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He spends his whole first week inside his new not-his house, blinds closed tight and curtains drawn over all windows, the only source of light his flickering, muted not-his television. He opens his door only for Holt (Greg, his brain corrects automatically) or his FBI agent handler, Garcia. Otherwise, he remains inside, ignoring the shouting laughter of children playing in his not-his yard and the loud gossiping women that congregate in the yard next door. At night he lays in his not-his bed, staring at the ceiling, unable to fall asleep without his lullaby of car horns and sirens and the general mayhem of Brooklyn.
In that first week, he discovers that there are some hundred-thousand roads between his temporary ( temporary ) not-his home and his home in New York. Between where he sits in his crappy not-his living room and his desk, which is for the first time in two years (and seven years before that) clean. He’d packed up his belongings and handed them over for storage - well, he’d packed almost all of his belongings. He’d left his partially completed Rubix Cube on the desk pressed up against his, right next to the keyboard.
Some hundred-thousand roads between his not-his new life and his old life, his family, his friends; a hundred-thousand roads between his awareness and the reality of his situation. Sure, his body is in Florida, but his mind - his heart - his soul - those are still in New York.
He’d spent the hours after that phone call in a mild panic, staring at his team through wide eyes, desperately trying to commit them to memory. How Rosa’s hair curled wildly and tapered down the middle of her back and whipped around as she’d paced; how Charles’ brows rose and scrunched together with each changing expression; how the muscles in Gina’s throat contracted any time anyone said “Florida” like she was choking down the urge to vomit; how Terry glanced around the room nervously, like Figgis was in the walls.
And Amy.
How her jaw set the second he’d told her, how her eyes darkened in fear and something else - determination, maybe. How her hand drifted to cover his fist clenched against his thigh beneath the table as Garcia explained what was going to happen. How she tucked her hair behind her left ear and glanced at him when Garcia looked down at paperwork.
“We’re gonna find him.” She’d said quietly when they somehow ended up alone in a hallway at the precinct, and it hadn’t been a promise or even a fact, but a threat; and he’d thought that prison might have actually made his beautiful soft girlfriend a bit harder in all the right places. He’d pressed her up against the wall and kissed her desperately and let his hands drift over her, like a blind man reading braille. And for a brief moment, he’d been grateful for her newly hardened exterior, because it might actually make leaving her behind in what is effectively a war zone a little bit easier if he knew she could totally handle it without his help.
Now he sits in near-darkness, and he thinks that maybe it isn’t the knowledge that she’s in a war zone that causes him the most pain - it’s that he’s not there with her. It’s that he’s the one that put her and everyone else he loves and cares about there and then disappeared across the country to hide from it all. It’s that he has no way of knowing how this is going to end; it's that by the time he finally does learn the ending, it’ll be far too late for him to do anything about it.
On the one-week anniversary of arriving to his new not-his life, Jake ( Larry , his brain corrects) sits on his not-his couch, plants his elbows on his knees, buries his face in his hands, and sobs.
The first three days without them around were surprisingly easy, she thinks. It was jarring to walk in and find his empty desk up against hers on that first day, sure, but no more jarring than it was that first time around, which she hopes is a good sign. And the Rubix Cube - his Rubix Cube - had given her pause, too; for just a moment, she’d let memories of his disgruntled face wash over her, and a smile almost tugged the corner of her mouth up. She’d sat heavily, letting her purse and her briefcase slip from her arms to the floor, and she picked the toy up slowly, almost reverently. The plastic had a few scuff marks from all the times he’d thrown it across the room in frustration and a few stickers had peeling corners from the one time he’d tried to cheat, and she’d thought that maybe she could see Cheeto crumbs lodged inside the thing.
She'd given herself thirty seconds to lose herself in memories before she’d tucked it beneath her computer monitor and started her morning with set shoulders and a renewed determination.
She worked feverishly, her only significant pauses coming in the form of bathroom breaks and one meeting called by Wuntch to formally announce that Terry would be taking over as acting captain in Holt’s absence. They’d applauded him, but it was a hollow applause; really, someone should have stood in the back with a bullhorn and balloons and streamers and explosives of some sort to really celebrate. But that someone was too far away to know his presence was needed.
The first three days were easy, working herself to the bone alongside Rosa and Charles and Terry, because none of them ever left. The night crew grumbled and complained but one pointed glare from Rosa had shut them up immediately and they’d moved down to the second floor which is where they should have been all along , Rosa had snarled.
On the fourth day, things changed. She isn’t sure if it’s because she really hasn’t slept for longer than a very uncomfortable twenty minutes on the break room couch (she’s been caught dozing off against towering stacks of case files, too, but Terry just gently nudged her awake from those with no comment other than a worried grimace) or if it's because all she's eaten since that God-forsaken night are the energy bars Charles keeps leaving on her desk when he thinks she isn't looking, but something changes on that fourth day. Things seem more desperate, more real; her gaze continuously darts up to the elevators, like at any moment the ding! will be followed by a triumphant laugh that escapes from a toothy grin beneath laugh-line-crinkled brown eyes. She catches herself leaning forward to show that empty desk part of the case, to pick a brain that is no longer there about details she might have missed. She feels Rosa and Gina staring at her each time, but despite the blush that creeps up her neck, she refuses to meet their gaze.
So, yes, she’s on edge on that fourth day. She isn’t sure why she’s on edge, but she does know what pushes her directly over - Charles.
Specifically, Charles’ octopus balls.
She knew the story better than her own name; Jake told it to her so many times with so much pride (because who wouldn’t be proud of their best friend fighting for the freedom of the love of their life?) that it would be forever burned into her memory. He’d quietly offered her one in the kitchen where she stood hunched over the groaning coffee pot, and she’d frozen.
And somehow, in the blink of an eye, she’s in Terry’s office. Her eyes dart over the unchanged decor - the rainbow binders, the framed news clippings, the medal of valor - and she collapses on the couch. The sounds that escape her chest can’t really be described as sobs; they’re too animalistic, too primal. She feels Terry’s presence beside her, his thick tree-trunk arms around her shoulders, and then she’s surrounded by Rosa’s coarse, curly hair, the smell of Gina’s lotion, the feel of Charles’ hand on her knee. She cries and cries and over the rush of her own tears she hears sniffles from those around her. And in the midst of it all, her analytic mind reminds her that no matter how bad it is to be away from him under the pressure of such a serious threat, at least she’s not alone.
Holt finds him curled on his side staring at the wall in a trance-like state the next day. He sits at Jake’s feet and they’re quiet because somewhere between Raleigh and Savannah they ran out of words to say. Eventually Holt stands up and makes his way into Jake’s kitchen, where Jake hears him open cabinets and drawers and tut at the general lack of homeliness. Jake’s struck with the realization that aside from a few extra bags of airplane peanuts and that airport Cinnabon back in JFK, he hasn’t eaten anything in a week. On the heels of that realization comes the gnawing worry that Amy is forgetting to eat too because she tends to do that when she’s stressed out. Hopefully Charles will remember to force her to eat something.
Holt drags him to a grocery store where people stare at his pale skin and his mussed hair and his wrinkled clothes but he just doesn’t care because suddenly he’s ravenous and Holt is buying him groceries. He’s impatient and fidgety up until Holt has the burger patties cooked and the fries are out of the oven and he basically inhales his plate. Holt raises an eyebrow, but says nothing. At least, he says nothing until he’s finished his own plate.
“You cannot let this end you.” Holt says. His voice is as stoic as ever, but Jake thinks he can detect something - some emotion he’s been running from for a week - lurking just beyond his reach. “Figgis wants us dead. He will use whatever tool is available at his disposal to ensure that we are dead. But I have faith in the nine-nine. We are surrounded by the most intelligent detectives in Brooklyn, and with them on the case, I believe that we have a chance.”
The emptiness of the house seems magnified now, but Jake nods slowly. Holt is right, as usual. But the silence around them is crushing and Jake can feel all his fear and worry bubbling up in his chest. “I can’t stand that they’re in danger because of me.” He blurts suddenly.
“It isn’t because of you. You had nothing to do with this. You did your job and you did it well, Peralta. This...unfortunate situation is Figgis’ responsibility. Not yours.” Jake ducks his head and shrugs. It sounds good on paper, sure, but - “Detective Santiago would not be working herself ragged if this case was your fault.”
He perks up. “Amy?” He says, and the name catches in his throat.
Holt nods slowly, studying Jake’s face carefully. “Garcia mentioned his contact in New York, Agent Larson, said something about her. She has apparently been working the case non-stop with Detectives Jeffords, Diaz, and Boyle. In the week that we have been gone, they have collectively left the precinct for non-case-related reasons twice. People like Santiago and Diaz do not work that hard to clean up messes for people who’ve caused those messes. You should know that better than I do.”
From then on, Jake makes an effort to go outside, even if it’s just for a brief moment to get the newspaper from his dried-out not-his front lawn.
Kevin returns from Paris six weeks after Holt and Jake leave, and Amy, Gina, and Rosa are at the airport to pick him up. Amy bounces on the balls of her feet nervously while they wait for him to disembark, eyes darting over his fellow passengers nervously. Agent Larson told them on no uncertain terms that because of their association with the nine-nine, they would need to be extra vigilant. Figgis’ operation is weakened with what seems to be his entire network inside the NYPD and the FBI now in custody, but she’s seen things like this before; an injured animal is far more likely to lash out, and to lash out dangerously.
Kevin appears toward the middle of the pack, head bobbing amongst those arriving, looking like a nervous lamb being led to slaughter. The moment his gaze lands on Amy - or rather, near Amy, as Gina begins jumping up and down and waving at him frantically in her excitement - he seems to relax. Well, he relaxes marginally.
Rosa drives in her usual stony silence and Amy stares out the window in the passenger’s seat, letting Gina’s incessant chatter create a soothing buzz in her brain. Amy’s mind drifts to the living arrangements they’d agreed to; as heart-breaking as it had been, the timing for Jake’s need to go under for a while really couldn’t have been more perfect. While it hadn’t been required that the rest of the nine-nine move house, it was strongly suggested, and everyone (excluding Terry) had chosen to do so for their own reasons. Movers cleaned Jake’s old apartment out and instead of storing it away in a climate-controlled closet, she told them to just bring it to her new apartment where she unpacked everything and reorganized with Rosa's help. Charles needed a bigger place to have enough room for his new child. Rosa was moving anyways, and Gina - well, Gina was Gina and said that Jake’s old place still smelled too much like his grandma, which was cramping her style. Amy thought she’d seen a flash of sadness in Gina’s eyes the day she’d closed that front door for the last time, but then she’d dropped the key in the landlord’s hand and started sing-shouting a Rihanna song and everything was back to the weird new normal they’d settled into.
Gina is living with Amy in her spare bedroom that would later be an office or a library (Amy really isn’t sure yet, she needs Jake’s input) until she found the “space to truly live my life out loud” and Rosa sleeps over on the couch so often she basically lives there, too. Charles is there a lot too, at first, but then his baby arrives and suddenly his time is divided between getting to know his daughter and trying to save his best friend. Charles agrees to take Cheddar in, too, and Amy has never hated her dog allergy more.
Kevin is going to stay with Terry and Sharon, who’ve already made room for him. They moved Cagney and Lacey’s beds into their own bedroom and Ava’s crib moves from the space of wall beside the door to being pressed up against Sharon’s side of the bed, and they moved quite a bit of Kevin’s belongings into the second bedroom. Amy, Rosa, and Gina hover in the kitchen with Sharon while Terry helps Kevin unload his luggage from the boot of Rosa’s SUV. Amy bounces Ava on her hip and coos at her to distract herself from how lost and uncertain and scared Kevin looks as he walks through the house.
“Everything’s gonna be okay,” she says softly to Ava, who stares up at her with eyes that are wide with wonder. And then it hits her that she’s not just holding Terry’s daughter; she’s holding Jake’s goddaughter. The little girl that Jake will be responsible for should, God forbid, anything happen to Terry and Sharon. The little girl Jake loves. Amy clenches her jaw as Ava reaches up and grabs a fistful of her hair, which she gently tugs on. “We’re gonna bring him back,” Amy whispers, wincing when Ava pulls a bit harder, and a tiny smile twitches on Ava’s features.
Terry brings Kevin later when they all meet at Shaw’s, and Kevin sits between Amy and Rosa. “You’re going to find him.” He says over the rim of his pint glass. It had been an unusual order from him, but Amy supposes there really isn’t anything normal about anything anymore, and had accepted it without question.
Amy and Rosa glance at each other over Kevin’s head. “It’s a damn promise.” Rosa grunts. Kevin nods slowly, wiping the frothy moustache his beer has left on a napkin, before turning to appraise Amy.
“Even if it kills us.” Amy says, and she’s never felt more earnestly convicted in her life.
A hundred-thousand roads between New York and Florida. That doesn't even account for the long stretches of land between streets. Jake studies them until his eyes blur and they look like the veins of an animal, vast and impossibly tiny as they bridge out and away toward the coast or toward the interior. He traces his fingertip over the computer screen, up and down and back up again, and each time he hits New York he pauses and imagines that they can feel it. They can feel the warm weight of his finger, his unblinking gaze, his desperation to be near them again.
Sometimes he thinks he feels them too; there are moments when he swears he feels them, like they’re right behind him, flanking him while he works in his stupid garden or waves at the ladies next door. Those are the days he turns in early rather than sit with Holt on Holt’s front porch to watch the fireflies flicker and slap mosquitoes (good God how are there so many mosquitoes in one place?) off of his arms and legs. The days when he buries his face in his pillow and screams himself hoarse because how could he seriously be in Florida planting ficuses in his not-his front yard while they’re in New York being hunted by a mad man?
He gets better at hiding it after a while. Better at losing himself in games of cops and robbers with the neighborhood kids, in learning how to make new dishes with Holt in the evenings, in sipping at horribly fruity alcoholic beverages with the ladies next door who fawn over how sweet and funny Larry is. It’s a dull, hollow existence, and he wishes they were there with him.
He’s been gone for three months, and the smell of his shampoo has faded from his pillow, so Amy has resorted to snuggling with one of his older hoodies when she lays down at night. She doesn’t really sleep anymore, but there are stretches of time when her brain sort of shuts down. Her eyes close and she buries her mouth and her nose in his hoodie so that her very lungs are full of him, and she drifts. She’s never far from the surface, never deep enough to really recover from the day before, but it’s enough to keep her going. In the mornings she slips the hoodie on and shuffles wordlessly to the kitchen where Gina is already pouring three glasses of orange juice.
Three months. Rosa’s destroyed the break room twice in separate fits of rage and frustration. Charles has introduced Ellie to everyone in the precinct and he’d perched on the edge of Jake’s old desk to bounce Ellie on his knee, as if being there would erase the painful, grating fact that Jake really should have been the first person to meet her.
(He'd cornered Amy in the break room later, cradling Ellie close to his chest, and his eyes shone with sadness. "Amy, Genevieve and I were talking, and...we'd really love it if you would be Ellie's godmother."
She'd cried. "Yes," she'd said, and he'd gently handed Ellie over so that Amy could stare down at her sweet sleeping face.
It didn't dawn on her until much later that she wasn't sure if he'd asked because he knew Jake would be back soon and believed he'd be with Amy forever or if it was because he wasn't sure if Jake was going to come back.)
Three months to the day, and on that day, someone tries to steal her car. The operative word being tries. She was supposed to go interview a perp with Rosa. She’d made it out to her car, slid into the driver’s seat, had the keys in the ignition, when Rosa yelled something from the steps of the precinct. Something about paperwork, a signature. Amy left her door open and her keys in the car; it would only be a moment.
“Hey! ” Rosa barked. Amy whipped around just in time to see a young man in a ratty grey hoodie sliding into her car. She’d taken two steps toward the vehicle when she was blasted backwards by a giant explosion.
Figgis had rigged her car to explode, and that carjacking idiot had paid the price for her.
“We could move you somewhere else.” Larson says later, when they’re in an interrogation room, because that’s where Rosa directed her when they’d stumbled inside.
Amy feels Rosa tense beside her, because he isn't talking about precincts. “No.” Amy says before Rosa has a chance. “This is a good thing.”
Larson raises a skeptical eyebrow.
“It means we’re getting close. He’s scared.”
Later, when she’s in her bedroom wrapped up in Jake’s hoodie, she panics. Quietly and muffled into a pillow, so as not to alert Gina and Rosa, who are just outside the door in the living room eating Chinese takeout. Time passes slowly and after what feels like hours and hours, she hears a knock on her bedroom door.
She peers through her tangled hair blearily and is genuinely shocked to see Kevin in her doorway, half-hidden behind the door, gazing at her apprehensively. “I heard what happened today,” he says off-handedly.
Amy presses her lips together and bites down on her cheek hard when he slips further into her room and perches on the edge of the bed beside her. He touches her back; presses his hand against her spine, just between her shoulderblades, beneath the hood of the jacket. And Amy loses it.
He rubs circles into her back soothingly and she knows he’s crying too, she can tell by his irregular breathing patterns. “I miss him,” she moans into her sheets.
“I miss him, too.” Kevin says thickly, and even though she knows they’re talking about two different men, it doesn’t matter. Because in that moment, Jake and Holt have morphed into one homogeneous person. A representation of the way things were; a physical embodiment of the fact that nothing will ever be the same again. And the longer they are away, the further reality seems to slip.
She nuzzles further into the sheets and tries to imagine that it’s Jake touching her instead of Kevin.
He’d somehow convinced himself that by the end of the summer, things would be back to normal (or at least, his version of normal). That he’d be back in New York in time to watch the leaves change, to wake up one morning with a nip in the air, to be able to wear his hoodies once again without dying of a heat stroke.
Autumn is strange in Florida. One morning the temperature didn’t soar to brain-melting heights, and Georgia (his other neighbor, the one that makes her own Sangria) said “Looks like fall is finally here!”
It made Jake’s heart sink into the pit of his stomach.
He knocks on Holt’s door a month and a half after that and he doesn’t even have to say anything before Holt is showing him inside and instructing him to sit on one side of the chess board in the living room. “I’m going to teach you how to play,” Holt says, and Jake shrugs in the most non-committal way possible.
Hours later, Jake is no less miserable, though he has a pretty solid understanding of real chess. He’s in his fourth game with Holt, and he’s stuck.
“If I might make a helpful suggestion,” Holt says. He leans across the board and points to Jake’s queen. “Sometimes it’s necessary to sacrifice your queen for positional or tactical advantages. If you sacrifice your queen, it will allow your knight -” he points to the piece “- to be free to checkmate my king.”
Jake stares at the pieces, his mind working overtime. “Sacrifice my queen?” He says softly, and Holt seems to realize that something is happening. His captain leans back and lifts his chin inquisitively. “What, what...what advantage, why...why would I…”
He’s angry. He’s so fucking angry. Because he’s already had to sacrifice so much, he’s already lost so much, and Figgis is trying to take his queen. He isn’t sure exactly what happened, since Garcia refused to go into detail, but he’d seen the news. A car bombing right outside the ninety-ninth precinct in Brooklyn. And the car engulfed in what could really only be described as a fireball was a familiar little silver car. He isn’t sure how or why the bomb went off, just that Amy wasn’t in the car when it did detonate. No one he cared about was in that car. But it didn’t matter, because his mind had immediately spiraled with what if’s that have been haunting him for weeks now, festering and putrefying and it's all just become too much.
Jake roars and seizes the edge of the board, sending the pieces flying. They rain down to the ground in a clatter, but it isn’t enough, not nearly enough, so he grabs the little table the board was set up on and hurls it against the wall. The thing shatters, legs flying left and right, and he’s just about to really start on his rampage - his sights are set on all the stupid encyclopedias lining the bookshelves on the far side of the room - when a surprisingly strong pair of arms clamp down over his.
“Peralta! ” Holt bellows. Jake struggles against him, desperate to break free, to scream and destroy until the monster in his chest is quelled.
He yells, yells until his voice gives out, and Holt keeps his grip firm. But the moment his voice gives out he crumbles, falls to the ground at Holt’s feet, and sobs. Holt sits beside him, arm around Jake's shoulders, and some distant, disconnected part of his brain thinks that Holt might be crying, too.
He needs it to be over.
He needs his queen.
On the day that Jimmy Figgis dies, it snows.
It starts hours earlier, long before Amy slides into the driver’s seat of a squad car and starts the engine. She’s alone, and the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, but when she glances in the rearview mirror her eyes are hard and bright.
She’s ready.
They’ve positively identified Jimmy Figgis (thanks in large part to Maura, who gives her brother up after Amy promises to put in a good word on Maura’s behalf with the prison guards in Texas) and after cross-checking with dozens of NYPD and FBI informants to verify, Amy learns that the terrifying faceless monster who has nearly destroyed her very existence is 6'0" and bald. And he’d been spotted in a warehouse across town, along with around ten bodyguards.
The plan is simple. Amy will be the distraction; she’ll lure them all in so that everyone else can get into position and surround the building. And she, hopefully, will live to see the end results.
It works perfectly. She lets herself get caught, and the bodyguard punches her so hard in the face that she actually blacks out. When she jolts awake a few minutes later, her wrists are being tied down to the arms of a rickety wooden chair. One pseudo-panicked glance (at least, she tells herself it’s pseudo-panicked) around the room confirms that twelve men are spread around the room in a loose circle.
The man whose mugshot she’s spent the last three weeks studying steps directly in front of her, his figure hulking and leaned over hers. “Amy Santiago,” he says, and his voice is like poison.
She adopts her fiercest Rosa snarl and lifts her chin and tries not to think about why he knows her name.
Objectively, when she agreed to this plan, she understood that there would be some time between being captured and the nine-nine storming the building. But it hadn’t really occurred to her just how much physical harm can be dealt in seven minutes. She ends up on the ground, struggling for breath, tied to the broken remains of her wooden chair. Figgis paces above her, shouting so loudly about ruined plans that veins bulge in his neck. Distantly she can hear the sounds of sirens outside the building and Figgis freezes.
“Go.” He says, and his bodyguards scatter. Likely to their battle posts. Amy grimaces as another wave of pain washes through her, its’ epicenter in the bruise that is likely blossoming over her stomach where Figgis kicked her with all his might.
“It’s over, Figgis,” she wheezes. He swings his foot and kicks her again, lower this time, and it knocks the air out of her lungs.
Her eyes are closed but she can hear him walking away.
It takes a minute, but she hears the side door open, hears light footsteps rush across the floor, and then Rosa is skidding to a stop on her knees at Amy’s side. “You okay?” Rosa asks, tone clipped and face tight.
Amy knows her eye is black and her nose is bleeding from that initial punch, but her body is coursing with adrenaline, so it’s hard to tell exactly how bad the damage is. “I think.” She rasps, and even though she can tell Rosa’s ready to interrogate her for her lack of conviction, for now, she nods stiffly and slices the ropes around Amy’s wrist with the knife in her pocket.
Once Amy is on her feet, Rosa thrusts the butt of her glock into her hand, and seconds later they hear the door open again.
Figgis has a gun in his hand and terror in his eyes, and the moment he realizes what he’s looking at, he freezes. “Drop your weapon.” Rosa spits.
He stares.
“I said drop it! ”
“It’s over, Figgis,” Amy pants. “It’s over. We have you surrounded. Drop your weapon and put your hands behind your head.”
She sees his hand move and hears gunfire and the next thing she knows, Figgis is on the ground. There’s blood and other stuff splattered on the wall to his left and Amy stares at the place where his head had been just moments earlier.
“Fuck!” Rosa shouts, and just like that, the spell is broken.
“Coward! ” Amy screeches. She drops her gun and sprints to Figgis, seizing the front of his shirt and shaking his lifeless body. “You fucking coward! You threatened the love of my life, chicken coward piece of shit! ”
“Santiago! ” Terry grabs her around her waist and she cries out because something isn’t right inside of her and his arms are like concrete against her. She’s sobbing hysterically and writhing in pain as Terry hustles her out of the building.
They rush her to the emergency room of Brooklyn Methodist where she’s put through countless scans and tests, and hours later when she feels like a zombie walking the earth, they tell her that the damage is minimal and that she’ll make a full recovery without needing any surgery.
She walks into the waiting room rubbing the spot in the bend of her elbow where the IV had been and is met by the team, her team, and Rosa tells her through a wide, toothy grin that Figgis is dead. It’s over.
They’re coming home.
He finds out with the rest of the country while watching CNN.
At first, he can’t quite believe his eyes. Breaking: James “The Butcher” Figgis Reported Dead.
Holt is banging down his front door within sixty seconds and Jake lets him in; they sit in the living room in tense silence, their rapt attention fixated on the screen. A reporter stands outside the main police department, surrounded by civilians and other reporters, and snow falls slowly around him.
It takes about an hour for Garman to appear at the podium, flanked by Wuntch (which Holt points out in a growl) and a few other police officials. “James Figgis, also known as Jimmy The Butcher, was killed earlier this evening in a shootout with police. Thanks to the tireless efforts of our dedicated detectives and officers, the last remaining sympathizers of his organization are now in police custody. At this time I’d like to specifically recognize the bravery, integrity, and sacrifice of the ninety-ninth precinct in Brooklyn.”
Garman pauses, eyes downcast, and Jake holds his breath.
“Crime techs are still working the scene, so it is unclear at this time if there are any other injuries or fatalities. We will know more on that in the morning. Thank you for your time.”
Garman turns and walks away despite the fact that Jake can hear the other reporters shouting questions. “Is that it?” He asks, knowing full well that it is.
“I’ll call Garcia,” Holt mutters as he pulls his phone out of his pocket. He dials the number and puts the phone on speaker. Garcia takes five rings to answer the phone.
“Ray,” Garcia says.
“Are they okay?” Jake demands.
“And Jake, good. I’m actually headed your way now. Which house are you in?”
“Mine, are they okay?”
“I should be there in -”
“Are they okay? ”
“They’ll be fine. All minor injuries. I’ll be able to tell you more when I get inside.”
He’s there five minutes later, and he perches on the edge of Jake’s not-his coffee table. He looks tired.
“Agent Garcia, I need to know what happened to my detectives.” Holt says forcefully.
“Detective Santiago sacrificed herself to serve as a distraction while the rest of the team moved into position to surround the warehouse. In the end, she and Detective Diaz cornered Figgis. He killed himself to avoid jail time.”
“Is Amy okay?” Jake asks, nearly choking on his words.
“She’s okay. Minor injuries, like I said. The team moved quickly enough that she wasn’t alone with him for long. It wasn’t enough time for him to do any serious damage. She’s actually currently at Brooklyn Methodist, where they’re running tests to make sure that everything’s okay.” Jake feels tears gathering in his eyes. “I am confident that she will make a full recovery.”
“So...so...now what?”
Garcia smiles. “Now we run a risk assessment. But I can tell you, based on the preliminary impressions of the case in its’ current state, it looks very good.”
Jake releases a breath, and all the tension he’s carried for the last seven months drains from his body. He’s going home.
He’s going home.
Rosa, Gina, and Charles all pile into her bed with her that night, and even though her body aches, her mind is buzzing with excitement. Charles has been openly crying on and off all night; it morphed into borderline hysterical sobs when Amy emerged from her closet in shorts and one of Jake’s hoodies. She isn't sure if it's because of the bruises dotting her legs or if it's because it's Jake's favorite hoodie. Amy lays sandwiched between Gina and Rosa, turned at an angle so that her her ankles cross Rosa’s on one corner of the bed and her head rests against Gina’s calves. Gina lies on her stomach, elbows digging into Amy’s pillow down at the foot of the bed, nose buried in her phone as usual but very much engaged in the conversation. Charles’ head is propped against Amy’s side and his feet dangle off the end of the bed but he claims to not mind. They talk well into the night, laughing and giggling like school children, and Amy is violently reminded of her childhood. Of sleepovers with girls in her grade back before being different was cause for ridicule; back when children were children and it was all okay. Of late nights in the living room, piled on top of the mass of limbs she knew to be her brothers, struggling to stay up long enough to catch the beginning of Saturday Night Live because she loved the excited looks the actors got on their faces when they yelled “ Live from New York… ” and how safe and loved she’d felt in the midst of all those boys.
It’s a similar feeling now, even though her chest still aches with a Jake-shaped hole. She tilts her head to one side and meets Rosa’s gaze, softer than she’d ever seen it, and they share a slow smile.
Larson told them that while they were still running a risk assessment, things were looking really good. They’re due to hear back in the morning about the official next steps. And while Amy is so ready to get the missing pieces of her life back together again, she knows she’ll think back on this night for the rest of her life. This moment will live in her memory until the day she dies, so she does everything she can to memorize it, to become it, to adopt the openness and vulnerability into her senses forever.
The sun is rising slowly when her phone rings, and within minutes they’re out of bed and opening the front door and gathered around her dining room table as Larson lays out the future.
Pimento is currently on a flight en route to New York from Kansas, and Rosa slams her fist down excitedly against the table hard enough to upturn the bowl of oranges in the center. The four detectives clamber to pick it all up as Larson watches with raised eyebrows.
Holt and Jake are scheduled to board a flight in precisely three hours; and three hours after that, they would land in New York City. It would take some time, she realizes, to get their luggage and get a car and drive all the way from JFK to the FBI building where they’ll be debriefed and released. “They’ll be home by this evening.” Larson says as he gathers his file up.
Thus begins the longest day in Amy Santiago’s life.
Debriefing is very similar to interrogation, Jake thinks. He’s been in the FBI building in New York for just over an hour now, signing paperwork and listening impatiently to suit-clad agents drone on about his service to the country, or whatever. He doesn’t care. There are thirty-seven streets between him and Amy.
He finds out that Kevin has been living with Terry and Sharon, and Gina and Rosa have been living with Amy in her - no, their - new apartment. He half-hopes they’re there when he arrives, and half-hopes they aren’t. Because he definitely isn’t going to be able to keep his hands off of Amy, not for the foreseeable future. His fingers burn to touch her, to feel her fluttering heartbeat and the warmth of her skin and the softness of her hair and the gentle puffs of her breath against his neck. God, he needs her.
Finally, mercifully, an agent escorts him and Holt out to a black town car. They climb inside and Jake jiggles his leg in anticipation.
Thirty streets between him and Amy.
Twenty-two streets between him and Amy.
Seventeen streets between him and Amy.
Nine streets between him and Amy.
Two streets between him and Amy.
“I’m proud of you, son.” Holt says. Jake gazes at him across the back seat, heart ready to bound right out of his chest, and Holt reaches out to pat him on the shoulder just as the car slows to a stop.
They’d given him an envelope with an apartment number scrawled on the outside and a key inside; he pulled it out now. Four floors between him and Amy. And he misses her face like hell.
“Thank you, Captain.” Jake says, and he has trouble getting his voice to solidify any louder than a whisper.
He slings his bag over his shoulder and bounds up the stairs, through the front door, and to the elevator. Four floors between him and Amy.
The elevator is bright and when he steps inside he looks around slowly, wondering how many times this elevator has carried members of his makeshift family up and down, to and from his and Amy's apartment. The walls betray no secrets, but his heart leaps into his throat as he reaches for the 4 button, because it occurs to him that Amy has definitely touched this button.
Three floors between him and Amy.
Two floors between him and Amy.
One floor between him and Amy.
He follows the signs in the hallway that point him to apartments 400-425, down to his left. With each step he takes, his pulse quickens. With each passing door, his pace gets a bit faster, until -
Apartment 413.
One door between him and Amy.
His hands shake as he reaches for the handle. For a moment he has a terrible, awful vision of walking inside and finding her with someone else, but he shakes it away quickly as the key slides into the lock.
He isn’t sure what he’s expecting, but it’s quiet when he finally gets inside. He scans the place quickly - no doilies in sight. A lot of her old wooden furniture is in there, but he sees his massage chair off to the side in the living room. The old antique vases are gone, replaced with more modern looking decor. He wonders if Rosa helped Amy decorate.
The TV is on, volume low, and Jake meanders toward it slowly. He’s starting to think Amy isn’t there; one quick glance into the master bedroom confirms it. But he does a double-take anyways, because suddenly he absorbs all the photos on the wall in their bedroom.
He’s in all of them. Well, most of them. The majority of the framed pictures are of him and Amy (including the commemoration of their victory over The Vulture), but there are plenty with the whole precinct. Several of Jake with Gina, Rosa, Charles, or Terry, and several of just Amy with their friends. He spots a photo of Amy’s family on one bedside table (the side she usually sleeps on when they share the bed), and there’s a picture of Jake with his mom on the other table (on his side, naturally).
His favorite, he quickly decides, is one of them in the precinct. He can tell based on the angle that Gina took it. Amy’s perched on the edge of his desk, her back turned to Gina, and Jake’s looking up at her like she hung the moon. He picks the frame up and holds it close, studying Amy’s back closely.
He hears the front door open and he replaces the picture quickly. A voice is speaking, but it isn’t Amy; it’s Gina, he realizes with a jolt.
“- hot, s’all I’m sayin’.”
“Then you should have gotten his number,” Amy says, and he’s positive his heart has dropped out of his body.
“Not tonight, boo. Too much goin’ on already.”
He moves forward without thinking, and he has just enough time to absorb the grocery bags in Gina’s arms before his gaze falls on Amy. He gets a split-second to look at her, to register her black eye and the tired bags beneath her eyes, before she spots him. And another split second in which the world literally stops spinning.
In a flash, she’s in his arms, her face buried in his neck and his buried in her hair. He hears her sobbing, realizes that he’s crying pretty loudly, too, and he doesn’t care. He needs to be closer. Needs to press his fingers and lips into her skin until she knows exactly how much he’s missed her. He buries his fingers in her hair and she moans“I love you I love you I love you” in a high-pitched keen against his shoulder.
He never wants to be away from her again. Ever.
She pushes him away even though it grates against every instinct in her body, leaving herself just enough room to grab his face and hold him steady. She kisses him ruthlessly, sloppily, and his hands scrabble up her back for purchase. He’s just as desperate as she is, though; his lips smother hers and their teeth clack together but she doesn’t care, she doesn’t care, she needs to be closer. There’s still way too much space between them.
It takes them a solid twenty minutes to calm down enough to separate, and even then Jake wraps his arms around her and tucks her head beneath his chin. He holds her head in place with his hand, stroking her hair slowly and gently. Amy closes her eyes, cheek pressed against his chest, and breathes slowly. There are only a few layers of clothing between them, and she’s positive the hungry burn in the pit of her stomach will only calm when there is nothing but skin between them, but Gina’s still standing in the kitchen watching the scene unfold through tears in her eyes and the camera lens of her phone. She’s been Periscoping the reunion, she tells them.
Jake releases Amy long enough to engulf Gina in a hug, but he presses a kiss to the side of Gina’s head after about thirty seconds and tears himself away to get back to Amy. “I’ll just talk you y’all tomorrow. Ames, don’t forget your meds.” Gina says from the doorway.
“Thanks.” Amy calls, face already buried in Jake’s chest again. The front door opens and closes and for the first time in seven months, Jake and Amy are alone together.
Several hours later, he lays on his back in their bed. His eyes flutter closed every few minutes, exhaustion tugging at every fiber of his being, but he fights to stay awake. He lets his head loll to one side and his cheek presses against the top of Amy’s head, which is bowed against his shoulder. Her left hand rests loosely against the right side of his ribcage and each one of her slow exhales skates across his bare chest; she'd lost her battle against sleep ten minutes earlier. He reaches down slowly to grab the edge of the comforter and eases it over their intertwined bodies, taking care to ensure that every inch of her skin is covered.
Nothing between him and Amy, except for the alluring temptation of sleep. She nuzzles closer to him and he closes his eyes.
He knows coming back isn’t going to be easy. It will never be the same. But, he thinks as he slips into oblivion, it might just be better.