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It’s the sum total of many moving parts that ends up landing him in such a position at such a late hour; the coalescing of several Unfortunate Incidences, of which he had little to no control over, that thrusts him into such a predicament. A series of bad omens, as Gina would later tell him with a knowing smile, that he just couldn’t avoid, because he’s a freight train careening out of control and this is the end of the tracks.
Or something - something like that. It’s hard to think straight at 3 o’clock in the morning.
Event the First: his return from being undercover.
It’s been a little over a month since he’s been back and while most everything in his life has settled back into something resembling his former definition of normal, there are still things lingering. Like, where the hell did that potted plant in his bedroom come from? Why is that red-and-yellow checkered flannel shirt missing from his closet? Why can’t he bear to look at Santiago’s face for longer than three seconds at a time?
The last of these three weighs the heaviest on him (though he would be lying if he said any one of those made him angrier than the missing flannel, butcome on, that’s his favorite flannel). The third keeps him up at night, staring up at the ceiling, trying to pinpoint the exact moment it all fell apart. He thinks, at first, it was his stupid fumbling admission in the parking lot - the one that felt so brave and noble at the time that now feels stupid and immature and childish. It’s easy to pin it on that moment and that moment alone, but:
He knows it’s not the truth.
The real moment came six months later, precisely four minutes after he walked back into the bullpen for the first time since leaving, when he managed to break through the throng of people surrounding him to move toward their desks and asked quietly if he could talk to her in private.
He follows her into the evidence lockup, studying her from behind, trying to identify any changes in her appearance since the last time he’d seen her. But of course he finds none. She walks a few feet into the room and turns around, taking a deep breath seemingly to steady herself, and looks at him expectantly. There’s a pregnancy to the silence between them that he just isn’t used to, an edge of worry in her eyes that kills him, and his brain immediately short-circuits into humor mode because she looks like she’s going to throw up and it’s been a major part of his life for the last six years to keep her calm and okay.
“Did you arrest a perp named Joe Uterus?” He asks.
Her relief makes her positively radiant. She grins and nods enthusiastically and for a moment - a brief moment - they’re just Jake and Amy again. And it’s nice, because he’s gone six long months without her and, frankly, he missed her like hell.
But then that pregnant silence is back and he clears his throat because it’s now or never. “I know we left things kind of weird, y’know…me saying I liked you, uh…romantic stylez…”
Her eyes are the size of saucers and she doesn’t appear to be breathing and, once again, his brain short-circuits. Except this time it’s flashing the image of Amy’s pretty lipstick and the way her face lit up when she told him about going out with Teddy again.
“It wasn’t…um, I didn’t mean it.” He hears himself say. Something flashes in her eyes, but it’s gone before he can process it, so he presses on. “I dunno, I guess I was just…nervous about going undercover. But I thought about it a lot while I was gone, and…yeah. I’m sorry if it, um, made things awkward. Or…or whatever. You’re my friend and I would never want to jeopardize our friendship.”
“Our friendship,” Amy repeats faintly. “Right.”
She’s been avoiding him - as well as any cop can successfully avoid their partner - ever since. And Jake hates himself for it.
Event the Second: something happened while he was away, and everyone refuses to tell him about it.
It’s not as though he’s caught anyone talking about it, or walked into the break room to be greeted by suddenly cut-off conversations and wide, nervous smiles. It’s more of a change in atmosphere - more shifting glances and expectant looks, as though the secret is obvious and he should have figured it out ages ago. The looks increase in frequency and intensity as days fade into weeks, and Jake’s fairly certain he’s going to lose his mind (and possibly his title as detective) if he doesn’t figure it out soon.
Holt is, of course, oblivious - he assigns a jewel heist to Jake and Rosa (who has been quite possibly the greatest source of these Significant Looks) and blatantly ignores Jake’s long, tired sigh.
“You’ve got all the clues you need. More than enough clues, dum-dum. Just…pay attention.”
And that, he decides, is the dumbest thing she’s ever said to him. Because he has exactly zero clues and she won’t stop rolling her eyes at him.
Event the Third (escalated in his mind to The Incident): the catalyst, the scene from the alley pulled directly out of his nightmares.
It’s not often one of their own is injured in the line of duty. It’s definitely not unheard of; the thing with Charles’ butt was the fourth shooting of a fellow detective in Jake’s years at the precinct (and luckily, was the lightest of the four - the other three were not so lucky). Diaz returns to work with bloody knuckles and split lips all the time, as does Jake (though not as often). Once, Amy brought a guy in and booked him, completed all the paperwork, while nursing a stab wound to her upper arm with a bandana she found in her car; another time, Terry dragged three perps in on a dislocated shoulder. Injuries are not uncommon.
It is, however, stunningly terrifying to hear it on the radio in the midst of a dangerous jewel-thief related bust: “Officer down in the alley, requesting medics. Repeat, officer down in the alley, requesting medics.”
His brain does this funny thing in situations like this - it’s like all personal thoughts shut down. His brain very much becomes a machine, hell-bent on analyzing and cracking down until the mystery is solved. It’s why his panic often comes hours after the fact, when he’s alone in his apartment and he can bury his face in his pillow until it passes.
But there’s something off this time, some instinct that takes over and pulls him out, out of the building, down the fire escape, crashing down to earth right there at the mouth of the alley. He can see shadowy figures moving around one central object, like bees to a hive, and he’s drawn to them by that same instinct. He runs, tainted alley air burning his throat and solidifying in his airway the second he realizes that the object they’re centered around is, in fact, a person.
A person who is currently lying motionless on the ground, apparently oblivious to the flurry of activity surrounding them. Familiar silky raven hair splays out on the dirty concrete beneath them - beneath her - and it suddenly registers in his shut-down brain that he knows this person. His stomach bottoms out and his lips part and he’s still running.
Amy was covering the alley.
“Amy,” he gasps when he reaches her. Her eyes are closed and there’s blood smeared down the side of her face and he swears his whole heart has dropped out of his body.
“Don’t touch her, son,” an unfamiliar man in a paramedic uniform says sharply. Jake recoils instantly, scrambling backwards several inches as the paramedic leans in toward Amy. “She’s okay - blunt force trauma to the head, probably a grade three concussion. But we can’t risk any neck injuries.”
There’s another paramedic on Amy’s other side, securing a neck brace around her, and Jake still can’t catch his breath even as they hoist her up on a gurney and rush her off in the back of an ambulance.
He stays behind, works the crime scene, doesn’t leave until he’s certain that every last piece of evidence is bagged and the perp is safely locked away in holding back at the precinct. He’s just about to get started on supervising fingerprint analysis when he feels a hard thump on the back of his shoulder.
“Why are you still here?” Rosa demands. They’re standing in the perp’s living room and her arms are crossed over her chest.
“We’re not done with the scene yet -”
“We were done two hours ago. Why aren’t you at the hospital?”
“I’m not hurt -” Her brows lower dangerously and he balks. “Okay, okay, I…I don’t know.”
She continues glaring at him until he manages to talk himself into going to the hospital, which, okay, he still doesn’t understand how she pulled that one off, but whatever.
Amy’s conscious again by the time he gets there, but is still drowsy and a little disoriented according to the nurse that leads him back to the examination room where she’s waiting. “She is dealing with a headache right now, and the painkillers are only mild,” she warns him, paused outside the room, hand on the doorknob. “Don’t be offended if she’s flinching every time you talk.”
He nods and steels himself as the nurse opens the door.
Amy’s inside, perched on the edge of an examination table, shoulders hunched and eyelids drooping. She’s not wearing a neckbrace anymore, thank God. She perks up a little at the sight of the nurse, and then her gaze shifts to Jake over the nurse’s shoulder.
And he swears she practically lights up like a menorah.
“Amy, hon, how’re you feeling?” The nurse asks cheerfully.
“Tired.” She answers automatically. She smiles wearily as the nurse clucks her tongue. “Little sore, still.”
“Well of course you are,” the nurse tuts. Jake edges into the room, keeping his back against the wall. “You heard back from your emergency contact yet?”
“Manny’s in Chicago,” she says, and God he can practically feel how tired she is just by her voice alone. “And my parents are on an Alaskan cruise for the next two weeks…”
“We can’t release you unless you have someone to keep an eye on you for the next forty-eight hours,” the nurse says gently. Amy nods slowly, gaze fixated on her knees. “Should I go get a room set up for you?”
“I’ll do it,” Jake says suddenly. The words burst forth from some strangled part of his throat, and once they’re out he briefly imagines himself dragging them back in, but Amy’s head has already snapped up toward him and there’s something like gratefulness shining in her eyes that makes the pit of his belly feel as though it’s glowing.
“Here,” the nurse hands him a pamphlet with the word “concussions” emblazoned across the cover. “It’s all the instructions you’ll need. If she starts throwing up, bring her right back here immediately, okay?”
He nods, and the next thing he knows, he’s unlocking Amy’s front door with her keys and ushering her inside. She shuffles past him and heads straight for her bedroom, presumably to change out of her gross alley clothes, and he busies himself in her kitchen. “I’m gonna lay down,” she tells him a few minutes later. She’s standing in her bedroom doorway and is carefully tying her hair back from her face.
“I’ll wake you up when it’s time for the first round,” he says, and she nods before turning away and closing her door. There are blankets laid out everywhere in her apartment and his phone is set to go off in an hour, so he parks himself on her couch and turns on the television and drifts.
The first time he wakes her up, he discovers that not only was she hit on the back of the head - there’s also a pretty gnarly bruise across her lower back that she has no memory of getting. She discovers it when she tries to lean back against her headboard and the muscles beneath it spasm in protest.
The second time he wakes her up, she seems to genuinely struggle for a moment before remembering his name, which strangely terrifies him far more than seeing her unconscious in an alley did.
But it’s this third time - right at 3 AM - that all of these moving parts finally come to a head.
To be fair, it’s not so much him waking her up as it is her waking him up on accident. It’s her forgetting that he’s there, her shuffling out of her bedroom for a glass of water and, in response to her pounding head, deciding that her glass is best finished in a seated position. It’s her sitting on his ankle and bending his foot in such an awkward position that he wakes with a yelp that scares her half to death.
It’s him sitting up quickly, it’s her lurching forward to sleepily apologize, it’s them accidentally careening into each other right there on the couch.
He blames it on the fact that he hasn’t been sleeping well lately - on the fact that he’s missed her - on the fact that she doesn’t immediately pull away. He blames all of these things for him instinctively wrapping his arms around her and flopping back down on his makeshift bed with her half on top of him.
“You okay?” He whispers hoarsely. He feels her nod against his chest. “‘Kay. You still have…time. Before it’s time. For meds. Or whatever.”
“Hm,” she hums throatily in acknowledgement and sinks a little deeper into him, and he closes his eyes and tightens his grip around her. He can still feel tension in her legs, which are extended toward the ground, and he bends his leg beneath her.
“C’mon,” he whispers, reaching down and blindly tapping at her thigh. She grunts quietly and shifts, slow and disjointed, until her legs are between his and her right hip is caught between the back of the couch and his left hip and she sighs in contentment and nuzzles closer. There’s a dim warning light somewhere in the back of his mind flashing like mad - but he’s too warm and content to care. He drifts, and Amy’s hand curls ever-so-slightly against his chest, and his heart is whole and full for the first time in months.
His alarm goes off on her coffee table twenty minutes later and she groans when he reaches for it, slapping at the table until his fingers make contact with the snooze button. “Come on,” he whispers, poking at her upper arm. He feels her shifting, feels her arms winding down on either side of his waist in search of the couch cushion beneath him, which pushes her face up an inch or two above his. It’s three in the morning and he’s exhausted and so he can’t really be blamed for what he does next - it’s just pure instinct.
He pushes up off the couch and pecks the end of her nose. And she freezes.
And reality - in all its’ ugly, nasty, moving parts - comes crashing down around him.
His apology is still caught in his throat when she moves again, and he braces himself, prepared for a slap or a punch or maybe even a well-placed knee - but what he feels instead is the soft, warm pressure of lips pressing against his. He opens up to her instinctively, hands grazing the outsides of her thighs as he reaches up to steady her hips, and their kiss is slow and agonizingly tender. It’s a bit awkward, with Amy’s arms on either side of his head, but the weight of her around him combined with the languid movements of her lips and tongue and teeth make him forget the awkwardness - the previous panic - hell, his own name.
Amy pulls away slowly, her forehead still pressed against his, and he briefly wonders if insanity is a side-effect of whatever these painkillers are.
She stands up and twists away from him, leaving him dumbfounded and winded on the couch. He watches her tilt her head back and swallow her pills with half a glass of water. She doesn’t look at him when she walks by the end of the couch where his feet are splayed, and she closes her bedroom door behind her.
He sinks back into the cushions, fingertips tracing over his own lips that are still burning beneath the ghost of hers.
Needless to say, he doesn’t sleep much that night, because moments after her door closes, as an impossible grin splits his face, he has a thought: Teddy is an insanely lucky dude.
It’s like a cinderblock drops into his gut. Teddy - Amy’s boyfriend - probably won’t take kindly to the fact that they just made out on her couch while she’s recovering from a concussion.
At six, he gets up and heads to the kitchen and starts making pancakes - because if he doesn’t find something to do with his hands, he’s going to lose his mind. Her door opens just after he finishes the second batch and he glances up to find her half-hidden behind the door, looking at him warily. She seems to have come to her senses overnight as well, he gathers as she cautiously steps out of the bedroom and into the dim glow of the kitchen light.
“Made pancakes,” he says weakly, gesturing to the small mountain on the plate to his left.
“Thanks,” she says slowly, uncertainly.
They’re quiet and she quickly throws back the pills before easing up beside him. “I made enough for each of us to have three -”
“I’m sorry,” she interrupts abruptly. She’s looking up at him and her eyes are too wide and there’s that fear again, that uncertainty, that makes his heart beat uncomfortably fast. “Last night, I didn’t…I wasn’t thinking straight, and I, I put you in a weird position, since you, y’know, don’t…don’t feel that way anymore -”
“It’s okay,” he says quickly. “It was late and neither of us were thinking straight and…and I’m sure you thought I was Teddy or something -”
“What? Why would I think that?”
Jake furrows his brow. “I don’t…know. I just assumed that…that you assumed…”
“Jake,” Amy says softly. “I’m not - Teddy and I broke up.”
He feels his jaw drop. “What? When?”
“While you were gone. Like, four months after you left? I think? I just, I couldn’t…I was confused, and it felt wrong to keep him on the hook. It felt like I was leading him on? And he’s a good guy, I just couldn’t…keep going. Not after what you said.” She inhales deeply and closes her eyes briefly. “Like I said, you made it clear you don’t feel that way when you came back, and that’s fine. I’m not trying to change your mind. I just…wasn’t thinking straight last night. I’ve just missed you so much and -”
He can’t stop himself. He lunges toward her, spatula falling from his hand and hitting the floor with a clatter as he grabs her face and kisses her. She responds slowly at first, her little noise of surprise landing in his mouth, but her hands rise up to cling to his biceps and she lets him walk her backwards toward the counter.
Except the second her back hits the counter she yelps and jumps forward, away from the edge, essentially flattening herself against his chest and clambering across his feet in the process. “God, sorry, sorry, I forgot!” He says quickly, gathering her up and turning away from the counter, belatedly protecting her tender lower back from the offending edge.
She gazes up at him, eyes wide with emotions he doesn’t recognize, before a laugh comes bubbling up her throat. She claps a hand over her mouth to contain it, but it’s too late, they’re spilling between her fingers now, and suddenly this whole situation is outrageously hilarious and then end up sitting on the kitchen floor giggling, legs splayed out and tangled together.
“So is that the big secret everyone’s been keeping from me lately?” Jake asks some time later, when the pancakes are cold and Amy’s leaning against him. She glances up at him, her question written clearly across her face. “That you and Teddy broke up,” he clarifies.
“Oh, um…I guess? It wasn’t really meant to be a secret, though.”
“Rosa said something about how I’d have to figure it out for myself.”
Amy rolls her eyes, but he detects her carefully-hidden smile. “Yeah, then, that was the secret.” She says. “I just…I needed to be sure that you meant it before I went and told you.”
“Sorry I lied in the file room,” he says, watching the way a lock of her hair slips between his thumb and index finger. “I was nervous. And you seemed to panic when I started hinting at what I’d said before -”
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. Her head tilts back, landing right in the crook of his neck. “I was trying to prepare myself.”
He kisses the crown of her head. “Sorry it took a concussion for me to stop being an idiot.”
“Sorry I had to assault you at three in the morning to stop being an idiot.”
“Is it considered assault if the victim really enjoyed it?”