Work Text:
Jake Peralta is sitting in the interrogation room.
It’s strange, Amy thinks as she watches him through the glass. They’ve probably been in this same position at least three dozen times before - her on this side, him on that one - but never once has she been quite this anxious. Never once has he seemed quite so frail.
Never once has he tended to his own minor wounds, or held his own ice pack to his bruised and swollen eye, or watched the door with as much quiet intensity.
Never once has he been a victim.
(“I need to hear his voice, okay? I need to know that he’s okay -”)
“Amy,” she nearly jumps out of her skin, whiplash seizing at her neck as her head snaps toward the door. Rosa’s half-hidden behind the partially opened door, looking subdued and apprehensive. “Chisenwall is here.”
She nods, jaw clenched, unable to voice an acknowledgement. There’s some latent anger still prickling in Amy’s chest, doubling over as Rosa quietly closes the door behind herself - part of the agreement was that Amy and only Amy would be allowed to sit in the observation room for the duration of his statement. She turns her attention back to Jake - who has begun drumming his fingers on the table, still staring intently at the door - and the anger slowly dissipates again. Holt was right, after all; it would probably be too difficult for her to get him to let his walls down long enough to get an accurate picture of his vantage point of today's hellacious events.
(Nevermind that she's his partner and if there's anyone on earth aside from his mother who could get him to be completely and totally vulnerable in his honesty, it's definitely her.)
Still, there's an uneasiness to his posture that sends little sparks of anxiety through her system on his behalf. He's still on-edge - less so than when she found him earlier - but enough that it has her very seriously considering blowing off their captain's orders and just going in there anyways. She's just made her mind up to do it when the door he's been so intently watching suddenly opens. Jake straightens up slightly, shifting in his seat with what Amy recognizes to be alarm as a newcomer - Chisenwall, she supposes - enters the room.
“Hi Jake.” Chisenwall is a rather slight and unassuming-looking man. His back is turned to Amy but she can see the swell of his cheeks in profile as he smiles, warm and reassuring. A small fraction of the tension seems to fade from Jake’s face. “My name’s Detective Chisenwall, and I’m here to get your statement about what happened today.”
“Where’s Amy?”
It’s the fact that his voice quivers on her name, she decides, that makes the tears spring up in her eyes. Right back, she'd promised him. I'll be right back. “She got called back to the crime scene.” Chisenwall tells him calmly, and Amy almost laughs. “Your captain decided that the need for her presence was greater there for the time-being. In fact, all the detectives in your precinct are still at the scene. Captain Holt asked me to take your statement.”
Jake’s brow is furrowed and gaze fixated on the metallic table between him and Chisenwall. “She was just here, though,” he mumbles. “She said she was coming right back.”
Whispered, more like it. Whispered and randomly punctuated halfway through by a kiss to his forehead done out of instinct because he'd been leaning into her heavily and she'd never felt him tremble like that before. It was especially scary when it hit her all at once that this was Jake Peralta she was trying to soothe. The bravado and over-confidence that usually exuded from his very pores shot completely to hell, leaving behind only terror to fill the empty void. A terror so strong and visceral then in the moment that has only faded slightly now, over an hour later. She'd whispered the words into his hairline and waited until he nodded and had a mostly-steady grip on the ice pack she'd been holding to his face and then she'd darted out of the room in search of a cold bottle of water.
(Gasping for air desperately, face pressed hard into her neck made wet with a terrifying combination of blood and sweat and tears as his newly-freed hands grip and pull with such desperation her windbreaker rips beneath the force -)
“Your captain has asked for her assistance back at the scene. She’ll be back as soon as she can.” Chisenwall is gentle and reassuring, but Jake’s free hand visibly clenches into a fist where it sits atop the table and Amy wants nothing more than to hurl herself between them, to hold him close the way she did when she finally found him, to yell and scream until Chisenwall and Holt and everyone else just leaves him alone.
(He’s somewhere close by and he can’t breathe and she can’t get to him and she’s going to be too late -)
“Will you tell me a little bit about how everything that happened came to be?” Amy watches Chisenwall shift in his seat, leaning toward Jake - who in turn leans back and folds his free arm over his middle, as if he’s holding himself together. “How exactly did you end up in that apartment building?”
Jake glances at the interrogation room door. “Amy’s supposed to take my statement,” he says uncertainly. “She said she was coming right back.”
“I really am very sorry that she’s not able to, Jake. It wasn’t her choice.” Amy looks away, chest fissuring so violently she has to choke back a sob. “She’ll be back as soon as she can, though. In the meantime, why don’t I take your statement? That way when she does get back, you won’t have to worry about it. You guys can just go straight home.”
When the silence stretches on longer than a brief pause, Amy chances a glance back up into the room. Jake appears to be considering Chisenwall - chewing the inside of his cheek much the same as she does in her base level of stress - before he, too, leans forward in his seat and lowers the ice pack. “We can leave right after?”
“Yes.”
“And - and she doesn’t have to come back? I mean, she can...she can stay? With me?”
Her heart is palpitating and she wants to scream and claw and tear her way into that interrogation room and whisk him away right then and there, proper procedures be damned. The look in his eyes - guarded, vulnerable, scared - kicks up a protectiveness in her that before today she did not know she possessed.
“You have my word, Jake,” Chisenwall says evenly. “I’ll make sure you both get to go home and stay home right after this.”
(Her stomach swoops and her heart skips a beat at the use of the word home, at the implication that their home belongs to both of them, like their lives overlap so intimately in that way. It’s not a wholly unpleasant swoop, which under any other circumstances might be cause for alarm - or at least some very serious overthinking. As it is, she merely racks her memories, trying to recall what his first aid kit situation is in his apartment and wondering if she might be able to convince Charles to go pick a few things up before they leave in a bit.)
“Okay,” he’s nodding when she snaps back to the present. “I’ll give you my statement. I, um,” he stops and clears his throat, eyes squeezed shut. “I was at that apartment building because I’d gotten intel from an informant that Brewer was hiding out there.”
“Brewer being a suspect in a case you’ve been working?” Chisenwall asks as he quickly scribbles notes on his notepad.
“Uh-huh. Real big mean-looking dude. He had multiple armed robberies and aggravated assaults as priors, so I knew it was risky to go in alone.”
Chisenwall glances up. “But you did it anyways?” He asks softly.
Jake’s staring at the table again when he nods. “I wasn’t even sure if he was there,” he says, and even with the pane of glass between them Amy can clearly see that his gaze has drilled straight through the table and is suddenly a million miles away. “I didn’t wanna waste anyone’s time if it ended up being an empty apartment building.”
Chisenwall nods slowly as he writes. “But it wasn’t empty,” he finally says, and Jake closes his eyes. Slowly, he replaces the ice pack against his face. “What happened when you got inside?”
“Brewer had the advantage of knowing the layout of the apartment. He just snuck up behind me and hit me over the head with a pipe or something, I don’t know. I never saw what it was. He knocked me out and took my gun and dragged me upstairs. I didn’t stand a chance.”
“Can you describe what you saw when you regained consciousness?”
(She tears into the room and barely absorbs the grimy carpet and the writhing pile of bodies in the middle of the barren room, nearly leaping over the officers attempting to wrestle Brewer into submission because he's not here, he's not here, his blood stains the carpet out in the hall but he's not here where is he where is he oh god where is he -
“JAKE!”)
She sees a muscle in Jake’s jaw twitch as he briefly grinds his teeth - a nervous habit of his, one she only very rarely sees. One she has classified as Level Three on the Peralta Stress Scale in her mind. The hairs on the back of her neck stand up on instinct. “An empty apartment, basically. There was no furniture. It was just a big carpeted room with a counter and a stove in the kitchen area. He tied me down to a chair in the corner, away from the window. The whole unit was completely empty.”
“It wasn’t the unit he’d been living in, then.”
“No, I don’t think so. He came in and out. I think he slept in a different unit.”
“So...approximately how long did Brewer hold you hostage until you received the first call?”
“I dunno...an hour, maybe? It wasn’t that long.”
“What was his behavior like leading up to that first call?”
Jake’s eyes narrow slightly. “He wasn’t nervous or anything,” he says slowly. “He didn’t really talk to me a lot. Like I said, he was in and out a lot. I’m sorry,” he unfolds his arm and drops the ice pack to grip the edge of the table loosely. “Do you have any idea how long Amy will be gone? I'm just -” he cuts himself off and shakes his hands out - also a classic Stress Level Three indicator. A way for him to burn some of his anxious energy.
She has to choke down a whine at the sight.
“I don’t. I’m sorry, son.” Jake slumps down slightly, compulsively popping his knuckles beneath the table. “How about we finish getting through this statement, and when we’re done, if she’s still not here, I’ll make a call and have her come back. Deal?”
“Okay,” he says, sounding remarkably like her youngest brother after being denied a cookie by their mother in their youth. With slow hands, he reaches for the ice pack again.
“Okay. About what time did you receive the first call?”
“It was sometime between nine-thirty and ten. They finally figured out something was wrong when I hadn’t shown up for work yet -”
Amy closes her eyes, briefly, and beneath her eyelids she sees Charles’ face made deathly pale with concern upon realizing that Jake was over an hour and a half late for work - the first red flag of the day.
“Who’s ‘they?’”
“Oh, the squad. The other detectives.”
“I see. And - do you know who that first call was from?”
“Brewer pulled my phone out of my pocket before I could see, but I think it was Charles the first time.”
“I understand that first call went unanswered -”
“Brewer rejected the call.” Jake interrupts. “I’m pretty sure that’s how they knew something serious was going on.”
(He is, in fact, correct.)
“How quickly did the second call come in?”
“Not even a minute later. I know for a fact that one was from Charles, because Brewer said his name as he rejected that call, too.”
“How many calls did it take for Brewer to finally answer the phone?”
“Four. He answered the fourth call. Amy’s call.”
(“I swear to God I’ll kill him right here and now if you don’t stop calling this damn phone!”
“Who the hell is this? Where the hell is Jake?”
“You’ll never see him again -”)
“I understand that Brewer never left the line connected long enough for your tech department to track the call,” Chisenwall says. “And yet...your precinct was able to find you in less than an hour.”
“Yeah, the Find My Phone App,” he says it with an affectionate smile clearly visible around the ice pack, one that Amy unconsciously reflects. “I lose my phone a lot, so Amy and Charles and I all downloaded an app called Find My Phone. Basically if I can’t find it, I just ask one of them to track it, and it uses GPS signals to track the phone.”
(“What the hell is he doing in Harlem -?”
“Dammit Charles, just drive!”)
“How did Brewer react when you guys heard the sirens?”
It’s hard to see to the untrained eye, but the shudder that ripples down Jake’s spine is as clear and visible as a neon sign to Amy. “Angrily,” he says, and it takes everything she has not to demand to be let into the room at the haunted quality of his voice. “He thought I somehow tipped them off.”
“Is that when that -” he gestures to the ice pack “- happened?”
“No, um, all of this happened because - because I wouldn’t shut up when I knew Amy or Charles or really anyone from the Nine-Nine was on the line with him. He, uh, pulled my gun on me then. I thought he was just gonna shoot me and be done with it. I think he would've, if Amy hadn't called again.”
She drops her head and closes her eyes, fighting back a sudden surge of anxiety. “What happened when Amy called you again?” Chisenwall asks.
“He answered. He was still holding the gun on me, but he answered. That’s when he made the first ransom demand.”
“For what amount?”
“Thirty-five thousand.”
“Did he ever mention why that specific amount?”
“He didn’t, but I checked his rap sheet before and that’s how much he owes in fines in addition to the warrants and stuff. I don’t think it was his original plan but I guess he figured he could get something out of it if he played his cards right.”
Amy looks up again in time to see him wince, his free hand sliding around his front to lightly curl around his ribs. “Would you like to take a break?” Chisenwall asks gently.
Jake shakes his head, a maddeningly familiar look of determination turning his features to steel. “I just want to get through this.” The words come filtered through gritted teeth. “Will you at least text Amy and ask her how much longer she’ll be?”
Chisenwall hesitates, but extracts his phone from his pocket anyways. She’d forced Rosa to give him her number upon arriving here for this exact reason; she knew that he knew she was in the observation room. The lie, the ruse that she’d left the building was of Holt’s construction, as was the decision to place Jake in the interrogation room. He’d wanted to ensure Jake didn’t get a chance to talk to any of the other officers, to put on a brave face and downplay the events of the day in an effort to seem tougher and therefore accidentally dim the details in his own mind. Which, under normal circumstances, Amy would totally understand.
Holt didn’t feel him trembling the way Amy did, though.
She watches Chisenwall pull up a new text thread and quickly type out a message, and a moment after his thumbs stop moving over the screen, her phone buzzes with a new notification from an unsaved number.
Jake would like to know when we can expect you to return to the precinct.
She glances back up - Chisenwall has his phone on the table beside his hand, and Jake is watching the still-unlocked screen as intently as he’d been watching the interrogation room door before.
Tell him it’ll be less than twenty minutes, she types out quickly. And tell him that I’m so sorry I had to leave. I’m working as fast as I can.
She can see her own text pop up on Chisenwall’s screen, and in the split-second afterwards Jake drops the ice pack and lunges across the table to seize the phone. Chisenwall makes a sound of protest but doesn’t move to snatch it back. Instead, he watches Jake’s thumbs move over the keyboard so fast they’re a blur. And it’s as Jake’s sliding the phone back to Chisenwall with a vaguely apologetic look on his face that another text arrives to Amy’s phone from that same unsaved number.
Pls pls hurry, it reads. I rly need u asap.
“You and Amy seem to be very close,” Chisenwall notes offhandedly as Amy struggles to remember how to inhale. “How long have you two been dating?”
She expects the usual reaction that assumption always gets - one of over-exaggerated disgust, of pointing out a short list of her physical flaws he seems to have memorized quickly followed by an even shorter list of her personality flaws. All in good fun, for the most part, never once toeing the line of genuine disrespect.
But instead of that, Jake’s face remains utterly unaffected. “A year,” he says, with the same detached calmness with which he’d been recounting the events of the day.
Chisenwall makes some further remark - something quiet she can’t quite make out over the blood rushing in her ears - and she does not give her next message hardly more than a thought as she quickly types it up.
I’ll be back before you know it and then we can go home and order pizza and watch Die Hard on the couch. I’m so sorry Pineapples, I’m coming back as soon as I can. I’ll see you really, really soon, okay? Hang in there!!
Jake starts when Chisenwall’s phone buzzes, but he manages to contain himself this time (for the most part, aside from his violently bouncing leg beneath the table) as Chisenwall briefly reads the message. He slides the phone to Jake, who quickly snatches the phone up as soon as it’s within his reach. She holds her breath as his eyes dart back and forth across her text - and then releases it in a relieved huff as a small smile blossoms across his face. It stays in place as he awkwardly types out a response with one thumb; Amy leans forward and bounces on the balls of her feet in nervous anticipation as Jake slides the phone back to Chisenwall, a brief flash of anxiety sparking across his face. In less than a heartbeat, her phone buzzes in her hand once again.
Im holding u to that. Pizza and die hard and snuggling on the couch sounds like the best thing in the entire world rn..pls hurry back to me.
(“P-p-please don’t go,” he struggles to say through violently chattering teeth. The back of the ambulance in which they’re sitting is cold, but somehow she knows the violent tremors still rocking his body have nothing to do with the chill in the air. “D-don’t go, don’t l-leave…”
“I just have to tell Captain Holt that I’m taking you back to the precinct,” she says, her voice as low and soothing as she can make it be. He releases a high-pitched whine of protest and she squeezes his shoulders with her arm wrapped around them tightly, rubbing her hand over his upper arm vigorously and fighting off the tears that suddenly spring up in her eyes when he seems to scramble a little bit closer. His shock blanket falls loose from around his shoulders and she quickly, gently pulls it back into place with her free hand. “Just right over there, you see? You see where he’s standing?” She points straight ahead where Captain Holt stands some fifty yards away, and feels Jake nod his head, still tucked into the bend of her neck. “I’m going right there and coming right back, you’ll be able to see me the whole time -”
Trembling, clammy hands close around her wrist the moment she drops it back to her lap and he shifts even closer, nose pressing against her pulse point. “H-hurry,” he urges in a mumble. “Please hurry, p-please.”)
“Okay, Jake,” Chisenwall says as he tucks his phone back into his pocket. “We’re getting close to the end. I won’t make you go into details about what happened in the hours between phone calls - we’ve pretty much pieced all of that together through the recordings of the hostage negotiation -”
(Another, more visible shudder from Jake and another shot of fury through Amy.)
“- we really just need to know how exactly you got from that apartment to the storage closet where Amy found you. What was it that set Brewer off?”
“I-I don’t - I don’t know, exactly,” Jake mumbles. His leg is still bouncing. “I couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, but...it sounded like whoever he was talking to was refusing his demands and it was making him really, really angry.”
(“I want to help you, Robert,” she says raggedly into the phone, “but my boss won’t agree to the terms if we don’t get a confirmation that Jake is okay. Please, I want to help you, I will help you, but first I need to know that he’s okay. I need to hear his voice, okay? I need to know that he’s okay -”
“Three million or I shoot him between the eyes right now!”
“Robert please just let me hear his voice, I’m begging you -”
“This is over!”
“No, wait! Wait! Jake!”
The line goes dead and the SWAT team rushes around her, flooding out of triage to quickly surround the building. And she’s rooted to the spot, the phone clutched in her hand, and she knows - she knows - that if she tries to call again, she’ll be immediately met with the sound of his voicemail.
It’s the sound of a distant gunshot - muffled, because it’s coming from inside the building - that brings her roaring back into action.)
“Can you just...describe what happened after that?”
Jake shifts slightly, seems to subconsciously press the ice pack harder against the bruise, which makes him wince. “He threw my phone on the ground and then broke it by stomping on it,” he says quietly, “and then he shot it with my gun, just to be sure. I was pretty much sure that I was gonna die then.” He stops for a moment, visibly struggles to swallow, before turning his head back toward the interrogation room door and starting again. “He untied me from the chair and kind of threw me on the ground, on my front, but before I could get my bearings he jumped on top of me and zip tied my wrists. I was still gagged - he gagged me at one point between phone calls because I wouldn’t stop yelling every time I knew it was Amy on the other end of the line - and then he made me get up. He held the gun against the back of my head and made me start walking.”
Chisenwall is scribbling ferociously, but Jake does not seem the least bit aware. His eyes are glazed, staring at a point only he can see some insurmountable distance away, his fingers rippling against the ice pack still in his hand. And even though she knows it all worked out in the end, Amy can feel her anxiety mounting.
“He made me go up a flight of stairs and then into a storage closet full of all these cardboard boxes. There was one against the back wall that was open and empty and he made me get inside it, kind of in the fetal position. There was some rope in there and he used it to tie me like that so I wouldn’t be able to kick myself free. And then he closed the top of the box and taped it up with masking tape or something. I don’t know. He had all that stuff in that room, or that stuff was already in that room from when people still lived in the building. I don’t know. But he sealed the box and then I kind of - I felt him stacking other boxes on top of mine, and then in front of mine, and I realized he was - he…” Jake trails, suddenly sounding choked, and once again Amy finds herself fighting off a mighty urge to just up and break through the glass between them. “If someone opened the door and glanced inside, or even opened a few boxes, it wouldn’t look like anything was off. My box was buried under all the other boxes. I was buried. And I was like, holy shit, they’re never gonna find me. I’m gonna starve to death before anyone finds me.”
He stops again, jaw clenched. And this time Chisenwall gives him a long moment before he speaks again. “About how long were you in the closet before Amy found you?” He asks gently.
Jake doesn't answer right away, choosing instead to stare down at his lap for a long moment. She holds her breath and listens, watches, waits - until the quiet, muffled sound of a sniffle filters through the sound system. He's crying, she realizes with a blindingly painful pang when he finally lifts his head and swipes at his face.
“I don't know,” he mumbles, his voice pitiful and thin and wilting at the edges with exhaustion. “Felt like three days. Like I was dying.” He clears his throat and readjusts in his seat, his eyes suddenly a little less glazed. “I was having a panic attack. A bad one. Amy gets ‘em real bad when she's in a small space like that. I've teased her for it before.” He shudders and shakes his head slightly. “I get it now.”
Chisenwall hums in understanding. “Do you know what it was that alerted Amy that you were in that closet?”
Jake furrows his brow and shakes his head. “I heard her open the door but I was gagged and having a panic attack so I couldn't really make a lot of noise. Maybe she heard me hyperventilating? I don't know. I heard her open the door and say something - she talks to herself when she's really frustrated - and then it got quiet and I thought she left. But then the next thing I knew, she was grabbing boxes and throwing them. It sounded like an avalanche. And then she grabbed my box and ripped it open.”
(The first thing she can process after the cardboard flaps are torn away is how deathly pale he is. And then comes the blood running down the side of his face and the bruise blossoming around his left eye. And his eyes, frighteningly wide, wild, desperate -
“Oh god, oh Jake, Jake -” she pulls the gag from his mouth and he gasps, gulps down air like a fish out of water. She pulls him into her on instinct, momentarily forgetting the rope coiled so tightly around him his straining muscles bulge around them, too caught up in the pure and dizzying relief knocking the sense right out of her. “It's okay, it's okay,” she breathes over the noises coming involuntarily from his chest as he struggles to catch his breath. She reaches up blindly and strokes his hair, and he nuzzles closer, a continuous and broken hum emanating from his throat. His torso twitches against her, and logic finally comes screaming back - he's still uncomfortably bound.
“You have to move slow, okay?” She murmurs. “Don't try to stand up right away, let the blood flow get back to normal - I'll stay on the floor with you -”
She cuts the ropes from his legs and his torso unfolds all at once, stretching out to the furthest limits allowed by the box still separating them. She rips the wall between them down and his legs almost spill out to the side; she helps him turn so that his legs are stretched out in front of him, his back against the back wall of the closet. A low, throaty groan escapes his throat and she soothes him the best she can with quiet, nonsensical whispers of reassurance, encouraging him to lean his head into her shoulder with a hand on the back of his neck as she reaches behind him to cut the zip ties still binding his wrists.
His arms fall limply to his sides and she leans back, intending to give him enough space to breathe, but then his arms are swinging up and around, landing heavily against her back, knocking her off-balance and forcing her into his chest -
“A-Amy,” her name comes out in the midst of a choked, gurgling cry, and then he's falling apart in her arms, sobbing so violently she has no choice but to hold him together as he clings and grasps and yanks so forcefully her windbreaker rips along the seam. His face slides along her neck in the midst of it all and the newly-exposed skin feels wet, alarmingly wet; she reaches up to smooth her thumb over his forehead, rubbing the backside along her throat in the process, and when she pulls it away it comes back painted with an alarming liquid red -)
“I don’t know how she knew I was in that closet,” he says quietly, and the echoes of his sobs fade back into her memories. “I don’t know how she knew. But she did. And she saved me.” He looks as if he wants to say more, but as she watches he bites down on his tongue and crosses his free arm over his middle again.
Chisenwall seems to notice, too. “I think this will be enough for your statement,” he says, jotting down one last note before flipping his notebook closed and leaning backwards in his seat slightly. “Would you like me to call Amy and ask her to come back to the precinct now?”
“Please,” Jake says, so quickly he almost cuts the last word of Chisenwall’s question off. “I’m sorry, I - please.”
“Nothing to apologize for,” Chisenwall says warmly. “You’ve been through a lot. I know I’d be anxious to see my husband after going through something like that.”
Amy backs away from the window, pacing backwards until she feels the edge of the table bump into the backs of her thighs. She watches Chisenwall lift his phone to his face, and a few seconds later her phone begins to buzz with an incoming call.
“This is Amy,” she answers, surprised to find her voice as husky as it is.
“Amy, this is Detective Chisenwall from the Five-Six. I’m sitting here with Jake, and we’ve just finished up with taking his statement. I understand that you’re still busy at the crime scene -”
“Tell Jake I’m on my way in right now.” Amy interrupts. And if it was any other day she might feel bad for interrupting, but because it is today - because her partner, her best friend in the world, looks three breaths away from completely collapsing - her mind is already singularly focused on getting him home in one piece, which leaves no room for manners. “I’ll be there in less than five minutes.”
“Of course, I’ll let him know. We’ll see you soon, then.”
She lowers the phone without saying goodbye, too absorbed in watching Jake’s facial expressions flicker so fluidly as he absorbs what he’s heard. “Is she already on the way?” He asks, hope poorly concealed beneath a paper-thin bravado.
“Less than five minutes.” Chisenwall confirms. A shiver seems to work its way down his entire body, a new, bristling kind of energy humming in the aftermath.
She makes herself wait two more minutes - each second punctuated by the loud, erratic tapping of his nails against the table - before she pushes off her own table and exits the observation room. She ducks down as she passes the window to the interrogation room door - knowing that he’ll notice if she comes from the wrong direction - and then walks all the way down the hall. She stops at the very end, turns back toward the interrogation room, closes her eyes, and counts to ten.
And then Amy starts running.
(She’ll tell him the truth someday, when this is all a little more distant, when she’s certain enough in the depth of their relationship to know that he won’t up and leave her out of anger. And he won’t leave - won’t even spare it more than passing, mild annoyance - claiming he knew she was listening in the whole time because he’s just that damn good of a detective.)
She sprints all the way down the hall and skids to a stop outside the door, seizing the doorknob to keep herself from flying right past it. She flings the door open the moment she’s righted herself and then launches herself inside just to find that he’s already on his feet, ice pack forgotten on the table, basically shoving his chair out of his way as he launches himself at her.
They collide halfway between the door and his seat, their reunion hug almost as desperate and claiming as that first one back in the storage closet. She can feel one of his hands hopelessly tangled in her hair and the other gripping her ribs so tightly she’s certain she’s going to have a bruise tomorrow, but she’s not much better with the way she claws up his back and grips the loose material of his flannel in her fists like someone’s going to try to rip him out of her hands if she doesn’t hold on tight enough. The only thing outside of Jake she absorbs is the quiet sound of Chisenwall standing and leaving the room.
“I’m so sorry, Jake,” she whispers once the initial hysteria has worn off. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry - Captain Holt wouldn’t let me come back in -”
“It’s okay,” he mumbles, lifting a clumsy hand to stroke over the back of her head. “S’not your fault. It’s okay.”
She cups the back of his neck lightly, letting her fingers drift up to tunnel through the soft hair at the base of his skull for a moment. “Are you okay?”
He nuzzles closer, and against her neck she feels his jaw briefly clench. “Am now,” he breathes.
Her heart seems to swell for a long moment, so she busies herself by closing her eyes and stroking his hair. “Ready to go home?” She asks once she’s finally found her voice again. “I owe you pizza, Die Hard, and couch snuggling, remember?”
He seems to lean more of his weight into her for a moment - a sigh, she realizes, he’s just released a long sigh of relief - and then she feels him nod. “Please,” he mumbles, just loud enough for his voice to crack. “Oh, God, please.”
She pulls back a few inches - inwardly cataloging the way his grip around her tightens past the point of pain for a brief moment until he seems to realize she’s not pulling away completely. Instead she tilts her forehead forward until it gently bumps against his; he hums and briefly closes his eyes at the contact. They stand like that for a long moment, and then -
She’s not sure who makes the first move. All she knows is that one second she’s staring at the place where the top button of his shirt was ripped off, and the next Jake’s hauling her up to her tiptoes and kissing her like she is the last source of oxygen on the planet. It’s hard and demanding and desperate, fueled by latent fear and adrenaline, more of a confirmation of life on both ends than an actual display of affection.
The affection comes through his hands - through the way he flattens his palms against her back and splays his fingers out as wide as they’ll go, like he’s trying to cover the entire surface area available to him all at once. He holds her like he’s never going to get enough of her - and as her brain short-circuits in response to his teeth nipping over her lips, the thought occurs to her that it might actually be her who will never get enough of him.
He pulls away slowly, his grip instantly transitioning back into a hug, and she tries to blink herself out of her stupor with her face buried in his shoulder. His heart is thumping hard and strong against his chest where it’s pressed against hers and she can swear she feels it so urgently and immediately that it jars her very bones. There seems to be no sense of regret in the tension cording his muscles beneath her hands - just that same desperation that seems to wipe all logical thoughts from Amy’s mind all at once.
“C’mon,” she hears herself whisper, “let’s get you home.”
They leave the interrogation room together, much the same as they entered it: Jake shuffling along at a fraction of his usual pace, Amy’s arm thrown over his shoulders. Only this time, Jake snakes an arm around her waist and leans into her a little more heavily, and she squeezes his upper arm as a wordless reassurance.
“Detective Santiago?” A voice calls from behind them just as they reach the bullpen gate. They pause, both turned to look over their shoulders, just to find Chisenwall approaching them with his notebook in hand. “I’m so sorry, I know you’ve already given your statement, but...I gotta admit, curiosity is getting the better of me. May I ask you one question about today?”
She shoots Jake a pointed glance. “Can it wait? I’m sorry, I just really need to get him home -”
“I’m fine, Ames,” he murmurs with a brief squeeze to her waist.
“Are you sure?” He nods, eyes closing briefly, so she follows her instincts and leans up to briefly peck her lips against the corner of his mouth. And then, with a poorly-disguised sigh of impatience, she turns back to Chisenwall. “Your question?” She prompts with a flourish of her hand.
“I’m just wondering how you knew to check that closet,” he says cautiously. “I mean, I looked over the blueprints of the place on my way over - there must’ve been over three dozen storage closets in that whole complex, and yet...you managed to locate the correct one in less than ten minutes. How?”
She ponders it a moment - lets the memories wash back over her - and reaches back blindly until Jake’s fingers tangle with hers. “I don’t know. You just - you spend so much time with a person, getting to know a person, falling...falling for a person…you just know when they’re in the room.” His grip around her fingers tightens, and she swipes the pad of her thumb over his knuckles unconsciously. “I could just...feel him. I knew he was close. And when I opened the closet door, I knew he was in there - I just thought maybe there was a crawlspace between the walls or something. I could hear him trying to breathe around the gag. So I started digging through the boxes, trying to get to the back wall, and then I got to a box I couldn’t lift and after a second I realized the sounds I was hearing were coming from inside that box, and...you know the rest.”
Chisenwall nods, a faint smile igniting the features of his face. “Well, that answers that,” he says as Jake tugs her hand just hard enough to bring her back toward him half a pace. “I hope you both get plenty of rest tonight. Especially you, Jake. If you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go call my husband.”
She watches him walk away before slowly turning and meeting Jake’s eye. “That was a lot, I know -”
“Did you mean it?” He interrupts softly. Amy stares for a moment, eyes flicking down at the movement in his throat as he swallows thickly. “Did you mean what you just said about me? About - about...us?”
She has a strong urge to blow him off and deny it, but the way he’s holding her gaze - the way his eyes are shining with undeniable hope - makes her swallow her pride. “Yes,” she breathes, and his face softens with a dizzying mix of awe and wonder and adoration all at once. “But I think the best place to talk about all of this is on your couch in your apartment over pizza to the sounds of Die Hard. What do you say?”
His eyes rove over her face like he’s looking at her for the first time. “Did I actually die today? Is this heaven?” He mumbles, and her heart throbs with an unexpected punch of affection.
“C’mon, weirdo,” she chuckles, pulling him into the elevator with the hand still clasped in his.
Just under half an hour later, she’s got him changed into his most comfortable set of pajamas and laid up on the couch, legs extended over the pillows laid out across his coffee table and covered in the three blankets she draped over him the moment he sat down. The Die Hard start menu is playing on a loop on the television screen and she’s just finished paying the Sal’s delivery guy for the box of room-temperature pizza currently clutched between her hands. He reaches for it the moment she turns away from the door, making grabbing motions with his hands until she’s seated beside him and the box is open on her lap.
“You don’t want a plate?” She asks as he somehow manages to fit half of an entire slice into his mouth at one time.
“Do you even know me?” He asks, words muffled and slurred around the pizza.
“I do,” she laughs, pulling a face when he crams as much of the other half into his mouth as possible all at once. “I do know you. I know you’re gonna choke yourself on that pizza if you’re not careful.”
He turns his head sharply toward her, eyes bright with a smile otherwise imperceptible due to the massive strain on his lips to hold a truly obscene amount of pizza in his mouth all at once. She laughs as he struggles to chew, and then laughs even harder at the face he makes when he’s finally able to swallow. “Oh, God, that was a bad idea,” he mutters, before leaning toward her to poke her exposed side. “Shut it, you. Tell me more things you know about me.”
Amy lets her laugh fade naturally, the lid of the pizza box falling closed as her head tilts to one side. He’s holding her gaze again - that same look of wonder from before starting to soften the edges and turn her insides to goo - so she inhales deeply and slides the pizza box onto the coffee table beside his legs. “I know...you grit your teeth when you’re really anxious,” she says softly. “And I know you can’t listen to any of the songs on the Red album by Taylor Swift anymore because all of those songs remind you of Sophia. I know Die Hard is your favorite movie, but your favorite Christmas movie is actually A Christmas Story because you love the scene were the dad makes up curse words. I know you overheard some kids saying a boy was gonna stand Gina up for a dance in middle school that you weren’t planning on going to and you decided to go to her house and pick her up as her date.” A smile passes over his face, and she reaches forward to lightly caress the hair curling at his temple. “I know you refused a relief team on the night of our date last year. I know you snuck into that stupid underground bar that Dave Majors took me to a few weeks ago but you didn’t interrupt us, even though - and I’m not gonna lie to you, here - I would have been thrilled if you had.” His grin has gone sheepish, tinged at the furthest edges with worry - but she keeps the rhythm of her stroking fingers steady, and after a moment the worry dissipates. “What I don’t know is why you didn’t interrupt us.”
His eyes are half-lidded now, head tilted back to lean more into her touch. “I - I don’t know,” he mumbles, and she gently smooths one lone curl pressed flat against his forehead back with the pad of her thumb. A quiet, strangled hum escapes his throat at the movement. “I wanted to - I just,” he stops, eyes slipping shut, so she edges closer in order to reach further. “I couldn’t - deal. With him. Him and - and you. Because I...wanted you. I mean, I, I still do, but that - then, I just - I was being dumb, I didn’t want him to ask you out but it would’ve been a real dick move if I’d said that when he asked -”
“Dave asked you if he could ask me out?” Amy interrupts before she can stop herself.
“Yeah. Asked if there was anything going on between us. I told him there wasn’t because...I mean, again, it would’ve been a dick move to tell him there was, especially because I didn’t think I stood a chance with you at that point,” she tuts quietly and he grins, eyes falling shut as her nails gently scratch along his scalp just above his ear. “Plus, he’s super hot, and I’m...me. I didn’t think I stood a chance.”
“None of that is true, for the record. But if that’s really what you thought...what made you change your mind?”
“Rosa.” He answers at once. “She pointed out that respecting your space and your agency was all well and good, but also I had to let you know that I was still an option. So she convinced me to go to the bar to...to show you I care.”
“And when you got there, you...what? Chickened out?”
“Hey, I did not chicken out, jerk! I was totally ready to bust the date up, okay, I snuck through the back door for crying out loud!”
She’s laughing as he grumbles in indignation, and after a moment he seems lulled back to complacency by her fingers carding through his hair. “So what stopped you, then, Braveheart?”
He sighs, and then eyes her sideways. “You’re gonna think I’m crazy,” he says offhandedly.
“Only one way to find out.”
He rolls his eyes and turns his head away, effectively moving her fingers from his temple to the back of his head; she quickly lowers her hand to the nape of his neck to avoid the still-tender place where Brewer knocked him out that morning. “I can’t look you in the eye when I say this,” he mutters. “I walked in and...and saw you talking to him,” he pauses, and even though instinct tells her she should tease him, she forces herself to stay quiet. “And right as I was about to charge in, you...double-tucked.”
She stares. And then stares some more. He turns his head back to her, gazing at her expectantly - like she’s supposed to know what he’s talking about. “I’m sorry,” she says once she realizes he’s not going to voluntarily offer an explanation, “I...what did I do?”
“You double-tucked. Y’know -” he mimes tucking hair behind both of his ears, adapting a disturbingly gleeful smile as he carries out the motion. “Double-tucking. You do it when you like a guy. According to Rosa,” he adds quickly, alarm shining bright in the backs of his irises. “I didn’t figure that out on my own, I swear. Rosa told me.”
“That’s - um,” her hand falls from the side of his head to rest loosely against his shoulder, and his entire arm twitches beneath her fingers. “I didn’t - I didn’t even know I had that as a tell. That’s...weird. And good to know, I guess.”
He smiles, relieved, and briefly tilts his head down to squish her hand between his cheek and his shoulder. “Well, yeah. I saw you double-tuck as you were talking to him, and...I couldn’t do it. I’d kind of convinced myself on the way over that you didn’t really like him like that just to, y’know...make myself feel better about what I was about to do. But then I saw actual proof that you did like him -”
“Wait, wait - I remember that,” she interrupts suddenly. “I remember double-tucking while I was talking to him - oh my God, Jake,” she releases a breathless, disbelieving laugh. “I was talking about you.”
“Wh- you were?”
“Yes! Dave had just mentioned you and I started talking about what a great partner you are and I just - it was really hot in there and it felt like my ears were burning, so I tucked my hair behind my ears -”
“Because when you blush, it starts at the tippy-top of your ears,” he murmurs, bringing a distant memory of him screaming those same words over the swelling music from the Titanic soundtrack in Shaw’s back in sharp clarity. “Oh my God, Amy - you, you liked me.”
She’s not sure if it’s relief or amazement or adrenaline or just plain amusement that makes her laugh, but before she knows it she’s doubled over on the couch, laughing so hard tears are streaming down her face. He’s laughing too, she can hear his deeper tenor over her own loud soprano, she can feel it in the way his hand shakes clumsily with each guffaw when it lands against her back. It’s utterly ridiculous that they should be having this conversation when less than ten hours ago she was genuinely terrified that she might never see him alive again.
Her laughter suddenly cuts off with a choked gasp, the memories - the realization of what almost happened - comes hurtling back. He almost died today. She almost lost him. He would have died without ever knowing, without ever understanding -
“I like you, Jake. I like you a lot. I liked you back at the bar with Dave Majors, I liked you before you left for your undercover mission, and I still like you right now.”
His grin has vanished, replaced now by that soft look of wonder that nearly made her swoon back at the precinct. “Romantic-stylez?” He asks, breathless.
Her laugh escapes on a sharp exhale through her nose. “Romantic-stylez,” she confirms with a nod. “And...I don’t really know where you are right now, but that kiss back at the precinct…that was more than just a spur-of-the-moment thing. I know you felt that.” He nods vigorously, and her anxiety drops a notch. “I don’t want to push you into something before you’re ready, but...I’d really love it if something could happen between us. Romantic-stylez.” she adds with a faint grin.
He almost looks as if he’s just been handed a winning lottery ticket, like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing and seeing. “Amy, I...holy shit,” he runs a hand through his hair and she squeezes his shoulder gently. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been dreaming of you saying those words to me? Yes, of-freaking-course I want something romantic-stylez to happen between us, I - it’s literally all I’ve been wanting for the last year - oh my God, I can’t believe this is really happening right now -”
She cuts off his babbling with a chaste kiss, and immediately he responds to her, arms sliding like steel coils around her waist, hands slotting into place between her shoulder blades and against her ribs like it was all made to fit together perfectly. He pulls her to him and she ends up straddling his lap, hands finding purchase in what has quickly become her favorite part of him - his hair. He hums against her and it’s like she can feel it vibrating all the way down her throat and into her sternum, lighting her up with warmth and familiarity from the inside out.
“Mm, mmwait, wait,” he pulls her back and when her eyelids flutter open he’s looking up at her with a face folded with guilt. “I gotta - I have to tell you something really dumb that I did earlier when Chisenwall was taking my statement.” She lifts her chin slightly, hoping she looks inquisitive. “I kind of...kept bugging him about where you were and when you were coming back. And he assumed we were dating, and asked me how long we’d been together.”
Amy furrows her brow, hoping she looks convincingly confused. “What’d you say?”
A faint pinkish tinge blossoms across his cheeks. “Um...I might’ve...told him we’ve been dating for a year.” She raises her eyebrows and he tightens his grip around her at once, as if afraid she’s going to push herself up and away from him. “I just - I was still so freaked out about everything, and - and he asked, and...I don’t know,” he drops his gaze momentarily, before lifting it to meet hers again. “It just made me feel a little better, I guess. To pretend like we were, y’know. Together like that.”
Slowly, gently, she extracts her fingers from his hair and smooths her hands down over his neck to grip his shoulders. “I understand,” she says, and his shoulders loosen beneath her hands at once. “I probably would’ve done the same thing if our roles were reversed. And that explains the texts you sent, too.”
He ducks his head sheepishly this time, biting his cheek to hide a grin when he finally looks back up. “Yeah, that second one was pushing it and I knew it. I just hoped you’d give me a free pass because of everything.”
She leans forward and kisses the end of his nose and the center of his forehead in quick succession. “There might’ve been a little part of me hoping you actually would hold me to it,” she confesses in a whisper.
His eyes light up.
She ends up on her side, back pressed against Jake’s front, one arm extended over the edge of his couch serving as a pillow beneath her head, the other hanging loosely over the curve of her waist. Their legs are sandwiched together, hopelessly tangled on the other end of the couch, and as she reaches for the DVD remote on his coffee table and fumbles over the Play button, she feels him leaning forward to press a kiss to the exposed skin on the back of her neck. The familiar opening notes of the movie begin to flood the quiet apartment and she settles backwards into him, smiling when his arm around her waist pulls her closer still.
“Hey, Ames?” He asks quietly as the opening credits flash across the screen.
“Hm?”
“I hope this doesn’t sound too, uh, suggestive - I really don’t mean it to be - but, um, would you - will you stay here tonight? I just, I’m still a little bit freaked out about everything that happened and I’m afraid that if you leave I might have another -”
“Jake,” she interrupts softly. He falls silent at once and she grips his forearm where it rests against her stomach with both hands, turning her head back to look him in the eye as best she can. “Of course I’ll stay with you tonight. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
He seems to sag in relief before he pushes himself up slightly, neck craning, and she turns just enough so that he can kiss her slowly. A breathy whisper of a moan escapes the back of her throat as a hand curls around the back of his neck, one he echoes deeper in his chest. It grows steadily more heated, their hands greedier in their touches, and when he finally pulls away and rests his forehead against hers, he’s panting.
“If someone told me when I woke up this morning that I would end up making out with you on my couch while we watch Die Hard before ten PM, I...don’t know what I would’ve done,” he mumbles, and her answering laugh is quiet and bubbling. “Never would’ve guessed everything that happened in between, but...dare I say it...worth it.”
“No,” she says sharply, lightly thumping the back of his neck when he drops his head to bury his face in her neck. “No way. We would’ve happened eventually, I think you know that. What happened to you today was terrifying, okay? In fact, as your secondary on that case, I’m actually furious you didn’t even bother to text me before you went in there after Brewer -”
He pushes himself up suddenly and cuts her off with a strong kiss, one that has her eyes slamming shut and hands scrambling for purchase. He kisses her desperately and her toes are curling in her socks and good grief he’s good at this -
He pulls back suddenly and when her eyes flutter open he’s watching her, amused. “That’s a neat new trick,” he mutters to himself.
“I’m either gonna smack the smug off of you or I’m gonna kiss it off. Your choice, Peralta.”