Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s a mild spring morning in South Carolina when the alarms at Jericho Supermax Prison begin to blare.

There’s been a breakout—the details are unclear, though there’s a new suspicion that the fight between inmates in the yard may have been a distraction, luring the guards away from their posts while the prisoners slipped away unnoticed.

By the time they’d gotten all the convicts into their cells and noticed the two missing, it had been hours—at this point the alarms are more a formality than anything else.

Jeff Romero and Francis “Tank” Williams are gone.

• • •

“Jake!” Calls Terry from the briefing room, “You’re late!”

“Sorry, sorry,” Jake yells back as he runs through the bullpen, holding his coffee aloft to prevent it from spilling all over his jacket.

The cops of the 99th precinct stare at him expectantly as he slides into the empty chair next to Rosa.

“What, no excuse?” Ask Terry.

“Lieutenant, I’m an adult, I can take responsibility for my own actions, okay? I’m offended that you would think— Fine, Amy had to come in early this morning and after she left I accidentally locked my house keys in the car and my car keys in the apartment, happy?”

“Don’t worry, Jakey, it happens to the best of us,” says Scully comfortingly from where he’s separating donut holes into two even piles in the back of the room.

“Yeah, one time I left my fancy underwear at my girlfriend’s house and my wife’s sex toys at the strip club! My mistress was not happy about that,” chimes in Hitchcock.

The room lights up with groans of disgust.

“As I was saying,” continues Terry loudly, and Jake mouths ‘fancy underwear?’ in disgust as everyone refocuses their attention on the lieutenant, “During the night shift, Officer Grant brought in woman for Possession with Intent to Distribute. About an hour ago we discovered that she had been carrying an unfamiliar strain of meth, cut with some so-far unidentified kind of inhalant. Three other precincts in Brooklyn have reported finding the same unknown type of meth on perps arrested on drug-related charges in the past week. Now this could be a one-off, but it could also be the next Giggle Pig, so for now we’re treating this as the potential start of a new drug ring.”

“Noice!” Jake reaches back for an over-the-head high five from Charles.

“The perp refused to name her supplier even in exchange for a lighter sentence but we now have a working street name for the drug: blizz. We’ll be coordinating with... uh, Jake?”

Jake belatedly realizes he’s standing up; the room still echoes with the shrieking squeak of his chair legs scraping against the floor.

“Oh, um, sorry Terry,” he stutters out, heart pounding, adrenaline racing, “I, uh... did you say ‘blizz’?”

“You know something about it?” Asks Rosa, kicking her legs off the table to get a better angle on the conversation.

“Maybe,” Jake admits. “When I was in prison there was this gang that was smuggling meth in through the kitchens. They called it blizz around the yard, cause meth had an image problem.”

“And you think it’s the same gang?” Asks Terry, rifling through his briefing papers for background information on the woman they’d arrested.

Jake shakes his head. “Can’t be. All those guys were serving multiple sentences, and they’re not the ‘out-early-on-good-behavior type.”

“Regardless of whom the supplier turns out to be, it is still worth looking into Peralta’s lead. Any potential information this may arouse will still be more than we had five minutes ago.”

“Captain Holt is right,” agrees Terry. “Jake, after the briefing I’ll have you look through our perp’s known associates, see if you recognize anyone. For now, Rosa, you and Sergeant Santiago will be partnering with detectives from the 8-4; they should already be downstairs with Amy. The rest of you, dismissed. Captain Holt will assign cases for you to work on.”

The room begins to empty; officers and detectives filing out to begin their day’s work. Jake follows absently, lost in thought. He’s stopped by a large hand on his chest and looks up to see Terry standing over him with a look of concern.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, totally, all good,” he says quickly, then backtracks to provide a less suspicious response. “I guess I was just... startled. I didn’t really think I’d still have to be reminded about my time in prison after over a year so I was caught off guard, that’s all.” There, are nice half-truth. No one needs to know that almost 18 months later he still has nightmares about what would’ve happened if the squad had busted Hawkins even an hour later.

Terry nods slowly, still a bit dubious but willing to let it go. “Okay. Just let me know if anything gets to be too much or if the investigation brings up anything you’re uncomfortable with. I mean it, Peralta.”

“Won’t be a problem, Lieut,” Jake promises, flashing a signature smile as he follows Terry out of the briefing room and to the lieutenant’s desk where Charles and two Manila folders are waiting.

Terry sits down in his chair and flips the first case file open to a mugshot of a pale woman with dark curls and darker freckles. “This is Marianna Bernice; 5’4”, 130 pounds, 39 years old. Not counting her most recent arrest, she’s been charged with drug possession three times and convicted once for distribution. These,” he points to a second folder, “Are associates, some ex-boyfriends, and a couple of old cellmates. Take a look.”

Jake obliges, picking up the surprisingly thick file and skimming through names, bios, arrest records, and mugshots until suddenly there’s a very familiar face glaring up at him.

“This guy, here. Francis Williams,” he points to the mugshot in the ‘ex-boyfriends’ section. “He was called Tank at the prison but that’s definitely him. He’s part of Jeff Romero’s gang.”

“That’s a lead,” says Charles enthusiastically.

Terry nods. “I’ll send a message to Amy and see if the 8-4’s perp also has a link to Williams or Romero. Great job, Jake; if this pans out we could have a real lead on a supplier.”

“Even if this is connected to one of them, we still have to figure out how whoever’s in charge is coordinating blizz distribution from inside prison,” Jake points out. “If they have a guard or a staff member doing their dirty work maybe Bernice knows who it is.”

Terry’s mouth twists into a doubtful frown. “Bernice already made it clear she’s not willing to talk,” he reminds Jake. “What are you suggesting?”

“I wanna take a crack at the perp,” Jake pleads, “You said she’s still in holding?”

Terry checks his watch. “Fine. You can talk to her. But you have thirty minutes to make progress before I put you on a more worthwhile task.” He motions for one of the uniforms. “Officer Vargas, prep Interrogation B for the 9th Ave dealer.”

“Oh, Jake is on the case!” Chirps Charles excitedly. “I’m so excited, I just love watching you go to town.”

Jake grimaces at the innuendo. “No, Charles, we talked about this.”

“Right, sorry Jake, you just get me so worked up I can’t help but release!”

“Boyle, no!”

He hurries off to Interrogation B alone before Charles can say anything else creepy or sexual.

• • •

“Marianna Bernice? Hi, I’m Detective Jake Peralta,” says Jake as he steps through the door of the interrogation room five minutes later.

“Peralta?” She repeats, a flash of interest sparking in her eyes for a moment before it disappears and she folds her arms as best she can with the handcuffs attaching her to the table. “Well, like I told your friends, I don’t have any names for you. You’re wasting your time.”

Jake nods passively as he sits in the unoccupied chair on his side of the room. “Listen, I know Francis Williams is working with your supplier to get the blizz to you,” he says. She makes a valiant effort to remain unfazed at the revelation. “I just need you to tell me how he’s getting blizz onto the streets. The DA is still willing to cut a deal if you cooperate.”

Marianna shakes her head. “Doesn’t matter if you think Frank’s involved or not. I ain’t giving anyone up.”

He sighs and leans forward in his chair, looks her gently in the eyes. “Marianna, you’ve been arrested on an A-1 felony and it’s your second offense. That means you’re facing up to 20 years in prison. Considering how much meth you were carrying, I honestly don’t see the judge going easy on you. But I can bring that number down to single digits if you let me. I just want to help you.”

She’s chewing on the inside of her lip now—that’s a good sign, he thinks: she’s reconsidering.

“Even if you can do that, I don’t wanna be known as a snitch. When I get out there’ll be people who are mad at me for ratting to the cops. I don’t need that.”

“There won’t be anyone on the outside to resent you if you let me put them away,” Jake reasons, “And if you help me now, I can guarantee there won’t be a single judge who wouldn’t help us protect you if anyone did try to hurt you.”

“How many,” she demands suddenly.

“What?”

“How many years off can you promise?”

Jake blows out a breath through his teeth and considers how much he’s really willing to offer her, how much he really thinks he can talk the DA into. The absolute minimum sentence for a second felony drug offense is twelve years. With Marianna’s arrest history there’s no way she’ll get off that easy. But if she cooperates... yeah, he can swing that. “I can get you down to no more than ten.”

“You swear I’ll be protected?” Marianna asks softly, eyes cast downward as she mulls it over.

“Cross my heart.”

“And you’ll really get me ten years off?” Her voice is almost a whisper.

He matches her softness, putting on his most earnest expression. “Marianna, I promise you I will do whatever I can to get your sentence reduced if you help me.”

“Okay,” she says. “I can tell you where he keeps his stash.”

Jake grins.

• • •

“Ladies, gentlemen, drunks, prostitutes, and my good non-binary fellows of the 99th precinct, please hold your applause ‘til the end of the presentation: Jake Peralta. Is amazing. Thank you.” Jake strolls into the center of the bullpen smugly, arms spread wide in triumph which, yeah, may be a little cocky, but he figures he deserves this one.

“You got a name?” Terry asks incredulously amid the scattered claps from officers who actually know what Jake’s talking about.

“Better. I got a location. That’s just how I do, Terrence,” replies Jake, accepting a celebratory high five from Charles.

He pulls out his notebook and reads off the address to Terry, who types it into his computer and pulls up a photo. It’s nothing special, just a dinky little auto-parts store in Bushwick that, according to the store’s website, closed its doors 6 years ago. Not exactly the most common spot for storing a supply of meth.

Still, by this point he’s learned to expect the unexpected.

“This could be something,” says Terry, “But she also could have handed you a random address to get her sentence reduced. Take Boyle and check it out. But if you see anyone hanging around or coming in or out, call it in immediately, and don’t engage until you have backup. I’ll update Amy and Rosa and see if their investigation has turned up anything that can back up Bernice’s story.”

Charles whoops. “Yes! We will be called... the BSB!”

Jake frowns. “The Backstreet Boys?” He asks hesitantly.

“The Brooklyn Stakeout Buddies!” Corrects Charles proudly.

Jake considers for a moment, then concedes with an impressed nod. “Not your best, but I’m weirdly into it.”

Charles lets out a quiet “yes!” and fist bumps the air as he follows Jake down to the garage.

• • •

They’ve been parked in their undercover vehicle in an alleyway across the street from the store for almost two hours and have yet to see any movement in or around it, which probably means it’s safe to go in and check the place out.

But Terry wanted them to stake out the place for at least three hours before going in, so, here they are. Waiting.

Jake drums his fingers against the steering wheel. Normally he’s cool with stakeouts but this time they're not even waiting for anyone in particular or possibly even anyone at all for that matter. No hard target, no objective, just... waiting.

It doesn’t help that Charles is singing “Stake On Me” in the passenger’s seat, which is better than his usual “Stake Me Out Tonight,” but it’s still painful to listen to him butcher the high note every single time.

Jake’s just about to break out the snack bag when a gunshot splits the air.

He meets Charles’ alarmed eyes for half a second before they spring into motion, Charles already halfway out of the car to retrieve their vests while Jake grabs for the car’s radio and waits impatiently for dispatch to connect him with Terry.

After what seems like an eternity to Jake’s jittery brain, the static on the other end of the line morphs into a voice.

“You got Jeffords; what’s going on?”

“Terry! It’s Jake. Charles and I are at the Melrose Street auto-parts shop and just heard a gunshot from inside. We’re going in to check it out; send backup in case there’s more than one shooter.”

“Roger that. Getting two cars en route to your location; ETA is ten minutes. And Peralta! If there are multiple perps in there—”

“Wait for backup; yeah, I know!” He ends the transmission and catches the bulletproof vest Charles tosses him as they run across the street to the clearly not-quite-abandoned shop.

They split up, Charles going to the front door while Jake covers the back, and burst through the rusty doors with twin shouts of “NYPD!” to find... nothing. Except for a few broken down display tables, the room is entirely empty. Jake moves across the floor to a doorway leading to where there were once registers and racks of smaller items while Charles crosses to the staircase to check the top floor.

Jake’s gaze sweeps across the second room. Still empty. “Clear!” He calls, checking behind the clerk’s desk and the row of shelves. There’s no similar shout from Charles. He pauses. The building shouldn’t be that big that he wouldn’t be able to hear his partner from another room.

“Boyle?” He walks back into the first room, gun still raised as he clears the corners again, and climbs the stairs to the second floor.

Ah. Mystery solved. Found Charles.

A man with a long beard and a deep scowl stands behind Jake’s partner, gun hovering a few inches away from Charles’s back while Charles holds up his hands placatingly, an apologetic look in his eyes.

“NYPD!” Shouts Jake, “Drop the weapon!”

“I don’t think so, cop,” snarls a second voice, and Jake hears the sound of a safety releasing behind him. Well shit.

“Tank! Buddy! Long time no see,” he laughs nervously, “How’s, uh, prison?”

“Hands up. Now,” grunts Tank in reply, and the bearded man grips Charles’ shoulder and moves the gun closer to the base of the other detective’s neck.

Jake hesitates for half a second—his face tightens and he lets his eyes dart around the room, looking for any possible escape—before he raises his hands, finger moving deliberately off his gun’s trigger in a show of peace.

No sooner has the gun been snatched from his limp grip than the bearded perp suddenly brings his own weapon crashing across the back of Charles’ head and he collapses, out cold.

“Hey!” Jake shouts in protest, but it’s useless; Beardy has already stepped over Charles’ limp body as if the detective is no longer worth his attention. Damn it, this is going all sorts of sideways.

“Take off the vest,” Beardy orders, and with an unconscious partner and two guns focused on his head, Jake has no choice but to slowly remove his bulletproof vest and let it drop heavily to the floor. While Beardy keeps his weapon aimed at Jake’s now-vulnerable chest, Tank shoves the gun he took off of Jake into the waist of his pants and begins to pat Jake down, removing the baton, radio, and handcuffs from Jake’s belt.

Jake tries to comfort himself with the thought that hopefully it’s been ten minutes by now and backup will be surrounding the building while Tank twists Jake’s arms behind his back and he feels his own handcuffs being snapped tightly around his wrists, which is completely unfair and should absolutely be against the rules.

“Let’s go,” says Beardy, waving his gun at Jake.

The barrel of Tank’s gun nudges him back towards the exit and he reluctantly lets the men lead him away from his vest, his radio, and his partner and down the block to where an inconspicuous car with tinted windows is waiting.

“Cool, cool,” he breathes. Tank pushes him into the backseat before sliding in next to him, and the bearded man stars the car.

“Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.”

• • •

They drive for long enough that a cold sweat is starting to drip down the back of Jake’s neck. He has no idea where they’re going or why and he can’t deny he’s starting to get really, really freaked out because, like, he and Tank weren’t exactly close in prison but the guy wouldn’t seriously hold enough of a grudge over anything to want to kill him, right?

The car finally putters to a stop after about forty minutes and he’s once again manhandled as the perps pull him back out of the car and he takes as thorough a glance around as he can. The air is salty and cool as the breeze chases away the afternoon sunlight and there are warehouses all around him. He thinks they might be in Red Hook, by the marine terminal, but he was in the room while Amy watched a documentary about the Upper New York Bay a few weeks ago and there’s something like 400,000 square feet of warehouses over here so he’s not super sure how much that helps him.

“Hey guys, come on; let’s talk about this, okay?” He tries, pulling out all the stops as they shepherd him into one of the countless identical warehouses.

“Funny,” says a new, third voice as the creaky door is slammed and bolted shut, “Considering talking’s what got you into this mess in the first place.”

Jake’s stomach falls faster than the first drop on a rollercoaster even as a phony smile plasters itself across his face.

“Hey, Romero! What’s up... dawg?” He lets out a nervous chuckle, badly overplaying the mock cheerfulness in his sudden state of dread. “You’re not still mad about that, are you?”

Romero fixes him with an unamused glare. “What do you think?”

“Ah, so, that’s a yes. Cool, cool.” He laughs again in an attempt to alleviate some of the nerves. It doesn’t work.

“When I was running the blizz operation, I had respect. I had authority. Not even the guards tried to mess with my crew. You know what I got now?”

The question seems largely rhetorical and with every passing second the urge to mouth off in the face of danger is dwindling because Jake may be dumb but he’s not stupid and contrary to popular belief he actually can be quiet when he so chooses to be so he says nothing.

“Now I got guys in the yard that aren’t afraid to look me in the eye. I got guards on my ass around the clock. I got junkies breathing down my neck, ‘cause they wanna know when the good stuff will be back in circulation ‘cause they’re tired of the third-rate shit McAtherton’s boys are bringing in.”

At Romero’s signal, Tank and Beardy grab an arm each and begin to frogmarch Jake deeper into the storage warehouse, through the long isles of packaged product and into a hallway separating the storage area from the small office spaces in the back of the building, and Romero continues with his casual conversational tone as if he hasn’t just orchestrated the kidnapping of a police officer and brought said police officer to a shady warehouse for shady reasons.

“It took my runners a few tries to get arrested by the right people but, hey, I can’t complain. It got you here in the end, didn’t it? Guess I’ll have to send Marianna flowers or something; she must have really sold it for you to come charging out to the auto shop so quickly.”

“So, what, you broke out of prison just to kill me?” Jake asks, half incredulous, half kind-of-worried-for-his-life. “I mean, that doesn’t seem like the most thought-out plan.”

“I broke out because jail sucks,” Romero deadpans, “Killing you is an added bonus. After this I’m headed out to Vegas to set up my new operation.”

“Ah,” murmurs Jake, and clears his throat, “Cool.”

Romero stops to test the handle on a door marked “Quality Assurance Office,” a paper sign in the window reading “Closed for Renovations.” The handle turns easily and the door opens into a room that’s bare save for a single desk that’s been pushed into the corner.

“This one’s good,” decides Romero, and Jake is pushed into the dusty, dim, ill-used room with dark, crummy windows lining the tops of the tall walls.

“Do you remember what I do to snitches, Jake?” Asks Romero.

It’s kind of hard to forget the feeling he’d had when Romero had cornered Jake in his cell a year and a half ago and threatened his life with a low hiss and a fake smile.

“Let them off with a warning and eventually make up and move on?” He guesses instead, because saying it out loud would make it real and he really doesn’t want this to be real.

Beardy jams his foot into the back of Jake’s knee and forces him into a kneeling position, and Romero looms over him with a yellow smile on his face and a sadistic glint in his eye.

“Normally I like to start with a nice castration before I move to the main event,” says Romero with an air of nonchalance, “Because they go into shock before the guards can break it up. But I’ve got all the time in the world out here. We can stretch this out for hours if I want.”

Yup, yup, cool, nice, specific policy, Jake gets that. Gotta have, uh, structure in life.

“I told you you’d be next, Peralta.”

Chapter Text

It’s been hours—he thinks it’s been hours, it feels like hours—since his death began. The beating is coming slower, now, or maybe that’s just his wrecked nerves and overstimulated brain messing with him. He feels numb; his legs, his arms, his face are all losing feeling. Even his chest and stomach are starting to go blank in between the burning stakes that drive intermittently into his skin.

He thinks someone is talking to him through the veil; there’s moments when he hears questions asked with a gentle and amused and overdone sincerity but he can hardly even decipher one noise from the next before the kicking resumes, and someone laughs as another rib snaps or he bucks weakly at a blow to his black-and-blue abdomen and gags on a scream that he doesn’t have the energy for, and the nausea stuck high up in his throat is painful in a different way, because he can barely swallow around it and every time he draws a quick, gasping breath he can feel bile pushing against the inside of his throat alongside the tacky blood that occasionally makes it high enough to dribble out of his mouth.

As another fiery boot anchors itself in his stomach, just below his ribs where his solar plexus is already brimming with agony, and tears spring up in his eyes as a new lance of unforgiving pain spreads its way across his body, he thinks that this, being slowly kicked to death on the hard floor of an empty storage warehouse, must be the worst way to die.

He barely notices that the kicks have abruptly stopped until the thick numbness has settled like a blanket over him, suddenly undisturbed for the first time in an eternity.

Then a steel-toed foot nudges at his shoulder and he flops limply onto his back, and everything inside him shifts, the broken (shattered, dusted, pulverized) pieces of rib and jellified organs sloshing around like the world’s most disgusting milkshake. The gradual paralyzation of his nervous system flees as every part of him radiates pain and it’s suddenly much, much harder to breathe.

He’s gasping like a fish on the dock, mouth parted and head lolling, eyes open but vacant, staring at nothing in the sudden recess.

Fabric rustles and his empty gaze is obstructed as a man—Romero, why is Romero here? He’s supposed to be in prison. Is Jake in prison? Please, he doesn’t want to go back—crouches down in front of him. He’s smiling.

“You’re not looking too good there, Beef Baby,” he says, and lays a hand on Jake’s forehead like he’s taking his temperature. The back of his hand is like a fiery coal against Jake’s cold, clammy, sweaty skin. Jake heaves in another breath, too exhausted to conjure a reply.

He never really thought that internal bleeding could be so bad or hurt so much—inside the body is where blood lives, it’s literally where the blood’s supposed to be—but he can safely say that this is the most agonizing experience of his entire life.

He’s starting to understand why Terry was so freaked out that one time a few years ago when Jake got hit by a car and ruptured an organ or two—except then it was just one teensy little car accident and they’d gotten him to the hospital before the bleeding actually got bad enough for Jake to realize that blood can still cause problems even when it stays inside the body.

Romero’s still talking to him. Jake’s tuned the words out; it takes to much effort to listen. His eyesight is steadily blurring as he settles for watching dust particles float through the air, shimmering like snowflakes when they pass through the scattered beams of sunlight that filter in through the windows.

“Pathetic,” sneers the convict. “This is the best the NYPD has to offer? I’ve had petty thieves and two-bit thugs who lasted longer.”

His boot takes advantage of the new angle and wedges itself into the side that had been safely nestled against the dirty floor, and Jake wants to cry; in the brief reprieve his pain receptors had gone blissfully quiet and the blow ignites everything all over again, frayed nerves sparking like a broken electric cord and sending stuttering signals of white-hot pain into his brain.

As it is he can barely manage a choked-off scream that’s more of a tortured moan than anything.

Then Romero laughs and Jake realizes that he actually is crying now: small, warm tears have started to roll intermittently down the side of his face and he’d be embarrassed if he wasn’t preoccupied with being in so much pain.

The sturdy foot nudges at Jake’s shoulder again, catching his attention, and he drags his heavy gaze over to Romero’s smirking face.

He crouches down in front of Jake again and leans in with a mocking whisper.

“What do you think, snitch: you learned your lesson yet?”

The question is definitely rhetorical; he should probably just lie there and be quiet and not do anything dumb but Jake’s dead either way and it always look so cool and defiant in the movies and his saliva is spotted with copper anyway so what the hell. He spits in Romero’s face.

“Fucking pig!” Romero seethes, and jumps to his feet as he scrubs ferociously at the red and pink flecks spotting his cheek and nose.

Jake flinches, and swallows, and the escaped convict lays into him with renewed vigor until Jake’s brain whites out with the pain and he can’t feel anything at all.

He’s practically vibrating from how much his body trembles, every muscle overworked and at a loss for how to operate. Even blinking is too tiring so he lets his eyelids slip down without a fight as he redirects every bit of energy he has left into moving his chest up and down.

It’s quiet except for his and Romero’s heavy breathing, one in torment and one in exertion. It’s then that he notices there’s a siren blowing somewhere beyond the four walls of his grave, and he peels his eyes back open a little.

“It’s the cops, Romero, we gotta go,” hisses a tense voice, “He’s dead already, just leave it!”

The voice is right, about both things probably. Romero’s face is starting to light up in the alternating flashes of blue and red that burst through the dirty windows set high in the walls, and Jake definitely wishes he were dead.

An out-of-focus man with a long beard grabs Romero’s arm to pull him away, but Romero resists, still glaring down at Jake with anger and disgust.

“Shame I couldn’t kill you in front of everyone, but God was this fun,” he spits, “You’re in insect, Peralta, and you deserve to be crushed like one.”

Romero lets the bottom of his boot come to rest on Jake’s sternum, slowly applying increasing amounts of pressure on his compromised rib cage and Jake doubles his efforts to breath as his chest tightens in response.

“Goodbye, Jake.”

With one last merciless smile, Romero lifts his leg and brings it back down harshly and swiftly in a crushing stomp, and Jake feels as if in slow motion as everything in his chest caves inward and two broken pieces of his shattered ribcage stab straight through the soft body tissue and into his lungs.

He coughs and gags and chokes at the sensation, and around him three heavy sets of footfalls diminish as their owners escape through the emergency exit, and in the confines of the small empty room every terrible noise that Jake is making bounces off of the walls and echoes back into his ears like sonar reminding him that death is twelve feet in front of him and closing in.

He tries to remember the first aid steps for broken ribs and punctured lungs—because even if he didn’t have those before he definitely does now—but it’s so hard to think with all the staticky white noise buzzing in his brain and all the First Responder training he’d had at the Academy was for helping civilians who were hurt; they’d never trained him on what to do when he was the one dying.

There’s something about airways, right? Gotta... keep those clear. Makes it easier to breathe. Propping someone up helps alleviate pressure or open up the lungs or something, right?

He tries to shift back to his side to breathe easier but the moment his core tenses to assist in the movement every nerve erupts in agony and he squeezes his eyes shut and a few more tears drip down his temples. Okay, wrong, no, that was a mistake.

He flops back down, his body is quaking again and he can feel his throat starting to clog up.

He coughs to clear his throat of the intrusive liquid tickle forming inside but the single cough turns into an uncontrollable bought that causes his lungs to shake and spasm until he feels like he’s been breathing in too much chlorine at an indoor pool for three hours.

It’s reminiscent of the summer he spent at asthma camp when he was ten, except back then he had an inhaler and camp counselors who would ease him through the pain of an asthma attack and now he has nothing except a slow death on a dusty floor.

The buildup in his throat is getting more and more pronounced as the seconds tick by. It’s choking him with it’s tacky, metallic taste and the way it blocks the air trying to pass in and out of his body. No, it’s drowning him.

That’s what this is.

He’s drowning. In his own blood.

He coughs again and this time a mouthful of red sprays out with it.

The kicking was painful and the taunts were a different kind of painful, but now, as his lungs overflow with a thick, gelatinous liquid he can neither contain nor expel, he knows that drowning is a much worse way to go.

He spasms, shakes, and he’s gone.

• • •

There’s an angel floating above him.

She’s blurry around the edges, made up of vague patches of dark and light, but her eyes are clear, in focus.

She’s speaking to him, he thinks. It’s all quiet underwater murmurs, though. Maybe angels don’t speak English. But her voice is nice even if he can’t understand it; all soft and calming. He lets it roll over him like cool breeze on a warm spring day.

He registers soft touches on his scalp, and after 100 years of agony it feels so nice and different and addictive, gentle scrapings of gentle fingers through his sweaty hair.

“It’s okay,” whispers the angel, and it’s real-sincere, in a way Romero’s faux-soothing words hadn’t been, “It’s okay, Jake. I love you so much.”

Hm. Maybe she does speak English. Or maybe he speaks angel. That’d be cool.

A few minutes later, he finally notices that his head is resting on something soft and solid and warm, and he’s not handcuffed anymore, and he must be propped up or something because it’s not nearly as hard to draw in oxygen but he can still feel liquid in his lungs that he’s pretty sure shouldn’t be there.

Well, win some, lose some.

His eyelids are starting to droop again; his field of vision narrows a little more. Maybe the angel will let him take a nap.

“Hey, Jake, no, eyes open, okay?” Guess she won’t.

“Stay awake, dum-dum. You can do that, thousand push-ups.” Oh, is there a second angel now?

Curiosity gets the better of him and he pries his dry lids open again. It’s disorienting; he can barely make out anything anymore except what’s directly in front of his face.

Speaking of which, oh, there is a second angel. He wonders why she’s hanging upside-down until he realizes she’s just leaning over him from above. Her halo is big and black and wavy all around. It’s a funny color for a halo to be; he’d’ve thought they’d all be white or gold or shiny like in the paintings.

Her mouth is frowny and tense.

“Where are they?” Hisses Jake’s angel, in a voice that’s not as gentle or calm as the one she’d used with Jake. She sounds scared. Jake is suddenly filled with the need to comfort her. Protect her.

The other angel’s lips press into a thin line, almost disappearing entirely from what he assumes is her face. “Still four and a half minutes out,” she replies, then: “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.” His angel’s eyes harden. “He’s gonna be fine.”

He doesn’t feel like he’s gonna be fine. In fact, he thinks that his body must really love irony because it chooses that exact moment to clench and spasm as he lets out a series of hoarse, wet coughs and another round of blood forces it’s way out of his lungs and when his throat is finally clear he whines deliriously through the crushing pain.

His angel is making low shushing noises; the hand carding through his hair picks up its pace. When he can understand words again her voice is back to sounding soft and peaceful.

“I know, babe, I know it hurts. The ambulance is almost here; they’re gonna come help you. You just have to stay awake until they get here. Can you do that for me, Jake?”

She’s so beautiful. He doesn’t want to make her sad, so he gives the best approximation of a nod he can manage. It’s, like, one half-inclination of his head, and even then he’s instantly dizzy with the exertion. It’s worth it when she smiles.

“That’s it,” she says. “I love you, Jake, so much. Just remember that, okay? No matter what happens.”

He smiles dopily at that, still incoherent and feverish but wow, she loves him and isn’t that incredible? He must be really lucky to have someone like her. Well, he’s not feeling lucky right now but... in general.

He’s spacing out, oops. He shouldn’t do that to her; she deserves his attention. He comes back to himself, barely, and realizes his head has flopped down on its side and he’s been staring blankly at the shiny zipper of her jacket.

Everything is cutting in and out like static. He can barely feel her hands anymore and his ears are ringing in a two-tone wail that’s getting progressively louder in the background. It’s very annoying.

He wishes he could press his hands over his ears and roll over and go to sleep. It’s too early to wake up and he doesn’t remember setting an alarm.

Why are there even alarm clocks in the afterlife? That’s stupid.

Why is his alarm going off anyway?

Five more minutes.

“Hey, eyes open, remember? Jake? Jake!” The hand in his hair moves down to his cheek, she pats at it with growing distress. He can’t get his eyes to open this time. Her fingers are pressing on the side of his neck now and his too-fast, too-faint heartbeat flutters against the force.

“Jake, please, please wake up!”

He can’t. He’s sorry.

There are tears on his face and he doesn’t know if they’re hers or his.

The wailing is so loud, too loud, and there’s bright red lights flickering through his closed lids. In the not-so-far distance, an army of footsteps thunders towards him and his angel. He hopes Romero isn’t back—he doesn’t want the angel to get hurt. He can’t protect her like this, and he definitely can’t take any more abuse.

“In here!” Screams his angel, and it’s way too loud and his ears don’t like it and why is she telling Romero where they are, that’s bad, that’s danger, and everything is too much at once, too overwhelming, and Jake would flinch if he had the energy.

Then her hands are back on his face and frustration is mixing with the desperation. “Jake! Come on, Jake, they’re right here, please don’t do this!”

Sorry, sorry—he’s sorry; he’s not supposed to make her sad, he’s never supposed to be the reason she sounds like this, he’s not supposed to be like Roger—

He passes out.

• • •

His eyes are open again. He’s lying on something that’s softer than the floor with hard plastic supporting his neck and pain everywhere and too many hands touching him and a blinding light shining straight into his brain.

“Pupils are equally reactive,” says a deep voice he doesn’t recognize. “Sir, can you follow the light for me?”

The white circle moves side to side without him and his eyes are open and he’s being blinded, but not by a halo.

Where’s his angel? Is she okay? Why did she leave?

“No response to verbal stimulus. Going for pain stimulus.” He thinks he feels a slight pressure at the base of his neck, a pinch, a twist, but there’s already a million bubbles of pain popping at the surface of his brain and really what’s one more. “Unresponsive. Courtney, get me an update on vitals.”

“On it.”

No, he wants his angel!

‘Amy.’

His lips form the name but no sound comes out.

‘Amy.’

He manages a huff of air this time, but it makes his lungs flare in pain and a little bit of the liquid climbing up his throat sprays out with the effort.

“Don’t try to speak, sir,” commands a woman’s voice. Jake frowns. That’s not his angel. He forces his eyes open again—when did they close?—desperate to see where she went. He has to make sure Romero didn’t get her.

“Vitals are weak but holding,” announces the not-angel, “Let’s get him in the back.”

There’s a bustle of motion that his eyes can’t track and then the ground is moving under him and the orangey setting-sun sky above him is replaced by grayish-white ceiling slates and he moans when his head spins at the sudden change.

The voices coming into focus around him are even louder now, bouncing around the small space in a way that’s disorienting.

Someone places a clear plastic dome over his mouth and nose and the deep voice is back, ordering him to breath normally, and he tries to focus on the voice’s owner through the swirl of colors. He thinks he must look like a mess right now, sweaty and wild-eyed and muttering and mumbling.

He’s going numb again, but his arm still works even if he can’t feel it and he manages to grasp onto the deep-voiced man’s wrist. Jake’s eyes flit back and forth between the three blurry versions of a person that he sees, unsure of which one is real but knowing that he needs to make them understand that he needs her.

“Amy,” he croaks, sound finally coming out of his sore, aching, collapsing, clogged-up throat. “Need.”

The three sets of identical eyes hovering above him flick to Jake’s left hand and the deep voice asks: “Wife?”

“Angel,” he murmurs in correction. His voice is so quiet that he’s not even sure the message gets across, but deep-voice leaves before Jake has the chance to ask for his angel again.

But he must fade out again or something, or maybe she can teleport with her angel powers, because all of the sudden there she is in front of him. His body releases a tension he hadn’t realized it had been holding and he relaxes against the soft cushions underneath him.

She’s okay.

And look, there’s a smile on her face. Her eyes are watery and fearful and the smile doesn’t look all the way natural but it’s a smile and smiles mean happy, right? So she’s okay. Safe. He can rest.

He does.

Chapter Text

Being dead is okay, he decides after a while.

Sure, it’s boring and nothing ever happens and he sometimes gets vague sensations of light or sound or color or movement that he can’t really decipher, but it’s peaceful and painless and his consciousness ebbs and flows too much for him to ever actually remember where he is or what’s happening or how he got wherever he is.

He does miss the angel though. Amy. His wife.

He knows now that she wasn’t really an angel—if she was, she’d be here with him now, right?—but in the brief moments when his brain is working enough to actually form coherent thoughts he still likes to imagine her as one because really the only thing she was missing was the wings and a halo. She had the personality, and the beauty, and the brains, and the perfection, and he was so in love with her and she was in love with him, too, so it’s close enough.

His greatest regret about dying is that he doesn’t know when he’ll get to see her again.

He hopes she’s okay without him. That’s what he thinks about when he can think.

Then his moments of slightly-more-awareness fade and his thoughts unspool. Like thread. Like a coil. Like... other things that unwind. A dreidel. The wheels on a toy race car.

Oh, he’s floating again. Floating, floating.

He’s floating on big waves of colorful darkness. So much nothing, tiny and expansive and empty and full and pretty and dull and lovely and boring. He’s getting existential now, isn’t he.

Existential.

That’s a big word. He didn’t use words like that before Amy.

Amy.

Amy is the most wonderful name in the world. He wants to marry a woman named Amy.

She would be the most wonderful wife in the world and she would have the most wonderful name in the world.

They would be Jake and Amy.

Amy and Jake.

He can picture their wedding. He has pictures of their wedding.

Oh, duh, he did marry a woman named Amy.

It was awful because there was a bomb and perfect because she was there and it was perfectly awful and awfully perfect.

He’s floating.

• • •

He floats for a long time, he thinks, or maybe it’s no time at all, because when he finally crashes down and down and down until he’s sinking, there’s still nothing but dark and empty and silent.

This darkness is crushing, because it’s thinner and thicker.

It’s thin enough to be pierced, and when it’s pierced he can hear and smell and he gets pictures in his head—memories—and then he gets flashes of a life before the dark and he wants it back.

But it’s thick enough to hold him there in the miserable, choking, confining nothing, and he’s never wanted out more than he does when the voices come to visit.

They come one at a time, and they’re spread out unevenly, or maybe evenly—like he said, he can never tell—and every time he hears them he feels a spark of indignation at the stupid whatever that’s keeping him away from them, and Jake wishes he could break free, but he can’t, so he doesn’t.

• • •

“Jake, the precinct is soooo boring without you, girl,” complains the voice that oozes confidence and pride and decades-old inside jokes and whispered secrets at sleepovers at four in the morning and a friendship that stretches back to little-girl-holding-little-boy’s-hand, “The G-Hive has been super supportive of me taking a break from being their flawless queen and savior while I hang out with you, so I tried to go visit Terry and Holt and all those other ones a few times to raise morale with my beautiful body and talented mind but it’s like suddenly there’s no one to give in to my lovable, wily antics anymore. I’ve pitched like four new business ideas to Terrence and he hasn’t even taken off his shirt or complimented my genius once. I seriously can’t believe I ever worked there. Also, Grayson from middle school started hitting me up on Twitter and no one even gets how crazy that is. It’s like, is my life suddenly not the most important thing to these people anymore? Anyway, you have to come and back me up before I start getting humble.”

After a while, the voice turns muted and sincere in a way that seems out of the ordinary to his barely-functioning brain.

“Okay Jake, I gotta go now.” There’s a slight pressure against his skin, a soft hand moves his hair off his forehead tenderly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The voice comes back every day that he can remember and reminds him to wake up, and Jake wishes he could open his eyes, but he can’t, so he doesn’t.

• • •

“It’s time to wake up now, Jacob,” says the voice that sounds like warmth and strength and bandaids on scraped knees and late nights crying over Roger when she thought Jake was asleep.

She recites prayers from the Torah that he remembers from his childhood, and the Hebrew escapes him but the words are like a song and he lets the verses wash over him.

“Wake up, sweetheart,” she says, and Jake wishes he could listen to her, but he can’t, so he doesn’t.

• • •

“Nikolaj asked if he could take the training wheels off his bike today,” chirps the voice that reminds him of made up lyrics and strange new foods and unconditional friendship. “Genevieve and I are so proud of how brave he is, but we’re still a little scared about him falling off. What if he gets a bruise? You know we Boyles have very thin skin. And we’re chronically afraid of everything; Jake, the first time I fell off my bike I didn’t ride again until I was twelve! Of course, I know what you’d say. ‘Charles, if he’s old enough to be experimenting with a palate of Mexican goat cheese, Mediterranean fig spread, and African nut combinations, he’s old enough to ride a bike on his own!’ I just wish you could be up to say that to me yourself. I can just imagine the cool, bad-boy swagger you’d deliver parenting advice with.”

The voice rambles a lot, but it’s okay, Jake decides.

“I miss you, bud,” he says, and Jake wishes he could return the sentiment, but he can’t, so he doesn’t.

• • •

“The 9-9 has not been the same without you,” reports the voice that dictates authority and respect and fatherhood and Halloween heists.

When he asks Jake to be okay, it sounds like an order, and Jake wishes he could obey, but he can’t, so he doesn’t.

• • •

“Hey,” grunts the voice that announces toughness and bravery and thick walls and constant support and a deep, shared trust that could never be replicated.

She barely ever speaks beyond that greeting, but he can always tell when she’s in the room, and her presence is solid and comforting and he likes her visits even though they’re rare. She watches over him, protective, and he feels safe.

She calls him a dummy and tells him to stop being so dramatic and get up already, and Jake wishes he could stick his tongue out and tease her in return, but he can’t, so he doesn’t.

• • •

“Please, Jake, I need you,” whispers the voice that makes his heart ache with the intensity of the love he feels; that conjures up memories of crossword puzzles and binders and Amy and happiness.

She stays by his side almost constantly, and Jake wishes he could see her face and hug her and kiss her and make everything okay, but he can’t, so he doesn’t.

• • •

Then he decides it’s time to open his eyes, and he can, so he does.

It’s confusing at first, because he was pretty sure he’d moved past the point of thinking he was dead, yet here he is staring into a blank white nothingness and he’s pretty sure he’s ‘not supposed to go into the light’ or whatever, but that’s all there is so what else is he supposed to do?

Everything is bright, very bright, far too bright, and it hurts his eyes so he tries to close them again and go back to sleep until it’s a little darker outside, but now that he’s opened his eyes all his senses want a turn and sound and smell and touch are trickling back to him one at a time.

He hears a rhythmic beeping that’s piercing and annoying and constant and loud and the whoosh and whir of oxygen pushing through a tube that aligns perfectly with the rise and fall of his chest.

He smells clean, thin air that’s too crisp and cool and leaves the aftertaste of disinfectant and ambiguity on his tongue.

He feels the weight of a blanket over his chest and a thick plastic mask over his mouth and nose and a warm mass resting on his arm and a prick on the inside of the opposite elbow.

Now that hearing and smelling and feeling and thinking are back it’s hard to go all the way under again so he resigns himself to getting up for real and opens his eyes again to the same blank whiteness that’s now slightly less overwhelming as it comes into focus. He makes out the bumpy popcorn texture of the white and realizes it’s not a vortex but a ceiling, which makes much more sense with the whole not-being-dead thing.

“Amy’s gonna kick your ass for this,” says a voice to his left, sounding tired beyond belief but immeasurably relieved, “Waiting until the one night Captain Holt finally gets her to go home and sleep in a real bed.”

Jake turns his head to the side—really it just flops down onto the pillow since just because he’s awake now doesn’t mean his body is actually ready to cooperate with movement just yet—and blinks slowly as the images slot together in his mind. Bright patterned shirt. Shiny bald head. Brown leather suspenders. Big muscly muscles. Strong arms. Gentle hands. A look of concern slowly growing the longer Jake stares blankly at him.

“Jake?”

Jake smiles. “Hey.” The word gets trapped in the oxygen mask and bubbles up in a fog of hot air so he reaches a clumsy arm to his face to free it. Terry grabs his hand gently and moves it back down to the bed and shakes his head.

“Leave that on for now, okay?”

“‘kay,” Jake breathes, feeling about six years old with how groggy and kitten-weak he is. “Time is ’t? Don’ be la’e for work ‘gain.”

Terry smiles softly and a little sadly. “Don’t worry about it, Jake. You have the day off.”

“Oh. Tha’s nice.” He super tired again anyway, so it’s probably for the best. He doesn’t want to fall asleep while chasing a perp. That would be embarrassing. “Gon’ go t’ sleep now.”

“You do that, buddy. I have to make a call anyway.”

Jake snuggles back into the soft stack of pillows under his head. “Night.”

This time when he falls asleep, it doesn’t feel as final.

• • •

The next time he’s awake he feels like his brain has reset.

His eyes open and he thinks hey, hospital, which is quickly followed by ow because basically everything above the waist feels sore. He remembers there being an oxygen mask over his mouth last time he was conscious, but it’s gone now, so that’s a good sign that he’s no longer on the verge of dropping dead.

He blinks his dry eyes a few times and looks around the room. There are four chairs scattered about the room, though all are currently unoccupied. The clock above the door reads 4:26 and there’s no light peaking through the closed curtains, so he assumes it’s because visiting hours have long since ended.

His body feels stiff and cramped and he desperately needs to stretch, so he experimentally begins to test his arms and legs which are, thankfully, all where they should be and seem to be working fine. Then he pulls himself into a sitting position, and it feels worse than that time when he worked out with Terry for an hour and half while the squad tried to hack into the Sergeant’s email to delete the accidental baby-names-list Jake had sent to everyone.

His core feels like jelly, throbbing intermittently, and he mutters a very deadpan: “Well that sucked.” that lingers in the empty air.

Once the dull ache has faded a little, he does his best to fluff up the pillows behind him and leans back against the small headboard. Now settled and semi-upright, he peels back the collar of his hospital gown to check out the damage. Oof. The skin below his neck is mottled purple and yellow with half-healed bruises, and a gnarly, raw looking surgery scar curves around the bottom of his ribs on the right side. A second, smaller patch of sewn-up skin peaks out from underneath his left pec.

“Yikes,” he whispers.

There’s a crash and his head whips to the doorway, where a dark puddle of coffee is spreading from the tiles into the carpet around the broken pieces of a white ceramic mug.

Above the debris stands Amy Santiago, glorious and radiant with her sleepy eyes and adorably frazzled ponytail, and his startled face softens into a smile.

“Hey, Ames.”

“You’re awake,” she breathes, almost like she doesn’t believe it, and starts pinching her arms to make sure she’s not dreaming.

Uh oh. How long was he... not?

“Um...” He wracks his brain for a good response. “Yeah.”

That’s all the confirmation it takes for her to skid straight through the coffee puddle and into the room, somehow avoiding every part of him that aches when she pulls him into a firm, desperate, devoted hug.

“Terry said you were, but that was just once and it was only for a few minutes, and the doctor said it was a good sign but then you didn’t wake up again and we thought—” She’s muttering wildly while she rotates between pressing soft kisses to his lips and forehead and pulling back to stare at him like she’s making sure he hasn’t passed out again. “How are you feeling? Do you know where you are? Does anything hurt? I can get the nurse...”

He squeezes her hand gently and she reigns it in; he notices with a flash of guilt the unshed tears in her eyes. “Amy,” he says softly, putting on his most reassuring voice, “I’m okay. A little sore, but that’s it.”

She nods, chewing on the inside of her lip. “What do you remember?”

She asks it like she’s almost afraid to know the answer.

He shrugs, then winces when it pulls on his new scars. “I was working the blizz case with Charles—shit, is he okay?”

“Just a bump on the head. He stayed overnight the first day to be safe but they cleared him.”

“Cool, cool. Um... Tank and some other guy were there. From prison. And then...” It’s Jake’s turn to trail off. The hand not intertwined with Amy’s clenches sporadically into the thin hospital sheets. He clears his throat in a poor attempt to regain composure. “Jeff Romero. He was mad cause of some stuff that happened... after Hawkins. When I was in jail.” He looks up at her. “Please tell me you got him.”

She’s toying with the messy braids in her hair. “Missouri PD picked them all up three days after we put out the APB.”

He lets out a breath of relief. Wait, three days later?

“Three days?” He echoes numbly. “Amy, how long was I...”

“It’s Thursday.”

Oh, thank god. He nods. That’s not that bad.

“The twenty-fourth.”

“Oh... that’s...” He trails off, doing the math in his head. Eleven days. No wonder Amy was freaking out.

“Yeah.”

He’s saved from having to get too deep into Uncomfortable Emotions™ by the appearance of who he assumes is the nurse.

“Mr. Peralta,” says the young-looking guy in light blue scrubs, sparing a glance at the drying puddle of coffee still painting the tiled hallway floor, “Glad to see you awake.”

Jake cracks a mild smile. “Glad to be awake.”

“I just have to give you a quick checkup before I call your doctor in,” the nurse explains, looking at Amy in a subtle request that she move out of his way.

“I’ll text the squad,” says Amy, taking the hint and quietly excusing herself. “It’ll be nice for them to have some good news to wake up to.” She plants another kiss on Jake’s face; lets her eyes linger on him for a moment before she leaves.

The nurse—Mateo, as he introduces himself—runs through the assessment swiftly, checking Jake’s blood pressure, breathing, and muscle strength and making about a bajillion little notes on the small stack of papers clipped to a board at the foot of the bed while he asks about chest pain and whether or not it hurts when he presses down on certain areas of Jake’s stomach.

After a few minutes, he swaps out with a woman in dark braids and a long white lab coat.

“So what’s the damage, Doc?” Jake asks after she’s gone through her own list of inspections.

“Extensive bruising,” she reports, flipping over a page or two on her clipboard, “The majority of which was confined to your chest and abdomen and should continue to clear up nicely. You experienced heavy internal bleeding from a Grade IV liver injury which required a three-part damage control surgery, though there were no complications afterward and you’ve been recovering as expected. Your right lung was punctured which lead to traumatic pneumothorax; treatment for the collapse was completed several days ago, but your chest is still wrapped for three broken ribs and two bruised ones.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound so bad,” he says, trying to remember how many ribs there are in the human body to calculate the ratio of healthy to hurt ones.

“You died twice, Mr. Peralta.”

‘Third time’s the charm’ seems like an inappropriate response, so instead he shoots her a finger gun and mutters a lengthy stream of ‘cool, cool, cool, cool’s.

“But you’re doing well, and aside from a few bumps early on, there’s no evidence that you won’t make a full recovery in enough time. We’ll want to keep an eye on the lung for a little while: sometimes patients who have a pneumothorax experience a relapse within the first two years. For now, if everything continues to heal smoothly, we can discharge you within a week. I’d advise taking it easy on the job for at least a month, but the details of your return to work can wait until later.”

She tucks her clipboard under her arm and checks the shiny silver watch on her wrist. “You’ve got four more hours until visitors are allowed in; I’ll send your wife back up but I suggest you try and get some more sleep before the morning.”

There’s no need to send anyone to find Amy; she’s been standing awkwardly outside the door, listening intently to the bits she could hear and lip-reading through the slats in the window blinds during the quieter parts.

She grins sheepishly at the doctor when she reenters the room, but the older woman simply shrugs it off with a quip about not having to go over Jake’s condition a second time.

“You heard the good doctor,” says Jake, once they’re alone again and Amy’s back to sitting by his bed, running her hand up and down his arm, “Got a while before visitors. You should sleep.”

“Pretty sure that instruction was for you, babe.”

“Amy. You’ve been watching over me for a week and a half,” he barters, “Let me return the favor. Besides, you’re clearly exhausted and that chair is definitely not good for your back.”

He pats the space beside himself and gazes up at her imploringly.

“Jake,” she says, in her admonishing ‘you’re an idiot, Peralta’ tone that even marriage hasn’t succeeded in completely eradicating, “Even you know that sharing a hospital bed with a patient is absolutely against the rules.”

“Come on, Ames, you know rules are made to be broken,” he goads playfully. “Besides,” and here comes the clincher, “If your back is sore we won’t be able to have tender reunion sex later.”

She finally manages a genuine laugh, cracking a smile that makes her positively glow, and relents. He scoots over carefully to make room for her while she takes off her shoes and lets her hair down from its messy ponytail.

“Hate to break it to you, Peralta, but I think sex may be out of the question for you right now.”

“How dare you, Santiago,” he replies as she climbs under the covers with him, “I’m amazing at sex, you really think hospitalization is going to stop me?”

A retort graces her lips, but it’s cut short by a massive yawn, and he’s reminded with a pang in his chest that she hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in eleven days.

“Okay,” he says quietly, as she lays her head on his shoulder and her hair tickles his chin, “No sex for now. Just cuddles.”

“I could get behind that,” she murmurs sleepily.

He presses a kiss to the top of her head. “Goodnight, Ames,” he whispers, and, true to his word, stays awake, listening to her snore softly until the pink and orange rays of sunrise peak through the heavy hospital curtain, illuminating her like the goddess—angel—that she is.

• • •

Weirdly, the whole thing eventually comes to feel like some twisted kind of closure. For a year and half before the incident (as they take to calling it), he lived with a fear of Jeff Romero lingering over his head. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Well, it dropped. Dropped right off the top of the Empire State Building and splattered like a bug on the pavement. But now that it’s dropped... well... it’s over, you know? Romero’s gone. For good this time. Locked up in a maximum maximum security facility somewhere, and Jake will never have to worry about him again.

He still has nightmares—obviously. It’d be kind of hard not to. But they’re different. Before, they spiraled, exploring every devastatingly dark nook and cranny of his imagination to draw out the worst ways that Romero and his gang could get to him or Amy.

Now they’re straightforward.

Sometimes they happen exactly as it was, with him dying on the floor of a warehouse. Sometimes Amy is the one dying. Those are the worst ones. Sometimes he’s back in the yard at Jericho Supermax and the other inmates are cheering Romero on while they watch Jake suffer. Sometimes Caleb appears in those ones, too, and stares at Jake with a hunger in his eyes and a smile on his face. But they all end the same. Romero kicks him in the head, and he wakes up.

He wakes up, and Amy’s lying next to him, the big spoon to his little spoon, and she gives him a squeeze to let him know that she’s there, and she’s okay, and they’re safe, and Romero is never getting out again.

Sometimes he repeats those facts out loud a few times to calm his racing heart.

But in time, Romero becomes just another typical occupational-hazard cop burden. He goes right up there with the Ianucci’s, and Hoystman, and Figgis, and Florida, and Hawkins, and all the times anyone in the squad has been wrapped up in an active shooter call or a sticky hostage situation.

In the end, it’s just one more case for the nightmares jar.