hand. She's a young woman, younger than Jake, with sharp eyes and her long dark hair tucked behind her ears.

He nods, and tries not to look as awkward as he feels. "Yup, that's me."

"Hi, it's great to meet you." She holds out a hand for him to shake and he does, shooting a last look towards the receptionist who gives him a thumbs up and a quick smile. "I'm Molly, I'm the administration manager here at College Humor. The position you've applied for is under my management, technically, but you'll actually be reporting directly to the CEO for most things."

"The CEO?" He frowns, eyebrows furrowed. "Why?"

"Oh, you'll be his assistant, specifically. It's simple enough, just tending to the admin and organising that needs doing, sometimes getting him lunch or picking up his dry cleaning. It's easy." She gestures around the office floors where tens of people are working on— Jake doesn't even know what. Some of them are on the phone, some of them are typing, some of them are gathered around the water cooler and laughing in hushed voices. "This is the main floor. You'll see these people a lot, but you won't spend too much time down here. You'll mostly be upstairs, that's where the upper management offices are."

She keeps walking and Jake hustles to keep up as they round the corner towards the elevator. "Hey, Molly? Can I ask you something about my application?"

She sighs, and for the first time since Jake has met her, she looks embarrassed. "It's about the rejection, right?" He nods, and she laughs, awkward. "Sorry about that. Our system sends out an automatic rejection if a candidate doesn't meet the— the desired criteria."

"Oh," he says, eyebrows furrowed, "so why did I get an interview?"

Molly shrugs as the elevator door dings open, and Jake follows her inside. "Honestly, this job has been pretty hard to fill. He's kind of— he's not what most people expect. When he saw we'd sent a rejection, he demanded you get an interview."

"I used to work here, years ago," Jake says, and she looks at him, surprised, "maybe he remembers me?"

"Maybe," Molly nods, though she doesn't look convinced, "I wouldn't be able to say for certain. But we are a little bit desperate."

The elevator dings on arrival and he follows her out through the doors into a corridor with a pair of towering heavy wooden doors. It looks incredibly out of place next to all the sleek keypads and bright lighting, but that seemed to be par for the course for this place. She walks right up to the keypad next to the doors and presses something, waiting for an answering buzz before speaking into it.

"Sir, I have your two o'clock."

Nothing happens for a long moment and she turns back to face him with a smile. "Good luck."

"Thanks." He smiles back, eyes darting between her and the huge doors behind her. "This is, uh— this is a little more intimidating than I was expecting."

"He's a pretty intimidating guy," she shrugs, even though Jake doesn't remember Ricky being particularly intimidating, "Seriously, good luck in there. He can be a little... unpredictable. Try not to let it catch you off guard. Though I guess you would know all about that if you used to work here."

Jake nods. "That's crazy, I don't remember him being so—"

The buzzer sounds again and Molly takes a step back, gesturing for him to enter. "Good luck," she says again, smiling, then turns to head back towards the elevator as Jake faces the doors.

He can do this. It's easy. All he has to do is convince Ricky to hire him back even though he was fired. The guy Molly was describing didn't sound like Ricky, though. Jake hasn't been keeping super up to date with the corporate goings on of College Humor, even if he has been trying desperately to get his job back for years. Maybe Sam took over. He was on his way up the ladder anyway, so it wouldn't surprise Jake if after he fired them, he took the reins. Jake supposes it doesn't matter; he's just here to suck up to whoever happens to be in charge now. It doesn't matter who it is.

He pushes open the needlessly wide and gaudy wooden double doors and there, in the centre of the room, framed by a window as tall as the ceiling and seated at a desk of deep mahogany, is Amir fucking Blumenfeld.

"Come in. Have a seat."

Jake can't breathe. "What the fuck?"

Amir has the audacity to look surprised. "Is that any way to talk to a potential employer?"

"Am I hallucinating right now?" Jake laughs, because he can't think of any other way to respond. "What the fuck is happening?"

He just huffs, like Jake is the one being ridiculous. "Are you gonna sit down or not?"

Jake, for lack of anything better to do, sits down.

He starts thumbing through a folder that Jake can see has his resume nestled inside, eyes scanning quickly. Jake just watches him, enraptured. This Amir in front of him now seems so different from the man he knew, but also exactly the same. Salt and pepper hair and a well groomed beard next to familiar chipmunk cheeks and sharp beady eyes. It's jarring. It feels like Jake is encountering two mutually exclusive ideas somehow mixing into a cohesive hole. He's oil and water, and he's sat across from Jake looking serious, eyes narrowed and free from the glasses he's so used to seeing on the other man's face.

He looks older, more serious, even if he still looks familiar enough to make Jake's heart lurch. 

He looks good. He's forty now, Jake knows (not like he's been keeping track), and age suits him.

"Jake, was it?" He asks, flipping open his notepad in that performative way Jake has seen him do a thousand times before, jotting down something Jake can't make out. "Jake Hurwitz?"

Hearing him talk knocks Jake back into the moment like a bucket of ice water. It doesn't matter if he's hot now (still hot, Jake's mind supplies unhelpfully), he's still the same asshole he's always been. "What are you doing?"

He holds his hands out, gesturing to the papers on his desk, smiling like it's obvious. "I'm conducting your interview, I thought that was obvious."

"How are you the CEO of College Humor?"

“Inappropriate!” He squeals, and Jake rolls his eyes. “I'm your boss.”

It takes Jake's brain a second to catch up, but when it does he narrows his eyes, confused. “Wait. You’re hiring me?”

“No.” He answers quickly, like it’s an instinct, but then shrugs. “Maybe. I've not decided yet.”

Jake scoffs. “Well, I don't wanna work here if you're gonna be my boss.”

Amir just shrugs with a smile, so reminiscent of the way he used to be. “Why are you being so antagonistic?”

He doesn't know. All he knows is that it’s instinct to fight Amir at every turn; almost a decade of sitting across from him and shooting down everything he said has worn its tracks in Jake's mind, and now he has to keep fighting because he isn’t sure what would happen if he stopped.

He rolls his eyes like Amir is being ridiculous, and resolves to not think about it later. “How are you in charge here? How and why do you have any authority over anyone?”

“My brilliant mind and sharp business acumen, Jakey,” he tries to wink, but just blinks at Jake real hard.

No one's called him Jakey in so long. It’s been years since he’s heard it from anyone; the sound of the familiar nickname in the all too familiar voice settles in Jake's ribcage, spreading warmth through him.

He swallows it down.

“That's an inappropriate nickname for an interviewee.”

Amir just laughs. “Interviewee? Or do you mean interviewpee.”

“I do not, and— are you peeing right now?”

“No, but only because I had a dry lunch and drained the main vein earlier.”

“How’d you actually do it?” Jake leans forward, trying to see what he was writing, but he slams the notepad closed. “Are you even CEO?”

He laughs, looking smug, and Jake groans. “I am! I won it off Ricky in a game of cards.”

“No way.”

“Yes way, my friend,” he holds his hands out to gesture at his office, leaning back in his chair, “this is all mine now, baby. Has been for years.”

Jake’s eyes go wide. “Years? How fucking long have you worked here?”

He shrugs. “Years, Jakey, I don’t remember how many. Two, or five, maybe. Who’s to say?”

“You should. You should be able to say.”

Amir just laughs, smiling wide. “It’s a simple question, Jake.”

“I know. I asked it.”

He flips open the folder with Jake's resume again, nodding. “Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page. Do you have any administrative experience?”

“Do I— what? No.”

“Hm. I figured as much.” He writes something else in his notebook, eyes focused and brow furrowed.

Jake leans across the desk and knocks the pen out of his hand. “Stop that!”

“Hey!” He squeals, reaching over to slap Jake's hand in retaliation. “Ass!”

“Quit it!” He leans over just to make sure he gets the last hit, then leans back in his chair, glaring. “I can’t believe you’re in charge here. This is insane.”

Amir laughs. “Believe it, man. I don’t know why you’re so surprised. I've always been management material.”

“No you haven’t. You were barely employee material.”

“Do you know COVID?”

“Don't do that—”

“I'm sort of like COVID.”

“How? Bad? Life ruining?”

He pops the collar of his shirt, and Jake rolls his eyes. “Efficient.”

“Disrespectful. COVID killed millions of people. People are still dying—”

“You think I don't know that? I've lost seventeen uncles to the cor-oh-no-virius.”

“Well— shit, I'm sorry for your loss.”

He just shrugs. “Eh, don't be. They weren't my uncles.”

“What?” He shakes himself out of it, taking a breath. He’s letting himself get pulled into Amir's shit again, like he always knew he would. Amir hasn’t changed where it counts; he’s still just as fucking hard to talk to as he’s always been. “You're a real piece of shit, you know that?”

He doesn't answer; he just keeps watching him, eyes sharper and more intense than Jake can ever remember them being. “Dinner tonight?”

He says it in the same way he’s always said it, but it feels different, echoing in this office where, against all odds, Amir commands actual authority. Jake can’t help but think of the last time he’d asked, the empty CH offices darkening around them. Where it led last time, and what it meant. Confessions mumbled into skin and his duffel bag so full that it was hard to zip.

“Is this part of the interview?”

“Would that affect your answer?

He thinks about it for longer than he’d like to admit, running through the options in his head. “I don’t know.”

“No, it’s not.” Amir says after a beat, still watching him with an intensity Jake feels in his bones. “I’m just asking.”

It’s a bad idea. It’s a bad idea to even still be sitting here, in his office; he should have walked straight back out of the door and back to New Jersey the second he found out who he would be working for. He knows his reasons for leaving, he recites them in his head at night like counting sheep, and right now he can feel them screaming at him, echoing every red flag Amir has failed to outgrow. If he’s not careful, he’ll get struck, again, like he was so terrified of being; caught in Amir’s orbit like every foreign body that gets a little too close, until his gravitational pull becomes too much, crashing and exploding like a supernova.

A bad idea, for sure. 

Jake’s never been very good at making good decisions, though.

“Okay, yeah. Sure.”

“Perfect, just hang on a second,” Amir says, picking up his desk phone, “I just gotta ask the wife.”

Jake's heart stops beating. It takes him a good ten seconds to find the words. “You’re married?”

“No,” he grins, watching him, slamming his phone back down, “I just wanted to get a read on you.”

He’s not sure how to feel about that. “And did you?”

He stands up, smiling, and Jake feels weirdly out of his depth. “Let’s go.”

It’s been a long time since Jake has been to a restaurant in New York. He doesn’t know where is cool there anymore, so his expectations are basically nonexistent, and he can barely find it in himself to be surprised when they turn a corner and Amir gestures towards a McDonalds.

“Really?” He laughs, because of course. “The D’s?”

“Where else, my friend?” He opens the door for Jake, holding it with a little flourish, and Jake rolls his eyes but enters anyway. “The service is great, don’t worry. I own this bish.”

“I wasn’t worried— should I be?”

Amir claps him on the shoulder, shaking his head. “I said not to be! You gotta listen more, Jake.”

“Don’t touch me, man,” he mumbles, halfheartedly shrugging off Amir’s hand, but the other man drops it back to his side, “do you actually own this place?”

He puffs up with pride, and Jake kicks himself for finding it endearing. “One of many. I actually own fourteen franchises, and one ‘themed dining experience’, whatever the fuck that means.”

“You own it and you don’t know what it means?”

“I own lots of shit, Jake, I’m supposed to know what every single individual thing is? Grow up.”

He leads them upstairs, shooting a hand gesture to the workers behind the counter that they seem to interpret as some kind of request, opening a door in a far corner and leading him into a private booth. The whole place has exceedingly weird vibes, and Amir settles into one side, motioning for Jake to sit opposite. He tries to look cool, mustering the confidence he practises in the mirror and trying to not look how he feels; like he’s stepped through a portal to an alternate dimension where nothing makes sense, and he needs to seem like he’s still as cool as he was when he was twenty two.

He’s barely sat down before a worker appears with a platter of chicken nuggets and fries in hand, placing it down between them. Amir looks thrilled.

“Bon appétit, man. Enjoy the finest nuggs this side of the Pacific.”

Jake scoffs. “What? I don’t get to order?”

“I ordered for you,” he says, already digging in, “I know what you like.”

“What if I’ve changed, man. What if I’m a vegan now?”

“Are you?”

He says it almost as a challenge; go ahead, prove you’ve changed, show me that you’ve done something with the last eight years.

Jake holds his gaze as long as he can before he relents. “No.”

Amir laughs, sharp eyes still watching him. “Then help yourself.”

Begrudgingly, he grabs a nugget, cracking open a barbecue sauce sachet to eat it with. It’s pretty good. Amir wasn’t wrong, which pisses Jake off, even if he’s not entirely sure why. 

While they’re eating, Jake keeps staring at him out of the corner of his eye. It’s the first time since Jake set foot in that office that he hasn’t felt Amir constantly watching him, and he uses the moment before the inevitable conversation kicks in to try and straighten his head out. This has been a weird fucking day, but, against every atom of his body screaming for him to see reason, Jake really wants this job. He thought he needed it before, needed to get back to College Humor, back to the last time things in his life were something resembling good; now, he doesn’t just need it, he wants it, for reasons he knows but doesn’t know how to deal with. He’s the one that left. He left, and now Amir is successful and hot and important and Jake’s just an asshole with a duffel bag that can barely hold a job. He knows why he left, and it's the same thing that’s pulling him back.

A guy appears with a bottle and two wine glasses, setting them on the table and then bowing out of the room. Jake squints to read the label; he’s not wearing his glasses, and he doesn’t want to reach out and grab it when Amir is watching him so closely. He has to keep up his cool guy charade until he’s hired, and then keep it up more until he dies, probably.

Amir picks it up, filling the glasses.

“What’s that?” He asks, grabbing the glass to take a sniff.

Amir chuckles. “Forty one Cabernet. Have a taste, you’ll like it.”

“What if I have to drive?”

“Do you?”

Jake doesn’t bother answering. He just takes a sip, avoiding Amir’s eyes. He does like it, which pisses him off even more, but not enough to stop drinking it.

“So,” Amir starts, as casually as if he was discussing the weather, “have you been sleeping with dudes?”

Jake chokes on his drink.

“What?”

He has the audacity to hold his hands up like Jake is being dramatic. “I'm just making normal conversation.”

“You’ve never had a normal conversation with a normal person,” Jake says on instinct, even though he hasn’t seen him for eight years and, for all he knows, Amir has normal friends now, “also I'm pretty sure as my boss you're not legally allowed to ask me that.”

“Potential boss,” he says, smirking, “you’re not hired yet, man.”

“Okay, but even as my potential boss, you still can’t say that. Right?”

Amir just holds his hands up and shrugs, but he has such a smug look in his eyes that Jake answers anyway.

“Yeah. Duh.” He hopes he sounds chill and unaffected, but Amir’s eyebrows raise like he’s shocked.

“Really?” Amir asks, and he’s not sure why but his surprise makes Jake narrow his eyes.

“Yeah, it's 2023, man. Don't be surprised. Anyone can sleep with dudes.”

“I am surprised.” Amir says, taking a sip and not breaking eye contact for so long Jake feels like his eyes are going to burn out of his head. “You keep surprising me.”

The thing is, it's only sort of a lie. Jake hasn't been sleeping with guys, but he also hasn't been sleeping with anyone, but he's been thinking about sleeping with guys, so— that's gotta count for something. He can’t tell whether Amir thinks it’s true or not, and he’s not sure he wants to know. 

All this for a job at a company that already fired him.

“So,” he starts, sipping at his wine again, “did I get it? The job?”

Amir shrugs. “I shouldn’t really say.”

“Are you serious right now?”

“There are other candidates, Jake. I can’t just skip over protocol because you bat your eyelashes and ask nicely.”

He purposefully ignores the comment about him batting his eyelashes, because he definitely wasn’t doing that and— and so what if he was. “You’re the CEO. You can.”

“Exactly right, I can. I probably won’t, though.”

“Come on, man,” Jake mutters, and Amir rolls his eyes like Jake is the one being the asshole, “I need to know whether I should bother sticking around or not.”

“Yeah, well, I know you’re not great at sticking around.”

It hurts more than Jake was expecting it to.

“Hey, come on.”

“What?” There’s a shift in Amir, an almost imperceptible change in the way he holds himself that Jake knows means he’s not messing around anymore. It’s been a long time, and things have changed, but Jake still remembers how to read him where it counts.

“That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?”

It is. Jake shakes his head anyways, scrambling to justify it.

“I had to leave. You have no idea. We were stuck, and if I didn’t leave then we would’ve stayed like that forever.”

“Would that have been so bad?”

Maybe not, but that’s not a thought he lets himself entertain. He’s been ignoring the feeling for the last eight years; he’s not going to start questioning it now.

“You own a company, man. You’ve gotta be, what, like a millionaire? Do you think you’d have done that if—”

He cuts himself off because he can’t bring himself to say it, but he can tell by the way Amir’s eyes shift that they both know. He’s not sure what he can say to make things better, or easier, or to try and make Amir understand why he left. Why he had to leave. To make him see that he didn’t have a choice. 

When Amir speaks, it’s quieter; barely above a whisper, sounding so unlike himself, yet unearthing memories Jake has spent years burying.

“You said you loved me, Jake.”

He did. The scariest thing is that he meant it.

“No, I didn't.”

“Yes! You did!”

“I was drunk.”

“No, you weren't.”

“I was tired!”

He knows it’s a terrible excuse even as he’s saying it, but all he can think is deny deny deny.

“What?”

“I was— it was the—” his voice dips down, quiet and hushed even though there’s no one around to hear, “the sex, it got to me, okay, I was all— sexed!”

“You told me you loved me, Jake. You told me you loved me and— and then you left. What was I supposed to do with that?”

The eye contact is so intense that Jake breaks fast, and just stares down into his glass of wine, biting into another chicken nugget. He wants to say I’m sorry. He wants to say I wish I could have stayed. He wants to say I never wanted to leave, not really, but what else could I have done?

“I don’t know, Amir. People say things they don’t mean sometimes.”

Amir laughs, and it catches Jake off guard. “Of fucking course. You’re still an asshole.”

“I’m an asshole?” Jake says. Amir fucking Blumenfeld is calling him an asshole, which, even if he’s a little bit right, is extremely hypocritical.

He nods like he doesn’t even see the irony. “You’ve always been an asshole to me, Jake. You’re so fucking insecure—”

“You’re the asshole!” He echoes, purposefully ignoring the comment about his insecurity. “Fuck you, man. I have my reasons, I don’t need this— this third degree! I don’t need your shitty job, you can shove it—”

“It’s yours,” he says, standing up, dropping his glass onto the table, “if you want it. You start Monday.”

He’s already pushing past Jake and out through the door by the time he can formulate a response. “Why?”

Amir stops, and Jake can tell that he’s thinking about it, but he keeps moving without answering.

Jake starts counting down the seconds until Monday.

Turns out finding an apartment in New York is hard.  

Jake has less friends left in New York than he'd anticipated. Most of the old CollegeHumor crew ended up moving out to LA one way or another, and he more or less burned his bridges with all of them anyway. He doesn't start work until Monday, so he has all weekend without even Amir to help him.

Not that he needs Amir's help. He's been on his own for eight years now, he can take care of his own problems. He can find his own goddamn apartment.

He just needs to find someone who'll let him crash in their apartment.

It's been years since he's even tried texting most of his old New York buddies. He's changed phones so many times since he left CollegeHumor that he doesn't even have most of their numbers anymore. 

He tries everyone he can think of before he even gets a response, and it's not Jake's first choice, but it is his only choice. Rima, an ex-almost-sort-of-girlfriend, responds after a few hours and begrudgingly agrees to let him sleep on her couch. Temporarily, she stresses, and Jake has to swear it won't be for more than a week before she even lets him ask. 

It's a weird situation, though over the last however many years he's learned that he doesn't have the luxury of being picky. That being said, he's still going to bitch about it. He deserves so much more than this.

"I deserve so much more than this," he mumbles into his oatmeal, and Rima sighs across the table.

"That's the third time this morning you've said that, Jake." She frowns, covering it up with a long sip of her coffee. "Which is kind of rude considering I'm letting you stay here even though you ghosted me for fifteen years."

He rolls his eyes, because he knows what he did and doesn’t need to hear it rehashed over breakfast while he fruitlessly tries to enjoy his underwhelming oatmeal. He fucked up their relationship before it could even be a relationship. Before he could even know if he wanted it to be a relationship, because he could barely get enough time alone to figure out how he felt, and they could barely get any time alone to be together. They only hooked up twice, and went on three dates, before—

Well, before the thing that always ruins everything in Jake’s life came barrelling into their relationship like a tornado.

Jake just looks at her, eyebrows raised. “Not really. That wasn’t my fault, you know.”

“It wasn’t?” She looks skeptical, but Rima is nice, so he can see her talking herself into giving him the benefit of the doubt. 

“No,” he smiles, abandoning his oatmeal in favor of leaning across the table to look her directly in the eyes, “it was Amir’s fault.”

“Jesus, Jake,” Rima shakes her head, and Jake isn’t sure what he’s even done to make her mad, “Amir’s fault. Right.”

“What?”

She looks quietly frustrated, and Jake regrets telling her so much about his situation. Not everything, though. There are some things about him that he doesn’t need getting out. “You can’t just blame Amir for everything that’s ever happened to you. You have to take responsibility eventually, Jake.”

“Responsibility? For what?” He sighs, checking his phone for the fifth time since he started eating breakfast. Only 8:30. It sucks staying with an early riser, even if it is because she has to do shit like take her kids to school or wherever it is that kids go on a weekend. "For Amir?”

“For your actions. For the things that you did and didn’t do that led you here.”

“It's not like I'm against taking responsibility for things that are my fault, it's just that none of this is my fault. Obviously.”

“It seems like you are against taking responsibility for things that are your fault,” she finishes her coffee, downing the rest and standing up to put the mug in the sink, “since a lot of it is your fault. You can’t spend your life blaming Amir when you know—”

“I don’t know shit,” he says, ignoring the look Rima gives him, “I mean, I do know shit, I know a lot of shit actually, I’m actually smarter than people think. But I don’t know shit about whatever you’re talking about.”

She sighs, turning away from him to wash her coffee cup. “How is it possible that you haven’t changed in the last fifteen years?”

“I’ve changed. I’m different.”

She shakes her head, placing the mug on the drying rack and turning to look him in the eyes. "You had exactly the same mindset back when we were dating. You've convinced yourself that nothing is ever your fault."

"We weren't really dating," he says, even though he knows it's not the right thing to say, "and most stuff isn't my fault. My life went bad because of a bunch of shit I didn't have control over. Why is everyone trying to talk to me about my life, anyway? It's my own personal business."

"Maybe because you keep saying things like 'I deserve better than this'?" 

"Because I do. I deserve so much better than this."

"Right, but have you actually tried to, like, improve?"

"I got my job back! Kind of. That's improving!" He's obviously been improving this whole time. Eight whole years of improvement. It's just hard to see yet, is all, but once he starts his job he'll be shining like a star again. "I've been improving the entire goddamn time. Have you tried improving?"

"I'm pretty happy with my life, actually," she smiles, and Jake's eyes move over to the picture of her hanging on the wall, smiling with her wife and her kids and something almost like jealousy bubbles up his throat, "I gotta go, I need to get Leo to soccer practice."

Jake rolls his eyes, because he feels like being a bitch. “Yeah, sure. Whatever. Wouldn’t want Leo to miss soccer practice.”

She does him the courtesy of not responding to that, just grabs her keys from their hook and heads towards the door. Jake tries not to look as bitter as he feels, even if he’s not sure why.

“Leo, come on!” She yells, and then turns back to face Jake. “We won’t be gone too long, Becky’s in her office if you need help with anything.”

He scoffs. “Help? I’m not a hundred years old, I think I can handle being alone for a little while.”

“I know, but just in case. You’ve seemed a little...” She trails off and Jake can tell from the look in her eyes that she's trying to phrase it delicately. “You’ve seemed a little heavy hearted since you got here.”

He has been a little up and down since he started crashing with Rima. His conversation with Amir has been playing on his mind; Amir's voice hasn't stopped ringing in his head, older and more serious but familiar in a way he can feel all the way down to his bones. He hasn't missed him. He refuses to let himself think about Amir for long enough to miss him, because every time he slides into Jake's head unannounced it makes his heart hurt. For some weird reason. 

He won't let himself think about that, either. He's not stupid. It's not that he doesn't know, it's just that if he never thinks about it, then it doesn't matter. If he doesn't think about it, it doesn't exist.

Jake finds himself thinking about it more and more these last few days, even when he tries not to.

“More like heavy sharted.” He mumbles, after way too long of a pause in conversation.

She takes a deep breath, pinching the bridge of her nose, and he can see her reconsidering the decision to let him stay. “You’re lucky I believe in helping the less fortunate, Jake.”

“Less fortunate? Don’t say it like that. I’m more fortunate.”

“Okay.” She smiles, and Jake doesn’t like the way her eyes crinkle with sympathy.

“I’m just having a little hiccup in my life right now. That doesn’t mean anything. It’s fine.”

“Sure.”

“Like you've never had a hiccup before. I mean fuck, you broke up with me, that’s gotta have been a low point.”

“Jake! Don’t swear, the kids might hear,” she gives him a look that makes him feel like a misbehaving highschooler, and he just holds his hands up, “and you know I didn’t break up with you. You stopped returning my calls.”

He did. He liked Rima; she’s cool and nice and fun to be around, but it was obvious that they didn’t have much of a connection outside of the physical. He was so attracted to her when they first went out, and even though they had fun, he could never see himself committing to a relationship with her, and they could never get enough time alone together for him to try and figure out why.

He shakes his head. “That was Amir.”

“Jake,” she says, her voice somewhere between confusion and pity, “that doesn’t make any sense.”

"You don't make any sense," he mumbles, even as he knows he's being ridiculous.

"I don't know what happened between you and Amir, but he's going to be your boss. If you want this job to work out, you need to move on from whatever you did."

"I didn't do anything—"

"Amir's clearly moved on. It's been years, Jake. Just leave it in the past and focus on doing a good job."

"Okay," Jake scoffs, "I know how to leave shit in the past. I'm not gonna be a friggin' girl about it."

She shakes her head, glaring at him. "Jesus, Jake, don't be misogynistic. I'm trying to help you."

"I know, but I don't need it. I'm doing fine."

"Okay. Sure. You're fine." She looks so disappointed that Jake can't even stand it, just stares back down into his oatmeal. "Why are you so incapable of letting someone help you?"

Jake just shrugs, and Leo rounds the corner before he can even think of anything to say to defend himself.

"I love you," he says, and he feels Amir's breath hitch, his hips stuttering against Jake's, mouth hot against his ear, "I love you, fuck, Amir."

"Yeah?" He says, breathing heavy, and his fingers dig into Jake's thighs a little harder, nails almost drawing blood.

Jake nods as much as he can, head thrown back, and when he opens his mouth to say it again, all he can muster is a garbled moan.

It's not until after, when they're lying tangled in the sheets and the afterglow and each other, that Amir mentions it.

"So—" he trails off, lengthening the vowel in a rhythmic voice, but Jake can tell he's unsure. "We pretty much jumped the carp with that one, huh?"

"What?" Jake asks, confused, and Amir just shrugs, jostling Jake's head from where it's tucked against his shoulder. "You know, you don't have to use a phrase if you don't know what it means."

"I know what it means!" He snaps back, and it makes Jake smile against his neck. "You're the one who shouldn't be saying phrases that— which you— the thing that you said."

"Wow, okay, bad job of remembering something I said four seconds ago. What phrase?"

"You know, the thing you said before. During the sex."

He knows what Amir's talking about. It slipped out before, in the heat of the moment, but the moment's still pretty hot, so he says it again. "I love you."

Amir swallows hard, and Jake is close enough to him that he can feel the action. "Yeah. That. Are you joking?"

"Why the fuck would I be joking?"

"I don't know. Bitches be crazy, I guess."

"Stop using phrases you don't understand. It doesn't make any sense when you do it. It just makes you harder to talk to."

"Yeah, well, ya love me for it."

Jake has nothing to say to that because, unfortunately, he does.

It doesn’t escape Jake’s notice that he’s not actually qualified for this job.

He's not entirely sure what Amir is actually going to have him do. The girl at the office had said that most people quit pretty quickly, which is not unusual for people who have to spend extended periods of time with Amir, but Jake has no idea what their jobs actually consisted of that made them quit so fast. If those people were qualified, then it stands to reason that Jake might have a serious problem with regards to not knowing how to do any of the things he was hired to do. His lie-filled resume paints a slightly different picture of his skillset than reality does.

Then again, he's extremely qualified at dealing with Amir, so maybe the other stuff will come after.

Amir. Jake's been doing a pretty good job trying not to to think about him for the last eight years, but for some reason the last two days it has felt impossible. Amir's voice has been ringing in his head almost nonstop, and nothing he does to try and stop it is working.

You told me you loved me then you left. What was I supposed to do with that?

Why would Amir even hire him after that? Amir is so petty and bitchy that he spends his life coming up with elaborate ways to fuck over people who have barely done anything to deserve it. There's no way he'd let Jake screw him over without exacting some kind of twisted revenge, right? It's Amir. He's been tormenting Mickey for years for no reason. There's no way he just lets his grudge against Jake be water under the bridge.

So why would he hire him? 

You told me you loved me—

He'd almost forgotten what Amir looked like when he really meant something. It's not something he does often; Amir is always hiding behind some level of performative bullshit, and underneath that is a level of genuine Amir bullshit that's hard to decode. But occasionally something cuts through all of it, and Jake isn't sure if it's scarier that this might all be part of some convoluted plot to put him in his place for what he did, or— or that it might not be.

What was I supposed to do with that?

Big words for someone who didn’t even say it back.

It's not like Amir to not say it back. He's liberal with 'I love you's even when they're unwarranted, and Jake has to force himself not to think about Amir to avoid facing the fact that he didn’t say it back, and—

And now he’s fucking thinking about it. Their whole relationship is a fucking mess. It’s a mess, and now he’s thinking about it, which is exactly what he was afraid of.

"Hey," he greets the receptionist, wearing the same slightly wrinkled shirt and old tie that he wore for his interview, "I'm the new admin assistant, do I just—"

"Oh! Perfect," she smiles, and Jake smiles back, trying for friendly and hoping that with how nervous he is it doesn't come off as creepy, "we've been excited for you to get here. I'll call for Molly to come meet you."

He nods, unsure, eyebrows furrowed. "Excited?"

"Oh yeah, Mr Blumenfeld hasn't had an assistant for a while, so we've all had to split the work between us, and it's been exhausting." She laughs like she expects Jake to laugh along, but notices the look on his face and stops abruptly. "Not that it's bad! You'll be fine, probably. He's just a handful, and it's a lot of work and we all already have other jobs. I kind of thought they'd stopped recruiting for it, to be honest. They were just promoting internal and getting temps for a while but everyone kept quitting and crying."

"Crying?"

She holds up her hands like she's trying to wipe the words away, eyes worried. "No, no no no no no, not really. You'll be fine, probably. He's just kinda harsh, you know? But you probably have a thick skin, right?"

Jake nods slowly, skeptical. "I guess."

"Yeah, Molly told me you'd been unemployed for like a decade, so she figured you'd be willing to stick through it."

"What?" He feels a little bad watching the receptionists face fall in horror, but can't help himself. "I wasn't unemployed for a decade. I've had a lot of jobs, okay, a lot. They just didn't last very long, and that was only for the last eight years."

"Oh, I wasn't supposed to say that," she says quietly, then meets his eyes again with a forced smile, "I just mean, you're resilient, right? That, like, shows resiliency, so you probably won't cry. Not that the others were crying a lot! Just, like, once."

Jake doesn't feel any better. The pit in his stomach continues to grow, swirling and all consuming, and he feels sick. "It's fine. I am resilient."

He hopes it sounds true, but to his ears it just sounds small.

The receptionist either doesn't notice or doesn't care, too wrapped up in trying to recover from what she said before. "Yeah! Sure. Plus, he didn't like any of those other guys. Molly said he liked you."

Jake's heart does something weird, and the pit in his stomach feels both calmer and more intense than ever. "He said that?"

She hesitates, head tilted. "...No, but he must have said something, because Molly said it seemed like he liked you. You must have done a good job in the interview."

Before he can even ask what he said, as if this girl even knows, the office doors open and the woman Jake met before his interview steps out into the reception area.

"Jake!" She smiles, reaching to shake his hand just like last time. He gives her his best handshake and hopes she couldn't tell how much his palms were sweating. "Great to see you. If you come with me we can get your paperwork signed and set you up on our system, and then I can show you what your role consists of."

He nods, giving the receptionist another smile as he heads into the main office, following at Molly's heels.

Back in the day, back before LA, when Amir wasn't everything he would come to be and was just a vaguely annoying part of Jake's work day, Jake would keep an eye on Ricky. He was nervous back when he was new at College Humor, always on edge that his boss would be watching him, appear out of the woodwork like magic to yell at him for something or other. Even as Jake settled in, became more confident, even as Amir started to worm his way into Jake's life and the beginnings of the deeply fucked up relationship they would grow to have started to form, he would still watch out for Ricky. He had ambition, when he was a kid. At twenty two he was convinced that he was gonna be CEO of something one day, and that paying attention would get him places.

It never did, but he at least learned something; Ricky never really did anything.

Ricky's schedule consisted mostly of doing whatever he wanted. He was always going to parties, or calling someone into his office to brag about something, or taking naps. Jake never really figured out what his work exactly consisted of, and eventually came to the conclusion that everyone else was apparently aware of the whole time; Ricky didn't do anything.

So when Jake showed up for his first day of work, he's not completely sure what to expect, but he wasn't expecting Amir to be busy.

It's past noon and he still hasn't seen him yet. First he has to sign some paperwork, and then he has to go get his ID badge, and then he has to get his system login setup. Then he has to make his email, transfer across the company calendar and Amir's personal calendar, and once all that is done he figured he'd be sent up to finally deal with him, but Molly says he's busy. They need to wait for him to be out of meetings, so that he can show Jake what he needs done. It's crazy. Who has meetings? It's not 2011 anymore, Jake figured everything would just be an email now. But Amir has meetings for hours, and according to the calendar they're real, actual meetings about important shit.

Jake knows there has to be some kind of angle. There's no way all of this is actually real. He keeps expecting to wake up screaming, and it's ten years ago and he's twenty seven and all of this has just been a horrible dream.

Eventually his email pings with a new message.

Come see me.

Followed by his email signature which, even in fucking 2023, still says 'gangnam style'. 

Weirdly, that actually makes Jake feel a lot better, even though he's not entirely sure why. At least some things don't change that much.

He heads up to Amir's office in the elevator, trying to control his breathing. He has no idea why he's so on edge at the idea of seeing Amir. It's Amir. He justifies it to himself by repeating the receptionists words in his head; Amir is unpredictable, and difficult, and it's reasonable for Jake to be worried about that. He tries to ignore the part of his brain screaming at him for a different reason, and pushes it down as far as he can.

It's a non-issue, is the thing. Jake doesn't have to worry about seeing Amir causing him an emotional response, because it's not going to happen. He's been making himself nauseous thinking about it for the last few days, but it doesn't matter. It's just a job. Amir is just his boss. This is just a foot in the door back where he needs to be, he doesn't need to get sucked back into the same cycle of destruction he spent years trying to escape from. 

It doesn't matter what Amir says, or does, because he's just Jake's boss. Jake doesn't have feelings for him anymore. Didn't have feelings for him ever, he forces himself to think, working desperately against the way his traitorous heart squeezes at the thought. It's purely a professional relationship, and it doesn't have to be like to was before. It doesn't have to end like it did last time, Jake's chest constricting with panic and nerves electric, barely able to breathe until he was as far away as he could get. Coming so close to being something Jake knows they could never be, so he's forced to burn it down and run before it collapses on top of him.

He doesn't want to do that again. He's sick of spending his life running from fire to fire. This job has to work out. It has to. Which means playing nice with Amir, and keeping his fucking distance. Amir will set them both on fire if Jake lets him.

So Jake can't let him. 

The elevator dings on Amir's floor, and Jake steps out, trying to be as confident as he can, and pushes the call button on Amir's door.

It clicks, and he swings it open. Amir is sitting at his desk, looking at something on his computer, notebook open beside him.

"Good morning," he mumbles without taking his eyes off the screen, "sorry I couldn't meet you earlier, I've been busy today."

It's so painfully normal that it throws Jake for a loop. "It's the afternoon," he says, pointlessly, because he doesn't know what else to say.

Amir doesn't even notice, just keeps typing away on his computer for a few seconds, wrapped up in whatever he's working on. Eventually he finishes typing and hits something, and smiles, turning towards Jake fully, and seeing him like this again catches Jake off guard even though it shouldn't. He'd been thinking about it all weekend, but actually seeing Amir here, like this, looking so much like himself but also like a completely different person, feels like it's short circuiting Jake's brain.

"What can I do for you?" He smiles, and Jake rolls his eyes.

"You asked me to come here. You sent me an email."

He nods, steepling his hands and resting his chin on them. "Right, yeah. Just wanted to go over a few key details. You know, this being your first day and all. I'd hate to have to fire you because I forgot to tell you what your job is."

"Have you done that before?"

"Enough of that, alright. I'm your boss, you shouldn't be questioning me like I'm some common loon." He scoffs, holding out a hand, and yeah, Jake can see why all those other guys quit. 

Jake just shrugs. He's already lost, which ironically makes this feel exactly the same as working with Amir used to. "Common loon? That's not anything."

"It's actually the state bird of Minnesota, so maybe you should actually learn something before you talk back to me. Okay?"

Jake doesn't know enough about birds to tell if that's bullshit or not, so he defaults to just being pissed about something else. "Why did you even call me in here?"

Amir narrows his eyes like Jake is the one being ridiculous. "Uh, because it's your job, remember? I gotta show you the freaking chains, man."

"You mean the ropes."

"Jeez! Kinky much? If I wanted to tie you up I'd buy you dinner first."

"You already bought me dinner," Jake says, even though it is objectively the wrong thing to say, because all of a sudden he's seeing flashes of fantasies of Amir tying him up, ropes around his wrists and ankles and one wrapping around his neck as Amir tugs on it, tightening. He swallows hard, shaking his head to get the thought to leave. The absolute last thing he needs on his first day at work is to get hard in his first meeting with his new boss.

Amir is watching him, and Jake isn't sure if he didn't hear him or just didn't want to deviate from what he was planning on saying, so he keeps going. "The chains, you ass, are as follows; you get me my breakfast, you get me my coffee, you answer the phone when it rings, you let people into my office if I have a meeting. Got it, ass?"

"Is that everything?"

"Yeah. That's almost everything."

Jake frowns, disbelieving. "The girl at the front desk said you were exhausting."

"Which girl? I'll have her fired quicker than you can say her name."

"I never said her name."

"Well, what is it?"

"She said you made the assistants you had before me cry, man."

"Psh, they were a bunch of babies. They couldn't handle it up here with the big dogs," he leans back in his chair gesturing around, and Jake rolls his eyes again, "you know, they say pressure rises to the top, and baby, this is the top."

"Who says that?"

"They say that, they do say that."

"No one says that. Pressure can't rise." He's arguing, but it doesn't matter. This is exactly what he though would happen; he's getting pulled back in to Amir's crazy. "Look, I'm just gonna get to work, okay?"

"Okay," Amir shrugs, and turns back to his computer, "your desk is the one outside the door."

He waves Jake away with a flick of his wrist, and Jake does a bad job of not looking shocked. "What? I just work outside?"

"Yeah," Amir shrugs, and Jake is back to feeling like he's the stupid one, "that's where your desk is."

"You're not gonna try to get me to stay?" 

"It's not like you would."

It hurts like hell every time, because he's right.

"Oh my god, man, I'm your employee. I'm here to do a job. Are you gonna keep trying to make me feel bad about that? Because it's not gonna work."

It is absolutely going to work every single time, but Amir doesn't need to know that. The less Amir knows about Jake's state of mind, the better, even if Jake sometimes gets the feeling that Amir can see right into his brain and just know. 

Amir just shrugs, holding his hands up. "I'm sorry, you're right. You're right. I'll stop. Just go to work."

"Yeah?"

"I mean, it doesn't even matter, right?" Amir shrugs, smiling, "We're not friends, you're an employee. Who was late this morning, by the way. I'm gonna have to dock your pay for that."

It hurts more than if he'd doubled down. 

Jake isn't sure if Amir is just perceptive when it comes to what to say to affect him the most, or if he genuinely doesn't care, but the idea that he is just over it makes Jake feel like his heart's stopped beating. He tries not to show it, bows out of the office with a tight smile that Amir doesn't even notice because he's already gone back to looking at his screen.

He collapses into the desk chair by his new desk, and drops his head into his hands. This fucking sucks. This sucks just as much as he thought it would, and stupid Rima was wrong for telling him that it was going to be fine. He pulls out his phone to tell her as much, and then sees that she's texted him saying good luck with your first day! :] and then he feels like an asshole for wanting to bitch at her. He shoots her back a quick thanks, followed by its not going great, but she's at work, so she probably won't see it for a while. That's fine. He's not some codependent loser who constantly needs someone else around to function. He was basically on his own for eight years.

He takes a deep breath and decides to spend his time setting up his work computer. This job is gonna be good, no matter what. He can get over heartbreak and loneliness. It's gonna be good, no matter what bullshit Amir pulls on him.

His first day is, against all odds, pretty easy.

Amir is busy, so Jake doesn't see him much after the initial meeting; just glimpses here and there, polite smiles and standard emails, and it makes Jake feel worse than if he'd tried to reinstate their old working relationship. Their desks aren't even together, which— Jake knows, logically, it doesn't make much sense that he expected that, but still. It's more jarring than he was expecting, being so close to Amir but not being Jake and Amir anymore.

He's packing up to leave, sun setting over the top of the New York skyline, when he can't stand it anymore, and some emotion he resolutely refuses to identify pushes him to open the office doors, locking eyes with where Amir is sitting at his desk. 

"Hey," he says, and he wishes he'd have thought of something to lead with, because when Amir raises his eyes to meet Jake's, he has no idea what to say, "you're, uh— I'm— I'm about to head out. For the day. Gonna go home."

Amir looks shocked, turning to look out the window like he's just now noticing the setting sun despite how dark it's starting to get in his office, and turns to him, brows furrowed. "Yeah, of course. Good work today."

"Thanks," he nods, the praise settling warm in his gut even with how hollow it rang, and he looks around, digging for anything else to say before he leaves despite that being the exact opposite of what he should be doing.

Amir just smiles at him, and he turns to leave when Amir speaks again. "Jake."

He turns to meet the other man's eyes, and when he does Amir is looking at him with a look Jake can't quite decipher. 

Jake can't breathe. "What?"

He's quiet for a long moment, and Jake feels his heart beating so fast it could explode in his chest, when he eventually breaks eye contact, shaking his head. "You know what? Nevermind."

"No, what?" Jake asks, the same feeling that drove him to open that door in the first place driving him forward now, moving closer. "What is it?"

He can hear the desperation in his own voice, and he hopes Amir doesn't notice.

"I just—" He starts, cutting himself off, and Jake can see him thinking about it, deciding what to say. Amir has always been like that; everything carefully constructed, exactly how he wants it, with varying degrees of success. Conversations planned out in advance, words chosen carefully. He just seems to have gotten better at it in the years that Jake has been away.

"Yeah?" He prompts, and he can see the way Amir gives up, settles back down, losing the fight to say what he was going to say.

"How was it? Your first day on the job?" He says, leaning forward with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes.

Jake can feel himself deflate, but nods. "Yeah, good. Fine. I don't know what you did to all those other guys to make them quit."

"They found me 'difficult and unpleasant to be around for any amount of time'." He uses the worst air quotes Jake has ever seen, but it makes him crack a smile.

"You are difficult and unpleasant to be around." Jake says, then hesitates, dropping his voice quieter. "They just weren't good at dealing with you."

"I don't know, today went pretty good, but you haven't seen me go full diva yet." Amir smiles, and this time Jake feels it warm into his ribcage. "I can be a real corporate bridezilla when things aren't going my way."

"You don't know what a bridezilla is," he says, because he can't say no one can deal with you at your worst like I can when Amir doesn't even care about him anymore, but he's still smiling. 

Amir looks happy, but the light catches his eye again, the sun now low beneath the blanket of skyscrapers covering the city. "It's getting late, huh?" he mumbles, face hard to read, "you should probably go home, we've got a big day tomorrow."

They don't. The schedule is not any busier than it was today, but Jake nods, because he can tell when he's being told to leave. "Right, yeah. I'll, uh— I'll see you tomorrow. I'm gonna head out."

"Where are you staying, anyway? You still got that sweet crib in Brooklyn?"

He doesn't. Amir must know that he doesn't, he hasn't for ten years, but maybe it's slipped through the cracks like the rest of the pieces of Jake that Amir used to covet so tightly in his mind. Maybe he really doesn't care that much, anymore. Maybe he hasn't for years, and Jake is an idiot for thinking anything different.

He just shrugs and tries not to look too pathetic. "I'm crashing with a friend, for now," he says, and hopes it doesn't come across like he has nowhere else to go, even though he doesn't, "I'm gonna start looking for a place soon, though."

Amir nods, considering, and there's quiet between them as the sun sinks deeper, streetlights flickering on outside.

"Stay with me," he says with a shrug, voice nonchalant, but Jake has spent years decoding Amir, and he can hear the faintest hint of hesitation, the barest hope in his voice even as he leans back in his chair.

It's everything Jake has been waiting for. The smallest sliver of evidence that Amir actually remembers, actually wants Jake back the same way Jake wants him, maybe, and it settles hot like fire in Jake's chest, heart pounding.

Except Jake doesn't want him. He can't. It's fucking terrifying, the idea that he could just slot right back in where he left eight years ago. It's fear that creeps up the back of his neck, choking and holding and seizing his nervous system and he can't. He left. He left on purpose. It would be like throwing the last eight years down the drain to undo the only thing he's ever actually done and go right back to where he was before.

"Amir," he mumbles, shaking his head, "I can't."

"Come on, it's not like I live at the dump anymore. I got this sweet ass place. Fucking cart blanche access to the business centre, too. Turns out they can't say no when your bringing dollah dollah dollah to the table."

He knows Rima will be so pissed at him for refusing an offer of a place to stay (not openly, because she's too nice for that, but he knows she will be), but this is exactly the type of thing he was worried about. This is how he gets stuck in the same repeating cycle. If he gets pulled back in, nothing will change. It will be exactly the same as the eight years he spent trapped in Amir's orbit the first time, and he can't do it. It ruined him the first time, over and over and over again, and he kept letting it. Leaving was hard, but it was right. It has to have been right.

He just shrugs, swallowing hard. "I can't, man, it's— you're my boss, it'd be— I couldn't."

Amir nods, and Jake can't tell for sure but he thinks he seems disappointed. "Alright, well, if you want I can hook you up with my real estate guy. He can find you a place, and not some shitty studio. He's good."

"I'm good, thanks," he says, because he refuses to need help from Amir of all people, "I can find somewhere on my own."

Amir holds his hands up with a laugh. "I didn't say you couldn't. I'm just trying to help."

"I know," he's on the defensive again, but he doesn't know how to stop, can't stop or let his guard down or have someone get a little too close, "I just don't need it, is all."

Amir laughs, not quite bitter but also not not that, and Jake feels his walls going up higher. "You've really not changed."

He doesn't know how to take it. He's not sure how Amir meant it, but it feels like an insult, a knife that nestles itself between his ribs and stays there. "Yeah," he says, eventually, moving back towards the door, "well, you have. You're all quiet and professional now. Do any of these business people even know what you're really like?"

"Jake, it's been eight years. You don't know what I'm really like." He sighs, dragging a hand down his face, and the gesture seems so normal and un-Amir like that Jake feels the knife twist. "Go home, Jake. I'll see you tomorrow."

He feels stuck. He knows he has to say something, anything, to diffuse the tension they seems to have now, but he doesn't know how to fix it. This is what he wants , he reminds himself harshly, eyes wandering towards the door. He's trying to keep Amir at arms length. He left. He left and Amir moved on, which is exactly what he hoped would happen.

He feels sick, anxiety churning in his stomach.

"Okay," he nods, and turns towards the door.

He's almost all the way out of his office when he turns back, one hand on the handle, one foot out the door.

"I do. Just— I know it's been— I do. Know you."

Amir looks surprised, eyes wide, and Jake tries not to think too much as the door thuds shut behind him, loud and heavy.