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He’s fifteen years old and he’s skipped class to be here at nine in the morning on a Tuesday, his dad’s leather jacket not hiding the fact that his voiced skipped an octave every time the waitress asked him if he wanted more coffee.
“Peralta, seriously,” drawls Gina. She’s smoothing lipstick on, a lurid shade of pink, her elbows propped uncaringly on the disgusting table with the stains of a thousand breakfasts. “How are you going to be the Die Hard cop if you can’t even indulge in a little harmless truancy every now and then?”
“Okay, first off, his name’s John McClane, and--” Jake twitchs again.
“Anything else you need, Lisa, sweetie?” The waitresses had all called Gina that since they first walked in, and the cook gave her a disgruntled snort at the sight of her and handed her a fifty. Jake decided not to ask.
“Naw, it’s fine, Dee. Thanks.” Gina looks at him over the top of her compact mirror as the waitress walked away. “It’s okay, though.”
“What’s okay?”
“Your whole,” Gina waves her hands vaguely at him. “Thing. I’ll be president by the time we’re thirty and I can give you a boost.”
Jake smirks, and doesn’t doubt her for a second. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. You and me, Jakey. Two little fatherless Italian Jews from Brooklyn, we’re gonna take over the world.”
Two months into the Academy, Jake’s sore in places he didn’t know could be sore and his new gun calluses are still halfway in the blisters stage, which is like ninety percent less badass. He wonders if John McClane ever felt like this. Probably not. But it’s dawn-thirty after their shift and he and his buddies are in some hideously greasy spoon, drinking the shitty coffee of the just, and he thinks it might be worth it, even as he tries not to nod off into his pancakes.
Beside him, Greg Li is shuffling cards around on the formica, Rosa staring intently.
“That’s the queen.”
“How do you get it right every single time?” he groans. Rosa smiles, the one with no teeth and the glinting eyes, and Jake sees the back of Greg’s neck go red. Half the class’s in love with Rosa, but Greg’s the one smart enough to not show it. Jake’s still technically dating Lily, who’s in law school now and way too smart for him but somehow doesn’t know it yet, and Rosa kind of reminds him of Gina somehow, even as they’re completely dissimilar, which is a terrifying thought. He wonders if they’ll ever meet, and what kind of horror they could pull off together.
“You falling asleep, Peralta?” says Greg, shaking him out of his thoughts.
“You’re not gonna get into Vice with card skills like that, Li,” says Jake, grinning, and Greg punches his arm and steals bacon off Rosa’s plate and he thinks it’s pretty awesome, being (almost) a cop.
Jake takes his mom to an actual, nice, brunch place that’s nowhere near his neighbourhood before his Academy graduation. He just gets a coffee, which probably costs more than some of his furniture, nerves twisting his stomach. He shifts uncomfortably in his dress blues, the pressed slacks and shined shoes weighing uncomfortably on him.
His mom leans against the table and fixes his tie.
“You look so grown-up, Jacob,” she says.
“Thanks, Mom,” he mutters, smiling.
“You know,” she says, and she doesn’t meet his eyes. “Your father would be proud of you.”
“Dad doesn’t know what happened to me past the third grade--”
“But if he knew, Jacob--”
“He’s not dead, Mom, he’s just an assh--”
They’re interrupted by the waiter bringing out her omelette with a practised disregard. He watches her eat in silence for a bit.
“Are you proud of me?”
“Of course.” She puts her hand on his, smiles that tired smile.
“That’s all that matters, Mom.”
After he buys the Mustang (and clears out his first actual paycheck as a cop, and several paychecks after that), Jake takes it through the drive through at McDonalds every day for a month. The traffic is hell and it’s worse in a stick shift, but it’s totally worth it.
He sees Rosa occasionally in Academy meetups and occasionally runs into her in really divey motorcycle bars, but Greg just drops off the radar about a year after they graduate. Jake doesn’t hear from him until he sees an email about an officer shooting in the Bronx, and then it doesn’t register until his commanding officer asks him if he graduated the Academy in ‘03, and if he knew Greg Li from Vice.
He eats breakfast with Rosa before the funeral in the same diner that they all went to, sticking out like a sore thumb in their dress uniforms. The coffee is still memorably terrible and the food is still greasy enough to light on fire.
“I wish Greg was here,” says Jake, anything to break the silence.
“He didn’t deserve it,” says Rosa, still looking at her food.
“Who does?”
“No, but he really didn’t deserve it.” Rosa fixes him with a glare. “You know. Li was a good cop. He was a good fucking person.”
“Yeah,” says Jake, and they don’t say anything for a while.
“Hey,” Jake says, right before they get up to leave. “Congrats on making detective. Shitty time to say it, I know, but I don’t see you around that much anymore.”
“Thanks,” says Rosa. “You know,” she says unexpectedly. “If Greg were here he’d call us all pigs and paper pushers and make fun of your haircut.”
“And he’d run that stupid find-the-Lady game on you again.” Jake finds himself smiling. “Order blueberry pancakes and steal your bacon.” Rosa does that thing where she almost smiles but not really.
“We need to leave,” says Rosa. “Funeral’s at eleven.”
They get blueberry pancakes to go.
Jake makes detective a couple months after that, assigned to the Nine-Nine in Park Slope. He likes it, enough people to make it interesting, quiet enough to play Tetris on his computer sometimes. His partner Charles thinks he’s awesome, so that’s a plus, and the captain doesn’t care if he wears a hoodie to work.
Charles brings in ‘Chinese-Mexican fusion tacos’ for breakfast on his thirty-first birthday, and it’s awful, but he kind of enjoys it anyway
“So I heard we’re getting a new detective,” says Charles over donuts in the breakroom.
“Ooooh, who?” Gina perches on the counter, dunking her strawberry glazed in Red Bull. “I hope he’s like, melancholy, middle-aged, but still sexually adventurous…”
“No.” says Rosa. “It’s Amy Santiago, from the Five-Five”
“Who’s Amy Santiago?” says Jake, walking in ten minutes late. “Oooh, donuts. These aren’t the wasabi-pepper kind you got last time, right, Boyle?”
“Nah,” says Gina. “I brought them. One of the girls in the dance troupe owes me. Big time. Amy Santiago’s your new, hopefully hot, partner.”
“She graduated first in her class in ‘08,” says Rosa.
“How do you even know that? Nevermind,” says Jake, as Rosa raises an eyebrow. “You’re weird and scary, I get it. Ugh, a nerd. I bet she’s all by the book and organized and stuff.”
“Don’t lie, Jakey,” chirps Gina. “You liiiike smart girls. I bet she’s, like, secretly a domanatrix or a spy or something.”
“What?”
“Whatever. Twenty bucks you hook up with her.”
“Wait, I want to get in on this,” says Rosa. “Fifty bucks if he hooks up with her. Within five years.”
“What the hell? You know what, okay. Fine. I’m not going to hook up with Detective Nerd.”
“You don’t even know what she looks like,” says Charles. “What if she’s like, really hot? Like Carmen Sandiego hot.”
“Boyle, I’m not even going to touch that,” says Jake. “And the rest of you, I’m not going to hook up with her. She’s probably going to leave within the year. The Jakester works alone.” Rosa rolls her eyes.
“Go, Jakester!” cheers Boyle, and accidentally flings his donut into the wall.
“This better be good,” says Amy. “I can’t believe you woke me up at five in the morning. On a Saturday.”
“Whatever, I know you went to bed at ten-thirty last night. You woke up early to watch the Mythbusters marathon.”
“What, no I didn’t--”
“It’s okay. So did I. Well, except for the go to bed part.”
“You’ve been up all night?” Now she’s doing the worried little pull on the corner of her mouth that Jake used to find annoying but now--
“Anyway, not the point. The point is, I’m pretty sure I know where Fischer’s hiding the drugs and money. And now we just need to stake out this warehouse until he comes to get it.”
“Okay. And how do you know he’s coming today?”
“Because he knows we got Bobby, and he’ll want to move it. He’s a suspicious guy. Don’t worry, Santiago, he’ll come. Besides, I brought you breakfast.”
She looks over at him suspiciously. He pulls out a crumpled poptart from the depths of his bag.
“Ugh,” she says. “I’m pretty sure that’s gone bad.”
“Nah, poptarts are infused with enough all-natural preservatives and flavours to last pretty much forever.”
She sighs as he opens the foil packet, but she grabs one of the tarts anyway.
There’s an explosion, and Jake wakes up at the hospital, head ringing. The last thing he remembers is talking to Barbara, Leo Iannuchi’s little niece, who was showing him the beautiful hand-made doll her uncle got her. Two months ago, Jake and Barbara’s uncle checked on his dealers, junkie kids only a few years older than Barbara. Jake watched Leo and his boys beat up one of the kids, who was a couple thou short this week.
“I gave it to my mother,” he sobbed, over and over. “She’s sick. Please. Please.”
“C’mon,” said Leo, “C’mon Jakey. What, you too good to beat people up? You need your badge and nightstick to do it?”
“Nah,” said Jake. “Don’t wanna get my shoes dirty. They’re new.” The Iannuchi boys laughed and Jake spat on the kid’s bleeding, broken face. Then he went home, and threw up.
Now he’s lying in a hospital bed, cleaner sheets than he’s seen in six months. There’s a tray in front of him, breakfast food neatly placed in a plastic tray. What happened, he thinks, then he realizes he said it out loud.
“You happened upon a trap the Iannuchi boys set for a certain rival dealer,” says Holt, who is inexplicably standing by his bedside. “You have a cracked skull and several broken ribs as well as various burns and lacerations.”
Jake nods, then stops, because it hurts.
“Iannuchis?” he croaks out.
“In holding. Your evidence was good enough to convict several of them, including Leo.”
“Good.” he says.
“Your FBI handlers would like to debrief you, but I convinced them to let it go until you were less injured,” says Holt. Jake suddenly realizes he’s starving. “You’ve been out for about fifteen hours.”
Jake pulls the tray of pancakes towards himself and starts to eat, fumblingly.
“I will leave you to your breakfast, Detective,” says Holt. He paused. “You did a good job, Jacob. You did the Nine-Nine proud.”
Jake froze, mouth full of pancakes, but Holt just turned around, and left.
He wakes up in an unfamiliar bed, and sticks his hand under the pillow, looking for his gun. Nothing’s there, and the sheets are softer than his, and they’re pale green. He rolls over into a pool of dark hair.
Oh.
He owes Gina and Rosa some money.
He slips out of bed, looking for his pants. Amy murmurs but doesn’t wake up. There’s a magazine stand with decent coffee and pastries outside of Amy’s building, he knows from the times he’d had to pick her up to go to a crime scene.
Amy’s awake when he quietly lets himself back into her apartment, sitting at her kitchen in a fuzzy pink bathrobe.
“Oh,” she says, surprised. “I thought--” Jake sets the coffee holder and pastry bags on her table.
“Got you a Boston creme. And a coffee, extra cream extra sugar.” He wants to make a joke about cream. It’s probably too soon.
“Thanks,” she says, and smiles at him. She pulls out the donut and sips the coffee.
“So we’re, okay, right?” He’s still standing next to her table. “I mean, if you--”
“Jake.” she grabs his hand. “Sit down. We’re good, we’re perfect. We can talk about it. After coffee.”