Angelo and Jake - Saturday morning (backdated)

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Angelo and Jake go out for Mexican food and catch up.



"Knock, knock, Jake!" came an obnoxiously loud and cheerful voice through the door for the time of morning. "Up off that couch if you want food."

"Aren't you supposed to be having a lie-in with your girlfriend?" Jake grumbled good-naturedly as he opened the door. "Come in, come in. Let me find some shoes. Or rather, figure out where Wanda's hidden them." He closed his laptop as he passed the couch. "You have good timing, though; first game starts at one, so we should have plenty of time for food before then."

"Not today. I thought I'd come bug you instead." He grinned, glancing casually around the apartment. "She's gettin' revenge for that whole thing before, then? An' who's playin'?"

"Um, college team number one and college team number two? Someone in the tournament. I'm out of the loop as far as college goes," Jake shrugged. "As for my shoes, I don't know if I'd call it revenge so much as a continuation of the norm," he said with a grin. "I prefer to think of it as a sign that she missed me. Aha," he exclaimed, finding them on a bookshelf with a grinning skull perched atop them. The skull had a pair of tiny girl's socks for ears. "Now she's taunting me."

He pulled the shoes on and grabbed his coat. "So, where are you taking me?"

"For starters, Mama Lupe's. You want Mexican food, my friend, you're gettin' the second-best Mexican food in all of New York. But don't tell her I said that." He grinned. "Then we find you a bakery."

"Brilliant," Jake said happily. "I see why Amanda keeps you around." He quirked an eyebrow at the other man as they headed down the stairs. "Second best, huh? In exchange for keeping your secret from Mama Lupe, I demand that you divulge the location of the best Mexican food in all of New York at some point in the future."

"Well, that and other things." He put on his best innocent face at that. "That one, I'm holdin' back until it's your birthday or I want somethin' big. It's my mom, but I'm not tellin' you where she lives."

"That seems reasonable," the shapeshifter said, shrugging, "especially since my birthday's in three weeks. I think Mama Lupe can tide me over until then. So, what have you been up to?"

"Workin', mostly", Angelo told him. "Got kind of busy since you were last here, between Elpis an' teachin' at the school. Plus the team an' part-time study... yeah. What about you?"

"Same--I've basically spent the last year doing nothing but work. Not that it did me a lot of good in the long run," Jake said darkly. He paused. "Ooh, I think I'm hitting the anger stage."

That got him a mildly concerned sideways look. "The anger stage? Somethin' happen at Infonet?"

Jake rolled his eyes. "Mother and Devi took over. Dad and I are both out."

"...out?" He turned, startled. "Your mom fired you? But you were good at it."

"Worse," he sighed, kicking at a rock on the sidewalk. "My sister fired me. Over the phone. Mother and Dad are splitting up, and from what little I gathered from our conversation, they've bought Dad out." He shook his head, frustrated. "And I was damn good at my job. I liked it, too."

"Wow, that's what I call a bitter divorce." He looked vaguely stunned. "But... even if your sister's sidin' with your mom in whatever happened, isn't it kind of doin' themselves a disservice to kick you out?"

"To be fair, it was kind of a bitter marriage," the shapeshifter muttered, looking fairly unhappy. "I would think so, yes. But it's always been the Jacobs versus Mother and Devi; I think they were afraid that if they kept me around, I'd still be working for Dad."

"Maybe you should", Angelo suggested. "If he can get back on his feet an' start himself some competition, he'd need you, right?"

Jake shrugged. "Maybe? I don't know." He sighed. "It just seems like another way to get caught in the middle of my parents' fighting again. Plus I still have to figure out who attacked me, and that's hard to do when you're trying to start a business from scratch."

"...attacked you." That came out just a little flatter than before. "Somethin' else I should know about?"

"You know, I still haven't decided which has been more fun, explaining why I was a girl with a guy's name, or this whole mess," Jake said wryly. "Yeah. My last day of work, someone stole my arm."

"...what the hell, Jake." He stopped dead and stared at his friend. "I know you just grew it back, but... what does someone want with your arm?"

Jake didn't stop moving, simply turned and started walking backwards, hands in his pockets. He was hungry, and he'd really missed Mexican food. "That, my friend, is the sixty-four thousand dollar question. And that's why I'm here, not plotting with my Dad to ruin the female half of my family."

After a moment, Angelo resumed walking, studying Jake's expression. "Yeah, that'd have to take precedence. Revenge on your mom an' sister can wait...you got any ideas?"

"Too many," Jake said miserably. "Everything from evil mad scientists who want it to do evil mad science, to Mother and Devi being insanely devious, emphasis on 'insanely.' I should probably take it as flattery," he said, trying to make a joke, but he didn't have the heart for it.

"Well, if it was your family..." He trailed off. "At least that'd be somewhere to start."

Jake wrinkled his nose. "I keep telling myself that the two of them would have just talked me out of it. It's more their style, and it means I don't have to hate them forever." In fact, he'd been trying to not think about the possibility at all, but it was easier to do in the daylight than it was late at night, as his insomnia could attest.

"Talked you out of what? Startin' another business?"

"My arm," Jake said dryly. "So that's where things stand. Mad at my family, missing an arm, and sleeping on Wanda's couch. The good life." He stretched. "Tell me some good news. Things going okay with you and Amanda?"

"Oh. Heh." He shrugged slightly in answer to the question. "Yeah, things're okay. We're both busy, you know how it goes, but we're workin' with that."

"Just okay?" Jake asked, with a pointed look Angelo's way.

"Yeah, uh... we had a rough patch", he admitted. "She was away a lot, an' when she wasn't I was, an' we didn't really talk much for awhile there. But like I said, we're workin' on it."

"Good," Jake said mildly. "Anything else to report?"

"Since you left? Man, there's a lot. An' we're nearly there."

"Clearly, you'll have to buy me lunch and tell me all about it," Jake said grandly.

Angelo laughed at him, but nodded. "Just this once, I can spring."

Jake held open the restaurant door for him. "And that, my friend, is why we get along so damn well."