Work Text:
Joel's memory was pretty shitty. He always got his work done on time, it was his job after all. But he would forget to eat, forget to grab his keys and wallet in the morning, and even forget really important things like whether he left the iron on or not.
Despite Joel's forgetfulness, he remembered a lot more than he honestly should have. Memories of his past lives, stretching as far back as the Roman Empire, had been dancing on the edge of his mind since he was a child. He had been a king, a soldier, a cop, a criminal, an emperor, just a kid who died far too soon, and what felt like so much more. It was frightening at first, visions of bloody battles and fire clashing between climbing a tree and watching the sunset when he was just trying to get some sleep. But as he grew older, they became comforting; the flickering of the fire and the sounds of jubilant laughter moved with him to his dreams more often than not. He would lay down after a long day of editing videos and asinine paperwork and suddenly be a king deciding the fate of his very own kingdom.
And every time without fail, a single man would be beside him. Teenage Joel tried to forget about the man who looked at him with so much unbridled love by kissing random girls behind the bleachers. College Joel tried sex and drugs, but when his first acid trip left him in a trench in World War I for two days straight he quickly gave it up. The sex was nice, but when he lay on his shitty mattress curled up with a girl whose name he couldn't be bothered to remember afterwards, all Joel could see was the man. No name or defining features came to mind, though sometimes a striking beard and boisterous giggle were present in more than one of his past lives. He tried, and mostly failed, to forget about the mystery man as he tried to make it big in the Hollywood sphere.
And moving to Austin when Burnie and Matt told him their web series was becoming bigger than 5 guys across the country centered in a spare bedroom had been an extension of that. As the years went by, Joel thought he had succeeded in forgetting the man. He became buried in his job, loving the repetitive drone of his paperwork days mixed with filming shorts and podcasts with some of his best friends. Sure, his friends were getting married left and right, and every time he attended a wedding, the visions of the man would return tenfold (Sometimes, he would see his own past weddings; usually small, hidden affairs dancing around the memory of an extravagant one that just didn't feel quite right.) But he was happy for them. His shitty excuse for a love life - lives? - shouldn't keep his friends from being happy. Some of them would give him The Pity Face every now and again, as Joel got older and his youthful face got a bit more sunken and there was no significant other in sight. He didn't blame them; in his quest to forget the man he'd been crazy about for who knows how many years - many many centuries, he guesses - he'd pretty much given up trying to distract himself with anything besides work. Matt and Kathleen would introduce him to countless people from who-knows-where in the film industry, Burnie would make him cat-sit Joe The Cat because "cats make everything better, plus he likes you more than me", and Gus would just drop by to give him the newest handle of foreign rum he discovered on a trip. He always appreciated Gus' approach the most, the rum burning deep in his throat instead of in his dreams.
So when Burnie walked up to him right before lunch one day, saying he had a new employee to introduce him to (one that he would be sharing an office with despite him being hired for IT, because they had quickly outgrown 636 just like they had quickly outgrown the spare bedroom), Joel had thought absolutely nothing of it. They were hiring new employees all the time, and he stopped bothering to learn the name of every single intern who worked in the animation department because god, there were too damn many of them to even hope to track during any given production season.
There were no fireworks, no electricity shooting through Joel's spine when they made eye contact. It felt like everything was falling into place, and finally clicking when the man ducked through the door into Joel's small office.
Joel knew as soon as he saw him. He finally had a face to match the just out of reach memories of the past.
And a name.
Adam Ellis... was weird, silly, fantastic (and seriously a motherfucking sorcerer when it came to anything computer-related). Joel figured out most of these things very quickly, in just his first conversation of this life with the man. The rest of the IT department had come in and demanded him back after they ended up talking about nothing for over 2 hours.
In that same time, he took in Adam's familiar, yet so brand new, physical features; Adam towered over Joel's measly 6-foot-without-slouching stature, and looked like a goddamn viking with his thick auburn beard and statue-like build. His arms bulged out of his t-shirts, but he giggled when he was scared and cheered when genuinely excited.
They didn't dance around each other for long; Adam was actually the one to make the first move, and Joel gets giddy when he remembers the man's nervous giggling and blush on his chubby cheeks as he asked the older man out for drinks. He felt like he was on cloud nine that night, the alcohol and mantra of 'Finally, finally, finally' pretty much deciding Joel's actions for him. He didn't think twice when they went back to his apartment, leaning on one another as they stumbled their way through. He did think once when he practically slammed his lips against the other man's. Adam's strong hands came around his waist and grounded him, felt so familiar, so loving- This was right, god it was right.