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11:45 PM EDT
Rosa is very quickly learning that movies with Amy mean analysis. It’s not that she minds, really- she’s cute when she gets all excited, and usually pretty accurate- but the couple in row 4A was giving them dirty looks all throughout the film.
“The fight scene was very flashy,” Amy says, “but hardly accurate. I suppose it was entertaining enough, but all I could see was the- oh.”
Rosa glances over. Little can interrupt Amy once she really gets started, but now her brow is furrowed and she’s squinting across the street at a row of dirty shops that would not have looked out of place at a crime scene.
“What?” Rosa cranes her neck, trying to look in the same direction as Amy.
“I thought I saw a perp.” Amy’s hand closes over her purse, which Rosa knows for a fact contains at least one pair of handcuffs and a can of pepper spray. “He matched the photo we got last week.”
“No way,” Rosa says, giving up on trying to see him in the crowd. “The drug bust guy? We’ve been looking for him over two months!”
“I know,” Amy says. “I’m pretty sure . . . his hair is unforgettable.”
Rosa smirks. She can feel the anticipatory tingle of adrenaline in her veins. If Amy really saw him, if they’re about to shut down an old case with no leads or witnesses . . .
“He’s got ridiculous hair,” she agrees. “I say we follow him.”
Amy squeaks. “Follow him? Now? But we don’t have weapons, or backup, or a squad car, or anything! I’m wearing high heels, for heaven’s sake!” She gestures to her feet.
“It could be months before we get another chance,” Rosa says, and then pulls out her trump card. “You don’t want the Vulture to take our case, do you?” She emphasizes the our.
Amy bites her lip. “No,” she mutters, resignation clear in her tone. “Okay. He went that way, I think.”
That way is vague, but Rosa takes what she can get. She climbs into Amy’s car, and they’re off.
Tailing suspects by vehicle is tricky business, but he had a head start and they can’t hope to catch up to him any other way. Rosa spots him after about three blocks, weaving casually along the crowd. He’s an unmistakable match to the photo she spent hours comparing to every city surveillance camera in the area.
“Wow,” she says. “Nice find, Santiago.”
Amy blushes. She has a very full blush, leaving her entire face maroon. “Okay!” she says, voice a little higher-pitched than normal. “Let’s go catch that guy.”
They park by an unremarkable one-story building. Amy feeds the meter coins from her glovebox and Rosa complains about how it’s taking too long.
“He’s probably gone already,” she grumbles. “We’re cops. We shouldn’t have to pay the damn meter.”
“We’re off-duty cops,” Amy reminds her. “This’ll only take a few seconds.”
True to her word, three and a half seconds later, they’re bursting into the building, trying to look as threatening as possible in a thin-strapped dress (Amy) and a pair of sweatpants (Rosa. They still haven’t quite figured out who miscalculated the formality of the date).
“NYPD; put your hands . . .” Rosa trails off. The room is completely empty. “Goddammit! I could’ve sworn he came through here.”
“He probably did,” Amy says. She drops to the floor and crawls along it, poking around for a trapdoor. “I bet there’s a hidden entrance around here somewhere.”
Rosa crosses the room to investigate a closet door. She tries the knob, but it doesn’t budge.
“C’mere,” she calls. “I’m pretty sure this doesn’t hold cleaning supplies.”
Amy scowls at the door. “Can you pick the lock?”
“Normally, yes.” Rosa kicks it, trying not to be too loud. “I need more supplies than I have right now, though.”
“Okay,” Amy says. “Well, you know the best part of police work.”
Rosa grins. She and Amy argue about that sometimes, but she’s pretty sure Amy isn’t asking her to do paperwork. “Back up.”
It takes one powerful kick for the door to cave. Actually, it splinters, but it’s still impressive and very fun. Amy lets out a euphoric giggle, smiling through her hands at the remains of the door, and Rosa very courageously and patiently resists the urge to kiss her.
The closet doesn’t hold cleaning supplies. Instead, it holds a steep, narrow staircase leading into the shadows.
“Wow,” Amy says, and Rosa figures that sums it all up pretty well. “Oh my gosh, we found an actual secret bunker. This is so cool.”
Rosa dips her head so her hair covers her unprofessional grin. “You’ve found bunkers before, Santiago.”
“I know but this is like, straight out of a cop movie. Almost a cliché.”
Rosa digs around in her bag for a penlight, switching it on and holding it up carefully. “You really would think criminals would get more creative, but apparently not.”
Amy is so close Rosa can feel her breath, warm on her neck. They descend slowly, speaking in whispers. Rosa shines the tiny light on each wall, wishing what they see was more memorable.
“This was dumb of us,” Amy says. “We don’t have anything. We should have waited for backup.”
“No turning back now,” Rosa says which, okay, is not totally true. It would be easy enough to turn back and investigate in the morning. But she likes this, liked walking into the unknown, totally unprepared but with Amy at her side.
A light begins to grow clearer as they reach the bottom, coming from farther below. Rosa presses against the wall and breathes, searching for a plan.
“We cover the exits,” Amy whispers. Her mouth is very, very close to Rosa’s neck. It makes her hair stand on end. “They won’t be able to leave.”
Rosa doesn’t reply. It’s a good idea, but it doesn’t take into account that the perps might try to take them down, and they’re totally unprepared for one such scenario. She forces herself to stay calm, and they descend further, slowing down and focusing on being silent.
Rosa glances around the corner. The stairs let into a big room, lit by a couple dangling lightbulbs and covered in peeling paint. She counts eight guys, all speaking in low voices. They look at ease, but they’ve made a few rookie mistakes, most notably holding illegal meetings in a room with one narrow exit.
“Give me your shoe,” she whispers to Amy, so quiet that the pulse of blood in her ears almost drowns out the words.
“What? Why?” Amy is not great at being quiet, but the guys are too absorbed in whatever they’re doing to hear her.
“Trust me,” Rosa hisses through her teeth, and a second later the point of a plastic heel digs into her palm.
Rosa bursts from the stairs, waving the shoe around like a maniac. “NYPD, put your hands in the air!”
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Amy shift to fully cover the exit.
“What the hell?” One of the guys leers at her, and she resists the urge to break his arm. “Is that a high heel?”
Rosa smiles mirthlessly, fantasizing about killing him over and over again, which usually gives her a pretty good intimidating look. “You don’t want to know what I can do with this shoe. We clear?”
The guys shift, considering their options, and she realizes with relief that they don’t have weapons either. They probably weren’t expecting a raid this late when they had no reason to believe the police were after them.
“Are. We. Clear?” She points the heel at one of them.
“Crystal,” one of them mutters, and the others grumble in agreement.
Rosa’s tired. She relaxes. The shoe goes down.
They surge all at once towards Amy, and the only exit, in a blur of noise and confusion. Rosa gives chase, thinking of nothing but the startled look on her girlfriend’s face when the bust went awry.
She slams a guy onto the ground and presses the heel to his neck. She wishes, not for the first time, that she had a gun. She yanks him up and goes after the others.
It feels very right to fight back-to-back with Amy in a way that Rosa can’t explain. Eventually, they’re all lined up by shirt color (courtesy of Amy, what a dork) and Amy’s handcuffing each one.
She only has one pair of handcuffs, so she improvises. The guy they originally followed gets the pair, and all the others are bound with whatever else she can find- a phone charger, a scarf, and a lot of dental floss.
“That’s . . . imaginative,” Rosa says, and Amy flushes.
“Yeah,” she says. “I took a seminar on how to make handcuffs out of various items. Turned out that everyone else there had a very . . . different plan on how to use it. Oh God, never tell Jake that.”
Rosa snorts. “I’m not an idiot. I want the full story later, though.”
Amy mutters something that Rosa doesn’t quite catch. Her face looks like a beacon. “Anyway, it turned out to be pretty useful.” She focuses on tying the men together. She’s looking away from Rosa, and Rosa wishes she wouldn’t.
“Okay!” Amy says loudly, clapping. One of the guys closest to her winces. “All right, um . . . we’re taking my car, so you’d better not stain the upholstery.”
Rosa snorts, leaning against the wall. This is an entirely improvised arrest, and she’s loving every minute of it. They should do spontaneous police work more often.
Amy goes first, then eight grumpy men tied together, shepherded along by Rosa, who’s still holding Amy’s shoe. The staircase feels a lot longer when Amy and Rosa are separated by eight other people.
It’s raining by the time they surface, cold, biting rain that’s only a few degrees away from being snow. They push the perps into the backseat of Amy’s car, and Amy keeps narrowing her eyes at them through the mirror.
“They’re so dirty,” she hisses to Rosa when they’re stopped at a red light. She taps her fingernails against the wheel. “I’m going to have to powerwash the seats.”
Rosa stifles a smile, but doesn’t reply, and they drive on.
12:13 AM EDT
It’s about midnight when they reach the precinct. Amy insists they take the elevator for the first time in Rosa’s career because, “I’m still wearing one broken high heel and have had enough stairs for today, thank you very much.”
It’s supposed to be a quick stop to lock the perps away. They’ll go back to Amy’s apartment feeling satisfied and proud and they’ll discuss the movie more and maybe break out Amy’s granny alcohol to celebrate the bust. They’ll have a good night.
Of course, it doesn’t exactly work out that way.
The precinct looks weird with nobody there. Rosa has never been the first to get here or the last to leave, so she’s never seen it with the lights out, the furniture casting cool shadows on the wall, and everything’s so quiet.
She could get used to this.
Amy turns around from the cells, finishing locking up, and she has the dorkiest smile on her face. Rosa can only hope that she won’t do the fist pump, because she’s really powerless when it comes to the fist pump.
“New York Police Department,” she says, and she sounds exactly like an infomercial. “Making the world a safer place eight totally coincidental arrests at a time.”
Rosa doesn’t try to hide her smile this time. “I guess we’ll be back in the morning to finish all this up.”
Amy nods, and they’re halfway to the door before she freezes, smile gone. “Shit.”
Amy never swears. Amy developed a swear jar for the precinct once and made total bank. If Amy swears, the apocalypse is probably imminent.
“Uh-oh,” Rosa says. “Quarter in the jar, Santiago.”
Amy turns toward her, panicked. “All paperwork is due at precisely eight o’ clock tomorrow,” she says, and Rosa considers saying something a hell of a lot more colorful than “shit.”
“We were so caught up,” Amy says. “First time in Nine Nine history, actually. Everyone was ready.”
Eight perps, caught in the act of a drug ring that they didn’t even know was happening, who could most likely be a lead to arresting way more guys. All that adds up to a mountain of paperwork. Like, an actual mountain.
Rosa closes her eyes. “We’ll be here all night,” she says in a resigned voice.
“I know,” Amy says. “I’m so sorry, Rosa. This is a terrible date.”
“No way,” Rosa says because she can hardly let her girlfriend think that their date was ruined. “We busted a ton of perps and we didn’t even mean to. This is a great date. Now shut up and get over here so we can romantically interrogate those guys.”
Amy laughs a little. “That makes it sound like we’re trying to seduce them for information.”
Rosa wrinkles her nose. “That’s weird. We’re not doing that.”
Amy covers a yawn with one hand and Rosa realizes exactly how long this night is going to be. “How about you interrogate them and I start on paperwork? I’m not scary when I’m tired.”
Rosa shrugs because it’s true, Amy looks like a big-eyed kitten when she’s tired. “Okay,” she says, “but when I come help, we’re working at the same desk. This is still a date.”
Amy smiles, and her eyes are so bright and her face is so close and Rosa wants to kiss her over their incredible stack of paperwork.
Instead, she turns and heads into the interrogation chamber to see if she can still terrify people that saw her wield a high heel as a weapon.
1:32 AM EDT
Amy is like a machine. She types efficiently, spell-checks everything, and manages to talk to Rosa without pausing for a second. Rosa is impressed, and wonders when paperwork became such a life skill.
“How did the interrogation go?” she asks. “Please don’t say I have to add anything to this.”
Rosa scowls at her computer screen. There is no way that the word intriguing has that particular amalgamation of vowels, and why does she even have the word intriguing in her police report? She replaces it with interesting. “The interrogation was totally useless,” she says. “They know too much about us. They cracked a lot of jokes about shoes.” No, interesting doesn’t sound right. She deletes it and stares at the blinking line. “They’re so smug that we have to spend the night here; it’s annoying.”
“They have to spend the night here, too,” Amy reasons. “They really shouldn’t be smug. At least we get comfortable chairs.” She pauses. “There is no professional way to say that I handcuffed them with dental floss.”
“Try, ‘due to a lack of materials, equipment had to be improvised, but proved adequate,’” Rosa suggested.
“Hey, yeah. Thanks.” Amy types it in. “I really should be used to this, seeing as I’m partnered with Jake and all. ‘The evidence was found in a stuffed bear’ is an actual sentence that I have been forced to write.”
Rosa dimly recalls that story. “I don’t get why the perps aren’t scared of me,” she mutters. “They’re behind bars. They should be scared.”
“You are wearing sweatpants,” Amy says. “Do you think that the best way to add emphasis is italics or underlines?”
Rosa blinks. “Neither?” She leans back in her chair, staring at the ceiling. “God, this is boring. I’m going to put on some music.”
“Last time you did that, we spent more time arguing over who got to pick the songs than working.”
Rosa smirks a little at the memory. “That was when Gina was here,” she says. “We’re mature adults. We can agree on music.”
1:56 AM EDT
“Didn’t peg you as a classical kind of girl, Diaz.”
“Shut up.”
2:21 AM EDT
“I need coffee,” Amy declares dramatically. “I will likely implode if I don’t get caffeinated in the next twenty minutes.”
Rosa is slumped over her desk, forehead just touching the cool paper. “I’ll get a camera.”
“I don’t think the crappy break room coffee will be enough to sustain me,” Amy continues. “I need real coffee, and I will stop at nothing to get it.”
“Oh my god,” Rosa says. “Fine, I’ll come with you to tour half the city in an attempt to find a coffee shop open past ten.”
“Worst comes to worst, convenience stores stock Starbucks,” Amy says, but there’s a desperate note in her voice.
“I promised myself five years ago that I would never drink canned coffee, and I’m not going back on that now,” Rosa mutters, but she stands and follows Amy out into the night.
2:49 AM EDT
“Caffeine has replaced the blood coursing through my veins.” Amy drums her fingers against the desk. Her nails make an annoying clacking sound.
Rosa feels like the universe is conspiring against them because of course Amy will be super energetic right about when Rosa stops being able to move more than a few inches at a time.
“I feel so energized,” Amy says, and Rosa groans softly into her keyboard.
“I can totally do all this paperwork,” Amy mutters.
If Rosa flips her off, it can be chalked up to too much coffee, too little sleep, and words that are starting to blur together on her computer screen.
3:15 AM EDT
“Christ, how long did I sleep?”
Amy’s face is smudged with ink. Rosa wonders when exactly that happened. It’s kinda cute.
Amy straightens her ever-growing pile of papers. “About thirty minutes. You skipped four song turns.” She says this last bit with vindictive pride, as if she personally tricked Rosa into sleeping so she could listen to her own music for half an hour.
“I get to pick the next four songs,” Rosa says quickly. “Rules are rules.”
“Rules can’t be made up just to suit your purposes,” Amy says. The smudge is bright blue and spans the entirety of one cheek.
“Sure they can,” Rosa says. She leans forward and kisses Amy right on the smudge. Her lips come off tasting inky. “New rule: office PDA rules don’t count when we’re the only ones in the room.”
Amy twitches a little, and her eyebrows bunch together the way they do when she’s trying to be professional, and for a moment Rosa thinks that she’ll get a kiss back, maybe on the lips.
Instead, Amy says, “I think you should pick the next four songs.”
3:22 AM EDT
It is physically painful to watch Amy dance, but it’s also endlessly entertaining. Maybe Two Drink Amy can be sort of correlated to Four Hours Past Her Bedtime Amy. Rosa thinks she could be on to something. Exhaustion is a hell of a drug.
“Don’t headbang,” she calls out, wincing a little. “This is not a headbanging song.”
Rosa’s very mature girlfriend-slash-coworker responds by sticking her tongue out. She spends too much time with Jake, probably.
Still, headbanging with a ponytail is an admirably courageous endeavor on Amy’s part that also happens to be funny as hell.
“This is a good song,” Amy says. “You pick good songs, Rosa.”
Rosa covers her face. She’s getting a lot of secondhand embarrassment here. “I have great taste in music,” she says. “Hey, listen! The song is over! You can stop headbanging now!”
“Three exclamation points,” Amy says, amazed. “Wow. Fine, but only because I have a headache now.”
3:41 AM EDT
“Goddammit,” Rosa moans. “We have to sleep.”
“We only have three perps left, though,” Amy says. Her speech is a long slur of mumbling, but Rosa can make out the words. It’s a talent, really.
She grabs Amy’s most recent paper. “Babe, you went off on a three-paragraph spiel about dolphins here, and another one here.”
“Goddammit,” Amy agrees. “Well, at least I didn’t think ‘yhdghj’ was a word.”
Rosa rolls her eyes. “Not everyone has the energy to spell-check four times.”
“Twice,” Amy mumbles. “My standards are rapidly dropping.”
“Okay,” Rosa says. “Time for bed.”
“Okay,” Amy agrees, slumping off her chair and onto the floor, which looks really uncomfortable.
Rosa laughs. “How about the break room?” she suggests. “Carpeted floors and a sofa.”
Amy shoots her an exhausted thumbs-up from her facedown position on the floor, and Rosa drags her over, only bumping her against three filing cabinets.
By the time they’re both in the break room, Rosa is way too tired to climb onto the couch, so she collapses next to Amy. Their heads bump together, and their breaths sync up. Rosa’s exhausted and Amy’s cute, and everything seems sort of okay even though they’ve only done a little more than half their paperwork.
She closes her eyes and gets fifteen minutes of sharp, sweet sleep.
She’s a pretty light sleeper in general, even when she’s really fucking tired and would give an arm and a leg to not wake up for at least twenty-four hours.
This means that when Amy sneezes, she’s awake immediately, and a little concerned.
“Amy?” she mumbles, trying to make out the clock on the wall. What time is it?
“Oh, Rosa,” Amy’s voice is stuffy and Rosa sits up, more awake than ever. “I didn’t realize-,” she breaks off, coughing into her arm.
Rosa’s brain feels slow, too slow. “Are you having an allergic reaction?”
There’s a worrying pause before Amy says a very soft, “Probably?”
“Shit.” Rosa scrambles to her feet, helping Amy up. “Do you need to go to the hospital? What the fuck is even on that carpet?”
“I don’t know!” Amy says, and she sounds vaguely panicked and okay, keep calm Diaz. Rosa leads her out into the bullpen and eases her into her chair, hard-won in the Jimmy Jab Games.
“Okay,” Rosa says. “Okay, hey, breathe. Breathe, Amy.”
“That’s a little hard when my throat’s closing up!” and now Amy’s crossed into hysterics and they’re both freaking out and someone needs to stay calm, goddammit.
Rosa finds an EpiPen in Amy’s desk (actually, she finds three EpiPens and is suddenly really grateful that her girlfriend is probably the most prepared woman in Brooklyn) and she really, really doesn’t know how to do this.
“Jab my arm,” Amy says, and Rosa does, relieved. She’s good at stabbing things, and now that skill is sort of coming in handy.
“Should I stab you with another one?” Rosa asks and she’s totally not panicking not at all she’s the calm one here.
“No,” Amy says. “No, I think I’m okay, just wait.”
Rosa is really, really, really bad at waiting, especially when Amy could be dying and the only reassurance she has is “I think I’m okay.”
But they wait. Amy’s head ended up in Rosa’s lap at some point during the proceedings, and now Rosa’s loathe to let it go, and if she strokes Amy’s hair it’s because she just had the biggest fucking scare of her life and she’s allowed to stroke her girlfriend’s hair a little.
“I’m okay now,” Amy says. “My throat’s back to normal. I think.”
“Thank you for keeping three EpiPens in your desk,” Rosa says.
“Thank you for figuring out that I keep three EpiPens in my desk.”
“You’re Amy Santiago. Of course you have three EpiPens in your desk.”
Amy settles back, and Rosa likes the pressure on her legs. “Mmm,” she says. “That was scary.”
“Yeah,” Rosa stares up at the ceiling. “Super scary.”
They sit like that for a while, not quite talking, just letting themselves touch.
3:32 AM EDT
“Hey,” Rosa says. “If you’re not too tired, maybe we should go outside. I don’t know what was on that carpet, but it could be everywhere else, too.”
“I bet the stars are out,” Amy says. Her voice seems very quiet. “I bet they’re gorgeous.”
Rosa pushes her up a little, gripping the back of her chair for support. “Yeah,” she says, and they head out again.
The stars are out, and the stars are gorgeous. Amy tries to count them until her cheeks are pink from the cold and from smiling too much, and she has to start over again and again. Rosa helps after the fifth, “oh damn, I lost count.” They perch on the rickety fire escape, squeezed together on one step, watching the sky.
“Thirty-three,” Amy says. “That one, you see it? That’s number thirty-three.”
Rosa can’t tell where Amy’s pointing at all, but she doesn’t mention it. She counts a thirty-fourth, one that Amy’s probably already counted, because this is a very difficult activity to do with two people.
“Thirty-five,” Amy says, burrowing deeper into Rosa’s side and what, no, of course they’re not snuggling. Rosa Diaz doesn’t snuggle.
“I already counted that one,” Rosa says. “Look somewhere else.”
“How do you know?” Amy asks. “I didn’t even point.”
“I just do. Oh, shut up, don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like a baby animal, or whatever- hey, stop laughing!”
“Sorry.” Amy sounds distinctly unapologetic.
“Better be,” Rosa huffs. “Oh hey, thirty-six.”
Amy wrinkles her nose. “Okay, as much as I love this game, it is really cold and I am really tired and I vote we go back inside.”
“That’s two votes for, none against.” Rosa stands up, stretching. “Let’s go face the paperwork.”
“Oh God, don’t say that,” Amy begs. She tries the door. “Er. Rosa?”
Rosa really doesn’t like the sound of that. She tries the door too and learns that they have indeed locked themselves out in thirty-degree weather.
“You can pick locks, right?” Amy asks. There’s a definite note of desperation in her voice. “This shouldn’t be a problem.”
Rosa shakes the handle, scowling. “I didn’t expect the Captain to listen to me when I told him to make this place harder to break into. Fuck, what did he do?”
“It sounds like a very good idea to make this place harder to break into,” Amy says, ever-loyal to both Rosa and Holt. “I just don’t find it a very good idea right this minute.”
“I’m with you there.” Rosa kicks the door. It doesn’t budge. “This is our second break-in tonight,” she mutters.
“Third,” Amy corrects, “if you’re counting getting into the office in the first place. I still don’t know why you have a key.”
“Can’t tell you all my secrets just because we’re boning,” Rosa says distractedly. “Shit. Santiago, do you have a pin in your purse or something?”
“I do, actually,” Amy says and for a brief, joyful second Rosa thinks that maybe they won’t have to spend the night up here. “I just, um- left it inside.”
“Well.” Rosa kicks the door again, just for fun. “Where are we? Thirty-six stars?”
Amy groans and rests her face in her hands.
4:13 AM EDT
It takes a total of forty-five minutes, eight increasingly creative lockpicking strategies, and a lot of senseless violence against inanimate objects to get the door open, all of which is difficult with numb fingers and biting wind.
Amy moans as they fall into the bullpen. “Warmth . . .” She blows on her hands, rubbing them together. “Thank you so much.”
“I don’t want to be stuck out there any more than you do,” Rosa says, and if she takes Amy’s hand it’s just because it’s super cold and they should be conserving body heat as much as possible. Honest.
Amy smiles in that dorky way of hers in which she sucks her lips in and pretends she isn’t smiling at all.
“I am weirdly energized,” Rosa says. “I could have sworn I was exhausted an hour ago.”
“It’s the cold,” Amy says sagely. “It wakes you up like nothing else.” She pauses, staring at the still enormous stack of paperwork. “God, I need coffee.”
“No,” Rosa says, and that’s the end of that. Neither of them wants to get locked out again.
They settle in again, and Rosa puts on some music that she thinks Amy will like but not be encouraged to dance to, and they work quietly, and if Rosa notices how cute Amy looks when she’s chewing on her pen cap, that’s just because the human eye is naturally drawn to movement and there isn’t a lot of movement in this room.
Rosa makes about seven million spelling mistakes and creates a lot of new words that Holt probably won’t be impressed with, and she looks over twice to see Amy writing about feminism and the history of punctuation, respectively.
But they’re working and they’re getting a lot done, and if Rosa marvels about how, even in a rumpled dress and bloodshot eyes, Amy looks like a queen, it’s because she’s really tired.
5:16 AM EDT
“We should write a song about coffee,” Amy informs Rosa as they stand in line at the convenience store. It took only six sleepless hours to get Rosa to break her promise and drink canned coffee like she’s dying of thirst, and she’s pretty disappointed in herself.
“That sounds like a disaster.” Why is the line so long? How many people really run out at- god, is it five in the morning?- to get coffee?
“Gina could create an interpretive dance,” Amy muses. To Rosa’s neverending horror, she sounds like she’s actually considering it.
“No,” Rosa says, as firm as she can ever be with Amy. “No song, no interpretive dance. Christ, Santiago, I thought you were smart.”
“Not when it’s five fifteen in the morning and I got like fifteen minutes of sleep,” Amy says. “Do we have to pay extra if I open this right now? I can’t go five more seconds without caffeine.”
“Go wild,” Rosa says, distracted by the tacky Brooklyn magnets on the rotating display by the window. Briefly, she considers getting one for Jake as a joke, but he’d probably think it was a sincere gift and really love it, and where’s the fun in that.
Amy manages to drink an entire can of coffee before they reach the cash register. There should be a limit on the amount of coffee people are allowed to drink at one time, Rosa decides. She and Amy probably went way over that limit five hours ago.
They play rock-paper-scissors to see who drives and who power-naps in the passenger seat, and Rosa loses. She doesn’t know how she’s so bad at rock-paper-scissors. Is it even possible to be bad at rock-paper-scissors? Maybe it has something to do with how she always picks rock.
Based on how the rest of the night has been going, she wouldn’t be surprised if they got into a car crash or something, but they manage a safe drive back to the precinct. Rosa shakes Amy awake so they can suffer together, and they settle down with about six cans of coffee each to do more fun paperwork.
6:08 AM EDT
“Done!” Amy shrieks, and it’s so loud that one of the perps in the cells rolls over in his sleep, grumbling something or other.
Rosa holds up her hand for a high-five because she has less than ten sentences to go, and the sun’s starting to come up, and oh god, they did it, they stayed awake longer than it should be possible for two humans to stay awake, and they finished their fucking paperwork.
Amy totally misses coming in for the high-five and ends up on Rosa’s lap somehow, dissolving into sleepy laughter. Rosa doesn’t move her, instead trying to type faster and BS her way through the last ten sentences.
When she’s done too, she hits “Save” four times and rolls off the chair, taking Amy with her. Amy giggles harder, and they roll on the floor a bit, overcome with sleep-deprived euphoria at being done.
If they fall asleep intertwined together, with not an inch of space between them, it’s because it’s cold and they’re tired and they’re blissfully, blissfully happy.
8:12 AM EDT
Rosa wakes to the flash of a camera, which she definitely does not appreciate, and a couple muted sniggers, which she appreciates even less.
She’s so tired that she can’t even open her eyes, so she blindly reaches out, hoping to hit someone. “Fuck you, Peralta,” she says, because this is definitely Jake’s work.
“Someone stay up late last night?” he asks, and how is it possible that she can hear him wiggle his eyebrows?
“Shut up,” she says, burying her face in the nearest soft thing, which is probably Amy’s dress, given the hoots that rise up from the peanut gallery. “Everyone. Shut up and let me die.”
She feels Amy shift, and Jake laughs. “Okay, let me guess- you got drunk, broke in, and trashed the place.”
Amy shifts further, and someone says, “That’s lewd, Santiago,” and it’s either Jake or Gina. She wishes she could open her eyes.
“What on Earth happened here?” That’s Holt, but if Rosa couldn’t tell by the voice, she can definitely tell by the little whimper that escapes Amy.
“We didn’t get drunk, sir,” Amy says. Why is it so fucking bright in here, what did they do to deserve this? “I swear- oh, you might need to sign this.” Rosa can hear the crinkle of papers, and she decides to be helpful.
She feels around until she finds another sheet of paperwork, probably hers because she saw Amy organize her stacks at least nine times. She holds it up for the captain to see. “And this, and a lot of other things. Permission to take the day off?”
“Okay, okay,” Jake says, barely contained glee in his voice. “You got drunk and . . . did paperwork?”
“It’s Amy,” Gina says. “What do you expect?”
“And Rosa, though.” She’ll kill Boyle. She’ll kill them all. “That changes things.”
“We weren’t drunk,” Amy says. “We accidentally caught eight perps and stayed up the whole night completing the paperwork.”
“Hey,” Rosa says to no one in particular, because she’s never opening her eyes again. “What time is it?”
Boyle coughs slightly. “Eight-fifteen a.m.”
“Two hours of sleep,” Rosa says. “That’s actually better than I expected.”
“Go home,” Holt says. “Both of you. We’ll talk to your perps.”
Someone- probably Amy, actually- drags Rosa to her feet. “Open your eyes,” she says, and yep, definitely Amy.
“Never,” Rosa says, so Amy drags her across the bullpen and over to the elevator. She bumps into three filing cabinets on the way, which really feels like karma being a bitch.
They file into the elevator for the second time in Rosa Diaz’s career, and it’s only then that she opens her eyes.
Everything’s blurry and way too bright, but she can make out Amy’s face, cute and smiling.
“That was a disastrous date,” Amy says, but her laughter doesn’t sound forced.
“It was perfect,” Rosa says, which is probably the cheesiest thing she’s ever said in her whole life, so she hopes Amy doesn’t get used to it.
If the elevator doors open on Detective Diaz and Detective Santiago kissing, it’s simply because they really like each other and just had the best-worst date of their lives.