Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She is twenty-five and he is twenty-eight. It is 2009 and she is not in love with him yet.

She walks through the precinct doors and immediately comes face to face with a bundle of curly hair accompanied by a blue hoodie. A cool breeze blows past her as if pushing her inside. She says “I’m Detective Amy Santiago, I just graduated from the academy.” He shakes her hand before retrieving a packet of candy from his pocket and offering it towards her. She politely declines.

His name is Jake Peralta and he is a mess.

His workspace is a catastrophe and his paperwork is worse and despite the fact that he can solve a murder in a day, he somehow finds it impossible to find his way to a trash can to deposit the growing pile of wrappers accumulating under his desk. She is sure he means well but she’s been in the Ninety-Ninth for all of ten minutes and he’s already pushed half his mess onto her desk.

It is driving her insane.

The sergeant is a tall man with kind eyes and he must have seen the pained look on her face because he asks subtly if she would like to move desks. Peralta looks up wide-eyed as if he didn’t even know he’d done anything wrong. She says it’s fine.

It’s fine, she tells herself, the semi-constant state of disarray that his desk resides in is absolutely, totally, one-hundred percent, completely fine.

They get assigned a case as partners in her first week.

He immediately spills coffee in her car as he gets in and the fact that he’s exactly twenty-three minutes and thirteen seconds late does nothing to lessen her anxiety to solve the case.

She briefs him – despite him being the designated primary officer, despite her only being in the nine-nine for a week - because he’s late and he’s forgotten to read the intel. It’s a simple armed robbery, no hostages, no guns – just a perp with a knife and a shopkeeper who was quick to the panic button.

She’s driving to the bodega on the corner of 3rd and 4th street and he won’t stop talking. He talks about his breakfast, his new phone, his lost badge, his first pet, everything, but she steadily ignores his constant stream of words. He eventually asks her about herself and she says simply “I am going to be Captain one day” and he knows that she means “You will not slow me down.”

He stops asking her questions after that.

She is shouting at him in Spanish.

And Peralta, whose understanding of Spanish is wholly limited to “sí” and “señor,” cannot keep up. He looks to Rosa helplessly only to find she has resigned to raising an eyebrow and grinning.

Rosa finally says “Relajarse, Santiago!” and Amy stops.

“Did you call me an idiot?” he asks Amy.

“What?”

“Idioto? That means idiot, right?”

“Yes, Peralta, obviously.”

He grins for a second, forgetting her insult in light of his newly found translation skills. She groans out loud as she leaves the room.

When she returns, she finds that Gina stuck a neon yellow post-it-note to the side of their desks that read: ‘List of Places Peralta and Santiago Have Been Kicked out of for Arguing.’ Amy rolls her eyes and drops it into the recycling bin by Peralta’s desk. He just stares at it.

They both know what it will say without even reading it: the break room, McGintley’s office, the briefing room, the coffee shop down the road, Charles’ apartment, Gina’s apartment, Peralta’s own apartment, Shaws…

She sighs heavily and takes her break on the roof, watching the trails of smoke disappear from her lips into the air. When she returns, the post-it-note is gone and there’s a familiar flash of fluorescent yellow sticking out from his drawer.

He doesn’t mention it.

They’re sent out on a stakeout and he dutifully stays silent until she asks him to tell her about himself. He looks surprised as if she’s luring him into a trap and she immediately feels guilty.

(It’s been a year since their first case and her knowledge of him is still limited to just two facts she can remember from their conversation on the way to the bodega. She actually listens this time.)

She learns he’s an only child. He’s allergic to bees. He loves Die-Hard. His dad is a pilot but he left when he was seven. His mom is a teacher.

He asks her to tell him about herself and she complies. He learns she has seven brothers. She is allergic to dogs. She watches Jeopardy every evening. Both her parents were cops. Her mom likes painting.

His mom likes painting too. It must be a mom thing, he says. She laughs politely, compliantly.

He asks “Do you have a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, or whatever?” and she shakes her head and changes the conversation. He knows that she means: “I am not interested in you. This is not going to happen.”

He asks her out for a drink that night and she begins to object but he interjects and says “Just as partners, with the rest of the squad,” claiming it’s a “Trademarked Peralta Guarantee.”

She agrees.

(They drink until midnight, reluctantly at first until the alcohol and laughter drowns out any previous reservations she may have had.)

She just needed printing paper.

She’s working overtime with Peralta because the arrest numbers are due the next morning. She loses the impulse game of Rock-Paper-Scissors that he challenges her too, pulling the figurative short straw, and begrudgingly traipses towards the storage room he directs her towards.

Storage room twelve on floor three of the ninety-ninth precinct: the home of the neatly stacked printing paper that she needed for the arrest numbers. The issue, she soon learns, is that closet room twelve on the third floor is decidedly too small.

And the door closes behind her with an alarming clunk.

She tries to pull it open but to no avail.

And her brain automatically says “Shit. Fuck. Shit.”

She lets her back slide down the wall and starts to form an action plan, considers who she can call. She still hasn’t met anyone from the night shift. McGintley’s gone home. She definitely can’t ask Rosa. Charles lives too far away. Peralta’s friend Gina has only just started working there and she doesn’t know her yet.

Peralta is downstairs. She’s got Peralta’s number. She could call Peralta and risk him making fun of her until the day she dies.

She’s starting to breath faster and faster, feels panic rising and making its home in her chest as the walls get closer around her.

She calls him.

“Santiago, what’s taking so long? Have you gotten lost?”

She only manages to gasp out “Peralta… claustro— locked door,” but somehow he understands.

“Wait, I’ll be right there.”

True to his word, he appears, unlocks the door and sits in front of her.

“Hey, listen, it’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. Sorry, I didn’t know you were claustrophobic. We can go back to the bullpen, it’s much bigger out there.”

She nods, lets him help her up from her position on the floor and follows him to the bullpen. Things start to return to focus and she can see his worried face clear in front of her. She waits for the inevitable name calling or poked fun.

It doesn’t arrive.

Instead, he says “Are you okay, Amy?”

“I’m fine, Jake.”

She pauses.

“Thank you.”

“That’s okay.”

(They return to work for another hour without mention of the previous events and it only strikes her later that it’s the first time they’ve called each other by their first names and she swears it won’t happen again. Life resumes as normal.)

Chapter Text

She is twenty—seven and he is almost thirty. It’s 2011 and she is not in love with him yet.

They work a string of stressful B&E’s, all painfully connected and painfully out of their reach. They stay late at work and McGintley tells them to shut up when they start yelling at each other.

He tells them to shut up because it’s disrupting his online poker game but the squad relish the few minutes of quiet that the command brings.

Until Peralta tells her to chill out and she tells him to grow up. Tensions are high and fuses are shorter.

They don’t talk to each other for three days and Rosa is exasperated. She says “For God’s sake, sort your shit out, Santiago,” to which Amy tells her to piss off.

Rosa grins and says it’s the most she’s liked her since they met.

He turns thirty the next day and celebrates accordingly that night in both a state of ecstasy and panic. She begrudgingly attends even though parties were never her thing and she doesn’t even like him that much and she’s honestly only there because Charles invited her. She drinks in his apartment and dances to too loud music with Gina and Charles and the squad.

Peralta doesn’t even know she’s there until he walks into his kitchen and spots her sitting on his countertop. She’s glaring as she nurses her second beer in one hand and browses through her phone with the other. She leans heavily on the counter next to her as she leans against his shoulder. He’s massively drunk when he says “I’m sorry, I’ll do better” and she sighs into his hair.

She’s massively spaced out so she says: “You use strawberry shampoo.”

He nods, smiling.

She says “I’ll do better, too” but the music has suddenly gotten louder and her head is starting to spin and she doesn’t think he hears her.

(She finds out eventually that he did.)

Gina shouts their names and they’re pulled through into the lounge.

“We’re taking a photo, idiots! Get in!” she yells.

Amy laughs, grabs Peralta by the arm and pulls him to stand on his couch behind Charles and Rosa. She swings her arm around him and smiles wildly. The camera flashes and she blinks back a laugh.

“Best detective gets the last bottle of beer!” Gina yells and watches them argue amongst themselves.

“We should make a bet!” Jake yells over the music, “best detective is whoever makes the most arrests in a year!”

“What’s the prize?” Amy asks quickly.

“I dunno, sort it out at work on Monday?”

She shakes his hand and the bet begins.

Everyone has left by 3:14 am and she stays at his apartment upon his argument that she’s too drunk to get home safely and he’d hate if anything happened to her. She doesn’t know how to respond to that so instead, she promises to help him clean up in the morning. They drink the left-over beer and are sickeningly drunk when they collapse on his sofa, surrounded by empty bottles and confetti and misplaced clothes.

He says “I’m fuckin’ thirty, Ames” and his words are slurred and he’s grinning and the last thing she hears before crashing out is “I didn’t think I’d make it,” and she wants to ask him what he means but then they are asleep.

They wake in the morning tangled on his sofa and she gets up long before he does and listens to him snore lightly for a little while. She hasn’t woken up next to someone for a long time and while his presence is a cause for concern, the rise and fall of his chest is oddly calming.

She lets him sleep and quietly piles plates and cups into his sink and pizza boxes and beer bottles into trash bags by his door as she chokes down paracetamol through a hot cup of coffee. She was gone before he wakes and when they return to work there’s a new pack of pens on her desk and an expensive cup of coffee next to her computer.

He begins to say “Sorry” across the desk and shuffles uncomfortably on the spot but she interrupts and says “Peralta, it’s okay, we’re okay,” and he lets out a sigh of relief.

It is mid-September and Jake is called to talk down a jumper.

It’s a kid, only seventeen, and he’s sitting on the roof of the Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. His legs are dangling dangerously over the edge as he looks down.

Amy is assigned as his partner and they drive silently for ten minutes to the hospital until he says “I’m really nervous.”

She looks up from where she had previously been staring at the floor.

“They wouldn’t have called you unless they didn’t think you were the best for the job.”

“That’s more pressure. I’ve only ever talked down one other person.”

“I know, I read the file. You did great though, Peralta. I’m sure this will go just as well.”

He nods before mumbling a quiet “Thanks, Santiago,” under his breath.

Jake takes a deep breath as he gets out the car and does what he does best: he talks.

Jake says: “Hey, my name’s Jake.”

The boy says: “I’m Luca.”

Jake says: “Nice to meet you. It’s meant to rain, pal, you should come back down before you get wet.”

“No.”

“Hey,” Jake tries again, “do you like pizza? There’s a diner down in Flatbush and my friend Charles says the pizza there is amazing.”

“No thanks.”

“Do you wanna talk about what’s going on?” Jake asks slowly.

“Life’s a bit shit, right now,” Luca says simply.

“Man, I’ve been there. You know I did what you’re doing now once. A long time ago. And now I’m a super awesome cop like McClain so I promise it’s really not worth it.”

“McClain?”

“Yeah, like Die-Hard. You ever seen it?”

“Huh? Yeah, I love that film.”

“Wait, did you just say ‘that’ film?”

“Yeah.”

“Buddy… there’s four more.”

“No fucking way.”

“Luca, trust me. If you can stick it out through the second and third one the fourth one is well worth it. I’ve got a special addition Canadian copy you can borrow if you want.”

Luca thinks for a moment. He peers over the edge one last time before slowly edging away and back down the stairs.

Jake, true to his word, orders a pizza from the diner and sits in comfortable conversation with Luca as they eat, lounging on the hood of his car while they wait for his mother.

Amy agrees to talk to Luca’s mom to get him the support he needs. As Luca offers to walk the pizza boxes to the bin, she quickly grabs Jake by the arm.

“Did you mean that what you said? About you jumping?”

He looks sheepish for a moment.

“Yeah, it was years ago though, Santiago, I was like sixteen and mad at my dad. I talked myself out of it.”

“Do you—” she tries to think how to phrase it, “do you feel like that now?”

“God no,” he grins, “all good now. Super awesome McClain cop, remember?”

Luca returns and she sets about preparing to talk to his mother. She tries to remove the image of a sixteen-year-old Jake talking himself down in the forefront of her mind.

Chapter Text

She is twenty-nine and he is thirty-two. It is 2013 and she is not in love with him yet.

They are amicable now. She nods to him across the desk and he offers her an infamous ‘Breakfast Burrito’ which she politely declines. She throws him a bag of candy from the vending machine when he’s stressed and he buys her coffee that is only adding to his crushing debt when she stays late working. They drink at Shaws and eat street food on cases.

“Detective Peralta and Santiago” has grown into “Jake and Amy” in the comfortable way that all friendships do.

Holt appears and Jake is different. He cares more, he wears a tie, he stops pushing crumbs onto her desk and actually deposits them into the bin, he doesn’t ask her to spellcheck his work as often. One day, he gets to work early.

He stays the same in most respects. He still obnoxiously strolls into rooms as if he owns them. He makes jokes about perps and sings loudly while he makes coffee. He banters with Holt and conspires with Gina. He updates Charles on his flourishing love life with the sort of reckless abandon that almost makes her jealous. She doesn’t think she’s even capable of a meaningless fling.

They deal with the immaturity that is his fling with the medical examiner. And the fling with Isabella. And Marie. And Louise. And Meghan.

She tells her mom about him and says “He finds love difficult.”

Her mother nods knowingly and says “As do you.”

Amy blushes. She changes the subject.

She goes on dates sometimes but they’re painfully boring.

Jake comes into work with a string of hickeys trailing down his neck. He tells them it was from a girl at GameStop near Brooklyn Heights. Charles congratulates him, Rosa calls him gross, Gina calls him a slut. They loudly start chanting “Jake’s a slut!” over his hysterical laughter.

Amy’s trying to work. She rolls her eyes.

Holt bans talk about everyone’s private lives after that.

He is in a slump. He mopes around the precinct in plainclothes, toying with the badge around his neck and not really speaking to anyone other than Holt.

“It’s not a slump,” he says as Amy hands him a coffee in the breakroom.

“I mean it totally is,” Rosa pipes up from her desk.

“Thanks, Rosa,” he deadpans.

He listens to their suggestions as to how to fix his slump one by one, immediately rules out Charles’ – “I’m not getting married just to get divorced!” – and considers Rosa’s – “I could bone a handsome stranger…” – before turning to Santiago who just shrugs.

“Great, thanks, everyone. Remember me when I’m fired,” he says as he leaves.

“We will!” Rosa shouts after him.

(Amy feels a little guilty so she leaves an almost solved case on his desk and watches him boast about solving it when his slump is banished. He adds another digit onto his ‘bet’ score and grins smugly at her but she doesn’t really mind.)

The drunken bet from a year prior reluctantly draws to a close.

“Admit your defeat, Santiago.”

“Never.”

“Five!”

She stands defiantly upright and glares.

He walks smugly away towards the box on his desk.

“Four!”

He pulls the CD player out from where he had hidden it under Charles’ desk and turns it on.

“Three!”

Someone wheels in the whiteboard from the break room.

“Two!”

He spins the whiteboard round, revealing the ‘PERALTA WINS!’ message underneath.

“One!”

Confetti goes off, music blares from the speakers, the other detectives gather round in amusement.

 “Jake wins! Amy loses!”

She admits defeat just in time for him to dance over to her and bend down on one knee.

“Amy Santiago, I spent one whole dollar on this ring. Will you go on the worst date ever with me? You have to say yes.”

“…Yes.”

“She said yes! She said yes!”

He smiles like a child on Christmas morning.

She keeps her word. They do inevitably go on the date and it’s not awful but it is a little awkward for a while after until he calls her ‘Tall Butt’ in a briefing. She, in return, calls him stupid among some other decidedly rude, decidedly un-Amy Santiago words.

The rest of the squad rolls their eyes.

Life continues on.

Chapter Text

She is thirty and he is thirty-two. It's 2014 and he is in love with her.

She is dating Teddy. And she really likes him.

He’s not as tall as she’d like and he’s mildly obsessed with Pilsners and he insists on buying this certain brand of orange juice and he doesn’t like Jeopardy and he can’t cook and okay, he’s slightly boring but… it’s simple. It’s nice.

And he’s – well, um – he’s a good listener so he’s got that going for him, she thinks.

Amy Santiago relies on writing lists in times of crisis. She’s organised everything from Christmas gifts to mugs she owns to decide how to act.

She writes a list about Teddy on a pink post-it-note.

Number One: he listens to her.

She’s midway through writing when Jake stops by her desk, one hand grasping a coffee and the other on a sandwich.

“Ames?”

She pushes the post-it-note stack onto the floor, wide-eyed and panicking and looks up from her computer.

“Yes, Jake?”

“Uh, never mind. It wasn’t important.”

He walks quickly out of the bullpen leaving her staring bemusedly after him.

She overhears a conversation as she walks into the evidence room later that day.

“She says he listens to her,” Jake says.

“That’s it? You’re way better than that square,” Gina scoffs.

“Cheers, Goose.”

She hears him sigh and curse as he drops a box of evidence on the ground.

“He treats her well, buys her flowers and shit. I wouldn’t even be able to say ‘I love you.’”

“Do you love her?”

Amy interrupts by making her presence known. Jake gratefully assumes she didn’t hear anything.

(Anyway, she thinks, he must be talking about someone else.)

Time passes, and it’s cool, they’re cool. Sometimes she catches Jake looking at her when she’s working or looking oddly at Teddy when they’re drinking at Shaws but otherwise, yeah, she thinks they’re cool.

He’s called up for Charges and Specifications by the CCRB after the Wint case. She writes ‘Peralta’s Trial Day’ on her calendar and it makes her panic because unlike him, she knows the rules. Charges and Specs are for the most serious allegations -of misconduct. At best, he’s suspended. At worst, he’s fired.

(An unforeseen result is that he’s hired by the actual real-life FBI and he disappears undercover for three months.)

He says "I kinda wish something could happen between us, romantic styles" and she thinks about his conversation with Gina and the way he stutters getting his words out and how this is genuine, real emotion that she didn’t know he was capable of but she says nothing and he knows that she means "I don't - can't - feel the same way.”

Then he is gone.

She goes to Shaws, downs a couple of shots and thinks about his eyes and the crease of his smile. When she falls asleep that night the cold figure of Theodore Wells next to her begins to feel like second place.

“Shame about that Jacob boy, he seemed nice when we met him at your medal ceremony,” her mother is saying over the top of her newspaper.

“Jacob? As in Jake Peralta?”

“I never liked him,” her father adds, “too childish.”

“Sorry, Jake’s in the news?” Amy asks.

“Yes,” her mother replies, handing her the newspaper, “el pobre chico, he’s obviously made some mistakes.”

Amy studies the inside cover, scanning the article, her eyes coming to rest on a picture taken by a reporter of Jake with one of the Ianucci brothers. And he’s smoking.

“He’s undercover, mama. He had to pretend to be fired so that the crime family he’s investigating would trust him.”

(She’s not allowed to tell anyone this. She’s not entirely sure why she’s so quick to defend him.)

Her mother nods, knowingly.

“I am sure he will be home soon, mi corazón.”

Chapter Text

She is thirty and he is thirty-two. It's still 2014 and he is not the same man who loved her three months ago.

He has returned. There’s a new scar across his forehead and he laughs too late at jokes sometimes and he is… different. Not bad different, but not a good different, either.

Just, different.

(She’s not used to ‘different.’ The one constant in her life is Jake Peralta shouting ‘Noice!’ at her when they’re delegated a difficult murder case. Instead, he swallows thickly and nods when Terry announces it.)

She’s relieved he’s home and safe but when she tells him “I’m still with Teddy,” there's a harder set to his jaw and a hesitant acceptance in his eyes that wasn't there before.

They celebrate at Shaws and he sits with her and says “I still really like you.”

She says: “I know, I’m sorry.”

He drinks too much, too fast and when she asks if he’s okay, he says “It’s hard to adjust” under his breath. She leans across the bar to order a beer and edges her chair closer to his. He rests his head carefully on her shoulder – in the comfortable way he did before this all began. Before he loved her. He’s staring at the empty beer bottle in his hand so she reaches across and hands him hers when it arrives. He drinks it gratefully with an odd desperation that’s never been there before.

“I drank a lot undercover,” he says after his first drink.

“I’m quitting drinking after tonight. For a while anyway,” he says after his second drink.

“Just the taste of alcohol and cigarettes remind me of being there. Undercover. Panicking in a bar in Staten Island. Or being punched by Leo,” he says after his fifth drink.

(He’s telling her all of this in a hushed voice like a secret.)

And Teddy – oh God, she forgot about Teddy - is looking at them weirdly as they talk because Jake knows he shouldn’t have his head on her shoulder and he’s breeching dangerous territory but she knows he doesn’t really care. He’s tired and home and he says she feels like a long-lost familiar force next to him - one she can’t tear away from him just yet.

She makes her excuses and drives Jake home. He thanks her and his hands are shaking and he can’t quite unlock his front door so she takes his key and does it for him.

“You’ll be okay, right?” she asks.

(Translation: You’re better now you’re home, right?”)

“I’ll be right as rain with you in the morning, Santiago.”

(Translation: I’ll be fine as long as I have you, Santiago.)

“Goodnight, Peralta.”

“Goodnight, Amy.”

When she returns to the bar Teddy asks if Jake’s is okay. Amy tells him about his confession that he stills likes her because it’s easier than explaining that he’s drowning after his time undercover.

Teddy asks if she loves him back. She shakes her head because it’s the truth.

She is not in love with Jake Peralta.

“Rosa, where’s Peralta? I need to ask him about the Weaver case.”

“He went home.”

“What? Why?”

“Dunno,” Rosa replies, “he clocked out like an hour ago.”

Amy looks towards his desk. The clock ticks towards 5 o’clock and into overtime. She clocks out, grabs her wallet and keys from her desk and strides purposefully out of the precinct.

She shows up at his front door and knocks once, twice. He finally appears in the doorway, scruffy haired with dark bags making their home under his eyes.

“Hey, Santiago, sorry I left early, I should have stayed to help with the Weaver case I—”

“I brought Chinese food and a case of beer.”

A look of confusion crosses his face before breaking into a hesitant grin. He gestures for her to come in, relieving her of the beer and one of the neatly packed plastic bags of food.

She quickly starts unpacking food, listing off his favourite items that she proudly remembered.

He stands off to the side, a little awestruck, dumbly nodding in response.

“You didn’t have to do this, Amy,” he says quietly.

“Don’t be silly,” she smiles, “you’re my friend.”

“Do you want to talk?” she asks over dinner.

She’s sitting on the ground while he lounges on the sofa, eating off novelty Star Wars trays. He leans down to steal a prawn cracker off her plate.

“Not really,” he says.

“Okay.”

“You’re… you’re not going to push?”

“You left work early so I assumed you weren’t doing too great. You can talk when – if – you’re ready. I’m not going to pressure you. I am, however, stealing half of your rice.”

He laughs and pours a pile of rice onto her plate.

“Can we— can we do this again sometime? Like often?” he asks haltingly.

“I’ll come if I get to choose what takeaway we get.”

He extends a hand for her to shake.

It becomes a weekly tradition.

It begins each evening with her shouting “Need me to come over tonight?” as she clocks out and walks towards the lift. It inevitably causes the other officers to raise insinuating eyebrows at each other but neither Jake nor Amy seem to notice.

He’ll reply to her question in one of three ways:

“Nah, It’s all good today, thanks.”

(Translation: I’m doing okay today. Takeout can wait.)

Or “I’ll leave the door unlocked.”

(Translation: Thanks, I need some company.)

Or just a simple nod.

(Translation: Please. Tonight’s not a good night.)

She has been known to boast that she's trilingual. She can speak English, Spanish and 'Jake Peralta.'

It’s the third time she’s appeared – armed with cider, pizza, fries and onion rings – but this time with her phone securely attached to her ear via her shoulder. She leans forward to hammer on the door with her boot as way as knocking.

Jake answers almost immediately with a look of confusion.

‘It’s my mom,’ she mouths at him as he takes the bags from her grasp.

He’s piling the pizza’s onto plates and stealing fries from her portion while she wanders in and out of rooms, talking.

“No, mama,” he hears her say, “no quiero casarme con Teddy.”

(No, mama, I am not going to marry Teddy.)

She lets out a sudden exasperated sigh as she strolls back in to the room and stands by the kitchen table.

“You better not have stolen any of my fries,” she hisses.

He holds his hands up in mock surrender as he laughs.

“Sorry, mama, I wasn’t talking to you— No it’s just— I’m with Jake,” she says finally, “no mama! Yo tampoco quiero casarme con Jake!”

(No mama! I am not going to marry Jake either!)

He looks up upon hearing his name but she bats him away with a wave of the hand.

It is the sixth time she’s appeared on his doorstep, clasping Indian takeout from the shop down his road.

The reply to her question that day had been a simple nod. She takes a deep breath and knocks on his front door.

“I’m ready to talk,” he says as soon as the door opens.

His hair is ruffled, tangling into knots on top of his head as if he’d been running his hands through it for hours before. He’s wringing his hands back and forth, a nervous habit rooted in childhood.

“Okay, Jake.”

“Some things happened when I was undercover. I had to do… things.”

“I thought you were just on computer duty?”

“I may have lied about that. I didn’t want to be sent to a therapist.”

She nods, waits for him to continue. He stares off into the distance, his hands dancing along the side of his beer, unsuccessfully attempting to connect the bottle opener to the lid.

“I saw some shit. Leo sent all these women to my door when I was undercover to sleep with and one of them was sixteen and obviously, I didn’t sleep with her, I just gave her some money and bought her a pizza but Jesus Christ, you know? And I had to do an initiation process undercover and my ribs still haven’t healed properly from it like I’m literally not cleared for active duty. And I shot a man in the head undercover and it turns out the FBI are a lot more forgiving about murder than the NYPD. And—”

He stops talking, realises what he’s said and looks to her for a sign that she hates him, that she’s going to storm out and tell everyone what he did. Instead, she reaches over, takes both the beer and the bottle opener from his grasp and deftly flicks it open.

“Do you hate me?” he asks quietly.

“Of course not, Jake. You had a job to do and you completed it.”

He lets out a choked sigh that he didn’t know he was previously holding in.

“Are you cheating on me?” Teddy asks as Amy walks through the door.

“What? No! Why would you ask that?”

“You’ve cancelled our last few dates, you get home late but you’re not working overtime.”

“Are you keeping tabs on me?”

“No! I would just like to see my girlfriend occasionally.”

She sighs, runs a hand through her hair. There’s an awkward pause like he’s expecting her to defend herself. Instead, she waits with an air of decisive silence.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally, “I shouldn’t have accused you like that. That was wrong of me.”

“We’ve been taking shifts with Jake,” she says slowly, “he’s found it really hard to adjust after coming home so we’ve been spending time with him to check he’s okay.”

(It’s half a lie, so it’s not really bad.)

“On your own?”

“No,” she says quickly, “with Gina or Charles or Rosa.”

(She’s watching the lies expand in front of her very eyes, getting bigger and darker and she knows why she’s lying because, okay, she has been spending a lot of time with him, but she can’t seem to stop herself.)

Teddy nods. She knows he doesn’t fully accept it.

He sleeps on the couch and she pretends not to notice how he glares behind her back.

Chapter Text

She is thirty-one and he is thirty-two. It is 2015 and he is not in love with her anymore.

Sophia falls into his life with a grace she could never master and she can commonly be found sitting on the edge of his – their - desks drinking a can of orange soda in their lunch breaks. She’s talking about a court case while he types. He’s forever easily distracted so while his right-hand types, his left is trailing along the hem of her skirt, occasionally dipping up her skirt. She laughs and bats his arm away playfully.

He asks her out to dinner and she leans down to kiss him. She negotiates (because she’s a defence attorney, so of course, she does) and arranges a dinner and a movie. Her treat.

(Teddy texts Amy and says he won’t be able to make dinner.)

Charles comments that Sophia is gorgeous.

Amy is not jealous.

(She realises too late that she is in love with him.)

“You don’t go round Jakes apartment anymore,” Teddy offhandedly comments one day.

“He’s got a girlfriend. She’s doing my job for me.”

“Your job?”

“Our job,” she corrects herself quickly, “our job. Mine and the squads.”

The lie is unravelling around her like her grandmother’s old wool, falling faster and faster and faster, leaving a trail of guilt wherever it lands.

Teddy nods but she knows he’s not convinced.

Their weekend away should have been simple. They would have had dinner together, she would have left Jake and Sophia to go off to their room while she worked on the case in the lobby. She would have had one martini and gone to bed by ten. They would have collected the perp in the morning and driven back to the precinct listening to Taylor Swift or an audio book depending on who drives.

Instead, Teddy tells Jake she liked him and breaks up with her and she watches Sophia excuse herself with this angry glint in her eye that neither of them had seen before.

“That’s the last time I invite Teddy, awkward,” Jake attempts to joke.

They look at each other, deciding what to do.

“I should go back to the room,” she says.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you liked me?” he calls after her.

She stops, turns.

“I have – had – a boyfriend, Jake. And I didn’t know for definite if I even really liked you.”

“Do you? Like me, I mean?”

“Goodnight, Jake,” she says quietly, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Teddy and Amy break up with the inevitable crash and burn that they were always destined to create.

Sophia and Jake broke up gradually, with a softer fall out of accidental love.

He calls her at around 7 pm. Amy picks up after the second ring.

“What’s up, Jake?”

“Sophia broke up with,” he tells her.

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry, man.”

“It’s okay. I mean, it’s not okay, but it’ll be okay.”

(An awkward pause.)

“Now we’re both single again—” Jake says.

“We should have takeout tonight—” Amy says at the same time.

“Huh?”

“What?”

“Takeout?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

“Good.”

“Cool.”

“I’m gonna hang up.”

“Good idea.”

Five o’clock on the dot, just like old times, she appears on his doorstep with two bags of Chinese food and a case of beers.

(Just like old times, she thinks. But she spends a little longer choosing what to wear.)

They are drunk and Jake immediately proposes a game of Truth or Dare. A distantly sober Amy objects. The drunken Amy just laughs.

“Are we high schoolers? Why would we play Truth or Dare?”

“Because it’s fun. Truth or dare, Santiago?”

“Truth.”

“Did you think you were gonna marry Teddy?”

“Woah, jumping right in huh?”

He shrugs.

“No, Jake, I wasn’t going to marry him.”

“Why?”

“You’ve used up your truth! No more questions, that’s cheating.”

“You take a shot then.”

“You’re just making up the rules as you go along!”

“Totally.”

She glares at him but drinks anyway.

“This game sucks, Pineapples.”

“My grandma calls me ‘Pineapples’, you’re not allowed to call me that,” he says.

“It’s not fair. I’m doing – I’m doing all the drinking,” she hiccups, “truth or dare, Detective Peralta?”

He pauses for a moment, considering his options.

“Dare, Detective Santiago.”

She scoffs and edges closer.

“Bold move.”

She thinks she could easily say “Kiss me” and the mixture of shock and alcohol leaves a bad taste in her mouth.

“I should head home,” she says, “it’s getting late.”

He looks confused but he shrugs.

“I’ll call you a cab.”

Jake and Amy are standing to the side as the Boyle-Linetti parents’ wedding draws to a close. It passed with all the stress and drama that is expected of a nine-nine wedding.

Jake is saying: “Marriage is a sham anyway, Santiago. Don’t be down about being a single loser.”

Amy scoffs, takes another sip of her wine.

“I’m not sad, I’m happy for them.”

He nods, watches Darlene Linetti – the woman who became like a second mother to him as a child – dance with her new husband – the father of the man he calls his best friend.

It’s odd. But the Boyles and Linettis have always been odd and he doesn’t expect that to change now.

“Not that I’m worried about dying alone or anything. When Taylor Swift realises how devilishly handsome I am I’m sure I’ll tour with her.”

“Oh yeah, and as soon as time travel’s invented and I go back to marry Al Gore I’ll be the first lady.”

He lets out a loud laugh.

“Al Gore is like 100 years old, Ames, that’s gross, how does the sex even work?”

“‘How does the sex even work?’ Title of your sex tape.”

He chokes a little on his drink as he laughs and she feels oddly accomplished.

They do eventually dance. It’s one am and they’re meant to be cleaning up because they promised Gina they’d help but the music is still playing and they’re drunk and Jake says “Hey, I never did get that dance earlier.”

She rolls her eyes at his smug face and pulls him by the arm. She relishes the look of surprise on his face and they’re alone and she feels genuinely content.

Charles walks into the room grasping a beer and pauses, watches them dance for a while. Maybe it’s because he’s drunk or maybe it’s because he’s happy but he leaves them be.

He’s gone by the time Jake jokingly spins Amy round. She laughs and listens to it echo around the room.

She looks at the clock on the wall and says “I should get to bed.”

He nods. She links his arm around him as they walk back to their rooms. She unlocks her door and let’s go of his arm.

“Goodnight, Jake Peralta.”

“Goodnight, Amy Santiago.”

They don’t mention the dance again.

Terry calls and says “Jake’s in the hospital” and she’s out the door before she’s even thought it through.

Jake Peralta, with three broken ribs, a hairline fracture in his hand and a fractured arm from getting hit by a literal car while on the Marballi case, is lying in Room 43 on the broken bone ward, high off his ass on morphine.

 “You’re— you’re not invincible, you know,” she says as she walks through the door.

“Ames! You came to see me!”

The nickname ‘Ames’ sounds foreign when it falls from his lips as if he’s used to saying it without her knowledge. It makes her smile.

“You’re high on pain meds right now, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yeah, totally.”

“You’re not gonna remember this, are you?”

“No, probably not. I remember a lot though, like the nice doctor who saw me this morning. Her name was Doctor Lichaels.”

“Do you mean Michaels?”

“Amy, you’re a genius!”

She smiles again, pauses for a moment, thinks.

“I’d be lost if anything ever happened to you,” she says slowly.

“Uh huh, yeah, same, Ames.”

“I’m really worried about you.”

“Cool, Ames.”

“Teddy and I broke up because he wasn’t you.”

“Ha-ha, Teddy sucked.”

“He did suck,” she agrees.

“Your makeup looks nice,” he says, attempting to sit up to look at her closer.

“I was on a girl’s night out. We were dancing.”

“That sucks. I like dancing.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They talk until he falls asleep.

“You must be Amy Santiago,” Doctor Michaels says as she walks into the room, “you’re Jacob’s emergency contact.”

“Really?” Amy asks as she gets up to shake her hand.

“I was actually just about to call you. Are you Jacob’s girlfriend?” the doctor asks.

“I’m his… his partner,” Amy says, “his work partner.”

Doctor Michaels nods seemingly understanding, tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear and stands at the foot of Jake’s bed.

“You’re a detective too, I’m sure you understand the risks of your job but Jacob’s been checked into hospital four times this year.”

“Four times?”

“Mm,” Doctor Michaels confirms as she flicks through his file, “and he’s only been cleared for active duty after two of these occasions.”

Amy looks over to the pale figure in the bed beside her and thinks back, tries to remember any times Jake’s taken time off, or even told her he was injured. Her mind comes back blank.

“Jake’s never told us about any of that,” Amy says slowly.

The doctor nods.

“I assumed so. Have you ever discussed self-destructive behaviour with him?”

Amy shakes her head.

“I read his file, he’s been through a lot and it would be no surprise if he was dealing with the aftermaths of what happened to him. I’d like to refer him to a therapist.”

“Jake won’t do it,” Amy says decisively, “he’ll play it off and say he’s totally fine.”

Doctor Michaels smiles, says kindly “I’ll talk to him” as she leaves. Amy sits next to his bed for a while after and thinks. She pretends not to notice how Charles raises an eyebrow at her suggestively when he returns and she is still there.

“Well, do you like him?” Kylie is asking at dinner, “I mean you’re worried about him, right?”

“He’s my friend. Anyway, are we twelve? No, I don’t ‘like’ him, Ky.”

“Not even a little?”

“Not even a little.”

Chapter Text

She is thirty-one and he is thirty-three. It's 2015 and she is in love with him.

“So, a lot of change around here, huh?”

He kisses her in the dim light of the evidence locker and the old world they knew collapses around them and braces to accommodate for them.

It’s tender and heartfelt and she can feel him putting every want, every promise he’s wanted to act upon for the last year into it and she desperately attempts to catalogue every move, every touch, in her mind.

His hand moves up the small of her back. Charles calls and they break apart. His hand lingers on the base of her neck.

A silent promise to return to what they started.

They stand in front of their new captain and he’s talking but she’s not really listening. He asks her a question about calories but all she can think about is the feeling left on her lips where Jake’s should be. The new captain shouts something at her and she feels Jake’s hand subconsciously move towards hers just for a second – a secret comfort – and then it is gone.

They agree “light and breezy” but she’s never been good at that.

They go on a date and it’s filled with all the trademark Santiago awkwardness that she was born with.

So, after their meal, she orders four shots.

(She knows what she’s doing.)

First shot. Apple liquor. Amy’s a little spacey.

She’s a little bit lost in his eyes and he’s talking about a case and all she can think about is how the galaxy of stars amongst the brown of his eyes look like the fortune teller’s crystal ball she used to see at the fair as a child.

He’s grinning at her, face softening as he meets her gaze. She thinks he calls her a lightweight but she’s not entirely sure.

Second shot. Triple Sec and vodka. Loud Amy.

They’ve moved from the table to the bar and she is laughing. He’s telling a story about a case he worked on with Charles and she’s sure it’s largely made up but he keeps insisting it’s not.

Every time she laughs she’s well aware that she’s being too loud but Jake is looking at her like she put the stars in the sky and she’s more than happy to oblige.

Third shot. Coconut rum and pineapple liquor. Amy won’t stop moving.

She’s trailing her fingers along his arm while twirling a strand of hair around the other in a way that’s slightly mesmerising, almost hypnotic. She moves her hand into his as he talks and starts tapping out an imaginary beat on his knuckles. He’s watching every movement she makes.

Fourth shot. Brandy and peach schnapps. Amy can’t stop watching his lips.

He’s talking about a shirt he bought, boasting about how it makes him look a hundred times more attractive. He’s rambling because he’s drunk and she is following the movement of his lips with every syllable.

He quickly notices, bites his lip and brings her back to earth.

She stands from her stool, places her hand on the back of his neck, tangles her fingers in his hair, and kisses him.

(There’s nothing gentle in this kiss. It’s not the frantic, accidental kisses from their cases or the tender, long-time-coming kiss of the evidence locker. It’s hard and fast and she keeps moving her hand higher up his thigh and he asks “Come home with me?” in a husky voice. She leans heavily on his crotch as he lets out a deep sigh that she swallows up greedily.)

She wakes in the morning in Jake’s bed and for the first time, she sees a future with him deeply entrenched in it.

They deal with the Vulture and Wuntch and Holt returns to the precinct with a spring in his usually solemn step.

Amy can’t stop reminding Jake: “You did that. You fixed everything!” with this insanely proud look on her face that he never wants to forget.

He stays in her apartment some nights and some nights she spends at his and it’s unorganised and impulsive in a way that she’s not used to being with boyfriends.

She realises she likes – loves – having him around and she isn’t growing tired of him. She likes waking up to cooked breakfasts and falling asleep on his tattered couch watching America’s Got Talent. She likes him showing up at her doorstep asking to go for a drive and stealing his cherry shampoo when she uses his shower.

(She even likes Die-Hard but she’d never tell him that.)

They’re lying over his couch one evening, her head in his lap as he mindlessly runs his hand through her hair.

“Aren’t you worried about Wuntch?” she’s asking.

“Wuntch is a dick, babe, I wouldn’t even worry about her now Holt’s back.”

‘Babe’ rolls naturally, gently off his tongue and he looks at her quickly as if to check he hasn’t overstepped a mark. In response, she just takes his hand in hers.

“Yeah, you’re right, babe,” she says.

He turns his head away but she can still see the smile he is trying to hide.

They argue for the first time over a mattress of all things. She thinks back to how arguments were before, arguing in the precinct or in the offices or on cases about uselessly unimportant things. She tries to remember how things were all those years ago but she can’t even remember.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“I’m sorry too,” she says.

(That never used to happen, she thinks.)

Her phone is rife with panicked texts from Jake on Christmas Eve.

They begin okay. An excited mess of capital letters and emojis shouting that there’s a hostage situation in a shop and she doesn’t even know why he’s out shopping on Christmas Eve but she’s not thinking about that right now. The texts quickly shift into a panic when he says they’ve got Gina.

(He’s alright in the end, obviously. He’s got a galaxy of bruises cascading over his eye and she’s sure he’s concussed despite his refusal to be checked out in the ambulance.)

She kisses him in front of God and Holt and the news reporters nearby and all the officers from nearby precincts and she oddly doesn’t mind the other officers’ stares or the cameras bearing down on them.

He’s not sure if it’s the cold of her lips or the shock of her kissing him that makes his face feel numb but he melts into the warmth of her arms as she wraps his NYPD windbreaker around him. He’s just run out of adrenalin as the shock hits in and she can feel him start to shake.

(Distantly, she’s aware that Gina is threatening someone with her newly made flamethrower from the lighter she confiscated out of Amy’s bag that morning in an attempt to stop her smoking but she’s not dealing with that right now.)

“I’m taking Jake home,” she says loudly.

The Vulture shouts back.

“No can do, Stupid-iago, we need to question him.”

“You can do that tomorrow, dumbass,” she says pushing her way past him, “we’re going home.”

Jake zones back in to say “You’re badass, babe,” and then they are gone.

Her mom calls after seeing her literally run into Jake’s arms and make out with him on the news.

Amy picks up immediately and listens to her mother complain about the shock of seeing her only, angelic daughter kiss her boyfriend live on national television before, in turn, listening to Amy talk about the infamous hostage situation and the other cases she’s working on. She inevitably moves on to talking about Jake.

Camilla Santiago has not failed her as of yet and, at exactly 10 pm, after listening to her daughter talk about Jake’s favourite shower gel for exactly twenty-two minutes, she subtly suggests that she might possibly be in love with Jake.

Which causes Amy to let out an expletive so foul that it has her mother threatening to wash her mouth out with soap.

Her mother asks: “Have you told him you love him yet?”

To which she says: “God, no.”

(Jake infamously has a bad relationship with love and it worries her. It’s the kind of relationship where if love was personified and he saw it on the street he’d cross to the other side and pretend to be on the phone just to avoid it. His therapist classed it as ‘daddy issues’ but that’s nothing new.)

Chapter Text

She is thirty-one and he is thirty-three. It's 2016 and she is in love with him.

“I love you,” she says.

Pause.

“I love you too.”

It’s not the first time she has told him but it is the first time he says it back and they're dancing on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean.

He says ‘I love you’ like it’s an epiphanic moment - a point of no return - and there's something about how his features soften while his eyebrows crease as he says it that makes her kiss him again right there. She’s always been able to read him like a book and this page shouts that he loves her.

They quickly fall into easy domesticity.

It’s organised – in true Santiago fashion. Mondays at hers, Tuesdays at his, Wednesdays for overtime, Thursday is date night, Fridays at Shaws. Jake adds to her neat grocery list on the fridge and she relents, buying extra cans of soda and occasionally dropping extra large packs of Haribo into his lap (if only to earn the joyful gasp that escapes his lips).

(There’s hushed pillow talk of moving in together, planning quicker routes to work, pointing out there would be less rent.

“It’s more practical,” they agree out-loud.

“I want to be with you as often as I can,” they agree silently.)

Jake’s apartment has a bath.

She loves it.

She buys bath bombs and candles and neatly organises the vast array of colourful shower gels in his cupboard. Sometimes she sits, cross-legged on the floor, reading, as he fills the bath with bubbles and coaxes cherry shampoo through his curls. Other times, she joins him, stepping carefully into the waves and filling the space he leaves in his too-small bathtub. He grins and kisses her lightly on the forehead and sometimes it ends in sex and sometimes they just talk but she’s there, she’s always there when he needs her.

He learns gradually that Amy likes to shop. She always has but the stereotype of girls liking shopping sits uncomfortably in her mind controlling her actions.

She likes shopping though.

She likes writing lists of things to buy and neatly crossing them off. She likes stopping to buy coffees or hot chocolates and patiently waiting for him to finish taking photos of their matching Starbucks cups because he likes the way their names look next to each other.

(Usually, she orders for them while he finds a table – a Mocha Frappuccino for her and an Ultra Caramel Frappuccino with extra vanilla for him. When she places them lightly on the table and the names read ‘Gruber’ and ‘McClain,’ Die-Hard style, or ‘Johnny’ and ‘Dora,’ in their style, he has to choke back a grin as he kisses her and tastes the coffee on her lips.)

“You need to talk to your dad,” she says, stroking his hair gently.

He’s lying on his childhood bed with his head in her lap and it turns out all of the worst scenarios she had imagined when meeting Jake’s mother are greatly outweighed by the sudden arrival of his father.

“But I don’t wanna, Ames.”

“I know but don’t you think it’s maybe the grown-up thing to do?”

He nods, sighs, rolls away from her.

“Hey!” she says quickly, pulling him back.

She kisses him lightly on the forehead.

“For luck.”

He rolls his eyes fondly as he leaves the room.

She waits for him to leave before rising from his bed. She looks around his room, attempting to take in every knick-knack, decoration and photo.

The photos lining the walls of his room appear to be endless and curiosity is rising in her chest as she looks around at the relics of his childhood. The photos are filled with grinning young Gina’s and smiling Karen’s. A couple are peppered with his dad but they’re few and far between. There’s some of him and Rosa and Stevie at the academy in frames along his windowsill. One of them he’s clearly drunk but he looks giddy with happiness and it makes her smile.

There’s one frame next to his bed, dusted and positioned, unlike the many others. In it, the nine-nine is grinning at the camera, drunk beyond belief at his thirtieth birthday party all those years ago. She picks it up.

“I forgot about that photo,” he says.

“How’d it go with your dad?”

“They’re, uh, they’re back together. I think he lives here now. Doesn’t matter,” he quickly changes the subject, “I put that photo there when I came back from being undercover ‘cause I’d stay here at weekends to be near my mum like a loser.”

“You’re not a loser, Jake.”

“You’re standing in my childhood bedroom which has skateboards and Backstreet Boys posters on the walls.”

“I think it’s sweet. You just wanted to feel safe, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Don’t worry about being safe now I’ve got you.”

He moves to wrap his arms around her. She looks around, looks at the skeleton model next to the toy boat on his bookcase, the pile of vinyl under the rows of CDs and the baseball bat against the wall. There’s every aspect of Jake’s personality originating in every item.

As they go to leave Jake slips the photo frame into her bag. She looks questionably at him.

“I don’t think I’ll be coming back here for a while, not while my dad’s here anyway.”

She smiles sadly, runs her thumb along his cheek and feels him soften into her touch.

He’s lying on her couch scrolling through Instagram on his phone. She’s been lying on top of him for the last hour reading until she dropped the book lightly to the ground and turns over, soaking in the smell of his cologne and their lavender washing powder.

“Did you know Rosa is afraid of needles?” she says into his chest.

 “Yeah, and flying.”

“No way, I’m braver than Rosa.”

“You’re braver than most people.”

“Awh, babe.”

“I’m half being nice, I’m also half sucking up so we can get Chinese food tonight.”

She deadpans but withholds her reservations about having Chinese food two nights in a row.

“What are you afraid of?” she asks suddenly.

“Damn, Ames, that’s deep.”

She sits up and nimbly takes his phone from his grasp. He frowns until she leans down to kiss him. They separate and she touches her forehead to his.

“What are you most afraid of, Jake Peralta?” she asks again quieter.

“Probably killer clowns,” he replies quickly, “and, you know, dying. And losing you.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Chapter Text

She is thirty-two and he is thirty-four. It's 2016 and he is not allowed to be in love with her anymore.

Figgis calls at exactly 8:54 pm and just like that, he loses everything.

(Retrospect is a valuable gift and in hindsight answering the phone was the beginning of the end.)

They’re in a hotel room in Brooklyn with a timer counting down the three hours they have left together. There’s an FBI agent outside the door and one along the hall and the world is giving them all the privacy it can muster in this damp hotel room but there’s never really enough.

“Have I ever let you down?” he says.

“Yes, many times.”

“If I come back, I’ll never let you down again.”

“When.”

“When I come back.”

She kisses him roughly, feels the tension lessen in his arms as she clashes against him. She moves from where they’re sitting on the bed into his lap and moves her hands along his thighs. She thinks if she traces every curve, every freckle, every bone, every scar, she might be able to map out a full picture of him to cut up and lock away in her brain. Enough for the next week, the next month, the next year if need be.

(Then he is gone.)

A month passes.

She lives half in her apartment and half in his and he has enough in savings to hold onto his apartment for another couple of months as he asked. She walks like a ghost around his apartment, occasionally tidying and dusting and usually falling asleep on his couch the way she would if he was still here. She traces her hand along the Die-Hard posters lining his walls and steals shirts from his wardrobe to wear under her pantsuits because they smell like the sandalwood cologne and Haribo packets he secretly hides in the pockets.

It’s difficult to be in her apartment with the absence of his shoes on her doormat and it’s difficult to be in his apartment with the absence of him in the shower or cooking them breakfast and it’s difficult to be at work with the absence of him across the desk, kissing her in the morning despite her reservations about public indecency and there’s a gaping hole in her life that is usually filled by her Jake Peralta.

Three months pass.

Her alarm wakes her at seven am on the dot. Her phone greets her with a calendar reminder.

‘One year anniversary with Jake <3’

She considers taking the day off but decides against it.

Her day goes – for lack of a better term – shit.

She’s late to work. She loses a case to the nine-four. One of her cases is thrown out because of mislabelled evidence. A perp pours coffee over her desk. Kylie cancels dinner that evening because she’s ill.

And someone has cleared Jake’s desk.

It’s overwhelming and adding to the shit day and she misses Jake – she needs him right now – so she disappears to the evidence locker to breathe.

She celebrates their one-year anniversary alone in the evidence room and thinks back to that fateful day eight months ago when he kissed her in the dark of that godforsaken room, with only the folders and boxes swallowing their secrets.

She slides her back down the wall and sits on the cool linoleum floor.

“Santiago?” Terry’s voice echoes into the room.

“Sorry, sarge, I was just taking a quick break,” she says wiping her eyes.

“It’s okay, Amy, you wanna talk?”

She shakes her head. Terry strolls into the room and sits lightly down next to her.

“I’m sorry, I know this must be hard for you.”

“We were going to move in together,” she hiccups, “we had plans.”

“Do you think he’s the one?”

“We’ve only been together a year, sarge.”

“Yes, but you’ve known him for what? Seven years?”

She nods.

“And you’re still with him. You’re still putting up with all his Jake-ness. That’s something even Terry finds impossible.”

She smiles.

“Maybe you were soulmates from the very beginning,” Terry says.

She thinks back to the first day she walked through the precinct doors and immediately came face to face with the bundle of curly hair and blue hoodie of Jake Peralta.

“We’ll get them home soon,” Terry promises.

Five months pass.

Her father calls and asks her when she’s going to move on.

“I’m waiting for him, dad.”

“He could be there indefinitely, mi preciosa,” he argues.

“He won’t be, we’re going to find him and get him home. And Captain Holt too.”

She hears him hmm noncommittedly down the phone. In the background, she hears her mother say something indignantly and she sighs. She waits for the inevitable: her mother telling her father what for, forever changing his mind.

“I’m sorry, mi hija,” he says finally, “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sure you’re going to get him home.”

“It’s okay, pop, I know.”

Six months pass.

“They’re in Florida!” Terry tells her.

“We’re going to go get them, right?”

“Damn right, Santiago.”

They are reunited.

He's all nerves and blond tipped hair but she doesn't mind. She doesn't mind that they don't immediately fall in sync. She'd take a year of awkward forehead kisses if it meant she had him back.

She'll have him back, in just a little while.

But first, Figgis.

"Good luck," she whispers as they separate.

"Don't die," he says.

She feels his presence behind her as she exits the side door of the bowling alley. 

“Follow me,” she says as they make their way along the outside of the fun plex.

He nods.

(He would follow her to the end of the Earth without any prompt but she doesn’t know that yet.)

He's wearing a bulletproof vest over his shirt and hoodie and the familiarity of the security it brings does nothing to sooth the panic growing in his chest.

Figgis has a gun to his head because it’s the only fatal shot available to him.

Fatal, as in to cause death.

And all she can do is watch. She watches silently from the shadows hiding along the walls and all she can think is he can’t die. She’s just got him back. She’s just got him back so he can’t die. She’s got to run her hands through his hair and feel his body underneath hers and celebrate the anniversary that they missed – there’s an endless list of things not yet done.

She knows he is thinking the same thing. He’s thinking he can’t die yet, he hasn’t had the cinematic embrace he’s thought about for the last seven months. He hasn’t said I love you or held her close or moved in with her.

He can’t die yet. He hasn’t met Nikolaj. He hasn’t won another Halloween Heist. He hasn’t seen his mom. He hasn’t, he hasn’t, he hasn’t –

So, she runs, gun in hand, impulsively relying on her trust in Jake and adrenaline coursing through her veins to make her act.

He nods, once, twice.

She shoots. He falls. Figgis flees.

Jake is talking a mile a minute about Die-Hard and guns and loving her and she has to leave him to arrest Figgis.

(She makes a mental promise that she’ll never leave him again.)

She’s gone when he wakes. He rises back to life in time to see her twist handcuffs onto the wrists of Figgis and time slows as she throws him in the back of the police car.

There’s so much he could say to Figgis that words don’t even begin to cover it so he lets himself be pulled into the nearby ambulance and feels sobriety and consciousness begin to flood over him. Someone asks him his blood type but he can’t seem to remember.

She appears and helpfully supplies the answer and sure, it’s not the cinematic reuniting she knows he would have thought about when he was far from home and far from hope but it’s okay. They’re together again and for now, that’s enough.

He can’t leave Florida just yet. They’re assured that the FBI will work through the night to finalise his return to civilisation – his return home – but they’ll have to spend one last night here.

She oddly doesn’t mind. She can feel the reassuring grasp of his hand around hers. She can bring him home and fall asleep next to him again.

(She can also have sex with Jake, but that’s not a new thought. She hasn’t stopped thinking about that since he left.)

They get a taxi back to their neighbouring houses and Gina, Charles and Rosa make an unspoken agreement to sleep at Holt’s. Amy wants to be with all of them but she also wants to be alone with Jake and God, she really does appreciate them giving them time alone.

He stumbles into his house and he’s too tired to sweep her off her feet – the way he’s always wanted to – so instead he lets her push him onto the tattered couch and kiss him. She can’t stop smiling and apologising and he reassures her it’s fine, they’re fine, it’s all fine.

The sound of joyful laughter from next door spills through the thin walls and Jake and Amy feel warm again.

December rolls around and a letter arrives through his front door ordering him to the hospital to check how his leg is healing.

In another life, he would have ignored it, or gone alone, but he’s trying to do better – mainly for Amy. So, he tells her the next evening. He asks her to come with him and for the first time in years, he doesn’t feel immediate trepidation about a trip to the doctors.

(Amy – thinking back to all those years ago when she last saw Jake in a hospital bed, when she was told he’d been keeping his injuries secret, when he was described as ‘self-destructive’ – feels a swell of joy when he asks her to come with him.)

His leg begins to bounce quickly up and down as he sits in the waiting room. Not particularly out of nerves, she thinks, more out of boredom. She wraps one arm around his lightly and places the other on his knee, feels the movement lessen beneath her hand.

She pulls his letters out of her bag, reading and rereading to check they’re there at the right time. Her eyes come to rest on the doctor’s name.

“Hey, I met Doctor Michaels the last time you were in the hospital,” she says.

“When? After the Marballi case? You weren’t there.”

“I was. Terry called me and said you’d been injured. We talked about some stuff but you were so high on morphine I knew you wouldn’t remember it.”

“Weren’t you busy or something? You were out with Kylie? I remember telling Charles not to tell you.”

“Yeah, I left early.”

“Awh Ames, you were so in love with me, that’s so embarrassing for you,” he grins.

She goes to object but there’s a loud beep over the PA system and his name flashes across the screen. He gingerly stands up before leaning heavily on his well-healed leg and walking down the corridor, arm in arm.

“Long time no see, Jacob,” Doctor Michaels says from her desk as he walks into the room, “ah, and Amy too!”

She stands to shake their hands and watches Jake as he drops unceremoniously into the chair with Amy in the one beside him.

“So, you’re walking okay, detective?”

Jake nods, looks down at the healing scar on his calf.

“Amy shot me in the leg but it’s all good now!” he says happily.

“You told me to!” she says indignantly, turning towards the doctor, “I promise, he told me to. I saved his life.”

Doctor Michaels grins.

“You’re no longer just his ‘work partner’ then?”

Amy blushes. Jake looks confused as the doctor turns back to him.

“And you’ve been attending physiotherapy sessions?”

“Yeah, once a week.”

Doctor Michaels adds something to her files, scans over the rest of the information.

“And the… ‘thing…’ that we discussed the last time I saw you, has there been any trouble with it?”

“Not since Amy,” he says confidently.

Amy bows her head and pretends not to catch the smile the doctor throws at her when Jake isn’t looking.

Jake moves into Amy’s apartment in January. There’s a satisfying, solid feeling when she hangs his signed Die-Hard poster next to her expensive art. His Nakatomi Plaza mug sits comfortably next to her Sudoku themed one.

They negotiate. Amy throws out 90% of her doilies in exchange for Jake selling three of his four massage chairs.

(And truthfully, he only really does it because when she’s tired and stressed from a long day at work he makes them hot chocolates and pulls her warmest blanket from their bed and relishes how she sits on his lap and curls into him as they share the last remaining massage chair. He’ll focus half his attention on the film they're watching and the other half on the whir of the chair and feel content.)

It is February when Amy says “Babe, we should paint the lounge” and Jake looks at her like she’s the most brilliant woman on Earth.

(He thinks that she is.)

Jake has a smudge of light blue paint across his forehead and a blue handprint on the seat of his trousers from a grinning Amy and when the doorbell rings he forgets about both of these in the wake of his father smiling at him from the corridor.

He hears Amy distantly say “Who is it, babe?” but he doesn’t fully register that she’s spoken.

His dad says “Got’chu a moving house present, bud!” with a grin. Jake just frowns.

“We moved in a month ago, but thanks, dad.”

(If he hears Amy say ‘shit!’ out loud, upon the revelation that it’s his father bracing their apartment, he doesn’t let on.)

"How's everything then, pal?"

Jake appears to have forgotten how to speak.

Amy materializes next to him, wraps her arm around his waist and squeezes him closer, a subtle reminder that she's there. 

"Thank you," he says, taking the gift from his dad, "we would invite you in, but we're right in the middle of redecorating."

Roger excuses himself, wishes them well, before leaving.

"You've got paint on your forehead," he says.

"You're not upset?"

"I'm tired of being upset with my dad. Come on, lets finish painting."

He turns the music up on his phone, starts to loudly sing along to an old Mumford and Sons song.

She watches for a minute before joining him.

Chapter Text

She is thirty-three and he is almost thirty-six. It's 2017 and she is in love with him but he is taken away from her time and time again.

It begins like this: in their shared apartment, two lovers eat pizza and watch Friends reruns. They have ordered a vegetarian pizza because it’s a compromise on his behalf; he trades one night of movie control with the choice of her favourite pizza. (It doesn’t take a genius to work out what film he cho0ses.)

It is mundane. Normal. Uneventful. If you asked either of them about it neither would remember anything specific.

The credits roll as she wraps her hand around his and feels his heart beating in his chest as she curls into him. He leans into her touch and waits for her to speak.

“You’re going to finish this case, aren’t you?” she asks.

“Yeah, well- yeah, Rosa and me are.”

“Rosa and I,” she corrects.

“Rosa and I,” he nods compliantly.

“Is it going to be dangerous?”

“For two super cool, super talented detectives? Of course not.”

“Jake—”

His face softens.

“Ames. I’m invested in it now. Plus, I— I just need something to do right now.”

She nods knowingly.

“You’ll be careful though, right? Hawkins is dangerous.”

“I’m always careful, Ames.”

There’s a bad feeling in her stomach so she kisses him.

He isn’t careful.

There are too many missed variables the night they spend with Hawkins: the drinking, the fake cocaine, the missing phones, the lost time spent choosing the right emojis in his text to the captain. Amy Santiago knows Jake Peralta was doomed from the start.

“What are you thinking?” she asks.

(They’re about to leave court in his beaten-up cop car. A cigarette hangs between her lips and sometimes she wears a mermaid dress and sometimes she wears a pantsuit and he is trying desperately hard to remember everything about her as a distant timer counts down the week they have left.)

He wants to say something poetic like “I can’t live without you,” or “You can’t wait for me forever,” but instead he stutters something about cigarettes being bad for her and instantly regrets it.

She doesn’t roll her eyes or scoff like she usually would, letting him know he’s saying the wrong thing. She wishes she could grasp the words from where they float in the air and hide them in her pockets, throw them carelessly out of the window or set them on fire and watch the smoke intertwine with her cigarette. She wants to put them anywhere other than where they are now, trapped in the four walls and four wheels, floating around in the air, in and out of her mind.

She knows what he’s trying to say though.

“You’re going to be fine, Jake,” she says.

It’s a lie but he doesn’t mind.

(Six days left until the final trial.)

“We could just run,” Rosa says, “Pimento has a place. We’d be safe there.”

The three of them are sitting on the precinct roof, drinking cold forties they hid in the precinct fridge even though its majorly against NYPD protocol.

They’re not supposed t0 be there. Protocol states any cops under investigation must be suspended until a verdict is reached. Protocol states they could be arrested for returning.

Protocol, protocol, protocol.

Fuck protocol, Amy had said as she unlocked the door and pulled them out into the cool air.

“Nah, might just jump,” Jake says, peering over the edge.

Amy clutches tighter at his arm as Rosa coughs out a laugh.

“Good plan, man,” she nods.

“I’m joking, Ames, don’t worry,” he whispers.

Amy stands, breaths in the fresh air. She rolls her neck carefully, feels the tension in her shoulders. He watches her with an air of restrained complaint and he wants to scream or shout or say something stupid but God, he’s tired.

“We’re in this together, right?” he asks Rosa suddenly.

“Yeah, of course man. Us against the world like always.”

They knock their glasses together in a silent toast, a sort of promise. Amy watches calmly.

(Four days left until the final trial.)

She is staring at the shakily written “Trial Day” scheduled on their calendar for two days’ time, thinking back to the first time she wrote it all those years ago before the mafia, before they were in love.

The calendar never fathomed this. Sure, it expected the odd last-minute, panic-inducing lunch date here or there and maybe even thought about the possibility of a moving out day if it went all downhill but not this.

He moves to stand behind her, wrapping his arms around her shaking form. He decisively takes one of the neat coloured pens from their home on the wall and writes ‘date night!!’ for that evening. She tries to object, favouring to stay and work on the case one last time.

“Let’s just go out tonight. We could go to a dumb club somewhere and dance.”

“I hate dancing, Jake.”

“I’ll teach you.”

“We should work on the case.”

“We can afford to take one night off.”

“People will recognise us.”

“We’ll go late. It’ll be dark.”

She should have known from the start, she’s never been able to dissuade Jake Peralta once he’s set his mind on something. She smiles.

“Okay, babe.”

He’s kissing her in the middle of a club. It’s not their usual scene, surrounded by drugs and alcohol and people desperately hooking up and her cop-senses are yelling at her to do something.

But he’s not even a cop anymore.

And they’re tired.

They’ve been tired since the day he was arrested and there’s no sign of it letting up. They don’t really sleep, they just walk around the apartment like star-crossed ghosts or watch Die-Hard on his phone while Amy smokes on the roof. Their bed is reserved solely for angry sex and all it reminds them of is the possibility that Jake might soon not be in it. Sometimes they collapse onto their sofa but their sleep is restless and disturbed and they don’t even dream anymore.

So, they dance. And it’s way too hot and it’s way too crowded, but for a little while, they’re just a normal couple, dancing. They’re not ‘Disgraced Detective’ and the woman trying to exonerate him. They’re not even Jake and Amy. They’re anonymous in the purple and blue glow of the lights and the smoke machines hide their shaking hands and frantic kisses.

They call a cab and get shouted at for making out in the back seat. They throw a couple of dollar bills back through the window as they tunnel back into their apartment. When they wake in the morning, Jake almost forgets he’s about to be on trial, facing up to 15 years, with her intertwined with him and memories of alcohol and dancing and her hands in his hair on the tip of his tongue.

(Two days left until the final trial.)

Detective Jacob Peralta is on trial and found guilty and imprisoned all in one Friday afternoon and then he is gone. His desk is cleared. His cases are redistributed. His honours and medals are repealed.

She thinks about it as he’s handcuffed and pulled from the courtroom. His dad left on a Friday. His nan died on a Friday. He was arrested on a Friday. He’s found guilty on a Friday.

“We hereby find defendants Jacob Peralta and Rosa Diaz guilty on all charges.”

(Nothing good happens on a Friday.)

“You know what your issue is?” she says through gritted teeth as tears cloud her eyes.

“Enlighten me, Ames.”

His voice attempts some resemblance of cockiness but he chokes on his words.

“You think you can’t fail.”

“Have I failed you yet?”

“Yes,” she cries into his chest, “many times.”

This has happened before. There’s nothing new under the sun. They’re trapped in a repetitive loop of mistakes and failed promises and Jake is taken away from her one too many times. It’s a familiar conversation, one that echoes and slips through time and space and Amy’s brain tells her if she could feel anything other than grief in that moment she would feel déjà vu.

“I promise if – when – I get back, I’ll never fail you again.”

She swears “I love you” and he is pulled away.

“You’ll wait for me?” he asks suddenly.

“I’ll wait forever, Jake, God, forever, I promise.”

(But she knows he doesn’t believe her.)

The press screams his name with the kind of unlawful injustice that Amy Santiago had only read about in books. The New York newspapers lap the story up, grabbing at theories and accusations about the scandals of two highly decorated officers.

She falls into her mother’s arms as soon as court adjourned. They’re joined by Karen and Gina and Charles and Terry.

They break away after a few minutes and she holds eye contact with their captain, looking pensively at them.

“We’ll get them out, Santiago,” he promises. She nods.

The headline hits and she knows she shouldn’t read the newspaper accidentally left on her desk but she’s morbidly curious and she’s tired of fighting it all. It screams the word “Traitor!” and the front page is covered with a photo of Jake. His eyes are dark and he’s being cuffed and pulled out the court and everyone’s looking at him - snapping photos and screaming questions - but he’s just looking at her. He’s being dragged away and he’s probably going to die but all he can think about is her and he’s saying her name with his last breath.

The newspaper falls to the floor and disperses into a pile.

“Are you okay, detective?” someone asks.

“I don’t know,” she whispers.

All she knows for definite is that she is sick of the people give her pitying looks and the way the uniformed officers glare at her. The newspapers – forever eager to spread suspicion and concern – ask how such dangerous behaviour of two of the top detectives went unnoticed. They also ask who else could be doing the same.

Amy hears the whispers of ‘That’s his girlfriend, I bet she was in on it too.’

Amy is aware that Jake is infamously bad at hiding things. She found her last birthday present in their wardrobe, her Christmas present in his car, her valentines present in their bath.

She finds the box in his bedside table. She’s looking for the Hawkin’s case file Jake snuck home from work and she doesn’t mean to but it’s just kind of… there.

A neat white box hidden between a PlayStation remote and box of cufflinks.

She’s forever curious by nature and she feels the ever-present feeling of stress that had been crushing her shoulders for the last few weeks lift as she opens it. A small silver ring shines up at her and it’s so perfect and she feels the grief and loss and pain of losing Jake all over again.

She replaces the box to its secret home and collapses against the bed. She lets herself cry for the first time since the judge shouted “Guilty!”

She’s bitter. She knows why no one is fighting for him, why the nine-nine are alone in their desperate quest to save them, why the other officers keep their heads down and refuse to question it. They don’t question it because they want to believe it.

They want to believe that the immature detective from the Nine-Nine got in way over his head, that he’s fallen in his prime, that he’s been led astray, betrayed everything he ever stood for.

They want to believe it because they hated him from the start.

Too-loud, Captain’s favourite, obnoxious, never fully punished for the mistakes he’s made – the grievances that leave their lips in echoes of whispers are endless. She hears all of them, internalises all of them.

She’ll fight against all of them too.

Chapter Text

She is thirty-four and he is thirty-seven. It's 2017 and he asks her to marry him.

He’s free.

Charles drives as fast as the law allows to the prison. There’s a mutual unspoken agreement in which he decides to collect Rosa while Amy goes to Jake.

“I’m here to collect someone,” Amy says as soon as she walks through the door.

The prison guard in the booth glares.

“Name?”

“Jacob Peralta.”

The man raises an eyebrow, silently hands a form through the window which she signs neatly.

“Going to need some form of ID, miss.”

She reaches into her pocket, pulls out her badge and police ID.

“Do you know how long he’s going to be?” she asks.

“Could be an hour. Could be a day. Depends on when we get him into protective custody. You could just come back tomorrow.”

“I’ll wait,” she says through gritted teeth, “thank you for your help.”

She sits down on one of the hard metal chairs, gently drops her bag to the floor and pulls out a book to read.

Two hours pass before the bell rings and the thick metal door slides open. A shell-shocked looking Jake Peralta walks out, surrounded by guards and all of a sudden it doesn’t matter because he tears away and immediately collapses into her arms. They fall against each other and onto the ground. If he was more conscious she’d comment that it’s the classic cinematic reunion he’s always dreamed of.

As it is, all she can think about is the cold Jake Peralta in front of her and the clinical scent of his skin.

They remain in place for a little while, repeating ‘I love you,’ promising to stay together and to never be torn apart again under the watchful glare of the prison guard.

Eventually, they stand - a little calmer and a little bolder - as she kisses him. She thinks the way she effortlessly intertwines with him says more than any words ever could. They part and she reaches for her bag by the chair.

She pulls him towards the male bathroom, eliciting an interrupting cough from the guard. Amy doesn’t care.

“In here? That’s bold, Ames,” he grins.

“We’re not having sex, Jake,” she says, rolling her eyes, “get changed.”

She hands him the bag, filled with clean clothes, his body spray and soda which he takes gratefully. There’s nothing massively significant about the way he swapped an orange jumpsuit for NYPD slacks, an old shirt and his favourite sneakers (or maybe there is, she doesn’t really know anymore) but she feels better and better with every new item he puts on.

He turns to grin at her and immediately softens.

“God, I’ve missed you.”

He starts to cry again and she repeats the mantra from earlier: “I love you, you’re safe, I’m here, we’ll keep you safe from now on.”

The cab ride from jail to their apartment takes an hour and forty-eight minutes. The cab driver wants to talk. Jake just wants to get home.

He asks “Where have you kids been then?”

Jake says “Prison” and the cab driver chokes out a pained cough.

“He was wrongfully convicted,” Amy interjects, “but he’s free now.”

Jake’s hand moves across her bare arm and makes her shiver.

“He got fifteen years but we got him out in eight weeks,” she says distractedly.

His hand dips under her shirt.

“We’re cops, he was framed, framed for, uh –”

“Armed bank robbery,” Jake adds helpfully.

“Armed bank robbery,” Amy confirms, sheepishly.

They make accidental eye contact and she shoots him a warning glare. In true Peralta fashion, he ignores it.

“I think I remember reading about you in the news,” the cab driver states, “from the ninety-ninth, ain’t you?”

“That’s us,” Jake nods, “what’d you read about us?”

“Nothing much. She’s your girl, yeah?”

Jake raises an eyebrow wolfishly and grins.

“Oh yeah, she’s the best detective in the whole of the NYPD,” he boasts.

That’s it for her. She pulls him by the collar to kiss him roughly and she doesn’t mind his beard grazing at her cheeks because it’s been too long and no one, not even fate or the universe or God Himself, could pull them apart again.

Not even the goddamn cab driver who’s staring steadily ahead disapprovingly.

(Amy Santiago is a keen multitasker at the best of times but she’s never been more diligent that when she’s unlocking their apartment door with one hand and unbuckling Jake’s belt with the other.)

She wakes at 6 am to the sound of the bath running and the empty bed makes her feel a burst of sudden panic. She stretches and walks into their bathroom. He is sitting on the floor with his back to the bath, he smiles up at her as she enters. She moves to sit down next to him, feels his cool skin against hers and feels a little more content.

“Are you okay?”

“All good, Ames, need to wash with something other than meth soap.”

“Wait, what?”

“Not meth. I didn’t do meth in prison. You did meth,” he says quickly.

“Oh my god.”

(She drops the subject but he tells her eventually anyway:

“I may have accidentally, kind of, by accident done meth in prison.”

“Jake, what the fuck?”)

She knows he doesn’t want to be alone so, when he clambers clumsily into the bath, she sits nearby on the edge of their sink in their bathroom, reading.

He curls into the baths with a slight yelp and relaxes into the heat of the water.

“Charles would tell you to wash my hair,” he grins suddenly.

“Don’t you dare.”

“Please?”

She softens, balances her book carefully on the side and runs her fingers through his entangled hair. It’s soft and long and cascades into his eyes when he tilts his head forward.

“Can you drive me to get a haircut tomorrow? I don’t wanna drive yet,” he grimaces.

She nods, moves her hands down his neck and traces the scars along his back from being in the mafia and feels him shiver. She knows there are plenty more – the scar from when she shot him, a scar from falling at a police training programme, a scar from when Rosa threw her empty gun at him one time, a scar along his leg from escaping Figgis.

He knows what she’s thinking about without her even mentioning it.

“I’ve got a new one,” he says quietly. He gestures to a new scar forming along his arm from Romero in prison.

(She can map out the last few years of his life via his scars and she doesn’t even realise they’re both crying until he turns and kisses her forehead and feels cold tears reach across her face.)

(“I love you, you’re safe, I’m here, we’ll keep you safe from now on,” she says.)

He’s been home for three days. He's donned his recently returned detective uniform and he's staring at himself in the mirror of their bedroom. When sunlight streams through the window and glints off his detective badge, he feels sick.

She watches him from the doorway. He doesn’t look panicked but he doesn’t look particularly calm either.

“You ready to go, Jake?”

He turns upon the sound of her voice and looks expectantly. He nods.

They drive to the commissioner’s office in comfortable silence, his hand gently resting on hers when shifting gears. He knocks on the door lightly. She kisses him on the cheek but waits outside.

Jake has trusted the Miranda Rights and the NYPD longer than he's fully trusted himself. But as he stands in the too-cold office of the commissioner and listens to him apologizing through gritted teeth, something inside him just kinda… shifts.

The commissioner says: "It was a miscarriage of justice. Your name has been dragged through the mud and we will do everything in our power to reverse what has happened to both you and Detective Diaz."

(She hears Jake say "You fucking better" as he leaves the room and then he collapses into her warm hug.)

He returns to the precinct the same day despite Amy's protests, despite Holt insisting he stay home, despite Gina bribing him with booze, despite Rosa promising she was staying home too.

He returns nonetheless with a harder set to his jaw and the occasional flash of discomfort in his eyes and when he walks into the bullpen at 5:45 am he limps.

For once, he’s early.

There's an endless stream of hugs and he's pretty sure Charles is crying and when he kisses Gina on the forehead, she ruffles his hair and rolls her eyes. Terry face-times his daughters at home and when they see Jake in the background their eyes light up and they shout for their Uncle Jake to make silly faces at them.

Jake laughs.

(Everything is normal.)

Jake’s laugh is loud and booming and it bursts through everyone’s ears like morning sunlight, and Amy thinks nothing, not even his dad or the mafia or Figgis or prison, could do anything to quiet that laugh. But there's this hesitance afterwards like someone had tried to.

(It scares her no end.)

She knows he feels better when they’re together.

But God, she can feel the cold spreading, growing, freezing her fingertips and leaving a cold breeze whenever he leaves the house.

He leaves in the dead of night and doesn’t return until three am. His hair is flaked with snow and his cheeks are bright red and he tells her sleepily that he’s walked the streets of Brooklyn to tire himself out. He collapses into bed beside her and feels the cold reaching at her skin.

(She isn’t used to this. Warmth is accustomed to following Jake Peralta wherever he goes, thawing her heart when she’s sad and clutching at her skin when he entwines their hands in her pockets.)

He’s cold at home and he’s cold at work and he sits at his desk with his legs crossed, not really focusing but not fully disappearing either.

Recovery is cold and grey and tiring and the streets are hidden in ice but they’re trying.

Nothing good ever happens when they’re drunk.

They learn this the hard way. Jake gets called in again by the Commissioner to discuss the Hawkins arrest files and is grilled for four hours for details. When he returns to the precinct, he says “God, I need a drink” and that’s all she gets as way of explanation.

He drinks and drinks and drinks and the squad watch him descend into drunkenness until he curls into Amy’s side in a booth.

Terry has to carry him to the cab waiting outside and Amy clambers in after him.

“You’re obsessed with Hawkins, Jake! It’s over! She’s going to prison!” she is shouting, but she’s drunk and she’s watching herself say it like an out of body experience.

He just stares at Amy as his brain races at a mile a minute, his thoughts getting louder and louder and louder, saying ‘I never know what to do, I’m so unsure of everything, I freak out when I’m alone, I’m not like I was before and I’m so fucking scared you’ll realize, God, I’m so selfish, I’m just like my dad,” but he’s never been good with words or emotions or honesty and he’s realised he’s been saying all that out loud and she’s just staring at him and he’s shouting and—

He hears echoes of the past in which his parents shout at each other.

He stops shouting. Closes his eyes.

“I’m gonna sleep on the couch tonight, Ames.”

She swallows thickly. Steps closer. Repeats her mantra like a promise.

“I love you, you’re safe, I’m here, we’ll keep you safe from now on.”

“I didn’t mean any of what I said,” he says quickly, “I’m fine.”

“You’re nothing like your dad.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You never need to apologise, Jake.”

They’ll be fine.

(The ice is melting.)

Chapter Text

She is thirty-five and he is thirty-eight. It’s 2018 and they are healing.

She watches him recover.

It’s not particularly exciting or evident. It’s refusing to take certain cases and leaving work early. It’s visiting his mom more and double – triple – checking the door is locked. It’s visiting a therapist and not being able to get out of bed.

But he’s here, she thinks, he’s alive.

And that’s enough for her.

“You’ll tell me if it gets bad, won’t you?”

(Jake is using his mandatory hourly break from Holt to lie on the break room sofa. He’s dressed in an NYPD t-shirt and jeans and when Amy sneaks in to sit next to him – well, more like climbs on top of him and tangles her limbs around his because honestly fuck standard procedure at this point – she’s met with a too-thin Jake made up of bones and warm skin.)

“If what gets bad, babe?”

“I don’t know, just… anything.”

“Sure, Ames. I’m fine though, you know that, right? The precinct is the best place I can be right now.”

“It creates something like normality,” Amy quotes.

“Yeah. Where’d you read that?”

“Doesn’t matter, just sleep.”

“Hun, I’m not tired.”

(He sleeps.)

(He wraps her in his arms and for the first time in a long time he’s warm.)

It’s a long process.

Sometimes she finds herself keeping track of the minutes in her head, only to remember no one’s coming to take him away this time.

Sometimes he doesn’t sleep for days, lies in bed playing games on his phone, drinking endless cups of coffee and hot chocolate.

On those nights, when he finds the dark is particularly scary and the room feels just a little too small, she sits with him. She turns on the bedside lamp, reaches for a book or a case file and talks. Sometimes about work and sometimes about family and sometimes about Die-Hard but always about him, grounding him, pulling him back down to earth with both hands.

One evening, he paces the room for so long she swears the carpet is being worn away beneath his feet. She watches, lets him work through whatever mental problem he is thinking about until he’s ready to talk.

He eats dinner that night and sleeps soundly and that’s a victory to her.

He proposes.

It's full of the hyper-fixated, trademarked Peralta planning and sentimentality. He proposes in the evidence locker where they had their first kiss all those years prior and again the world they knew collapses around them and braces for their landing.

(Amy - despite NYPD protocal - later sneaks to the CCTV room and makes a copy of the tape.)

“I’m worried you’ll wake up one morning and wish you were married to someone as smart as you are.”

“I am marrying someone as smart as I am – you.”

She pushes him against the wall of their apartment as soon as they get home and kisses him.

She murmurs compliments against his lips and he’s sure he’s never felt true bliss until Amy Santiago whispers “You’re a fucking genius” as she pulls his shirt off over his head.

She is made the sergeant of the uniformed officers and he cannot stop staring at her.

He watches her dress in the deep blue uniform in the morning, mesmerised by the metal glinting off her badges. She returns from her break and finds him sitting in her chair at her desk and she knows she should tell him to get back to work, to return to his floor, but he’s grinning wolfishly at her with a distinct look of pride she can’t quite decipher.

She looks around to check none of the officers are watching before kissing him lightly on the forehead.

“Afternoon, detective,” she says.

“Afternoon, sergeant,” he says in return.

He leans up to steal the cap off her head before wearing it himself. She tries to swipe it back but he’s too fast as he legs it towards the stairs to the detective’s floor.

She rolls her eyes and huffs before sitting down herself.

She looks over her desk to pick up a file and her eyes come to rest on two new white photo frames.

In one, the drunken faces of the Nine-Nine stare back at her on Jake’s thirtieth birthday. In the other, she is holding up her ring to the camera with Jake smiling widely behind her.

They almost make her tear up. She quickly speeds to the detective’s floor in time to hear Holt shout “Peralta! Please give sergeant Santiago her hat back!”

She enters the bullpen at the same time Jake is leaving and he smiles as he returns the cap to its rightful owner.

“Captain Holt,” Jake calls loudly, “Sergeant Santiago is here! I’ve given her cap back.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Thank you for the photos, Jake.”

“I thought it would make your desk feel a bit more like home.”

They’re fully aware that Charles is hovering nearby, nudging Rosa and smiling like an idiot, but they don’t mind.

She wakes at two in the morning to an empty bed and when she rolls over the sheets are cold. Jake is nowhere to be seen. She finds him slouched over their kitchen table, surrounded by wedding invites and seating plans. It warms her heart and she thinks he looks peaceful, oddly serene, in a way that he never does when he’s awake.

She kisses him lightly on the forehead. He stirs. 

“You need to get some proper sleep, babe, come to bed.”

He nods, stands up too quickly and leans on her to steady him.

“Love you, Ames,” he sighs.

“I love you too, babe.”

She pulls him to bed.

Amy “Marriage-Is-Just-A-Piece-Of-Paper” Santiago is married.

Jake “I’m-Definitely-Going-To-Die-Alone” Peralta is married.

They say I Do under the moonlight and stars of a crisp Brooklyn night and it is last minute and a nightmare but it suits them.

They toast and Charles cries and for just a little while it is only them in the world and nobody else.

They dance and he expertly steps out the way when her feet move of their own accord in the practised way that dancing with Amy Santiago for many years brings.

Jake Peralta stands on the edge of the precinct roof.

They’ve been married for all of two hours and he is already worried.

He stretches, feels old scars pull across his back as he looks down into the abyss below. He thinks he looks like Batman until his fear of heights strikes him and he steps carefully down from the brick edge. He takes a deep breath as he pulls the tie loose from around his neck.

“I’ll have kids one day. I’ll be a good dad,” he says quietly to no-one in particular.

He pulls his coat closer around himself, takes another breath.

“I’ll- I’ll be a good dad…” he says again, but it comes out more like a question that time.

Jake thinks of his dad. How he cheated on his mom. How he left them. How he was never around. He thinks he’s a lot like Batman in that respect.

“Batman was basically Robin’s dad and Robin turned out okay,” he mutters.

“Jason Todd went mad – and he died, like twice. You wanna talk about anything?”

(Amy Santiago has just materialised behind him and her voice makes him jump.)

“Oh, shit, Ames, sorry, I was just taking a breather, I’ll come back inside—”

“Jake, it’s okay, everyone’s making their way to Shaws,” she walks lightly towards him, lifting her long white dress from where it trailed along the floor and lighting the cigarette she brought with her, “so, you wanna talk about anything, Batman?”

He kisses her quickly on the forehead and plucks the cigarette from her hand and drops it off the roof, eliciting a “Hey!” from his frowning wife.

“Talk about Batman? Yeah, of course. So, in the comic- “

“Jake, I meant the whole ‘Dad’ thing.”

“Oh, okay, cool. Cool, cool, cool. Cool. Yeah.”

He looks towards the door and through the precinct windows. It’s probably empty. He bites his lip.

“No one can hear you, Jake, they’re all outside, it’s just me.”

She runs her hand along his jaw, feels toughened, clean-shaven skin under her fingertips.

“Do you wanna have kids? I mean, it’s not on your life calendar so I didn’t know if– “

“Yeah. One day.”

“With me?”

“I married you, didn’t I?”

“I’m still worried it’s just a practical joke. Like I’m going to wake up tomorrow morning and there’ll be cameras aimed at my bed live streaming the prank and you were never really there at all.”

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily, husband. Come on, we should head off.”

"Okay, wife."

She walks back through the precinct doors and immediately comes face to face with a bundle of curly hair accompanied by a black tuxedo. A cool breeze blows past her, as if pushing her inside.

She is thirty-five and he is thirty-eight. It’s 2018 and they are married.