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“Of course, you are all required to attend, either before or after your shifts for that day. And please, if we could all try to avoid some of the scenes I’ve seen from this precinct in the past. It is vitally important that we are seen to be professional in our conduct.”
(The previous year, Peralta had shown up in an almost exact replica of Gwyneth Paltrow’s 2002 Oscars dress. He too had chosen to forgo a bra. It had been a bad choice.)
Holt stared out into the room with a face that could have been carved from a block of wood. Terry, standing behind him, cleared his throat. Holt added, more as an afterthought. “Of course, enjoy yourselves, also.”
-
Amy sighed. In theory, events like these were supposed to be good for your career. You show up, look good, make polite conversation with the Deputy Commissioner and eventually get promoted, right? In practice, well, she really wouldn’t know. Amy had never actually gotten to go. For brownie points, she always volunteered to take the shifts no one wanted that night, and had always ended up dealing with some idiot complaint which took way too long, so by the time she got to the function hall, the crab cakes were gone and so was anyone worth talking to.
This year though, this year was going to be different. Holt was going to be there, he was her ticket into the big leagues. As soon as Amy had seen the initial email she had rushed in her request to get the shift off, using up like, seven of the favours Gina owed her to get the job done. She had picked out an elegant, understated outfit (grey silk shift with a slight scoop in the neck, nothing too dramatic), and she’d been thinking up appropriate talking points to impress her superior officers. To cover all her bases, she and Boyle even spent two lunchtimes rehearsing exit lines for awkward conversations. (Boyle was a particularly good help here, but probably not in the way he thought.)
Two days before the big event, off-handedly, Gina asked her how she was getting there, and without stopping to draw breath, informed Amy that she would be joining Gina and Rosa at Gina’s place for “pre-gaming, bikini waxes, cocktails, you know, we’re gonna get all Sex and the City on this bitch!” Amy, overwhelmed, only had time to nod before Gina grabbed her wrist. “Just don’t forget. I’m the Samantha. And the Carrie. You can be Charlotte, or that redheaded one, talk to Rosa about it.”
Amy shot a questioning look at Rosa, not exactly sure how Gina had managed to get Rosa to agree to this one. Rosa shrugged. “She promised me whiskey.” "Bikini waxes?" Amy mouthed, incredulously. Rosa nodded grimly. "It was a lot of whiskey.”
-
Amy arrives at Gina’s place an hour before they’re meant to be there, figuring that if they get there early, maybe she can offer a hand with the decorations. If nothing else, she’ll be able to scope out the seating arrangements, maybe make a few strategic changes if necessary.
Gina’s door is ajar when she walks up to her apartment, and she can hear music coming from inside. “Hello?” She calls out, but she reflects that it’s fairly unlikely she’s heard over the sounds of “Hot in Herre”, until Gina comes traipsing down the corridor, bottle of Jack in one hand, doing some what are probably supposed to be sexy, but instead mostly disturbing dance moves.
"Amyyyy, what is up!" Gina hugs her with one arm, which is a little weird, until Amy realises that the bottle of Jack Daniels is half empty. It’s going to be a long night.
They don’t leave until an hour and a half later, not until Gina and Rosa have both pronounced Amy’s outfit unsuitable, and squeezed her into some tight spangly thing with a pair of Rosa’s dangerously high heels on.
"Jesus, Amy, it’s cop prom!" Gina exclaims, shaking her head at Amy’s sensible court heels. "It’s time for you to get your slut on!" As she shoves Amy into the bathroom to get changed, she hears Rosa make an approving sound. "Hey Gina, that almost rhymed."
The heels are high and the dress is short and when Amy informs Gina that she will, in fact, be keeping her underwear on, Gina scowls. “Amy, I’m your friend, mostly, so it’s my duty to tell you this. Those are some straight up granny panties.” Amy is wearing seamless underwear, nothing super sexy, but nothing that you can see under a dress either. “You can’t dress like steak and serve up lunch meat, you know what I mean?” Even Rosa crinkles her nose at that one. Despite an offer to borrow some of Gina’s apparently unused underwear (“You have eight drawers of underwear and you don’t wear any of it?” “I mean, I do on the first date, I’m not a cave person!”), Amy declines, and fortunately makes it into the cab, underwear intact.
-
They arrive late, of course, but thankfully, Holt is missing from the table so they escape what would have undoubtedly been something close to a facial expression. Everyone else is already there, halfway through the entrée, which Amy misses out on completely as Hitchcock and Scully split hers, having assumed she wasn’t turning up.
Jake, to his credit, does not react to her outfit. At all. No whistles or catcalls. Not even an eyebrow raise. Nothing. Not that Amy is paying attention.
He does however, pull out her chair, which would be weird if Amy allowed herself to think about it, but she doesn’t so instead she just smiles, awkwardly.
Gina promptly ditches them, having informed the entire precinct weeks ago that the 94th precinct had the highest concentration of “bangable dudes”, and thus she would be spending the bulk of her evening there.
Rosa’s boyfriend arrives half an hour after they do, but the truth is, he’s so good looking that no one has the heart to chastise him, not even Boyle, who suddenly decides he has a pressing need to visit the kitchens and compliment the chef on his chicken florentine. Personally, Amy’s chicken tasted like paper wrapped in sponge, but it’s probably for the best he’s gone.
(Definitely for the best, she later reflects, watching as Rosa and her boyfriend dance in a manner that would definitely not have been appropriate at a regular prom. Rosa’s boyfriend has some serious moves.)
She spends most of the night drinking double strength vodka tonics, making polite conversation with Terry’s wife, and the Captain’s husband and hoping desperately that her underwear isn’t riding any further up her ass.
(After offering to loan her some underwear, Gina spent about fifteen minutes earlier that night imploring her to go commando. “Rookie mistake, Santiago! You’ll spend all that valuable time trying to yank your panties off, and lemme tell you, when the coat check guy says you’ve got ten minutes, he means it!”)
Jake doesn’t say much to her at all, and in fact spends a lot of time catching up with friends from his academy days, who all seem to come and find him. It’s when the third guy that’s nicknamed after a character from Top Gun leaves their table that Amy gets up, yanking her dress down her thighs as low as it will go, sneaking out the back door, where she sits down on the steps. (She ignores the glares from the cater waiter who skulks back inside, stubbing out his cigarette a foot away from her. Amy resists the urge to ask him for one.)
-
Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes later, her ass is numb and Amy has decided that the universe was right not to let her go to cop prom the first time around because it is totally over-rated. It’s then that she looks up to see Peralta looking down at her, two paper cups and a bottle of Dom Perignon in one hand. “Mind if I join you?” She shakes her head and he shrugs, sitting down, placing the bottle and the cups next to him.
She’s about to say something when he jumps back up, sending one of the cups flying down the stairs. He shrugs off his jacket, handing it to her before sitting back down. “I figured you might be cold.”
She is overly touched by this, or maybe by the fact that he actually remembered to bring two cups, (or even just by the fact that he came out to find her) and it takes her longer than normal to slide his jacket on. It’s warm and it smells faintly of what she assumes is his cologne. Amy’s not normally a cologne type of girl but she catches herself taking a deep breath in as she settles the folds of the jacket around her, rolling the sleeves up around her wrists. It’s spicy but not overpowering. Nice. Yeah, nice is definitely the word she’s going to use here.
All this time, Jake has been talking, his voice a low murmur registering just outside of her awareness. She’s pretty sure he mentions something about a guy nicknamed Goose, and Gina and then Captain Holt flipping his shit (or you know, raising an eyebrow, whatever passes for Holt flipping his shit). “So then, I thought I’d come out here and see what the cool kids were doing.” He finishes, lifting the bottle up from beside him. “I did have two cups, but one of them was lost tragically, you know, while I was being such a gentleman to you.”
"Well thank you," she begins diplomatically. "I just needed some air, it’s kinda stifling in there." Jake nods, handing her the remaining cup. "Uh yeah, making nice with the wives…and husbands, of course it would be. It’s cop prom, Amy. You and –“ He finally, finally looks at her, a proper once over. Amy resists the urge to pull his jacket tighter around her. "- I’m guessing Rosa’s dress are here to have fun." He grins, and it’s like eighty percent wolfish, she’s sure of it. "You look good, Amy." He holds the bottle steady between his knees and pops the cork, champagne bubbles running down his fingers.
(Amy does not think about sucking his fingers clean, and even if the thought does occur to her, she definitely doesn’t dwell on it for half an hour when she gets home that night.)
She shakes her head, grinning despite herself. “Where did you get a bottle of Dom anyway? I know the department didn’t shell out for that.”
He makes a tsk sound at her, pouring some into the cup for her. “Santiago. You never ask a magician to reveal his secrets.” She raises an eyebrow at him and his face splits into a grin. “Okay, the department didn’t shell out for us, but it turns out they did for the top brass.”
(It isn’t until years later that she finds out that the department didn’t shell out for top brass either. Turns out Jake Peralta’s debt is all encompassing, and sometimes romantically inclined.)
He takes the bottle, preparing to toast, when Amy grabs it from his hands. “Nuh uh, you can drink out of the cup, I’ve always wanted to do this.” She tips the bottle up, taking a swig, but the bubbles are particularly effervescent, and she ends up with a nose full of them, coughing back half her mouthful all over the bottle. Peralta laughs, not unkindly. “Okay Santiago,” he places his hand on her back, patting her as she coughs repeatedly. “I’m cutting you off.” It takes her a few seconds, but she recovers, grinning sheepishly as she takes a more conservative sip from the cup. He takes the bottle back from her, one handed, because his other hand is still resting on her back. For the record, his hand is warm and large and it’s totally not weird, not weird at all. Which is weird.
They sit out there for another half hour, sitting quietly enough so that they can hear the music from inside, which has taken a decidedly eighties power ballad-y turn. They place bets on whether or not Terry has taken over the DJ booth. After ‘I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight’ finishes, Rosa comes to find Amy, leading her back inside to find Gina, leaning on Rosa’s boyfriend, tipsy and bemoaning the loss of ‘this crazy hot patrol cop who got called out for a 217’. Amy’s like, ninety percent sure there’s no such thing as a 217, but she doesn’t have the heart to say anything, so they bundle Gina into a taxi before anything major can go wrong. Gina however, seems okay with this development, and soon begins regaling them with tales of policeman’s ball conquests gone by.
-
"I mean, it’s not forever", Gina says, her head dropping limply onto Rosa's shoulder, as they make their way home. "It’s just cop prom." Rosa nods sagely. Amy says nothing, and buries her nose in the collar of Jake’s jacket.