from a wild or overly fanciful imagination

the writing journal of santiagos-peralta i own nothing. everything you recognise belongs to authors, creators, channels, writers etc.

[evilhagwoman]

some kind of jake unrequited love drabble?

(or he thinks unrequited I mean)

((Set after Tactical Village but before Charges and Specs. I’d set it in current B99 time but we’re not entirely sure how Jake’s feeling so I decided to play it safe—hope you don’t mind, anon?))

i’m spinning around in circles also on a03

Of course, just because you’ve had your big realisation about your feelings, it doesn’t mean Amy suddenly realises she feels the same way—except in the daydreams you allow yourself to spin before you go to sleep.  

Far from it in fact. It seems like every day she comes in with a new story of Perfect Teddy and what a Perfect Boyfriend he is. You don’t begrudge her her happiness just because it isn’t with you (really, how can you when she comes in with a smile on her face in the mornings and sometimes directs it at you?) but it doesn’t stop you wishing it was.

And sure, you’ve liked unavailable people before this thing you have for Amy, but you also usually move on pretty quickly and painlessly. Aside from Jenny Gildenhorn -which is really the only comparable situation you have to this even if it was in the 8th Grade- it isn’t usually that hard for you to bounce back from romantic knocks.  

For the foreseeable future at least, there is no bouncing back from liking Amy Santiago. 

Read More

[evilhagwoman]

(anon because i deleted one account and haven't started another because essays but if i didn't i would be myself) ANYWAY jake/amy prompts are all established relationship fluff: jake and amy trying to persuade each-other of baby names (amy would SO want to call it raymond), jake and amy trying to plan a wedding and the squad offers unhelpful input, jake and amy wake-up hung over and very late to something important and bicker constantly over hazy memories of what went down last night.

((I chose scenario #1 :) I hope this is something like what you wanted, anon?? nothing really happens (and I mean, at all) in this fic but future Jake and Amy name choosing and a little glimpse into future events in their relationship. Hope you like it!))

love you tenderly, love you sweet– that’s what i’ll do

“I know I didn’t write it down but I mean… Raymond is kind of a timeless boys name, don’t you think?” Amy muses out loud.

Jake looks up from The List, eyes narrowed. “I worry about you sometimes,” he says.

“What? I’m just saying, it’s not a bad idea! Anyway, that’s a bit rich coming from the guy who’s first boys name suggestions were-“ Amy swipes The List from his side of the table to read from it “-‘John McClane Peralta’, ‘JJ (Jake Junior)’ and ‘Jacob Peralta II’. I would have crossed them out immediately if it weren’t for The List rule.”  

“Hey, they were good suggestions! Let the record reflect that I only agreed to cross them off very reluctantly!”

Read More

[evilhagwoman]

Can i request jake/amy, preferably them being sneaky about their relationship and maybe Diaz figures it out or something

((sorry about the wait for this justmeamirxh—I reinterpreted the prompt just slightly but it’s still full of theidiots attempting secret dating so I hope you enjoy it! Thank you for thisprompt because have to say, I had a lotof fun writing this! Not a huge fan of how I’ve ended this but I don’t think Iwas ever going to be happy with it. Oh well.))

 when it’s cold outside, i got themonth of may (also on ao3)

“Detectives,”Holt greets Jake and Amy as they enter. He notes their formal wear with either mildinterest or suspicion, Amy can’t tell which. “I apologise for the interruptionto your evenings.”

“What thehell is so urgent?” Jake asks. He sounds as exasperated as Amy feels, but sheisn’t brave enough to verbalise it in front of Holt. “We were on a date!”

Thisstatement is enough to make the entire bullpen grind to a halt, every pair ofeyes turning on them. Amy turns bright red under the attention and shoots a panickedlook at Jake because this is definitely not the way she wanted everyone to findout.

“And bythat I obviously mean— dates, plural,”Jake back-pedals carefully. “Amy with a dashing, young stud called… Jack, and I with a lovely lady called…May. Amy and I just met each other outside and walked in at the same time. Fromour separate dates that were in different places. Obviously.”

Read More

[chi-merical]

ourveryclosetalking said: Hi ! Amy is high on meds and Jake take care of her !

((I’m taking a bit of creative license with Amy’s injury because despite my best googling, I’m not sure what kind of injury would require drugs that would have a ‘high’ effect on her. So please do your best to ignore inaccuracies for the conceit of the fic. I have no medical knowledge to speak of and it will more than likely show

It’s not my best work -I did write most of it in a train station this morning- but I hope you enjoy it!))

-/-

Jake watches Amy turn her head away for a split second and suddenly the B&E perp they’ve been chasing for two weeks is behind her, arm raised above her head. Jake’s eyes zero in with absolutely gut-wrenching terror on the black object he’s holding.  

“Santiago!” Jake yells just a second too late.  

Amy looks around just as the butt of the gun cracks sickeningly into her skull and her body folds under her, flopping against the shipping container she was standing next to. Everything happens very fast after that. Jake rounds on the perp, his own gun raised with the safety off, the blood pounding through his veins and ringing in his ears so hard and loud he barely hears himself thunder, “Drop the weapon! Drop your weapon now!”

The perp hasn’t recovered quickly enough from the hit to Amy that he’s in a position to have a gun stand-off with Jake and seems to know it, dropping the gun on the floor and putting his hands up.

“You’re going to kick the gun to me, then slowly kneel with your hands on your head,” Jake commands.  

The perp takes a second too long for his liking. “Now!” Jake yells, the sound reverberating around the warehouse and usually Jake would delight that even the perp jumps at the fury in his voice but at present, Jake can barely think through the fury and worry he’s feeling enough to do his job. The perp finally does as he’s told and three uniform officers come up behind Jake, guns pointed at the perp.

“Jones, cuff the bastard and get him out of here. De Souza, Fisher, radio for an ambulance and then go check he’s not got any associates up ahead,” Jake instructs brusquely, not training his gun off the perp till he’s in cuffs and being carted out.

He runs so fast across the distance to Amy that his feet skid, and he comes down hard on his knees but he barely cares. His hands flutter to Amy’s face, to the massive egg that’s already forming on her forehead, and all his mandatory NYPD first aid goes out the window.

“Amy,” he whispers desperately.  

-/-

“I’m fine,” Amy protests later while the nurses fuss around her. Jake’s half listening to her and half to Holt on the phone. “I just have a bit of a headache, that’s all. I want to go back to work.”

“You’re not going anywhere until we get the results of the X-Ray back, honey, and work is going to be out of the question for at least a few days,” one of the nurses informs her firmly but sympathetically. “We need to confirm there’s no fracture to your skull. And that headache you have right now is only going to get worse, you’re going to need some pretty powerful painkillers very soon.”  

The nurse puts his hand on Amy’s arm. “Is there anyone we can call to come and sit with you? Family member or someone you’re close to?”

Jake can see Amy about to say ‘no’; her parents are hours away in New Jersey and she wouldn’t want them to worry anyway. The brother who lives closest, Rafe, is away with his husband for two weeks. Kylie is at work. All of these thoughts seem to occur to Amy at the same time they occur to Jake and abruptly she looks so lonely that it breaks his heart.

Jake puts his hand over the speaker on his phone. “I’ll stay with her. I’m her boyfriend” Jake lies smoothly. Amy looks over at him, shocked, but stifles it when the nurse looks between them with an eyebrow raised.

“The NYPD allows you to work together?” the nurse asks sceptically.

“We’re partners in everything we do,” Jake explains. He hates Doug Judy, but he’s big enough to admit the man has a way with words.

The nurse still doesn’t look entirely convinced but nods, allowing it. He and the other nurses leave soon after, reassuring Amy they’d be back with painkillers.

“Thank you,” Amy mouths to him and Jake nods with a smile, resuming his debrief to Holt.

-/-

“I like your surname, did you know that?”

“Thanks,” Jake says, touched, shuffling the deck of cards. “I was born with it.”

“Peralta.” Amy tests it out experimentally, as though she doesn’t call him by it at least fifteen times a day –and sadly, ignores his frankly brilliant joke. “Purr-alt-tah. Par-alttt-a. Pear-all-ttuh!”

His surname is repeated back to him in at least five different phonetic variations (Jake loses count) until Amy finally settles on ‘Peralta’. Jake doesn’t mind that she’s effectively wasted a good two minutes of their lives –how can he, when she’s so doped up on pain medication she barely knows what she’s saying anyway?- plus… it’s strangely satisfying to watch her mouth form his name in slow motion.  

Of course, he’d prefer that she wasn’t hurt at all to see it but watching Amy when she’s like this, loose and mental filter-free, is an interesting experience. They’ve been playing Snap with the deck of cards a nurse provided from the  hospital staffroom and even that’s an amusing sight because her reaction times are so skewed from the pain killers. He just lets her win most of the rounds because her childlike celebrations are so endearing.

Amy gasps suddenly, grabbing Jake’s arm tightly. The cards slip out of his hands and spill out all over her bed and the floor. He looks up at her, alarmed.

“Holt,” she breathes, gaze fixed outside her room. Holt is indeed standing outside her room and gives them a brief nod, waiting to be invited in. Amy turns to Jake, eyes wide. “Jake, you have to make him leave.”

“What? Why?”

“He can’t see me like this, Jake, I’m high on drugs!” She stages-whispers the last word so dramatically Jake struggles to hold in a laugh. Amy glares and hits him in the arm and it’s surprisingly hard for a woman who’s muscle control is impaired right now.

“You’re high on prescription drugs given to you by trained medical staff, Ames. It’s not like you’ve been injecting heroin into your eyeballs.”

Amy effectively ignores him. “All my hard work on our burgeoning mentor/mentee relationship will be for naught!” she wails. “His inclining-towards-favourable opinion of me gone forever. I’ll never make captain now. My life is ruined.”

“I’ll just get him to leave, shall I?” Jake suggests.

“Yes! Make him leave!” Amy says eagerly. “Tell him I’m highly contagious if you have to.”

“Yeah, I don’t think a contagious head injury is going to convince him, somehow,” Jake tells her as he gets up and heads towards the door. He clicks it shut behind him and walks over to Holt.

“How is she?” Holt asks.  

“She’s okay,” Jake says. “They don’t think there’s a skull fracture, but they’re waiting on x-rays to confirm. She’ll be out of action for a few days, maybe a week. She’s on some pretty powerful medication right now.”

Holt nods. “Well, I’ll speak with Amy then we can get going back to the precinct. Everyone is very concerned about her.”

Jake holds his hand up to stop him as Holt grabs the door handle. “Sir, I don’t think talking to her is a good idea right now.”

“Why not?”

“Like I said, she’s on powerful painkillers right now and she’s not really got any filter right now. She’s a bit-” They both look through the blinds into Amy’s room. Amy, who had been watching cautiously from behind her blankets, pulls them right over her head to hide her face. “-embarrassed,” Jake finishes.

“Oh.” Holt says, sounding disappointed. “I was going to give her this handmade well wishes card Terry made for her on his lunch break.”

Holt holds out a sheet of what looks like A4 printer paper folded in half. The words ‘Get Well Soon, Amy!’ have been neatly cut out of POLICE DO NOT CROSS tape and stuck on the front, with a pencil sketch of the squad in the precinct underneath. Jake can see messages from the squad inside.

“I can give it to her. Honestly, sir, the best gift you can give her is to let her regain her usual  slightly awkward but always well-meaning composure before she has to talk to you.”

“As you well you know, I don’t believe in gift giving or receiving but I will… defer to your judgement on this, Peralta.”

“Amy will thank you for it. And sir,” Jake starts.  He looks at Amy through the blinds then back at Holt. “I know it’s short notice and I shouldn’t ask but… could I have the afternoon off?”

Holt follows Jake’s gaze to Amy in the room, then stares at him for a long moment in a way that makes Jake think Holt knows everything--that wanting to stay with Amy might not just be about being a close work partner. Jake shifts uncomfortably.

“Okay,” Holt finally says and Jake breathes a sigh of relief. He doesn’t know if he could have gone back to work today while knowing Amy’s injured in the hospital on her own.

“I’ll do enough free overtime to make up for mine and Amy’s absences this afternoon,” Jake tells him. Holt looks surprised he’s offered.

“You’re a good partner, Jake. Give Santiago my best.”

“Of course. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Jake watches Holt leave then nods to himself and goes back into Amy’s room, his heart buoying at the huge smile she’s giving him.

“You did it! Jake, you’re the best!”

“I know,” Jake replies sagely, taking his place next to her bed again. There’s nowhere else he’d rather be. “It’s a burden I have to carry. Now I believe the Snap scores were 23-15 to me?”

[chi-merical]

((Your typical, trope-y, run-of-the-mill pregnancy scare fic. There’s no call for it really. Title from Laughing by Hooded Fang))

no matter, baby, what the days bring i’ll be there (also on ff.net and a03)

Amy throws up at a crime scene.

Not unheard of for a cop really, but Jake knows it’s unusual for Amy because –though he’s loathe to admit it- she’s usually got a stronger stomach than even he has plus the gunshot wound to the head that prompted her vomiting session doesn’teven make the list of the most gruesome cases she’s worked since she’s been acop.

Jake isn’t even there to be the supportive boyfriend and hold her hair back, instead finding out through a brief text from Rosa. He does make a point to get back tothe precinct as quickly as his department store robbery case with Charles will allow (Charles actually has to convince him out of putting the sirens on when the traffic gets bad) and he finds Amy hunched over her desk, looking pale and drawn.

“Amy,” he says, kneeling next to her. He gently touches her forehead with one hand and takes hers with the other. “Rosa text me, told me what happened.”

“Of course she did,” Amy sighs, rolling her eyes.

“You still look queasy,” Jake says, searching her face in concern. “Are you okay?”

Maybe if he’d known how she was going to reply, he’d have asked her somewhere slightly more private than the middle of the busy bullpen at midday when everyone is rushing around trying to get whatever they’re doing done so they can go off to lunch. Amy takes a jagged breath in, takes his other hand and says, “Jake… I might be pregnant.”

And just like that, his entire world narrows down to a single point.

-/-

It isn’t that he couldn’t see himself doing the parenthood thing with Amy one day. Honestly, he’s actually pretty sure he wants to spend the rest of his life with her-- not that he’s going to tell her that just yet, at risk of going ‘Full Peralta’ as it were.

The thing is, he and Amy just haven’t been dating that long. Five months is not nearly long enough that something as huge a commitment as a tiny human isn’t mind-blowingly terrifying.

He definitely isn’t financially stable enough and/or far enough out of his crushing debt yet to support a kid on his salary and while he thinks Amy probably is (being the financially savvy of the pair of them) he’s also pretty sure she wanted to be a little further along in her goal of eventual captaincy before children. Jake wouldn’t be surprised if she had a detailed life plan hidden away somewhere laying out the specific year in which every major life event would take place for her.  

Long story short, neither of them are ready for this.

“We’re not ready for this,” Amy says to him when they’re at lunch that day, steadily rising panic in her voice. “We are so not ready for this, Jake.”

Jake takes her hand over the table, lacing their fingers together. “Everything’s going to be fine. We don’t even know if you’re actually -you know. If you’re really--”

Despite his best efforts, his mouth still can’t quite form the word so he gestures with his other hand; making a round pregnancy belly in mid-air and pointing vaguely at her abdomen.

“-Pregnant,” Amy supplies.

Jake feels a bit dizzy every time he hears it and even without the possible-maybe pregnancy hormones that Amy may or may not have been experiencing, he absolutely gets why she threw up this morning. He might be a dad. He’s thirty-four, barely has a relationship with his own father and he might be one.

“Yeah, that.” Jake does his best to collect himself because he knows whatever he’s feeling about this, it’s going to be magnified ten times for Amy. She doesn’t need her boyfriend to be a nervous wreck right now. “We don’t know yet so we’re not going to freak out. Holt gave you the afternoon off so you go to the pharmacy and buy a test. I’ll get there as soon as I can after my shift. If it’s negative, then nothing changes-”

“And if it’s not?” Amy asks.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Jake says. Amy doesn’t look comforted by this so Jake reaches across the table to cup her face, looking straight into her eyes. “Amy, whatever you want to do, you know I’ll support you, right? If you think it’s too soon and you want to have an abortion, I’ll support you. If you want to keep it, then… we’ll work something out. Together. Okay?”

Jake smiles at her and notes with relief that some of the tension releases out of her shoulders as she smiles back a little and leans into his hand. “Okay,” she says in an exhale.

The clock in the café they’re sitting in tells him he’s already ten minutes over his lunch break and he winces. “I should get back to work.”

He has no idea how he’s ever going to concentrate on work for the next four and a half hours but he can’t exactly .

They both stand up but Jake stops her leaving with a hand, a sudden worry eclipsing his mind. “Look, um,” Jake starts uncertainly. “I know you’re freaking out right now and I totally get that but could you wait until I’m there before you do the test? Please? I just- I really want to be there.”

He wouldn’t necessarily blame her for wanting to know as soon as possible so he’s pleading with her rather than demanding. It’s important to him for two reasons: first and most importantly, because he wants to be there for her; second, because there’s a chance she is pregnant and there’s a chance she might want to keep the baby even despite the complications it’ll inevitably bring to every aspect of their lives. And in that case, he’s going to start as he means to go on—being there.

Amy watches him for a long moment, then says, “Okay.”

Jake lets out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding. “Thank you.” He kisses her, holding her face for a few seconds when he pulls away. “Get the tests, go home and take it easy. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

-/-

As soon as I can, much to Jake’s frustration, ends up being evening the next day because a time sensitive lead comes up in his and Charles’ robbery case and there’s no way he can get out of it. He tries to though, and Holt and Charles look at him suspiciously when he wheedles out every excuse he can think of to leave—usually he’s so wrapped up in wanting to solve the case that he’ll work to all hours to solve it.

Jake’s pretty sure they’d let him out of it if they knew the real reason he wants to leave. Then again, he’s also certain the news of ‘Amy might be pregnant’ would end up filtering around the precinct as ‘Amy is pregnant’ and that’s definitely not going to help anything. Amy wouldn’t want people knowing their business anyway. He watches the hours tick by with ever increasing annoyance and sends Amy a bunch of apology texts, sick with guilt that he’s –albeit unintentionally- drawing this out even more for her.

It’s 1 AM when they realise the lead is a bust. In response, Jake excuses himself, goes into the break room and hurls a mug at the floor (which he realises on reflection whilst cleaning up the shards, was actually Rosa’s favourite. He leaves her an IOU note on the counter.)

Amy finds him fast asleep on the break room couch the next morning under Gina’s angry unicorn blanket. Jake wakes up to find her sitting on the edge of the couch next to him and combing her fingers through his hair. He scrambles awake, panicked. “Did you take-”

Amy shakes her head no and Jake relaxes. “Tonight,” she says. “We’ll do it then.”

-/-

By mid morning, Jake is back at the department store with Charles. Not that he’s really contributing much to solving the robbery case at present—Charles is taking the lead on interviewing the employees and the owner while Jake confirms minor details with crime techs.

(Ever since the text from Rosa yesterday, it would be fair to say Jake hasn’t been giving this case as much attention as it really deserves.)

After a crime tech finishes talking to him, Jake drifts away from the immediate crime scene and before he even realises it he’s next to the infant and baby section on the floor. He’s never lingered in this section of a store very long before now and suddenly it looks like the most intimidating place in the universe—tiny versions of adult clothes and things called baby grows and strollers and baby bottles and baby monitors and that isn’t even the half of it. The sheer amount of stuff you apparently need to take care of a small human before they can even walk is overwhelming. Not only that, but most of the stuff is unreasonably expensive too. If Amy is pregnant and they do decide to keep it, Jake’s definitely going to have to auction the last massage chair he fought hard to keep when Gina helped him pay off some of his credit card bills by putting his stuff on eBay.

Ten minutes later, Charles finds him rooted to the spot with a pack of baby socks in his hand.

“Jake?” Charles says, making Jake jump. “Ready to go?”

Jake shakes himself out of his daze. “Oh. Yeah. You got everything?”

“I think so,” Charles confirms. He then looks pointedly at Jake’s hand, at the baby socks he’s still holding.

“Oh right, yeah.” Jake quickly hooks them back on the rail he got them from. Charles is still looking at him oddly so Jake forces a smile and says, “Tiny versions of things are hilarious” by way of explanation.

 -/-

 They go back to Amy’s apartment after work, almost in silence the whole way but Jake holds her hand tightly from the precinct to the car and from her car to her bathroom door where she slips inside and closes the door behind her. Jake leans against the door and starts panicking-talking through all their options. He’s very aware he’s babbling and most of it is probably useless but it helps him feel a little bit more like he’s in control.

“I mean, we even could get married if you wanted-” Jake suggests when he gets to the ‘a) you’re pregnant and, b) we keep it’ list of scenarios.

The door he’s leaning on opens so abruptly that Jake very nearly falls straight into her. “Are you seriously proposing to me right now?!”

Jake’s bewildered by the intensity of her reaction. “Yeah, I guess?” It comes out more like a question. “Your parents are Catholic, right? Last I checked the Catholics aren’t big fans of children out of wedlock.”

Judging by her expression, he definitely isn’t helping. “Okay, first, Jake, one of my brothers got his high school girlfriend were they were both fifteen so after that my parents dialled down their expectations-- any grandchild born to us over the age of twenty is a victory for them. Second and more importantly, call me a hopeless romantic but I do not want our proposal story to be: ‘Jake asked me while we waited for my pee on a bunch of plastic sticks to tell us if I was going to be pushing a small human out of me nine months later’!”

Jake winces, pushing the heels of his hands into his forehead. He’s being an idiot, overwhelming her when she’s already anxious enough about what the next few minutes might bring. “I’m sorry, Amy. I’m just... freaking out right now. I say stupid stuff when I freak out.”

“Really? Hadn’t noticed,” Amy jokes weakly. She softens. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. It wasn’t that stupid, I just- I can’t even think about stuff like that. Not right now.”

Jake nods, pulling her in for a hug. Over her shoulder, he sees her bathroom counter. “You bought eight tests,” he observes, amused in spite of himself. “Really? Eight?”

"Yeah," Amy says like it's obvious, looking at the eight white sticks lined up with military precision next to her sink. “Accounting for margin of error, it makes sense: false positives, false negatives, bad batches, everything else than can go wrong with pharmacy tests. Eight makes sense, eight’s a good number. Why? You don’t think I should have bought more, do you?”

She sounds so worried Jake almost bursts out laughing—this is the Amy Santiago he knows and loves. A mental image of Amy furiously buying up every pregnancy test in every pharmacy in Brooklyn and lining them up neatly over every flat surface in her apartment springs to mind. Jake shakes his head, fondness for her settling into every inch of his chest cavity. If he’s going to be a parent, he’s glad he’s going to be a parent with her.

“No. Eight’s a good number,” he agrees with a smile.

Amy nods to herself, satisfied, then takes his hand and pulls him into the bathroom with her. She checks her watch. “A minute and a half left,” she whispers to him. Jake’s throat feels empty, thoughts rushing through his head so quickly he barely processes them before he’s panicking about something else.

He pulls Amy into him, wrapping his arms around her and lacing his fingers together over her hip. It seems like Amy appreciates the closeness but if he’s honest, he feels like he needs it more than she does right now. Jake kisses her temple then leans his forehead into her hair, taking in deep lungfuls of the smell of her shampoo.

"We’re gonna be fine, we’re gonna be fine, we’re gonna be fine,” he repeats quietly to Amy and himself.

Amy checks her watch again and gulps audibly. “Time’s up.”

They wait for the absolute longest twenty seconds of Jake’s life, staring at the first test on the counter. The result appears, and clearly reads: ‘NOT PREGNANT.’

Amy exhales, slumping in relief in his arms before snatching the test up and staring hard at it as if she’s trying to memorise it. Finally she looks at him. “Better wait—might be a false negative.”

The results come in quicker then, and the next three read respectively: minus sign, one line and ‘Not Pregnant’ again. (Jake is unsurprised Amy chose from several different brands of test for maximum objectivity.)

They wait for the rest anyway but after the fourth negative they can be fairly certain Amy won’t be pushing a baby out of her in nine months’ time. The last negative result shows up and they both look at each other, wide-eyed and weak.

“Thank God,” Amy says. “I mean, not ‘thank God’ but…  thank God.”

"Yeah,” Jake murmurs. “I know what you mean.”

 -/-

 They end up on Amy’s sofa together that evening; Amy lying with her head on Jake’s chest and ear over his heart, his arms wrapped around her.  An old episode of CSI: New York is background noise and lights up the otherwise darkness of her apartment but they’re not really watching—tired from the emotional upheaval of the last forty-eight hours and wrapped up in their own thoughts.

Amy turns her head suddenly, resting her chin on his chest and opening her mouth like she want to say something. Jake stops combing his fingers through the ends of her hair and waits. “Not-” she starts hesitantly “never... though. Right?”

Jake knows immediately what she’s referring to. “Not never,” he agrees, smiling. 

[chi-merical]

finding new ways to be awed each minute (also on ao3)

The gravity of the events of the last twelve hours that have lead Amy to waking up in this bed don’t really hit her this soon after waking up so her first coherent thought of the day is: remember to ask Jake where he gets his bed sheets. They’re warm and soft like a hug, more than the ones she has on her own bed---and to Jake’s credit and Amy’s surprise, they even smell clean.

She opens her eyes. Then it definitely does hit her that she’s completely naked in Jake Peralta’s bed.

Jake’s already awake, watching her. Amy meets his eyes then looks away, suddenly self-conscious. Modesty is a futile pursuit at this point, considering what they did and how much they saw of each other last night but Amy still pulls the duvet further up her body as discreetly as she can manage. There’s no coming back from this now, and mostly that’s an exciting thought because she’s wanted this for a long time now but also it’s kind of terrifying because this might not work. They could screw this up. They could screw this up so badly; this is the first relationship she’s entered into where she already has so much invested that she’s scared of losing— their working partnership, the odd friendship they’ve struck up in the last couple of years.

(In short, her fears boil down to losing Jake. The scariest part is that he doesn’t realise how important he is to her.)

She’s distracted from her anxious thoughts by Jake. He reaches across the space between them, gently and carefully pushing back a lock of hair that was falling in her eyes. Amy smiles shyly, surprised at the tenderness.

It’s nice but it’s strange—she can’t actually think of many times before now where she’s not known what to say to him. Even after they first met, back when they could barely talk to each other without starting an argument over something or other, she always had some kind of comeback or barbed insult to throw at him. But waking up with him, close enough that she can feel the warmth of his body across the bed, this is totally beyond her frame of reference.

“Amy,” Jake finally murmurs, propping the side of his face up on his arm. “Now that we’ve done this, there’s something I have to say. Something that’s been on my mind since you fell asleep last night.”

Amy eyes him, intrigued. “What?”

Jake shifts closer to her as though he’s about to let her in on a secret and Amy leans her head closer. Jake’s other hand comes up to rest on her bare shoulder, his fingers drawing absent minded patterns on her skin. He stares at his fingers rather than her. “I take back-” he starts, slow and serious, although Amy sees the beginnings of a smile on his lips. “-All the sex tape jokes I ever made about you.”

It’s the very last thing she expected him to say. Amy snorts loudly with laughter, burying her face in his pillow. Jake’s grinning that big stupid grin of his and he slips his hand from her shoulder to her waist to pull her against his body and Amy’s giggling against his mouth when he kisses her.

[chi-merical]

psa:

I have created a new ao3 account under the username jokeperalta because it was time to update (bella_barbaric is actually a holdover from my twilight fandom days to give you an indication of how long ago I created it) where all my future fic will be posted

I won't be deleting my old account because I have a lot of bookmarks/kudos/comments I want to keep as well as the fact that most of my fic I post on here links out to that account and replacing the links will take too long. I also won't be moving any of the fic I've written up to now onto my new account either because, again, it'd take too long.

Just to let you know that any new fic I write will be posted under the ao3 name jokeperalta and I will link to there from now on.

[evilhagwoman]

jake/amy on a stakeout, post sophia breakup

((fumeofsighs, I finally got my shit together and finished it—hope you like it and sorry for the wait!))

-/-

Watching Jake from the passenger side of the squad car, Amy thinks it’d almost be better if Jake had a Boyle-style reaction to his break up with Sophia. If he was melodramatic and boisterous about it, at least then they’d have something solid to work with. Instead he’s just… sullen and quiet.  It isn’t even that he’s neglecting his work— the opposite in fact, he’s serious about it for once: no jokes in briefings, nothing that’s not standard procedure, staying later than anyone to finish random bits of paperwork that nobody really expected him to fill out anyway on cases that everyone else considers closed.

The whole squad can see he’s miserable but despite everyone’s best efforts –Rosa takes him to a gun range, Boyle and Terry treat him to umpteen drinks nights, Gina takes him out for breakfast at some greasy cafe they used to frequent as kids-  nothing pulls him out of the mire for very long. Jake’s infectious personality, usually the thing that helps pull the squad out of a harrowing case groove, now works against them and it feels like the whole team is stuck in a rut along with him.

Amy thinks about all the times she’s been on stakeouts with Jake and wished he’d shut the hell up. Now she’s trying everything she can think of to try to get more than monosyllabic answers out of him—finally resorting to jokes that would usually be his area of specialty on a long stake out in an attempt to make him feel normal again. And before long, Jake notices.

“You can stop now, you know,” he says after Amy makes another terrible pun about money laundering (they’re currently staking out a launderette suspected of being a front for a drugs cartel.)

“Stop what?” Amy asks innocently.   

Read More

[evilhagwoman]

CS + "I really hate coffee but I'm a regular because I hate to start my day without talking to you" or CS + improve group

(( simpledaydreamer, I want to say that have literally no idea why this took me so long to finish but here it is in all its truly mediocre glory. Enjoy!))

CS + “I really hate coffee but I’m a regular because I hate to start my day without talking to you”

“God, you really are pathetic. Has anyone ever told you that?” Liam asks as Killian takes one small sip of the small Americano he ordered, screws up his face in disgust and promptly drops the whole cup in the trash, just out of sight of the Starbucks window like he does every morning. The good news is that his tongue has  now become immune from the initial burn of the first sip; either that or he’s just burnt off enough cells on his tongue for it not to bother him anymore.

“You have,” Killian answers as they get in the lift. “Most mornings for the last month and a half, and then countless times during our childhood, so I guess ‘yes’ is the answer.”

“Just ask for her number, for crying out loud. This is genuinely painful to watch. And expensive too—God, how much are you actually spending on coffee that you don’t even drink? It’s, what, two dollars-twenty five per cup five mornings a week? You carry on like this and you’re throwing away… forty-five dollars a month on coffee, Killian. Forty-five dollars. Just because you don’t have the guts to ask the barista you’re infatuated with on a date.”

“She’s working, she doesn’t want some leery customer she’s not interested in asking for her number—I can’t imagine what women in the service industry have to put up with from male customers and I’m not going to be one of them thanks very much.”

“Then just stop going there for coffee, since you don’t drink the stuff anyway,” Liam suggests. “Problem solved.”

“I can’t do that!” Killian looks scandalised at the thought.

“And why is that?”

“Because,” Killian responds as though it explains everything. And it’s nothing to do with Emma’s (as her name badge reads) voice as she reads out his name on the cup, or her smile when he she hands it to him. “Anyway, I’m acquiring the taste for coffee. One sip at a time.”

Read More

[chi-merical]

((I’ve been trying to write this fic since The Road Trip aired to put a narrative to what we now know Amy’s thoughts and feelings from Charges and Specs onwards were and heck, somewhere along the way it turned into an epic. What you see here is the third rehash of the structure I had in mind—it was a tough one to get right.  I hope you enjoy this and tell me what you think!))

stand back where you stood (i wish you would) also on ao3 and ff.net

You’re supposed to be going out for dinner with Teddy that night but you cancel with a text, saying a work thing came up. It’s not entirely a lie and Teddy knew it was Jake’s hearing today (you’ve been talking non-stop about how out of order it is all week while Teddy mmm’ed and ahh’ed when you paused for breath) so you’re sure he’ll assume it’s about that. And it is, in an indirect way.

Instead, you go home alone, get into your soft faded NYPD t-shirt and leggings, and sit in front of your boxset of CSI: New York without really watching it. Instead, you think about every strange look, every time you thought you caught him staring at you past the wall of computer monitors between you, all the times his smile looked that little bit forced when you brought up Teddy, you think about how all of it makes sense now. Not that you can get your head around the fact that it’s Jake of all people with these feelings--you spent the first six months of knowing Jake Peralta almost certain he wasn’t capable of feelings beyond smug and self-important.

By the time the first notes of Baba O’Riley are coming out of your TV speakers for the sixth time, you’ve mentally exhausted every possibility for how this could change your partnership finally coming to the conclusion that… actually, nothing has to change. Not really. Not if you don’t let it change. Like he said, you’re with Teddy and more importantly, happy with Teddy, and he’ll be undercover for a minimum of six months. Whatever happens after that you can deal with as it comes along.

Nothing has to change.

-/-

  You avoid Teddy’s rather frequent calls as much as possible for almost three weeks afterwards, only briefly explaining Jake’s cover story of being fired and sending him placating texts when he seemed to be getting concerned. You spend those almost-three-weeks glancing up at Jake’s desk opposite you and expecting him to be sitting there. It’s the first time you’ve had a chance to realise how big a chunk of your life Jake plays a part in, through work and just because that’s the way Jake is. And it’s not just you--everyone at the precinct is that bit quieter when Jake’s not there, like they’re missing a part of the whole. Jake is larger than life, impressing himself exuberantly onto parts of other people's lives he has no real business being in without even realising he’s doing it.

When you finally decides to pull yourself together, you throw yourself into your relationship with Teddy with renewed vigour, surprising him at work one evening with a reservation to his favourite Pilsner establishment/restaurant (to him, they’re one and the same.)

You explain as little as she can about Jake’s hearing and the aftermath –helped immensely by the fact you’re only allowed to tell Teddy the cover story anyway, and try to change the subject at the earliest opportunity. An odd feeling of guilt accompanies talking to Teddy about Jake now, knowing what you knows now. It’s as though you’re being unfaithful, but like it’s not Teddy you’re betraying.

When Teddy asks why you’ve had no time to talk recently, you don't have an explanation that’ll make sense to him (since it barely makes sense to you) so you say pathetically, “I was- confused about some stuff” and leave it at that. It’s not like it matters after all, you’re here now and ready to make a success of your relationship instead of pursuing a might-have-been.

  -/-

  Six months is a long time, and by the end of it, you’re sure of what you’re going to do.  You’re happy with Teddy, you are, and he’s reliable and safe and doesn’t eat gummy bears in fruit roll ups for a serious breakfast meal--so when Jake gets back you’ll let him down gently and he can move on and everything can go back to how it was.

As prepared as you think you are, your heart still leaps into your throat when you sees him for the first time. His hair’s longer and even messier than usual, but in lot of ways it’s like he says it is: like he never left. Everyone reacts to him in the same way they always did. Excepting yourself, of course, but no one else was on the receiving end of a goodbye declaration of feelings six months ago either.

Once the squad have dispersed and an awkward hello has been exchanged, he asks to speak to you in private… and then he asks you about Joe Uterus. It’s so far removed from what you were expecting him to say that all the tension you’re feeling releases at once, setting you at ease in the old familiarity between them in place of the uncertainty you’ve felt for the past six months—and it actually seems like that was Jake's intention. There’s no way he wanted to know about Joe Uterus the stray dog killer that badly (you wonder how he even heard about that) and you’ve known he’s more considerate than people give him credit for.

“But… also, I just,” Jake continues. “I know we left things kinda weird. You know, me saying that I liked you-”

In the end it turns out ‘letting him down gently’ isn’t actually as gentle as you’d had hoped. You’d had a small but tactful speech prepared from when the first whispers of his undercover assignment coming to an end had started drifting around the precinct. Of course, confronted with him now, it blanks from your mind and lacking anything else to describe it, you turn his own words back on him. It’s only after you say them that you realise how insensitive it sounds and you kick yourself.

But then he’s telling you that he didn’t mean what he said; the words you’ve been replaying in your head for the past six months, the phrase you deconstructed endlessly in line in the grocery store and in the bath and during long nights of paperwork. There’s something off about the way he tells you this new development but his explanation makes at least some sense and you have little choice but to take him at face value.

But you’re not sure you want to.

Maybe you were just flattered by the whole thing. That’s why you feel disappointed right now. Flattered by Jake’s apparent romantic stylez feelings for you, not that you’d cheat or even think of it but you liked the feeling of being wanted by someone other than your boyfriend. Your high school experience was such that you’re still slightly disbelieving when anyone expresses an interest in you and you know that if you and Jake had been in high school together, he’d have been the popular class clown to your teacher’s pet know-it-all. He wouldn’t have even glanced twice at you. Even if the police precinct where you both work is not high school (and you thank God every day for it), it’s still kind of… nice to have someone like him be interested in you. Kind of.

That’s definitely it.

  -/-

  Teddy comes to pick you up at the bar once you’re ready to leave Jake’s not-so-surprise party. You’re sitting with Gina and Jake when he spots you, walking over and bending down to kiss you in greeting. You turn your face just in time so his lips meet your cheek instead but you still see Jake avert his eyes uncomfortably. You’re also sure you see Gina discreetly do the Awkward Turtle hand motion but you’re not sure whether it’s in reference to Jake or the lips-to-cheek conversion and you ignore it.

“Hey, man,” Teddy says to Jake when he sees him, clapping him on the shoulder. You’d explained that Jake hadn’t really been fired but was undercover the evening after they got word that the sting had gone successfully. “Nice work on the undercover assignment—even my bosses at the 8-2 are talking about how well it went!”

“Thanks,” Jake says. “I mean, it could have gone better. One of the mafia guys got away, so.”

You catch Jake’s eye and smile reassuringly because you know how pissed he still is about that. Even without going through what he undoubtedly has in the last six months, you get why. Six months of his life invested getting up close and personal with some of the guys Jake lives to put away—anything less than a perfect result is a failure. Jake smiles back a little, his squared posture relaxing a bit.

“Ah, well. You win some, you lose some, right?” Teddy tells him, apparently oblivious to Jake’s feelings about it and how much he isn’t helping. Teddy turns to you now. “You ready to go, babe?”

You gather your bag and throw your coat over your shoulders, standing up.

“Nice seeing you guys again,” Teddy says to Jake and Gina—though really he’s only saying it to Jake because the present conversation isn’t interesting enough to keep Gina off her phone. You are no longer offended by this since you learnt how few conversations are interesting enough to keep Gina off her phone.

“See you tomorrow?” You’re not sure how it mangles itself into a question on the way out, somehow needing reassurance he won’t have found some new undercover mission to disappear on by tomorrow morning.

“Crime’s not going to fight itself, Santiago. I’ll-I’ll be there,” Jake manages a joke, smiling even it’s a bit forced. The last thing you see before you turn away is Gina drop her phone to her lap and look at Jake.

(“Hang on in there, prin’,” you overhear her say to Jake when she thinks you’re out of earshot. You swallow hard and keep walking.)

  -/-

  On the car ride back from the bar that night, you decide to tell Teddy the truth. Now Jake’s back, it’s something he should know… right? It’s in the interests of full disclosure. If Teddy somehow finds out through other means and gets suspicious about why you kept it from him, this whole thing could get very messy very quickly.

You turn the radio down to a talkable level and pick at the skin around your fingernails, an old nervous habit you thought you’d kicked. “Look, um, I didn’t tell you this at the time because we hadn’t been dating that long and it was kind of complicated with him going undercover and the cover story and everything but- before Jake left, he told me he liked me and that he wished something romantic could happen. Between me and him.”

You’re not sure what to expect in Teddy’s reaction to this news but you definitely don’t expect how he does end up responding, which is: a long silence, then, “Oh.”

You squint at him in the darkness of his car. “You’re… not surprised,” you surmise.

“Were you?” he counters and you want to scream ‘yes’ but instead you just nod mutely. Teddy shrugs. “No, I’m not surprised. I always got a jealous vibe from the guy when he was around you, but I didn’t think anything of it. Well, until now.”

Absently you think it’s amazing that your own boyfriend saw it coming before you did.

“So has he said anything about it since he’s been back?” Teddy asks.

“He told me that-” you start hesitantly, staring intently out the windshield “-what he said then was real but he respects that I’m with someone else.”

Teddy nods approvingly, then looks at over at you. He puts his hand on your arm in a gesture of comfort. “Don’t worry about Peralta, Amy. He’s a big boy, he can handle a little unrequited crush. I’m sure he’ll be over you in no time.”

“I’m sure he will,” you say faintly.

   -/-

  Most things go back to normal then almost immediately. It’s so normal, in fact, that it’s almost weird. Even between yourself and Jake, things are the same as they always were. You solve cases together, Jake makes sex tape jokes after the things you say, you roll your eyes at him. It’s all spectacularly ordinary. You’re not sure why you have a lingering sense of unease, since ‘everything going back to how it was’ is exactly what you wanted.

‘Most things’ does not include your relationship with Teddy though, and you can only blame yourself for that. You go to the opposite extreme to your last rough patch with him and become the textbook clingy girlfriend. You organise date nights for the two of you most nights out of the week save the nights one of you is working (most involve something to do with Pilsners which, okay, isn’t your favourite thing in the world but you don’t hate it so you’ll put up with it for his sake) and stay most nights at his apartment. He’s a little confused by your sudden involvement but he doesn’t seem to mind.

There’s only one instance where things actually get strained and it happens after he cancels on you one Friday evening, citing a work thing. Usually, this would be fine because it happens a lot between the two of you and in fact, one of the benefits of dating a fellow cop is the mutual understanding of the unsociable and erratic hours you have to work. But this time, for whatever reason, you take it seriously letting your imagination run away with you as to what it means for your relationship.

He comes to your place on Saturday morning with your favourite take out breakfast to make it up to you and you acknowledge his sweet gesture but you’re still unsettled.

“So,” you start, out of the blue once the breakfast food is almost finished. “Where do you think this relationship is going?”

Teddy nearly chokes on the orange juice he’s chugging. “Excuse me?”

At his surprise, you rationalise quickly in head that it’s not too early in the relationship for this conversation—you have been dating almost seven months after all. You shrug, carefully casual. “I was just wondering where you thought our relationship was going.”

“What’s brought this on?” Teddy questions.

“I just feel like we’ve been kind of-” you pause, trying to find the right words “-out of sync with each other recently, you know?”

Teddy just looks baffled. “Amy… I cancelled one date. I’m not sure we need to go to relationship guidance counselling over this.”

You realise abruptly that that’s what it must look like from his side (from anyone’s side except yours) and since you’re not sure you could explain your perpetual feeling of unease there’s not much point pursuing this with him. You plaster a smile and shake your head, standing up to move some of the dishes to the sink. “You know what? You’re right. Never mind, I’m being stupid. Don’t worry about it.”

Behind you at the sink, you hear Teddy’s chair legs scrape noisily across your floor. When he speaks again, he sounds suspicious. “Is there something else going on with you? Something you’re not telling me?”

You whirl around to face him, the washing up liquid on your hands splattering over your counter top. “Of course not. Why would you say that?”

“You’ve been acting strange for weeks. You want us to spend all this time together-”

“Aren’t I allowed to want to spend time with my boyfriend?” you say irritably.

“Yes, of course you are but every time we’ve spent time together recently, I always feel like you’re weirdly invested- like, like you’re waiting for me to prove something to you or something.”

You swallow hard and try to keep a straight face, thrown by how right he is. “What would I want you to prove?”

“You tell me,” he challenges.

You stare each other down for a few long tense moments, until you finally concede and drop your offensive. You don’t want to fight with him and you can’t deny that it’s you who’s fucking this up. “I’m sorry I’ve been off recently, Teddy. Things have just been weird at work recently-”

“-Because of Peralta?”

You start at the mention of Jake. The denial leaves your lips a little too quickly. “No! Nothing like that. Just… work things. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

Teddy softens. You can feel that the fight is officially over, and he walks over to hug you. “You should’ve just said.”

You nod against his shoulder. Teddy steps back when he realises you’re getting washing up liquid on his shirt.

  -/-

  You hear about Sophia weeks before you meet her. He doesn’t really talk about her to you so much but you overhear Jake and Boyle’s conversations about her sometimes because you’re nosy and when he comes into work with a huge smile on his face and a spring in his step some mornings--it doesn’t take a detective to work out that Jake is smitten with her. And you’re happy for him, you really are. It’s nice to see him so happy and by all accounts, Sophia sounds like she couldn’t be more right for him. Like they were meant to be or something.

(You only experience that bitter twinge of something you can’t and don’t want to name every once in a while and it’s relatively easy to smother. Plus, you’re an excellent compartmentaliser, so you can separate it from feeling happy for Jake. It’s nothing really.)

You come back from the evidence lock up one evening to find a woman sitting in the chair next to Jake’s empty desk, thumbing curiously through the things on his desk. She stops when you approach, almost guiltily. After a few minutes of staring at your computer screen and pretending to work, your curiosity about why a random woman is sitting next to Jake’s desk gets the better of you.

“Um, Detective Peralta is out at the moment,” you say to her. She turns in the seat to face you. “But can I help you at all?”

“Oh, no,” she says, waving her hands. “Sergeant Jeffords told me it’d be okay if I waited for Jake in here instead of out in reception. I’m Sophia-- Jake’s girlfriend.”

Now she’s explained, you’re not sure why you didn’t put it together sooner. She’s dressed like a lawyer and she’s beautiful and leggy and probably exactly Jake’s type. After a brief speechless moment, you smile amiably, shaking her outstretched hand.

“Oh, of course. Of course. I’m Amy Santiago, Jake’s my partner actually.” You wince internally at how much it sounds like you’re staking your claim on him, identifying him as yours in some way in response to her ‘girlfriend’ label.

“It’s so nice to meet you! Jake’s told me a lot about you,” Sophia tells you. You almost want to ask what he’s said, whether it was actually about you or whether she means just the squad in general, but she carries on talking before you can think of a way to frame the question that isn’t weird and overly involved. “We’re supposed to be going out to dinner but he just text to say he’s running late, of course. Why be early when you can be late is Jake’s philosophy— but then, I imagine you know what I’m talking about, since you work with him.”

You blink at her, trying to catch up with what she’s saying.  “Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, Jake would be late to his own funeral if he could manage it.”

“Right?!” Sophia says, laughing. You almost hate that she seems so nice.

You’re interrupted then by the man himself walking in with Boyle. He sees Sophia before he sees you – well, duh- and you’re subjected to a look of unadulterated joy that practically punches you in the gut and you have to look away, feeling ever-so-slightly winded.

“Hey you, sorry I’m late,” you hear Jake greet Sophia. You just stare at your blank computer screen. “I see you’ve already met Santiago.”

“We were just-” you start to explain.

“-Gossiping about you,” Sophia supplies. She’s grinning at Jake.

You almost laugh at the sudden look of masked worry on Jake’s face as he looks between the two of you. “Really? That’s, um, cool. Just as long as you know that you can’t trust a word that comes out of Amy’s mouth. She’s actually a compulsive liar. It’s a real problem, but we’re all supporting her through it. Right, Amy?”

You scowl at him and you almost feel normal for about five seconds, until Sophia slides her arm around Jake’s waist, all casual and comfortable intimacy. Your hands itch in your lap for something to do and you have a sudden hankering for a cigarette.

“You ready to go?” Sophia asks him.

“Yeah. See you tomorrow, Santiago.”

Sophia smiles at you. “It was nice meeting you, Amy.”

“You too. Have a great dinner!” you say with enthusiasm that even you can hear the falsity of, but neither of them really notice.

Once they leave, you throw yourself into your work so intensely that the Sarge has to ask you three times if you want a cup of coffee before you respond. On your next break, you go out onto the terrace and take long drags from a cigarette.

You’re fine. Really.

  -/-

  You’re far too on edge to sleep or do anything else after the Dinner of Cascading Failures, which is how it shall forever be known.

Standing in the corner of the hotel room you were supposed to share with him whilst Teddy angrily packed his things was a supremely awkward affair and once he’s left, the room is almost eerily silent. You change into your pyjamas and get into bed, turning your iPod on full blast in an attempt to drown out your own panicked, circuitous thoughts. This approach decreases in efficacy as the night wears on.

Even though you know in your heart that it’s probably for the best that you got the whole breaking-up-with-Teddy over and done with, it’s true that you also could have handled it better. A lot better. Though, you still can’t help but be a little pissed with Teddy. As badly as you handled it, Jake and Sophia didn’t deserve that. You’re not even certain you deserved it.

With the benefit of hindsight, you know you were an idiot to assume that Teddy wouldn’t notice what other events in your life the rough patches in your relationship with him coincided with—the three week radio silence after Jake left, then the clingy girlfriend phase when he got back. Especially since you said it yourself not twelve hours ago that he’s a really good cop.

Frankly you’re surprised he kept his suspicions to himself for so long considering how certain he was of it at dinner.

But it’s not really Teddy you’re concerned with right now anyway. It probably should be, but in reality it’s not (you feel like this has been a background theme to your entire relationship with Teddy since that night in the parking lot.) You get up and pace the room a few times when the noise in your head gets too much, half wanting to go to Jake and Sophia’s room to try to smooth things over with both of them but you know you’re probably the last person either of them want to see right now and you’d probably make things worse.

After much anxious deliberation and finally frustrated to your limit with not doing anything, you pick up your phone and type out a careful message to Jake. Your finger hovers over the ‘send’ button for a good ten minutes for you work up the courage to press it. I’m sorry I told Teddy what you said.

You throw your phone across the bed like you’ve been burned by it once it sends. You’re simultaneously disappointed and unsurprised in the five minutes after when Jake hasn’t responded. Cursing yourself, you grab your phone again and type another before you can think too hard about it.I’m sorry he ambushed you with it at dinner.

Three minutes later: Also… sorry that he did it while Sophia was there.

One minute after that: And that it caused problems between the two of you.

And I’m sorry for all these apologies. I’m stopping now. I’m sorry.

You finally switch your phone off before you can be tempted to send anything else because your pathetic string of apology texts are starting to look ridiculous.

  -/-

  Jake at least looks relatively chirpy when he approaches the SUV at the ass crack of dawn the next morning. You, meanwhile, barely slept at all last night, skipped eating even though you haven’t since lunch yesterday since dinner was botched and feel anxiety-induced nausea at the thought of being in a car with him for the whole ride back to the precinct.

Against every scenario you’d imagined in your head since last night, he greets you as though your (now ex-) boyfriend hadn’t unceremoniously laid out your feelings for him and threatened his still new relationship with Sophia the night before. You know it’s going to take you a while to work up the courage to ask what happened with Sophia but you rationalise that it can’t all have gone south between them or he’d be in a lot worse mood right now.

On the way to the sheriff’s station, Jake talks to you about the perp and complains about the inflexible sheriff that’s making you do this prisoner transfer at an unholy time of morning instead of bringing up what happened last night. Something in you that’s been tensed since last night relaxes as you talk about the work and you’re reminded of how he brought up Joe Uterus in the evidence lock up on his first day back, always trying to make you feel comfortable.

(You think this is why you like him. The genuine regard he has for other people under the teasing and joking that he pretends is the extent of his personality. He hides it well, but it’s there.)

Last night’s debacle doesn’t come up till you’re on the road back to Brooklyn during a lull in the carefully light conversation when the tiredness and emotional exhaustion start to set in. Jake notices, of course he does, and offers you the chemical blue liquid sugar that you would have turned your nose up at yesterday. As it is, you just hope it’ll keep you alert enough to finish this godforsaken prisoner transfer and get home so you take a long deep swig that surprises even Jake.

Since he brought it up, you finally ask the question that’s been plaguing you since last night. “So, how’d it go with Sophia?”

“Good. We made up, we’re still together,” he tells you. Based on his mood, it’s what you were expecting. “I told her, you know, everything between me and you is in the past and we’re just friends, so.”

This is also what you were expecting but it still stings like salt on an open wound. It’s what you were expecting, but there was still that little part of you that hoped he’d drop everything for you. It’s the same part that was waiting all last night for him to knock on your room door, come to tell you he’s ready to try something real with you.

You look away from him and smother the feeling.

  -/-

  Noticing that you’re currently running on fumes, Jake abjectly refuses to let you help with the paperwork once you’re back at the precinct and the perp is the holding cell and tells you to go home. You’re too tired to argue or to worry too much about what the Captain might think. As if reading your thoughts, Jake assures you he’ll cover for you so you thank him and leave.

You actually only remember to turn your phone on again once you’re bundled under your duvet, fully intending to sleep through the day and a half you have until you’re in work again. You’re half asleep with your phone in your hand but the surprise of a message from Jake alerts you, sent about an hour after your last apology text last night.

most of these things arent ur fault but i forgive u on all counts anyway. stop worrying.

You tell yourself it’s your exhaustion that makes tears spring to your eyes at his kindness.

(this is why you like him.)

[chi-merical]

((2x12 post ep written because I can't leave well enough alone. Enjoy!))

like magic, play aces, stay with me, go places also on ao3 and ff.net

It’s well past two before anyone even thinks about calling it a night—Real Ray or Fake Ray eventually dissolving into conversations between themselves but once Boyle announces he’s heading ‘up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire’ as he puts it, the rest of the squad slowly follow, partly realising how tired they are and partly because it feels rude to stay up much longer than the host does. Gina and Jake (and Amy, but only because she’s been drifting in and out of drunken consciousness on the couch all night anyway) stay up slightly longer than the rest, finishing the snacks between them before getting up to leave for their rooms.

“Er, Gina, what should we do about Santiago?” Jake asks as Gina’s about to leave, pointing at the practically comatose Amy splayed out over the furniture.

“We?” Gina says skeptically.

“Yeah, we can’t just leave her here. She could start vomiting and choke on it or something.”

Gina looks at Amy and wrinkles her nose. “I’ll leave you to figure that one out, champ. Like you said, once you wake her she’s liable to start vomiting –or worse, crying- any minute. Not dealing with that.”

“So basically, you wanted to see Six Drink Amy but you’re not willing to deal with the consequences?” Jake surmises, annoyed but somehow completely unsurprised.

Gina nods, unapologetic, as she walks out of the room. “That’s pretty much it, yeah. Great detecting, Jake, I can finally see why they hired you. Okay, byeeee!”

“Thanks for all your help, Gina,” Jake shouts after her sarcastically. He’s pretty sure he hears a ‘you’re welcome’ from down the hall which he just rolls his eyes at.

He kneels next to Amy on the couch and clicks his fingers in her face in an attempt to wake her from the alcohol induced coma she’s apparently put herself into because, as light as she is and as bodybuilder-strong as he is, he knows there’s no way he’s supporting her entire weight all the way up the two flights of narrow staircases to their rooms.

“Amy. Amy. Santiago. Ames. Fartmonster. Amy.” It’s clear that no amount of name calling from him is going to get through her drunken fog addled mind so Jake breaks out the big guns. “Detective Santiago!” he shouts in the best Captain Holt voice he can possibly muster.

Holt left about twenty minutes ago so Jake lets himself be flattered his impression was good enough to fool her, even if she is out-of-her-mind drunk right now. “Yes, he did, but before he left he ordered you to go to bed so you’d better get on and obey that direct order from your Commanding Officer,” Jake emphasises, hoping deference to Holt is one of the things Six Drink Amy retains from Zero Drink Amy’s personality. “I’m pretty sure I heard him say he’d be extremely disappointed in you if you didn’t. And that he might fire you.”

“No, he didn’t, you’re a lying liar who lies, Jake!” Amy sings. Jake sighs—at least it doesn’t look like she’s about to start crying or vomiting. Yet. “Plus, it ain’t a direct order if I hear it from you now is it?”

She smirks at him, proud she’s outsmarted him. Jake grabs her hands and attempts to pull her up physically but her passive resistance gets him nowhere fast. This is apparently going to be more difficult than he thought.

“Hey… Jake?” she says suddenly, while he tries again to get her to stand up.

“Yes, Amy?”

 “Do you think I’m going to die alone?” she asks in a small voice. Jake collapses down next to her again—he’s practically got whiplash from her change in mood. Her dark eyes are wide and sad, and he’s pretty sure he sees tears welling up; he apparently spoke too soon about the whole not crying and/or vomiting thing. He's only seen Amy cry a handful of times since he's known her and every time it's like watching someone kick Bambi or something. 

“Of course you’re not going to die alone! Why would you say that?” In reality, he knows exactly why she would say that: because this is Six Drink Amy he’s dealing with, but he’s also interested in her drunken explanation.

“Everyone has- has someone,” she wails, hiccuping in the middle. “You have perfect Sophia, Holt has Kevin, Rosa has Marcus, Terry has Sharon and the twins, even Scully and Hitchcock have wives and I have no one! I’m going to die alone, Jake!”

“Boyle doesn’t have anyone either, you know,” Jake tells her because it’s the first thing that pops into his head. She stares at him, bottom lip trembling. Wincing, Jake backtracks, “Okay, I see why that might not make you feel better, but you’re not going to die alone, I promise you. You’re going to find someone who loves thorough vacuuming and hobby craft as much as you do, or otherwise doesn’t mind putting up with them for you because they love you so much.”

“But doesn’t like Pilsners?” Amy clarifies, tentatively, which makes Jake smile.

“And who thinks every Pilsner brewery should burn in the fiery pits of watery lager hell where they belong,” Jake confirms sagely.

“You really think so?” She’s almost smiling so Jake knows he’s on the right lines.

“I know so,” Jake tells her, bumping shoulders with her. “And in the extremely unlikely event that you don’t meet your someone, I will be there to personally make sure you own enough cats to make you the finest crazy cat lady in Brooklyn. I will buy you a cat for every birthday and Christmas until you’re eighty if I have to. The first will be named ‘Jake’ after yours truly and the cat from the 1978 sci-fi classic The Cat From Outer Space, of course; the second will be named-”

Amy’s playing with the zipper on his hoodie, looking at him fondly. “You’ll still be in my life when I’m eighty?”

 “Well, duh,” Jake teases, but there’s an element of truth there too. “Someone’s going to have to come with me to all those geriatric clubs and conventions for retired cops who don’t know how to let go of the job. It’s an action film waiting to be made!”

 Amy surges forward suddenly and wraps her arms around him from the side, leaning up to kiss him sloppily on the cheek. Jake’s cheeks heat and he pats the arm that’s across his body. “You’re so nice, Jake. You are. And Sophia’s nice too. You deserve each other, you know that?” she says with a trace of something in her voice that he can’t work out, resting her chin on his shoulder.  After a pause, she continues in a wobbly voice, “I don’t deserve anyone-”

 Jake interrupts quickly. “Okay, Six Drink Amy, I think you need a bed with a trash can beside it right now so let’s not explore that particular downward spiral again!” He grabs her arms and uses the off-guard opportunity to haul her up and this time she lets him.

[chi-merical]

((A reviewer of one of my Jake/Amy stories a while back said they wanted me to write some smut for them and at the time, I was thinking to myself “Yeah, that’s never going to happen” and yet, lo and behold, here we are-- with me writing as close as I ever get to smut for them. Them’s the breaks! 

Also, I’m super bad at smut writing which is why this turned into more of a Jake-and-Amy’s-slightly-awkward-but-still-very-sincere-lead-up-to-first-time-sex story (slightly awkward but still very sincere: title of their sex tape, am I right?!) I set this in my head as a future/speculative fic set around the end of this season.))

  cause i like the way you’re calling to me also on ao3

 Jake’s hands are on her before they’re even properly through her door—sliding under her coat and around her waist. Amy kicks the door shut behind them just before he pushes her up against the wall, lips breaking from hers to trail across her jaw and down her neck. Amy’s hands find his hair while her hips push into his of their own accord. He pushes her coat off her shoulders (it occurs vaguely to the neat freak in Amy that she should pick it up and hang it up properly but she feels like that might kill the mood a little bit so she suppresses the urge.)

Amy’s pulse thrums through her so loud she can literally hear it. She lets her hand trail down his arm and slides her hand into his, using it to tug them away from the wall. Amy meets his eyes and bites her lip, leading him to her bedroom.

Once the door is shut behind them, Jake wastes no time pulling her close again; one hand splayed out on the small of her back, the other combing her hair away from her face in a surprisingly tender gesture. He’s about to kiss her again when she sees him get distracted by her bedroom. Amy just sighs and shakes her head while he looks around, waiting for the inevitable commentary on her choice of décor. Such are the perils of inviting Jake Peralta into your bedroom. Amy wishes she knew better.

(Her mother and grandmothers instilled in her a love of fine lacework even if she never mastered that particular craft herself and so what if she likes her doilies? They enhance.)

Amy smiles sweetly and wraps her arms her arms over his shoulders and around his neck, easing her fingers under his leather jacket and hoodie so they fall to the floor at his feet. She pulls him close enough that their noses almost touch, her chest against his. His arms circle her back loosely. “Shut up and take your clothes off, Peralta,” she murmurs.

Jake smirks back slowly, heat in his eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”

Amy sees his hand drop and the doily threaten to slip out of it so she lifts his wrist pointedly and wags a warning finger in his face with her other hand. Jake rolls his eyes and places it back extra carefully on the cabinet. The last thing she sees is his ‘happy now?’ look before he’s surging forward to press his lips to hers.

In the end, the disposal of their respective clothes is more a haphazard joint venture; his tie ends up flung on the wicker chair in the corner of her room and she will discover later that they managed to somehow kick her shirt under the bed. Amy wishes she’d had the forethought to wear something slightly sexier than the practical black sports bra and plain panties she threw on this morning but Jake doesn’t seem to mind, looking at her with a maelstrom of emotion that she can only call awe and it makes her simultaneously deeply warm and deeply self-conscious.

Amy tugs him back into her space once they’re both down to their underwear, fingers skimming lightly over the bare muscles of his shoulders. She’s seen him shirtless of course (and even covertly admired him shirtless on occasions that she wouldn’t admit even at gunpoint to Jake) and she knows all cops have to be in shape but having the reality under fingertips is so much nicer than she thought it would be.

Jake walks them backwards and Amy yelps when he gently pushes her onto her bed. Her body bounces and he follows--his body between her spread legs and his mouth back on hers. Amy interrupts him only to sit up and pull her bra off over her head and tossing it aside because she knows it’s just going to get in the way before pulling his face back to hers. Her legs wrap around the backs of his and she thrusts her hips into the tent in his boxers, enjoying the resulting groan he makes into her mouth.

Truth be told, he’s far better at this than even she imagined he’d be (and whatever she did or did not imagine regarding Jake and sex will remain strictly between herself and her vibrator.) His confidence and self-assurance translate well in the bedroom, unafraid to shift his body and trail kisses down her throat and snake a hand between her thighs.

It’s actually Amy that can’t hold it together.

Even when his fingers are inside her panties and his mouth is closed around her nipple and she’s arching slightly up off the bed from the growing heat between her legs, Amy can't actually stop her mind from going a million miles an hour. Amy lets out a long breathy sigh and opens her eyes again. This is when the reality of Jake Peralta in her bed, pleasuring her, actually sets in for the first time.

  Which is why it happens. A peal of laughter escapes her before she can stop it, and she winces at how loud it sounds in the quiet of her room.

  She lets herself hope he somehow didn’t hear it for a second, until he stills completely over her body. Jake lifts his head from her chest, squinting up at her half insulted and half bemused.

  “…Did-” Jake starts, before stopping himself as though to calm himself “-did you just laugh?”

  Unfortunately this only makes it worse. Amy cracks up laughing properly now at his face and the situation, covering her face in embarrassment. Jake moves up the bed and pins her on either side with his elbows, hands sliding under her shoulders so his weight is resting comfortably on top of her.

  “Something about my sex technique amusing to you, Santiago?” he asks, smiling with her despite himself.

  “I’m sorry,” she tells him, in between giggles. “I promise I’m not laughing at you, I’m not!”

  Jake turns this over in his mind for a second, pulling his bottom lip into his mouth, and then shakes his head. “Yeah, you know, amazingly that doesn't make me feel better. I swear if you’re thinking about something you saw on Saturday Night Live while we’re doing this, I’ll just leave now.”

  “No!” Amy says a little too quickly and Jake looks pleased. “I was just thinking-”

  “This better be good.”

  “Shut up. I was just thinking how weird it is that we’re actually doing this. You know, you and me.” Amy stretches her fingers out over his shoulder, watching them instead of him. The explanation she has in her head isn’t verbalising well. “I don’t know, I just never saw it coming, that’s all.”

  He’s thoughtfully quiet for a few moments. “Well, I saw it coming,” he finally says.

  Amy looks at him, curious. “When?”

  “When we first met.”

  “We hated each other when we first met,” Amy reminds him sceptically.

  “I still knew it would happen.” Jake shrugs. Then he puts on that mock-serious face and deep voice he puts on whenever he’s about to tell a Peralta-epic and Amy rolls her eyes and leans back into her pillows. “It was a cloudy day in the autumn of 2007, and your first day at Brooklyn’s ninety-ninth precinct. Our eyes met across a crowded bullpen –you in your sensible pantsuit, leather brief case satchel thingy and that green pen behind your ear; me with my killer charm, good looks, and general bad boy allure- and that’s when I knew. In that moment, I thought to myself, ‘it’s only a matter of time before that woman falls into bed with me.’”

  Her death glare is only slightly undermined by the smile she’s trying to tamp down (she can’t help but be a little flattered he remembered so much about the day they met, right down to the weather, her leather briefcase satchel thingy and the fact that she’d had a green pen behind her ear.) Amy tightens and locks her legs together around his hips and twists her body with all her might, taking him by surprise and putting him on his back. Her fingers slide between his so she pins his wrists next to his head.

  “You gonna show me what I’ve been missing all these years then, Detective Peralta?” Amy murmurs, leaning down close to his lips.

  Jake smirks. “Thought you’d never ask, Detective Santiago.”

        End note: regarding the Peralta-epic Jake tells—I actually have no idea when Amy (or Jake for that matter) started at the 99. I always imagined she’d only been there a year or maybe two at the start of season one but then in The Jimmy Jab Games they showed her in a flashback from 2008 so I’m guessing only the Powers That Be know the answer for sure. I’m totally spitballing on that one.

[chi-merical]

((Toby/Happy, established relationship. I experimented a little bit with my writing style in this so I hope it still makes sense.))

baby, can i hold you tonight also on ff.net and ao3

For a woman who makes a point of being bold and brash to the point of aggressive when conscious, Toby notices very quickly that Happy takes up as little room as physically possible when she sleeps. Body turned sideways and facing out of the bed, close to the mattress edge, legs curled up close to her stomach, with her arms tucked in and her hands resting on opposite shoulders. It’s interesting.

(“Shared a lot of beds in foster homes,” she murmurs to him sleepily when he wonders why out loud. No sharp retort about shrinking her out after sex which sort of surprises him. Maybe because she’s so used to his fascination with the human condition, or because she’s just too sleepy to bother. “Bigger kids’d push me out if I took up too much space. Now go to sleep, asshole.”

“The term of endearment you chose just there is very telling you know,” Toby tells her.

He hears a snicker, then -almost instantaneously- soft snoring. Toby smiles, reaches over her carefully to switch the bedside lamp off and drops a light kiss to her cheekbone.)

(Plus, the sex part before the passing out part is pretty damned fantastic, so it’s swings and roundabouts really.)

Life marches on. They help catch bad guys, Toby loses many a wonderful hat to various dangerous missions, it’s Happy that takes Toby to the monster trucks rally in the end— oh, and there’s a few near death experiences thrown in there for good measure.

Toby gets shot. It might be a stupid thought to have while you’re in danger of bleeding out but Toby can’t deny he’s a little gratified by how panicked Happy gets, insulting him graphically, profusely and in languages he’s never even heard before for stepping in front of her when he saw the gunman.

“I’m not taking anything you say personally,” Toby says to her, smiling weakly and wincing as she presses her plaid over-shirt into his abdomen. “I know it’s an expression of your love and concern for me.”

Happy shakes her head angrily as blood soaks through the fabric of his white t-shirt (wrong colour choice for today apparently) and her shirt, swearing even more coarsely in response. The EMTs and police arrive shortly after—the gunman has been pressed face first into the floor by Cabe since a few seconds after he fired the gun.

Toby doesn’t process much clearly after that, EMTs blurring around him and loading him onto a stretcher and into the back of an ambulance but he does hear clearly Happy’s curt answer when an EMT asks her what relation she is to him.

“I’m his girlfriend.” It’s the first time she’s called herself his girlfriend or even come close to any sort of label on what they have. Again, there’s a time and a place for being pleased about such a relationship development which very arguably is not right now, but it still warms the bones of him while he bleeds into the sterilised gauze that’s replaced Happy’s shirt.

As luck would have it, Mr Gunman wasn’t the best marksman in the world: the bullet went in somewhere near his appendix so he was never in any real danger but the wound still looks pretty badass even if Toby does say so himself. He’s back at home less than a week later, on orders to take it easy.

The team gives him a new custom hat for his collection with a small gold bullet casing on the rim as a get well soon present to remind him of his ‘triumph in the face of death’ as the accompanying card over-dramatically puts it. It’s too sentimental and creative and well-thought-out to be anyone’s but Paige’s doing with the rest of them chipping in money to pay for it but he thanks them all sincerely.

Happy stays over a lot at his for a while after he’s discharged.She tells him this is only because her shower coincidentally broke down and she’s waiting for the water company to fix it.

They both know this is a flagrant lie—as though she couldn’t fix a simple shower problem far better and faster than any poxy water company engineer could but Toby says nothing.First, because he likes having her over so they can play video games and eat ice cream at frankly inappropriate times of night but also because he knows he’d be the same and worse if the situations were reversed. He knows the whole shooting incident scared her more than she lets on.

He knows this because her sleeping positions change. The first night he spends at home, he’s almost asleep when the mattress shifts on her side of the bed and a soft pressure comes to rest on the side of his ribcage. Happy’s hand snakes around him to rest on the gauze of his taped up wound, stroking lighter than a butterfly’s wing. She doesn’t move away even she she falls asleep herself.

Toby wakes up to her curled around his back, hand still resting protectively where he was shot. Maybe he’s still dreaming, or maybe it’s the powerful pain meds he’s dosed up on but he could swear he feels her press a kiss to his shoulder blade before she carefully leaves the bed as well. Which he’s tempted to point out to her actually means she’s just spooned with him before being non-sexually intimate with him in bed—not something he ever expected from Happy Quinn. But as far as she knows, he’s dead to the world in a medication-induced sleep so he settles for internal satisfaction instead.

(Even once the gauze goes and the bullet wound becomes an angry patch of red skin, Happy’s hand always ends up resting over it every night, her small body pressed up against his back. Toby pretends he doesn’t notice the sudden change but he still smiles into the darkness when she curls herself around him each night.)

And after Happy stays over that first night back from the hospital, she doesn’t really leave. By the time their first anniversary is on the horizon, they’re more or less living together. For two people with a incredible amount of combined neuroses, the whole thing works pretty well. He’s the neat freak to her organised chaos existence, and she can cook reasonably well while he burns everything and has a endless stream of take away menus in his drawer. It works out pretty well.

He gets back one night from drinking with Walter and Sylvester in the dead of winter to his –rather, their- dark apartment. The ground outside is almost frozen solid and the lack of cloud cover means his skin is almost frozen too from walking home in a thin jacket and t-shirt. He creeps into the bedroom and strips as quietly as he can, slipping in next to Happy and trying not to jostle the bed too much even though he’s shivering because he’s fucking freezing.

It doesn’t work. Happy wakes, briefly, to mutter: “You’re fucking freezing.”

This complaint, however, does not stop her shifting over to him and subsequently falling back to sleep on top of him, his cold flesh pressed against hers. She’s like a tiny furnace under the covers which definitely helps with his own temperature. Toby’s arms wrap around her of their own accord and that’s the last thing he remembers.

(When he wakes up the next morning, she’s still there—sleeping peacefully on top of him, ear directly over his heart, hand resting over the wound on his abdomen. Toby just smiles, pulls the covers over her bare shoulder and drifts off himself.)

[chi-merical]

((established Jake/Amy fluffy fluffy fluff fluff. You may develop tooth decay.))

all was golden when the day met the night

You're a planner, you always have been. 

You'd written a will by the age of twelve, on pink spiral bound notebook paper when the only things you had to bequeath were your CDs and the money in the piggy bank under your bed. Morbid maybe but hey, random death happened every day and you just knew Felipe would take your NSync CDs given half a chance and you weren't about to let that happen lying down, even in death.

By the time you were seventeen you'd created your first five year plan complete with high school, college and police academy graduation (all of which came to pass because of dedication, hard work and of course, planning.)

When you wrote that toast for Captain Holt at his first Thanksgiving at the Nine-Nine, you didn't just write it. You planned, you redrafted the plan twice, you wrote a draft and redrafted that a dozen or so times before you were even moderately happy with it. 

All of this provides the strongest possible anecdotal evidence you can think of for the 'opposites attract' theory because you've never met anyone less organised and more averse to planning than Jake Peralta. 

Jake is an engaging story teller but this morning, you're only half listening; sometimes you prefer to just watch him in his element—wild gestures and exaggerated expressions and wide smiles on that wide mouth of his.

You’re a planner and this extends into your relationships too so you can make sure nothing comes out of left field. And definitely, the decision to say ‘I love you’ for the first time should always be carefully thought out, pre-prepared and timed to perfection—not too early in the relationship but not leaving them hanging when they say it first. It’s important to get it right; honestly, you don’t even like the risk of being the first one to say it. Feeling it is one thing but saying it out loud? It’s a commitment in and of itself and has to be treated like one.

At least, that’s your usual philosophy. Maybe Jake’s rubbing off on you.

“So I dive over the most enormous pyramid of boxes you’ve ever seen -and it turns out they have thousands of tennis balls inside them so of course they go everywhere- grab the perp by his ankles while he’s still running and then Rosa almost trips on the tennis balls running over to cuff him…“ Jake tells you, walking backwards toward your door, stuffing his arms into his jacket as he goes.

And that’s when you say it. Inelegantly and completely without pre-thought or planning.

“I love you,” you blurt out.

“…Then uniform come in and they all do trip and-” He stops. His head turns to one side as he regards you. “Say again,” he says, a very different smile creeping up his face.

“You heard,” you accuse, blushing, even if you’re not entirely sure he did.

“Oh, I know. I just wanted to hear you say it again,” Jake says, grinning properly, eyes dancing. He’s walking back to you slowly now, work apparently forgotten for the time being. Maybe you should have done this when Captain Holt wasn’t expecting him at work in twenty minutes but then again… it’s not like you planned it, is it?

“I love you, idiot,” you say a tad more confidently because he’s blatantly daring you and you wouldn’t be you if you didn’t respond to challenges, especially from Jake Peralta.

“That’s some flagrant rule-breaking, Santiago, I’m disappointed in you,” he says. Your face must convey your confusion because he grins wider and elaborates. “Our first date. I did tell you.”

You’re not allowed to fall in love with me, you remember and you roll your eyes. In fairness, he had a problem keeping that rule long before you did.

“But, lucky for you, I’m ready to let it slide,” he continues rounding the breakfast bar so he can get close to you.

“How generous of you,” you say. Only Jake could respond to you saying you loved him for the first time by turning it into a joke—you’d be annoyed if it was anyone else but with Jake, you’re so used to him reacting to emotion in this way it’s almost an endearing character trait of his.

He steps close to the bar stool you’re perching on and his hands find the sides of your face, tipping your head up gently so you’re looking him in the eyes. “Yep, and do you know why?” You say nothing, but his gaze makes something catch in your stomach. “Because I love you too, Santiago.”

Jake leans down to kiss you and you think this couldn’t have gone better if you’d planned it.

[chi-merical]

((This is pure, pure speculation based on the various spoilers we’ve had for The Road Trip -including some that we got ages ago that I’m now convinced was the planning stages/an early version of the script. I’m so excited for this episode that these little scenarios just keep bouncing around in my head for how it’s going to go and it’ll annoy me till I write it down so here we are. It’s probably wildly inaccurate but hey ho, this is what I want to see! Vague-ish spoilers ahead.))

and i will never let you get away

“You can say it, you know,” Jake says to her once Sophia and Teddy have disappeared into the gas station to use the facilities. After a successful prisoner transfer they’re heading to the B&B; that is, herself, Jake, Sophia and Teddy are heading there because Jake did the thoughtful thing and invited their significant others to make the work weekend more fun for both of them. Or so he thought. Jake, Sophia and Teddy have been holding the conversation since they set off from Brooklyn, Amy only contributing when a question was directed at her, and she knows at least Jake noticed her reticence.  

Amy looks at him, lifting her head off the glass for the first time since they started driving. “What?”

“You didn’t want me to invite Teddy, did you?” Jake guesses. He’s right as usual.

He’s watching her earnestly, an apology written across his features. Amy sighs and smiles wanly at him—he shouldn’t feel guilty, it was a nice gesture and in any other circumstances Amy would have been thrilled to have a free weekend in a nice B&B with her boyfriend. And since Jake obviously wanted Sophia to come, inviting Teddy would have seemed like a natural step so Amy wouldn’t be playing the third wheel all weekend. It was a very thoughtful thing for Jake to do really. It’s Amy that’s the problem. “It’s fine, honestly, it’s just-” Amy stops, wondering whether to tell him. “I’m planning to break up with him.”

“Oh,” she hears Jake say. Amy forces her gaze to stay on the gas station outside the passenger window—she doesn’t want to see his reaction, doesn’t want to know if it still matters to him whether she’s with someone or not. She can admit to herself at least that it’s because she knows it doesn’t matter to him anymore. Not now he’s moved on, not now he’s got kind, smart, legs-for-miles Sophia. “Jesus, Amy, I’m sorry. If I’d known…”

She turns back to him. “You didn’t know. It’s fine, Jake, really. It’s just a weekend.”

Jake looks like he wants to say something else but Teddy and Sophia reappear in the backseat and Sophia thrusts a multi-coloured slurpee into her lap that she bought for Amy because she’s just that nice.

Jake finds her on the swing seat on the porch that evening after dinner. It really is a beautiful B&B that the NYPD is paying for and Amy thinks it’s a shame she’s in no mood to enjoy it. Jake and Sophia seem to be enjoying themselves though so that’s, you know, something. Even if Amy did have to excuse herself abruptly to the toilet when Sophia fed Jake a spoonful of chocolate cake from her plate, the comfortable domesticity between them suddenly too much to bear.

And as for Teddy, well, she’s sure he would be enjoying it if his girlfriend wasn’t so damned dour all the time. He’s caught onto the fact that something’s not right and she’s sure she’ll get the concerned boyfriend talk before they go to bed tonight. She won’t be able to tell him the truth of course, because telling your boyfriend you want to break up while you’re away with him is a level of cruel she refuses to stoop to.

Jake sits next to her on the seat, in silence at first but he starts swinging them harder, grinning at her, and Amy feels her cheeks lift too for the first time all day. Damn him. Eventually he slows down and folds his legs up under him. Amy feels him sneak glances at her, biting his lip.

“Ask,” she tells him. “I can tell you’re dying to.”

“Why do you want to break up with Teddy?”

 After a long minute, Amy says, “He’s nice, he’s sweet, he’s reliable. Our relationship works.”

Jake nods slowly. “I’m seeing a pretty big ‘but’ approaching on the horizon.”

Amy snorts loudly at his imagery but sobers quickly. Her explanation comes out quicker than she can stop or even temper it. There’s a part of her that feels guilty for telling Jake all this before even letting Teddy know that their relationship is on the rocks but it’s been playing on her mind so much lately that it’s just a relief to tell someone. “Our relationship works but shouldn’t there be more than that? With the person you’re supposed with? Don’t you think it should feel like more than just ‘working’? Like… I’ve never been so furiously mad at Teddy that I could happily wring his neck.”

Jake laughs. “You’re saying that not wanting to commit the second degree murder of your significant other is a bad thing?”

“I’m saying, I just don’t feel anything when I’m with him and I can’t remember when and if I ever did, he doesn’t make me laugh anymore--” In a pause for breath, Amy finds Jake’s eyes. Her next words come out quietly and before she thinks through their consequences. “At least… not like you do.”

At this, Jake grows very still. There’s no room to claim she was kidding or any other bullshit excuse; she means exactly what he thinks she means. “Amy,” he says slowly. “What are you saying?”

The moment is dangerous between them for a few mad, scary, wonderful seconds and Amy just knows this is one of those turning point moments like his romantic stylez was. Then, like a metaphorical bucket of cold water, over Jake’s shoulder Amy sees Sophia come out onto the porch and look around, obviously for Jake. And abruptly, Amy becomes so acutely aware of how selfish she’s being that it brings tears to her eyes. Jake told her how he felt months ago and she does nothing about it until he moves on and while she still has a boyfriend-- she’s being cruel and Jake deserves better.

He deserves Sophia.

“Nothing. I’m not saying anything,” she mutters, dropping her eyes and standing up so quickly the seat swings against the wall of the B&B hard. Amy forces a smile as Sophia passes her on the porch, trying not to feel Sophia’s boyfriend’s eyes on her back as she escapes inside.

[chi-merical]

9. roommates!au

1. called the wrong number while drunk!au | 2. daycare!au | 3. role reversal!au | 4. noir!au  | 5. exes who just can’t stay away from each other!au |  6. extras on a movie set!au  | 7. teachers!au   | 8. bestselling author and harsh critic!au 

Being honest, she doesn’t even like Killian Jones.

He’s messy and smug and annoying and his bed is entirely too close to his goddamned wall -the very same wall that her room is on the other side of- for the number of times he has nameless women in there. Emma has long since lost count of the mornings she’s entered the kitchen in the mornings to find a pile of his dishes dumped in the sink as though he thought they’d wash themselves.

(Well, she supposes he must think they do since Emma ends up doing them most of the time.)

Even if he doesn’t mind capturing the occasional spider since Emma can’t stand the little heathens, it doesn’t mean she likes living with him.

This is all David’s and Mary Margaret’s fault, and that’s a fact Emma never hesitates to remind them of when she visits their nice, clean apartment. Killian is a friend of Mary Margaret’s boyfriend David that Emma hadn’t really known very well before this year but at the time it was all all right since they had all planned to move together after college. Until David and Mary Margaret decided to be turncoats and get their own place together instead, leaving herself and Killian with little option but to move in together and pay a higher share of rent than they were expecting. They both apologised profusely of course for inconveniencing them but still, Emma curses them when she finds take away wrappers left on the coffee table and his smelly socks strewn across the sofa.

All of this, then, might make it a little difficult to explain why she’s straddling his lap on the very same sofa, fingers in his soft hair in order to tip his head back and currently kissing the shit out of him.

Emma is cold. Emma is wet. Emma is miserable.

Killian is sitting in front of the television with a six pack of beers and a large bag of popcorn when she gets back from her disastrous date (for a start, Emma went dressed for a fancy restaurant, dress and sky-high heels, Walsh took her to his work—the monkey enclosure at the zoo.) She throws her keys on the counter and kicks off her heels with a little too much force so they go flying across the room like suede-covered projectiles.

Killian watches this display with amusement. “Careful, love. You could take someone’s eye out with those,” he says. Emma gives him a thunderous look and practically rips her now-sodden red coat off and drapes it over the back of the barstool.

(Disaster number two: Emma did not take an umbrella. And it rained. A lot.)

She doesn’t miss Killian’s eyes raking her body in her short leather dress which, okay, is sort of flattering. Walsh barely noticed (though in fairness, she did have to keep her coat on most of the night) and for all his faults, Killian’s a shockingly attractive guy. It’s nice knowing she can capture his attention even looking as much like a drowned cat as she does right now.

“Good night?” he asks, smirking. Emma turns her glare back on him, about to leave and dry off and check herself for the stench of monkey (again) before sleeping until noon tomorrow. Killian’s smile softens from mocking to sympathetic. He lifts the six pack rings of beer in the air. “Fancy a beer?”

Emma briefly considers the pros and cons of his offer. Cons: spending time with her annoying roommate so he can take cheap shots at how badly her date went. Pros: drinking herself into oblivion before she can have a crisis of self-esteem about the string of failed dates she’s been on recently.

Emma walks over, throws herself on the sofa next to him and holds her hand out. Killian nods sagely and presses a beer into her hand. She looks up at the screen.

“What the hell are you watching anyway?”

“Peter Pan,” he tells her, offering her the bag of popcorn. Emma takes a handful and shoves them ungracefully into her mouth.

She decides not to question why a grown man is watching a kids film with a pack of beer at nine o’clock on a Saturday night. “Cool,” she says around the popcorn.

  - - - -  - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  By half way through the film, they’ve progressed from beer to the bottle of vodka Emma keeps in the cupboard under the sink, mixing it with a bottle of Coke Killian had in the fridge. It all ends up being more fun than Emma expected, perhaps because they’re both getting progressively drunker but also because Killian can actually be pretty decent company when he wants to be. He keeps the snide comments about her subpar love life to a minimum (except when she tells him about the monkeys--he laughs long and hard at that but Emma finds herself smiling with him) and he’s got an extremely sharp sense of humour that Emma must have missed while being annoyed at him for the four months they’ve been living together.

“You seriously don’t like Peter Pan… of Peter Pan?” Emma demands, perplexed. “He’s the main character! He typifies the ‘loveable rogue’ character personality!”

Killian screws up his nose in disgust. Emma does not think it’s cute. “He cut off Hook’s hand and fed it to a crocodile and you think he’s loveable? Really? Swan, I have to say, I wonder about you sometimes.” Emma tries to hits him in the arm for that but her aim is off because of the alcohol so she ends up hitting the sofa cushion instead. “Peter Pan literally doesn’t want to grow up, what kind of bloody twisted demon actually wants to stay pre-teen forever? Nah, give me Captain Hook any day.”

“You identify more with Captain Hook than Peter Pan, right. Now there’s a psychological insight into Killian Jones that I really could have done without.”

Killian smiles but ignores her. “‘Least Hook has some concept of honour. For all his faults-”

“Like wanting to murder children?” Emma supplies. It occurs to her vaguely that this is probably the most intelligent drunk conversation she’s ever has

“-Hook actually follows some kind of code. You know, like good form. I respect the guy for that. Peter Pan just does whatever he can to get ahead, consequences be damned. That’s not—I don’t like that.” Killian leans his head on the back of the sofa, looking at her. Emma glances at the TV screen and laughs. “What?” Killian asks, smiling too.

Emma points at the DVD menu. “The movie finished. We didn’t even notice.”

“So it did,” Killian murmurs, turning his eyes back to hers. “What do we do now?”

For a long minute, the only sound between them is the constant loop of the DVD menu music. Emma’s pretty sure if she wasn’t drunk and unexpectedly proximate to him on the sofa she wouldn’t be entertaining the sort of thoughts she’s currently entertaining about running her hands all over that jaw line of his (though she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t thought about it even while stone cold sober. So what? Being her annoying flatmate doesn’t stop him being a freaking Adonis.)

Killian might not like it but the ‘consequences be damned’ approach has its advantages. The oh, fuck it stream of thought that’s currently running through her brain is what convinces her to lean over their unspoken respectful distance dividing line on the sofa that they’ve gotten progressively closer to crossing all evening and kiss him lightly on the lips.

His lips are soft but ultimately stock-still under hers and Emma pulls away, a cold pit of regret and shame opening in the bottom of her stomach. Killian though, to her surprise, doesn’t look horrified. Far from it, actually. He stares at her from an inch or two away, eyes flicking down to her lips. His hand tangles in her still-damp hair and the next thing Emma knows, they’re kissing again.

The way Emma’s head is turned eventually get awkward and uncomfortable so she shifts herself while they kiss, and Killian’s hands splayed out on each side of her ribcage brings her closer. It’s clear something radical has to be done to make things progress faster so Emma lifts her right leg up and over his, straddling him. The bag of popcorn next to him spills out all over the sofa after her knee tips it over but Emma can’t bring herself to care right now—not while her dress is slowly hitching up her thighs, her hands in his hair.

Her hands trail down his neck and over his collarbones until they find the buttons on his shirt --further down his chest than she expected, but then Killian does have a penchant for having his chest hair on display. Killian stops briefly to ask, breathless: “You sure?”

They’re both drunk, he definitely isn’t who she imagined she might be doing this with tonight but it’s not like she’d ever have the guts to do this while sober. And so what if she’s curious about what sex with him is like? She’s had to listen to him and other women through the thin walls of the apartment for long enough (those women all seemed pretty satisfied judging by the noises they made) so she says, “Yeah.”

His hands slide under her backside and Emma can’t help the surprised yelp she makes when he lifts her effortlessly and carries her through to his room. It’s all she can do to wrap her legs around his waist and hold onto his shoulders for dear life. And no, she definitely doesn’t find it hot when he kicks his bedroom door open so he continue kissing along her jaw.

Consequences be damned, Emma thinks as they fall together on his bed and his lips find the column of her throat.

  - - - - - - - - - - -

  “This doesn’t mean I like you,” is the first thing Emma says to him when he drags his eyes open.

She’s been awake for an hour or so now, thinking through what this means other than a drunken tryst. It’s tough work when you’ve got a head full of sludge but she knows Killian isn’t going to consider the eventualities that might arise from this and clearly someone has to. It’s highly possible she should have left his bed to do this kind of practical thinking but Killian’s arm is thrown over her and his leg is between hers and there’s no way she’s be able to leave without waking him (and maybe it’s kind of nice.)

Killian squints at her and scrubs a hand down his face, yawning and rolling his shoulders back. Emma’s eyes follow the movement of his muscles before she tears her eyes away. “Thank you, Swan, for not letting me labour under that delusion any longer than necessary,” he mutters, voice rough with sleep and hangover.

“This was a one-time thing,” Emma continues. She stops short of labelling it a mistake even though any objective person would call drunken sex with your roommate a mistake, the objective person hasn’t felt the pleasure of Killian Jones’ talented fingers and tongue.

Killian huffs out a breath through his nose, closing his eyes and smiling like he’d been expecting this. “Of course it was.”

Emma can’t work out his tone so she chooses to take his words at face value. “Just wanted to make sure we’re clear,” she says. Before her brain can catch up with her, she adds. “Anyway, you and me would never work. You’re… messy.”

At this, Killian gives her a blank look. She shouldn’t have said anything. “You wouldn’t –hypothetically- go out with me because I can’t keep the flat tidy?”

“Well, that too. But that’s not what I mean when I say ‘messy’.”

“Well, do tell,” Killian says with something like sarcasm. Emma ignores it.

“First, there’s the lease. We still have eight months left on the lease to live out and I barely tolerate you as it is. When the relationship between us inevitably went south it’d be unbearable. Then there’s David and Mary Margaret.”

“David and Mary Margaret,” he echoes. “Really.”

It’s not a question but Emma quickly elaborates anyway, wanting to draw the intense focus of his eyes off her. “We’re both friends with them and they’d be affected when we broke up and I don’t wanna put them in that situation–even if they’re technically the reasons we’re in this mess; I bet this wouldn’t have happened if they’d moved in with us like they said they were going to.”

Killian smirks. “Don’t be so sure. Clearly you find me even more irresistible after a few libations, Swan.”

Him and his stupid vocabulary. “So clearly, we should just forget this happened and go back to how things were.”

Killian doesn’t say anything for a while and Emma wonders whether or not to gather up her clothes and leave now they’ve had The Talk. The sooner things go back to normal the better. She’s about to get up when Killian says, “You sound like you’ve given this a fair bit of thought.”

“Not really,” Emma lies. It’s weirder to admit you’ve spent an hour watching someone sleep and going through every eventuality of a possible relationship with them, all of which -in her head at least- ended up in the crashing-and-burning-with-many-casualties category. Herself and Killian would be the human relationship equivalent of cats and dogs when it got really bad. And she has no doubt it would.

She sits up, gathering his quilt around her naked body and fighting the head rush of a night two cans of beer and countless vodkas and coke. Her dress and tights are a crumpled heap next to the bed and she’s not physically or mentally prepared to force herself back into it just for the walk across the corridor. Killian has a soft dark blue robe on a chair next to the bed. “Do you mind?” she asks shyly, gesturing to it. He shakes his head no and Emma wraps it around herself tightly as she gets up and gathers her clothes.

Emma stops by the door, pulling her lip into her mouth. “So,” she starts. “We’re agreed? We go back to normal?”

His expression doesn’t change much and Emma can’t work out what he’s thinking for the life of her. “Yep,” he says, the note of cheeriness sounding a little false. “You’ve convinced me: I’m messy.”

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  (Try as she might to ignore it, walking into a gleaming kitchen the next morning with all the dishes washed, dried and put away where they should be feels a lot more significant than just a nice roommate gesture.)

[chi-merical]

((set in a few episodes time where Toby is more... I don't know if 'aware' is the right word but cognizant of what he's feeling for Happy. Honestly, I wasn't actually planning on writing fanfic for this pairing but hey, this popped into my head and I ran with it))

"Hey, Paige, what's up? How's Ralph doing?"

Maybe she doesn't have 'genius'-level reactions at the best of times but Paige will freely admit Toby voluntarily entering into casual conversation with her takes longer to react to than it should. She did have an unexpectedly late night last night tearing to tear Ralph away from a book he was thoroughly engrossed in so he could get some sleep--she should have known better than to text Walter for advice who first asked her what he was reading and then promptly text back 'Let him read' as though she was the one being unreasonable.

The second reason Paige is stunned into silence is that while she's sure Toby tolerates her and likes Ralph, she still doesn't think he really understands why she's here (which she can't blame him for, since there's moments in her days here where she feels exactly the same way.) 

Paige blinks twice at him, half tempted to look around to see if there's anyone else he could be talking to. "I'm... good, as is Ralph, thank you, Toby?" It comes out more like a question.

"Good, good, happy to hear it. Hey, Paige could you move-" he looks between her, middle distance and the floor beside her, like he's judging a distance "-about five paces to the left?"

"Okay?" Paige acquiesces after a perplexed second, eventually reasoning that there must be a explanation for why he's being weird, even if she can't for the life of her work out what it is. Better to humour him for now.

"So... Paige," Toby says, slightly too loudly. He's trying to smile casually but it comes out looking forced. "How's it going?"

"How's what going?

"Life," he says. Paige doesn't miss his eyes flicking behind her every couple of seconds.

"No different than when you asked less than a minute ago, amazingly."

Toby doesn't respond, just keeps his eyes on something behind her. Paige follows his gaze and then it makes a little more sense. It's not something he's watching, it's someone--

Toby looks momentarily deflated she's worked out his plan so quickly (Paige feels a sense of achievement even if it wasn't the most cunning of plans.)

"I needed a human woman who's likely to be in Happy's line of vision and you're the closest I've got," Toby explains quietly. Paige isn't sure if she should be offended. "And if she's jealous then the objective likelihood of anything happening isn't going to matter much to her. Crap, she's looking over--hey, Paige, could you maybe put your hand on my arm and start laughing?"

Paige huffs a breath out, rolls her eyes and moves five paces to the left. Toby squints at her, like he can't believe she isn't playing along. "Two things, Toby: first, did it not occur to you that I might not want to be involved in your trying to mess with Happy's head?  Second, did it also not occur to you that messing with her head is not the best way to get her attention?"

Toby rolls his eyes. "I'm a behaviourist. Messing with people's heads is what I do for a living."

"And therein lies your mistake: it's what you do for a living, it's not how you impress the girl you like."

Rocking back and forth on his heels, Toby looks at her speculatively like he's turning over her statement over in his mind. Paige just smirks contentedly--she's right and they both know it. "Then what would you suggest, genius?" he finally says.

The addition of 'genius' is almost an insult but she can see he's feeling vulnerable and defensive so she lets it go. "I don't know, how about actually sitting down and having a real conversation with her? Or asking her out? Or even passing her a note that says 'Do you like me? Check yes or no.'"

"Well, now you're just being facetious," Toby grumbles, about to step away and Paige laughs.

"Hey, Toby," Paige calls. He turns back to her. "Since you're as dumb in love as us normals, I will accept an apology for trying to involve me in your scheme to make Happy jealous."

Toby smiles genuinely now. "I'm sorry, Paige."

"Accepted." She shoves him lightly in Happy's direction. "Now go talk to her, genius."