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Amy is, unsurprisingly, quiet on the drive home.
It’s not the same desperate sadness Jake found her in on the couch in the break room, but there is a definite air of melancholy to the way she stares out the window. Elbow propped against the door, fingers curled against her chin, contemplative, quiet, quiet.
He doesn’t dare turn on the radio.
He knows it doesn’t have anything to do with him (not directly, at least). He knows she’s lost in her own thoughts, in her own memories - likely all the unpleasant ones, given the week she’s just had. He knows this, and yet, there is some primitive ne’er-developed sector of his brain that has had silence equating with anger and punishment since he served as a seven-year-old witness to his parents deploying such tactics against each other. He knows it isn’t about him, but when she sighs and briefly closes her eyes, he feels his anxiety spike.
He doesn’t dare turn on the radio, but he does flinch when he clears his throat.
“You hungry?” His voice rasps from lack of use and Amy’s eyelids hang lower than usual when she turns to look at him curiously.
She shrugs and chews the inside of her cheek. “I guess I need to eat,” she murmurs. “I’ve been living off of Cheez-Its from the vending machine for most of the week. What’re you in the mood for?”
He opens his mouth, the word pizza practically tripping over his tongue, before he hesitates. “Um…you should choose.”
Her brow furrows. “I should choose? Why ‘should’?”
“Because - ‘cause you’re the one who hasn’t had real food in a week, you just said you’ve been living off Cheez-Its.”
“So this has nothing to do with you feeling needlessly guilty over everything I told you about and trying to make it up to me?”
“That’s - I’m - are you mad at me?”
The question erupts from the confines of his chest before he can stop it. Amy makes a noise - one of indigence - just as the street light ahead flashes to red. He has no choice but to bring the car to a stop; he has no choice but to meet her bemused gaze.
“Why on earth would you think that I’m mad at you?”
Jake bites out a sigh and scrubs the heels of his hands against his eyes, willing the right words to come to him. “I just had no idea how bad it is for you and for every other woman on the planet. And I feel like such a jerk for not saying something to every creepy or stupid or just plain mean guy who’s said or done stuff like that to you while I’m around. I mean, you’re my wife. If I can’t recognize when crap like that is happening to you, I’m definitely not recognizing when it happens to, say, Rosa, or Gina, or - or anyone. I’m mad at myself, and you’ve been really quiet this whole ride home - I don’t know, I thought you were, like, ignoring me because you’re mad at me, too.”
The light flashes green, but he doesn’t dare look away - not when Amy’s looking at him like that, all overflowing with concern and affection and breathtaking love. “Jake,” she murmurs.
The car behind them honks.
“Pull over up there.”
He does as she says, waving in apology as he steps on the gas. Amy waits until he’s safely pulled over, until the cars behind them are passing them without swerving, before reaching across the console and grabbing his right hand. “I am not mad at you, not at all. I just want to get that out of the way first and foremost.” She squeezes his hand between both of hers, and a sense of calm overtakes his entire mind. “Secondly…I think that a more productive way for you to look at this is by recognizing that this is a learning opportunity for you. You’ve never had to directly deal with this culture from a woman’s perspective before, so I understand how and why you wouldn’t be aware of it when it happens. I’ve never blamed you. But now that you are aware of it, you can learn how to watch for it and recognize it, and you can be better in the future. There are plenty of educational resources out there, but just the fact that you want to be better is the exact reason why I could never be angry at you over any of this. I love you so much, Jake Peralta.”
She lifts his hand up to her lips and presses a kiss against his knuckles, and he squeezes her hand gently, letting his head fall back against the headrest. “I meant what I said when I proposed to you,” he murmurs as she slowly strokes the back of his wrist with her thumb. “You really are the best detective I know. Best detective, period. The numbers don’t lie.” Tears have sprung up in her eyes; he squeezes her hand a little harder. “There isn’t a single person on the planet who can take that from you. You’re the kind of detective - the kind of person that I wanted to be when I grew up, and every single day I wake up more happy and excited than the last because it’s one more day I get to spend with you. You’re brilliant, you’re so funny, and you’re the love of my life, Ames. I love you so, so much.”
The tears spill down her cheeks as she leans forward, curling her free hand around the back of his neck to anchor him down toward her. They meet in the middle - the kiss somewhere in the grey between chaste and desperate - and when they break she stays close, forehead pressing against his almost insistently, so he can feel her full-body tremor as she sniffles and shivers.
“Thank you,” she whispers, the warmth of her breath washing over his chin.
He responds by leaning back and pressing a kiss to her forehead before she can lean away; he turns his right hand still clasped in hers so that their fingers interlock and squeezes three times as he flashes a smile at her. “Let’s go home and get some pizza,” he says as he eases the car back into the flow of traffic.
“I knew you had an opinion,” she says through a grin as she pulls his hand into her lap.
“Yeah…sorry. I freaked out a little and made it about me and that wasn’t cool. You were just really quiet.”
“I was thinking about Carrie,” she says softly, “and about how Rosa was right. That maybe I ruined Carrie’s career, and possibly her life. And I was thinking about how I really don’t want to go to work tomorrow to have Rosa say ‘I told you so.’ I wasn’t ignoring you, not on purpose.”
“I know. I know. But, Amy, you did the right thing and you did it really well. It’s not your fault that the company is corrupt, and it’s definitely not your fault that they basically iced her out after she came forward and pursued the case. You and Carrie were and still are both in the right. And as for Rosa, I don’t think she’d do that to you, but I can text her right now and tell her to leave you alone tomorrow -”
“No, no, you don’t have to do that,” Amy interrupts wearily. “I appreciate the offer, but…this was my decision. I have to face the consequences.”
He glances at her to find her staring down at their joined hands, free fingertip ghosting over their laced fingers. “You don’t have to face them alone, though,” he reminds her as he returns his gaze to the road. “You definitely don’t have to face Rosa alone. In fact, I’d advise against it, since she’s the most terrifying person on the planet.” He manages to draw a chuckle out of her at that; the sound is like long-forgotten music to his ears, invigorating from the inside out. “You have the best laugh.”
She squeezes his hand. “Sorry I’ve been so quiet.”
“You don’t have to apologize -”
“No, but I want to. Because I don’t always realize that I’m doing that and I know how much it bothers you. I can’t guarantee that I’ll always be able to keep myself from doing it in the future, but I can promise that if I ever am mad at you for something, I’ll tell you. Deal?”
He flashes her another smile - this one decidedly more grateful. “Deal.”
He’s still grateful three hours later, seated on the couch with his feet propped up on the coffee table. He’s got a belly full of pizza and contentment in his veins, spurred on by the near-inaudible snoring coming from Amy, currently sound asleep with her head in his lap. He’ll move her to the bed before midnight, he decides, but for now he doesn’t care to risk waking her before she hits four solid hours of sleep. So with careful, restrained movements, he pulls the blanket folded over the back of the couch down and pulls it over her body, contorting his spine as much as he can in order to get both of her feet covered.
And once he’s sure she’s covered as much as possible, he takes the remote and toggles onto Netflix’s search function, slowly toggling around the keyboard until he’s typed out ‘feminism’ in the search bar. He chooses the third one down in the results, and as his selection begins to load, he gently runs his fingers through Amy’s hair.