Chapter Text
She shakes his hand as she steps inside the house, the family dog’s barks shooed away. It’s usually a ten or a twenty (in dire cases, Ben Franklin’s face graces the bill) slipped into someone else’s hand, but it’s not money this time; it’s leverage, a lifeline among all this.
“Sophia, we don’t need inside help-” Raymond Holt protests, the bent cardstock of a business card flimsy under his ironclad grip.
“Don’t treat your predicament so gently,” she cautions, voice lowering, “and don’t you dare dismiss any resources I send your way. The phone number on that card? Call as soon as you and your husband discuss it. Those experts’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”
“Whatever it takes?” Holt repeats, disturbed. “Are you sure we should resort to such … methods?”
“I’m positive. In my opinion, we should’ve called sooner,” Sophia folds her hands across the kitchen table, fixing her gaze on the grandfather clock nearing eleven o’clock. As soon as the hour chimes, she steps out of the household, looking out across the moonlit pond and feeling somehow bittersweet. “I’m off to collect some papers from my last client. They called that number on the card 一 truth be told, I was waiting for the crew to finish up 一 and everything’s settled.”
“What did they need settled, specifically?” Holt’s on the edge of his seat, although he hides it well. Kevin thinks he’s at fencing class. How is he supposed to confess that their high-powered family lawyer suggested they call a hotline and enlist the help of some shady, underground negotiators?
“The crew recently helped protect a small African country from political corruption by discrediting the immoral brother of the current president. My client was a young reporter whose life was endangered by using her first-amendment right to discuss the upcoming election and the president’s brother’s role.”
“Sophia, there’s no way that’s true-”
“Call the number,” she retorts, smoothing out her skirt and gently waving Cheddar goodbye, the last bit of innocence lost within her gesture as she walks out. The engine of her car starts, a rumble against the backdrop of night’s silence, and she’s gone. Holt sits at the kitchen table, memorizing the number on the card until it’s burned into his brain, and then he decides to lie.
“We’re just telling Kevin that fencing was cancelled tonight, right, Cheddar?” he asks, kneeling down and scratching his dog behind the ears. “It won’t hurt him. We just have to keep him safe.”
Cheddar barks and rolls over, oblivious. Holt grins, a little less high-strung, for the first time today. “We’ll do whatever it takes, okay?”
“Sweet, Ames! We printed more business cards? Did Charles take my advice?” Jake’s sitting on the well-loved sofa in the ‘John McClane’ living room (simply one of the perks of being millionaires living in a bar with a mansion upstairs: each person has their own living room) when Amy walks by. There’s a package the size of a deck of cards in her hand, and he looks up at her hopefully, the way he would a masterpiece.
Calm down, it’s been two weeks since ‘Johnny and Dora,’ he thinks. It’s a good thing Jake’s keeping his thoughts to himself, since his breathing jilts as he notices she’s wearing his shirt.
“Obviously not.” She rolls her eyes for what feels like the tenth time today. It’s not her fault if he asked if peacocks got offended by male beauty standards at breakfast. “Who wants a black business card with black ink on it? It’s just a magnet! It’s illegible!”
He grins, alight. “That’s the beauty of it! Destroys your credit cards. I don’t even have to steal ‘em out of back pockets and purses.”
“You’re such a thief,” Amy says, looking at her shoes to keep from blushing. She just has a lot of emotions she can’t show at the moment. He can’t know she’s this smitten this early. He just … can’t.
“Like you haven’t done the same, ruining people’s public records with a simple yet illegal search of their browser histories. You’re worse than me, you hack.” Perhaps he can’t work a computer as well as she can, but Jake Peralta certainly knows how to push Amy’s buttons.
“It’s hacker,” she replies, so type-A it hurts, avoiding eye contact as she picks at a loose thread on the hem of her t-shirt. “And I am not worse than you. You’re a pickpocket! We’re in this together, remember?”
“I remember,” he murmurs, casually slinging an arm around Amy’s shoulder and pressing a button on the remote. He tries not to smile when she whispers ‘you’re the best’ under dim lights, the curtains closing as part of the pre-programmed Santiago protocol.
The Jeopardy theme song starts to play as soon as the hundred-inch television turns on; Amy happily hums along, legs criss-crossed, before she starts muttering the answers angrily under her breath, Jake trying not to fall in love with her all the while. It’s not his fault Amy can list more state capitals than he can actual states.
“No, the capital of North Dakota is not ‘Dakota City’!” she exclaims, livid. Glad the John McClane room’s soundproofed, Jake hears Amy mumble out ‘it’s Bismarck, was that so hard?’ before his heart flips in his chest once more. He’s hopeless, head-over-heels-and-back-again, and he wouldn’t have expected anything less.
Two short knocks arrive, echoing a little 一 practically Rosa Diaz’s calling card. Jake, half-asleep in the peace of the room, comes to his senses.
“Guys, quit makin’ out. We’re needed in the main room, especially you, Santiago. New client. You know the drill.”
“Alright, alright,” Amy calls, scowling as she runs a hand through her hair. Grabbing the nearest laser pointer (“what do you mean, you collect these things? are there limited editions or something?”) and running down the stairs, her mismatched socks a blur of color, she lets go of Jake’s hand halfway down.
“You guys know we’re official, anyways,” she mutters as she reaches the foot of the stairs.
He knows it’s ridiculous to be this lovesick after fourteen days of holding her hand and sleeping in the same bed and waking up to see her bleary face. It’s foolish to love her just because she insists on making him French toast every morning after Charles taught her how. But the pangs come time and time again, sparse sparks and flickers of static, and Jake starts doing what he does best.
He wasn’t raised a thief, in all honesty, but loneliness is one powerful motivator. When he falls, he breaks quickly. When he latches on, he’s an anchor.
Amy clears her breath as the screen turns on. “This is Raymond Holt, former NYPD police captain and current businessman. He owns an antiques store with his husband, Kevin Cozner, a professor at Columbia.” Pictures of Holt, his husband, and the store, Nine-Nine Antiquities, flash across the screen. They seem but a distant memory when Amy clicks again. “This is Seamus Murphy. He’s after Holt, who left the NYPD to escape the favor he owed, but Murphy caught up to him.”
“So it’s our job to protect Holt?” Gina asks, pulling up a chair and looking down at her nails. They’re freshly manicured 一 Amy still remembers seeing Rosa’s frostbitten, furtive smile handing over the bottle of rose-pink polish 一and not a thing is out of place. Grifters need to fit into frame, Gina always says, and the crew’s long since known ‘the frame’ means buying anything from Coach purses to gold-infused gummy bears.
Charles glances toward the ground, somber before he raises his eyes once again. “That it is. And we will do a good job, right? This case means a lot. I shouldn’t have to go into detail when I say life-or-death situation.”
“We understand,” Amy replies, running a hand through her hair. As she sits up, she doesn’t even notice the stack of business cards sitting by her lap disappear. It’s Jake’s clever hand that seemingly grabs a pen out of thin air, writes ‘dinner soon?’ in loopy handwriting before he sticks the card in Amy’s front pocket.
“We all do,” Rosa nods, arms crossed.
And, as the crew walks away, Amy clasps Jake’s hand in hers and grins up at his face. “Check your frocket,” he says, and she frowns at the notion of the word (what? it’s grammatically incoherent.)
Gaze slanted down, she pops her pocket open and gently pulls the card out. “How did y-”
“Told you I was a thief,” he mumbles.
Jake doesn’t yet know, but the back of that business card will grace his and Amy’s bedroom wall (once they get a room together, that is 一 Gina was right) for years to come. The glass becomes dusty and the picture frame scratched, but nothing can knock that memory from their minds.
“Tonight?” she asks, face hopeful as she tugs black hair away from the nape of her neck and into a ponytail.
“Yeah,” Jake says, words fading as he goes farther, “tonight sounds good. Bouche Manger, if you’re up for it?”
“You look great,” he calls, eyes softening as he looks at Amy. She’s wearing a red dress, low-cut, hair pulled to one side of her face and distractingly curled to one side.
“You look good, too.” She’s only ever honest. There’s a black tie looped around Jake’s neck, a shadow to the crisp, cream button-up she hasn’t seen since she insisted upon cataloging his closet.
Something subtle reminds Amy of her intentions right then and there, so she takes his hand; her heels click along the hardwood floor, all the way to the exit. She’s already mentally planning what she’ll say to the cabbie when Charles walks up to them abruptly, one hand help up.
“Where are you going?”
“We have a date.” Jake purses his lips after he finishes speaking, cheeks darkening a shade or two. “It’s not like we need permission.” Of all the times and all the places to interrupt them, this is just-
“I really hate to do this.” Charles’ face falls as he speaks. “I’m sorry, but you and Amy can’t go out. Not when we’ve just begun this case, and not when you two could risk being spotted. You only get one first impression, so you can’t be seen out at some restaurant … probably kissing and … flirting, and … falling in love… as perfect and as romantic as that sounds, it’s just not feasible. It puts our clients in danger.”
“So, basically, your rules are that we just can’t leave this building until the case is closed? That won’t be for a week, maybe more!” Amy protests. She didn’t borrow Gina’s red dress (“trust me, you’re gettin’ laid if you wear this tonight” “gina!”) and shave her legs in the bathtub so she could spend another night alone.
“Well, there is one last option,” Charles attempts. “Our client told us to start tomorrow, anyways, so he could take care of everything tonight at the antiques store.”
Jake turns to look at Amy for a split second, looks at her brown eyes and lost hope, and he takes the plunge with her.
“Welcome to Chateau Royale, or should I say Chateau Boy-ale, and I’ll be your chef tonight!”
“We’ve already met, Charles,” Amy smiles and sighs, trying not to mess up her makeup as she rubs her temple. “Good evening to you, too. Don’t you have menus or something to give us?”
“Well, I know you two so well, and making menus would take more time away from your night, so I’ll just dream up a little something for you to eat and my servers’ll send it out.” Charles grins at the end of his sentence,
Gina walks out from the kitchen a few feet away, crossing her arms and scowling. “Charles, don’t tell me you chose us as your waitresses because we’re women.”
“I’m sorry!” he retorts. “You and Rosa are the only other people who live here! I had no choice!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Rosa mutters, footfalls only a moment behind. “You and Jake better have a good first date, Ames, or this was a total waste of my time.”
“Anyways, we’ll try to stay out of your way,” Charles says, making a thumbs-up and scampering away in his pink apron. “Have a good time.”
Amy laughs at her friends’ antics, hiding a grin behind her hand and kicking Jake from under the table. “Come on, we’ll still have a good night. It just matters that you’re here, right?”
“Yeah, you’re right. Besides, Charles would inevitably ask about everything tomorrow. He might as well be here to witness it himself.” Jake stops fiddling with his tie, setting eyes on Amy and feeling his heartbeat slow.
Gina walks by minutes later carrying a tray of drinks, interrupting a conversation she’d been casually spying on (“you’re kidding. you used to be an art thief?” “stop making it sound so impossible, Peralta.”)
She murmurs, “Santiago, remember what I told you about that dress,” as she drops off two Old Fashioneds with straws, one black and one grey. Amy swats her, pretending not to notice her boyfriend’s satisfaction 一 Jake and Gina have known each other since they were in diapers, and Amy knows for a fact Gina’s modeled every outfit for him since she was old enough to shoplift.
Gina disappears behind the kitchen door once again, the echo of her footsteps fading as her rapid whispers begin. “Guys, they’re fine! Not that we should stop eavesdropping or anything, because we’re getting a lot of dirt. Apparently Amy once broke into a museum and held a statue for ransom? You wouldn’t expect it from a hacker, I know, but she swears by it.”
The conversation coasts along through the night, the moon hanging heavy in the sky and glinting across the shot glasses Rosa gently leaves at their side. Charles stops by a minute later, sliding two pastas and salads and a lone calzone (“it’s like I don’t even know who you are anymore, Jake Peralta - or should I call you Ben Wyatt?”) across the table on a platter.
He falls in love with her across a table shining gold underneath the lights, silverware clinking as it falls against their plates, secrets shared across a cream-colored tablecloth. She once had seven brothers: five are dead, but the twins are miraculously untouched. She says he should meet Vic and Luis sometime before she halts mid-sentence, swallowing a few words down.
“No contact with the outside, right? I always forget.”
Jake musters a smile for something that can only be described with a plaintive face. “Yeah. Lucky for me, I don’t really have any family to miss. You already know my dad left when I was seven, but I never told you anything about my mom.”
Her eyes soften as she reaches for his hand across the table. “You don’t have to-”
“No, I want to,” he replies, feeling weightless somehow, as if his words are spilling out into the open and he won’t ever want to take them back in. “She died when I was twelve, and I scattered her ashes across her pottery. Since then, I just got put in foster home after foster home. It gets a lot easier to take the five-finger discount when your quote-unquote parents don’t want you to make a fuss as it is, and when you know security guards’ habits like the back of your hand.”
“I’m sorry about your mom,” she pauses, heavy.
He masks a twinge in his smile, a quality only orphans know best. “It’s not your fault.” It wasn’t his, either, but neither of them say it. They already know.
“I’m glad I get a little more clarity about your past,” Amy says, tucking hair behind her ears with both hands. “I might as well explain myself, too. I told you I was a thief before I turned into a hacker, but I never talked about why. My mom had this saying when I was a kid, ‘the canvas is my canvas’, and it annoyed the hell out of me.”
“Language, Santiago,” Jake laughs, taking another sip of the Manhattan that Gina lays at their table. “And, no kidding, that’s awful. It sounds like some pretentious quote from Reader’s Digest.”
“It was about how paintings were so different than sculpture, which wasn’t real art, apparently, because ceramic and clay and all offer more of a canvas than paintings. It got on my nerves. Every time I’d finish a piece at school, I’d bring it home only to see her disappointment. I figured, why try? I quit art class and I started hiding her still lifes.”
“Looks like it worked a little too well.” Jake smirks.
Amy smiles, shifting forward in her seat. “That’s just the thing, even that career couldn’t stick. I twisted my ankle trying to sneak a painting of the Madonna past the Louvre security.”
“Madonna’s in the Louvre?”
“Not her, the virgin Mary. It’s like you don’t even know your art history-”
“I don’t, for that matter.” He grins, loosens his tie a little. “Maybe you could teach me.”
“We’ll save that for later.” She bites her lip, pulling at a runaway curl and toying with it under the dimming glow of the lights overhead. The fourth drink is kicking in. “Anyways, I got off scot-free for the Louvre incident because there was some other guy who was also breaking in on the same night? It’s all a blur. I went to the hospital and got some crutches. I figured I couldn’t be agile forever, so I picked up a computer science course and never looked back.”
Jake starts to cough. “Um, what were you trying to steal that night, Ames?”
“Madonna on the Green Cushion,” she replies, voice with a quiver, hands folded neatly. “Why?”
He gulps down the rest of his Manhattan with a startle. “Well, this is awkward. Nice to meet you, art thief. I’m the other guy who was also breaking in. I assume you’re the guardian angel who cleared my record without a trace?”
“That I am,” she responds after a pause, picking up her glass (seriously, Gina and Rosa keep bringing them drink after drink) and clinking it against Jake’s empty one. “I thought I might as well. I needed the practice hacking, anyways.”
He laughs. “Wow, is that the only reason you did it?”
Amy flushes pink. “I … may or may not have had a soft spot for the guy who took the blame that night. I owed you a favor, didn’t I?”
“Ames,” Jake says, leaning forward, voice deepening, “you don’t owe anyone anything.”
She could drown in words like those. Pulling forth, elbows pushing past the trail of empty glasses they’ve each left behind, she murmurs, “It’s late. I kind of want to go back upstairs. And I wouldn’t mind going upstairs with you, if you get my drift.”
As soon as Amy finishes speaking, she twirls another dark strand of hair around her finger, and her eyes dart to the steps standing just behind the open bar.
“You mean-”
She nods, a smile tugging at her lips as Jake’s eyes come to their own realization. His chair screeches against the floor, and he takes her hand as he drops his cloth napkin across an empty plate. “Uh, Charles, I assume you’re still in the kitchen, but Amy and I are just gonna … go to her room for date-night couple-y kind of stuff …”
“Just go!” Gina yells from behind the door.
“You better hope all the bedrooms are soundproofed, Amy!” Rosa adds.
Amy giggles, slipping off her high heels and pulling her boyfriend up the stairs. She doesn’t know, but Gina just won a hundred-dollar bet with Charles. Of course that red dress and those four drinks would get her to fourth base (“boyle, no one calls it that anymore!”). Of course.
“What do you mean, fencing class was cancelled?” Kevin asks, forehead wrinkled in worry. The wisps of grey at the edges of his sideburns will only get worse with time, his husband knows.
A twinge of regret strikes Holt’s heart. Sometimes, he hates how good a liar he is. “There’s nothing else to explain. The head instructor got injured, so he’s decided to close for a while.”
Kevin’s face falls a little more. “I just wish you would’ve told me beforehand. We haven’t had a lot of alone time since the whole Murphy confusion. I figured, because you said everything was getting better, we could finally feel at ease again.”
Holt tries to swallow his guilt. “I said he hadn’t said anything in a while. I didn’t mean that anything was better.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I mean, Sophia told me you reached out to someone-”
“I did, but this someone is taking their sweet time. Just leave it alone.” He walks away before Kevin can reply, individually hurt looks on both their faces.
Kevin sees it’s past Sophia’s business hours anyways, and sits at the kitchen table for longer than he can remember. He wonders, again, just how Ray can take matters into his own hands. Instead of seeking the answer to an impossible question, though, he focuses on the practicalities. On his way up the stairs, where he falls asleep on the pull-out couch he hasn’t used in years, Kevin almost prays that this clears up soon.
Firing up Gertie’s engine and driving to Nine-Nine antiques, Holt spends all night cataloguing and dusting and who knows what, trying to get his mind off of his marriage. He thinks about the promise he made to the crew on Sophia’s business card, saying he’d clear everything up that night so they could start taking Murphy down the next day, and he desperately hopes they keep their promise, too. It seems his life is swinging in the balance, and Holt’s hands shake of their own accord as he takes Oscar Wilde plays and stacks them next to copies of ‘Dorian Gray.’
Sixty-four miles, two police precincts, and sixteen alleys away, Seamus Murphy sits in the front seat of his beloved Rolls-Royce, drinking from a bottle of scotch with far too much satisfaction. “I think I’m just gonna let ‘im stew a little,” he says into the phone. “The guy freaked out when his Thanksgiving pie went missing. You think he’s going to handle death threats well?”
The voice that replies cracks with static and exhaustion. “Sounds like a good enough plan to me, Murphy. Anytime you want me to get started, I’m your contact, you hear me? Holt’s crossed a few lines over the years, and I wouldn’t mind a chance at revenge.”
“No problem. Have a nice night, now.” Seamus finishes the bottle with ease, tipping his head back to drink every last drop. He hangs up, cracks his knuckles, and goes home. Like vengeance, he's taking his sweet time.