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Jake high-fives Amy on his way out of the shower and her way in. Once upon a time in their relationship they would have showered together if they were running late for work and needed to save some time (and more likely making themselves even later). But they’ve been married three months now and living together for two years and honestly, shower sex is super overrated. It’s crazy slippery and someone always bumps an elbow or gets soap in a really uncomfortable place and it’s too cramped to get the right angles or leverage.
Still, it’s fun watching Amy’s butt disappear behind the shower curtain.
Jake grins to himself as he turns to the medicine cabinet. The mirror is steamed over and he resists clearing a spot with his hand – Amy hates the smudges – and opens the door to grab his contacts. For a second he’s confused when he can’t find the familiar frog-face case he keeps his in, but then he remembers Amy made him throw the case out after he dropped it in the toilet. He sighs and takes out the boring blue case instead.
He’s only had contacts for about a year and he’s still not good at putting them in blind, so when he closes the cabinet door he glances at the shower, and Amy’s hazy (but still somehow sexy) profile under the water, and then rubs clean a corner of the mirror so he can see what he’s doing.
The first one pops in but feels weird against his eyelid, like it’s at the wrong angle (which yes, he knows is impossible, it’s a circle), but he blinks a few times and it seems to settle. The same happens with the second one. His vision is a little off but the bathroom’s full of steam so he just closes his eyes as he towels himself off and slips on the boxers he slept in.
He opens his eyes again as he turns toward the bedroom – and for a second he thinks he’s having a stroke. He doesn’t have any idea what a stroke feels like (he’s not entirely sure what a stroke is, actually) but the sudden blurred vision, the way the familiar lines and shapes of their bedroom have gone all sideways, and the accompanying vertigo must mean that something is very, very wrong. Jake stumbles toward the bed, hands flailing out in front of him because he can’t see , and practically collapses. His heart is hammering in his chest and he’s blinking madly, eyes tearing up.
His eyes – Jake laughs out loud when he figures it out. He’s put in Amy’s contact lenses. She’d even told him when he borrowed her extra contact lens case to be careful they didn’t mix them up.
He’s massively relieved that his brain isn’t going to explode (he’s pretty sure that’s what a stroke does), and he flops back on the bed, blinking up at the blurry ceiling fan spinning slowly overhead. His vision is still totally screwed up but the contacts aren’t actually uncomfortable, and as long as he just lies there he doesn’t feel dizzy.
It occurs to him that in a way, he’s seeing through Amy’s eyes. And he knows that’s not really how it works and that Amy would tell him he’s being ridiculous but- it’s also kind of true.
He smiles to himself as he pushes up on his elbows and slowly looks all around their bedroom, taking in the familiar and yet suddenly new surroundings. He squints at their matching bedside lamps and the floral prints hanging on either side of the headboard, the colors and shapes fuzzy, taking on new forms. The ferns on top of the armoire are a dark, muddy green, and their blurry arms seem to be waving at him in the breeze from the fan. The wicker laundry basket in the corner is a friendly looking lump, the bookcase a somewhat threatening dark tower, looming over the bed.
He knows this room so well that he could close his eyes and perfectly imagine the line-up of items on Amy’s dresser: the bottles of perfume and lotion, the silver tree that holds her few pieces of jewelry, the quilted box that her abuela gave her long ago, still holding the keepsakes of a child, shells and foreign coins and shiny buttons. He cranes his head to look behind him anyway, to see the shape of them from a fresh, Amy perspective.
He’s been seeing the world through her eyes for years now, really – as a partner and as a friend, as someone he loves and as someone he will spend the rest of his life with. But it hits him anew, now that he’s literally (sort of) seeing through her eyes, how incredibly lucky he is. No one else gets to be this close to her, gets to share her life with her and experience the world with her always at his side. His heart seizes at the power of that thought.
This woman – somehow he finds a way to love her more every single day.
“Jake!” Amy’s panicked voice shakes him out of his near-blind reverie, and Jake sits up, looking blearily toward the bathroom.
“What is it? Are you okay?”
Amy doesn’t answer right away, but Jake makes out her hazy silhouette in the bathroom doorway, steam puffing out around her so she looks like a dream, soft and ethereal.
“Ames?”
“Why am I wearing your contact lenses?”
Jake shuts his mouth. He blinks at her and though it doesn’t help clear his vision, he feels pretty confident that she looks annoyed. Perhaps very annoyed.
Then she tilts her head to one side, and he can feel her eyes on his face, and she says, soft this time, “You’re looking at the world through my eyes, aren’t you.”
“Maybe?”
Amy stumbles toward him, arms outstretched the same way his were, towel wrapped around her body, and when she bumps into his knees she grabs onto his shoulders and peers into his eyes (probably – even up close he can’t see too well).
She says, “You are a ridiculous goofball and I love you, so much.”
He beams back up at her and says, “I love you,” and he kisses her with his eyes – her eyes – wide open.
+++
Amy refuses to let him have his own contacts back after they’ve both taken the lenses out of their eyes.
“They’ve been in my eyes. That’s gross,” she says.
“But I’ve just been wearing your contact lenses for the past five minutes,” Jake says.
“Yes, and that was sweet, but also gross,” Amy says, and dumps his contacts into the trash, along with her own.
The thing is: Amy has a backup pair. Jake does not. He was down to his last pair and hadn’t gotten around to ordering more and yes, Amy told him ages ago to just get the daily disposables so he’d always have a huge supply on hand but he hasn’t yet.
“You can’t go to work blind,” she says, following him into the kitchen once they’re both finally dressed.
“What do you think I did before contacts?” Jake says.
“I try not to think about that,” Amy says. “Seriously, put on your glasses, babe.”
He rolls his eyes – his back is to her, so it’s safe – and squints into the refrigerator to make sure he grabs the orange soda and not the Orangina bottle. When he turns around, Amy’s right in front of him, close enough that he can see her just fine.
“Please?” she says.
She doesn’t wait for him to reply, just unfolds his glasses and carefully slides them onto his face, nudging them into place with a finger. The room snaps into focus, startling and satisfying at once.
“Better?” Amy says.
Jake shrugs and mutters “I don’t know” under his breath even though he knows he’s being childish. It’s only when he sits down at the table with his bowl of Froot Loops that he realizes he’s grabbed the Orangina after all.
When Amy hands him the orange soda instead, the smirk on her face is clear as day.
+++
No one at the precinct cares about his glasses. The only person who says anything is Charles, and he tells Jake that he looks like an international spy slash billionaire playboy slash Russian dancer.
“All three?” Jake says.
“Not all at once, but yes,” Charles says.
“Cool,” Jake says, and means it.
He’s still not planning to ever wear the glasses in public again, until he’s walking out of the precinct with Amy, their shifts ending at the same time for once, and she yanks him by his badge into a dark corner of the parking garage and mauls him with her lips.
“What was that for?” Jake says, panting, when she finally breaks away. His glasses have steamed up, and he reaches up to take them off so he can wipe them on his shirt.
Amy grabs his hand though and growls. “Leave them on.”
“Oh,” Jake says. And then, “Oh.”
He does eventually get new contacts. Just- not right away.