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Jacob's flight lands at JFK on the afternoon of the eighteenth.
Sam puts on his glasses and shoves his hair beneath a plain ballcap, as usual. Nobody approaches him as he waits for the plane, thank God. It's twenty minutes late. When Jacob finally comes through the door, pulling his suitcase behind him, he looks exhausted and beautiful.
“Hey,” he says as Sam hugs him lightly, working hard to keep his level of enthusiasm appropriate for a public place. It's hard. He hasn't seen Jacob in nearly five months; it feels like five years.
He pulls back just enough to look at him properly. Jacob’s eyes are rimmed red, shadows carved beneath them. His stubble is darker than Sam remembers. His sweater is wrinkled from the flight. He smells faintly like recycled airplane air and cheap coffee.
“You okay?” Sam asks.
Jacob huffs out something that might be a laugh. “I am now.”
Sam squeezes the back of his neck, his thumb pressing just under his hairline the way he knows Jacob likes. “Come on. Let’s get out of here."
They walk toward the exit together, their shoulders brushing. The automatic doors open with a rush of cold February air. Jacob inhales deeply.
“God,” he says. “I always forget New York smells terrible.”
“You love it,” Sam replies.
“I love you,” Jacob corrects, so casually that Sam nearly trips over his own feet.
They reach the curb. A cab pulls up, and Sam opens the trunk automatically, muscle memory from a hundred pick-ups and drop-offs. Jacob hands over his suitcase and then just stands there, looking at Sam like he’s memorizing him. Sam shifts under the weight of that gaze.
“What?”
“You’re real.”
Sam’s chest tightens. “Last I checked.”
Jacob shakes his head slightly. “No, I mean, on the phone, on video… it’s different.”
Sam swallows. The traffic noise fades. “I’m here,” he says softly. “You’re stuck with me now.”
“Good,” Jacob replies.
The driver clears his throat. “You getting in?”
Sam laughs, embarrassed, and slides into the back. Jacob follows, their knees bumping immediately in the cramped space. The door shuts, sealing them into a warm little bubble of quiet. Neither of them speaks as the cab pulls away from the curb.
*****
Sam knows all too well the evils of jetlag. He's planned a quiet evening: DoorDash, Netflix, soaking up Jacob's presence. He doesn't have any expectations for anything else. He never has expectations of Jacob, but as soon as the apartment door swings shut behind them, Jacob is pressing him against the wall with a soft thud that knocks the breath out of him. Sam’s hands come up automatically, gripping Jacob’s jacket to steady himself. For a split second neither of them moves, the air between them charged and electric, every mile and every late night and early morning call collapsing into this single moment.
“Jacob—” Sam starts, laughing.
“I’ve missed you,” Jacob says.
“Me, too,” Sam replies, as if those words come close to describing it.
“I have something for you.” Jacob steps away suddenly and unlocks his suitcase. Before Sam can say it's fine, he can wait until tomorrow for his birthday present, Jacob is pulling two pieces of paper out of his bag.
They’re bent at the corners, a little wrinkled. One is covered in looping, careful letters in purple marker; the other is a riot of crayon lines that barely stay inside the page. Jacob hands them over. “From the girls,” he says. “They insisted.”
Sam takes them like they’re fragile.
The smaller one has been folded in half about six times, the paper soft from being opened and closed. When he unfolds it, a bright, scribbled rainbow explosion beams up at him. Sam’s throat tightens instantly. He opens the second card. This one is neater, written in careful block letters with a few backwards ones mixed in:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAM
THANK YOU FOR BEING DADDY'S BEST FRIEND!!!
There are three exclamation points, each one drawn a little taller than the last. In the corner is a tiny drawing of three stick figures holding hands. One of them is taller, labeled “DAD.” One is smaller, labeled “ME.” The third just says “SAM,” with a smiley face that takes up most of the head. Sam lets out a shaky laugh.
Jacob smiles at him. “They wanted to be part of your birthday.”
Sam swallows hard and looks back down at the cards, tracing the letters with the tip of his finger like he can feel the pressure of small hands behind them.
“I don’t even know what to say,” he admits quietly. He's met the girls several times, but he hasn't seen them in nearly a year. They can't possibly remember much about him.
Sam sets the cards carefully on the entry table, until he can find them their own place in the apartment. Then he turns back to Jacob, eyes a little glassy but bright.
“Thank you,” he says, and means all of it: the flight, the cards, the showing up.
Jacob’s hand comes up to rest lightly at Sam’s waist, hesitant, like he’s still asking permission even now. “You’re welcome,” he murmurs.
They stand there a second longer, foreheads almost touching again, both smiling in that quiet, disbelieving way of people who aren’t used to getting this lucky.
Then Sam exhales and nudges him toward the living room. “Okay,” he says, wiping once at the corner of his eye before Jacob can comment. “Pre-birthday rules. Shoes off, food ordered, movie selected. You are not allowed to fall asleep before 9 p.m., even if your body thinks it’s 2 a.m.”
Jacob laughs. “Bossy.”
“Jetlag is my sworn enemy,” Sam replies, already reaching for his phone. “And I waited months to just sit on my couch with you. I’m not wasting that on you unconscious.”
Jacob toes off his shoes and drops onto the couch with a tired groan that sounds half theatrical, half very real. Sam flops down beside him. Jacob’s head tilts, resting briefly against Sam’s shoulder, just for a second. Just long enough for Sam to feel the weight of it.
Jacob is asleep by 9:15. At ten, Sam gently wakes him and helps him into the bed.
“Don’t go,” Jacob complains, putting his arms around Sam and trying to pull him into the bed as he tucks him in.
“I’ll be right back,” Sam promises. “You need to rest.”
“We haven’t seen each other in five months!”
“So I’ll look forward to some really epic birthday sex tomorrow, okay?”
Jacob chuckles, but Sam can practically hear him drifting back to sleep already.
He changes into sleep pants and a T-shirt, tosses his clothes in the laundry basket, brushes his teeth. When he goes to make sure the apartment door is locked, Sam sees the cards again, sitting on the table where he left them.
Sam doesn’t dislike kids. Just the opposite: he thinks they have a lot to say that’s worth listening to. But he’s never wanted any of his own. The impulse has just never been there, and he made sure that any partner of his knew that going into their relationship. Now, having seen what a good dad Jacob is and having acted out fatherly love himself, even if it’s in a bit of an unorthodox way, he’s not so sure.
He leans against the entry table, looking down at the cards again. The bright crayon crosshatching. The three figures, one of them labeled with his name as if he belongs there.
It’s not that he suddenly wants a house full of children. That hasn’t magically changed. But the certainty of it—the clean, unshakeable no he’s carried for years—has started to erode as he’s grown closer to Jacob. He wonders, not for the first time, what it would be like to experience that with Jacob.
It could happen. It’s not an impossibility, but when he thinks about it, he doesn’t find himself thinking about the long road of surrogacy, IVF, contracts, money, everything they would need to have a child of their own, if they ever decided that was what they wanted. Embarrassingly, Sam finds himself wondering what it would be like to have a child spontaneously, even by surprise.
The details of it aren’t important. Sam rolls his eyes at his own ridiculousness, but nevertheless, he indulges himself. He lets himself imagine facing a shock of that magnitude with Jacob. What would they do? What would Jacob do? Would he be happy at the news? Would he finally leave his wife? It's pointless to think about it. He turns out the light in the living room, leaving the cards in the dim glow from the hallway.
Jacob is exactly where Sam left him, sprawled diagonally across the mattress like he owns it, one arm flung over Sam’s pillow. His hair is mussed, his mouth slightly open, and he’s snoring in a way he will absolutely deny in the morning. Sam smiles. He moves quietly, sliding into bed on the narrow strip of space Jacob has left for him. The mattress dips; Jacob stirs, his brow creasing. Without fully waking he shifts closer, instinctive as breathing. His hand finds Sam’s side, curling there like it’s the most natural place in the world.
“You came back,” Jacob mumbles.
“I said I would."
Jacob hums, satisfied, and tucks his face against Sam’s shoulder. The weight of him is warm and solid and real. Sam lies there, staring at the ceiling, listening to Jacob’s breathing even out again before falling asleep himself.
*****
The next morning, they have breakfast at a diner in the neighbourhood, then Jacob gives him a pair of gold earrings, two records he bought for this occasion when they were filming and carried across the ocean and back again, and a sweater Sam had offhandedly admired months ago in a shop window in London, which Jacob apparently went back for without telling him. They don’t do anything dramatic after that. No parties, no crowds. Just the two of them wandering slowly through the afternoon, Jacob’s hand brushing Sam’s sleeve every so often as if to check he’s still there. They duck into a bookstore, then out again; they stop for coffee and sit too close in a corner booth, knees knocking under the table. It feels almost absurdly domestic. Easy. Like this is their normal life, instead of something that’s still, after all this time, mostly illicit.
By evening, they’re back at Sam’s apartment, the sky outside already dimming. Jacob gives Sam strict instructions not to “hover,” which Sam interprets as a polite way of saying don’t watch me burn your birthday dinner.
Sam obediently sits in the living room. There are small, clattering sounds from the kitchen. A cupboard door slams.
“Need help?” Sam calls
“I said no,” Jacob replies immediately. “Relax. Birthday people are decorative only.”
Sam smiles. “I’m not decorative.”
“Have you seen yourself, love?”
Love. The word always melts Sam’s heart. He sits there, listening to the domestic rhythm of Jacob moving around his kitchen: the scrape of a pan, the running water, the low hum of him half-singing to himself under his breath. When Jacob finally emerges, it’s with two plates and a bottle of wine tucked under his arm, looking deeply pleased with himself.
“Behold,” he says, setting everything down on the coffee table. Sam sees a new bandage on one finger. “A culinary masterpiece achieved with only one minor injury.”
They eat on the floor with their backs against the couch, plates balanced on their knees. It isn’t fancy—pasta, slightly over-salted, and a salad Jacob clearly assembled with more enthusiasm than skill—but it’s made by him, and that matters more than anything else.
They talk about the upcoming promotion season, about a terrible film Jacob watched on the plane and two good ones he saw in London, about the records he bought for Sam and why he chose them. Later, when the plates are pushed aside and the wine is half gone, Jacob disappears again and returns with a small chocolate cake in a bakery box. There are only two mismatched candles, which are more than Sam knew he owned, stuck crookedly into the icing. Jacob lights them, then switches off the lamp so the room falls into soft shadow, the candlelight flickering across his face.
“Make a wish,” he says.
Sam looks at the candles. He doesn’t close his eyes immediately. His gaze drifts instead to Jacob. For a split second, that ridiculous thought from the night before slips back in. A life that is louder. Messier. A future that includes things he’s always said he didn’t want. He doesn’t let himself follow it all the way through. It’s too big, too dangerous, too dependent on variables he can’t control: Jacob, his marriage, the fragile shape of whatever this is between them, still undefined after all these years. Still, the certainty of never feels further away than it ever has.
Sam closes his eyes. He doesn’t wish for a child of their own, in whatever form that might take. He doesn’t even dare to wish for Jacob, not explicitly. That would feel like tempting fate in a way he’s not brave enough to risk. Instead, he wishes for more time. For more of this. For as much as he can get, for as long as it lasts. It's the same thing he's wished for every birthday since he met Jacob.
Sam blows out the candles. The smoke curls upward, thin and fleeting.
Jacob grins. “What did you wish for?”
“If I tell you, it won’t come true.”
“That’s not how that works.”
“It absolutely is,” Sam says.
Jacob studies him for a long moment, something searching and tender in his expression. Then he leans forward and presses a kiss to the corner of Sam’s mouth.
Sam’s heart stutters. He turns his head just enough to meet him properly, the kiss deepening with warmth, and familiarity, and the quiet gravity of two people choosing each other again. When they finally pull apart, they don’t move far. Jacob rests his forehead against Sam’s temple.
“Happy birthday, love,” Jacob murmurs.
“Thank you,” Sam says softly. Then, before either of them can become too caught up in their emotions, he lightens the mood. “I believe I was promised some epic birthday sex?”
Jacob laughs. “I believe that’s what you asked for,” he corrects, but he’s already slipping his hands beneath the hem of Sam’s new sweater.
Later, as they lie together in the glow of New York’s ever-burning lights, Sam kisses Jacob on the forehead and asks, “Could I give them something? The girls?”
Jacob looks up at him. “It’s your birthday.” Not anymore. If Sam looks hard, he can almost see the first light of dawn breaking over the city. The birthday sex truly was epic. A little too epic, maybe, for a newly thirty-nine-year-old. He's already starting to feel sore.
“I’d like to get them a present. With your help. If that would be okay with you and…” And with her. Sam lets the sentence trail off. He doesn’t want to say that part out loud, not right now.
He doesn’t have to. “Of course,” Jacob says, sounding more touched than the offer really deserves. “We can go shopping later. For now—” He stifles a yawn that falls just this side of ostentatious.
Sam takes the hint. He pulls the duvet over both of them and settles down, his arm around Jacob’s shoulders as Jacob cuddles naturally into him, like it’s where he belongs.
Soon, Jacob’s breathing slows, but Sam once again remains awake. Lying here, wrapped around a man who fits him so well even in his sleep, Sam can’t help thinking about the impossible, ridiculous fantasy he’d indulged in the night before: the shock, the two of them staring at each other across a kitchen table, laughing in disbelief, terrified and elated all at once. It’s still pointless to dwell on it. Their reality is complicated enough without borrowing futures that can never exist. But as Jacob shifts closer, pressing his face more firmly into Sam’s shoulder, Sam allows himself one small, private concession: if some impossible, unexpected life ever did arrive—messy and unplanned and terrifying—he would want to face it like this. With Jacob beside him, the world narrowed to the undeniable, unchangeable fact of them.
Outside, the thin line of morning light begins to edge its way more firmly between the buildings. Inside, Sam closes his eyes and lets himself drift off, holding on to the warmth of Jacob’s body and the fragile, growing sense that, all impossible imaginings aside, the shape of the future might not be as fixed as he once believed.