Work Text:
x.
“I kind of wish something could happen between us. Romantic Stylez, and I know it can’t, because you’re with Teddy and I’m going undercover, and that’s just how it is”
i.
When Amy turns twenty three, she's out of the academy and right into Jake Peralta.
That was not meant to come out so sexually.
“Doesn’t matter” choruses Jake, grinning like the dick he is, “it came out sexually and was amazing.”
“Ugh, screw you Peralta, You're drinking cupcake batter through a straw right now”
“It’s a breakfast smoothie but whatever.” She looks at him, disgusted, and he only grins wider. She strongly considers stapling his face to his computer.
“Also ‘screw you Peralta’ is the title of your dream sex tape”
ix.
“What?” he’s laughing and she’s grinning against her (very strong) will. “How could you not have been Valedictorian?!”
“Right?” she leans forward in her chair and takes another bite of pizza, pushing the case work across her desk to the corner to make room. “But I think Madeline was” – she looks around for people even though there is no one in the precinct and its one .a.m. in the morning “blowing Mr Brenner- our principal- so that’s how she got it.”
She leans back, watching as he loses it laughing and she thinks, rather inexplicably, I want to keep you.
v.
“Jesus, Peralta did something die on you.” She asks, the minute he steps out of the elevator.
“Yes” replies Rosa from behind him “It was my will to live”
“Hey!” Jake looks wounded, and also covered in shit, “I didn’t force you into the cab here with me.”
“Actually you did. There were witnesses and I made your lip bleed.”
“Well we didn’t know he had an accomplice on the roof- Gina would you stop taking pictures- and next time you can chase a guy nine blocks and get a pile of human shit dumped on you”
“So it is shit then.” She’s grinning so hard her face may actually split open. Peralta in the entry way on the elevator literally dripping poo as Charles runs off to get handy towels and Gina documents it all on her Snapchat story.
He glares. “Shut up Santiago.”
iv.
“He’s not here” Jake says, literally just as the guy they’ve been chasing appears, pushes over a shelf of cupcakes and makes a run for the back door.
She hears him yell “NYPD GET DOWN” but the guy is already running past the industrial sized freezer, and she’s almost slipped on a bowl of icing he’d knocked over. She reaches for her gun except, damn it, it’s in the back of the fucking squad car they’d driven over in because Jake had attempted to carve ‘Jake rox’ into the side so she’d thrown it in the boot for safe keeping.
The perp has almost made it to the door, and Jake is stuck behind an enormous oven- who even knew bakery’s had this much crap in them- So she does the only thing she can think of, picking up a wooden spoon and aiming right for his head.
The guy goes down the like a shot, but she throws a large mixing bowl to make sure he’s properly knocked out. Jake, now wedged between the oven and the wall, is staring at her like she’s just stripped nude and revealed a Yippee Ki Yay Motherfucker tattoo across her stomach. “Oh my god” he says, “You did not just knock that guy out with a whisk.”
“It was a wooden spoon actually” because there really is nothing else to say. He’s beaming, and she starts to handcuff the guy, and by the time she stands up Peralta’s legs have given out from laughter and the perp is bitching about filing for brutality.
“Santiago” he gasps, still halfway through the tiny gap but now leaning against the wall, struggling to form words, “You’re freaking excellent”
xi.
“When was the last time you saw Jake?” asked Gina, just as Amy’s getting onto her bus. It’s raining outside, as Gina’s question goes unanswered- she’s seen a sign for a stall selling faux floor a block down- and Amy almost wants to cry when the bus doors shut.
She can see him, standing in the dark with his box of stuff and ‘romantic stylez’ and all of it. She can picture the entire whole god damn thing. And being in serious undercover jobs always used to happen to other people, the kind you read about who died on the job in The Globe, except now they're happening to Jake, who once helped her move into her apartment when her movers cancelled and stayed till three in the morning just to help her file away all her new kitchen appliance manuals in the right places.
iii.
“Tell me a secret” she slurs, the words so cliché they actually burn her throat. Then again, that could just be the whiskey.
“A secret?” he looks at her with raised eyebrows and she wants to never leave her drunken brain, to never leave this cab, to never leave him. The alcohol is making her head melt inside her skull.
“Yeah”
“I” –hiccup- “think you're really smart”
She giggles and drags her head across the peeling taxi headrest. “That’s your secret.” He is ridiculous and she is drunk.
“Yeah” he’s looking at her like they're talking about two different things entirely, there is something shifting in her chest. “It is”
vii.
“Santiago- Jesus Amy that’s a lot of blood” she knows, she feels it seeping down her leg and can taste it in her mouth. Jake is pale.
“Fuck, fuck, Ames look at me” he’s sort of- holding her face, and that’s when she knows how bad this is, because Jake has never looked that scared before and his hands don’t shake like that. Oh God, her leg hurts so fucking bad, she can't speak because she’s afraid she’ll cough up blood. Jake is yelling into his radio “No Rosa this isn’t a fucking joke get down here Amy’s been shot-“he looks back to her, and it registers dimly that his hands are covered in her blood.
“Amy, hey.” He tries this pathetic half grin “it’s going to be fine, alright? Rosa is coming to get us and you're going to be fine. You can probably still make that lame pub quiz night you were telling me about, I’ll even be on your team if you want, yeah? Ames, you need to stay awake, Amy, Amy!” He is fading into the background and there is so much blood, and Jake is yelling her name, and she can hear the screech of Rosa’s cop car, and she falls off the back of her mind.
viii.
“Boyle, this could be worse”
“How?!” Boyle is staring, dumbstruck at his desk, which is covered in glitter. Whoever Gina paid to let her into the precinct and practise with Floorgasm overnight is fired. Without the severance package.
“Well, it could be happening to me” Jake finishes. Amy snorts, and then hates herself for it. Peralta does that weird thing with his head when he turns to her, beaming. She throws a handful of glitter at him.
ii.
“STOP CALLING ME, YOU JACKASS” she yells down the phone as soon as she answers, no joke, yells. Her cat wakes up and rolls off the bed in surprise.
“Santiago, I'm frankly very disappointed in your work ethic. As police officer you should be ready for calls at any ti-“
“I HOPE YOU DIE IN A FIRE”
“Charming, seeing as I’m only calling to tell you there was a murder tonight, you have to come in. Charles is meant to be on call but he’s at his grandmother’s dog’s funeral, I don’t know Rosa’s number and Terry blocked me after I accidentally forwarded that call from the ‘Nigerian Prince’ to him and his phone company reported him for being involved in a criminal conspiracy. We have to go tape the place off to civilians.”
“Oh.” She feels sick, she's never worked a murder before. Which is kind of insane because she's been on the job five months and it’s Brooklyn, but murders seem… big. Murders are the big time. “I thought you were just calling to sing ‘one hundred bottles of beer on the wall’ again because you were bored on the night shift”
“Nice to know you have such a high opinion of me.”
“Hold on…” she's turned on her lamp now, and the light is forcing her to think, “Charles’s grandmother didn’t have a dog, she hated animals and Charles was going on about how she once drowned his pet hamster or something yesterday in the break room” She narrows her eyes “And Charles took a week off to fly to her funeral last month.”
There is silence down the end of the line, until: “Amy it’s so boring down here you would not beli-“
She throws her phone against the wall.
vi.
“You don’t need to stay, you know. I've got this”
“I know” she says, before sitting down and picking up a file off his overflowing desk. “Let me look anyway.”
He’s staring at her like she’s offered to give him both kidneys, and she’s flushing under the nape of her collar.
xii.
When was the last time you saw Jake Gina had asked. What colour slacks was he wearing when he left? God, she can't remember. She takes a long gulp from the wine bottle and turns off the TV. Her apartment goes dark, and its three thirty in the morning, and a Wednesday, and it’s so quiet that maybe she’ll seep into it.
One hundred and thirty-seven days ago she thinks blithely, if Gina was still interested.