Work Text:
It's fine, he's totally okay. Going undercover is cool as shit. Okay so granted, he doesn't get to use any of his cover stories, but being himself makes it so much grittier, right? It's like he's in an episode of The Wire or something.
Jake never actually finished the first episode on the DVDs he borrowed from Terry, so he's not a hundred percent sure that this analogy is accurate. (Who doesn't want to be Idris Elba though?)
-
The FBI gives him half an hour to pack some stuff from his own apartment to take with him. There are rules, of course. Nothing identifiable, no photos, no diaries, no phone, at least aside from the burner they hand him. He’s allowed a quick call to his mom, but he’s only allowed to tell her he’s going on assignment for six months, no details. Agent Clarke says, in what he thinks is meant to be a reassuring tone, “Don’t worry. If anything should happen, your next of kin will be informed of your service.” Yeah, it’s pretty safe to say this doesn’t reassure Jake at all.
The phone call sucks. His mom doesn’t say anything bad, but he can hear it in her voice. She’s got that same tired, resigned tone she used to take on when she would talk about his dad. Keeping the phone pressed against his ear, he twists the corner of his shirt into a knot as his mother tells him to be safe. For the first and last time, he thinks about backing out. He doesn’t though, and it’s almost entirely because he knows that without this, he’s not Jake Peralta, undercover cop, he’s Jake Peralta, fired from the NYPD.
(It might also have a tiny bit to do with the last conversation he had with Amy. He doesn’t know from experience, but Jake’s pretty sure it’s hard to casually come back from an ‘I might die and I think I want to date you’ conversation and go back to normal after a less than a day. He’ll be lucky if six months is even the half life.)
-
It occurs to Jake, as he’s locking the door to his apartment that no one has told Gina. He almost asks permission for another phone call, but how would he even explain Gina to a group of FBI agents who all manage to make Captain Holt look like the carefree, irresponsible one.
(‘She’s my sister’, the lie sits on the tip of his tongue, but he stops himself from saying it out loud. She’ll figure it out, or Gina will twist Boyle’s arm until he tells her the truth. Literally or figuratively, whatever works. He hopes she’ll know to visit his mom. The thought of them worrying together just manages to make him feel worse.)
-
They set him up in a truly terrible apartment. (‘What, no mint on the pillow? Consider me a dissatisfied customer”, Jake Peralta of two weeks ago says.) Jake in the present says nothing, and tries not to look too hard at any of the stains on the kitchen counter. “You just got fired from the NYPD”, a nameless agent shrugs at him. “You can’t afford anything better.” He nods. The part of him that is still functioning normally files this away in a part of his brain marked ‘character motivations’. Jake Peralta, disgruntled ex-cop, looking for a little extra to make ends meet.
As soon as they have him settled in, he feels a wave of exhaustion overtake him. He’s suddenly overwhelmed with the realisation of what he’s signed on for. He wants to sleep, but he can’t. He’s been told to make contact, to go to this skeevy dive bar and make a scene. At last, something he knows how to do. Jake makes the exhaustion work for him, chases it with three pitchers of truly awful beer and goes for broke. Five hours later he gets home, blackout drunk but with a number saved in his brand new phone. He sleeps for fourteen hours and wakes up in a sweaty tangle with his leather jacket around his elbows and his head on fire.
-
Here’s something they don’t tell you about undercover work: a lot of it is just spending a shit ton of time shooting the breeze with probably the biggest low-lives he's ever met. After he makes friends with Leo, who hooks him up with a job at an auto shop, he quickly realises his particular style of repartee isn't going to work with his new crowd. Jake is suddenly grateful that his first supervising officer back when he was in uniform was a huge creep, because it means he's got a wealth of truly awful stories about women and partying. Within two weeks he's Jakey, (or Jakey boy, said with a leer and an arm around his shoulders, clapping hard against his back), but it doesn't matter what they call him, he's in.
-
Four weeks in, the FBI makes contact with him. He almost wants to laugh, they literally meet at an undercover parking garage. With Agent Clarke is a rookie agent, who asks kindly, as they’re leaving. “Did you want to pass any messages along?” Jake pauses for a second, trying to think of something funny he would have said. He comes up with nothing, and it isn’t until later on he realises that he thought of himself, Jake Peralta, detective of the Nine-Nine in the past tense.
-
The most disappointing part of being undercover is that it doesn't make it any easier to forget about things. To forget about Amy. To forget about that night, her confused face, the overwhelming sense of nausea he still feels when he thinks about what he said.
(Head first, eyes closed, right?)
If anything all of it just gives all his good memories a sharp painful edge. They hang out at a pizza place a lot (some stereotypes are true, okay), and he stops himself from checking Boyle’s online review of the place. Every time he tells another terrible, offensive story he feels Rosa slapping the back of his head.
To take his mind off things, he throws himself headfirst into his work, following every lead, but as the weeks turn into months the information starts to run dry. He spends more and more nights bleary eyed on his shitty couch in his shitty cover apartment, flipping through the channels trying vainly to get to sleep, purposely not thinking of Amy. She didn’t say anything back to him. Jake wonders what she would have said if he’d given her the chance to answer. He’s not sure if it’s better or worse that he didn’t.
One of the older guys, (Gus, Jake thinks?) asks him if he had a woman, and there’s only so many times you can say ‘one woman? brother, I had all the women’ without it ringing hollow. Eventually he shrugs and there must be something in his face because Gus nods, putting a hand on his shoulder. The thing that gets him, Jake reflects later that night, on his third straight Law and Order episode, is the rush of gratitude he felt at that moment. It's the first real thing he's had in weeks.
-
It’s late, they’re at an after-hours party. The girl has dark hair and a mouth shiny with lip-gloss and liquor. Over the blaring music he thinks he hears the name Giuliana, but he's not sure. It doesn’t matter anyway, he's not gonna be that guy who sleeps with one girl to forget another. (Besides, her eyes aren't quite the right shape.)
Before Jake can make his excuses, her mouth curves up into a predatory grin. It takes him a beat to realise she isn’t grinning at him. Leo is standing behind him, hand pressed between his shoulder blades, friendly and a threat all at once. He's a little buzzed from the tequila but is suddenly aware that this is a test he needs to pass. The girl takes his hand and he can just make out Leo’s voice in the background. “Take care of my boy, okay?” he says. “You must be cool, if Leo likes you,” she mumbles into his neck as they wait for a cab. Jake laughs, but doesn’t answer when she asks him why.
He goes home to the girl's apartment. To Giuliana’s apartment, he forces himself to think. They sleep together. Jake Peralta, upstanding detective, decent guy, stays until mid-morning, takes a shower, goes downstairs, finds a coffee cart and brings her breakfast.
Jake Peralta, ex-cop, (that guy who sleeps with one girl to forget another), is gone just after sunrise.