Chapter Text
It all started a few days ago.
Like the awesome, supportive sister she’s always been to (most of) her brothers, when he asked her about it, Amy didn’t hesitate to agree to participate in Tony’s new medical research by letting him run an MRI on her. She didn’t know, then, that what was supposed to be a quick and harmless procedure would eventually turn into this. She would have passed on it otherwise.
Because all it took was one mistimed earthquake while she was stuck inside the engine for her whole perception of the world to change in an instant.
She didn’t realize the after-effects it had on her brain right away. It’s only after she stepped out of the hospital once her brother made sure she was OK and started to make her way towards the closest subway station that would take her right back to the precinct that she sensed something was wrong. And, to be honest, even then, when she first heard the notes of a song resonating in her ears, she didn’t pay it much attention. She’s used to the buzzing of New York City, after all.
It wouldn’t have been the first time someone listens to their music out loud without a care in the world about disturbing other people.
But then Amy saw a passerby starting to sing and dance from the corner of her eye, soon followed by everyone else around but her, and she started to wonder what was going on. She imagined she’d walked into the middle of a flash mob or something. Again, it wouldn’t have been too strange for such a thing to happen in the Big Apple.
As a cop and a New Yorker, she’d seen way weirder things than that.
For a moment, she even asked herself if it couldn’t be another prank Peralta pulled on her, to make her believe she was going crazy after getting that MRI.
Warning lights started flashing in her mind, though, when Amy ran into more and more people who looked like they were singing to her, as if all of a sudden she was having access to their deepest thoughts as they were sharing them to her through these different hits, with somehow no way of escaping it no matter where she went or what she did or who she met.
So maybe there was something wrong with her indeed.
She was breathless when she finally arrived at the precinct after rushing her way out of this madness. She thought she would be safe there — kept far away from any potential unexpected singer in that haven that is her workplace (well, not really a haven; the precinct is full of criminals, after all). And, well, she was, at first. Until she stepped out of the elevator and into the bullpen. It only took a few seconds of the normal background chattering before the familiar (and even much welcomed, for once) sound was replaced by the first notes of another popular song from a couple of years’ back.
Today I don’t feel like doing anything
I just wanna lay in my bed…
Amy almost tripped on her way to her desk when she recognized Hitchcock and Scully’s voices singing in unison. Although she shouldn’t have been surprised that that was what was going on in their heads. At least, she thought, they didn’t burst into some elaborate choreography, like she saw too many people do while she was heading to the precinct.
No — in complete Hitchcock and Scully fashion, they simply swang their heads up and down to the rhythm of the music instead, comfortably laid back on their chairs and showing no care in the world for the paperwork waiting in front of them.
Don’t feel like picking up my phone
So leave a message at the tone
‘Cause today I swear I’m not doing anything
“Can you hear that?!” She carefully approached Rosa’s desk, talking in whispers as she shot a few glances in the direction of the pair.
Her friend didn’t even bother looking up from the screen of her computer, apparently not much interested in whatever Amy had to say to her. “Hear what?”
“Hitchcock and Scully…” Amy looked around to make sure no-one was listening in on their conversation before she went on, “… singing.”
It seemed to pick Rosa’s curiosity because she suddenly snapped her head up and stared at Amy. The way her eyes pierced right through her core made her feel uncomfortable. She was unable to remain still in front of her friend while waiting for her to say something. Anything. But instead of words, it’s laughter that escaped her mouth.
“Are you on drugs?!”
“No!” Amy quickly dismissed it, feeling extremely offended that someone — someone close to her, moreover — would assume that of her. Even if she might have sounded a little crazy to Rosa if she really couldn’t hear the pair singing too. “But I think… I think there’s something wrong with me,” she admitted, then proceeded to share with her everything that happened ever since she went out of the hospital.
For some reason, she thought that she’d be the only person who would listen to her story without judging her.
And she was right to believe so — because as soon as she was done with her tale, the only thing Rosa answered was, “So you can hear people’s thoughts through songs? Dope.”
Amy’s face lighted up immediately, relief spreading through her whole body with her words. “You believe me?” she still asked.
“Yeah.” Her friend shrugged. “I’ve heard weirder things.” Amy didn’t ask what exactly were those so-called ‘weirder things.’
So Rosa was the first (and well, only) person she told about her newfound power. This is why the first thing Amy does on the morning after her ‘date’ with Jake and The Incident that occurred there (AKA., him unconsciously singing a love song to her) when she gets into work is to run to her desk. Fortunately, it’s still early, which means that not many people are there yet — and, even more importantly, Jake hasn’t arrived yet.
For once Amy is quite grateful for his complete lack of punctuality.
“Jake sang to me last night.” She doesn’t bother with small talk (she knows Rosa despises it anyway) as she gets straight to the point, taking a seat next to her colleague.
Such a reveal doesn’t seem to surprise her much, somehow. “He bragged about being the best and beating you at your games, didn’t he?” She watches her with an amused grin tugging at her lips.
It doesn’t make Amy laugh; quite the opposite. “I wish.” She sighs desperately. At least that she would have known how to deal with. She’s used to this (annoying) side of him. “It was a Taylor Swift song. Enchanted .”
Her heart misses a beat in her chest as memories of the previous night come back to her mind. After they successfully arrested the perps and Jake took her home, Amy spent hours searching through the Internet and reading pages after pages about the meaning of the song and the story behind its lyrics. What she found there, the mentions of fairytale and pining and romance made her freak out almost even more than the actual moment of him singing to her, and she didn’t get much sleep when she went to bed, her mind buzzing too much with interrogations.
“Oh,” Rosa replies after a moment of silence. “That’s some serious, romantic shit.”
“I know…” Amy buries her head in her hands and shakes it. She could use a cigarette right now. “Do you think he could have… not meant it?”
She looks up to face her friend with a hopeful glint shining inside her eyes.
Everything would be so, so much easier if he hadn’t.
“When you hear people sing, it’s about what they’re feeling inside, right? So he probably does. I mean, he did put a lot of efforts and money into what was supposed to be a joke.”
Amy lets out another desperate sigh. She knows Rosa is right — she knew that even before she asked for her opinion, actually. But still. She would have loved for her friend to prove her wrong.
Sure, it’s flattering to know that Jake is interested in her, but… it’s Jake. He doesn’t do romance. She has many examples of him not being good at it throughout the past few years, including a recent Internet search for cheapest date possible — and him being actually proud of it when confronted about it.
He’s funny and nice and smart and a truly amazing friend (and well, yes, he’s good-looking as well; she can admit that) but Amy wouldn’t really consider him boyfriend material. Not for her, at least. They’re too different, with two very different ways of living their lives and even though it works when it comes to their job, she’s not so sure they would make such a good match in other areas such as a romantic relationship.
He’s her partner and nothing more.
She doesn’t want anything to change between them, and she definitely doesn’t want for things to become awkward if he were to share his feelings with her for real.
“What are you gonna do?” Rosa’s voice suddenly takes her out of her spiralling thoughts.
“Nothing? It’s not like he actually confessed anything to me. I can’t go to him and tell him that I think he’s into me because he sang to me during our stakeout. He’d think I’m crazy.”
“Ha.” Her friend snorts mockingly. “That’d be funny.”
But once again Amy doesn’t think it would be. She doesn’t get the chance to tell her that, though, because more people start coming into the bullpen as the doors of the elevator open, including Jake himself. He happily greets his colleagues like he does every morning, fully unaware of the huge bomb he dropped on his partner the night before.
In that moment, Amy envies him. She wishes she could be so carefree and mostly oblivious as well.
She wishes last night — and the days before that, since her MRI, actually — were just a bad dream she’s going to wake up from soon.
But unfortunately they are not.
She tries her best to act normal around him despite what she knows, even after Holt calls her into his office and drops another bomb on her that makes her heart clench in her chest: Jake declined being replaced by the relief team during their date/stakeout. She does feel almost relieved when a stripper comes into the precinct and reveals that Jake hired him for her — it’s a terrible ‘gift,’ of course, and completely unprofessional, but at least this is the man she knows and the man she knows how to deal with.
Fortunately, everything goes back to normal after this incident, with no more mention of their bet or date; it’s just a casual day at the precinct. Amy congratulates herself for being so good at hiding her true emotions, because not once does Jake seem to catch that there’s something bothering her, when he’s usually so good at reading people (and especially reading her).
It’s all part of their jobs, after all.
Amy doesn’t hear any more singing for a while either and she has to admit that it’s a huge relief. She’s still not sure what she’s supposed to do with this new strange ability.
So far, it hasn’t been very helpful; quite the opposite, actually.
It’s only later in the afternoon, when a young officer from the floor below them comes to ask for Jake’s signature on some paperwork, that her ears start buzzing with music again. It distracts her from her own work, forcing her to look up. She watches as the woman stares at her partner with what Amy recognizes are dreamy, somewhat hungry eyes. Her lower lip is stuck between her teeth while his own attention is focused on the document until she opens her mouth and suddenly, the words are out.
What a man, what a man, what a man,
What a mighty good man!
Amy tries to keep a straight face, but she can’t retain the chuckle that escapes her mouth for very long when she hears that small musical number.
It doesn’t stop there, though — because when the officer goes on with the chorus, half of the precinct (including Charles, among others), stands up to accompany her with background vocals.
Gotta say it again now
What a man, what a man, what a man,
What a mighty good man
He’s a mighty mighty good man!
Is everyone really thinking that Jake’s hot?! Amy grins as she looks around at all the people pointing in the man’s direction while religiously singing their song. Maybe this power can be useful and entertaining, after all, when it’s not directed towards her. She keeps smiling amusedly even after everything goes back to normal, which owes her a frown from Jake while he passes the document back to the other woman.
“What is it?! Do I have some crumbs on my face again?” he asks, confused and a little worried as he tries to wipe away those (nonexistent, for once) crumbs off his face with his hand, once the officer is out of sight.
Amy rolls her eyes at his antics. “No.” He immediately relaxes in front of her, though still waits for a reason behind her teasing smile. She pauses for a beat, then the words are out before she can actually process them. “Don’t you think she’s cute?”
Maybe this is why she heard that woman singing — to help a potential love story (one that doesn’t include herself ) blossom between her partner and her, who clearly has a thing for him and most likely wouldn’t mind going out with him. Amy’s definitely not doing this to take herself out of that situation with Jake, nope.
Not at all.
“Yeah, I guess.” He doesn’t seem very enthused, though, and quickly leads the conversation somewhere else so Amy doesn’t insist.
At least she tried.
The day ends without any other major event or musical number happening. Actually, everything remains normal between her and Jake for some time.
She still hears people singing songs to her, but she learns to deal with this new power that’s been given to her. She learns that she’s actually made to help those persons if she wants for the tunes to stop resonating through her ears. Rosa is here to listen when she needs to vent about her problems, offering useful advice and solutions, and slowly Amy embraces this peculiar ability of hers.
She finds that it’s actually particularly useful with her (or even her colleagues’) cases as more than once it allows her to enter the thoughts of potential suspects and know if they actually committed the crime they’re being accused of or not. Of course, she can’t tell anyone why she’s so sure someone is innocent when every piece of evidence tells a completely different story, and her arguments wouldn’t stand in court anyway, but it forces her to work even harder to find more proof, making her an even better detective along the way.
So she starts seeing her power as a blessing, really — especially when days, and even a few weeks, pass without Jake ever singing to her ever again.
She knows that, unconsciously, she started to pay more attention to his actions and what they could mean ever since That Night, like the fact that he regularly brings her coffee in the morning — exactly the way she likes it — and all the other little, nice gestures he can have towards her. She’s become more aware of what she does or says as well, making sure that she never sends the wrong message and lets him believe she could be interested in him.
(Because she’s not, right?!)
But, after those few weeks of nothing out of the ordinary happening, Amy persuades herself that what she heard on that rooftop during their date/stakeout was just some thought that occurred to his mind in the heat of the moment and not real feelings he has towards her. He must have been entranced by the ‘romantic’ atmosphere around them (it was a beautiful night, after all), nothing more.
He doesn’t like her, and never did. At least not like that. They’re friends, and everything’s good — great, even — between the two of them.
Everything’s as normal as it’s ever been.
Or at least that’s what Amy likes to think, because it’s easier than digging deeper into possible other reasons why he would have sung a love song to her that night.
(Why he wouldn’t let her pay him back for her coffees even though he’s in crushing debt and could probably use the money for better purposes.)
She goes on with her new life then, almost forgetting about this musical incident until a new day comes and they’re assigned a new case together and she shares some big news with him: she might be leaving the Nine-Nine to work with Major Crimes. This promotion would be a new step taken towards her life-long dream of becoming the youngest female captain of the NYPD someday and she’s very excited about it — a sentiment that Jake doesn’t share at all when she tells him all about it. It’s the complete opposite; he reacts childishly as all he can think about is how she’s going to be working with the Vulture that is Detective Keith Pembroke.
He doesn’t share her enthusiasm and he makes sure that she knows it, trying to dissuade her to go to her interview all day long.
“Why do you care so much if I leave?!” she confronts him at some point while they’re stuck in a dumpster and looking for some piece of evidence for their case that they’re supposed to find there. She’s a little annoyed (and truly hurt) that he wouldn’t be more supportive of her career opportunities. He’s supposed to be her partner and friend after all.
“Because…” He faces her and suddenly she regrets saying anything at all.
She should have kept her mouth shut — because one second, some heavy silence falls upon them as he trails off the word, and the next her ears are buzzing in that now-familiar way that tells her someone is about to sing to her.
So maybe things aren’t back to normal between them…
She doesn’t immediately recognize the song, though, so she braces herself for whatever it is that will come her way and prays that it is not another love song.
You and I…
Jake lets out the first lyrics while pointing between the two of them with a soft, almost sad smile, and despite how much she wants to believe that it’s not another love song, Amy has to admit they are not off to a great, non-romantical start.
“Well, let’s do this, I guess…” she says under her breath with a sigh as she shoots a smile back at him; she’s already ready to get it over with.
We’re like symphonies exploding in the sky
With you, I’m alive
Like all the missing pieces of my heart, they finally collide
So stop time right here in the moonlight
‘ Cause I don’t ever wanna close my eyes
As he goes on with the first verse, Amy has to admit that so far, the song and its melody are kind of sweet and nice. There’s obviously a choreography accompanying Jake’s words, mostly movements of his arms that match the lyrics; nothing too elaborate — thankfully he doesn’t use any of what’s inside the dumpster as some kind of props.
(Although it shouldn’t matter: it’s all happening in her head anyway.)
Then comes the chorus.
Without you, I feel broke
Like I’m half of a whole
Without you, I’ve got no hand to hold
Without you, I feel torn
Like a sail in the storm
Without you, I’m just a sad song
And Amy’s heart stops for a full second in her chest when she hears it. There’s a lot to unpack here, between the meaning of what’s being declared to her and the desperate look shining inside Jake’s eyes.
Especially when she knows all of this is supposed to be the expression of the reason why he’s been acting like a bad partner for the whole day. Why he doesn’t want her to leave the Nine-Nine…
The intensity with which he stares at her increases as the song reaches a new point:
You’re the perfect melody
The only harmony I wanna hear
You’re my favourite part of me
With you standing next to me
I’ve got nothing to fear
And then he’s back with the chorus again, although slower this time, his voice lower. There’s also even more sincerity and sadness shining inside his brown irises and once again, something cracks in Amy’s chest, especially when he lets out the very last words and lets them drag for a beat:
Without you, I’m just a sad song…
This is definitely on a whole new level than the first song he sang to her a few weeks ago. It leaves a true print on her heart this time; shaking her to her core. She can even feel some tears prickling inside her eyes.
She’s definitely not used to this version of Jake, the open book who pours his heart out for her. Although he doesn’t really do that — because when the music fades away and everything is back to normal, the words he lets out have nothing to do with what he previously sang to her.
“Because The Vulture is the worst. That whole division is the worst! They steal cases, it’s the lowest of the low.”
“So, if I transferred somewhere else, you wouldn’t care at all?” Amy can’t help but ask in return.
She doesn’t know why she does that — what if it pushes him to share what’s truly going on with him but for real, this time? Could she handle it?
She doesn’t know, but what she knows is that somehow, in that moment, she feels upset that he would use The Vulture as an excuse to deflect from his true feelings.
“No, of course not. Do whatever you want, y’know? It’s your life,” is all that Jake replies, though. It doesn’t make Amy feel better; on the opposite, she’s even more disappointed by this new answer that she knows to be full of lies. And it’s quite a weird reaction to have, to be honest, for someone who is not interested in him.
Her heart clenches in her chest while he can barely meet her eyes, and confusion washes over her.
Without you, I’m just a sad song…
The words from his song resonate in her ears again, and she sighs. What was she expecting of him? And what would have she said if he’d tell her the truth, anyway?
So many questions she wouldn’t have to ask herself if she didn’t know about the true nature of his feelings towards her, something she was still unaware of only a few weeks ago. And if the experience of hearing him sing was surprising the first time, it’s now even worse — because past the shock of learning what she means for him, she now has to be confronted with the question of what Jake means for her .