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Jake’s been home from Florida for a month now, back in the precinct for a week, and tonight’s the first night he and Amy have gone out for the night rather than retiring early for movie night (which is really just the flimsy excuse they tell people rather than the honest truth: hardcore making out on the couch). They’re at Shaw’s with the rest of the nine-nine and some of Jake’s old high school friends who just happened to be in the neighborhood, and from the moment they walked through the door Jake has been swarmed with people. Amy didn’t really seem to mind; she just smiled and waved him off.
His gaze keeps drifting to her, though; from where she sits at the bar with Rosa and Adrian, chatting over beers, to the dart boards with Terry and Charles, to the jukebox with Gina where she tries and fails to learn a quick dance routine to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun." He’s having fun, and she smiles and laughs more easily than he’s seen in the last month, so he’s convinced that this night out is exactly what they needed.
That is, until he notices that guy. He’s pretty innocuous as far as guys go - average height, only a hair more muscular than Jake (mostly because of the weight Jake accidentally lost while in Florida), and blond. Perhaps the most notable feature is a particularly defined jawline. At first, Jake didn’t even notice him. He came in with a pack of dudebros and sat in the back corner booth and laughed uproariously at something stupid, probably. No, Jake didn’t notice the guy until Amy took too spirited a step and spilled a mouthful of beer on Gina.
“Amy Santiago!” Gina shouted shrilly.
Jake was already watching Gina rush to the women's room, already laughing at Amy trying to sweep the beer up with her foot, but the sudden movement in the corner caught his eye. The blond dudebro whipped around at the sound of Amy's name, eyes wide and scanning over the crowd, and his whole face lit up in an amused grin when they landed on a giggling, pink-faced Amy.
Dudebro turns back to his table, sets his drink down, murmurs something to the dudebro beside him, and stands. Jake is frozen on the spot, oblivious to whatever conversation his high school friends are yammering on about, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing. His first thought is maybe the guy is one of her brothers - Jake’s yet to meet all of them - but it’s quickly dismissed when he remembers the photograph on Amy’s bedside table of all her siblings. They’re all definitely Cuban. Not a single blond in the pack. Plus, Amy managed to develop a sixth sense as a child to detect when her brothers were in the room with her and where they are at all times, and she hasn’t looked around in paranoia once.
Dudebro approaches Amy cautiously, reaches out slowly, barely brushes her shoulder. Amy turns to him and Jake recognizes the way her body moves immediately - this guy is definitely a former boyfriend. The tips of her ears flush red immediately and her eyes widen to that oh my God we used to boink circumference. No big deal, right?
Except...the guy is ridiculously good-looking. And he’s grinning at Amy. And talking really fast, and waving his hands around wildly, and...is Amy laughing?
She is. Her head falls back, her shoulders quake, and her silverbell laugh rings over the heads of those milling around between them. Jake clenches his jaw and tightens his grip around his beer. Not a big deal. Amy can laugh.
What she can’t do is reach out to grab onto Dudebro’s chiseled forearm. Distantly, he recognizes it’s probably just to keep her balance, but it’s so distant he can barely even acknowledge it as real.
Jake shoulders past his friends, hardly bothering to mutter an apology before he’s out of earshot. Dudebro’s gaze flickers to Jake over Amy’s shoulder, and Jake almost smirks when he throws his arm over Amy’s shoulder.
“Hi, babe!” She says brightly and way too loudly when she realizes it’s him. Okay, good, he’s caught her before her third drink, which is really just a slippery slope to her fourth and...well, bad things happen when Four-Drink Amy shows up. “Hey, there’s someone I want you to meet. This is Scott!”
“‘Sup?” Scott reaches out to shake Jake’s hand, and Jake grabs his hand begrudgingly, a little disappointed that his name wasn’t actually Dudebro.
“Scott and I used to date in college,” Amy explains loudly, and Jake works very hard to swallow the lump in his throat. “We were in all the same art history classes.”
“Aw, dude, remember Dr. Morris’ mole?” Scott reaches to lightly thump her upper arm, and Amy makes an exaggerated gagging motion, setting both her and Scott off into a fit of laughter.
“Amy and I have been partners for six years,” Jake says, wincing a little at the brutish quality of his voice. Both Scott and Amy blink at him in confusion. “And we’ve been dating for over a year, so…”
“That’s...uh, cool, man,” Scott says, glancing uncertainly at Amy. Amy’s brow is furrowed, and Jake knows she’s trying to probe him without words, so he keeps his gaze on Scott and a fake smile plastered to his face. “I hear all this commotion is in your honor.”
“Oh, yeah. I had to go to Florida for witness protection. ‘Cause I pissed off a mob boss. But Amy was super kick-ass and caught him about a month ago. She got a Medal of Valor.” He glances down at her and even though there are still a few creases between her eyebrows, she’s smiling. “This is the first time we’ve gone out with the nine-nine since I got back, on account of the fact that we’ve been so busy boinking -”
Amy smacks her palm against his diaphragm, knocking the air out of his lungs.
“Green is not a good color on you, Pineapples,” Gina’s finally returned from the bathroom; her eyebrows are arched, but the moment she notices Scott, her expression turns appraising. “Hi, Gina Linetti. You may recognize this from the fingernail painting emoji.” She extends her hand to him with a sultry wink.
Scott, to his credit, doesn’t seem all that put-off by anything that has just happened. He chuckles and takes Gina’s outstretched hand. “Scott Brooks. Nice to meet you, Gina.”
“Isn’t it?”
Scott and Gina dissolve in a strangely quiet flirting conversation, which Jake watches with a mix of rapt interest and vague disgust. He only looks away when Amy ducks out from beneath his arm and walks away.
“Ames, wait,” he jogs to catch up with her, and his stomach sinks when she doesn’t even look back at him. “I’m sorry!”
She ignores him, choosing instead to tap Rosa on the shoulder. “We’re headed out,” she says. Rosa stares at her for a second, glances over her shoulder at Jake, and then back to Amy with raised eyebrows. “Don’t worry about it. Can I have my purse?”
Rosa reaches beneath the bar where Amy’s purse hangs on a hook between her knees, and hands the strap over without a word.
Amy slings her purse over her shoulder, casts a glance back at Jake, and starts toward the door. He takes that as his cue to follow her, and he slumps along like a dog with his tail between his legs.
She doesn’t speak on the brisk walk back to her car, or when they’ve slid inside, or when she’s started the car and turned the heat up. “Ames,” he tries softly.
“Not yet,” she says, but he notes that her face seems to soften a little at his nickname.
So they ride in silence all the way back to their apartment, which is just long enough of a drive for Jake to regret every single thing he’s ever done wrong.
They trudge up the stairs in silence, and Jake stands a few paces back with his hands buried deep in his jacket pockets while Amy wrestles with the keys. Two-drink Amy, in addition to being too loud for her own good, is also a little uncoordinated. People don’t really notice it, because they’re too distracted by the fact that she’s literally screaming in their faces, but Jake noticed the very first time he saw Two-Drink Amy. He noticed everything about her, even back then.
She finally gets it unlocked after her fifth attempt, and she drops her purse on the table beside the keys rather than hanging it on the hook as she always does. She trots inside without a backwards glance, flicking lamps on as she goes, and Jake watches her retreat to their bedroom from where he stands locking the front door behind her. She closes the door, and he shoves his hands in his pockets again. He isn’t sure what to do, now. Should he try talking to her? No, he knows better than that. Amy needs time to work through her emotions, and she can’t do that when someone hovers over her.
But he can’t sleep on the couch, not when he knows he messed up so royally. What’s that thing people always say? Don’t sleep on the couch angry? Wait, no, that doesn’t make any sense. Plus he’s pretty sure it’s marriage advice.
Marriage advice. He’s been so surprised lately at how similar the advice people have given him on moving in with Amy is to marriage advice. But what’s even more surprising is how that realization doesn’t freak him out. He kind of almost likes the idea of being married to her. Actually, no, scratch that - he really likes the idea of being married to Amy Santiago. That's kind of the reason why he's been hiding that ring in the back corner of his sock drawer.
He’s been a mess of emotions ever since he got back from Florida, but only when Amy’s not around. When she’s around, things make sense. He sighs loudly and runs a hand through his hair. He can feel it stick up in awkward angles and thinks for the eighth time that day that it’s really, really time for a haircut.
At that precise moment, the bedroom door swings open. Amy’s changed from her work clothes to a pair of soft cotton shorts and her old faded student government shirt from high school. She folds her leg beneath her on the couch so that she’s sitting sideways, facing him. He waits until she gestures to the cushions before her to join her.
“You were jealous of Scott.” She says as he sits.
“What? No. I wasn’t jealous of Scott. ”
“Jake.”
“I wasn’t!”
“Oh my God, drop the act, Peralta! We’ve been too busy boinking ? Are you serious?”
“It’s true -”
“You can’t go all macho-man every time you see me talking to a guy from outside of the precinct! What, are you gonna fly off the handle when you see me talking to my old college friends at our wedding?”
Her face immediately flushes pink, and for a split-second he considers teasing her for it, but instead he just makes a mental note. “No, no, of course not. Look, I’m sorry,” he leans forward and takes her hand, and a tiny wave of relief washes through him when she doesn’t recoil from him. “I’m sorry, okay? I promise that will never happen again.”
“How am I supposed to know that? And I swear to God, if you tell me it’s a Peralta Guarantee, I’ll tell your mom that you threw her quiche out last week after she left.”
“Oh, God, don’t do that,” he closes his eyes and sighs, turns away from her, and glares at the coffee table. “I’m just, I’m...having a hard time vocalizing this.”
“Try.”
“Okay. Okay, so it’s...it’s just that...I had to go almost eight months without seeing you. Eight months, Ames.” He shifts a little, so that his knee is just barely touching hers, and peers up at her through his lashes. “And I missed you so much.”
She still looks pissed, but he can tell she’s starting to cool off.
“Sometimes I still miss you. Even when you’re sitting right next to me. It’s just like...I can’t get enough of you. I went so long and I was so worried about you and about us and...and I am so ridiculously in love with you.” Her fingers tighten around his briefly. “And I’m just...I don’t know. I’m not ready to share you with anyone else yet. So when I saw that guy making you laugh, I went a little...macho-man, I guess.”
The ghost of a smile flashes across her features.
“I know I acted like an idiot. And I’m sorry. I guess I’m just really possessive of you right now. I’ll work on it.”
“It’s okay,” she says softly. Her thumb rubs soothing circles against the back of his hand. “Honestly, I...I get it. I didn’t want to, because I really think that we should trust each other completely. But Doctor Meyers mentioned that jealousy and possessiveness are pretty common between domestic partners when they’re in situations similar to ours. And now that I’m imagining it from your point of view, I can see why you reacted like that. I don’t know that I would have handled it better if it had been the other way around.”
She smiles now, and pure relief floods his heart. “Of course you would’ve,” he says, tugging lightly on her fingers. “You’d’ve been like, ‘Hi, my name’s Amy, I’m hot as hell and this is my equally hot boyfriend Jake, so back off.’” She laughs her silverbell laugh, and Jake’s heart soars. “Oh, by the way, you’re gonna be too busy dancing your ass off to talk to anyone at our wedding.”
Her blush starts at the tip of her ears and shoots down her neck so quickly that Jake almost chokes on his laughter. She groans and buries her face in her hands. “I was so hoping you would let that slide.” She mumbles into her palms.
“Nope. Never.” He tugs on a lock of her hair gently until she peeks at him through her fingers. “We’re gonna dance our asses off all night, and then I’m gonna spend the rest of my life making you laugh way harder than Scott ever did.”
“Oh my God,” Amy throws her head back and groans loudly, which draws an appreciative laugh from Jake. “I really, really don’t think you have to worry about Scott. I’m about ninety percent sure he’s going home with Gina tonight.”
“What? That doesn’t make me feel better! Ugh, God, now he’s slept with half of the important women in my life! Keep him away from Diaz and my mom!”
She shuts him up with a kiss so searing he has no choice but to stumble backwards off the couch, straight into their bedroom.