“You need to flirt back with him!” Jack insisted.

Ned ignored him, as he had during the entire drive back to their apartment, while he grabbed food for dinner, and while he set up his laptop to start preparing everything they’d need for the first day of shooting, which was Monday.

“Stop giving me the cold shoulder, Ned, I’m serious.” Jack closed Ned’s laptop, and Ned had to yank his fingers out of the way to avoid getting them pinched.

“Jack, cut it out.” Ned tried to shove Jack out of the way. “He wasn’t flirting with me, all right? You saw the way he looked at me at the end of the read-through.”

“He looked like a guy who was disappointed because the person he was flirting with wasn’t responding,” Jack replied, unfazed by Ned’s attempts to get him to move.

“I have to work,” Ned snapped. Irritation itched at him. “I have more important things to focus on than a guy who may or may not have been flirting with me. Like this film, for instance.”

“Ned, c’mon, that can wait for five minutes.” Jack’s expression went from teasing to serious. “Why don’t you ever take a risk?”

Ned opened his mouth to retort and realized that he didn’t have a smart answer ready. He swallowed. Jack was giving him that soft, serious, ‘I’m your best friend so talk to me’ look. It was the same one he’d given Ned right before Ned had come out to him, and he’d had that look again when Ned had needed to confess that he’d failed one of his general education classes and needed to take it again. Ned had, dammit, always been putty in Jack’s hands once he gave him that look, because when he used it, Jack just looked so much like he cared. Ned knew that Jack cared or he wouldn’t have stuck around the guy for so long, essentially at Jack’s beck and call. He definitely stuck around for times like these, when Jack knew that something was going on with Ned, sometimes even before Ned himself knew.

Now Jack had that expression on his face again, and he looked so genuinely invested in Ned and his well-being, that Ned found all of his frustration dissipating, replaced with a surprising feeling of vulnerability.

“If I take the risk and put myself out there,” he said, speaking slowly as he searched for the words that would explain the tight feeling in his chest, “then I could make an idiot of myself. He might be straight, with someone else, or just not interested. Then I have to deal with the—with the pity, or worse the condescension, and—and I can’t be humiliated like that.” Ned refused to meet Jack’s gaze, staring down at his closed laptop instead. “I won’t be humiliated like that.”

Jack sighed, and Ned looked up just in time to get his face smashed into Jack’s shoulder as his friend stepped forward to hug him. Ned let himself relax into the hug, wrapping his arms around Jack’s middle. He was lucky, he knew, that Jack was so tactile, and unafraid of the fact that Ned was gay. He didn’t think that Jack had ever once worried about their friendship turning into a case of unrequited love on Ned’s part, and for that Ned was grateful. Sometimes he thought that Jack was trying to make up for all of the touches and hugs that Ned didn’t get from his parents growing up, but then, that would have meant that Jack pitied him, and one of the things that Ned liked about Jack is that he never pitied him.

Taking risks meant that you got hurt, or worse, that you got hurt where everyone could see you. Ned’s parents had managed to drill that into his head: appearances were more important than anything. They had been the perfect couple to their friends and neighbors, affectionate and full of witty banter and always loyal. It didn’t truly matter how they were at home so long as everyone saw what they wanted them to see.

Ned hadn’t understood that until he’d made the mistake of thinking that because he was raised in California that he’d never have to deal with homophobia. His first attempt at asking someone out, a kid in his 11th grade class named Ricky Horowitz, had ended in utter disaster when Ricky had not only rejected him but outed him to the entire school.

Getting rejected hadn’t hurt nearly as much as everyone knowing his personal business, and knowing that he’d tried to ask someone out, and failed spectacularly. It was his business, not theirs. He had been determined to never be the subject of gossip. Then he’d gotten into college, learned what frat parties were, and ended up the subject of gossip again when he had learned that jocks who are willing to let you suck their dick when they’re drunk and you’re the one doing the sucking are not willing to so much as look at you in the light of day.

Humiliation. Again.

“You have to take a risk someday,” Jack pointed out, resting his head on Ned’s shoulder so that his words rumbled through Ned’s chest, sinking into him where Ned knew they would haunt him all night. “I know it’s scary. Every single time I ask a girl out, I’m terrified.”

“You sure don’t act like it,” Ned pointed out. It was why he never understood how people could say that he and Jack looked related. Jack exuded confidence and acted like he should be an emcee on stage while Ned looked like he had neurosis and should be working in a cubicle.

“Yeah, well, fake it ‘til you make it, right?” Jack pulled back, grinning, his hands resting on Ned’s shoulders. “You’re never going to get anything good in life by holding back and making the smart choice. We haven’t done that, have we? We’ve taken risks.”

“Calculated risks,” Ned clarified. “That’s different.”

“Who says flirting with an attractive person isn’t a calculated risk?” Jack said. “Look, I’m serious. Just going up to someone in a bar and asking for their number, that’s just a wild risk, that’s flinging yourself out there with no chance of figuring out beforehand if you’ve got a real chance or not. But if you want to flirt a little, see how the person responds, slowly amp it up over time, work your way up to asking them out—that’s all calculated. It doesn’t have to end in humiliation.”

“It doesn’t have to, and yet it always seems to,” Ned pointed out. “There’s got to be a reason why I’m never able to do a relationship.”

“I admit, your parents probably didn’t provide a good example.” Jack made a face, as if he knew what a risk it was to bring Ned’s parents into it. Jack was the only person who could bring up Ned’s parents and get away with it, just like Ned was the only person who could bring up Jack’s alcoholic sister who flitted in and out of rehab.

“No, you’re right.” Ned sighed. His parents had both come from money, and if he didn’t know any better, he’d say it was an arranged marriage to merge their fortunes, like they were back in Medieval times or something. They had never once touched, laughed at each other’s jokes, or showed affection for one another in any way. Ned had no idea how he’d come into existence when his parents seemed determined to not even be in the same room as one another. Then they had the audacity to act shocked when he figured out that his mother was sleeping with her yoga instructor and his father had a string of mistresses, all of them about ten years younger than he was. Of course, the neighbors and work colleagues and friends had all been equally shocked because: keeping up appearances.

Jack had once joked that Ned’s parents were a bundle of clichés, and Ned had to agree, but at least they’d taught him the truth that whatever bad thing happened to you wasn’t as bad as people talking about the bad thing that had happened.

“I don’t want to end up like them,” Ned admitted, “but that doesn’t scare me as much as the idea of putting myself out there and getting rejected by someone who’s just known me for a few days, or even just taken one look at me, and decided that I’m not—that I’m not worth the effort.”

“Well, you are definitely worth the effort,” Jack said gently. “The right person will see that. I think it’s a good thing that some people say no right away. It means you don’t have to go through the whole song and dance to realize that the person isn’t the right one for you. It’s like an audition, I can always tell within the first thirty seconds if that actor is someone I want for the role. Dating’s kind of the same. There’s no shame in asking someone out and them saying no. Especially if it’s another guy, I bet he’s had to ask people out and get rejected too, he’ll understand. I don’t think you’ll be humiliated.”

Ned sighed. Maybe Jack was right. His current policy of not engaging with anyone he found attractive certainly wasn’t netting him any boyfriends. It couldn’t hurt to try a little flirting, could it?

“I can’t date him,” Ned realized. “We’re working together. If this thing gets awkward it’ll ruin the entire filming process.”

“I’ll deal with that if it comes up,” Jack said. “I’m the director, I can set things to rights. You don’t have to interact with him at all if he’s a shit about it. I can keep you on the opposite side of the set or something. Exercise my all-powerful director status.”

Ned snorted with laughter in spite of himself. “All right.”

“Good.” Jack stepped back, dropping his hands from Ned’s shoulders. “I’ll let you get back to work then.”

“This doesn’t mean I’m letting you date Mandy,” Ned added. “I don’t have power over James, and you have power over her; it’s not a fair dynamic.”

“Fair enough,” Jack replied. “But the moment filming wraps, I’m asking her out.”

Ned sighed and rolled his eyes. “You’re the boss.”

“And don’t you forget it.”

Ned opened his laptop again and tried to concentrate, but it was hard when thoughts of James kept intruding. Maybe that had been what the odd look on his face was at the end of the read-through? Confusion and disappointment that Ned hadn’t responded to his flirtations? Ned found it hard to believe that someone as gorgeous as James would be interested in a nerdy-looking nobody like Ned, but then, he’d always been a bad judge of his own character. Jack had pointed that out before, as had various teachers and professors over the years. Ned is an excellent student but undervalues himself, he remembered one teacher writing on his report card back in high school.

Could it be that he really had an opportunity here? Could someone like James actually want someone like him?

As Jack had pointed out, there was only one way to really find out, and that was to put himself out there and take the risk.

The very thought made his stomach churn in fear. He could so easily picture James’ face when he’d first spoken and had been standing in the doorway, the light in his eyes and the slow, easy curve of his mouth, like it was going to slide up into a smile any second. He could also easily picture that mouth becoming a tight line and the eyes darkening in distaste, or James’ cheeks turning pink in embarrassment as he tried to scramble for a polite way to decline, or the uncomfortable, shifty glances around the room as his mouth twisted, uncomfortable with Ned’s flirting, trying to find somewhere to look that wasn’t at him.

None of those prospects appealed to Ned in the slightest.

But he’d never know until he tried, and he wasn’t going to find himself a meaningful relationship just by waiting for it to fall into his lap. He’d spent plenty of time complaining about how what everyone wanted was just one night of sex, and now this handsome guy turned up and Ned couldn’t find it in himself to take a little leap of faith?

Ned clenched his jaw. He wasn’t going to let fear rule him. He was going to flirt, dammit, and he would find out soon enough if James was interested or not.