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oh, i’ll take your hand when thunder roars
i’ll hold you close, i’ll stay the course
i promise you from up above
that we’ll take what comes
take what comes, love
Considering he hasn’t seen his girlfriend since the latest visiting day was cut short and he only just escaped being stabbed and castrated by Romero’s gang by a hair’s breadth, Jake figures it’d be best of him to perform some super romantic gesture when they finally reunite for the first time. For example, he could give a lengthy, poetic speech containing declarations of love so well-formulated they’d be right at home in a Nicholas Sparks novel. He could propose to her right then and there, completely ignoring how he’s both still ring-less and can think of more idyllic or meaningful places to pop the question than outside a correctional facility. He could lift her up and spin her round while kissing her to imitate the classical Hollywood happy ending. He could even do all three of these ideas following each other.
He ends up not doing any of them.
Because the moment he lays eyes on her sitting on a chair in the impersonal waiting room, biting her nails and staring coldly at the floor, he bursts into tears.
They’re not even cute tears, such as the kind you dab away with the back of your hand and pretend your eyes didn’t tear up at all to the end of the eighth Harry Potter movie.
No, this is full on ugly crying. And it won't even stop. He’s a snivelling, close-to-bawling mess hugging her tight and whispering in her ear how he missed her so much and she strokes his close-cropped hair and says she missed him more and he thinks impossible, because it should be.
His hand rests on hers as they drive to the airport, his thumb rubbing close circles over the soft skin while they chat. South Carolina is passing by outside the car windows, and he makes a promise to himself never to re-enter the state while Amy recaps the events of the last two months.
Gina’s only weeks away from having her baby. Nikolaj is doing great in his new year in school and Charles won’t stop talking about it. She worked a serial arson case she knows he would have loved. She went to dinner at Holt and Kevin’s house one night, which she says was the highlight of her time without him even though her allergies made her spend half the occasion sneezing. When they weren’t working to bust Hawkins, their lives moved on while his stood still, diminished to a reality of bright orange jumpsuits, inhumane guards and food worse than the time Amy tried to make a pulled pork stew by herself. He refrains from telling her how much it hurts to think about, opting instead to gaze at her while she drives and thank every single higher power the Universe could possibly hold that he’s back in her presence.
The first meal he has out of prison is an airport BLT from a plastic carton. It’s still the best meal he’s eaten in weeks. It’s made even better by the company, of course - chatting away almost nervously next to him, continuing to tell him stories and only sometimes going silent to let him know she missed him with a gentle squeeze of his shoulder - their secret code. He smiles then, meets those dark brown eyes he hopes their eventual children will inherit and tells her repeatedly babe, there is no way you missed me more than I missed you .
Both of them fall asleep during the two hour flight back to New York, Amy’s head a relaxing weight on his left shoulder and his left arm wrapped around her. Every now and then he presses kisses to her hairline while their jean-clad legs stay tangled together, only because he can finally, finally do that now.
“Your beard tickles”, she mumbles half-asleep one time, and he wonders aloud if it bothers her.
“No”, she says quietly then. “Not as long as you’re here.”
A cab ride through hectic Brooklyn traffic later, he’s back in their apartment again. They only have an hour to spare there before meeting the rest of the squad for an obligatory celebration at Shaw’s, an hour during which he spends twenty minutes walking around their shared living space while Amy showers. Everything is near the same; there’s a six-pack of orange soda in the fridge, one of his hoodies hangs slumped across a chair (except this one smells like Amy now) and the mornings’ only half-solved crossword puzzle has been left on the dining table. Most of all, it looks and feels like home, like comfort and privacy and being blissfully safe and together with his girlfriend again. As if this is just another Friday afternoon getting ready for a few drinks with the squad at Shaw’s. As if nothing has changed.
Except it has, because the moment he thinks about closing the bathroom door to shower he gets nervous. The heart beating faster, funny feeling in his stomach, head spinning kind of nervous. He barges out still fully dry with the towel around his waist to ask Amy if there’s any way she could stay inside the room while he cleans himself up, and even though she does gives him a concerned, examining look he doesn't like, she quickly nods.
He showers to the sound of her solving the rest of her crossword puzzle sitting on the bathroom floor. She reads the clues out loud and hums almost exaggeratedly while she works, and it's a blessing.
Closed doors and silence remind him of solitary now.
They’re leaving in ten minutes when he asks her the one question his mind refuses to let go of.
“Ames?”
“Mm-hmm?”
“What do you think about the beard? Honest? Is it everything you dreamt of?”
“Oh.” She blushes, thumbing at the hems of her pink sweater without meeting his eyes. “It's great, Jake.”
“You don’t really think so”, he prys, knowing her too well to be satisfied with the first answer.
“If I’m being honest, it doesn't really look like… you?” Her suggestion is doubting and accompanied by a small grimace. “Maybe? It’s up to you, but… I liked you without it.”
The smile he gives her is one of relief. “I was thinking the exact same thing.”
They’re the first ones to leave the bar that night - even earlier than Terry, so eager to get home to his kids - and Charles gives them a meaning look as they do, his eyebrows pumping as he tells them to have a good night. Amy promptly shoots him an unappreciative glare, but the fervor and eagerness with which she kisses Jake the moment they’re alone outside makes him wonder if his friend just might have had a point there.
And yeah, fine, it's been eight weeks. More, since they didn’t exactly have oceans of free time before the trial. It's not like the thought doesn't cross his over-exhausted mind when they stumble into the bedroom to change into their respective oversized grey NYPD t-shirts and crawl down under the covers. But he’s tired, he’s so mind-numbingly all-consumingly tired, and their mattress is actually comfortable and the duvet is actually warm and his pillow smells like their detergent and a faint trace of Amy’s shampoo, so he decides the fantasies he entertained himself with in prison can wait a little while. Luckily, he also fantasised about falling asleep next to her, legs intertwined and an arm around her waist for optimal closeness when pressing sleepy kisses to her lips and nose and forehead, and that fantasy he gets to fulfill.
The sound of Amy’s quiet breathing and the warmth her exhales leave against his neck is infinity times better than his cannibal bunk-mate’s snoring and accidentally waking himself by moving his forehead to close to the cold wall in his cell.
Waking up is better outside prison, too. Not even the jubilant joy flowing through him the mornings of visiting days even begins to compare to what he feels opening his eyes after a night of decent rest only to find his girlfriend looking back at him, coy smile and an offer about going out to the bagel shop around the corner to get breakfast. He agrees to it, and even though he’s devoured far too many pizza bagels in his life to be able to rank them all in a fair manner, he’s still pretty sure this one gets first place.
“This is the best breakfast of my life”, he declares when he puts his plate down on the floor and grabs the takeaway cup to chug the last of his coffee. “No pizza bagels in prison. Absolute worst thing about it.”
She raises an eyebrow, taking another bite of her no-pizza whole wheat cream cheese and scallion bagel. “Really, huh?”
“Must be, yeah.” Jake drags his thumb and index finger under his chin, pretending to contemplate what he missed most during his eight weeks of hell even though he knows the answer clear as day. “Can’t remember anything else I missed in there. Total blank. No search results found.”
She rolls her eyes at him the same way she’s done practically since the day they first started working together, the sight of it so familiar and heartwarming by now, and he budges immediately.
“Fine. I missed you. A lot. Like, a lot-a lot. All the time. Even more than pizza bagels.” He gives his grease-stained plate a longing look. “Ouch. That hurt to admit.”
“Well, I was planning to tell you I missed you too, but you just practically compared me to a pizza bagel. So no go.”
“I said you were better than a pizza bagel! That’s some serious stuff”, he argues, giving his best attempt at a moping face. “I can’t believe I didn’t win you over!”
Amy grins then, laughing and kissing him on the cheek before returning to today’s New York Times puzzle. “You already won me over, Pineapples. Pizza bagel love declarations and whatnot.”
They spend most of the day talking and napping together in bed, only moving to the couch around lunchtime for a few of the many DVR’d Property Brothers episodes he’s missed. They facetime Gina for a solid two minutes before she falls asleep and they call Charles instead, order pizza for dinner and don’t change out of their pajamas for the entire day. It’s the least eventful and most wonderful day Jake’s had in months.
It only grows better when the evening draws closer and the light, flirty teasing which has been a recurring theme for the day finally escalates. No fantasies or mashed potato portraits could ever compare to the sight and feel of her on top of him, and she makes sure he remembers it.
Yeah, the first part of Jake’s second night at home after prison is as sublime and faultless as it gets. It's the second part of it that bothers him.
Much like the first night, they fall asleep holding each other. It’s a reminder to themselves about how their eight weeks of hell are finally over, and it’s a little sweaty and impractical, but it still beats the remaining alternative of waking up to find the other gone. Even when they drift apart as the night moves on, Amy has a hand on his chest right over his heartbeat and he one on her shoulder, a physical closeness grounding him and serving as a protecting charm against the nightmares.
It works until it doesn’t.
It takes a while before he realizes it’s a nightmare. Only when Romero’s bearded face and beading eyes appear on the plasma screens earlier showing a first-rate Taylor Swift concert does Jake understand, his first thought being the simple notion that he didn’t even get to see the popstar perform Shake It Off yet.
“If it isn’t the beef baby”, the sly voice reverberates through the cell he’s suddenly back in. “Back so soon… Should’ve known better than to think your little friends would actually get you out.”
“I was innocent”, he tries to argue, but his voice deserts him and out comes only a meek whisper holding little to no self-persuasion. “I knew they would…”
“That wasn’t what I heard in the trial”, says another voice he hoped never to hear again. This time it belongs to Hawkins tall frame, towering over him where he’s crouched on the concrete floor. “It sounded more like… Guilty. On all charges.” She imitates the judge’s severe tone, then snickers. “Oh, yes. It was a true pleasure watching all your little friends panic like that. Fifteen years in prison… The perfect punishment for a dirty cop.”
“I’m not dirty”, he whispers again, only for her to imitate it back in a taunting voice.
“You always were a crack-up, Peralta”, he hears before everything goes black, and the next thing he knows is that he’s dying.
He’s not sure exactly how he knows he’s dying, but he knows . It’s the only plausible explanation to why it feels like someone’s tied a rope too tight around his chest, stripping him of the chance to draw breath in his lungs at a normal pace and speeding his heartbeat to worse than the time he tried running intervals with Rosa. He went to sleep in a bed with the perfect temperature and now he’s boiling under the covers, sweat dripping down his forehead and arms and he’s dying . He’s going to suffocate or get a stroke or simply lose consciousness for good, and some distant part of him still aware of his surroundings notes that he is crying. Great. He’s not even going to die in a dignified way, but instead a weeping, blubbering victim. Part of him can still hear Hawkins’ malicious laughter echoing - she must be watching him somehow - and nothing is real except the darkness in their unlit bedroom and the sound of his pounding heart and wheezing breath as his body fights to keep him alive.
A table lamp turns on somewhere, its illumination stinging in his eyes, and a voice is saying his name.
Not Hawkins voice. Not Romero’s. Amy’s voice.
His breathing eases marginally, but it does. Slowly but surely there’s a little more air in his lungs, giving him enough air to breathe even when the panicked fear remains prevalent.
“Jake”, she repeats, equal parts worry and composure in her tone. “Jake, I think you’re having a panic attack, okay? It’s going to pass. I promise. It’s okay, you’re okay...”
“Nightmare”, he manages to communicate, feeling the worst waves of panic die down with her continued promises assuring him he’s not in prison anymore, he’s here in their shared apartment and he’s perfectly safe. “Bad one.”
“You don’t have to talk about it”, she whispers. He finds the self-control to reach for her hand and squeeze it, the pressure when she squeezes it back grounding him further. His surroundings are slowly becoming real to him again, damp sheets clinging to his sweaty skin in an all but pleasurable way and he feels bad realizing this means Amy will probably want to change them tomorrow. He should offer to, he thinks.
The last thought merely passes by before the dread still lingering in his guts changes into another, more pressing sensation. He practically throws himself out of bed, making it just in time to the bathroom to lean his head over the toilet bowl and cough up yesterday’s dinner.
The possibility of anyone being willing to follow him in this repelling moment didn’t occur to him during the few seconds panic-sprinting out of their bedroom took, but he hears the unmistakable sound of water running from the faucet and realises his girlfriend - this in his eyes surrealistically loyal girlfriend, still not entirely disgusted by him - is there, too.
“ Ames .” He can both feel and hear the raspiness in his voice. “Come on, you don’t have to see this.”
“ Jake .” She’s pressing a pleasantly cold towel to his forehead and neck, dabbing at the beads of sweat still forming there. “I feel like you should know by now there’s no telling me what and what not to do. You had a panic attack, you got sick when it calmed down and I’m going to wait here with you until you feel better.”
“You should go back to sleep.”
“I literally just told you to stop telling me what to do”, she says resolutely and although it should be impossible he can practically hear her rolling her eyes. “We’re waiting here. Until you feel better.”
It takes a few minutes, but eventually the most intense queasiness passes. He dares to flush, rinses his mouth with water from a plastic cup Amy holds out to him, and finally relaxes against the wall attempting and succeeding at catching his breath.
“I don’t know if I can go back to sleep”, he admits when his head is resting on her thighs and she’s combing her fingers through his hair. “Tonight.”
“That’s okay. I won’t make you.”
“You still should, though.”
“There’s the telling me what to do again.” She sighs, shakes her head. “You need to stop it. Seriously, Jake.”
“Okay”, he tells her, but his guilty conscience isn’t agreeing.
His conscience does not get lighter as his third day as a free man progresses. His own exhaustion doesn’t bother him - there’s real coffee outside of prison, after all - but he sees Amy yawn and it tugs at his heart knowing he’s the cause of her fatigue. If it weren’t for his worthless head and stupid panic attack, she’d be well rested and not have to groan in disappointment upon discovering they’re almost out of food and have to go grocery shopping.
He decides it then and there, when she grumbles over being too tired to make a decent list; he can’t wake her up like this again.
There are no nightmares the next night. He doesn’t let there be.
To cut the explanation short, Jake Peralta doesn’t let himself fall asleep the next night. Sleep can lead to nightmares, nightmares can lead to panic attacks, panic attacks can lead to Amy waking up and she doesn’t deserve it. She’s spent too many sleepless nights at the precinct during his absence working with the others to bust Hawkins, mentioned it briefly in one of the many conversations they’ve had since he got home, and whilst she never says it outrightly he can feel how he’s ruined her life, being an inconvenience and a nuisance without even being there.
He has to make it up her. Although he’s not sure where to begin, he knows waking her up in the middle of the night cannot be the right way to go.
So when she falls asleep, first nestling her head into the crook of his neck and then shuffling a bit further away from him a short moment later, Jake stays awake.
There is one problem with staying awake when no one else is, though, one he quickly discovers. It means no one is there to distract him from his own thoughts.
Contrary to his initial reaction when he was left in solitary, his thoughts aren’t very awesome at all. They’re filled with fear of Hawkins and Romero and prison guards, of insistent loneliness and being deprived of a single hour of conversation with his girlfriend and best friend, of hoping but never knowing if the squad would get him out before fifteen years had passed. They’re riddled with guilt over once again having had to leave Amy and Charles and the squad behind without barely any contact, over how he once again missed his girlfriend’s birthday and over how he left her even after promising Florida would be the last time. They’re stubborn and repetitive and they don’t leave him alone no matter in how much detail he attempts to plan out his dream plot for Die Hard Six on a cruiseship.
Yeah. Jake’s thoughts suck. Repeating them to himself over and over in a dark bedroom feels unbearable, which is why he carefully makes his way out of the bedroom, out into the living room and onto the fire escape, grabbing a blanket from the couch as he goes.
Brooklyn streets are very different from prison, he finds. It makes them an effective antidote for someone who wants desperately to stop thinking about orange jumpsuits, concrete floors and meth-infused soaps. Time moves quickly on Brooklyn streets, with cars zooming by in a rush despite the late hour and inebriated club-goers laughing as they make their way home. Bright street lights illuminate his view, making clear how the buzzing volume and brightness and pure life of everything he sees from here is everything prison was not.
He spent eight weeks away and coming back is already proving much more of a challenge than he’d thought. Everything's the same, from the sullen grocery clerk manning the checkout in their nearest store to the way his definitely meth-less body soap smells to how Charles never texts him less than twenty pictures of Nikolaj in a day, but he’s not the same anymore. Two months have gone without him being there to witness them, two months in which life simply continued for everyone else while his stood still.
He doesn’t want to think about what coming back after fifteen years would have been like.
His thoughts are interrupted when the window opens again and three more blankets, two pillows and one Amy join him out on the uncomfortable metal structure.
“You weren't in bed.” Jake hears the distress and fury in her tone before he sees her. She’s bundled up in the dark blue wool sweater she usually saves for mid-December, and together with the sleep-ruffled ponytail it’d be a cute look on her, were it not for the fact that she’s clearly been crying and is now staring him down using her most no-nonsense glare, the one usually reserved for asserting dominance during interrogations. “I woke up because the bed was cold and you just - you weren’t there.”
“Sorry, babe.” He shrugs, a tad sheepish. “Didn’t want to wake you up.”
“Oh, yeah, you didn’t want to wake me up. Clearly.” She snorts before placing one of the three blankets down on the cold metal beams and wrapping herself in the other two. “So it just didn’t occur to you at all that while you were gone, I might have spent a few evenings crying myself to sleep because the bed was empty and I had no idea for how long? You didn’t consider all the times I woke up in the middle of the night, trying to move closer to you because I was cold, only to realize you weren’t there because you were in prison possibly getting threatened to death and I couldn’t do anything about it? You just didn’t think about that, huh?”
“Amy-”
“ Shut up !” She yells it loud enough for it to echo, tears falling again. He wipes them away for her, still unsure of what to do or how to react to his girlfriend’s sudden outrage except for listening. “You didn’t think. You didn’t think about how when I woke up because the bed was getting cold, my first thought was about how you were still in prison and these last few days with you must had been some kind of mirage, some dreamlike fantasy I had hallucinated to deal with you being gone for god knows how long. You didn’t think about how I tried to repeat every single detail about our case against Hawkins in my head to tell myself we were getting you out. You didn’t think about how I for one awful, awful second thought I’d lost you all over again.” She’s panting, gasping for breath when she finishes the angered monologue.
“No.” He’s looking at his feet, suddenly too flustered to say much more only because she’s right. “I guess I didn’t.”
“You’re a real idiot sometimes, you know that?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.”
She takes a deep breath and links her hand with his. “You’re my idiot, though. But I’m still mad at you.”
“I just - you were so tired today, after I couldn’t go back to sleep last night, and I hated how it was my fault. You shouldn’t have to stay up with me or babysit me. It’s not fair to you.”
“Do you know how many sleepless nights I had when you were gone?”
“No?”
“Me neither. I lost count.” There’s a second of nervous laughter there, despite the message not actually being funny, a second where she moves closer to him to lean her head on his shoulder. “Like, fully lost count. I was running on caffeine and energy shots for the first two weeks, because every time I closed my eyes I saw the judge declaring you guilty and Hawkins and you and Rosa and then you behind prison bars, you being beaten up... I was practically expecting Captain Holt to call and tell me you were dead any minute.”
“You went to prison and came back safe”, he interjects.
“I went to prison undercover with constant supervision meaning I was never in any real danger and it’s not pertinent to the point I’m trying to make here.” She shakes her head. “I would much, much rather you wake me up ten times a night than having to wake up wondering if you’re okay. Because I already did. For so many nights. And I would like it to stop now. I really want it to stop.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” He puts an arm around the blankets covering her, knowing she’s most likely chilly despite them. “I’ll do it next time. Promise.”
“Good.”
They’re silent for a moment, watching the cars go by without speaking before she asks.
“Why were you out here, anyway? What were you thinking about?”
“Nothing.”
“I’m not buying it, babe.”
“Fine”, he sighs. “I was thinking about all the things I’ve missed. And then I began thinking about all the things I would have missed if I’d been gone for longer. Like, if I were in there for fifteen years, we would’ve been fifty when I got out. I would have missed you making Sergeant and Lieutenant and Captain, and we’d be too old to have kids, and you would probably have fallen out of love with me and you’d be someone else and I’d be someone else. I’m already different. I already feel like I’ve forgotten how to be me .”
“You’re still you, Jake”, she whispers back without missing a beat. “You’re still the joking, uniquely intelligent, impulsive, sometimes slightly annoying but always entertaining Die Hard-nerd I love so much. I promise.”
“But I’m different. I feel different. I wanted things to be normal and they’re… they’re not. Because I changed.”
“So did I”, she admits, still seeming unbothered by his reveals. “It’d be strange if you didn’t change after what you went through. And it’s gonna get easier, and yes, maybe you’ll never be the exact same, or normal if that’s what you want to call it. But maybe you’ll find a new normal. Maybe we’ll find a new normal.”
He doesn’t answer her directly, just kisses the top of her head from where he can reach and draws her closer into him, revelling in the sweet bliss of having her close again.
“God, Ames, I don’t deserve you, do I?” The words feel cheesy, more emotional than he’d planned, and the way his voice cracks at the honesty surprises him. Post-Prison Jake cries in front of his girlfriend, apparently. So that’s new.
“Honestly?” She laughs again, and even in this anxious enervation it is still the very best sound in the world, made even better when she lifts his head to kiss him softly. “Probably not. But I’m here anyway.”
“I love you”, he manages to get out behind tears. “So much.”
“I know”, she says confidently, and despite the conversation they just had, it makes things feel exactly what he worried he’d never find again; normal.
The next few nights, he wakes her up to let her know where he’s going even if it’s only to the bathroom. If he leaves the apartment, she follows him, no questions asked.
He’s never been more thankful this is the woman he’s going to marry.
(With the engagement ring - in its box, carefully sealed in a plastic bag as to not accidentally spill something on it - hidden in the back of his locker at the precinct, Halloween truly couldn’t feel close enough.)