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The morning of April 29th is – unsurprisingly, given the shear dopeness of the romantic epiphany the night before it – mildly chaotic.
Later, when he’s drifting off on the couch while Amy makes flashcards for the sergeant’s exam, he’ll begrudgingly admit that he probably should have been paying more attention to his futile attempts at a romantic breakfast; for now, as Jake stands in their kitchen wearing his girlfriend’s pink fluffy dressing gown and daydreaming of Amy walking down the aisle, the burnt pancakes are very clearly her fault.
Because it’s all he can think about, now, like someone opened the floodgates to a whole new subcategory of Amy fantasies he’s been deep diving into all night, unable to sleep – Amy showing off a sparkling engagement ring, Amy as a glowing vision in white, Amy laughing at him as he fumbles with the rings or his vows or otherwise somehow manages to make himself look like an idiot in front of everyone they know.
(And yes, when he pictures it currently their wedding looks suspiciously like something out of Tangled, but he can work on that. Or maybe not, except he’s not exactly sure where you buy that many lanterns from and if they need a permit for that and he has zero idea what they’re going to do with a horse and a chameleon afterwards so overall it’s probably best that he leaves the planning to Amy, if she…)
(Well, he’s pretty sure she’s gonna say yes. God, he hopes so.)
The point he’s agonisingly slowly lumbering towards is that he has not had a lot of sleep, wrapped up in fleeting dreams of proposing and weddings and maybe being actually, properly married, officially Not Dying Alone and all the euphoria that comes from realising that he’s ready for that, that he might have been lucky enough to have found someone to tease and to surprise and to love for the rest of his life. It’s a lot to process.
Therefore, his burning of what was going to be a super romantic breakfast is by his logic, completely and utterly Amy’s fault. That being said, he’s not a complete monster - it’s not like he has the heart to tell her that she’s entirely to blame when she traipses into the kitchen in her old lady glasses and his hoodie, looking hopeful at the promise of breakfast.
“Pancakes?” She asks – the hope quickly eases into familiar endeared exasperation the second she clocks the blackened breakfast crime scene he’s been caught red handed in. Jake rubs the back of his neck sheepishly, hoping that he’s not visibly radiating the I wanna marry you vibe that he can feel strongly emitting from his chest.
“Uh, they were formerly pancakes at some stage before they mutinied against me to become gross charred bricks.”
“Mmm.” She hums sarcastically as if they appear even slightly edible, then quickly kisses the pout off his lips.
“Sorry. I got…distracted.”
“It’s okay, babe, we’re out of milk and orange soda anyway – let me go.” She firmly dismisses his protests before he can even say anything, a sign of the truly spooky psychic link their partnership has naturally formed over the years; he sighs one last lament over his culinary failure as she disappears into the bathroom and quickly returns with contacts in, her hair in a messy bun and a soft smile on her face.
Just like that, the pancakes don’t even seem to matter anymore - then he has the disgustingly cliché thought of we’ve got forever for pancakes anyway, like forever with someone isn’t merely a faraway abstract Disney concept and more of a real, tangible thing. Jake feels the very strong urge to lie down and preferably take a day or two to process that feeling on top of all the other ones that seem to be clouding his ability to be a rational human being.
He hopes he’s not going to be this weird all the time now, but judging by the direction and speed of his current train of thought there seems to be very little hope.
She’s leaning over the kitchen counter scribbling down a shopping list when he comes to his senses, because of course she is - he resists the urge to tease her now that he really, truly knows her and he knows her lists are an anchor that keep her organised, keep her steady, keep her sane.
Instead, he watches as she taps the pen against her lips, brows furrowed in deep thought as she mentally categorises the contents of their fridge, and imagines the glint of silver on her ring finger.
He’ll blame on overtiredness and being a general lovesick idiot, later; in the moment of mild chaos, it is absolutely her fault.
“Hey, Ames?” He begins, and everything is perfectly fine until she looks up at him and he literally feels any capacity for rational thought leave his body and he’s almost asking something stupid, like ‘wanna get married?’
Everything is perfectly great until before he knows it he’s almost asking ‘wanna get married?’ - like he’s asking what she wants for dinner or what the weather is going to be like today. Like he’s not asking the most important question of his whole life before 9am on a rainy Saturday while trying to waft away the smell of burning from permeating the kitchen, while half asleep and wearing her pink fluffy dressing gown.
Like he didn’t just have baby’s first romantic epiphany less than twelve hours ago and isn’t still very much almost giddily coming to grips with what that actually means. And all because she’s scribbling down a shopping list for three items that he knows she’ll remember, and how stupidly endearing and consistent and so very Amy that simple action is.
He almost says something very, very stupid – like ‘wanna get married?’ or ‘wanna secretly elope to Paris?’ or ‘we could just go down to the registry office, like today, because I’ve recently realised that you’re the one person I want to spend the rest of my life with, if that’s cool with you’ – and then he gets distracted practically praying that his poor, poor brain to mouth filter that has to deal with this shit on a daily basis hasn’t packed its bags and retired to Florida, because ‘wanna get married?’ is definitely absolutely not how you’re supposed to ask the love of your life to wed you in holy freakin’ matrimony, he knows that, and he doesn’t even have a ring yet and-
“…Jake?” Amy’s doing that face reserved just for him where she’s half amused and half genuinely concerned, and he expertly deduces that he’s been weirdly silent for far too long and therefore hasn’t just acted on one of the more questionable impulses of his life, brought to you straight from the guy who once owned six separate massage chairs. Small mercies.
“Yeah. Sorry, it’s nothing.” He waves a frantic hand in panicked dismissal, downplays it like his heart isn’t doing awe-inspiring acrobatics in his chest right now, bounces on the heels of his feet a little to try and dispel the nervous energy that’s coursing through his veins.
In the moment he realises he hasn’t just accidentally proposed to her, Jake also makes the executive decision to get some kind of proposal plan together soon so he doesn’t risk accidentally dropping a proposal into casual conversation – because yeah, ‘wanna get married’ is perfectly okay, but if he’s gonna do this, he’s gonna do it properly.
No ‘Celebration’ blaring loudly in the background or confetti cannons or cheap plastic one dollar rings this time. He’s going to do it right.
If he’s going to propose to Amy Santiago, certified actual most incredible amazing human/genius on the entire planet, it is decidedly not going to be while he’s wearing a pink fluffy dressing down and shoving a failed breakfast into the trash. That’s a Peralta guarantee.
“Okay, weirdo.” She gives him a smile with a fleeting hint with suspicion before going back to digging through her purse, and his heart rate slowly but surely returns to normal.
Jake’s going to need a binder. Maybe even with the good types of tab this time, if he can figure out what criteria makes a good type of tab first.
He also needs to calm down so he’s not on the verge of a cardiac arrest every time he’s in close proximity to his girlfriend, because he’s pretty sure that even if she wasn’t the best detective he knows she’d figure him out before he can even scrape the finances together to buy a half decent ring. Maybe he just needs to lie down in general.
“I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. Try not to burn our apartment down in that time?”
“Coming from the woman who seemingly insists on testing our smoke alarm twice a week.”
She rolls her eyes and gently reaches up to cup his face and kiss him goodbye, which is mostly sweet and only slightly satisfying because he knows that means she doesn’t have a good comeback. As the door swings shut behind her he busies himself with cleaning up the kitchen, overwhelmed with another wave of excitement at the idea of marrying his best friend.
Because he’s ready, now – really, he’s probably been ready for a while, deep down. Maybe the second that she kissed him in the back of the ambulance in Florida or when he forfeited yet another bet just to see her smile or when the Nine-Nine was saved from getting shut down and she showed him just how hot she finds his moral compass.
The typo in that crossword puzzle shines out like a beacon in the night; but thoughts of Amy and loving Amy and marrying Amy have been brightening up the darker corners of his life for longer than he’d care to admit.
It’s all her fault – all that determination and kindness and brilliant enthusiasm. The way she’s so stubbornly cemented herself into his heart a, refusing to leave just as she refused to let him work their first case alone, demanding to be taken seriously with a fierceness that both irritated, impressed him and slightly turned him on. She is warmth, joy, that bubbling kind of laughter that just lights him up every time he gets to hear it – but she’s also tougher than she looks and stronger than she knows. There is absolutely no-one else like her.
And the plan, absolutely, startlingly clear in his otherwise sleep deprived and cloudy mind, is to marry her.
(And, on an equally unsurprisingly chaotic yet magical evening in mid-May, he does.)