#i've had writers block for like 7947839 years but safe house happened and suddenly i wrote 1.5k in two days

[johnny-and-dora]

as long as you come back home

"What?” He asks softly, like he's staring straight through her. “Nothing. I just...I never thought I’d have to get used to being apart from you.” “Me too. I guess I thought whenever I missed you, you were always going to be just the other side of my desk.”

or, the one where jake and amy talk about jake volunteering to stay with kevin in the safe house. (pre 5x12) read on ao3

Amy stirs gently from her sleep, her head still a little cloudy from another disorientating, half-waking dream. Her nights have been restless for the past few days, ever since Murphy called in Holt’s favour – and a slow, sleepy blink at her trusted alarm clock along with the moonlight pouring through the crack in the curtains tells her it’s the dead of night. 

She groans into her pillow, wishing herself back to sleep with every fibre of willpower she has left, but the tightness in her chest tells her there’s no use. The respite of the morning, knowing that Kevin is safe and well – and the sweet relief of highly caffeinated drinks – is still hours away.

She shifts a little in bed as her ears finally tune in to the familiar, light buzz of muted dialogue coming from the TV screen in the living room, and her brows furrow in hazy uncertainty. She rolls over to find the bed empty beside her and lets her stomach drop for a second before rational thought kicks in.

Slowly, movements laced with lethargy, she gets up, careful not to trip over one of Jake’s dirty laundry mountains (“C’mon, Ames, you love museums. Just think of them as art installations.”) Amy fumbles for her dressing gown and pads softly out of their bedroom like she’s still in a dream, drawn to the light of the TV screen like a moth – albeit a sleepy, still confused moth concerned for her fiancé’s wellbeing.

Wow, delirium-induced, moth related similes at two in the morning. Amy really needs to get some sleep.

“Jake?” She says in barely a whisper once she sees him slumped on the couch, and he turns his head to face her, hand nervously rubbing at the back of his neck. It’s still dark, despite the glow of the TV, and she didn’t think to reach for her old lady glasses so he’s slightly blurry – but he’s hers, and he’s home.

As she blinks he gives her a soft, warm smile that doesn’t quite meet his eyes, the one where she can tell that he’s happy to see her but something’s quietly gnawing at him and he doesn’t quite know how to stop it.

(It’s a smile she, a little sadly, recognises – although whenever something was bothering him when they were first partners, she could never get anything out of him but sex tape jokes and terrible flirting. Luckily now she’s much better at getting him to open up without having to punch him first.)

(Not for the first time, she warms at the idea of telling a fresh faced, newly transferred Amy Santiago that someday she’d be engaged to marry the biggest pain in the ass in the precinct.)

“Did I wake you?” He whispers quietly, and she shakes her head. “No no, it’s fine. Are you okay?” “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither.” She moves towards him then, curling up next to him on the couch, head resting lazily against his chest. She feels the tension in his shoulders relax a little once she’s there and squeezes his hand tenderly.

In the secret language they’ve unconsciously created over the past eight years they’ve known each other, it means I’m here if you need me. They’ve done it in the deafening quiet of emergency rooms and before the nerve-racking tension of raids and after countless tragedies and during seemingly impossible problems, again and again, since before they were dating, since before they were even really friends.

Neither of them acknowledges it, but it’s a constant. A comfort, though they wouldn’t dare admit it back then. Another tiny declaration of love they make every day.

They stay like that for a while, silent apart from distant sounding sirens on the TV, breathing slow, heavy and rhythmic. The air feels weighted with a thousand what-if’s they’re both terrified to say out loud because it might make it true. Amy tries to focus on whatever old rerun of Serve and Protect that’s showing in the small hours, but her eyelids keep drooping and she can’t get her mind off Holt and Kevin, imagining the worst over and over again.

Over the rolling credits, Jake takes a deep, unusually shaky breath, eyes still fixed on the screen, hand still firmly in her grip - and Amy prepares for the worst.

“I think I have to volunteer to watch over Kevin in the safe house.” “Well, yeah. We all promised to help out-“ She says cautiously, stomach casually plummeting when he finally glances down at her and confirms her suspicions. “You know that’s not what I mean. I mean, just me.”

“Jake-“ She begins, but it comes out all wrong, like an exasperated, desperate sigh - and whatever argument was on her lips gets caught in her throat, so she just looks at him, and he smiles sadly.

“I know. But it’s my fault that Murphy is even after Kevin, and that Holt even made the deal with him in the first place. I have to make things right.” She tries to keep it together, hates knowing that he’s unfairly put that burden on his shoulders and she can’t carry it for him.

“You would be gone for months. Again.” “I would miss you like crazy – but it...it wouldn’t be like last time.”

“It feels like you only just came back to me.” She says, voice impossibly small, face half-buried in his grey T-shirt, mainly so she can avoid his gaze. She hates how vulnerable and how clingy she sounds, and knows really that she can’t stop him, but that doesn’t change the weight casually building in her chest at the threat of him leaving again.

“I know, Ames, and I’m sorry. I hate leaving you, so much you don’t even know - but I have to go. I owe Holt so much, and it’s not even about that. I just know I have to do the right thing. I can't just sit here when I know Kevin's in danger.”

And she knows, Amy knows that it’s not going to be like last time. She knows it’s not even going to come close to the hell that they’ve endured, crawled through, survived and come out the other side – more to the point, she knows he’s doing the right thing, keeping Kevin safe.

If their roles were reversed, if any of the squad and those they loved were in the same kind of danger, she would do the exact same thing.

She knows him well enough that he would be pacing around their apartment every night for a month, doing that adorable nervous thing with his hands when they almost fizzle with energy he can’t dissipate, hating for anyone else but him to be helping out. She knows that he feels responsible for it, for all of it, and nothing she or anyone can say will change his mind. She knows, because his stupid, damn stubbornness one of the reasons she fell in love with him.

His moral compass is relatively new, but she loves that too. She loves every part, every single piece, every inch of him, including the part that’s desperate to leave. And she wants to be angry, she wants to scream, to beg him to stay - but how can she? So she breathes, exhales long and heavy.

“I know you can't." She says, after a while. He raises an eyebrow, and Amy sighs again, desperate yet firm.

"Just...come home soon – and be safe, and come back all in one piece, otherwise I’ll kill you. We have a wedding to plan.” They exchange, sad, longing yet soft smiles, another million things she could say between them, but she doesn’t need to - he already knows.

He kisses the top of her head and she squeezes his hand, twice this time. I love you.

“I love you too. And I’ll call and text, and you can visit, and I swear, I’ll be home before you even know I was gone.”

He won’t be, of course. He’ll be gone for far too long, two months too long, and it’ll be hell on earth. But he’ll also come back to her, just like every single time she has before. They’ve gone up against far worse monsters than Murphy - six months of swampy witness protection hell, eight weeks of orange jumpsuits and willing to risk lives, risk careers, risk everything just for the chance to hear each other’s voice, to find a scrap of normality again.

And so help her God, when they catch Murphy, and they will, she’ll let every criminal in New York walk free before she lets Jake Peralta out of her sight again.

As if he can hear her, he laughs a little, in the cute familiar small way he exhales out of her nose she’s going to miss along with everything else, and she feels the rise and fall of his chest against hers like they’re one being intricately tangled together. She turns her head up to look at him, unable to stop at least a small smile from softening her face.

"What?” He asks softly, like he's staring straight through her. “Nothing. I just...I never thought I’d have to get used to being apart from you.” “Me too. I guess I thought whenever I missed you, you were always going to be just the other side of my desk.” That makes her smile, and she buries her head in his chest again. "I know. But I'm always going to be here." She says, poking where she can feel his heart steadily beating under his shirt, and he laughs.

"Damn, Santiago. Didn't know you could be so cheesy." "It's your fault for making me watch all those stupid rom-com movies." "C'mon, you love them! I swear you tear up every time." Amy sticks her tongue at him in childish retaliation and he laughs again, pulling her closer, and for a moment everything is right in the universe again.

She’s still heavy with the thought of being apart again, heavier and heavier at ever having to let him go - but the weight she’s carrying around - it’s different to last time. It’s lighter, and she’s full of just enough hope – and, for once when it comes to Jake, rational thought - to keep her afloat. This won’t last forever.

There’s a promise in intricate glinting silver that’s wrapped around her left ring finger that makes sure of that, and a quiet, determined, hardened resolve she didn’t have last time.

She draws a long, heavy breath, finally starting to drift off, diving into the last dregs of hope for a good night’s sleep, no longer restless with his arms wrapped protectively around her.

(And it’s two seemingly everlasting months later, when his hands are in her hair and hers on his waist and they’re both laughing, giddy as their lips brush and their foreheads touch and he’s really, properly actually here, he’s home, when she finally breathes out.)