“You know what? Maybe Marika was right. It was embarrassing for you to shit yourself in front of everyone, and I shouldn’t rub that in. You are embarrassed, right?”

“Yeah," Amir responds, not convincingly.

Jake takes it, anyway. It's all he's gonna get. He hangs up his jacket on the rack in their entryway. It managed to stay out of Amir's blast radius, he thinks. It is brown, though, so.

“Go shower, and then we can have dinner.”

“Well, don’t you want to use the shower first? In case you wanted to nut.“

“No. I don’t.”

“I’m just saying, you’re being kind of a dick, so maybe you should be kind to your dick.”

“Horrible. Don’t say that to me ever again.”

“You know, the list of things I can say to you is probably shorter than the list I can’t say.”

“Probably? Definitely, at this point.”

Jake takes a few slow steps toward the bathroom, herding Amir inside. He scans the room over Amir's shoulder, making sure the towel and fresh change of clothes he laid out this morning are still there. They don't need to 'try nudism' again. That lawsuit almost didn't get dropped, and Headgum can't afford much more than their rent and a parking fine. Jake's about to close the door when Amir turns back to him, head cocked.

“Remind me how to shower again?”

“Look at the chart on the wall.”

Jake never thought he’d print out and laminate a how-to guide for showering, much less for his adult roommate/de facto life partner, and not some poor decrepit foster child. But it’s better than actually having to wash Amir, which has happened more times than Jake is willing to admit. At least here the shower head is detachable. The second place they got in LA it was fixed to the wall – Jake had to learn to live with the stench, or teach Amir hygiene once and for all (the 'for all' didn't work, it seems).

“I don’t like the chart," Amir whines.

“I don’t like the shart that’s all over your body.”

“Oh, you love it.”

“I don't. I don't like your body and I don't like the shit covering you like you were mud-wrestling.”

“Stop with the weird similes. You're exaggerating. You're harping.”

“I'm only harping because you won't get in the shower,” Jake says, tilting his head and pointing with both hands to the shower.

“I'm not getting undressed in front of you. Pervert.”

“You joined Tinder to neg girls and make them send you photos of their earlobes, 'the more piercings the better, I wanna see through your lobes like they're Swiss cheese'. I think that's the pervert move.”

“Well, it worked. I've got a date tonight," Amir says, preening his hair.

How could that line possibly work on anyone? Are Jake's standards of what's normal entirely wrong? Jake's just a regular, vanilla dude (on his Tinder profile, at least) and he can't find a single match. He even tried swiping through guys, to see if his account was bugged or whatever, and it still didn't work. The dummy account he made matched with his real profile just fine, though.

Amir's personality is so repulsive, though. There's gotta be something about his kinda-short kinda-pudgy stature that's appealing to people. Coupled with the beard, could be a teddy bear thing going on? He also dresses in pretty trendy clothes (obviously nothing compared to Jake's), and he has a nice enough haircut. It's better than the fauxhawk, anyway, although Jake can't fault him too much. He still gets chills remembering how low-waisted his jeans were.

Jake sizes up Amir, and then himself in the mirror. He's obviously better looking – taller, more muscular, and never covered in piss and/or shit. Who'd ever go for Amir over him?

“Good thing you're showering, then," Jake says, redirecting. "You wouldn't want them to smell you like this.”

In the beginning, Jake used to say she, until it became obvious that Amir was into guys, and then he defaulted to them, because Amir still went on dates with girls. Jake figured it was a New York thing, because he was young and stupid. Around the time they first moved to LA Amir leaned all the way into guys, so Jake went solely with he. Now, Amir's back to liking both, or maybe just girls? There's been a lot of girls lately, a streak of ten (not that Jake's counting, because that would be weird, albeit incredibly supportive and politically correct). It's all really confusing. Amir's so inconsistent Jake has no idea what to default to, or if he should just guess, or ask Amir every time.

Amir scoffs. “Joke's on you – she has no sense of smell.”

Another girl, then. Probably. Jake's been kind of confused about that lately, too. Sometimes Amir says he's bringing a girl over and then she has a beard and gives Jake weightlifting tips, as if he needs them. And sometimes Amir has a guy stay the night and the next morning he walks out with lipstick on. Jake doesn't have a habit of asking about Amir's dates (there have been many unsolicited horror stories) but if he does want to, he doesn't know how. He's not stupid. He's obviously heard of trans people. But Amir's dates aren't even trying to be men (or women). It's not like you don't have to put effort in – Jake wasn't born knowing how to trim his beard, or nutshot his friends, or hit on girls. Everyone has to learn how to fit in. That's what society is – doing a bunch of stuff you don't want to do because otherwise you're off living alone in a cave somewhere subsisting on various molds and algaes. What kind of a life is that?

Jake walks out into the hall and closes the door behind him. He waits for the sound of the shower running, then he lays down on the couch in the living room and pulls out his phone to play some Wordle. It dings – Micah.

  Micah: hey, you know how i went camping over the weekend?
Jake: yeah how was it
Micah: well someone broke into my place while i was gone
Micah: BUT the neighbors have security cameras that point at my place so.
Micah: proves i didnt steal my own tv lol
Jake: creepy
Jake: sorry that happened, dude. do you need to come stay with...

Jake types me, then us, then me again. If Micah needs a place to stay he might not come here if Amir's an explicit part of that. The bomb threats are still a sore subject.

  Jake: sorry that happened, dude. do you need to come stay with me?
Micah: no its fine
Jake: you sure?
Micah: yeh
Jake: alright. let me know
Micah: no doubt

He's not fine, is he? Insurance claims are tricky; can he manage that on his own? Jake takes a deep breath, in, and out. He's not Amir. Micah is capable of doing almost everything a real adult can do (bar cleaning glass – Jake's never seen so many streaks). Anyway, he won't have to convince them that the crying bearded baby next to him didn't smash all their windows even while he's confessing. He has real evidence.

You can't be allowed to point cameras at someone else's place. Jake pulls up a tab on his laptop and looks into it, but the benefits seem to outweigh any Big Brother stuff in the eyes of the law. Maybe it'd be a good idea to have cameras here. Their office building has them – at least, in the lobby. Jake's never actually looked into the top corners of their office, not even when they moved in. There could be anything up there. Cobwebs, probably.

Amir strolls in dressed (thankfully) with a towel around his shoulders, still drying off his hair. That seems quick, but he's stain-free and only smells like their lemon-peel body wash.

"Scrub-a-dub-dub, three men and a rub. You seem tense – did you rub yet?"

“There was a break-in at Micah's," Jake sighs, setting his laptop on the coffee table.

“Oh, shit. That one wasn't even me.”

“I know you haven't been breaking in places because I haven't been stepping in the glass shards that fall off your clothing.” Jake lost two good pairs of tweezers to that stupid break-and-enter phase.

“Don't judge me. It's legal.”

“It's explicitly illegal." He just never got caught.

“Whatever. He's fine, right?”

“Yeah. I thought maybe we should think about security cameras.”

“I think you're a big baby. You're so scared of waking up with a gun held to your head,” Amir says in a toddler voice. “Need me to kiss it better?”

“I'm not scared, dude. I just don't want our computers or hard drives to get stolen.”

“Why? Because they contain my life's work of photographing you when you're not looking and also all the raw podcast audio, which is where we make all our money from now?”

“Yes, exactly," Jake says, pointedly ignoring that first part.

“Fine. I don't actually care, I just like hearing you talk.”

“You're doing all the talking in this conversation. I can barely get a word in–“

“Maybe I should ask Crystalpher. She's a security expert of sorts.”

"Who?"

"She's my date. Actually, I think she's here right now." Amir listens for the doorbell – it rings about three seconds later.

"How did you know that? You're a wizard."

"A wizard, or... a pizzard? Piss-ard?"

"The pun doesn't work. Just answer the door."

Amir tosses his towel onto Jake's head, and presumably heads for the door. Jake scrambles to bat it off before the wet fabric stink gets into his hair and skin. It lands on the yellowed fern Jake bought to teach Amir empathy. Definitely the right judgement call over getting him a pet. He'd probably throw a towel on that too, and it'd suffocate if it hadn't already starved. Jake picks two books from the shelf and tongs the towel into the washing machine. The shelf creaks under the pressure as he shoves them back into place – why is it so jampacked? They don't read anything denser than headlines.

Jake sits neatly on the couch, and smooths out his shirt. Amir leads her in – she's a little taller than him, with dark hair pulled back and, yeah, a lot of earrings. Even in the middle cartilagey part. Ages ago, Jake decided to get his ears pierced, he asked the guy in the tattoo shop what the coolest looking piercing was. After he saw that the bar thing that goes across the whole ear needed two holes, he asked for the least painful piercing instead. That hurt enough that he didn't stick around for the second ear.

"And this is my roommate, Jake.”

Jake gets up, and shakes her hand with a smile. “Hi, Christopher,” he says, praying he can call her Chris so he doesn't slip up and call her a guy.

“It's Crystal-pher," she enunciates.

“Sorry– Sure. Crystalpher.”

Now it makes sense why she's going out with Amir. He only knows people with made-up names. Wait – she's not that freaky guy that turned out to be ten guys, is she? Jake scans her up and down, hoping it's not obvious; and no, it's not him. She doesn't have the nose for it.

“You can call me Crystal," she offers. At least she thought he was having trouble with her name and not staring at her like a creep.

Amir leans in, hand on the side of his mouth. “Just as long as you don't call her when I'm not around,” he says in the intonation of every dad from a 70's sitcom.

They all laugh; though Jake doesn't bother to make his seem genuine, Crystal's into it. That's sweet. She thinks she likes Amir's sense of humor. Wait until he brings out the child abuse material.

“Alright now, Crystal – would you like dinner now, or dessert first?”

She sort of meows at him, swiping her claws through the air. Gross. Do they really have to do this in front of Jake? Oh, shit. This better not end up like another Emily and Murph situation. At least Amir can't take him in a fight.

"You're eating in?" Jake asks. Not much of a date, but there'll be less chance of getting a hairy foot shoved into his crotch.

Amir grins. "We're eating out."

"Walked into that one. Look, how about a drink, huh?" Jake offers, hands on his knees, about to stand up.

"Fantastic idea. Too bad I came up with it first." With that, Amir wooshes through the saloon doors into the kitchen.

Yeah, leave your date alone with your taller, more handsome roommate. That's not the plot of every porno ever. She's not Jake's type, anyway. Not that he has much of a type, but she's really scary; hasn't stopped watching him the whole time Amir's been rustling in the kitchen.

"You seem uncomfortable," she says, holding her interrogation lamp stare. "Do you have a problem with me?"

"No. All good over here." Jake gives a tight-lipped smile.

"Is it your roommate? You think it's weird that he's a lesbian, right?"

"I, uh– no. That's fine. Of course I don't have a problem with that." Something metallic crashes to the ground in the kitchen, and Jake seizes his chance. "Hey, I think I'm gonna go help Amir find the drinks."

He rushes over to the kitchen entrance, hiding around the corner from the doors. Amir's not actually claiming to be a lesbian, right? To this poor girl(?)'s face? It was one thing when he threw 'liberal lesbian rabbi' into a dating app to be edgy or piss Jake off or whatever motivates him to do most of the weird shit he does. But this, now, in this political climate? He must be confused; he doesn't know what he's saying, like in September when he was calling himself Asian for some reason.

He rounds the corner, swings open the left door and walks inside – Amir is looking inside pots and pans, like they have a habit of stashing flasks.

"What are you doing? Put those back."

"I can't find anything. This is your fault for never buying any booze, because you're an alcoholic or whatever bitch excuse you used to get out of it."

"I never said that. You made a big deal out of pouring all the beer down the toilet. You pulled an intervention on me, bud. The only people that showed up were yourself and Leron."

"I invited Mickey, but the bastard never showed up. Probably because I gave him bum directions."

"Yeah, probably." Jake squats down and stacks the burnt-bottom pots back in the cupboard under the stove. "Hey, why does Crystal think you're a lesbian?" he asks, his voice cracking on the final word.

"Because I am. What are we gonna do about these drinks? I'm freaking out here," Amir squeaks, squirming.

Jake opens the fridge. The door blocks Amir from his peripheral, replacing him with calming hot sauces and oat milk.

"Look – there's Coke in here. Let's go with these."

"Our first date is ruined. I can't believe it. Fine, just get back out there before she up and leaves due to all this– this dillydallying."

"It's been all of two minutes."

"Now!" he shouts, and yeah, she definitely heard that.

Whatever. This isn't Jake's date. It's not like it matters if it goes well. Amir isn't going to move in with her or anything. Jake's gotten his hopes up before, to no avail, because he doesn't get avail. He should tank it on purpose – this whole charade will end sooner, and then he and Amir can have the movie night they scheduled. But Amir'll want to watch Frozen again, and he's obviously in a militant mood where he's not gonna give in to a Ryan Reynolds movie just to spend time with Jake. Fuck it. He'll encourage it. Let Crystal bear the brunt for a few days.

Jake waves sheepishly to Crystal as he comes back in, pretends he's trying to walk silently back over to the couch, praying he doesn't invoke Amir's wrath again. She squints at him, like she's stupid for not realizing he's the submissive one sooner. Jake grips the arm of the couch hard as he sits down. This goes against all his training. In front of girls, he's supposed to look cool, confident, and dominant – things that don't always come naturally, but he's also not naturally a little pussy bitch that lets his roommate yell at him. This is for his own good, Jake reminds himself, mind over matter.

Amir saunters in and takes his seat on the couch, between them. He sets down two Cokes on the coffee table, one for Crystal and one for himself.

"None for me?" Jake prompts.

"We're out."

"We're not out." There's like six left.

"Well, I only have two hands, so."

"You could make two trips." That's what a normal person would do. That's what a polite host would do.

"You could get off your ass," he hisses, harmonizing with the bubbles in his soda.

"Fine. I didn't want a whole one, anyway. Gimme a sip of yours."

"No."

"Come on, man. Just a sip."

"Get your own soda, you sick fuck."

Jake can't help but hear his own voice in it, when Amir flings his words back at him like that. It almost feels like he's in the wrong, just for a second, but of course he's not.

"I can't believe you right now. You really wanna look like this in front of your date?"

"If you're so thirsty for it, then why don't you slurp it up from the ground, you little piggy?!"

Amir knocks the can over. It floods the whole table, dribbling down onto the floor. Jake's laptop is swamped in Coke – he grabs it and rushes to the kitchen. He dabs it with paper towels until they come up dry; it still doesn't turn on.

Jake learned the hard way you have to activate the warranty before it offers any benefits. This time, he called them and set it up before even leaving the premises. The computer's no problem. He only lost all his files, both important and unimportant. The blurry screenshots he took, the memes he saved. That almost hurts more. He's gonna be spending his whole life creating content with Amir, because apparently there's an audience for that. They can explain how the podcasts got deleted, and take a short hiatus, but Jake will never be able to look at those old kinda-shittily cropped tweets and breathe air hard through his nose again. Or his fitness regimen that he followed for exactly one day after he made it his desktop background that's been sitting there for months taunting him. Maybe it's not such a terrible loss.

No, he's still going to have to look at all the pushups he's not doing. They have a backup drive, set to copy files daily from every device on their network that gives permission. At least the hiatus is off. He won't have to read weird ads for Leron's laser tag place while they're placating their other sponsors. Amir's hovering in the doorway behind him. Jake can hear him scraping his nails against the hem of his shirt. He doesn't turn around.

"I, uh... I didn't think about your computer. Sorry."

Jake wasn't thinking about it either, and yet he managed not to spill soda all over it. Go figure.

Amir sniffles. "Are you mad at me?"

"I don't want to talk right now," Jake says, to the backsplash.

After a minute, he dares to look. Amir isn't there. Jake brings the roll of paper towels and some club soda to the now deserted living room. There's giggling from Amir's bedroom as he tries to scrub the stains out of their rug. He's gonna have to get a cleaning service if this doesn't work. One thing's for sure – he's calling up that security camera place. Nothing's gonna get stolen under Jake's watch.

Jake falls back on the floor, panting. Surrounded by wet paper towels, he dials the number.

The security camera guy comes and goes. He doesn't say much, installs the cameras and hooks them up to the network, then asks where the monitor should go. Jake says his bedroom, because it has the least Amir exposure. There's no need for another Coke incident. Then the guy gives him an instruction booklet and leaves – it says the footage overwrites itself every twenty-four hours. That's what Jake gets for cheaping out and getting the next-to-worst option. Not like he could afford the nice ones anyway, even to deck out the office as a business expense.

During all of this, Amir goes out with Crystal for the fourth time this week. Not like Jake wanted to go anywhere or anything. He actually didn't, though. And it'd be a terrible idea leaving Amir alone to answer questions, but wouldn't it be nice to have the option?

The computer shop is out of his particular model, somehow, so he has to wait for it to arrive. Truly one of the shittier weeks of Jake's life. At least when Kumail abandoned him in the woods, he had a clear goal: get home. But with his laptop broken, the only thing there is to do is like, clean the toilet, or something, and he's not doing that when his mom lives in Connecticut and can't scold him over it. There's the TV, but he put a parental lock on so Amir wouldn't watch Fifty Shades knockoffs in the common area, and then forgot the password. He can only watch Sesame Street for so long before going insane. He could get a snack, but he's already full of leftover pizza, and he's not actually hungry. The act of chewing something just seems more appealing than sitting, staring at the clock on the wall.

His phone itches in his pocket. How did Amir clock his no-nut April so easy? He's more tense and pissed off, sure, but it's not showing. Right? It's not even an all-or-nothing deal, jerking off-wise. He just wants to reset his mind so he can get back to guy-on-girl stuff, things meant for him. Not two girls being exploited for his enjoyment. He does enjoy it, though. Like, so much that it eclipses everything else. But he's read articles he can't un-read. His stomach gets tight from guilt, not pleasure. So he'll do it right, or not at all.

He waits until it hits nine to head to bed. Acceptable, if early; but being so bored, it doesn't take long for him to doze off. Right as he's about to fall asleep, something thuds across the house. Paralysed, heart racing, he listens for anything else. His own heart and the whooshing of fluids in his ears is all he can make out, but Jake knows what he heard. They're being broken into. He's not crazy; he can't possibly hope to confront the guy, but he can make damn sure the cameras are capturing it all.

Achingly slow, he folds over the rustly covers until he's free to stand up. He tiptoes over to the wall, and finds the monitor with his hands, powering it on. It shows their front porch – it's dim, but the streetlight is enough that he can tell there's no-one there. He presses the button on the face, and flips through the views one by one. There's nothing lurking in the living room, hallway, or spare bedroom they don't use as a home office anymore.

It could have been a bird or bat crash-landing onto the roof. He hasn't heard anything since. His breathing stills as he watches nothing happen in the kitchen. For safety's sake he clicks the button one last time, to complete the loop.

But he miscounted; it's not the front door. It's the view of their backyard – except it also appears to be the view of Amir's bedroom, nestled neatly into the corner of the frame, under where the drainpipe juts away from the gutters. Crystal and Amir are identifiable, even only lit by Amir's bedside lamp. Out of the entire width of their backyard, the installation guy decided to install a peephole pointing directly into one of the bedrooms. Fucking sicko. He looked so normal, too. The normal looking ones are the real freaks. You decide to sit across from one and twenty years later you're laying out his clothes for after his second shit-himself shower this month.

He's probably watching them now. They have to have some kind of backdoor that lets them watch the feeds, even though they say it's secure. That's why Jake said no cameras in the bedrooms. It wasn't just a healthy dose of paranoia.

Amir slides his hand under Crystal's borrowed sweatshirt, leaning in to kiss her neck. This is legit voyuerism. They have no idea he's watching them. It's disgusting – Amir ruined a football game by bringing it up, how the people he watched weren't even doing anything dirty. Wouldn't he love to see this, then? It's so much more than a kiss on the cheek.

He wouldn't wanna watch himself, though – his self-esteem is so low, he self-describes as a three out of ten. It'd have to be someone else, someone he doesn't know. Maybe even Jake. If he knew Jake was watching them, right now, then–

But Jake isn't watching. He's just seeing. Seeing is fine. Seeing is legal. Jake thought he heard a noise, and he looked at the camera feed, and he saw Amir and Crystal clambering all over each other like animals. And nobody could blame him for not shutting the screen off right away, because his computer was gonna take days to arrive, and he was kinda bored. That can't qualify as watching.

Crystal takes off her sweatshirt, and tosses it across the room. It catches on the fake monstera by the window, for a second, and Jake can read the state name emblazoned on the front – that's Jake's Connecticut sweatshirt! He's been trying to find it for two months. What the hell is she doing with it? Amir must have stolen it (Jake was starting to suspect that, anyway) but why give it to her? Does it smell like Jake? Was Amir smelling it while kissing Crystal?

Jake grinds his teeth, pops his jaw. That's it – he's going to kill Amir. Oddly enough, he's pissed at Crystal too. He wants to slap her, or choke her, or something, for participating in this fucked-up impersonation game. She doesn't deserve it, though, she's not complicit. All she's done wrong is have a stupid name.

Amir needs revenging upon, though. Jake should shove his own medicine in his mouth and force it down, rub his throat like a dog that won't swallow pills. He's been doing this fucked-up shit for years with no repercussions. If Jake's the only who'll stand up and do something, so be it. Metaphorically standing. He rolls his desk chair over and sits in front of the monitor again, untying the half-knot of his sweatpants' strings. There are no cameras in here. Morally questionable, yeah, but in terms of getting caught this is untraceable.

They twist around so her legs are hanging off the edge, and Amir steps in between her and the camera's eye. Jake can still figure out why she's tossing her hair when Amir moves his arm, even though he has to press his nose against the screen to see it. He could hear something through his door if he held his breath, but he can't – he whines, fogging the display. Amir's over her, but not on top of her, not trying to speed things up and she's arching into it and they're both staring into each other's eyes, checking in to make sure everything's okay and Jake... stops.

There's that tinge, that he's spying on them – not because he is, but because of what they're doing, who they are. Conversations from Jake's dorm flick through his mind like a film reel, talking about bases and fucking the ugly ones from behind, joking about roofies and making girls kiss in exchange for cheap plastic beads. How could he ever think those chin-pube assholes were an authority on how to treat women? What the fuck is wrong with him?

Jake turns off the monitor. He gets back into bed and lays there until he's not hard anymore, five minutes, and then lays there some more, maybe hours, until he falls asleep.

Jake heads to work without Amir; he couldn't sleep anyway and also he doesn't really wanna look Amir in the eye for the next month or so. If he can just get some work done, maybe he can knock out his baseline level of guilt and be left with the guilt he should be feeling. That's gonna be more manageable. On the subway he yawns and yawns until people back away, thinking he might fall asleep leaning on their shoulder. He might, but he's also so on edge it's hard to imagine what a cup of coffee would do to him, even the piss-weak bodega blend they stock the office with.

He should have finished what he started last night. At least then the whole thing would be justified in some way. Now he feels bad and got nothing out of it. It's stupid, war that ends in a truce, no land exchanged or leaders overturned. Just dead bodies lining the streets. He makes a mental reminder to discourage Micah from joining the military, if he ever gets the inclination.

The elevator stops on floor seven. Cops kneeling in the landing area, next to the lock on the TechWeCan front door. The woman next to him rushes out, asking fifty questions all at once, but the doors close before Jake hears any answers. The landlord said this building was secure. They also said that about Jake's apartment buildings but Amir always managed to find a way in. Often without breaking a window.

He exits on floor ten; Marika's hovering outside the HeadGum office. He walks up behind her. She's swiping through photos of the broken lock from seven, holding them up to the one on their door. It's the exact same model of door-handle. They never did change the locks. They just got the key from the landlord and started piling in flatpack desks and chairs – and it looks like TechWeCan did the same thing.

“Shit,” he says, over her shoulder.

She turns to him. “You gonna call the locksmith, or should I?”

Jake scratches his head. “I'm pretty busy, you know– it's– yeah.”

Jake shoulders past her before she can reply. His cheeks heat up as he reaches his desk. That was such a stupid thing to say (if it even qualifies as a 'thing'). At least she'll know not to make him talk to anybody else today, even if the cute IT lady has to come in. Even if Amir comes in.

Maybe he won't. He's already spent like, twelve hours in bed with Crystal. What's another eight, or twelve? That way they'll have had an even twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hour fuckfest. Sounds great.

He looks down at his hands; he's wringing them. Checks to see if Marika is staring at him – she is, of course, because he's standing over his desk doing nothing. Throwing his bag on his desk, he sits down, and takes out a notebook from the drawer. What is he gonna do with a notebook? If it doesn't run Audacity or connect to the internet it doesn't belong in this office. He scribbles little smiley faces in it anyway, as if that'll convince anyone he feels like smiling.

Marika saunters over, sticking her phone in her pocket. "I told Amir," she says. "He wants to know why you didn't text him first."

So all of a sudden he cares whether Jake lives or dies. They've barely spoken in days. Jake pulls out his phone, typing quickly:

  Jake: seen my Connecticut sweatshirt anywhere? i seem to have lost it

No, that's fucking petty. It's also pretty damning evidence that he was spying on them, or that he went through Amir's room while he was out. As if he'd care enough to do that. Amir probably took it so he'd look for it, make him find some weird Jake shrine hidden in the back of the wardrobe, framed by all his clothes that've 'gone missing' over the years. Jake deletes that, and tries again.

  Jake: office on seven got broken into.

That's matter-of-fact enough. He presses send.

  Amir: wow. gay! 
Amir: lol
Jake: don't say that.
Amir: whatevs. we're fine though right
Jake: yeah gonna replace the locks though
Amir: lox. lol
Amir: also you can go ahead and mark me down as sick today.
Amir: if you know what i mean
Jake: yeah
Amir: sex
Jake: yeah i got it.

Jake doesn't think about it, doesn't picture it, pulls on his Bluetooth headphones and blasts Enema Of The State. His phone dings; he swipes the notification away as soon as it pops up. He scrolls through the comments on their latest podcast until it dings again, the one that's supposed to remind him in case he forgot. He can't forget. He'll never be able to forget.

He checks his messages. It's not Amir.

  Micah: insurance approved!
Micah: your boy's getting a newer shittier tv
Jake: nice
Micah: thank god for paranoid idiots with cameras
Jake: haha. yeah it's kinda creepy right
Jake: i mean they could be watching you anytime. isnt that messed up

It takes a second for Micah to type his reply. He wasn't stupid enough to not change his locks, was he?

  Micah: i guess??? but that's true about like. windows
Micah: like if your windows are open someone could see in
Micah: see you pooping lol. if they're into that
Jake: grow up
Micah: 420 blaze
Micah: 69 69

Jake mutes notifications from Micah. He yawns, and when the yawn is over he can't pry open his eyes. A quick power nap can't hurt, right? Jake sets his phone to Do Not Disturb, and shoves it in his bag. Then he lowers the blind on the window to the recording studio, and lays down on the green couch. Nobody's supposed to record today. He can sleep in peace, if he can manage to sleep. His gut is still churning even as his arms and legs are lead pipes sinking into the plush body of the couch.

They left the curtains undrawn. Did they want someone to see? Did they like the thrill of maybe getting caught – Jake did, after-hours in the CollegeHumor offices. Shit. He was on camera too, wasn't he? They must have gone through the footage at some point, or seen him over the desk dividers. Nobody ever said anything, though. Jake's been living in peace until this very moment.

And that's exactly why he can never tell Amir. Or Crystal, but she's not going to be around long.

He didn't wanna tell Amir he decided to fire him, either, then they got in a huge fight because Alan 'Gay Test' Avery decided to spill the beans. This time nobody else knows. There's no witnesses, no evidence. Jake just has to act like he normally does. He's already failing at that because he's about to nap at work, but he's not gonna get any sleep at home, in the same room he violated them from. This is a quiet, sex-free location. This is his sanctuary.

Something thuds at the end of his dream and Jake bolts awake – he's falling a hundred feet, or off the couch onto the floor, anyway. The rug doesn't do much to cushion the blow, but he's not sure how much of being sore is from the couch versus the rough landing. He feels his way to the window and pulls up the blinds. It's after sunset, not quite night, and the office is empty. Did no-one think to wake him up? Or did they forget him entirely? He notes that Amir's desk is untouched, then grabs his bag from his own and heads home, locking the door behind him. It might not stop anyone, but it feels wrong not to lock it. When he opens their front door, Amir is rummaging through the jackets on the coat rack.

"Hi," Jake says, quietly. Ideally Amir would've been out or in his room, or some place Jake could tiptoe past then run and hide under the covers.

“Have you seen my hard drive?" he asks, dumping forgotten tissues onto the floor. "The one with the orange thing around it.”

“You're talking about an actual drive, right? Not like, an orange? Because it has an orange peel around it?”

Amir glares at him. “I'm serious.”

And it took ten seconds for Jake to make himself feel like shit. Congratulations. Instead of sneaking to his bedroom he's gonna be up all night looking for something that may or may not even be here. It's probably back at the office. Amir uses it to store all his creepy candids of Jake. But he's stopped taking them – at least, he's gotten better at doing it secretly. Either way, why does he need it now? He misses Jake all of a sudden? If he really did he would've called.

Jake leads them into the living room, so he's not crammed next to Amir in the narrow entryway. He lifts up a couch cushion, not seeing what's under it because he can feel Amir's eyes on his back.

“You looked in the desk?” Jake asks.

“Of course. I'm not stupid.”

“I didn't say you were stupid. Did you take it into the bathroom again?”

“No. I said I wouldn't do that anymore.”

“Right, it's just that we've lost three other drives because you flushed them down the toilet.”

Amir grabs another pillow off the couch and punches it, scrunches it up. “Shit.”

“So you did?”

“I don't know. I don't remember.”

“Look – it's late, let's just have dinner." Dinner doesn't require talking. Food stops talking. "Is Crystal here?"

Amir slumps on the couch, hugging the pillow. “No. She's going out with her brother – incest much?”

“Gross.”

"Let's be bad. Let's get fucking takeout like two little bad boys," Amir says, and so Jake orders pizza if only because Amir's finally learned he can't talk to Jake while he's on the phone.

Jake hangs up. He's still in his work clothes, and they're extra warm and stifling from sleeping in them. He changes into a t-shirt with a small hole near the collar and sweatpants, things intended to be pyjamas, and carries his clothes to the washing machine. It's only half-full, but a load of laundry is something good to do with his hands, instead of picking and biting and wringing. And if things get awkward during dinner, the machine will chime and he'll have an excuse to leave the room.

Jake wanders back into the living room. "Do you have any laundry?"

"That depends: do sheets count?"

"Yes," but he's not changing Amir's bed right now, not when the stains are still fresh.

"Then... no," Amir says, because he's feeling contrarian, or something.

"You have to change clothes every few days, buddy. You'll get a skin condition."

"Who are you, my mother? Just kidding, my mother would never not want me to be sick."

"Please don't tell me that. I'm gonna go check your room."

"Why? You think I'm hiding something? You're the one who's so closed off; it took you like six years to work up the courage to get breakfast with me. I mean–"

Jake's in Amir's room now, so he doesn't have to listen anymore, although he can still hear. He forgot how grating Amir's voice is, with all the time he's been spending with Crystal. The room smells bad, of course, but it's nowhere near the body-pulled-out-of-a-lake stench that Jake's had to endure in years past. Amir must have cleaned up for Crystal – or more likely, she cleaned up for him. Either way it's a load off Jake's shoulders, even if he won't do his own laundry. The gross thing is, Jake asking if he has washing isn't even an excuse. He's gonna have to bleach the sweatshirt five times to get all the Amir off it. God knows what that'll do to the lettering.

It's no longer laying by the plant but crumpled in the corner, tossed behind one of the nightstands. Jake picks it up gingerly by the collar, and as the fabric drapes he can spot smears across 'Connecticut'. Not splatters, smears. Like it was used to wipe up afterwards.

Is that all that Jake's worth? He has no more value than a cumrag? Sure fucking seems like it, when Amir didn't even text that he'd be out late, or not coming back at all. Well, that's fine. Crystal can take him off Jake's hands. Crystal can remind him how to shower, and wipe his ass, and she can force-feed him blended up vegetables and McNuggets so he doesn't die of malnutrition. She can take over from now on – Jake's done.

Y'know, before, there was at least a modicum of respect. Amir begged him for a dinner together, for months and months and when Jake deigned to give in Amir damn well enjoyed every second he spent with Jake.

But that doesn't matter. Jake's not going to get angry, because he's not involved in this anymore. He's eating pizza and watching a movie with his roommate tonight, and then he's going to bed and not worrying about if his adult fucking roommate needs tucking in.

Jake shoves the sweatshirt into the garbage.

"Is the pizza here yet?"

"I dunno, did you hear the doorbell ring?" Fucking idiot fucking motherfucking fuckhead, he doesn't add.

Amir cups his hand around his ear. The doorbell rings. Jake isn't even surprised anymore. Amir's magic, yeah, whatever. Jake still has to answer the door because Amir'll bite the delivery guy's ankles.

Jake swings open the door.

"You owe me twenty bucks," Crystal says, and she walks in with the pizza boxes, Jake's name printed in bold on the receipt dangling off the top.

Jake bites his tongue with everything he's got; quickly tastes watered-down spit and blood. He should rinse it with Listerine – maybe his tongue will fall out entirely. He has to pass the living room on the way to the bathroom, and Crystal's sitting in his spot, and Amir whispers something in her ear.

He grabs the green-blue bottle, pours himself a capful and swishes it round his mouth until his eyes water. He doesn't try and blink the tears away; he just lets out the Listerine into the basin and covers his beard in tinted spit strings. Holding a finger on one nostril, he blows his nose straight into the sink. Why not? At this point, he can't sink any lower. The ribbons of snot are strong and long, like stubborn spiderwebs. He lets them hang for a minute while he sobs silently, then he pinches them off and rinses his fingers under the tap.

Slowly standing up again, he looks at himself in the mirror cabinet. Red, glistening eyes with swollen bags. Sunburnt nose with a snot bubble like a bullring piercing. Three-day unbrushed hair crusted into waves, and his beard looks stupid again, even if he wiped all the gunk off. He grabs the electric shaver off the sink and grinds it down, down, not leaving a series of comedic mustaches like he normally would. The razor only stops buzzing when he could pass for a twenty-year-old again. It's not a close shave like with a real razor, and his sideburns are uneven, but it's fine. This is the nature of spur-of-the-moment haircuts. They're supposed to make you look as crazy as you feel, and Jake looks like shit.

He listens for what they're doing, but they're just talking. Nothing he can yell at them for. There's no way to his bedroom but past them. His bedroom is like a padded cell, anyway, without his computer. He can't sleep again, not this soon. But he's not wandering New York streets at night, not with all these burglars around. Not if he could get locked out and have to call Amir until he answers the door in nothing but a towel, explaining 'we just showered'.

Jake opens the cabinet and grabs the bottle of melatonin that's probably out-of-date, and pours out like twenty into his palm. Then he decides that's too many, and tips them back in until he's left with five, and swallows them one by one with tap water scooped up in his other hand. That should knock him out.

He storms past them cuddling on the couch and doesn't turn his head, even when they ask where his beard's gone. He slams his bedroom door behind him. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he strips off his slightly-wet socks.

The monitor glares at him with its cold black square pupil. He grabs thumbtacks from his desk drawer, strips off his shirt and pins it above the screen. It covers it completely, but the square edges still catch the fabric, like when a girl with giant boobs is walking around and Jake's not meaning to stare but come on. Everyone has to be looking; they just catch the eye. Bad feminist, right?

Looking, watching, seeing, observing, scrutinizing, ogling. So many words for being a pervert, but none that make any of this okay. Not just what Jake did, but what Amir's been doing for the last week. He gives up his life for Amir again and again and what does it ever get him? He's the secondary fucking Mickey at this point. He should pack his things and hop on the next bus. Or get hit by a bus. Amir might miss him more that way.

He lays down on his back, but the tears roll into his ears and Micah got an infection from remnant lake water, so he turns on one side instead. He hugs the covers to his burning chest and sobs until every muscle in his body is exhausted.

Jake slots a hazelnut pod into the coffee machine and presses the power button. It drips black into his mug until he asks it to stop. The only thing that'll listen to him. Micah doesn't listen. Amir doesn't listen. Jake doesn't even listen.

The house is empty, again. He peeked through the crack of Amir's door to make sure, not before waiting outside for five minutes overthinking why they might leave the door open if they're still in there.

He gingerly steps over the shards on the kitchen floor, in a small pile like a drinking glass fell from the counter. They can't have been fucking in here, too. That's just not sanitary. But what about Amir is? Jake sweeps up the glass and dumps it in the bin.

The doorbell rings as he raises the steaming mug to his lips. Pretending no one's home sounds really nice, but it might be his new laptop. If he doesn't collect it now he's gonna have to find the shipping depot in the middle of Crack Den Central and prove who he is with a drivers' license that still has his beard. He leaves his coffee on the dining table, and answers the door

It's a tall man and a short woman, neat and suburban, neither in a delivery company uniform. Maybe they're religious doorknockers. They're not Crystal, though, so he'll give them five seconds before he shuts them out.

“Hi – we live next door," says the man. "We were broken into sometime last night.”

Should've got cameras, then.

"I didn't see anything, sorry," Jake says, starting to close the door.

“That's the thing," the woman says, sticking her foot in the way. "We saw you have security cameras. One of them might have a view of our backyard. Do you think we could have a look at the footage?”

Jake's heart rate spikes so hard he has to grip the doorframe to stay standing. So much for coffee.

“Uh, no. Pretty sure it doesn't point at your house.”

“Are you? We were really hoping–“

“The footage deletes itself every four hours." Four's believable, right? They don't seem like they know a lot about technology.

“Don't you have a backup or something?” asks the man.

Yes. Yes, they might.

Jake's laptop was set to backup every night, same as every other device on their network. Does the camera system even connect to their wi-fi? More importantly, did it back up before or after Amir and Crystal's tryst was deleted? Not that Jake wants to watch it again – not that he was watching the first time. But it's a violation of their privacy. He has to delete it. Also, there's gotta be something there that connects Jake to the scene of the non-crime. Two birds, one stone.

“I'm busy,” Jake says, and he goes to close the door again.

"Aren't you going to pick up your parcel? It could get stolen, you know."

Jake looks down. His laptop, presumably, is shoved wonkily behind the wilted pot plant on their porch. Real secure. And they didn't even knock! He's never ordering from those fuckers again.

Jake snatches the parcel and locks the door right in their stupid nosy faces. Don't they know Amir lives here? Don't they hear the arguments? If Jake were them he wouldn't have come over if his whole house was stolen. Like, the walls and floor and everything.

He takes it to his desk and cuts the tape on the seams, but still dings the box pulling out his laptop. It's so clean and smooth, untouched by sneezes and food particles. He boots it up and it shows him three options – copy files over wi-fi, copy files from a hard drive, or start fresh. There's no time to copy anything across, even though it'll be an ass-ache later. He has to see if there's a back-up before someone else finds it. He makes a new profile and starts the set-up ball rolling. He plugs in the back-up hard drive, too, so it's ready as soon as he can log in.

While the loading bar crawls along, he pulls out his phone for something to fiddle with, maybe play some Wordle. He has a new email from some address he doesn't recognize, with random numbers at the end. It's a wonder it didn't get caught by his spam filter, considering all his important emails seem to. The title reads: jake blackmail final draft. He opens it.

If you don't send $5000 to the linked account within 48 hours these photos will be leaked online for everyone to see.

There's also a bunch of attached photos of him. Jake can guess who took them. But Amir wouldn't blackmail him for money. It'd have to be someone else with access to his creepshot drive that went missing who also doesn't like Jake.

Crystal. Jake knew she had too many piercings.

Carefully, he scrolls through the attached photos. Mostly, it's him in the shower, but he's not even doing anything worth photographing. He's washing his armpits with a bar of soap, shampooing his hair; the towel rack blocks him from the waist down. It's candid, naive. That's only more distressing. Sure, it'd be terrible if Jake was fully dick-out, but at least then they'd make sense. Jake can't imagine what these are for.

Maybe they are sexual. They feed into Amir's sick voyuerism – he did say it only took a kiss on the cheek to send him wild. Ruined the Superbowl party for everyone. Some of the photos are recent, from a month or two ago. Jake's beard is still short, a little ragged at the bottom where it grows faster.

Should Jake even feel bad anymore? He can picture Amir gently, achingly twisting the doorknob and tip-toeing into the bathroom, crouching down to snap these pictures, making sure Jake doesn't spot him lurking behind the towel rack. That's a million times worse than watching out-of-focus camera footage mostly by accident. Jake stopped himself. Jake realized what he was doing was wrong, something Amir is incapable of.

This happens every time Amir manages to grab a heartstring and wrench it until Jake cries mercy, until he feels bad for not taking Amir's side from the start no matter how stupid it was. Then Amir turns around and spits in his face, does the same thing again and again until Jake turns numb. This time Amir didn't even have to call him out on anything. He's internalized Amir. Why does he let himself get tricked like this? Amir doesn't deserve any more of his time. Why doesn't Jake just leave?

Why does he come back, every time?

'I wish I knew how to quit you,' as Amir said, years ago when they weren't even living together, when Jake felt like he should pretend he hadn't seen Brokeback Mountain even though everyone in the office was quoting it.

The matter at hand is Crystal, the blackmail. He could just ignore it. Nude photos of him aren't going to end his career – he's a guy. His mom will probably see them, though. She'll ask questions about him and Amir and if they're together (in the stupid condescending way she says together, like he doesn't know what it looks like to live with a man for ten years and never have a girlfriend). Avoiding that is worth at least twice the asking price.

Jake's computer dings, finally finished with its updates, and he's prompted to log in. Technically, he could blackmail her back, but it'd probably just tank his own career. Or he could pin it on Amir – he's the one on camera. He's the one who left the curtains open. All of this relies on the footage existing, though. He types in his password and hits enter.

"Jake? Are you home?" Amir calls.

"In here," he replies, wishing he said something bitchy like 'I could ask you the same question, since you're never here anymore.'

Amir peers around the doorframe. “What's for dinner?”

“I don't know." Isn't he going out with Crystal again?

“Not sure if I can eat your words, Jakey. You seem to gobble them all up for yourself,” he says, shoveling imaginary food in his mouth.

Jake doesn't reply. He clicks on the drive, and peers through the mass of folders.

“What? Got a stick up your ass? Is it a USB stick?” Amir asks.

“I told you, USBs are different from hard drives.”

Amir slumps, suddenly disinterested. Jake can fix that.

“Your girlfriend is blackmailing me," he spits.

“Cheryl? But she's my oldest friend.”

“No, Crystal.”

“Oh. No, she wouldn't do that. I mean, what would she have on you, other than what I told her while we were having s– okay, I see. Yeah, you don't want that leaking to anyone.”

“Why were you talking about me? Never mind,” Jake says, strategically scratching his head so his palm blocks Amir's face. "They're photos."

Not nevermind, though. This all but confirms the voyuerism angle behind the photos. Jake's so stupid. Never in all these years did he imagine Amir's obsession with him was in any way sexual. Amir's always meeting up with dates or behind truck stops. But he never got his fill, because it wasn't with Jake. Why switch back to girls, though? Last time Jake checked he was still a dude. Not that he has to check. He's never checked. Did Amir tell her about March 15th 1999? She didn't mention that in the email.

Amir grabs Jake's wrist and turns the phone towards himself. “What is she asking for, anyway?”

“Five thousand.”

“Only five?” He's disappointed.

“Yeah, well, your photos are pretty blurry. Might not even be me.”

Amir grimaces as he swipes through the pictures. “These aren't the good ones.”

Jake yanks his arm away. “What are the 'good ones'?”

“Well, they're in focus for one–“

“Amir. I don't like this.”

“Well, yeah. Who likes getting extorted? I mean– What?”

“The photos. I don't like that you took them, I don't like that you kept them, and I don't like that you're taking one right now! Stop it!”

Jake snatches Amir's phone out of his hands, the flash going off as he shoves it in his pocket. “I'm keeping this until we get the blackmail thing sorted out.”

“Wow. Prince diva's got a thorn in his ass. I'll take it out, Mister Lion, with my little mouse paws. Squeak squeak!”

“Don't push me.”

“Well, assuming she is the cowardly bitch that stole my hard drive, and it wasn't you trying to frame me–“

“How would blackmailing myself be framing you for anything?”

“It's probably on camera, is what I'm saying. Let's look through the footage.” Amir leans over his shoulder and mashes his fingers into the trackpad.

“No! Uh, that's fine. I can look by myself. You know, it's my problem, right, so...”

Amir opens up one of the saved files and starts scrubbing through the footage, the video split into five squares, one for each camera. Jake checks the date in the bottom corner – this is from the night. He swallows thickly, throat dry and tight.

"She was asking about the cameras, and I told her what you said, about it deleting itself. And then we were too busy having sex for me to tell her about our backup system, so..."

“Amir.”

“I'm gonna find this biznatch jacking my shit, and I'm gonna call her out on it.”

“Amir,” Jake tries again, more forcefully.

“Don't worry. I haven't missed it. I have the eyes of an eagle, or vole.”

Jake closes the laptop on Amir's hand. “Stop.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you can see in your bedroom window.”

Amir flips the lid open again and drags the cursor along, to the point where they're both undressed. The moment when Jake shut off the monitor.

“Oh. This is... Wait. How did you know that?”

“I heard a bump in the night and accidentally saw it. I was gonna delete the footage but I didn't think it was even saving anywhere until today.”

Amir perches on the corner of Jake's desk, looking down at him. “You were watching me?”

Jake braces himself on the arms of his desk chair. “No. Only for like, a second, dude.”

“Were you watching her?”

“I wasn't watching either of you, because that's– that's not okay. Remember – I just said not to take photos of me without my consent. This is wrong– would be wrong, like that's wrong.”

Amir walks out, blank. Surely he's not actually feeling remorseful. He's never done that before. Jake follows him to the living room, where he's slumped on the couch, shaking his head.

"You okay, bud?"

Amir takes off his glasses, and rubs the bridge of his nose. “You're such a fucking hypocrite.”

“Okay, well, you know what? I did watch it. My computer was broken, and I was bored, and I watched you two have sex. There – I'm a bad fucking person too. Are you happy?”

“No. I'm sad.”

“Well, you're a hypocrite as well. Whatever. What I did was totally different.”

“Yeah, it is. I never took photos of you when you were that vulnerable.”

“What about the Ace and Jocelyn where you made me strip naked and walk into the Hudson river in February? You didn't film me when I was 'vulnerable'? Didn't blackmail me?”

Amir shrugs, his chin folded into his chest. He's not even taking any of this in. Jake sits next to him, in the same curled-up slump. This is the biggest fuck-up he's ever done. Maybe this is too much for Amir. It could be over. He doesn't feel at peace; he's hollow.

“Did you like it?” Amir asks, barely louder than a whisper.

“No. I felt disgusting. I turned it off halfway through.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. I guess that's better.”

“Not sure how that's better, but sure, if you say so.”

“It's better because you're a jerk-off diva, and we lived in a million other places together where we had to share a bedroom. You never just give up in the middle of it.”

“I thought you were asleep,” Jake says weakly.

“You know I sleep better in an office environment.” Amir grabs a throw pillow and holds it in his lap, picking at the stitches. “So you didn't like it at all? I didn't look good?”

“I wasn't really looking at you, I– I mean, you both looked fine, I guess?”

“The camera adds ten frowns."

So he is willing to forgive Jake. He should offer an olive branch in return.

“I sort of... got it, though. How you're... you know.”

“A dyke?”

“Well, I know you can't say that.”

“Then you don't get it.”

“I do, though. That's what I'm saying. And, if that's what you wanna do or be, I support it, or whatever.”

“So– sorry, I'm just a little confused, let me get this straight: you think because watching me was like watching whatever weird porn you're into, you understand me? If I had sex with you right now, would that make you a lesbian?”

“What? How did this turn into us having– no. I mean– I'm not weird like you, dude. I'm just normal.”

Amir laughs dryly. “Right. I'm such a fucking freak you decided to dedicate your whole life to try and make me fit in. That's really normal.”

“I haven't dedicated my whole life to you. I have other things going on.”

“Name one.”

He takes care of Micah, too, even if he's not there in person. And he flies kites, and bikes and lifts weights when he wants to feel sore for a reason. And he works at Headgum, but most of that is with Amir, so that doesn't count. Why is that everything he can think of?

“I work out,” Jake says, after a moment.

“You're always trying to get me to go with you to the gym, though.”

“I'm not 'always trying', they just have an offer where you refer a friend. Why are you making this such a big deal right now? I care about you. I'm sorry if that offends you.”

“Oh, so you can care about me now? You're secure enough to admit that all of a sudden?”

“What?”

“I've been telling you I care about you since the day we met, and every day you push me away like I'm a piece of dirt. Like I'm less than nothing to you. Y'know, I thought when we first moved in together that might be your first hint that you didn't hate me, but you were still too stubborn to say anything. Well, if all it takes to get you to admit it is having sex with you, I'd be fucking glad to!” Amir screeches, shredding his throat.

He lunges forward and shoves his mouth against Jake's, grabbing the back of his head, forcing their skulls together, squishing Jake's nose. Amir's so soft and alive and Jake hasn't kissed anyone in months, years maybe. How could anyone expect him to resist?

It's all-consuming. Amir's skin is hot and damp. Jake always forgets how sticky people are when he goes this long without finding the most desperate, drunk girl in a bar somewhere and taking her to the back alley. Amir doesn't smell like grenadine and vodka, or cheap perfume. He's not letting Jake have him because nobody else would. Amir chooses Jake. Jake chooses this, too.

Amir's beard is insulating. It could be a nice replacement for Jake's while he grows his back, although then he couldn't get quite as close.

"You're a better kisser than Crystal," Amir murmurs, into Jake's neck. His beard is prickly against Jake's bare skin – is this what it's like for the girls Jake kisses?

"Don't talk about her," Jake says, but he likes the comparison, the competition. Maybe a little too much, maybe it's been too long, maybe Amir's just great in bed but Amir climbs on top of him and Jake jizzes at the barely-existent friction, all over his good pair of sweatpants. Why did he stop jerking off again? He keeps kissing Amir the best he can, but Amir can feel him faltering.

He pulls back, smiling. "Did you just–"

"No."

"You did. Wow, you're easy."

"It just happens, okay? It's normal–"

"Wanna try for two?"

Jake flushes. "Guys can't go twice. Can they?"

Amir trails two fingers down his chest. "I'm gonna help you find out."

Jake tiptoes over to his own room, careful not to wake Amir or trip over anything in the darkness. He picks up his phone.

  Jake: micah
Micah: jake
Jake: how are you man
Micah: asleep
Jake: sorry. nevermind
Micah: what's wrong
Jake: nothing. why would anything be wrong on my end
Micah: youre never awake at 3 am
Jake: i slept with one of amir's friends

Sure. That's not inaccurate, other than that Amir doesn't have friends, plural.

  Micah: and?
Jake: i don't know. it was weird
Micah: get out of there
Jake: i can't. i'm at my house
Micah: kick them out then

Does he know? Or is he just saying 'them' because young people do? Before Jake can work out how to ask, Micah sends another message.

  Micah: did you like it?
Jake: yeah. i guess
Micah: whats the problem then?
Micah: go with the flow. or whatever hippie bullshit
Micah: youre the one who lived in LA
Jake: fuck off
Jake: maybe i Should go back to LA.
Micah: no
Micah: no more moving
Micah: just go to sleep. things are better when its not 3 am
Jake: you're a bitch. i see why you never got into a frat
Jake: hello?
Jake: goodnight i guess. dick

"Are you okay?"

Jake slams his phone face-down on the desk. "Yeah."

"You gonna watch the footage? See if she took it?"

"That's right." Jake picks up his laptop

Amir yawns. "Bring it to bed. But wake me up if I miss it."

"Sure, buddy."

Jake wakes up in Amir's bed, cold. He looks over – Amir's burrito-rolled in the blankets, and he's claimed half of Jake's pillow. There's a mark on his neck from last night. Jake can't stop remembering how he sucked it into Amir's skin, especially because they didn't even shower. The dried crust in Jake's stomach hair feels like a tally on a chalkboard. Mark one down under... whatever he is for liking that combined with whatever Amir wants to call himself these days. Mark one under that.

The doorbell rings. It's day out, maybe nine o'clock. Too early for people. It's probably the neighbors again – this time he's just gonna tell them to fuck off. Jake pulls on his shirt and sweatpants from the floor – they're stained, but the dark heather grey color should hide it – runs his hand through his hair, and opens the door. He smiles.

“Crystal. Nice to see you.”

They figured they'd have to call her today, convince her to come over. Maybe she'd refuse at first in case Jake connected the dots and knew she was the one with the photos. Eventually she'd relent, because there's no way Jake could have any hard evidence. The footage overwrote itself, right? He ushers her inside and locks the door behind her.

“Is Amir here?”

Shouldn't she know that? Seeing as they're dating, or whatever. Amir must have walked home by himself last night – she doesn't even have the courtesy to drop him off? Crystal deserves everything she's about to get.

“I'll wake him up." Jake points to the couch. "Sit down.”

She does. He smirks a little as he walks back to Amir's bedroom – she's sitting right where Jake was when Amir kissed him. Maybe she wouldn't even mind, and her thing with Amir was all for the scam, but Jake'd like to think she'd punch him for kissing her boyfriend (girlfriend?). He opens the door to Amir's room and Amir springs out, karate chopping him in the sternum.

“Hi-ya!”

“What the hell?” Jake rasps.

“Sorry. I thought you were Crystal.”

“She's here, dude,” Jake mouths, pointing over his shoulder.

Amir scurries over until he's almost in sight, then straightens up and walks in proud and tall. He's almost commanding, although the boxer briefs diminish it a little.

“Crystal, Crystal, wish I never pissed-al,” he says, slow clapping.

“You're not dressed. We're supposed to have brunch together.”

“Brunch? Oh, brunch? A made-up word for a made-up girl. You're a crime.”

“What?”

“Don't play dumb,” Jake says, like anyone could understand that but him. “Just give us the drive back.”

She tries to look innocent and wide-eyed for a second, but she knows they know. “I have copies of everything.”

“And we have copies of footage of you stealing our stuff.”

Right after Amir and Crystal banged, she was rummaging through his drawers while he snored, sound asleep. Literally less than five minutes after. Then she crept out to the living room and found the drive under the fallen leaves of the fern. It was kind of impressive, like some femme fatale spy shit. Still illegal, though; and more importantly she's inconvenienced everyone enough for Jake's liking.

She glares at Amir. “You said the footage overwrote itself every twenty-four hours.”

“Well, there was one hard drive you didn't steal. The one that has all our backups on it.”

Crystal tugs on one of her earrings, trying to hold back a scowl. “Fine. I have better things to do than be here with you dickheads.”

She takes the orange drive out of her giant purse and throws it onto their coffee table. She gives them a thin-lipped smile and storms towards the door.

Amir grabs her by the arm. "Wait."

She seems surprised – but is this just another act? Was this whole thing really a betrayal on Amir's part? Or is he about to ask her to take him with her, for them to run away together and lead a life of crime? Jake digs his fingernails into his palm.

“You forgot one.”

“No, I didn't.”

“Marika texted me. She couldn't find the hard drive with our old podcasts on it. She's editing a 'best of' compilation – I told her not to bother, since every second of every episode is more than the best, but. Gimme the other drive.”

She sighs, and pulls out a drive with black rubber around the edges. She offers it to him, then drops it right next to Amir's hand, so he has no chance of grabbing it. It thuds dully against the floor, protected by its rubber casing. Hopefully.

"You still owe me for the pizza," she says to nobody, maybe Jake, and then she slams the front door behind her.

"Nice work, Amir. How'd you know she took that one? It was at the office, right?"

"We broke in a bunch of places together." That explains the pile of glass. "Even next door, I think, and then Marika emailed me about paying the locksmith bill or whathaveyou."

"Sorry – was this whole thing with Crystal because I told you to stop breaking in?"

"Only a little bit."

Amir flops next to Jake on the couch, trying to look cute and innocent. It's sort of working.

"Let's delete the part of the footage where you guys are boning." Jake kept it in case they needed a nuclear option, mostly because 'nuclear option' sounds really cool. They do still need the other part just in case they have to turn her in, of course. Jake clips the video until it's down to only the criminal activity, and empties the Trash.

Amir taps him on the shoulder. "Hey, so... there's gonna be a backup of last night as well."

"Oh, shit." They didn't re-angle the camera, or turn it off.

"Maybe we could keep it? If you want. Just an idea."

"You want to keep it."

"Yeah, but... you don't want me to have photos and videos like that, right?"

"I said I didn't want you to have ones I didn't know about."

"So...?"

Amir's not going to blackmail him. Probably. And it could be kind of a nice keepsake, albeit not one he could show his non-existent kids. It might be good to find out what he looks like during sex, too. For research.

"I'll think about it. For now, I'm turning all the cameras off."

"What if we get broken into? Wasn't that your whole thing?"

"Micah's fine. Nobody got hurt. How many people got hurt because of the cameras?"

"That's true. Plus, it'd be nice to have a third and not worry about illegally filming them."

Jake laughs, from how out of nowhere that was. "You're weird, dude."

"I'm your weird dude."

Jake kisses him, and Amir purrs like a cat. It tickles. He pulls back, just to stare Jake in the eyes.

"Why didn't we ever do this before?" he asks, after a moment.

"It's gay," Jake says, because that's the answer that takes the fewest words.

"Well, now we're both gay. And you can't be gay and homophobic."

"I'm not gay. And aren't you a lesbian still?"

"No. I'm with you now, and we're two boys, which makes me gay."

"Really?" Jake asks, voice cracking.

"What, you're disappointed or something?"

"I– I mean, I guess it was kind of cool having sex with a lesbian. Kinda fulfilling some high-school fantasies there."

"Oh. Well, you can call me whatever you want. I don't really care about labels."

"You're the one calling yourself different things every month. You even called yourself Asian one time."

"I got confused, okay? Anyway, I call myself all that stuff because labels are for other people."

"Aren't they supposed to help you figure yourself out?"

Amir shrugs. "I know who I am."

He looks at Jake sincerely, waiting for a response. Amir really knows who he is without looking at others to see if he's doing it right, if he's holding his crayon right and wearing the right length of shorts and piercing the right earlobe. Jake grinds his teeth together – this is so fucking unfair.

"I know who you are," Amir says, smoothing his hand over Jake's jaw, making him unclench.

That's not true, he wants to say, because if Amir did then he'd have left a long time ago. But Amir didn't leave. Jake did. Jake always left, and Jake always came back, and Amir was there waiting to jump back into it like they weren't apart for months, for years.

All the times he tried therapy, they told him to change how he was thinking about himself, the negative self-talk. It never worked, because Jake is stubborn and stupid and prone to outbursts, blind to himself and too self-aware, a million other things set in stone in his twenties. They said 'how could you love someone else when you don't love yourself?' but Jake's been caring for other people his whole life even if he hates himself because they need him.

Amir needs him, but Amir wants him too. He doesn't bring up any of the stupid shit Jake ruminates on for hours, like saying something stupid to the cute cashier about cucumbers. He sees the good part of Jake, whatever that tiny piece is. Jake was never fully convinced it exists; he still isn't sure right now. But if Amir knows him, truly knows him, and still chooses him – maybe Jake can choose himself too, even on the days when he's trying his hardest and still doing everything wrong.

"Amir, I love you," and he says it with reverence.

"Yeah, no shit."

Marika rushes up to them as soon as they walk through the brand-new Headgum front doors. She shoves her phone in their faces. “Have you seen this?”

“Seen what? Me and Amir were having a, uh, tech-free weekend,” Jake says, trying not to grin and give it all away.

Amir hangs an arm over Jake's shoulder, and Jake elbows him under the ribs. He frowns, but walks quietly over to his desk.

Marika presses play on a Twitter video, and Jake's voice streams through her tinny speakers.

“Can you not be all handsy right now? What is wrong with you?”

“I'm just being gay. It is Pride Month, after all,” Amir croons.

“Well, how about Pride is banned in our office? How about that? Get your hand off my leg–“

The video starts over again. Marika turns her phone off and sticks it in her pocket.

“People aren't happy, Jake.”

“That's out of context.” They gotta know it's out of context.

“Sounds really bad, though. I think you're gonna have to make an apology.”

“He was groping me in the middle of the studio. How is this my fault?”

“Either that or you have to publicly leave the company.”

"You can't fire me. I'm your boss."

"Actually, Amir's my boss. He gave me full authority to fire you if you were ever 'being too much of a phenomanary bitchness.'"

The LLC is technically registered in Amir's name, and he has to sign off on all the paychecks. She probably does have that power. Stupid Crystal and her stupid leaks. He should have known she had more material since she bothered to steal from their office. The photos were just for starters. She'd keep upping the stakes with videos and audio of him clipped out of context, things that could ruin his career, the whole of Headgum. Jake could've held this off for a few more months. Now he and Amir are gonna have to start again. Again.

Two cold, clammy, now very familiar hands land on Jake's shoulders.

“What's wrong, lover boy?” Amir says, jokingly.

Jake gasps. “That's it. I don't need to quit, or even apologize.”

He pulls out his phone and opens the camera. It's already on front-facing mode from when he was checking a pimple last week. His followers are going to get a lot more than a zit today.

“Marika, look away."

“Why?”

“Look away!” Jake shouts.

She does. She'll see it anyway, but not in person. Not yet, and not at work. Jake makes sure they're both in frame, and then he kisses Amir. He snaps a picture – it's perfect. They don't need another take, which is kind of a shame, but just goes to show his professionalism never ceases.

He posts the picture to the Headgum socials, with the caption: Happy Pride. The fans take back what they said about Jake's homophobia. Crystal likes the post from her fashion account. Micah replies with a thumbs up and 'long time coming', then 'no pun intended' and the sweat drops emoji. Amir replies: 'fanservice much?'