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Amy cries the night Jake comes home from Florida.
Not when she catches him breathing deeply with his eyes closed upon emerging from the airplane into the bustle of JFK;
Not when she sees his glassy eyes reflected back at her in the taxi window, darting around the approaching skyline so quickly they knock the tears right down his face;
Not when he kisses her cheek after she helps him hobble up the staircase after hauling all of their luggage up to her front door;
Not when the whole squad shouts “surprise!” the moment she flips the living room lights on and Jake responds with a breathless laugh followed immediately by tears of overwhelming gratitude;
Not when she glances up from taking dirty dishes from Terry’s hands to find Jake positively beaming on the couch, injured leg propped up, surrounded on all sides by Rosa, Gina, and Charles;
Not when Jake hugs her from behind as she closes the front door behind the last guest, crutches clattering loudly to the floor on either side of her, too intently focused on pressing feathery kisses on that spot behind her ear to care;
Not when she glances up in the mirror while brushing her teeth and sees that old, almost-forgotten spark back in her eye, lit by the flurry of movement that is Jake brushing his own teeth beside her;
Not when she stands up on the balls of her feet and holds his scruffy face between her hands and kisses him, long and slow and firm, or when his hands flutter against her waist in response;
Not even when he settles down in that long-cold spot on the left side of her bed, sinking down between the sheets with a soft, tired sigh, mumbling in that half-asleep voice that he loves her so much for the eighth time that day;
She wakes up at five AM to the sounds of Jake shifting in his sleep, his snores filling up the bedroom that has been still and silent for far too long, and when she finally manages to wipe the bleariness from her eyes she finds him just inches from her, finally, finally. She traps her bottom lip between her teeth, wondering only briefly if she’s allowed to reach across the space between them to push those god-awful frosted tips up and away from his forehead, but before she can work the nerve up to do it he shuffles a bit further down into the pillow and readjusts his grip around her comforter and quietly, quietly, quietly sighs, “Ames.”
Her response is immediate and involuntary, the tears flooding her vision before she’s even fully process what she’s just heard and - and it’s all real, he’s alive, he’s hurt but healing and he’s no longer in danger and he came back. There’s not a word in existence to encapsulate whatever emotion is billowing through her at the sight, no phrase concise enough to capture the veritable hurricane suddenly storming through her lungs. He came back. It’s too much, far too much for one heart to handle.
He wakes in the middle of it, groggy and disoriented. It would be comical were she in her right state of mind, the way his half-awake face is lit by one thin sliver of moonlight slipping through the space between her blinds. “Wuzzit?” He mumbles, fumbling across the bed, sleep-numbed fingers finding and squeezing her forearm.
She turns her face up to the ceiling and sucks in a deep, steadying breath; he seems to perk up at that, perhaps a memory of her previous panic attacks is flashing in the recesses of his bloodshot eyes, lighting an intense fire of concern. “I,” she rasps, swallows, clears her throat, “I missed you.”
His face softens in the scant moonlight and his grip becomes firmer, more grounding. “Babe,” he says, and she closes her eyes because her chest is wide open and he’s slowly, gently putting her heart back in place. “S’okay. S’all okay. M’here.”
“Yeah,” she murmurs. His hand leaves her forearm and snakes across her middle, curling down beneath her side to pull her closer to him. She feels his lips land against her shoulder, his long nose bump against her collarbone, and a shot of tranquility bursts through her veins.
“Missed you, too,” he mumbles, already readjusting his head to fit more comfortably beside hers, his grip around her waist shifting up a bit higher before tightening ever-so-slightly. “Love you.”
He’s asleep almost immediately, but the words still ring in her ears even over his snores. He loves her. He came back to her. He didn’t spend those six months thinking about how much better his life would be without her, he loves her and he missed her and he came back.
Here.
To this life.
To them.
“I love you, too,” she says, her voice soft and full of wonder.
His response is limited to a small, infinitesimal adjustment of his grip around her and a slow, contented sigh - and for the first time in six months, Amy smiles as she falls sleep.