#ty sparkle squad i owe you my life

[hythlodaes]

i hit lvl 90 with gnb which means.

it is time <:

[dumpsteramy]

we’re here tonight, and that’s enough

here is my secret santa fic for the very lovely very amazing and queen of words Renee! @amydancepants-peralta ✨ i hope this makes you smile, i loved writing for you and these two birds of a feather. your prompt about jake and amy being each other’s chosen family really resonated with me – i figured a family like jake and amy's will always take care of each other

happy christmas! 🎄❤️

Jake’s ringtone blares loudly through his apartment, ricocheting off the walls and threatening to smash the glass of every damn lightbulb hung on the wall. He groans into his pillow, one hand blindly grasping in the dim lights for anything to throw at the bastard, anything to shut it up forever and ever times infinity plus one.

But then it’s silent.

The incessant buzzing ceases to exist, and Toni Braxton’s wails of heartbreak are cut short. If it wasn’t three am, Jake would feel sorry for her and prolong his answering of the phone at least until the chorus hit – but it is three am, and Jake had hard plans to be comatose for twenty four hours minimum following his capture of quite the impressive burglary team. Pulling back to back all nighters never gets easier, especially when the rest of the squad is celebrating the festive period without him, drinking mulled wine and screaming along to every Christmas number one at Shaw’s. Surely John McClane got more sleep than this.

Toni’s back, deafening in the silence, and Jake bites back a groan as he grapples with his phone to answer whoever is calling at – God, three thirty?!

“Gruber better have a gun to your head, Ames,” he rasps, eyes squinting against the sparkle of tinsel threaded through his bed frame.

“I…sorry, I’ms so sorry… putain j’appelle, I caller and you’re sleeping bu’ I miss you…shhh!”

Jake’s bolting upright, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and stumbling into sweatpants. French speaking Amy. Nine drink Amy. And she’s trying to library-shush a rowdy bar, because he was sleeping, and, yep, even though her shushes are in vain his heart hurts from how stupid endearing his intoxicated girlfriend is.

“Aw you miss me? That's so embarrassing for you!” A dopey smile lights up his face. Amy has once again cut through something as trivial as sleep like an angel’s wings slicing through the clouds and he needs to follow her. He’s the luckiest man alive, and he’ll be damned if he wastes a moment of his life not adoring her.

Amy hiccups and it’s the sweetest sound he’s ever heard. “Tu me manques le plus.”

“Sorry, babe, I don’t know French, but I’m 100 percent you’re saying you’re super obsessed with me.”

Amy’s nodding rapidly, affirming, but all Jake can deduce from her silence is the sound of drunken carols in the background and Rosa yelling at him to come pick her up because she can't take any more of her pining.

“Still at Shaw’s?” He yawns.

“Dormir…I can get home fien, jus’ open window an’ I’ll climb in don’ worry about it!”

Jake’s sleepily cramming his right foot into his left sneaker when he starts laughing at the image she has so drunkenly painted.

“Ames, you live in a twenty story building! Can Ten Drink Amy scale buildings? Oh my god – is Ten Drink Amy Spiderman?!”

Amy starts laughing, merry and bright, and his heart trips, skipping against his ribcage at the sound.

She’s fine. A little loud, definitely way past dancing, but he reckons he can get to her before Gina double dares her to use the wrong ‘their’ in every Christmas card and ruins her life forever. There’s a scuffle on her end of the line and he hears something about riding le renne and les chevaux then some clinking of glasses. Okay, she may not be fine.

“Jake…it’s your Ames – I where you miss you?”

His smile is luminous in the dark of his apartment, and if he blushes, well, nobody needs to know the specifics, despite what Charles may say. His Ames really misses him. “You saw me like seven hours ago. But I miss you too.”

Amy’s satisfied hum is well worth the sappiness (and he loves the sappiness).

“Stay where you are, I’m coming to get you and you’re sleeping at mine,” Jake rumbles, throwing on a hoodie and jacket. He scampers down to his snow-covered car, almost skidding halfway across the street when a rink of black ice meets the underside of his sneakers.

“Reste là je bonne Gina me donne des tonnes d'eau épicée!”

Jake grimaces. Really shouldn’t have sold that Mustang, he’d be there by now.

“Stop talking French, stay with Rosa and maybe throw up a little, love you!”

He hears a clatter and can only assume she’s dropped the phone, so he speeds up a little, but then she’s back and screaming about –

“Mistletoe, Jake! Où sont tes lèvres?!”

“Hm what’s that now?”

“Où sont tes lèvres?!”

“Babe, I really don’t understand,” he laughs, “But I’ll be there in ten minutes… uh, dix minuexeux?”

“Ah, oui oui!” She yells, and seven speedy minutes later Jake’s pulling over on the sidewalk outside the bar and planning just how to convince her to down a swimming pool’s worth of water. Maybe he could shovel some snow into a beer bottle? No, that’s nothing. It’s almost four am, after all, and brain is broken.

The next thing he registers is the beat of Wonderful Christmastime as the bar door swings open and holiday revelers stumble out to the dark snowy street. Through the rose-tinted windows, he can just make out Rosa pouring an endless stream of water into Amy’s mouth while propping her up against a precariously teetering Christmas tree. He chases the warmth of indoors; the second the swell of holiday cheer and alcohol hit his senses, like a magnet, Jake is met with a mouthful of raven hair.

“Jacques!”

“Bonjour, ma chérie," Jake grins, kissing her quickly and steadying her as she sways dangerously in front of him. She clings to him, red lips leaving lipstick stains along the curve of his jaw.

“You’re druuuunk,” he giggles, wrapping her in his arms like his very own sparkly shiny present. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

“But you’re here, ’m already home,” Amy frowns, looking up at him like it’s the most obvious fact in the world.

He rubs her back, throat suddenly tight, because she’s everything he’ll ever need. Even drunk, there’s a blinding, aching sincerity in Amy’s eyes as they meet his. And if she sees him as a home, somewhere to lay her head in safety and shelter, he thanks his lucky stars for doing something right. As she hugs him, he murmurs a hoarse, “I’m always gonna be a home for you. Because you’re my family, it’s you and me.”

“I love you s’much,” Amy hums, kissing his cheek as he waves goodbye to Rosa and Gina.

“I love you,” he says, natural and easy, taking her hand as he navigates them through the throng of people out onto the street.

Something prickly scratches at his jaw, and he looks down at her. Amy is cradling his hand in hers, twizzling mistletoe in her other. She holds it up between them, brown eyes twinkling under the frosty festoons decorating Shaw’s. Tiny flecks of snow land in her eyelashes as she anchors herself against him.

“’m sorry I woke you,” Amy whispers in the quiet of the street, doe eyes meeting his. “And that you couldn’ come tonight. Misser you.”

He pulls her closer, linking his hands behind the small of her back and kissing her cold red nose.

“Missered you too, honey,” Jake chuckles, “there’s nobody else I’d rather pick up drunk off their face at four am.”

His lips graze hers softly, gently, tender and mild under the starry night sky. She smiles against him, safe, and he cups her flushed cheeks as she shivers in the snow. He takes his jacket off and throws it around her shoulders, leading her to the car and, once inside, slipping her heels off for her.

She’s dozing against his shoulder by the time he parks up, so he carries her back up to his place and lays her on his bed. Amy stirs under his twinkly lightbulb lights, reaching out to thread the mistletoe into his tinsel while he makes room for aspirin, water and the inevitable throw up bucket on his bedside table. Then he lies beside her, clearing her face of makeup and sloppily tying her hair up.

“Did you have fun tonight?” Jake inquires, impressed as she twists and wriggles out of her holly print dress; Amy prides herself on her independence regardless of sobriety level and complicated tie waist dress features.

“Mhmmn,” she hums sleepily, cuddling into him. “Gina owes me five lycra bodysui’s and you’re welcome.” She tosses him a wink and his smile, cheeky and so so fond, heats her cold bones.

“Oh, well Gina will definitely be getting her present first.”

Amy giggles, tucking her nose against his neck to breathe his distinctly home-y scent.

“Close your eyes, Ames,” He holds her hand between his two, solid and firm and everything she needs as the room spins around her.

“Thank you for looking after me,” she whispers, voice hoarse from what she vaguely recalls as her third duet of Fairytale of New York with Rosa.

“You don’t need to thank me,” he murmurs, suddenly bashful and running a hand up and down her back. He pulls his bed covers over them when her eyes begin to flutter shut. “Is there anything else I can do?”

She tries to fight the gravity weighing her eyelids down because under Jake's lights, cuddled and warmed securely in his arms and in his care, this moment – like all moments with him – is too precious to lose. But then, she’s home with him, and this feeling is guaranteed to stay for the rest of her days.

“You’re here tonight,” she tilts her head to press a kiss to his lips, then lays her head over his chest, “and that’s enough.”