A/N: I may in fact be doing this every week. Feel free to bear with or ignore me at your leisure.
"Thanks a lot, Jake," Leslie says, real easy, leaning on the edge of her open door. "I had to find my own way home."
"Yeah." Jake holds up his hands. "Sorry about that."
"Nah," she says, letting the door fall open and half-turning into the house. "I would've had to anyway. You wanting to come in?"
He steps in and closes the door behind him, walking at her side as she pads in bare feet back to the living room.
"What're you doing here, Jake?" she asks, eyes on the floor.
"Well," he says, and stops when she gives him a look, sideways. He pulls the flask out of his jacket pocket and says, "I thought we might raise a toast to your fallen comrade."
She studies him for a moment, her eyes sad, and then nods and heads toward the kitchen, pointing him to the couch. "Sit down, will you?"
He does, and in a minute she comes back with two glasses, places them side-by-side on the coffee table, and sits down beside him. She keeps her arms close to her sides, pulls her sleeves down over her hands, and he pours a shot into each glass.
Picking up his glass, Jake opens his mouth, tilts the glass, and shuts it again. Leslie reaches for hers and lifts it into the air, watching the light pass through amber liquid. She says, "To a good cop," and Jake simply nods and brings his glass to hers. They drink, and then Jake pours them a little more and Leslie settles back into the corner of the couch, cradling the glass against her stomach, her eyes falling on Jake and her lids half-closing.
He rests his arms on his thighs, mindful of her eyes on him but not looking back.
"How's Des?" she asks, and his heart lifts a little.
"Dead," he replies. "Or he soon will be, if he ever so much as…"
Leslie nudges him with her foot. "Yeah. You're a good uncle." He presses his lips together and she adds, "A father too, I hear."
Jake leans back into the couch, stretching his arms up in the air and stretching out his back too, and then letting his head fall back on the cushion, his eyes looking blankly up at the ceiling. "You heard that, did you?"
When he looks at her, just a glance from the corner of his eye, she's got her bottom lip between her teeth, worrying at it, and her eyes have dropped away.
"Yeah." He braces his hands on his knees and pushes up onto his feet. "I'd better go." He didn't even take his jacket off so there's not much he can do to delay his departure other than watch her silently. Her teeth keep going at her lip, and he puts a hand on the arm of the couch, leans down a little, and tugs at her lip with his thumb. Her teeth release it and she looks up at him, surprised, her lips parted. It's the most kissable face he's ever seen and he has to close his eyes before he can move away.
"Take care of yourself, Leslie."
"Thanks, Jake," she says, barely audible.
He lets himself out.
In the GTO, Jake drives for a while before he realizes he's doing a giant loop—down the hill to the harbour and around up again. He pulls up across the street from Leslie's house and hunkers down with the car off. He's not trying to be creepy, but he needs to think, and he needs to do it in the GTO.
Today Leslie was in the car with him. In the front seat with him. It's not even the same car, but Lord does it ever feel the same. He thinks of their relationship as Before, During, and After. She was in the car with him Before—remember? They got so close to it that night. He almost had her.
But that was a long time Before.
She was in the car with him During, of course. They went on Dates. They had a Relationship. All the capital letters, like if you had to make a list of Reasons Why She Shouldn't Have Left Him. There's not much cause for him to do that, of course, until she's sitting there next to him in the front seat and they're working on a case together and it's like five years ago and yesterday and this morning and he's losing it.
At that moment, of course, there's a tap at his window, and Jake jumps a good foot. Leslie is standing beside the car, arms crossed, wearing what looks like a bathrobe.
He rolls down the window and sticks his head out, looking down at her feet.
Slippers. One toe tapping impatiently.
"What're you doing out here, Jake?"
He looks back at her face and he doesn't have a good answer—really doesn't have an answer at all—and so he smiles, sly, and says, "Wanna come in?"
She sighs at him, and that's familiar enough, and nods, so he opens the door and pushes the seat back so she can climb over him without being entirely indecent. She sits sideways, one knee up on the seat and one foot planted on the floor, arranging her robe around her, and then she stares at him.
And he can't look back, because yeah, this is familiar. Painfully familiar. He wonders if she remembers, too, and one look at her eyes gives him the answer. He puts his hands on the wheel and clears his throat and doesn't say anything.
She doesn't say anything either, but after a minute he feels her knee nudging the side of his leg, and she's there close, her hands on her calf, the backs of her fingers brushing against his jeans. And so he takes one hand from the wheel and lifts his arm slowly into the air and over her head and wraps it around her shoulders, and she just nestles into his side like it's the easiest thing and makes the most sense in the world.
He slides down in his seat until he can rest his head on the back, and Leslie burrows under his leather jacket, the slightest chill in the September air.
She was about to go to bed, he figures, which is why she can fall asleep so easy while he sits there with his eyes out the windshield on a street light, her compact warm body everything he can feel.
When Jake wakes up, the sun in his eyes, there's only one sign she was ever even there: the belt to a bathrobe, coiled on the passenger side floorboard. Plus the cold air on his side, if you want to be metaphorical.
He looks across the street to see her car gone; she must have left for work, and Jake remains behind again, as always, with one more aching memory of this woman and his complete inability to ever keep ahold of her.
The saddest part is that he'll take it and be glad of it. A smile from her eyes will last him a week; a night spent at her side is so much more than he ever thought he'd get again. It's so little yet so much, and Jake knows that he'll keep holding on to the scraps he gets.
With the hope that he will get the feast again.
Lord, does he ever hope.