Chapter Text
Jake hates boxes.
Hates them.
He tolerates them for holding case files, understands their importance in the workplace.
But there is not a single cardboard box to be found in the Peralta Bachelor Pad. When he moves from Nana's apartment to Gina's old place, he unpacks within two days. After that, if he hadn't found a place for something, he'd rather dump the box on the floor than have an accursed brown cube continue to occupy in his living space.
It would shock none of his coworkers to discover that Jake loves a certain amount of clutter (he doesn't feel totally comfortable without it, actually). Amy complains once that he is a human hurricane of chaos and crumbs - that his movements through the precinct can be tracked by the lopsided stacks of files and open cupboard doors he leaves behind.
Jake smiles and says that he's doing her a favor.
When Amy initially transfers to the Nine Nine, her neatness bothers Jake. Amy's desk is sparkling clean; Hurricane Peralta fixes this for her on a regular basis. Eventually she gives up and accepts a certain amount of collateral damage from his whirling spiral of energy. When she starts to personalize her own desk with photos and rubber band balls, he knows that she isn't going anywhere.
Mess means permanence. Cleanliness means transience.
Mess is difficult. Mess takes time to remove. Cleanliness means that all of this can go away at a moment's notice.
His mom worked two jobs to make ends meet and they lived under a constant threat of eviction. Young Jake's room always had a few stray boxes lurking on a shelf or buried under a pile of laundry. They had to be ready to pack up when the lease ran out. Of his half-dozen childhood bedrooms, Jake remembered clean white walls, free of thumbtacks and nails so they could keep their security deposit, and constantly messy floors.
Nana's apartment was a box-free zone.
She always had a basket of half-folded laundry draped across a couch or cookie dough dishes cluttering her sink. His scented-marker drawings of superheroes and cops were tacked into her walls.
Young Jake liked that. He'd left a mark somewhere; he'd left an imprint that would never go away.
Nana said that you don't need to pick up for family. Mom rolled her eyes at her mother like it was a bad joke, but she bustled around the apartment with a bottle of multi-purpose cleaner, scrubbing till her hands were red when Grandma came to town.
Present Jake thinks that Nana was on to something. He has his own apartment now, his own little slice of permanence. The first thing he does in Gina's place is tack up his posters and hang his basketball hoop on a nail. If Gina makes him, he'll pull out the Spackle and fill in all the little holes, but there's no way that he's going to stay in another room with bare white walls.
Present Jake remembers what Nana said about family when he gives Sophia the bottle of multi-purpose cleaner and lets Amy into his apartment without a second thought.
Amy brings her own boxes into his life. Jake welcomes her clutter and informs her that her boxes have forty-eight hours before their contents are dumped inside and the empty containers are chucked in the hall. In or out.
Two days later, there is a pile of flattened cardboard outside in the hall.
Amy buys a shelf instead.
Their apartment is a glorious (somewhat more organized) mess.