#i put / bc tumblr doesn't do line breaks anymore clearly

[amyscascadingtabs]

the way you keep the world at bay for me

post-the set up, a.k.a jake taking care of hungover amy, hungover amy taking care of sad jake, and mac caring mostly about himself because he’s a baby 😌

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Jake doesn't get a lot of sleep that night, and for once, it's not even Mac’s fault. It's not even due to the pizza parlor simulator game either, although he does play a couple of rounds when Amy's finally snoring next to him after ranting to herself about the babysitter’s club for a solid ten minutes, but not even that can fully distract him from the dull sense of doom that's made itself at home deep in his chest. 

This is bad. Holt wants to see him tomorrow, and Jake knows there will be consequences. There has to be. There should be. He made a mistake, and he's going to get punished for it, and there is nothing he can do but accept his defeat. He already knows what he has to do; the nerve-wracking thing is the fact that it's still hours away, and his brain is spinning too fast for sleep.

He really wishes he could talk to Amy. She's sleeping on her stomach with her mouth open, arms straight out to the sides like she’s trying to push him out of bed, but he still can’t be mad at her. He hasn’t seen her this drunk since before she got pregnant, and he’s seriously worried about the hangover she’ll be sporting tomorrow, but he also knows she did it for him. Because they’re a team. Because she trusts him, sometimes even when it turns out he was wrong.

He wrongfully arrested someone. The sentence keeps repeating in his head, appears pasted in bold font on the inside of his eyelids if he tries to go to sleep, and displayed in luminescent letters on the ceiling of his bedroom when he gives up and opens his eyes again. He should have known better, has learned his lesson time and time again since his early days of constantly glorifying his job and letting his impulsivity get the best of him, and he still made a mistake.

  /

He just wants someone to tell him it doesn’t make him a bad person. If only Amy wasn’t so drunk he’s scared to wake her up right now, Charles wasn’t so devotedly biased in all questions involving Jake’s role as a detective, and Mac wasn’t, well… so completely unable to grasp any of the concepts involved in the question.

Amy lets out another mighty drunken snore, and Jake hopes she will consider it a testament to his love for her that he doesn’t voice record it. He turns his head instead and picks up his phone to go back to the pizza game. Maybe just a few more virtual customers will be able to lure him to sleep.

 ~

 He must have fallen asleep eventually, because when Mac does start babbling to himself over the monitor, the morning sun is shining through the windows, and Amy’s stopped snoring. She’s only moaning uncomfortably to herself now, and Jake’s guessing from her strained grimace that the headache has kicked in hard.

“I’ll get you coffee and aspirin as soon as I’ve checked on Mac,” he whispers to her with a kiss to her neck, and he thinks he sees the hint of a smile as she reaches out for him in what’s probably an attempt of a pat on the back, but ends up more of an unintentional slap to his butt. Or maybe she’s still drunk, and it is intentional. It’s hard to tell.

  /

Mac may have no clue about what’s currently going on with Jake, but at least it’s impossible not to smile when he hauls himself up and rocks back and forth on unsteady feet in excitement over the fact that someone’s coming to get him. He greets Jake with that wide grin that shows off all of his four teeth – two up and two down, and they’ve kept everyone up at night for weeks, but they’re so pearly white and cute so maybe it was worth it – and a laugh that’s been Jake’s favorite sound on Earth since the first time he heard it.

“Good morning, bud,” Jake tells his son as he lifts him up in his arms. “What do you say we get you a bottle and mama some coffee? Hmm?”

“Bah,” Mac repeats. Jake decides to give him the benefit of the doubt and say it means he agrees on the bottle.

“Bottle, exactly. You're so smart,” he says, booping his little nose and smiling as it makes Mac giggle. “Let's try another one. Dada.”

There's a tense moment of them both just staring at each other, and then finally, his son goes,

“Bah.”

“One day,” Jake says with a sigh as he carries Mac out of the nursery. “As long as you say me first, okay? We’ll get there. We’ll practice.”

  /

He puts Mac in the high chair while he tries his best to work the coffee machine and the bottle warmer at the same time. It's trickier than to be expected on almost no sleep, but at least he manages to pour the breast milk from the freezer bag into the bottle and not into his coffee this time. He's only made that mistake once (fine, maybe twice, and he kind of liked how sweet it tasted but he's never gonna tell anyone), but he suspects Amy's never gonna let him live it down. He gets Aspirin from the medicine cabinet while he waits, and puts a couple of slices of toast in the toaster. His own day feels already pretty much beyond saving, but at least maybe he can improve Amy's.

  /

Though, when she stumbles out of the bedroom, still in her pajamas with her huge glasses and hair on end and looking like she's either seconds from being sick or going straight back to sleep, he worries whether she might just be beyond saving, too.

“How are you feeling?” He asks as she gives him one drained look before walking up to the couch and face-planting on it with another pained groan.

“I think I might be dead.”

“That's called a hangover, babe. I think you used to be familiar with the concept once upon a time, but I guess it's been a while.” Jake grins at Mac, who only reaches his chubby hands out for the bottle out in response. “Toast?”

“Do I have to?”

“It's going to help.”

“Fine.” Amy pushes her head off the pillow to look at Mac. “He's not drinking the milk I pumped yesterday, right?”

“I poured that out for you. I know they say moderate amounts of alcohol are fine, but, well, you were speaking British.”

“Good call,” Amy mumbles as he puts the coffee, aspirin, and toast down in front of her. “See, this is why I married you.”

Jake just hums, but he does smile to himself as he goes to grab his own cup of coffee.

  /

“I wish I could call in sick to work today,” Amy says between bites of toast, and Jake looks up from where he’s absentmindedly brushing crumbs off the countertop while finishing his own. “My head feels like it’s going to explode.”

“I mean, you did very much go through contractions while managing an entire precinct during a blackout once. You could think about that?”

“No, this is worse than giving birth,” she states confidently, and Jake has to try very hard not to laugh. “Don’t tell my past self I said that. Or my future self if I ever give birth again.”

“Yeah.” He grimaces. “I’m pretty terrified to go, too.”

“Why?”

“Because yesterday? All of it?”

“Ohh.” Amy sighs. “Right. Maybe we should both just stay home.”

  /

Jake’s about to tell her how much he wishes that was an option when Mac drops the finished bottle against the tray, immediately starting to twist in his seat. Jake unclasps the belt and lifts him out before he manages to rock the chair – that kid’s shockingly strong – and Mac immediately crawls away towards the walker. He doesn’t use it to move yet, but he’s been pulling himself up with it for over a month, and the anticipation is high every time he lets go with one hand only to sit back down on his booty the next second. Sometimes Jake could swear his son does it for attention. At least Mac doesn’t seem to have inherited his impulsivity, Jake thinks, and then he’s back to beating himself up in his head.

  / 

“I just don’t know why I did it,” he mutters as he sits down on the floor next to Amy’s head on the couch. She nods slowly, and Jake takes it as a sign she might actually be able to listen to him now. “I should know better, right? These are, like... the kind of mistakes I used to make. I thought I’d gotten better at this kind of stuff. Smarter. Less impulsive. Less of a bad cop. But instead I arrested and tailed an innocent man, all because I thought I had a gut feeling and thought I was being set up.” He shakes his head. “I guess that FBI jerk was right about gut feelings.”

“You’re a great detective,” Amy says without missing a beat. “A lot of the time, your gut feeling is right.”

“That doesn’t excuse it. I still shouldn’t have done it.”

“No.” Amy sighs. “You shouldn’t have.”

“It sucked.”

“Yeah. It did. But there’s nothing you can do to change it now.”

“Do you think I’m a bad person for it?” The question comes flying out of him, and Amy frowns.

“Why would I think that?”

“Because it was a shit move! And because I’m definitely gonna get suspended for it, and that’s going to lose us money. And then we’re not going to be able to save as much for Mac, or pay for his baby music class or baby gymnastics. And then he’s going to end up broke and untalented and it’ll all be my fault, and then you’ll be ashamed of me and leave me and I’ll die sad and alone in a ditch.”

“And you don’t think you’re spiraling just slightly right now?” Amy asks. The smile on her lips is one of amusement, and it humbles him, bringing him out of his cycle of self-pity.

“I don’t know. I didn’t get a ton of sleep last night.”

“I don’t think you’re a bad person,” she says, and that does make him feel a bit better. “I think you made a really stupid mistake. There's no getting away from that. I’m not happy about it. But… I know you'll take responsibility for it. That’s already a whole lot further than a lot of people care to go.”

  /

Her fingers brush through her hair, calming him as she speaks. The hangover has made her voice a little scratchy, Jake notices when she's this close. It reminds him of mornings after long evenings out before they were parents, a time that always feels far longer ago than it was. Sometimes he thinks everything before Mac might as well be another lifetime.

  /

“And we'll work it out if you do get suspended,” Amy continues, talking over the obnoxious melody playing from a toy Mac has found. “It's not great, of course. But we can save lots of money on daycare if you stay home with Mac. That helps.”

“Like a paternity leave,” Jake says. He does like that thought.

“Oh yeah.” Amy laughs. “You’ll be just like one of those hip Scandinavian dads who get to stay home with their kids because they live in countries where they don’t hate people for having kids. And you two can go to all of the cool classes and playdates together. You’d be the sexiest dad at baby swim class for sure.”

“Wouldn’t I also be one of the only ones?”

“Good point. Make sure to mention your wife a lot. But hey, Mac’s going to love it.”

 /

As if wanting to confirm Amy’s point, Mac crawls over to Jake and tries to climb up on his knees to sit in his lap. He does this sometimes when he’s playing on his own; retreats to their arms for a hug or a quick cuddle, only to try and wriggle out of their grip and go back to whatever it is he’s doing in the next moment. Jake thinks it might be one of their son’s sweetest qualities. Mac rests his head against Jake’s chest, almost hugging him like that, and he wonders, not for the first time, how a person that’s not even one year of age can make every other issue in the world seem so insignificant. Even if it's just for a moment, it's a pretty damn good moment.

 / 

Fueled by the most powerful motivation of all – their son’s love and attention – Amy sits down on the floor too, patting her knees.

“You want to come to mama, Mac?”

Mac squirms for a moment in Jake's arms, and Jake lets go of him. Using the couch as support, for a second it looks like he’s almost about to take a step toward her. Both parents gasp in anticipation, and it must confuse him, because he reacts by giving Amy a shocked look and sitting right back down on his butt. Jake laughs as their son crawls away again, heading for the soft building blocks outside the playpen.

“He's such a tease.”

“He gets that from you,” Amy says, and Jake huffs in mock-offense. “Are you sure we shouldn't just stay home from work?”

  /

Jake thinks of his upcoming meeting with Holt. He's been fearing it for so many hours now, and he's starting to wonder if the anxious anticipation might just not be worse than the meeting itself. He already knows what he has to do; the only thing left is to rip off the band-aid.

“I don't think it will make anything better if we don't.”

“Yeah.” Amy sighs, closing her eyes and leaning on his shoulder. “I love you.”

“Love you too. And you should probably shower and put on makeup unless you want everyone to know exactly how hungover you are.”

“I know you're right, and I hate it.”

Jake grins and strokes her hair before getting up from the floor. “I’ll go get Mac ready for the day.”

  /

“Jake?” Amy calls out before he can leave for the nursery with Mac in his arms, and he turns around. Her voice is still a little hoarse.

“Yeah?”

“It's going to be okay, babe. We’ll figure it out.”

 / 

Jake brushes his fingers through Mac’s already unruly curls. He thinks of playground dates, the storytime for toddlers their library holds every Wednesday, and how much time he’ll have to make sure Mac says his name first now. Then he thinks of the bigger image; of daring to set a good example for this child, even when it's hard. If he wants the world to be a better place for his son, he's going to have to start by taking responsibility for his own actions.

“Yeah. I know.”

  /

For the first time that day, he dares to believe it.

#my writing #b99 #b99 fic #i put / bc tumblr doesn't do line breaks anymore clearly #anyway. this is late and not my best it's been a Week but i really wanted to write something so. here is Something <3