Work Text:
Jake is cradling the bomb when he walks out of Pam’s hospital room. The base of it is in one palm, the detonator mechanism in the other, and he’s holding it close to his chest. When the person in the bomb suit approaches – Jake can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman because of the head to toe Kevlar – he feels a weird moment of hesitation, like he’s reluctant to hand over this apparatus, like it’s somehow become precious to him. Then he reminds himself it’s a bomb.
His hands are steady as he passes it over, mindful of how fragile the device feels in his arms, and he’s suddenly, bizarrely reminded of the moment Terry handed him Ava, and how careful they both had been in the transfer from one embrace to the other.
It’s only when he’s let go of the bomb and the person in the bomb suit has turned away that the shaking begins. He can’t catch his breath and a cold sweat breaks out across his brow, and he’s convinced the lights are going a little dim, and then someone catches him by the elbow and walks him a few steps to a bench. The new person tells him to sit down and put his head between his legs and breathe. When Jake’s sure he’s not going to pass out he looks up and offers a weak smile to the man crouched in front of him, who’s got a bomb squad patch on his jacket.
Jake thinks of Teddy and of his wedding day and says, “I need to talk to my wife.”
“Okay, Detective Peralta, we’ll get her on the phone in a minute-”
“No, she’s here in the hospital. Give me a minute, I’ll just go-” He moves to stand and the bomb squad guy lays a hand on his knee.
“Detective, I promise you can talk to your wife as soon as we’re done, but I need to ask you a few questions first.”
The man’s eyes are kind and Jake gets the feeling that he understands, and so he swallows and nods once. The man stands and jerks his head toward the end of the hallway, opposite from the direction the bomb was taken, and Jake follows him past an exit sign and into a stairwell and down to a lounge on the first floor that’s been overrun with more people in uniform than Jake can count. He can’t imagine more than half an hour has passed since he told Terry to get them backup, but somehow a few dozen people are already here, plus surely more outside. The bomb squad man leads Jake to a table pushed to one wall and someone sets a bottle of water in front of him and even though it’s water Jake swallows almost half of it at once.
The debrief is mercifully quick and to the point. Jake walks the bomb squad guy – who finally introduces himself as Sergeant Chu – through his conversation with Pam, tells him what little he understands about how the bomb was meant to be detonated. Chu takes notes and nods a lot but mostly stays quiet.
When he’s reached the end of his story, Jakes watches while Chu finishes scribbling a few more notes in silence. He sets his pencil down and when he looks up he’s smiling.
“That was impressive work, Detective,” Chu says. “We have people on our team who have trained their whole careers for that kind of negotiation and you handled it better than a lot of them would have.”
Ordinarily a compliment like that would make Jake glow with pride – he’d probably ask Chu to repeat it on video so he could play it at the precinct, maybe on some kind of endless loop in the break room – but right now, it just sort of sinks in.
“I was so scared,” Jake says out loud, and he hears Chu hum in agreement, pencil scratching at his notebook again.
“You’d be an idiot not to be scared,” he says.
Jake slouches in his chair, tired all of a sudden as the adrenaline drains away. Chu snaps his notebook closed and tells Jake to stay put for a moment, and he disappears into the crowd of uniforms. Jake leans his head against the wall behind him and watches the room in a hazy sort of way as his mind flashes over this ridiculous day he’s had.
He sees Amy’s warm brown eyes and the soft, secret smile that reminds him he’s her favorite person, and she’s his. He sees her devastated and hurt, and fierce. Amy works so hard for everything she has, and it’s one of so many things he loves about her. Of course she would be just as passionate about having children, about having a family of her own, as she would about her career and her marriage. He respects that. He loves that.
And he sees now that he can meet her there. If he’s brutally honest, he knows that eventually he would have let her talk him into the kid thing – if it’s what she wants, he’ll give it to her, always. But she doesn’t need to bully him, because he can do this. He can take his fear and bundle it into something else. Maybe even something beautiful and precious to him.
He may have been sure of himself when he became a cop, when he married Amy, when he bought those Jordans. But not everything has to be so simple. Love can be scary and messy and complicated, he knows that as well as anyone. And Jake is great at scary and messy and complicated. He should have that printed on his business cards (he’s not sure he actually has business cards).
“Hey,” Jake says, standing as Chu walks up again. “I really need to see my wife.”
“Yeah, you’re free to go for now,” Chu says. He shakes Jake’s hand and nods his head toward the door. “We’ll bring you in for a full debrief tomorrow, but go home and get some rest. They’re sending your wife down now.”
Chu hands him his leather jacket – Jake has no idea where he left it – and escorts him out the door.
And when Jake finally sees Amy, he knows.