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moonlit-imagines · 4 years

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Headcanons for being Tony Stark’s Daughter (The Intense Years)

Tony Stark x daughter!reader

warnings:

a/n: y/n is 16-17, also ive really never written anything about team iron man so this was weird, someone needs to tell me i dont need every single movie detail in here

prompt: takes place from cacw and smhc

The Early Years (1) The Teenage Years (2) The Aftermath (4) Continued (5)

after the events in sokovia, you set up the relief fund for displaced sokovians and dealt with physical clean up while the avengers...

well, they had to deal with the press—and the governments of the world

getting to know your new suit AI, JOSHUA

briefly looking for bruce; no luck there

you ended up doing the MIT september foundation presentation with tony

and ending the presentation after pepper’s name popped up on the screen

“it’s probably best we get out of here”

you were his entire support system while he was going through his break with pepper

meeting charles spencer’s mother, who really gave your dad a piece of her mind

“my son died, but your daughter gets to live on. if you lost her, maybe you’d show some sympathy for murdering my child”

*awkward silence from you*

*awkward silence from tony otw to the compound*

HATING the sound of the sokovia accords, yet understanding why they’re being ratified

being torn between signing them or not and having a huge argument with the other avengers

“y/n, why dont you listen to your dad for once and sign the damn thing”

“uncle rhodey, you know why i dont want to sign. if they have us, they have access to our suits. you really think the UN should be telling us how to use them?”

“your defense doesn’t even make sense. i had the war machine or iron patriot or whatever the hell you want to call it, but the military was calling the shots”

“and look where you are now”

“right, well i wouldn’t expect a kid to understand”

“are you kidding me, rhodes? you’re gonna play the ‘im older than you’ card?”

comforting wanda while she feared being taken

and as soon as you heard about what happened in lagos

“think about it, maximoff. if you didnt do what you did, do you know how many more casualties there may have been?”

“but i killed innocents”

“no, rumlow killed innocents. you contained that blast better than anyone else could have and you prevented a whole bunch of deaths, give yourself some credit”

okay, so you weren’t the best at talking someone down while they were upset

staying in berlin with your father while the whole bucky thing began to get sorted out

but he sent you out to stay with nat while he had some “private time” with steve

tony keeping you close to him during the power outage at the base

until it turned out you brought your suit and tony did not!

everyone was looking at you to take down bucky, but it just seemed like a bad idea, you didn’t want to hurt him because you didn’t want to hurt steve

stalling to try and buy steve time to subdue his friend

“y/n, come on, for christ sake!”

“got it, dad! i know what im doing!”

“i dont think you do!”

feeling your stomach drop when bucky shot into your dad’s hand, if it wasn’t for his latest invention, he may have gotten seriously hurt

you had a slight change of heart after that, you couldn’t bare to lose your dad. not after all those close calls...

getting yelled at by secretary ross and the wonderful 36 hour ultimatum you, nat, and tony received

“i have a plan”

“don’t say the spider boy”

“fine, i wont say it”

a nice trip to queens :)

when this parker kid finally got home, tony left you to socialize with his aunt

small talk is sometimes unbearable

“so, what’s it like being tony stark’s daughter?”

“honestly? im always tired”

peter becoming a tagalong on your mission, which you didn’t really think was appropriate

“dad, i dont really think we should’ve brought the kid...”

“why? you’re about the same age as him, its not much different”

“um...no, i meant this isnt his battle. i don’t care how old he is”

face off between tony and cap where you literally just swallowed all your pride and apologized because you couldn’t handle the fact that the team was being ripped apart like this

team ups with Spider-Man

“so, uh, do you hate me or something?”

“hey, kid? we’re kind of in the middle of something, i’ll get back to you on that”

“it’s a yes or no question, y/n”

“pass”

so, things didn’t exactly go as planned...

your (former) teammates were taken to the RAFT and you couldn’t pull it together in front of them

they were pretty pissed at you

“im sorry, im so sorry, i should’ve done better”

they ignored you (up until scott lang)

“all you stark’s are the same”

“stay out of this, bugboy”

taking to the remote hydra base in another famous father/daughter teamup

“just like the old days, right kiddo?”

“i guess so”

“hey, cheer up, it’s not all that bad”

waltzing right in there to meet your friend and foe

seeing the video of your grandparents dying

*being killed

absolutely stunned by seeing such a gruesome thing

even after all you’ve seen, this really got to you

you were robbed of ever meeting them, which made you angry, but you couldn’t stay angry because there were so many things out of everyones control

realizing that this was a good time to hold tony back

“JOSHUA, lock down y/n’s suit. protocol: baby gate”

apparently your dad still had some old protocols in your suit that you hadn’t found yet

“JOSHUA? reboot! override protocol: baby gate”

“i’m sorry, miss y/n, but i cannot do that”

watching your father attempt to get revenge

and get critically injured

simultaneously working on opening the suit back up for a bad plan

finally getting the emergency release and stumbling out of your suit, rushing towards the conflict and throwing yourself in the middle of it

“please, dad. enough damage has been done.”

“y/n, get out of the way”

he saw you shaking and crying and he realized what he was doing

attacking the only family you guys really had

getting shoved out of the way so that they could end this fight once and for all

JOSHUA finally rebooting and bringing the suit over to shield you while you helplessly watched the end of this fight

when bucky and steve left, your suit disarmed and you crouched down beside your father

“come on, let’s just go home”

“im sorry”

“i know, it’s okay”

trying to comfort your dad after his defeat

you picked up cap’s shield and returned to your suit, it was time to go home

after a brief time of recovery (while you helped work on uncle rhodey’s prototype prosthetics), there was a slight change of plans for you

“okay, so for your punishment after what you pulled during my...divorce with cap, you’re going to babysit the spiderling so you gain some perspective”

“hold on, what?! what do you mean ‘perspective?’”

“i mean you dont know what it’s like to be in charge of the life of a teenager, so now you get to find out! congratulations on your promotion!”

it was not fun at all because peter kept blowing up your phone and you kept having to tell him there was nothing for him to do

Y/N: I’ll let you know when there’s a spider-level threat, kapeesh?

P. Parker: Yes, ma’am, sorry.

peter going behind your back to do some “superhero work”

and you having to swoop in to fix everything last second

“come on, you stole my thunder, y/n!”

“no, peter, i saved your life. next time you have a lead, call me first”

and then he didn’t 😌✨💕

“Y/N, incoming call from ‘big fat meanie’”

“put him through, JOSHIE...hey dad, how’s dubai?”

“taking care of a kid is harder than it looks, isn’t it?”

“don’t start with me”

damage control ahahah 🤡

“peter, why cant you just call me in? you don’t stop texting me for months but for this you go radio silent? you almost died. and you put a bunch of lives in danger! do you want me to have to go to your aunt and tell her you died?”

“im sorry! i just...i dont want to be a sidekick”

“kid, you’re gonna have a long time to make a name for yourself...but not if you’re dead!”

he started crying and you were very uncomfortable so you tried to hug him? it helped.

letting him off easy (just like your dad did to you growing up)

but apparently tony came back and took the suit anyways and you were pretty pissed about it

avengers moving day :) yes, part of your punishment was helping happy with moving day and hearing him gush about how you were “growing into such a responsible adult”

“happy i dont know if you noticed but ive basically been an adult since i was 12”

“keep telling yourself that, kiddo”

seeing an explosion and immediately knowing it was peter

“i’ll see you later, happy, love you!”

investigating the crash site and whaddaya know, there’s peter and his first bad guy, you were kind of proud

“peter, you okay?”

“nope!”

“okay, cool”

more damage control lmao (a/n: yall sick of damage control yet?)

a congratulatory call from your dad

“hey! you did pretty good, all things considered. why don’t you take the kid to the avengers compound for his special surprise?”

“aye aye, see you soon.”

“love you, kiddo”

“you too, dad”

quick fast forward to peter rejecting the position as an avenger while the press was outside, yes, you were surprised

but then your dad finally proposed to pepper, it was a pretty cool engagement announcement

“y/n, will you be my maid of honor?”

“duh!”

happily ever after (a/n: until the next part is up)

579 notes · View notes

elsaclack · 5 years

Note

59 for jake/amy!

baby BABY baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!

this is…….a fresh contender for the angstiest thing i’ve ever written straight up oops

trigger warning for graphic depictions of violence and injury!!!!!! this got REAL dark guys i’m SORRY

59. “Don’t touch me.”

Darkness descends rapidly over Brooklyn, plummeting Jake’s apartment into powdery, faded shadows and a bone-crushing silence.

Jake sits alone in the center of his couch, staring at a spot just beyond the far left corner of his coffee table that he can no longer honestly comprehend. The smell of stale beer and old laundry permeates the stillness around him, enveloping him in a sort of cocoon of anxiety spurred on by the latent adrenaline still humming through his body.

The solution to this, of course, would be an easy one. It’s not like this is the first time the aftershocks of a particularly gruesome case followed him home. It’s not like he doesn’t have coping mechanisms (whether they’re healthy or not is a decision to be made by him and him alone, regardless of what the crackpot precinct shrink says when he’s forced into mandated therapy sessions). There are eleven more beers in his fridge, ready and waiting for him once he polishes off the last few gulps of the open bottle before him. There are shitty nature documentaries to pretend to watch. There are video games collecting dust on the bottom shelf of his TV stand. There are unopened bags of potato chips in his cabinet (also stale, probably). Solutions are all around him, readily available, patiently waiting for him to blink the initial shock away and make a decision.

The beer bottle’s label - long since peeled away from the amber glass - is damp and disintegrating between his fingertips. He’s tangentially aware of it in the same way that he’s aware of the fact that he’s thirsty for something more substantial than old beer. It’s there, it’s a concern, and it may even be valid, but it’s nothing more than a violently-rocking buoy struggling to remain upright in a tsunami. He could throw the label away and wash the water-goopy paste off of his fingers and order a meal and throw on a movie, and he could spend the rest of the night pretending like he’s okay. He could idly scroll through his Instagram feed and pretend like he isn’t waiting, hoping for the call or the text he already knows will not come. He could turn the television on and studiously avoid the local news channels until he finds something stupid and funny and safe to focus on until the rest of his thoughts retreat to the sealed compartments in the furthest corner of his mind.

He could do those things - any of those things - but he doesn’t.

He can’t.

He’d told himself, way back at the beginning of his beat cop stint, that he’d never let himself be vulnerable. His job can’t allow it, he’d reasoned. Vulnerability allowed for weakness and weakness meant disadvantage and disadvantage meant death. His job is too important, his perps too ruthless. He’d find other ways to be vulnerable, other groups of friends to allow beyond the towering walls of false bravado and showmanship.

Within two years, and for four more after that, he had no notably close friends to speak of.

Until Amy.

And Charles, and Rosa, and Gina, of course. But Amy - stupid, perfect, brilliant Amy - was the only one who wormed her way in without his express knowledge. He still can’t remember, exactly, when the shift between annoying know-it-all partner and close confidante and friend happened, but one day - one day -

She was there. Right there, right beside him. Full of understanding and patience and gentle advice that left him feeling warm and safe in a most peculiar, unfamiliar way.

(Beyond that, he’s not sure when the shift between close confidante and friend and girl of his wildest dreams happened, either, but right now that seems neither here nor there.)

So it makes sense, then, that the masochist within him insists that he deserves this torture, in some way. A fitting price for a most egregious error in judgement that ended with her name being added to a long list of victims.

She’s luckier than most - something he keeps reminding himself, the only tattered rope keeping him from sinking into a bottomless abyss of regret and shame. Ernie McMahan simply did not leave survivors, and yet - survive, she did. Of course, nothing about tonight’s situation followed protocol, even by McMahan’s standards. The series of events that unfolded between 6:14 and 6:38 PM only unfolded by sheer happenstance. It’s not like Amy fit McMahan’s type - nothing about her screamed leggy blonde - and it’s not like he sought her out and preyed on her like all of his other victims. Hell, he’d only attacked because she got too close to finding him, but.

But.

The guilt sinks in a little deeper, soaking through his bones. Objectively speaking, it wasn’t expressly Jake’s fault. Like, sure, he wasn’t where he was supposed to be - where she told him to be - but in all likelihood, even if he was where he was supposed to be, it probably would have only meant he would have gotten to them a few seconds earlier.

He would have gotten to her a few seconds earlier.

Not huge in the grand scheme of things.

But insurmountable tonight.

The guilt crawls like a living thing through his belly, slimy tendrils licking up his skin, and when he closes his eyes he sees it all again - late evening sunlight spilling tangerine through the cracks between wooden boards haphazardly nailed over warehouse windows, illuminating the edges of a silhouette knelt over a writhing mass on the floor, muscled arms swinging and swinging and swinging. He can hear it, too - sickening sounds of knuckles pounding against bone and flesh, gasps and yelps and grunts of her in pain and fear, desperately fighting to escape, sensible rubber heels scraping uselessly against the dusty floor and fingers scrabbling at the butt of her firearm, lying six inches away, as his knees pressed against her chest and her left arm to keep her pinned.

He’d sprinted, flown, not sure if his feet were actually touching the ground, and tackled him off of her. On a kind of primal autopilot, he’d punched McMahan in the face so hard he’d knocked a tooth out before roughly rolling him to his belly and snapping handcuffs over his wrists; when he twists his own wrist now, he can see the angry split between his knuckles, already scabbed over, darkened red skin around it only just now curdling into what he’s sure will be a gruesome bruise. There will be more on his shoulder, and another on the right side of his forehead from where he’d hit the floor at an angle as he tackled McMahan. Something he’d usually be stoked about - nothing said badass cop more than battle scars.

Now, though - now, he can’t stand the talismans of his own failure.

Distantly, through his cracked open window, Jake hears a forlorn siren wailing. It fades into the night as quickly as it came, and he buries his face in his hands, gingerly scrubbing the heels of his palms over his eyes in a doomed attempt at drowning everything out. It wasn’t enough, being forced to stay in place to keep McMahan subdued while Amy slowly writhed in excruciating pain a mere six feet away. No, it wasn’t enough - because the angle afforded him the perfect view of her bruised and bloodied face contorted in an utterly terrifying portrait of agony, the way her entire body seemed to shudder and tremble with each labored, rattling breath in, and - most nauseatingly - the way her clothes hung tattered and ripped around the seams.

He tried to talk to her between snarling at McMahan to shut the fuck up and calling for backup on his radio. He tried to get her to speak, to look at him, to respond in any way, but all he got back were bone-chilling moans and heels still scraping uselessly against the ground.

Cops raided the scene before the EMTs - Jake scrambled toward her the second he was sure the beat cop had a solid grip on McMahan’s wrists. He’d crawled, ignoring the sting in his hand and the uncomfortable grit of the ground beneath his knees, reaching for Amy before his consciousness could catch up.

And the moment his fingers brushed against her arm, her eyes flew open, glassy and unseeing but fixated on his face.

“Don’t touch me!”

He’s in no way a wordsmith - has never claimed to be - but even if he was, he’s sure there isn’t a single word to fully encapsulate the raw, feral force with which those words left her. He didn’t know, before tonight, that she was even capable of making that kind of sound. It’s like the words were wrenched out of her chest, ripped out of her by some demonic force, sending him falling backwards and scrambling away from her on instinct.

Her eyes hadn’t followed him.

He’d stayed nearby, hovering, useless, until the EMTs rushed in. He’d watched them kneel down beside her, one speaking to her in a loud, calm, slow voice. He’d watched her wordlessly shriek again when their hands touched her body.

He’d closed his eyes and turned his head away when her shriek immediately transformed into a harsh, punishing sob as they lifted her onto a gurney.

He’d followed them out into the parking lot, biting down hard on the inside of his cheek as tears dripped down his face, only stopping when Rosa stepped between him and the ambulance. Go home, she told him. I’ll stay with her.

He wanted to fight her. He still wants to fight her.

But Amy’s words were still swimming through his mind, etching themselves across every available surface where he’s certain they’ll stay for the rest of eternity. So he didn’t fight her. He just nodded, cast one more glance at the ambulance, and forced himself to walk away.

Because it’s not his fault, but it is his fault, and even though realistically speaking his following her instructions to a T might have changed things just a little, he’d find a way to forgive himself for not. But what happened after…he exacerbated her pain and distress and fear, he made things so much worse, and he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to forgive himself for that.

Amy’s felt a lot of things toward him - he just never imagined fear would be one of them.

The sound of his ringtone cuts sharp and shrill through the air around him, and he starts, blinking for the first time in what feels like a very long time. Rosa’s name shines bright at the top of his screen above her contact picture - her scowling at the camera in front of the dartboards at Shaw’s six years earlier - and he struggles to remember how to swallow as he taps the answer button.

The word hello sticks in his throat.

“Peralta?”

Her tone is as flat and monotone as usual, but he senses the weariness beneath the surface. He clears his throat, forces himself to swallow, and hears her breathe in loudly through her nose on the other end of the line. “Hey,” he finally manages, wincing at the way his voice cracks from lack of use.

“How fast can you get to the hospital?”

Dread floods his belly at once, ice cold fear in an empty cavern, and he’s on his feet before he’s aware of his own actions. “Why?” he asks, not bothering to mask the fear in his voice. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing’s wrong, she’s fine,” Rosa assures him - and the fear subsides a notch or two. “She’s fine - well, she’s gonna be fine - she’s awake and aware, and she just gave Charles a statement on what happened.”

Jake nods, momentarily forgetting the fact that she can’t see him. It’s strange, the knot of jealousy forming in his throat. So Charles was allowed to go to the hospital, but he wasn’t?

“She wants to see you,” Rosa’s voice breaks through his momentary spiral. “She won’t stop asking for you.”

Something about the reproach in her voice tells him that this is probably an argument Rosa’s been having with Amy for a decent amount of time; a small smile erupts across his face in tandem with the undeniable affection throbbing in his chest.

“I told her I’d call you to see if you were still awake. I can’t lie to her, mostly because she knows my tells, but - I don’t know if you coming up here is the best idea.”

He frowns as he pulls his closet door open and reaches inside for his sneakers. “Why?” he asks as he drops to the edge of his bed.

“She’s still shaken up and super emotional, and I don’t know if - if seeing you is gonna - y’know - make it worse. She cried when she woke up and saw me, and then she cried again when she saw Charles, and we weren’t even on the scene with her - it’s obviously your choice, I can’t tell you what to do, but I just don’t want her to go through any more emotional trauma than necessary tonight. Okay?”

He lets out a breath as his heel slips inside his sneaker. Rosa’s not wrong - just like she wasn’t wrong when she sent him home at the scene.

But.

“She wants to see me,” he mumbles, bending to slide his other foot into his shoe. “I can’t - not come. I owe her that much. If she wants me to come, I’m gonna come.”

He hears Rosa sigh, her breath crackling against the receiver in a way he thinks might be harsh under any other circumstances. “Fine,” she says after a moment, “but change your shirt before you get here. You had bloodstains at the scene.”

He glances down at his chest, eyes automatically drawn to the red smears over the left side of his chest he hadn’t noticed until that very moment. He has no memory of when they got there, no idea whose blood it may be - with a grimace he clears his throat, and mutters “will do.”

“Presby. Get here soon.”

Twenty minutes later finds him standing at the sign-in desk of Brooklyn Prebyterian Hospital’s bustling emergency room, casting furtive glances through the receptionist’s window to the doctors and nurses rushing to and fro as he fills in the sign-in sheet. Amy’s still in a high-priority observation room here, according to Rosa’s text, though not for much longer - she’ll be moving to a trauma specialist wing as soon as the room there is ready for her. Her stay will be short-lived, provided her concussion proves to be a grade two, as the doctors currently suspect.

The nurse receptionist pulls the clipboard down to her desk when Jake slides it toward her, and after a moment of typing information into her computer, she reaches beneath her desk and produces an adhesive visitor’s sticker with his name and driver’s license photo. “Keep this on at all times,” she instructs as she hands him the sticker.

He nods, pressing the sticker down over his heart, and follows her directions through the doors and into the interior of the emergency room.

She leads him through a winding series of hallways, lined with glass walls and patients in varying states of distress, but Jake doesn’t absorb any of it; his focus remains on the back of the nurse’s head and on trying to regulate his breathing.

He spots Rosa first - wild curls unmistakable despite the distance. She’s got her back turned toward the hallway, facing the bed against the south wall, concealing the vast majority of the figure laying in said bed. Jake’s heart is in his throat.

The nurse stops five steps from the doorway to her room, gesturing toward it wordlessly, stepping aside to allow Jake to move past her. And it’s like his vision has tunneled - all he can see is Rosa’s torso and the legs stretched across the mattress to Rosa’s right, all he can hear is the quiet voice of his partner, his friend, his everything.

(Uh-oh, he thinks.)

He must make some noise there in the doorway - perhaps an unintentional rap of his knuckles knocking against the doorframe, or a strangled sound from the base of his throat - but Rosa turns toward him sharply, brow furrowed, shoulders tensed. She relaxes marginally when she seems to register who she’s looking at; slowly, she leans back, and Jake catches his first glimpse at Amy.

Angry, mottled bruises paint a vicious portrait across her face, accented by a swollen split to her upper lip and a truly alarming amount of swelling around her left eye. She’s looking at him standing in her doorway and all he can do is breathe, breathe, because she’s alive and he knows that but he’s never seen her like this before and it’s tearing something vital out of him, destroying him from the inside out. He releases his breath slowly, raggedly, letting his nails bite into the unrelenting metal doorframe to keep from releasing the sob expanding dangerously in his chest.

The room is quiet, disturbed only by the distant sounds of the ER behind him and Rosa standing, chair pushed backwards by her knees. “I’m gonna go get you another heated blanket,” she murmurs to Amy, before moving toward Jake.

She pinches his upper arm as she passes him, and the pain of it is almost enough to shock him out of his trance.

“Jake,” Amy murmurs - and that’s it, that’s what shakes him free. He moves toward her at once, forgoing Rosa’s chair to kneel beside her bed, overly cautious to keep his hands pressed to the mattress despite the consuming urge to touch whatever parts of her she’ll allow him to touch.

Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.

Neither one of them speak for a moment - he’s only partially aware of the tears wetting his face, far too distracted by the relief drowning his fried nervous system. Her left arm is stretched across the mattress at her side, her still-shaking fingers rising and falling erratically in a way he thinks probably isn’t entirely voluntary; deep bruises dance across her skin here, too, splotching around her elbow, traveling all the way up beyond the edge of her sleeve.

“I’m so sorry,” he breathes, and her brows knit together. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry -”

“No,” her voice rasps, and he squeezes his eyes shut, the memory of her guttural shrieks echoing in his mind. “Don’t - no, Jake, no sorries -”

“I should have been there with you, I was supposed to follow you through that doorway but I kept going down the hall -”

She shakes her head, a grimace momentarily contorting her features at the movement, and her hand leaves the mattress altogether before flopping back down again. “Stop, stop, please. It’s okay. I - I know. It’s okay.”

He drops his forehead to the mattress for a moment, trying to draw in a steady breath, and feels another weak thump against the mattress near his head.

“Jake,” her voice is higher, now, warbling at the base, and he springs up to find her eyes shining with tears. Her lips part to draw in a shaking breath, and he’s about to come out of his skin with a bone-deep desire to do whatever it takes to make everything okay for her again. “Jake, I - I’m sorry.”

Tears streak down both of her cheeks in tandem, but bewilderment falls like a wet blanket over his instinctive sense of alarm. “For what?” he asks in a strangled whisper.

“I screamed at you,” she mumbles, head lolling to one side. “You were trying to help me and I screamed at you.”

“I scared you,” he protests, “I touched you without any warning and - I mean, I know better than that, we both do, we’ve gone through the same training courses and we know - Amy, honey, you were in so much pain and you were also in shock and I scared you. I deserved a hell of a lot worse than you screaming at me.”

Her chin quivers as she lifts her hand again, managing to keep it aloft a little bit longer than before. “I didn’t mean it, I didn’t, I - when I woke up and you weren’t here…”

Her fingers weakly curl into the folds of her blankets as her voice trails off, tears streaming down her face in earnest. “I thought I would make things worse,” he admits softly. “I thought - I just wanted you to feel safe.”

She sniffles, her good eye wide, and her fingers flex again. “Will you please hold my hand?” she whispers.

He scoops her left hand up immediately, covering it with both of his own, pulling it up closer to his face to press his lips against her fingertips where they protrude between his palms. Her eyes flutter shut and she sniffles, returning the gentle pressure as best she can. She lets out a breath, releasing a quiet hum from the back of her throat; the noise, so little, settles like balm across his aching heart.

“Thank you,” she murmurs, good eye fluttering open. He nods, gently caressing the soft skin of the back of her hand with his thumb. “Jake, I - I, um. I need - I need to tell you something.” He shifts a little closer, ignoring the stiff protest in his knees, and she studies his face for a long moment. “I don’t know how to do this,” she admits after a moment.

“Okay,” he shakes his head, flashing her an encouraging smile, gently squeezing her hand. “You don’t have to tell me right now.”

“I want to,” she says earnestly. “I just - when I was - I thought, for a second, that - that I wasn’t gonna - that -” she stops, clenches her jaw, and he finds himself steadying her hand as a tremor works down her arm. “I was scared,” she says after a moment. “And I had this - this thought. That I wasn’t…that I might leave things behind.”

He stares at her for a moment, before understanding hits him with all the indiscriminate force of a careening freight train.

“I’ve been living my life with all of these compartments,” she continues, seemingly oblivious to the vice squeezing the air out of his lungs. “All of these neat little black and white boxes, and I’ve been ignoring the grey. Because it doesn’t fit, Jake. The grey doesn’t fit. And I’ve never been good at handling things that don’t fit. I just - if I can ignore it, long enough, eventually, it goes away.” She wiggles her fingers in his grip - not enough for him to loosen his own grip, but enough to draw his attention to the fingertips still peeking out at him. “I thought if I ignored this long enough, it would go away.”

He returns his eyes to her face to find her looking at him - looking at him, all of him, piercing right through to his very soul - and his heart shoots directly into his throat.

“It didn’t,” she murmurs.

He clenches his jaw, briefly squeezes his eyes shut, forces himself to inhale and exhale through his nose.

“It’s becoming more and more of a problem,” she continues after a moment. He keeps his eyes closed, focusing on her words until the rest of his surroundings fade away completely and it’s just her hand in his, her voice, and the unforgiving floor against his knees. “And I’ve been thinking - I’ve been dreading this, because I knew I was gonna have to tell you one way or another, and for once in my life I had no idea how you would react. I was so scared - it seems stupid, now.” He snorts involuntarily, dropping his head to press their hands against his forehead, and somewhere to his right he hears her let out a quiet laugh.

“Amy…” he murmurs when she doesn’t immediately continue.

“Hang on,” she says softly, and he nods. “I just want to get the words out. I like you, Jake. A lot. Too much, probably.” Another laugh escapes her chest - this one airier than the one before it. “I don’t expect you to say it back or to feel the same way - I hope you feel the same way,” she adds, and he bites down on the inside of his cheek at the undeniable longing punctuating each word. “But I know it’s been a while, and…you said, that night, that you’d pissed at yourself if something went down and I didn’t know how you felt. And that was all I could think about earlier. How angry I was going to be if you didn’t know.”

She huffs out a breath, fingers rippling against his palms. Slowly, he lowers their hands and opens his eyes; she’s watching him again, pursed lips moving slowly as she nibbles at the inside of her lower lip. He has this absurd desire to pull her lip away from her teeth with his thumb, to gently caress her chin, to cup his hand beneath her jaw and hold her head in place while pressing chaste kisses to her lips -

“You’ve had me for a long time now, Ames,” he admits, surprised at the emotion rasping in his voice. He reaches up with his right hand to gently, gently touch her face, smiling when she turns her head automatically to nuzzle further into his touch. “It’s - only ever been you.”

The smile that lights her face is genuine and soft, small and shy, and Jake finds himself thinking this - this is what I’ve been looking for.

“When you get outta here - when you get better - can I take you to dinner?”

She nods, smile growing, and he gently runs the pad of his thumb over her cheek.

“Are you guys done being gross?” A voice behind him asks.

He cranes his neck around, hands never leaving Amy’s body, to find Rosa leaned against the doorway, a light blue hospital-issued blanket folded over her arm. She’s got one brow arched, a distinct scowl across her features, but there’s an unfamiliar warmth to her gaze that makes Jake want to hug her. “Hi, Rosa,” he says instead, returning his attention to Amy’s face. “You can come in, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Rosa harrumphs but steps over his legs without further comment, unfolding the blanket and draping it over Amy’s legs. Amy’s eyes track Rosa’s movements, a thankful smile briefly splitting her face when Rosa makes eye-contact. “Okay,” Rosa says, “seems like you don’t need me here anymore. I’m gonna head home.” Jake feels a solid thump against his shoulder; Rosa’s looking at him very seriously when he turns to meet her gaze. “Call me if she needs anything, any time. ‘Kay?”

“Thank you, Rosa,” Amy says as Jake nods.

“Get better soon, I hate sparring with Charles.”

Amy laughs, and Rosa cracks a small, genuine smile. She pats Amy’s ankle twice, shoots Jake another nod, and then shuffles back out the door.

“You should get some sleep,” Jake tells Amy softly. She blinks at him slowly, something like serenity softening the features of her face, and he traces his thumb over her forehead, his touch featherlight. “Sleep, Ames, you need it.”

A crease appears between her brows as her throat works against a swallow. “I don’t want to miss anything,” she whispers.

“You won’t,” he assures her, “I promise, you won’t. I’ll be right here the whole time, I’ll be here when you wake up again. Sleep,” he urges her softly, ignoring the rush of pride he feels as the crease between her brows smooths out again. “We’ll keep talking when you wake up.”

“Promise?”

He nods solemnly, lifting her hand to press a kiss against her fingers. “I swear.” he murmurs against her knuckles.

(He keeps his promise, for the record - he’s there when she wakes six hours later, and the next morning, and the morning after that, and the morning after that, and pretty much every morning that follows.)

#brooklyn 99 #brooklyn 99 fanfiction #jake x amy #peraltiago #peraltiago fanfiction #my b99 fics #Anonymous #prompt request

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