Chapter Text
A few days after the showcase, Amy gets another phone call from her mom and Amy hesitates before answering.
Her mom’s called a few times more than usual in the past month or so and every time she answers her phone, she always finds herself stuck with Jake.
So she’s a little apprehensive this time round to answer the phone.
“We’re having a fiesta for Rey’s 30th,” Amy’s mom informs her over the phone.
It feels like déjà vu and she has a strong feeling her mom will invite the Peralta’s over again, except this time she’s expecting it so it won’t be a horrid surprise and it doesn’t sound so terrible to hang out with Jake again.
The horrid surprise is that Amy realises that she might, possibly, potentially, enjoy Jake’s company.
“I’ll be inviting the Peralta, of course,” her mom informs her again, but Amy recognises the beginning of her mom’s curious tone, which never has bided well for Amy.
“Oh yeah,” she replies neutrally.
“Mmm,” her mom replies. Amy tries to keep her cool. “I heard that you took Jake with you to your gallery night.”
“Yep, thanks to you,” Amy answers back, still keeping it cool as a cucumber. She can feel her head start to break out into a sweat and she wonders if her mom can smell her fear over the phone.
“Did you have fun?” Her mom asks.
“I guess,” Amy replies. She shifts from one foot to the other, itching to get off the phone.
“You’re spending a lot of time with him,” she comments. “Does this mean you’re going to move in with him?”
“I haven’t really,” she replies, not wanting her mom to get ahead of herself and start telling everyone that she’s decided to move in with Jake. “You know how the showcases are ma, they can be boring and he seemed excited to go.”
“Mmm,” is all her mom says.
“So what’s the plan for Rey’s birthday? Do you need me to come over early to help set up?” Amy asks to distract her mom.
She listens as her mom then launches into her plan of attack and she’s glad to move onto another subject, even talking at length about Rey’s party, which she usually avoids because it means talking to her mom for hours, but surprisingly her mom doesn’t drag it out too much and Jake isn’t mentioned for the rest of the phone call.
It hasn’t been an hour after she gets off the phone with her mom when she gets a text from Jake that’s mostly a bunch of party emojis:
another Santiago feeesta
Amy rolls her eyes.
Is that meant to say fiesta?
same diff
She leaves it at that but then her phone buzzes again from another text with Jake.
wanna come over and sort my finances?
Sure
She doesn’t know whether to send that last text with a period or not because it seems too harsh with it, but if she adds an emoji to the end it seems too enthusiastic. She stops and stares at her phone and makes a sound of disgust.
“Why do I even care?” She asks herself, sending the message without thinking about it much longer.
pick u up in 15
--
“Oh man,” Jake cries.
Amy stares at him and shakes her head. “What?”
Jake throws his hands up at the sign on the elevator, “The lift is broken!”
Amy shrugs, unsure what the problem is. “You said that you’re on the fifth floor.”
“Exactly,” Jake tells her, his tone still exasperated.
“Seriously, dude?” Amy asks him, giving him an unimpressed look. “It’s just five flights of stairs.”
Jake trudges towards the stairs, dragging his feet against the linoleum floor and leaves his arms dangling by his sides. He groans something unintelligible and Amy just shakes her head at his dramatics and follows him up the stairs.
He lifts up each foot slowly and lets them fall on each step with a loud thump. Amy follows, but his slow pace is slowly driving her insane.
“How are you a cop?” She asks, incredulous and watches him drag his feet up the stairs.
He doesn’t answer her and continues to complain and so Amy overtakes him and reaches the fifth floor before he does and waits for him by the stair entrance.
She’s got her arms crossed and tapping her foot against the floor by the time she sees his red face appear over the steps.
“Just,” he begins, dropping his arms onto his knees and sucking in a deep breath, “give me a minute.”
She waits impatiently and watches his desperate breaths with morbid horror, until finally he directs her towards a door that reads 510.
“Mi casa, es su casa.“ Jake waggles his eyebrows and gestures to the apartment door they’ve stopped in front of. “Admit that my Spanish turns you on.”
She rolls her eyes—becoming too frequent these days around Jake—and shakes her head. She lowers her voice in mock sensuality, “Yeah, hearing you out of breath really gets me going.”
He holds up a finger. “I know you’re putting on that sexy bedroom voice as a joke, but it’s really making me feel something.”
“Ugh, Jake!” She slaps the back of her hand half-heartedly against his shoulder while he just grins at her.
He puts his key into the door and opens it with great dramatics and whatever snarky comment Amy has prepared is stopped by the sight of a woman their age seated at the dining table, playing what sounds like a game on her phone.
Her feet are in heeled wedge sneakers and are kicked up on Jake’s dining table. Amy holds back a remark about germs, but she knows she’s got a cringe on her face just thinking about it. Her jeans are bright red and she’s got a colour clashing top on, but strangely makes it work.
“What the hell are you doing here Gina?” Jake asks. “And how did you get in?”
Jake’s friend—girlfriend? Amy thinks—doesn’t make any move to take her feet off the table or pause her game. She does look up at them and Amy is taken aback by the intensity of her light blue stare.
Amy feels like Gina’s staring into her soul.
Gina’s general expression doesn’t change from aloofness. “A spirit I met at dance rehearsal led me here. She must have known I needed the toilet, because she led me directly to your door.”
Amy blinks.
“You keep a spare key hidden in the pot plant in the hall,” she continues. “God Jake, how are you this city’s first and last line of defence?”
“No, that would be the Men in Black,” Jake points out.
Amy blinks again, confused by the entire exchange.
Jake only sighs, as if he’s embarrassed that Gina doesn’t remember that Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are the city’s main defence from aliens, and gestures towards Amy. “Gina, this is Amy. Amy, this is Gina. You remember her; she lived next to my nana.”
Suddenly it clicks that this is the same Gina who used to hang out with Jake at his nana’s house and made fun of her practical Mary Jane shoes—Gina used to wear highly impractical cork wedges, especially so for an eight year old.
She remembers that Gina used to make Jake learn her dance routine and then once made Amy sit in the audience and watch the ten minute routine.
Gina looks Amy up and down and Amy doesn’t flinch and waits for an insult.
“This is the new roomie?” Gina asks in distaste, but it sounds more like disapproval.
“Nice to see you too Gina,” Amy says to Gina, but Gina’s ignoring her.
“Why is she dressed like your nana?”
Amy looks down at her pant suit and frowns. “I had a meeting at work, this is my best suit.”
Gina doesn’t say anything else, but her eyes tell Jake that she’s judging. Hard.
She drops her feet from the table purposefully and stands. “I have to go talk to my psychic about my spiritual encounter. Toodles, girl.”
Gina marches in between them and out of the apartment and Jake closes the door behind her and spins around. “So that’s Gina.”
Amy nods. “Yeah, she hasn’t changed a bit.”
Jake laughs at that. “Basically.”
Amy decides to look around then and take in the reasonably sized apartment. There’s a Die Hard poster on the wall behind the television and another in the kitchen, which she thinks is slightly obsessive.
The one above the television is Bruce Willis with a pout on his mouth holding his gun and looking intense, while the one in the kitchen looks like it’s a poster for the Turkish market—judging from the text Amy can see—and much more dramatic and too excessive for somewhere you would prepare meals. There’s a building on fire behind a constipated looking Bruce Willis holding a machine gun and helicopters flying overhead.
His lounge room has a normal three seat sofa seated in front of the television, but the rest of the house is covered in what Amy recognises as—
“Do you have six massage chairs?” Amy asks incredulously.
She currently staring at where three of them have replaced actual dining chairs. Jake drops himself down into the one on the right of the sofa and nods. “Well yeah, how else am I supposed to be comfortable?”
“Maybe one I get,” Amy responds, holding a hand up. “But even then you can’t afford such luxuries, let alone six of them.”
Jake bites the top of his lip and shakes his head in question. “And?”
Amy throws her hands up and shakes her head. “So where are these debt receipts?”
Jake disappears into another part of the apartment which she assumes is where the bathroom and bedrooms are and while she’s sort of curious to see what Jake’s room looks like, she stays in the living room and settles herself into one of the three massage chairs at the dining table.
She’s beginning to fiddle with the buttons when Jake returns with an old shoebox and he dumps it on the dining room table dramatically.
She jumps out of the massage chair and stands beside Jake and drags the shoebox closer to her. She’s partly excited to get her hands into some paperwork and budgeting, but she doesn’t let it show because she knows Jake will only make fun of her.
“You’re super excited aren’t you?” He asks smugly, but it’s not as smug as usual and instead a little more amused.
She shrugs casually but then flips open the shoebox. Her eyes widen almost comically at the bills in front of her. Jake almost winces at her expression.
“Oh my god Peralta,” she tells him, still reading the documents, “When you said soul crushing, I thought you were over-exaggerating!”
Jake bites his bottom lip and shakes his head. “Nope! Very much soul crushing debt. No exaggerating there.”
Amy shakes her head and starts to sift through the papers, trying to keep up with all the numbers in front of her. She pauses on one document and snaps her head up at him. “You spent five thousand dollars on an armchair?”
Jake isn’t sure if she’s asking him or scolding him and shrugs his shoulders sheepishly. “Yes?”
“My entire semester didn’t cost that much!” Amy exclaims.
She knew Jake was irresponsible.
She didn’t realise how much.
“Why? How?” She demands, clutching the document in her hands.
“Uh, because Santiago,” he begins in a tone that can only be described as ‘duh’, “How else am I supposed to be comfortable watching TV?”
Amy just gapes at him, unable to form words.
“Jake,” she begins and her tone isn’t snide or judgemental or sarcastic. “I hope you realise how important this is.”
Jake bites his bottom lip and shakes his head. Amy takes a deep breath and calmly places the document back onto the kitchen table.
“Can you even afford to pay rent here?” She asks accusation lacing her tone.
He grins at her and she can’t believe how blasé he is about something as important as finances. “Why do you think I was looking for a roommate?”
Amy rolls her eyes, but there is a part of her that feels sorry for him. As much as she’s protested—loudly—about moving in with Jake, she knows it’s the best decision she can make right now.
She’s made a list of pros and cons (obviously).
Cons:
- He (mostly) annoys her.
- Jake is most likely (without a doubt) the messiest roommate.
- She will (definitely) be in situations that she rather not be caught in (e.g. potentially seeing Jake in his underwear or running into one of his dates).
- He (mostly) annoys her.
Even Amy can see that her pros list is logically more sound than her cons list.
Pros:
- Rent in Brooklyn will be much cheaper than her current apartment in Manhattan.
- She will be finishing university and joining the academy soon.
- Jake is a cop, therefore will not be bothered with weird working hours.
- As much as she loves her papi and mamá, she will not survive living at home again.
- Jake will be able to tell her about the academy and being a beat cop.
- Regardless, she will be evicted from her current apartment in a few weeks.
She also has to admit to herself that:
- Jake might not be that annoying.
She hasn’t given Jake any indication that she will eventually move in, but if she is to move in with him he has to get his finances in order. She can’t be living with someone who could potentially put financial strain on her.
“Peralta.”
Her tone is serious and commanding, which immediately makes Jake straighten up in his chair and drop his arms without thinking about it.
She almost smiles. “You seriously need to get your shit together dude.”
His shoulders drop and he grins at her when he says. “But that would mean growing up.”
Amy purses her lips to stop the smile breaking across her face.
--
They spend the afternoon sifting through the receipts to determine which ones are still outstanding and which he has already settled—unfortunately, Amy is only able to remove a small stack of receipts—but stop once they finish.
They agree to meet again to sort this out properly in a few days and Amy takes home the shoebox so that she can create a binder and spreadsheet to teach Jake how to deal with his finances.
Somehow Amy ends up staying back after Jake asks if she wants to watch Criminal Minds and they end up ordering take-out and comfortably settled across each end of his couch. She’s sitting on the end, her feet tucked under her and a bowl in her hand while Jake has his head resting on the armrest, lying on his back and knees propped up.
They’ve just finished an episode and it’s been a while since they’re had a break, so Jake pauses the show as Amy puts down her empty bowl and stands up and stretches. She frowns slightly at her creased pants, but is glad that her blazer is at least crinkle-free after hanging it on one of Jake’s non-massage dining chairs.
“God, what time is it?” She asks, yawning slightly and swinging her arms side to side to crack the stiffness out of her back.
“Ummmm,” Jake starts, picking up his phone, “nine-thirty.”
Amy groans and starts cleaning up the coffee table. She can’t believe that she’s spent at least ten hours in Jake’s company and hasn’t spontaneously combust. “I probably should start heading home.”
She misses the look of disappointment on Jake’s face as she carries the plates into the kitchen and sorts out of the take-away containers into their proper bins. Jake follows her into the kitchen and leans against the counter.
“Just leave the dishes, I can do them,” he tells her.
Amy hovers by the sink, knowing that Jake might put them off until the next day.
He laughs at her hesitation, as if sensing her thoughts and says, “I’ll do them as soon as you leave, I promise.”
“Okay,” she agrees slowly.
“So when do we want to tackle my soul-crushing debt?” He asks her, rubbing his hands together. “I’m free tomorrow?”
Amy yawns again and moves towards the dining room to gather her bag and her blazer. “Can’t, sorry. I have a shift at the gallery and then at Applebee’s. Maybe Thursday?”
Jake nods and follows her to the door. “I can do the evening, after five.”
“Yeah, I can do that,” Amy tells him, checking her phone distractedly.
“You bring the receipts and I’ll get some take-out,” he tells her.
She looks up and smiles briefly. “Sure, see you later.”
“You’re the best, Amy,” he tells her and she just shakes her head.
She doesn’t wait for Jake’s goodbye, but she can hear him say it as she closes his apartment door behind her. She can still hear him behind the door as she heads for the stairs and rolls her eyes as he continues to say goodbye and tell her she’s the best.
“Fucking weirdo,” she laughs.