#staying consistent

Jake supposes it’s not technically his son’s fault. Double-sided ear infection, ruptured eardrum on the right, had been their pediatrician’s judgment when they took Mac there this morning, following a night of so much crying that in the end, their son wasn't the only one whose ears were seriously hurting. Amy had ended up staying home with him for the day, whilst Jake had spent his workday downing a dangerous amount of coffee to not incidentally fall asleep if he as much as leaned against a wall for a second too long, and they had ended up canceling the date plans. Mac wasn't his usual happy self, it wasn't fair to hand Charles a feverish baby for a night, and neither of them really had the energy to dress up for dinner at a restaurant when running on less than two hours of sleep. Date night - officially canceled.

“Well,” Amy groans as she confirms the babysitting cancellation with Charles over text for a third time, assuring him that yes, they would be okay, and yes, they would call him the next time they needed a babysitter. “This wasn't how I had planned for tonight to go.”

“I don’t think it was anyone’s plan,” Jake tries to comfort her from a distance as he starts on his n-th lap walking around the kitchen table while bouncing Mac in the Babybjorn. Through a joint and arduous effort, they’d finally managed to get their son to take some baby Tylenol without spitting it out, and half an hour later’s worth of crying, he was finally dozing off. “Least of all Mac’s, I bet.”

Amy pouts, watching her son with the same worried gaze that Jake recognizes from times in his life he’d rather forget - a car outside a farm in Pennsylvania, a filled courtroom, the nights after he came home and the nightmares kept them both up. “I know. It breaks my heart to see him like that - I wish there was a way I could just take that pain from him, because he doesn’t even understand it, you know? I’d much rather suffer myself than see him doing it.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Yeah.” She sighs. “But I’m also sad about not getting to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I was going to wear a dress, and do my makeup, and get to hang out with just you for several hours and spend ninety percent of that time talking about how much we miss our baby, but still. I wasn’t planning for sweatpants and a sick baby.”

“I know, Ames.” He stops behind her on the kitchen chair, quickly pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “Me too.”

“I’m just so exhausted,” she mumbles, pulling down the sleeves of her grey NYPD hoodie and resting her chin on her hands. “He slept for two hours, so I tried to do some work, but it’s riddled with typos, and I could swear there’s a dangling participle in there somewhere. Imagine if I’d sent that to Holt! I need a nap, and I need to pump, because he’s been glued to me for the entire day but he’s barely wanted to eat.”

“You could combine those things?”

Amy snorts. “I wish. If I’d figured out how to pump while asleep, I would be so efficient. But no.”

  She lets out a yawn, and as much as Jake can feel his own exhaustion like a dull, weighted blanket on top of him, relentless despite the caffeine he’s tried to combat it with, he only needs to glance at his wife to know her day’s been worse. Sure, policework is tough, but he knows from experience exactly how much more demanding a full day of caring for a sick, fussy, baby can be. Jake loves his wife, but she’s categorically useless at letting herself rest sometimes.

“You can go to sleep for a bit,” he tells her, nodding when she raises an eyebrow. “Or pump, then sleep. Whatever you need.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Mac’s sleeping, and you’ve taken care of him the entire day. I’ll take him for a couple of hours, and you get some sleep, okay? You need it.”

“Rude,” she grimaces, but there’s an air of relief over her when she stands up, brushing her lips against the stubble on his cheek - shaving’s becoming less and less of a priority for him these days. “But okay. I love you.”

“Love you, too,” he whispers, and she gives him a knowing smile before heading towards their bedroom.

  He had been looking forward to their anniversary date, too. Not for the reasons Amy seems to believe; Jake loves her in fancy dresses and makeup, but he loves her just as much when she hasn’t washed her hair in two days and she’s wearing pajamas with milk stains and baby spit-up on it. He had been looking forward to spending some child-free time with her, but not because he prefers it over an evening at home with her and Mac. No, he’d really just been longing for a chance to show his tired, hard-working, champion of a wife how special she is to him, how much he loves her, and the life they have built. A proper date had seemed like the perfect way to do that, whereas a night at home with their sick baby did not seem nearly as strikingly effective, but Jake figures that shouldn’t mean it’s impossible.

“Come on, Mac,” he whispers, stroking his thumb over his son’s still-rosy cheeks. “Let’s see if we can surprise Mommy.”

  The living room is far from what Jake would categorize as messy, but he knows it’s already at a level that would bother Amy, so he starts by cleaning. He rinses the used water glasses, places a used muslin blanket in the laundry, folds the knitted blanket over the side of the armchair. He finds a number he knows he wrote down in his phone once, an Italian place that Charles recommended and which does delivery, and orders them dinner all while bouncing on a yoga ball to soothe Mac when he starts whimpering in the middle of the call. He closes the curtains, dims the lights, and finds the battery-operated tealight candles they’ve resorted to ever since Mac started trying to crawl, spreading them out on the dinner and couch tables. He puts on a Spotify playlist with piano music and finds a bottle of white wine he’s not sure when they bought, but which looks fancy enough for a date night.

It’s not much, he thinks, not when he has neither flowers nor a card nor a fancy anniversary gift to present - he’d thought to buy the first two things after work, then ended up rushing home to help Amy with Mac - but it’s something.

  Judging from the gasp she lets out when she comes into the living room, and the puzzled look she gives him as she realizes, it seems that Amy agrees.

“What’s all this, babe?”

“Well, I thought…” He scratches his neck, shrugging as he looks to the makeshift table setting on the dinner table, “even if we can’t go out, and even if we’re in our sweats, that doesn’t mean we can’t still have a date night for our anniversary. I’m sorry it’s not much, but… I thought it could be nice.”

“Jake, this is…” She shakes her head, looking around at his improvised decorations. “Wow.”

“You like it?”

“I thought we were just going to eat frozen pizza in bed,” she says. “Seems like I was surprised.”

“Surprise,” he grins, and it makes her laugh.

  They eat their dinner one at a time, because Mac begins to cry if they as much as attempt to put him to sleep on his own, but it’s still great, and Jake makes a note to text Charles a thank you for the recommendation. After dinner, they dig out a tub of salted caramel ice cream from the freezer, and the whole family snuggles up together on the couch as Mac eventually accepts a bottle, drinking the whole thing in Jake’s arms before he passes out again.

 It’s far from the most glamorous or ambitious date night they’ve had. Jake thinks back to their very first official date as Amy leans her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes, remembering to the haircut and suit and the Kamikaze shots needed to kill the initial awkwardness between them. He’d been so nervous before that date, deathly afraid to mess things up and scare her away, scared to love too hard and scared to love too little.

He hadn’t known it then, but it hadn’t been long before he’d started feeling the first sensations of something both ever-changing and permanent; a safety he hadn’t known before, but instantly craved more of. It had lingered, and it had grown, and it had brought him more happiness than he could have ever imagined that morning all those years ago when he kissed her for realz in the evidence locker and she kissed him back. Kismet, happenchance, or an amalgamation of the two - somehow, they found each other, and found the things in each other that made the work of building a relationship worth it.

Jake’s never needed fancy, anyway, he thinks as his eyes grow heavier and he lets them fall closed for a second. Life gets considerably less fancy when you have a baby, it’s part of the deal, and they’re always tired now. There’s less time for just about everything, and most days their topics of conversation circle around logistics and their baby ninety percent of the time, but having the safety of every day with her, with Mac, with his family - it’s more than Jake dreamed he would ever get, better than he ever thought he deserved.

  “It’s weird to think he wasn’t here the last time we celebrated our anniversary,” Amy says, playing with the curls near Mac’s neck and using her newly acquired, already finely tuned, mom-reflexes to put in her son’s pacifier before he even notices that he spat it out. “It feels like he’s always been.”

“He was growing inside of you,” Jake corrects her. “But yeah. From a tiny little bump to a fully-fledged human. Or fully-fledged baby, at least.”

“Yeah.” Amy smiles. “You know, there are some days when I miss going out on nice dates, or sleeping through the night, or looking a little more put together than this,” she gestures to her uneven messy bun and oversized pajama pants, “but even on the hard days, like today, it’s still better than when he wasn’t here. So I guess, even with the canceled dinner, this is still my favorite anniversary.”

“I know. I think it’s mine, too.”

“Would you have guessed?”

“Guessed what?”

“Three years ago, when we got married - would you have guessed that this is how you’d celebrate your third wedding anniversary?”

“I don’t know,” he confesses. “Maybe? I don’t think I ever thought that hard about it. I knew I wanted the rest of my life with you, and then, well, you know how I felt about kids for a while; I wasn’t sure about the rest. But now… I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else than here.”

“Me either,” she whispers.

“Would you?”

“Mm-hmm?”

“Would you have guessed this?”

“Oh,” she says, pursing her lips and scrunching her forehead. “I hoped, I guess? I dreamed. But this is better.”

Sitting up straighter, she kisses him. It’s a little clumsy with Mac preventing them to get too close to each other, and it’s over way too soon when he starts whimpering and Jake is up on his feet again, bouncing his son slightly until peace seems to be restored.

 “We’ll schedule another date, right? Once he gets better?” Amy asks as Jake tries to sit down again, Mac seemingly back asleep in his arms. “I know you say you don’t mind, but I really do want you to see me in something other than sweatpants at some point.”

“Sweatpants are like, my favorite outfit of yours,” he mumbles, and she gives him a surprised look. “But yes, definitely. Make-up anniversary date, as soon as our baby is healthy again.”

“Yeah. Happy anniversary, babe.”

“Happy anniversary.” He gets an idea, and even though he knows it’s risky when Mac literally just fell asleep again, he lifts Mac’s little fist anyway, imitating a voice that’s supposed to be their son’s before pretending to answer him. “Happy anniversary, mom and dad - why, Mac, thank you so much!”