Chapter Text
He drops her off at the door. It’s too late to do anything about his feelings now, Jake reckons. His mother always said nothing good happens after 2 AM, and it’s edging upon 1:30 now.
The sly part of Jake’s brain says it’s not even two o’clock yet, you’ve got time. But he looks at Amy, lipstick dark beneath weak-willed streetlights still trying to attract their first moths, and… she’s worth this pain. Even if it means he won’t end up with her, that’s alright. As long as she’s safe.
He runs through a fabricated mental timeline. What would happen if they just said fuck it, fled from her family and ran off into the sunset? Jake won’t lie, in this Wild West fantasy he’s definitely cast some Hans Gruber-ish (Gruber-like? Gruber-esque?) movie villains in place of Amy’s brothers.
“You sure you’re okay walking alone?” Amy asks.
Jake shakes his head easily. “I’ll be fine. Thanks, Ames.”
She wouldn’t be safe with him. Anything to keep her away from the apartment with the police files and the gun hidden beneath the floorboards.
Amy’s face falls as Jake walks away, his hands tucked into pockets.
“I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon? You should sleep in!” she calls after him, perched on the hand-rails.
It takes everything to turn back and yell, “Nah, tomorrow morning’s good!”
Like he doesn’t care. Like she doesn’t affect him.
As if.
“She kissed you?!”
Welcome to weekly briefings with the NYPD. Charles treats them like gossip hour, and correspondingly brings tea and cookies to each one.
It’s a big deal. He bought a travel-friendly kettle on Amazon (and, obviously, added shatterproof teacups to the order so he could get free shipping.)
“She kissed you and I didn’t hear about it until four days after?” Boyle whispers. It’s a bit more of a hiss, actually. A whisper-hiss hybrid. (A whiss? A hissper?)
Holt finds this entire sequence of events outrageous. But he does like tea, so he drinks a cup out of Boyle’s shatterproof set and stays put. He’d have to admit the cookies are good, too. The secret ingredient must be the sea salt.
“Do I really have to-” Jake protests, a hand in the air. There are some things he’d prefer the NYPD not know. “It’s personal.”
“This is part of the report. I apologize.” Aside from Holt’s veiled enjoyment of quote-unquote ‘gossip hour’, he’d also have to admit he’s interested in Jake and Santiago’s… working relationship. They do seem to work quite well together. Maybe a bit too well? At this point it’s hard to tell which sides of Jake Peralta are counterfeit and which are the real deal.
“She kissed me. Only on the cheek,” Jake clarifies, in reaction to Boyle’s giddy look. “Once, that’s it. I went to the poker game with Holt’s help,” he motions near his left ear, “and, afterward, two of the Iannucci brothers decked me in the alley.”
“And that’s how you-” Holt motions to Jake’s bruise.
“Yep. Looks cool, doesn’t it?” He’s smug, and rightly so. “And, um, after that happened, I went over to see Amy. This was at the warehouse where our office is.”
“At…” Holt checks the time log, “10:45 PM? That seems unusual.”
“She likes working late, okay?”
“If you say so.”
“How was the kiss?” Charles blurts. “Light? Soft? Deep? Passionate?”
“Alright, that’s enough. It’s between her and me, nobody else. Some things aren’t meant to be written about,” Jake says. He sighs after; he just got off of an eight-hour shift scanning paperwork and entering numbers into little boxes on Excel. “Is that all?”
“Thank you, detective. That’s plenty.”
Holt wouldn’t admit it, but he and Charles do exchange a look on the way out.
A kiss.
Huh.
Nothing like a little workplace romance to make gossip hour worthwhile.
Andrew Iannucci hasn’t seen much of his sister lately. It’s not that they aren’t close, they’re usually like peas in a pod; it’s just... Amy’s been busy, wrapped up in one of her endless personal projects. Something about reorganizing the filing system to remove the loose ends and duplicate files. She and that, uh, assistant of hers have been hard at work.
Amy’ll talk his ear off sometimes. About accounting, or television, or Jake, or the second Harry Potter book because she’s rereading it at the moment. She’s actually got one project she still won’t tell him about, and he’ll tease Amy about it sometimes.
What a nerd.
(He loves her for it, but he won’t admit that to anyone outside the family.)
Andrew swings by her apartment on his way to the warehouse. Amy likes to carpool for the sake of the environment, and he knocks hollowly at the door. He waits a moment for no good reason. Maybe she’s running late, he thinks.
She isn’t. She’s running early.
Crouched in a corner of her office, Amy types.
dime here, Ill meet you tonite at 7?
It takes everything in her to go back and turn her grammar imperfect, but, hey, it wouldn’t be a secret if you didn’t pull on a mask once in a while.
see you at 7, Rosa replies.
Dave catches Rosa in the morning, frown bent like a clothes-hanger at she looks down at her phone. Maybe it’s the coffee next door. They’ve jacked up the prices for a second time this month.
“Hey, Diaz.”
“Majors.” She gives him a head-nod, which is the most animated Rosa gets in the first place. Coming from her, it’s a win. Dave shakes his bag of donut holes until her head turns from her desk.
“Are those-?”
“They’re from Max’s.” He grins.
“Dope.” She leans to the side so the computer monitor isn’t blocking her face. “What, you’re not gonna share?”
“Oh, I’m gonna.” With a lazy swing of his wrist, the first one (cinnamon, one of Max’s classics) flies through the air.
“Dude, thanks. I owe you one.”
Rosa tucks the cell phone into her pocket.
The day practically crawls past, like the seconds have melted into one another. In the Marie Kondo office, there’s plenty of careful banter and well-constructed dialogue, weaving up and down. Amy’s smile doesn’t betray anything deeper. Jake’s exterior is thin. They file documents and scan reports and scrawl messy signatures onto checks (Jake’s, of course, is far messier. He’d tried to neaten his writing for the undercover stint, but some things are hard-wired, pressed into your DNA like ink onto a page.)
Amy trains herself in the art of looking away, or at least looking to. Looking to the clock, the door, the window, the ceiling (yep, they’ve been meaning to get it painted for quite some time, and doesn’t that remind her of a story about the Sistine Chapel-)
Jake laughs.
For real this time, a deep laugh he’s trying to hide. It starts in his stomach and winds its way up. “You always tell that story when you’re on edge.”
Amy shrugs. “Well, what if you make me nervous, huh? What am I supposed to do about that?”
In her desk, her phone buzzes. can we do 6 instead of 7?
“Well, what would you do if I said you, uh, you put me on edge, too?” Jake isn’t as good at looking away, so he matches her gaze with his own. “You’re enough to make anyone scared. I’ve seen you force a stapler through a foot-high stack of papers, and you practically have a - a small army of brothers, and-” he snatches his eyes toward the door when there’s some chatter in the warehouse behind them.
“And?” Amy prompts.
“And you’re more intimidating than anyone might think, Santiago. ‘Nough said.”
She smiles at that too, and reminisces upon the sound of his laugh for the remainder of the hour.
“Thank you, Jake.”
“Amalia?” Andrew comes knocking at the door of the office. He’s the only one who’s allowed to call her that. “I’ve missed you lately. Wanna grab a late lunch?”
She pulls back the door, gasping even if she’s known his voice for years. “Hi.”
Jake gives an awkward smile and shifts to walk out of their way.
“This is my brother Andrew,” she says, still caught up in the hug. She points to Andrew’s face with the hand that isn’t hooked over his shoulders. “That’s Jake, my assistant.”
“The new guy?”
She nods. “He’s been here for months. I hired him myself.”
Andrew looks him up and down. “Hope my sister’s been treating you well. She can be, like, a total medusa when she hasn’t had her coffee in the morning, or if her binders have been taken out of rainbow order.
Undercover Jake is supposed to be suave ー damn it, Terry gave him lessons and everything! ー but he can’t help his smile. Clearly he’s not the only one who noticed the binder thing. “She’s a good boss, trust me. She’s been showing me the ropes for a while now.”
“Learned from the best, didn’t she? Mom woulda been proud.”
Amy sniffs. She can’t cry, not in front of the two of them.
“D’ya mind if I steal your boss for an hour, Jake?”
“Go right ahead,” Jake motions to the door, and the Iannuccis walk out still leaning on each other.
Even crawling away from battle, they’d lean on each other. They’re ants in a hill, the siblings nine, and they’ll wage wars over each other.
He’s not supposed to, but Jake conveniently forgets to include Andrew’s file when he downloads some more data for the NYPD. Coolcoolcool, sneaking into Amy’s computer. No big deal. Does it all the time. All the freak-frack-frickin’ time, he tells himself. He feels guilt, soft and burning in his gut, when he looks at the photo on Amy’s desk. It’s her with an older woman (Amy’s mom, he assumes) and Gina and Andrew and a couple other boys.
Jake wants to turn it away, but then Amy’d know he was using her computer, so he lets the smiling faces be. It’s almost eerie, looking into their eyes.
He doesn’t want to be the bad guy.
Alright, dope, leavin’ Andrew off the file, he’s not in denial, it’ll alllll be fineeeee… he sings to himself.
He doesn’t want to be the reason that this brother ends up in prison, at least. Jake ignores the small stampede of rising thoughts; what, he really thought he could drag her family’s name through the mud and end up with clean hands? He’d somehow be able to rake them over hot coals and not end up blacklisted in Amy’s book?
It disgusts him, treating people this badly after they’d taken him under their wing.
But Jake thinks about that alley. The crack of bone against bone, silver rings bruising his face, hair drenched with sweat. He can remember it in snapshots. Scabs on knees. Yellowed teeth. Her brothers, Christian, Carlo ー they weren’t sweet like Andrew, were they? They were frauds. At least, that’s what Jake tells himself.
They didn’t treat their name like it was holy, not like Amy did. She didn’t get it. To her brothers, being in the family was a get-out-jail-free card, a lifeline soaked in blood. I’m one of them, I’ve got connections you wouldn’t believe, I can get you where you want to go, just trust me!
Jake hadn’t met the other brothers, and he felt a little bad for judging. Not bad enough, though, not enough to stop, never enough to stop; Jake was chasing thrills, gold and glory and (maybe) the girl. He didn’t know how to orient what he wanted (a safe bed, a night at a restaurant with Amy where he’d pay the bill) within the context of everything he needed (the data, the numbers, the proof to turn in the Iannuccis for good.)
He hadn’t met the other brothers. He’d just memorized their files under dim lamplight at home, at the apartment with the gun hidden under the floorboards.
Jake grips the flash drive with the data a little tighter. Their names are going to the police.
After a moment, he heads back to the computer. His fingers are cold as he types, bent over a little black computer as heavy as a piano.
He adds Andrew’s file to the rest of them.
Sorry, Ames.
The clock hits 5:45 and Amy’s nothing if not punctual. “Hey, Drew, I gotta run. I’m meeting up with Kylie, but we should do this again next week!” They’re holding leftovers from the sandwich shop on 65th, and Amy shoves hers in her purse.
He’d pause to pucker his brow. Funny of her to change gears so quickly, but Amy’d been pulling that move a lot lately. Either Kylie had suddenly gotten extremely clingy, or something was up.
“Yeah, of course! How ‘bout lunch again next week?”
“You got it.”
Amy walks all the way up to 71st, and then she’s gone.
Andrew takes out his phone. “Hey, Gina, I think you were right about Amalia.”
There’s a pause. Her voice is blurred on the other end.
“No, I’m the only who can call her that!” Andrew says.
Amy turns her head. “You… brought me donuts?”
Leo nods. “Best in New York. They’re from Max’s.”
“I… I thought I was gonna come here and meet a detective tonight, not… someone who’s working within the Iannucci family. I was gonna see badge number three-eleven-eighteen?”
“Eh, they’re busy. PD sent me instead.”
“And you decided to greet a confidential informant with donuts?” She crosses her arms, tucked into a dusky corner behind the Hotel Croquis. No one but the raccoons are willing to come out here. If her feet feel unsteady on the ground, it’s because she’s standing on ripped cardboard and remnants of wine bottles. “I - sorry. It’s just kinda weird meeting you like this. I mean, I was expecting a cop.”
He pauses. So, funny story, I do happen to be a cop, he’s called Dave Majors… Leo thinks of saying, but it’s too early in the day and too late in their relationship to handle that.
“So you work as a CI, too? I thought I wouldn’t ever meet another one of us.”
“Us?”
“Double agents,” Amy clarifies. There’s something a little badass about letting the words fall out. “I feel like I’m in a movie, don’t you?”
His mouth feels dry, and he clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. Well, whaddya know, there are more of us than you’d think.”
It’s a good feeling, being able to come out of the woodwork. Amy holds out a manila folder from her purse. “Yeah, so I’ve been working on some spreadsheets these past two weeks, tabulating how much money-laundering is going on. We’ve-” Her head turns when there’s a crack behind her.
Leo exhales slowly. “Prob’ly just a raccoon. Shhh.”
Amy hadn’t even noticed, but she jumped into his arms. “Thanks, Leo.”
There was a good reason three-eleven-eighteen hadn’t come that night.
Rosa texted Gina briefly. On my way.
She was under strict orders from Captain Wuntch to avoid mixing anyone from her personal life into her professional one. And, well, her sister’s girlfriend was about as personal as it got.
Gina was busy, still talking to Andrew, so she didn’t see the message.
They were hatching a plan. Something slow, methodical, even glacial in its ability to wreak havoc before you open your eyes or hear a noise outside. They were ants in a hill.
They were Iannuccis, after all.
And an Iannucci always defends their home against attack.
After the meeting with Leo ーit was definitely gonna take some time to get used to the idea of him as a CI ー Amy walked back to the office. She’d left her laptop sitting in her desk drawer (always check the drawers before you leave! Rookie mistake!) and she was just itching to watch the latest Ted Lasso episode while she ate one of the donuts. Or two, or maybe three. It’d been a long week, and she-
“You’re still here?” Jake blurts. He pushes the desk away from him as soon as she unlocks the door and flips the lights on.
“Um, rude.” Amy frowns. “Why were you sitting here in the dark?”
A pin could drop, and they’d hear it like a crash.
“Ew, were you, like, watching porn?”
“No!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure!” Jake protests. “How could you-”
“I dunno, you’re single-”
“Stop thinking about me like that!”
(She noticed he was single?)
“Let’s pretend this never happened,” Jake decides. “Oh my gosh, Amy, you’re still here!” He tugs her into a somewhat reluctant hug, holding on tight once she accepts the embrace. It’s nice if not a bit much, but, hey, he happens to give really good hugs. And did she mention it’d been a long week?
She rolls her eyes. “If you ever use company computers to do anything inappropriate-”
“I know, Ames. We went through orientation modules together, remember?” Jake taps his brain. “Day one. And then day two. Until day sixteen, how not to ruin your boss’ Youtube recommendations by watching the same Taylor Swift covers over and over.”
“Alright.” Amy laces her arm in his. “Take me home, Peralta.”
They walk outside and the wind greets them. They discuss Andrew and donuts and Ted Lasso until they separate at a street corner near a flowershop and a dress shop that no one ever seems to walk into, and Amy’s lamenting the death of all the dresses she can’t really afford. Someday, she declares, she’ll buy one. If she ever saves up enough. Jake says he has faith in her. It isn’t the best of promises 一 Jake places faith on all the wrong horses at the racetrack, and his bank account can prove it.
(Gambling addictions, Holt had said, weave their way into your life slowly, and that’s how you should describe them.)
They separate, anyhow.
His back is turned when it hits her.
He’d just finished taking down that plastered-on smirk, the one that says I’ve been doing this for ages, baby. Jake’s always been an expert at fooling people with his eyes.
His back is turned, and he’s walking away from the corner where they’d departed, and Amy doesn’t even realize she’s running to him until the edge of her shoulder clips the lamppost. There’s a dull knock and “oh my gosh, why did you do that?!” slips out of his mouth; she feels like a klutz and hasn’t the heart to care.
The nighttime swims in her eyes. In and out and in again 一 there, now the blurred, black-and-blue disfocus has lifted.
“Are you okay?” Jake repeats.
(Amy didn’t hear it the first time; she’d been too busy nursing that semi-self-inflicted wound.)
“What are you doing?” He talks slowly, letting each word outline itself in the open air.
“I - this-”
Alright, so perhaps Amy’d imagined this moment much more eloquently.
“This - what we’re doing right here-” she blinks up at him. He’s still holding her shoulders in his hands, keeping her grounded so she doesn’t fly away and clang into any more lampposts. “We need to stop this.”
Light falls from his eyes. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
“No! Not like that.” Amy shakes her head, hoping to clear all the mental debris away. “Jake. We - we should talk about this. Us.”
His face catches in surprise.
“I’d like nothing more, Ames.” He hasn’t even noticed he’s still holding her.
Jake doesn’t kiss her that night, but he damn well considers bending the rules to do so.
But, of course, there’s always a catch.
He’ll figure out his and Amy’s later.