A/N: Written post-Tactical Village, and happy to find post-Unsolvable it's still relevant! Jake drunk and sad has turned into my kryptonite, so I had to make him happy! So... this happened.
Also, very big thanks to my friend Ashley for looking this over and telling me that I'm wonderful constantly. She is the greatest.
Posted to Ao3 3/19/14... oops.
"I wish I had known," Jake mumbles into his beer. "I wish I had known."
Amy had seen Jake all by himself at one of the bar's booths and felt bad he was missing out on Rosa detailing one of her most gruesome arrests, so she had come to sit next to him. But sitting down, she could see that she wouldn't be convincing him to come and rejoin their group; he was about five beers past that point.
"What, Jake?" She asks softly, thinking about putting her hand on his arm and deciding against it.
"I wish I had known. Just ask. I just had to ask."
"Ask what?"
He barrels through, ignoring her question. "It's so simple I never considered it. It was impossible. The whole thing's impossible, really. That's what I knew. But I didn't know." He sighs heavily and his whole body slumps. "I didn't know."
"Jake – " Amy starts, leaning in towards him, prepared for awkward physical contact to comfort him, but he starts talking again really quietly.
"I was happy. I didn't know and I was happy because I didn't know. Now I know and it hurts. But it's a warm, achy kind of hurt I thought was made up, but it's real because I feel it, and all I had to do was ask."
The defeatist tone in Jake's voice creates a pang in Amy's chest, and she reaches out to grab his arm with both of her hands. "Jake it's okay!" She starts talking in a soft voice without thinking. "You can still ask – you know now! You don't – it doesn't – "
Jake shakes his head, leaning towards her. "No, you're happy. The time's gone. He's great and you're happy, and it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter." He spins the beer glass around on the table, not noticing Amy's grip is tighter than before. Amy doesn't notice she's gripping harder either, too busy trying to put one coherent thought in front of another.
"Why not?" Her voice cracks as she goes on. "What doesn't matter?"
"It doesn't. Doesn't matter." He breathes deeply and keeps talking, quieter and quieter. "I like you, but you're happy with your perfect cop, and that's good. I'm okay with it... I just wish I never knew. Or I wish I knew you'd probably say yes."
"Jake..." Amy doesn't know what she's saying, but she has to say something.
He downs the rest of his beer in one swig and turns to face her. "I need to go home." He doesn't ask her to move, so she doesn't mention that she feels like she's stuck to the ugly vinyl seat of the booth. Instead, he's looking at her intently, slowly raising his hand to her face and sweeping her hair behind her ear. "I shouldn't be this drunk and this emotional in public."
Amy doesn't realize she's moved until she's watching Jake walk away, and she wishes he hadn't finished off the last of his beer, because now she has to buy another one.
Jake wakes up all at once at four thirty in the morning, and he would try and figure out if it's his neighbors or some drunk in the street, but his head feels lopsided and his mouth is dry. He's forced to remember he was at the bar tonight and drank a lot, and his memory keeps jogging, unbidden, and he can remember talking to Amy, but not what he said.
He presses the 'call' next to her photo without thinking about it and flops back down on his pillow, his other arm over his eyes.
"'lo?" Her voice is low and groggy.
"Amy, was I talking to you last night?"
"Jake?"
"Yeah – was I talking to you drunk last night?"
"Yes, wh– " she yawns loudly, waking her voice up. "Yes, why?"
"What did I say?"
Santiago yawns again, "I don't know – something about you didn't know something, and hindsight, and you were sad." She coughs lightly before adding, "You weren't making a lot of sense, so I just tried to pat you on the back and then you left."
In the silence following, Amy's not sure if he said something she missed, or if the line is dead, so she asks again. "Jake?"
"Yeah, thanks... I – I couldn't remember."
She's not too tired to catch that there's something in his voice that says more, but she is way too tired to figure out what it is. "Okay. Well, I'll see you tomorrow nice and sober?"
Jake agrees and mumbles a goodbye, and she's sure that he'll be asleep in no time. But now that she's awake, Amy can't fall right back to sleep; she has to readjust all of her pillows and blankets and readjust her body for sleep.
Except as she's fluffing her pillow again, her tired brain catches up to her, and she does remember exactly what Jake said to her.
She ends up gulping down some cough syrup before she can manage to fall back asleep.
At the precinct, every time Amy looks up from her work her eyes dart over to Jake. Even when he's not at his desk or right next to her in a meeting she's hypersensitive to where he is in the building. She won't let her thoughts get farther than accepting that Jake likes her enough to want to ask her out. That Jake was getting drunk to forget how much he wants to ask her out. Or that Jake called her in the middle of the night because he was worried he had accidentally told her all of those things.
She's glad that her half-asleep brain didn't remember so she didn't have to lie to him, but she still feels guilty. All she can do is stop herself from thinking about it. She doesn't wonder why she can't keep her eyes off of him, or why her stomach has been nervous all day, or why she cancelled her lunch date with Teddy. She's not thinking about it. Not consciously, anyway.
Her subconscious might be slowly documenting every single moment, from when Jake smiled at her saying 'Good morning,' or the crinkle in his forehead when he's on the brink of solving a case, or the soft sappy look she saw when she caught him looking at her.
By the end of their shift, though, it's like her whole chest has filled up with bubbles of guilt, uncertainty, anxiety, and other emotions she's refused to look at through the day, so when Jake starts to leave, she follows him to the elevator and some of them manage to escape her mouth.
"Jake, wait!" He turns around to face her, but before he can reply, Amy blurts out, "I lied."
"What?"
"I mean, I didn't realize I was lying – it was four in the morning and I was half asleep – but after you hung up I did remember."
Jake's face is blank and he's unnervingly still, but she can see that his eyes are freaking out. "What?"
"I remembered after you hung up – that you said more than what I told you. You were talking about how the person you like is dating someone – and you said me."
Amy doesn't look up, as the silence stretches out between them. "I mean, you said 'you', so it's possible you thought I was someone else..." Jake silently avoids looking at her, so Amy just keeps talking, her arms wrapped around her torso. "I mean people say crazy stuff when they're drunk, maybe you thought I was Rosa." She looks up at him and asks, her voice soft and small. "Do you like Rosa?"
Jakes makes a sound that's somewhere between a snort and a laugh, finally looking up at Amy. "No, I don't like Rosa." He smiles at her for a few seconds before the awkwardness overwhelms them again. He runs a hand forcefully over his face and takes a deep sigh before he looks back up at her. "I do – I do like you. And I'm sorry for telling you when I was drunk, and not remembering."
He looks up at her, holding her gaze, and Amy feels like he's mirroring her emotions, and she wants to jump in to tell him to stop talking, but the uncertainty and fear hold her back, but not before she takes a half step forward.
"You're with Teddy and that's good, he's a great guy. And I just don't want to screw up our friendship, so we can just forget about it. That's probably easiest."
"But I don't wanna forget." Amy's open mouth finally lets her say something, and then immediately regrets it.
"What?"
"I – I've had a really weird day, Jake." She looks up at his confused face and takes a deep breath. "Every time I'd look up you were there – being a good cop, or a dork, or just..." she bites her lip on her words. "I don't want to forget that you like me, because I don't think I can forget that I like you."
Jake's whole body looks a little deflated and presses his lips together before he asks, his voice thin, "Are you serious?"
Amy has to roll her eyes. "Yes, Jake, I'm serious." He's still raising an eyebrow in disbelief when she walks towards him, connecting their lips.
She's never really thought about kissing Jake before, but it both lives up to and exceeds her expectations. His lips are soft and steady, and his arms circle around her, pulling her closer to him. The kiss is soft and sweet, and Jake breaks it off quickly, resting his forehead on hers. "So we like each other? What now?"
Amy shakes her head, still focused on his lips. "I don't know. Go somewhere private to make-out?
Jake grins widely before saying, "Yeah, we can talk about stuff later."
"Exactly." She grins, pulling him out of the precinct by one hand and up against her in the elevator, happy not to think about all of the complicated and stressful conversations in their near future.