Chapter Text
june 20th, 2021
On Jake’s first proper Father’s Day, Mac does the impossible.
He sleeps through the night.
And sure, it's something Jake has read that many eight-month-old’s are able to do, and sure, it's happened two or three times before, but it's still a rare enough event for it to completely throw his parents off their rhythm. When the telltale whimpers start sounding from their son’s crib at seven-thirty in the morning, the next thing Jake hears is his wife’s cursing.
“Fuck,” she says, and when Jake stirs to get Mac before the whimpers become ear-piercing cries, she quickly shakes her head at him. “No, go back to sleep, I was supposed to wake you with breakfast after I’d gotten up with Mac - now the schedule’s all wrong - damn it…” She lifts up Mac into her arms, and Jake almost laughs at how quickly her voice changes, all its tension vanishing when Mac’s chubby arms try to reach around her chest, overjoyed to see her.
“Hi, baby, were you asleep for the whole night all of a sudden? On the one morning I’d planned for us to get up early so we could make daddy breakfast? Were you?” She tickles his tummy through the pajamas, eliciting the sweetest of giggles. “Yeah, you were!”
“What’s this I’m hearing about breakfast in bed?”
“Well, I was expecting this little guy to wake up at five for a feed like he usually does, so I could get up and prepare a Father’s Day breakfast for us while he slept his last stretch. But that’s not going to work now.” Amy sighs, sitting down on the bed and adjusting the pillows behind her back. “Damn it.”
“Late breakfast is not a catastrophe, Ames.” He reaches up, moving her ponytail from her shoulder to her neck before Mac’s curious fingers can find it and earning himself a grateful smile. “Relax.”
“I know,” she mumbles. “I just wanted it to be perfect. It’s already falling through.”
“It’s not falling through because we got to sleep in. We can just buy breakfast from the bakery, right?”
“But I wanted to show off my pancake skills - I spent my whole day off last week practicing -”
“Was that the day when I came home and the apartment smelled mysteriously like smoke?”
“I wanted to at least try.”
She still looks disappointed, frowning as she stares out into space. Amy’s fiery passion for schedules and organization frequently comes head-to-head with the impossibility of predicting their son’s next move; Mac is usually crowned winner. Amy will claim it drives her crazy, but then their son will give her one of his golden smiles while stretching his arms out like he's reaching for her, and he’ll be instantly forgiven until the next time.
This time is no exception - the sweet sound of Mac's snuffles as he eats, combined with his hand clutching around Amy's finger as she offers it, has the smile returning to her lips in no time.
“First-world problems, I guess,” she says. “You're right. Bakery breakfast sounds good too.”
“I’m always right, and I know.”
Amy rolls her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Happy Father's Day, Jake.”
It's his first real Father's Day. Jake finds it hard to believe how fast the last eight months have gone, because it feels like Mac’s been here forever. Likewise, it makes him feel like he's been a dad forever, or at least long enough to make everything before it feel insignificant.
He talked about it with Charles at Shaw’s yesterday. They were having a few beers to celebrate Father's Eve (which Charles claimed was definitely a thing).
When Charles first adopted Nikolaj, Jake had struggled to understand how his friend’s life could have changed so much - but he gets it now. He can no longer remember the last time he said yes to a spontaneous hangout at Shaw’s, or an extra shift he didn’t absolutely have to take. There's always an awareness that every moment he spends somewhere else is precious time away from his son and his wife, and it always feels just that little bit wrong.
“Yep, that’s part of it,” Charles had nodded when Jake told him about it yesterday. “I’m jealous of every single one of Niko’s teachers.”
“Really? It doesn’t get better?”
Charles shrugged. “No. You get used to it, though. Don’t worry - it just means you’re a good dad. Which, for the record, I was the first one to know you would be.”
“I’ll mention you in my speech if I ever win prizes,” he’d said, raising his beer bottle in a toast. “Also, is it okay if I go home after this drink? If I leave in ten minutes I might make it for bedtime, and we’ve started reading him books every night, and it’s the most adorable thing. Wait, I’m pretty sure I have a video...”
If someone had told Jake a few years ago that one day, he’d be rushing home from Shaw’s at seven-thirty p.m. just so he’d have the chance to rock a rose-cheeked baby in panda-print pajamas to sleep for the night, he would have laughed in their face. Now, it’s everything that matters.
Another fact that would have shocked him is the fact that he’s a morning person now. Maybe not when they begin before five a.m., or when Mac’s had six wake-ups in one night, or that one time they were out of coffee and Jake actually started crying; but these mornings, when they’ve all gotten a few good hours of sleep, there’s nothing to rush to and he can wake up slowly to the soft sounds of Mac nursing - it’s easily one of his favorite parts of the day.
“It’s supposed to be sunny all day,” Amy notes, checking the weather on her phone with her free hand. “We could buy food from the bakery and have a picnic outside? A Father's Day picnic, instead of brunch at home?”
“Picnic sounds perfect.”
“Sorry you didn't get pancakes in bed,” she sighs, clasping her bra together again when Mac starts to pull away. “At least let me make you coffee?”
“If you insist,” he winks, grimacing when Mac crawls over to him and puts his hands over Jake’s nose and mouth. “Mac and I will just hang out here,” he tries to say, but it comes out muffled.
Amy laughs. “I’ll be back in five.”
She disappears out the door just as Mac lets go of his face, crawling with dangerous speed towards the edge of the bed before Jake catches him and places him back in the middle. Crawling is Mac’s new favourite thing since a month ago, tied only with food, snuggles and for some reason, remote controls (sometimes Jake wonders why they buy their kid toys in the first place). It’s come with a sudden need for them to baby-proof their apartment even further, finely tuned reflexes constantly working on stopping the child from getting himself hurt, and a glimmering, incomparable joy felt every time Jake sees his son light up with pride as he crawls towards him or Amy while they cheer him on.
It’s gone so fast, Jake thinks. It seems like only yesterday they brought a tiny and helpless bundle home from the hospital, placed him in the babynest on their bed and then laid next to him for an hour just watching him breathe. They’d been awestruck, so deeply in love already, and a little bit terrified.
Your son is going to love you, Roger had said after the disastrous sex reveal party, adding to the chorus of what Amy and Charles were already telling him. It had meant a lot to hear, especially so from him, but in the end, there was only one person who could truly convince Jake.
He’d felt it the first time he’d tried to bottle-feed Mac, practicing with him from early on so there wouldn’t be any difficulties when Amy had to go back to work. Mac had been skeptical at first, whimpering in protest when Jake teased his lips with the plastic nipple, but then he’d had an idea. After taking off his shirt, he’d tried the same thing again, and this time had been a success. Mac swallowed everything in the bottle, keeping eye contact throughout, and suddenly Jake had understood every word he’d read about how feeding - in any form - served as a bonding experience for both parent and child. He’d made sure to do at least one bottle-feeding per day after that.
He’d felt it again the first time Mac got sick, running a mild fever after getting his two-month shots and being near inconsolable for the rest of the night. Eventually, after two hours of screaming until he was red in the face, he’d fallen asleep on Jake’s chest in the middle of a cry and slept like that for three hours straight. Jake hadn’t even dared moving, just let his son sleep there like a living heating pad until he felt better.
Most of all, though, he’d felt it the first time his son laughed at him. Mac had been three months old at that point, and the laughter had been prompted by something as simple as Jake singing along to Taylor Swift while making coffee. Mac had been watching him while bouncing along in his babysitter, content and quiet until Jake had tried and spectacularly failed to hit the right notes in Cruel Summer. The tones of that pure baby laughter, directed at him, had been all Jake needed to feel certain that his son did, indeed, love him.
He worried whether he’d really be good at this, if he would break the infamous Peralta curse. Some days he still does. Parenthood is tougher than he’d thought, and when Mac starts crying after Jake has stopped him from crawling off the side of the bed for the third time, it's easy to feel like the worst parent in the world. But then he pulls out one of his secret tricks, putting Mac in his lap and pulling up a clip from some hysterical baby tv show that’s constantly bookmarked on his phone now, and ten seconds later all peace is restored as Mac giggles at the screen. Jake takes a moment to just breathe in the scent of his son’s neck, playing with the curls in his hair that have truly started to come in now.
He’ll never do everything completely right, but for these moments, when everything’s calm and his son is content and happy with him, Jake thinks that he must at least be doing okay. One thing is for certain; he wouldn’t give this up for anything.
Going out with a baby takes four times as long as it did before a baby. Jake used to think he was their biggest problem in the mornings, but he can't even begin to compare to their son. Before they're on their way to the park, they've gone through two outfit changes on Mac and one outfit change on Jake, checked the diaper bag three times to make sure they're not out of baby wipes again, and comforted their son who scared himself by crawling underneath the table and getting confused by the chair legs when his parents looked away for two seconds. They’ve packed food for Mac, sun screen, baby cutlery, a picnic blanket, warm shirts for everyone and extra toys for their son, and they're just going ten minutes away.
“You know we can just go back home if we forget something, right?” Jake reminds Amy as she goes through the contents of the diaper bag a fourth time.
“You want to roll a screaming and overtired child home in the stroller while he refuses to fall asleep because we forgot his elephant blankie, be my guest.”
She's right, so Jake shuts up and helps her pack instead.
It takes them an hour, but they make it outside and to the bakery, where Mac charms everyone in line by flashing his sunniest smile and watching his surroundings with so much curiosity he would have climbed out of his seat if he could. Nothing seems boring to an eight-month-old, and the world is always wondrous and full of things to discover. It’s as beautiful to witness as it can be exhausting, but most days, Jake wishes he had more of that boundless excitement himself. There is something so pure about the way Mac lights up when a yellow taxi drives past them on the street, when he spots a teenager riding on an electric scooter, when they get to the park and spot a few kids playing frisbee while a small dog runs around trying to catch it. It's the notion that everything around us is a little bit magical, and that kids seem to remember it while adults so often forget. Jake tries to remember the beauty of it two minutes into the picnic as he cleans out Mac’s mouth after the kid tried to eat a leaf.
The takeaway coffee has already cooled off when they can sit down long enough to drink it, but even lukewarm coffee is a luxury to a parent, and Jake swallows his in big gulps anyway. Keeping the BLT away from Mac’s reaching hands proves a challenge at first, but then Amy brings out the crinkling baby book that never fails to distract their son for a few minutes, and it buys them just enough time to both finish their sandwiches. Most things are a puzzle these days, sometimes including feeding themselves. Jake still wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else.
“I used to jog in this park before.” Amy takes the last bite of her sandwich and wipes away a bit of drool from Mac’s chin with the bib. “When we followed that exercise regimen while trying to get pregnant, this is where I would go for my morning runs. God, I hated them.” She shudders. “I would always meet these parents that were out walking their babies in strollers, and I’d try to smile at them, but on the inside, I’d feel so jealous.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m so glad I don’t have to exercise anymore.” Jake grabs one of the glazed donut-holes they treated themselves to, swallowing it in two quick bites before Mac spots it. “It was the worst.”
Amy opens her mouth to protest, but closes it again, shaking her head. “There were days when it made me so angry. Not at the parents, I wasn’t that crazy - okay, I almost was - but at everything. How there could be all these people around me with kids, everywhere I looked, and somehow we couldn’t have them. I just wanted to walk around with a crying baby, too, because it would be my crying baby.”
“And you got to do that in the end,” he says. They’ve both walked around this park with Mac in the stroller, lap after lap around the jogging trail to get their son to sleep.
“Yeah,” she nods, running her hand through Mac’s hair and smiling wide at him when he looks up at her. “I did.”
They don’t talk about it a ton. The fertility journey was largely pushed to the back of their minds once they got that positive test and first ultrasound picture, even more so with their son’s birth. There’s no time to dwell on the past when the present demands their constant attention, and although their relationship has been through worse hardships, the memory of that time is not a cherished one. Jake tries not to think about it in other contexts than to remind himself of how lucky they were. He wonders if it’s the same for Amy, or if it’s more present for her. He’s never asked, he realizes.
“Do you think about it a lot?”
She shakes her head again. “Sometimes. Never for long. I worry, a bit. I wonder what will happen if we try to have a second baby. If it’ll be the same, or worse, or if it’ll even work at all.” Mac crawls onto her lap at that, and she hugs her arms around him. “But I don’t think we’re ready for that yet, are we? One’s plenty for now. Right, Macaroon?”
“Definitely,” Jake nods. “But maybe in a year, right?”
She smiles. “Maybe in a year.”
He wants to say something cheesy, kiss her and tell her how happy he is to make plans for the future with her, but Mac chooses that exact moment to squirm out of Amy’s arms and speed-crawl across the blanket onto the grass. Jake catches him just before he’s out of arm’s reach, and Mac whines in protest, but Amy laughs.
“I gotta say, your dad-reflexes get more impressive by the day.”
“I know, right? I should be in a talent show.”
“Babe, you really shouldn’t.”
“Are you worried I’d become too famous and leave my family to live a luxury bachelor life? Because that would never happen, I promise.”
“Yep. Let’s say that’s what I’m most worried about.”
Jake’s not sure what she means. When it comes to his confidence in his own entertainment skills, it’s never been better, and it’s all thanks to his most enthusiastic fan. Mac gets fed a squeezy pouch with fruit and vegetables for a snack, and Jake does some of his best airplane noises so he’ll open his mouth for the spoon, making the kid giggle so hard he almost spits the food back out again. When he’s done, Jake places an empty plastic water cup on top of his son’s head, watching Mac laugh as it inevitably wiggles and falls off, landing in front of him. Then he does the same thing on his own head, actually balancing it for a moment for the tension, and Mac laughs even harder when it drops.
Jake is amazed by how much better fatherhood has gotten with time. It was always the most amazing thing to ever happen to him, but it was so different when his son was a newborn. Mac was rarely awake for the first weeks, and when he was, he was either stuck to Amy for feeding or crying because he was overtired or needed his diaper changed. Jake always loved his son, but for the first month or so, he felt pretty useless around him. The daily attempts at bottle-feeding, and the precious times Mac fell asleep against his Jake’s chest as they walked around the apartment at night, had made up most of their bonding time together. It was still wonderful, and Jake can miss the time when Mac actually stayed where you put him, but in the end, it’s got nothing on what fatherhood is like at eight months in. Now, Mac interacts with them, laughing and smiling and trying to babble gibberish back at them when they talk to him. He’s always on the move, like he’s anxious to miss out on anything the world has to offer if he sits still for too long. Judging from the way he’s currently trying to use the tree next to them to get up to a standing position, Jake wonders how long they’ve got left until he’s walking. It’s clear that Mac has his own personality now, no longer just traces of it hidden in a newborn’s constant needs, and every day of fatherhood seems to bring a new adventure.
There had been a time when Jake wasn’t sure if he wanted this. Little did he know, it’s better than anything he could have dreamt.
He gets a chance to check his phone when Mac starts to get overtired and Amy offers to walk around with him in the stroller for a while. Charles has sent him five texts wishing him a happy first father’s day, Karen has sent one, and there are some notifications from the Santia-bro’s group-chat on top of that, but the text that catches Jake’s attention aren’t from any of them.
It’s from his own father.
Happy Father’s Day, son.
Jake just glares at the message.
His own relationship with his father has changed drastically since he became a dad himself. For the most part, Jake understands Roger less. His heart hurts even as he drops off Mac with Karen or their nanny on the days both him and Amy are working, and every night when the kid goes to bed, it never takes long before Jake’s looking at pictures and videos on his phone again. He never understood why Roger left, but when Jake tries to picture a time in the future where he would betray his family the way his own father did, he fails to see how anyone could do that to their child and live with themselves. He’s forgiven his dad, but he’ll never understand his choices.
In another way, their relationship is stronger. There’s still hurt between them, a passive sorrow that won’t ever fully heal, but there’s something new to bond over now. Jake sends his dad a thank you-text and includes a video from this morning of Mac crawling through the hallway, holding the stuffed toy plane Roger gave him in one fist.
Mac & I wish you the same, he writes.
Roger may not have been a good dad, but he is a good grandfather. From the first time Jake placed his then newborn son in his dad’s arms, whispering under his breath that if Roger ever did anything to hurt Mac, Jake would personally make sure to have him arrested - he’s been there. He’s visited, shown interest, and made a point to be home when Karen babysits so they can both spend time with their grandson. Sometimes, he brings home airplane-themed baby gifts from his travels. Jake had been surprised at first, but he's come to understand it. Mac is their peace-bringer. It's impossible to be angry around him, and he’s the one thing they can always talk about that won’t bring up hurt feelings. Roger always wants to know how Mac is doing, and Jake always wants to tell him. Their shared love for this child is the silent promise of a truce.
He may not yet be at the point where he wants to buy cards or gifts for his father each year, but the text doesn't hurt to send anymore, and the happy smiley-face and thumbs up he gets in reply to the video puts a smile on his face.
The rest of the day flies by in the same pace days at home with an eight-month-old always seem to; scarily fast when you’re constantly busy. Mac tries the swing in the playground for the first time, and judging from the way he shouts with laughter as they push him between the two of them with minimal speed, it’s a success. They go grocery shopping in the afternoon and watch their son charm just about every other customer in the store as he smiles and points at everything he sees. They don't make it home in time for the afternoon nap, causing Mac to fall asleep in the car seat, so they drive the long way home just so he can sleep peacefully for a while longer even though the ice cream nearly melts in the car. In the evening, they take turns feeding him some oatmeal, which is another new favorite but still seems to end up mostly in his hair. Jake makes sure to snap a few shots of their little culinary enthusiast for Charles. Then he gets in the bathtub with his son, because he's all about multitasking these days, and the shouts of happiness from Mac as he uses his hands to splash water on himself are too cute to miss out on.
It all goes so fast, and suddenly, it's seven-thirty p.m. and time for the bedtime routine. Jake changes Mac into pajamas, then Amy reads the book while Mac looks up at her in fascination. After that, they nurse until he’s almost falling asleep but not entirely, at which point Jake takes his son to rock him to sleep in his arms. They’ve tried more than a few methods to get their son to fall asleep independently, but in the end, this is what's easiest. Jake puts on some Taylor Swift, walking around the apartment or swaying back and forth with Mac in his arms as the child clings to him, either sucking on a pacifier or drooling all over Jake’s shirt before he drifts off to sleep like that.
It's not the most recommended method, and he knows it bothers Amy to ignore the advice of her sacred research, but they’ve never gotten anything else to work. To be honest, Jake likes putting Mac to sleep like this. His son is already growing too fast. Jake fears the day this child won't need him like this anymore, but they're not there yet. Right now, swaying from side to side as he hums a familiar love song to the pajama-clad infant in his arms, Jake is everything his son needs.
He knows he won't always be. One day, Mac will have his own friends and his own life and Jake won't be more than the embarrassing father that's in the way most of the time. All he can do is hope his son will know that whatever happens, he’ll always be there. He will always make time to talk to his son, and be there to help him with everything he can as long as it's not related to maths. (Though, come to think of it, Jake's pretty sure he’d learn the quadratic formula too if Mac requested it. Just not before insisting that he should ask Amy first.)
But Jake doesn't need any quadratic formulas to be enough for his son yet. All he needs is some back strength, some Taylor Swift ballads, and he gets this love in return. He gets to hold his son in his arms, feeling him grow heavier and more relaxed until he nods off with his head on Jake’s chest, and it's heaven, the very definition of love.
It takes about fifteen minutes - or four different Taylor ballads - before Jake is sure that Mac’s asleep. Sometimes he has to do this for up to thirty minutes before success, but his back always aches then, so when he can put Mac down in his cot after half of that, he considers it a victory.
“Goodnight, Macaroon,” he whispers. “See you tomorrow. Or in a few hours, depending on what kind of night we have. But let’s aim for tomorrow, yeah? I know you can do it.” Jake squeezes his little hand, giving the still so adorable cheeks one last stroke before turning on the baby monitor and sneaking out of the bedroom.
Amy’s already started eating her pizza when Jake makes it to the living room.
“Sorry,” she says with her mouth full, and he laughs. “I was hungry.”
“Romantic,” he teases her before sitting down on the couch, reaching for a paper towel and a slice of Meat Supreme (display temperature, obviously). He does eat a little bit healthier these days, wanting to live a long life for his son and all that, but Sunday nights are still for pizza and orange soda. He is a hard-working parent, after all.
Amy scrunches her nose. There's a bit of tomato sauce on the tip of it and Jake thinks about telling her, but it looks kind of cute. “We get to eat a meal together without anyone crying. Sounds pretty romantic to me. Do you want to watch a movie?”
“Nah,” he shrugs. “I kind of just want to be silent for a bit.”
“Oh thank god, me too.”
They rarely talk the first ten minutes after Mac goes to bed in the evening. Sometimes it takes twenty, even upwards to half an hour before they're ready for any sort of longer conversation. Jake never knew just how much you could appreciate silence before he became a parent, either. This night, it takes until both of them have finished their pizza, Amy has made herself a cup of green tea and Jake has refilled his glass of orange soda twice, before they're ready to exchange more than a few words.
“So, your first father's day,” Amy says when Jake moves closer to her, resting his head on her shoulder while he scrolls through his Instagram feed, making sure to like all the Santiago brothers' posts and the one Charles seems to have dedicated to him. He’ll read it properly later. “How did you find it?”
“Oh, hands down the best Father's Day I’ve ever been celebrated on.” He grins, thinking about the matching Die Hard-shirts for him and Mac and the one-night, parents-only, hotel stay his wife and son gifted him. “I loved it, babe. Thank you.”
She twists her head to kiss him on the cheek. “You deserved it.”
“It's crazy, though,” he mumbles. “Sometimes I still can't believe I'm a dad. Or that we're parents. I know it's kind of our whole life now, but it's weird to think about, isn't it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, seven years ago we were just colleagues. Six years ago we were trying to figure out how to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Five years ago I was in Florida, four years ago in prison...” Amy chews on her lip, looking away at the mention. He reaches for her left hand and drags his thumb over the stones in her engagement ring. “Three years ago we had just gotten married. Two years ago we had started trying. I know I’m bad with maths, but I’ll never understand how it can have been that long, when it all still feels like it was just… yesterday.”
Amy squeezes his hand. “I guess it’s pretty weird when you put it that way. But I still think this is the best it’s ever been.”
Jake hums, letting go of her hand so he can cup her face with both. The first brush of his lips against hers is light, but she responds by pulling him in, her warm hands on the back of his head as she deepens the kiss. Capturing her bottom lip between his teeth, teasing it with his tongue, he lingers in it, savoring it to remember for all their stressed days when pecks on cheeks and squeezes of shoulders make up most of their physical intimacy. It’s different, a new thing to have that time together so limited, but it does make those moments all the more special when they happen.
“For the record,” she says as they pull apart, “I’m still proud of our son to have you as a dad. Every day.”
Jake blushes. “Well, I try.”
“Don't be so humble.” Amy runs her fingers through his hair. It's getting long and he needs to cut it, he just never gets around to it for some reason. “You're amazing. And I know - you know - that Mac feels the same.”
“Aww, you guys talk about me?”
“For sure. He tells me everything.”
“Damn it, I knew I shouldn't have told him about your birthday present,” he grins, making her laugh. “Thanks, Ames.”
“It's true,” she says, leaning her head on his shoulder and resting her hand over his heart. He clasps his hand over hers, holding it there. “I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
He closes his eyes, enjoying the rare moment of peace. The day’s exhaustion is starting to sink in, and he knows they should both go to sleep so they’re able to get up tomorrow morning, but the chance to just sit like this and talk, having a chance to just be with his wife only the two of them, is even worth offering some sleep for. It's the perfect ending to a perfect day, and Jake couldn't be more content.
“For the record,” Amy mumbles after a moment, her thumb stroking his knuckles. “Next Father's Day, I am making you pancakes. And Mac is helping.”
“Honestly, I feel like there's a chance he might be better at it than you.”
“You’ll never have any faith in my cooking skills, will you?”
“I know you too well,” he jokes. “And I don't care. It was still a perfect day. It always is, as long as I’m with you two.” Amy smiles, reaching up to peck his lips before settling her head back on his shoulder. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure that's my cheesiness quota for the day filled, so; you want to crash in bed and see if there's any chance of our son performing a miracle and sleeping through the night twice in a row?”
“Oh my god, I thought you’d never ask.”
The definition of romance has changed since they became parents, Jake thinks as they tiptoe into the bedroom and try to be as quiet and efficient in their routines as possible so Mac doesn’t wake up - but never before has every day of his life been filled with so much love.
~