The way Jake Peralta saw it, there were two kinds of drunk. The first was fun drunk. Beach house drunk, cover story drunk, late night paperwork drunk…That was the easy kind. Fun drunk was warm chested. It was here. It was every detail. It was a puzzle, all fuzzed over with the promise that, for once, everyone around him was here too. Fun drunk was not so very different from the way Jake Peralta lived every day of his life.
Fun drunk often took place at a bar. It often took place with flushed faces, rising laughter. Above all else, fun drunk meant Jake was never, ever alone.
He, however, was here. A bulb had burned out of his lamp, and there was some kind of infomercial on the television. The radio was on, as was a police scanner in the corner. The room was far from quiet, but it was empty, save one police detective leaning against the edge of the couch and holding a bottle in his fingers.
Fun drunk Peralta drank neat whiskey he'd conned or bet or goaded someone into buying for him. But at home, Jake drank cheap vodka mixed with watermelon Kool Aid pouches. This was the Jake who, true to form, never quite grew up after years in high school of drinking alone and watching reruns of LA Law.
He was avoiding the matter at hand, which was sad drunk, or more accurately after five hours of restless sleep, sad hungover. He was avoiding his phone, which had not rung. He was avoiding the overdraft notice from a night at the Maple Drip Inn for Teddy.
He lived seventeen minutes from the subway station where he was meeting Santiago for a stakeout, theoretically in nineteen minutes. It dawned on him that showing up hungover was not only irresponsible and dangerous, it was also really, really dumb.
Then again that was sort of the point, right? He was the drunk, irresponsible jerk who stood her up. He was the lanky man-child with the Peter Pan complex. He was the bleary-eyed wunderkind who would never give up the adrenaline or the easy laugh.
At least, that's how Santiago saw it. For a moment, she had looked so closely that she had almost caught a glimpse of the Peralta who sat, sprawled on the floor for twenty more seconds. And, because he was not, in fact, bulletproof, he had run back into the comfortable cover of immaturity.
An alarm rang on his phone. The "Bad Boys" theme from COPS. It knifed his head, and he smiled slightly, despite wanting to scream more than anything.
Aspirin. Bagel. Sunglasses. Gatorade for the road. Smirk. Sex tape joke. Annnd sidearm. Shot of whiskey he'd gotten as a gift sometime.
She saw him, jogging on the edge of lateness from the subway station. His loping stride was crooked, but she couldn't make herself mind so much. Jake Peralta was bulletproof and smiling.