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Amy is having a particularly shit morning.
First, one of her alarms doesn’t go off (the one that she relies on the most to rouse her from sleep) so she wakes up half an hour late and while she does enjoy rising at the same time as Jake—blinking awake to see his sleep-drunk smile, kissing him softly on the tip of his nose—eventually extricating herself from their sheets leads to the realization that, fuck, she doesn’t have time for the shower that she desperately needs. But she doesn’t even have the opportunity to weigh the consequences of just opting for dry shampoo when her stomach jumps, and she barely makes it to the toilet before bile and what is left of her dinner from last night (orange chicken, she bemoans mentally) ends up in the little ceramic bowl.
Idly, she can hear Jake’s concerned “Babe?” but she brushes him away before he can even broach a few feet of the bathroom, because they’re both aware that morning sickness is a well-known symptom of pregnancy, and normally, she’d be at least a little excited, but she suspects that it’s more along the lines of “we went to a shady Chinese place in Queens last night that would have given Charles a heart attack and ate a suspicious amount of lo mein” and, maybe a piece of her doesn’t want to get either of their hopes up.
She’s always had a sensitive stomach, after all.
But it doesn’t stop there. Not only does she wake up late and have to quell a thousand, protruding thoughts, but even her coffee makes her gag—God, she’ll have to pick up creamer tonight, since it seems like the one they have has expired, even if she can’t read the expiration date because she doesn’t have her contacts in and her glasses are tossed somewhere under the couch from the last time she let Jake put them on his penis (in her defense, it was his birthday). Looking past the lack of coffee, there’s also the fact that the top buttons of her sergeant uniform just won't lie flat like normal, and Jake furrows his brow at the heat of her skin when he presses a faint kiss to her neck.
“You sure you’re okay, Ames?” he asks, his hands drifting to her hair as she turns to face him.
She nods, perhaps a little too furiously because he grimaces further. “I’m fine,” she says, kissing his palm lightly. “Really, everything’s fine.” Then Amy covers his hand with hers, and he finally relents when she mentions that she has to go (Officer Jennings had asked for help with one of his assignments), that she’ll see him in the briefing.
And here she is now, standing off to the side of the room while Holt explains how a few of the detectives will need two uniformed officers to assist in an assignment and Amy’s in the middle of offering Jennings (always eager to please) and Alvarado (needs to get out of the precinct) when her stomach heaves and she’s moving before she can even process it, practically bolting through one of the doors and absently she can hear Jake’s frantic “Captain?” as she dashes to the fourth floor bathroom, the one that was finally fixed a few weeks ago, and a few seconds later she’s hurling into the goddamn brand new toilet and her husband is knocking at the door.
“I’m fine, Jake,” and it’s half-hearted, she knows. But she also knows that he’s in the middle of a time-sensitive case, and he’s not going to lose it because she can’t handle her orange chicken.
He takes the opportunity to come in, and his face falls as he crouches down next to her. “You obviously aren’t fine.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s just food-poisoning,” she reasons. “I’m fine. Or I’m going to be fine. Go and kick some ass with Rosa.”
“Ames.”
“I’m fine. Go.”
He brushes a wisp of hair off of her forehead, tucking the strand behind her ear. “Okay,” he says, not completely convinced, but he knows that she won’t back off. Quickly, he presses a kiss to the slightly sweaty skin just above her brow, and then rises on the balls of his feet. Amy smiles weakly at his slow, retreating figure, steps wracked with hesitation.
After waiting what seems to be a necessary, but normal, amount of time, she stands, flushes, and washes her hands. Her face is pale in the tiny little mirror, and when she leaves, she pops a mint in her mouth that Gina insisted on having in the women’s restroom, and quite frankly, Amy’s slightly surprised that Hitchcock and Scully haven’t raided the basket yet, but she’s thankful.
Absentmindedly, she thinks that she has a spare toothbrush somewhere in her purse, but as she discretely tries to make her way down to the third floor, she’s stopped by Holt, who asks if everything is alright, and she nods. He doesn’t press the issue any further, allowing her to escape to her beat cops and her blessed toothbrush.
Thankfully, most of the uniformed officers weren’t in the briefing room earlier, so only Vargas mutters a soft “Sarge, you okay?” to which she hums, asks her if she finished her patrol rounds from that morning, and when the officer shakes her head, Amy suggests taking Thomas instead of simply going alone. Vargas grunts out a “yes, ma’am” and Amy excuses herself to brush her teeth in the break room. And yes, she gets weird looks from Officers Eisen and Tareen, but she ignores it.
Over the course of the next few hours, she manages to not only finish a thick stack of paperwork—and damn, does that by itself lift her mood because, truly, there is nothing a good miles reimbursement form can’t fix—but she also completes one of her new officers’ firearm certification and hangs up a particularly difficult shelf.
And it’s fine, she’s fine, at least until she’s back at her desk and is catching up on emails when the desk a few feet behind her starts emitting the most horrid smell she’s ever had the displeasure of experiencing. When she turns, however, she sees that it’s just Officer Goodman, eating his lunch at his desk as he scrolls on his phone.
Really, she tries to ignore it.
She really does.
But the stench is so goddamn overpowering that after three minutes and forty seconds (yes, she was that aware of each passing moment, she can’t help but say something.
“Hey Goodman, can you put that away or eat it in the break room. It’s rank.” It comes out a little harsher than she intends, but also, why the hell would Goodman bring a yogurt with that pungent of an odor to a workspace (in fact, it reminds her of the break room on the fourth floor that time when Charles brought Terry homemade yak yogurt with blueberries and the entire bullpen had to be evacuated).
The blonde officer frowns, but shrugs his shoulders and closes the lid to a little white container. “Sure, Sarge, but it’s just strawberry yogurt.”
“Thanks,” Amy responds, this time a little softer, but even though Goodman eventually moves to halfway across the floor to eat his snack, she can still smell it and it only takes sixty-two more seconds before she hauls ass to the bathroom.
(Well, she power-walks. It is the most efficient means of travel, after all.)
For once, no one is in the bathroom, which is refreshing, but when she leaves, Gary’s standing outside, with a particularly pained expression lacing his features that reflects that of her husband’s own face a few hours prior.
Amy quirks an eyebrow. “Is there a problem, Officer Jennings?”
“Detective Peralta told me to keep an eye on you,” Gary offers, his voice increasing in pitch and speed as he finishes the sentence. “And now I’m worried that you have contracted the flu or some other illness. He told me that you would probably brush off any concern he or I had for your well-being, and I told him that you are very reasonable, but—”
“Gary, I’m fine.”
“I’m sure you are, Sergeant, but Detective Peralta seemed very keen on me ensuring your health, and, to be blunt, he can be very scary.”
Sighing, Amy rolls her eyes, informs the overeager beat cop that no, I am in tip-top shape, I just had too much orange chicken the night before and yes, my husband can be a little overdramatic but don’t listen to him unless it relates to actual police duty.
And he nods, says he understands, but Amy doesn’t entirely trust him not to hover over her the rest of the day, so she excuses herself to the fourth floor to try and get some work done, as Jake had sent her a text earlier that he and Rosa were headed to interview some guy involved in a money laundering ring that operates out of food trucks, and Terry (with his goddamn yogurt) is at home with his sick wife and daughters.
There might be a stomach bug going around.
That’s what she tells herself, at least, as she settles into her old desk with a thick binder and her laptop, and it feels like the past ten years again, except Jake isn’t across from her (though, there is a picture of the two of them from Charles’ “Bach Boys” slideshow, and Charles is just in the corner, barely visible). And really, it’s all fine and she’s actually feeling productive, and it’s right when she gets into the groove of things that Boyle makes an appearance.
“You know, morning sickness is a very common symptom of early pregnancy.”
“Charles.”
“And Jake mentioned that you couldn’t even drink your coffee this morning. Often, pregnant mothers’ taste buds change.”
“Charles.”
“Your breasts do look—”
“Charles, shut up already.”
It’s only then that Boyle fully stop in his tracks, and it’s Gina of all people who cuts him off so successfully. For a brief moment, Amy is thankful, but then when the small brunette beckons her over with a sharp wave of her hand, dread pools in the pit of her stomach because she does not have the mental energy for this.
“Look, after everything that’s happened today, I’d rather not add you making fun of me on top of all of that,” she says, as Gina leads her into an empty room (if she remembers correctly, it’s Scully and Hitchcock’s old nap room) and sits down on the old, beat-up couch, patting the space next to her, and Amy reluctantly complies.
“Seriously Gina, thank you for getting him to stop, but I have work to do.”
Gina just shakes her head, her expression serious for once. “Are you actually pregnant?”
All of the blood drains out of Amy’s face, then.
Until that very moment, she hadn’t even seriously suspected that she could be pregnant, she'd mentally eschewed the possibility. While she and Jake did try for a long time, taking every weird piece of advice that their mothers offered (including but not limited to: sleeping in total darkness; eating pineapple every day in the week leading up to her ovulation period; and taping a few pillows together and sliding them under her hips to keep her pelvis elevated for half an hour after sex), but after six months of disappointment, Amy elected to throw both of her binders devoted to conception away and they’ve been actively avoiding thinking about it since. And even with the puking this morning, she hadn’t allowed herself to really consider the possibility for fear that it was all for naught.
But if she actually thinks about it—she’s been throwing up at an alarming frequency, and she hasn’t been able to eat anything with any sort of smell (even without the possibility of food poisoning, why did she think Chinese was a good idea in the first place?), and her gums are sore (which she had attributed it to her habit of over-brushing), and, if she does the math, she’s two weeks late (normally, she’s fully aware of her cycle, but the past few weeks have been so crazy and she’s missed periods before because of stress). If she thinks about it, holy fuck.
Gina just raises her eyebrows, and Amy can’t do anything but shrug in response.
“I don’t know.”
And so, thirty minutes later, Amy sits with Gina in the little dark room, on the little green couch, and they wait together, with a little white stick in the sergeant’s shaking hands.
Frankly, Jake’s had a relatively shit day as well.
First, his wife is sick or has food poisoning—which, of course, is bad in itself (because when Amy hurts she’s a lot quieter, and she rebuffs any sort of coddling and sometimes he just wants to take care of her, and he’s also pretty sure that she may have actually bitten Officer Jennings’ head off), but also, if it’s the latter, he’s a bit bummed, as he quite liked the Grand Sun Chinese restaurant even if it was a tad sketchy. The egg rolls were bomb.
Furthermore, the food truck money-laundering ring turns out to be a bust, with their main witness refusing to talk and they only have a few hours left until the trucks will all move again, trying to secure a spot in Central Park for the weekend crowd. And Charles hasn’t been helpful either, as he keeps getting distracted and hangs up the phone anytime Jake calls him to ask for help.
Rosa eventually grunts that they should just take a breather and swing back by the precinct, look through the evidence files again to make sure they didn’t miss anything, and Jake begrudgingly agrees. When he actually enters the storage room, though, he’s pleasantly surprised to see his wife rifling through a folder. In three quick strides he reaches her, presses a soft kiss to her forehead, relishes in the fact that the frown between her brows is gone, but he then realizes that it’s instead replaced with some sort of nervous energy that he can’t quite place. “Ames,” he starts, slow, “you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m actually fine.”
For the first time today, Jake actually believes her. “Good.”
And they’re both smiling, and then Amy appears to have remembered something, because she shakes herself, as if trying to break out of a reverie. “One of my beat cops brought in something that Charles thought would help with your case.” She scrunches her nose in an attempt to recall. “Box J-1915, I think?”
As she turns back to pilfering through her own box, he grabs the one she named down from a high shelf, and begins searching through.
(God, he really needs to get better at filing, because this shit’s a mess.)
While he looks, he remembers her pale face from this morning. “Did you ever figure out what was up with this morning? Was it really the orange chicken? Because I really kind of liked that place.”
“First of all, that hole in the wall had a million health-code violations.”
“It was still good though, admit it.”
Amy only hums in response.
Jake continues to thumb through the evidence until he reaches the most “recent” section, but he can’t find anything that looks like it could be from a food truck. “What did Charles say it was, again?”
“I’m not sure exactly, but it looked small and it was in a plastic baggie.”
“I’ve gotta say, babe, it’s been a pretty crappy day. I really need a break in this case.” He’s shuffling through the bags from the past two days as he speaks. “God, this guy acted like I didn’t know the difference between DiGiorno and delivery just because he runs a successful pizza—oh, here it is.” In fact, it’s a small baggie with the date marked 2/9/19 in bold black ink, he doesn’t bother reading the rest of the entry information, and he can’t really tell what it is through the half-opaque plastic, but it’s light, and when he opens it there’s something small and white at the bottom. It takes him a moment to realize what it is. “Why would a positive pregnancy test help?”
“Maybe check whoever submitted it? You could ask them then.”
Even though her words are technically banal, there’s a certain edge to her voice that confuses him, but he brushes it aside, instead electing to flip the bag over and actually skim the information he normally skips completely. “Good thinking—4:36 pm, February 9th, collected by…” He recognizes the curve of the A and the loop of the Y and the new swirl of a P and it takes a second for it all to click but then he’s looking up at Amy, who’s a few feet away from him and grinning so wide he thinks her face might split in two, eyes shining. “This is yours?”
“Yes.”
“Not a money-laundering food truck owner?”
“Yes,” she repeats, nodding, biting her lip.
“And this is real, not some elaborate prank to get back at me for the time I put glitter in your lotion?”
She laughs, and the noise is sweet, tinkling as her eyes close and her cheeks flush. “I have three more positive tests if you want to double check.” And she looks at him again, with a smile that reaches her eyes and could probably touch the sky if it so desired. “But yes, this is real.”
“This is real.”
And he’s moving before he can even register it, his feet practically gliding, barely touching the carpet as he wraps Amy up in a hug, slipping his entire body around her torso, and he can feel her smile against his shoulder, through the leather of his jacket and the stupid plaid of his shirt.
Briefly, Jake pulls back, his hands remaining on her upper arms, and he couldn’t stop the corners of his lips from upturning, from taking over his entire face. “We’re gonna have a baby?”
Again, she nods, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. “We’re gonna have a baby.”
And he takes this as an opportunity to kiss her, one of his hands settling on her hip and the other scaling up her back as hers move to cup his cheek, and he should be embarrassed by how wet the skin is there, but all he can register is the taste of mint on her breath, on the way her lips feel against his, and on the way that they’re not alone in this evidence locker.
(He’s referring to the blueberry-sized baby, of course, not an actual grown person, though when they do emerge from the storage room, they’re informed by a grinning Rosa that Charles fainted again because he was watching the tapes live. And that Gina told them everything.)
(Jake and Rosa don't catch the money-laundering, food-truck owner, but they both count it as an acceptable loss.)