It's two days to Christmas, and Amy cannot hold it in. She's on a case with Peralta, an open and shut B and E case in a Pakistani bazaar just off Carroll Street. The owner was a man in his late 70s, ready to reluctantly and likely only partially retire, and all signs were pointing to the eldest son; unemployed, late forties and a multiple offender. Still, protocol must be followed, and they're on the way to their suspect's apartment, a dark shoebox on the eight floor of a Bay Ridge apartment block.

"What is the matter with you?" Peralta throws his head back to stare at Santiago after the fifth floor, face wrinkled in distaste.

"What?" Amy retorts.

"The smiling," Peralta mocks her, "the singing, the skipping!"

"Skipping?!" Amy's eyes bug. "I would never!"

"I see you!" Jake points, fingers gesturing wildly. "I see the skipping!"

"...it's Christmas, Jake," sighs Amy, conceding defeat. Skipping. Her body's greatest betrayal of her joy. "I get a full three days off work, I get to go home to Jersey, my tita's coming from Florida, why can't I be happy?"

Jake doesn't reply to Amy, but turns his back and starts walking up the next flight of stairs. They often go without talking on cases, but something in Jake's shoulders makes Amy want to pursue this one.

"What are you doing for the holidays, Jake?" Amy calls as they climb the stairs.

"Chanukah ended two days ago, Santiago!" She can't see, but Amy knows that Jake is rolling his eyes.

"You know what I mean."

"Working," Jake stops, turning his head over his shoulder to inform Amy, "I'm working the next three days."

"Full days?"

"Well, six to six tomorrow, midday to ten the next two days," he shrugs.

"And for the rest of the day?" Amy presses.

"Die Hard marathon?" Jake shrugs. "Not at the top of my priority list."

"Just watch Die Hard?"

"Yeah, probably. What's the issue here?"

"No, no issue, just..." Amy swallows, struggling to verbalise her thoughts.

It's been strange, since he went undercover; since Teddy; since Sophia. They're friends, of course, and the teasing has somehow reduced; boiled down to a friendly partnership and a more two sided banter than they've ever had, but there are still moments where they'll catch each other's eyes, and words won't come. There are words between them that once came so easy, now impossible to speak. She looks up at him, his eyes trained on her in what could constitute a glare.

"...are you going to spend the evenings with Sophia?" she finally manages to spit out, but it's not exactly what she wanted to say.

"Oh," Jake recoils a little, but he doesn't look offended or put off by the question; more surprised than anything. "Oh, no. Sophia's visiting family in Puerto Rico for a couple of weeks. Crime doesn't take a break, but apparently denying the world justice does!"

"And thank God for that," Amy smiles thinly. "So who'll you be spending the afternoon with, will you be going out to your grandparents on City Island?"

"My grandparents? You talk like my grandparents," Jake teases, but Amy can see the cogs turning in his head, his eyes darting. "Nah, I prefer to stay away from that. Santa stopped visiting me when I was about 8; Die Hard's the peak of festivity for me."

Jake turns again after that, marching up the stairs. There's nothing particularly special or different about this arrest - he doesn't try to make a break for it, but he does cry a lot. There's a lot of 'Don't tell him, please don't tell my Dad!' and Jake cuffs him with rolled eyes instead of a quipped jokes. They bring him back to the precinct in the back of Amy's squad car, and few words are exchanged on the journey back.

Amy leaves for New Brunswick soon after finishing up with their collar, trading her pantsuit in for a dark pair of skinny jeans and an informal blazer. There's a weight off her chest as she leaves New York on the New Jersey turnpike, but there remains a niggle in the back of her mind; a feeling that she's forgotten something that she really should do. She sleeps in her childhood bed that night; the lofted bed over the desk she'd slaved over as a teenager; the bed she'd proudly chosen as a seven year old when her family left Queens and she graduated to her own bedroom.

She allows herself an extra couple of hours of sleep the next morning, waking at ten. She knows that Jake's been in since six this morning, and she feels a bit strange, padding around her childhood room in her slippers and robe, the same robe she'd proudly taken with her when she moved back to the city for college, monogrammed AJS over the breast pocket. Jake once told her that Captain Holt wears monogrammed pyjamas - she doesn't know how he knows this, but she feels a little proud, knowing that her mentor shares her fondness for classy bedroom attire.

Amy spends the day in the kitchen, chopping food with her mother and sporadically dancing with her nephews to the music on the Cuban channel her Dad's prized satellite radio picks up - Pitbull free, to her delight. She doesn't consider herself to be particularly good with children, but she has a soft spot for her younger nieces and nephews, finally old enough to appreciate children from afar.

The mood in the house is infectious - Mateo and Paul will be home for the afternoon, Monica's flight's getting into Newark at 8, and Marc is already here with his family. It won't be the whole family, the others dotted around and poor Alex still on duty with his station down in Miami, but Amy has missed Thanksgiving for the last two years; missed Nochebuena last year; missed her parent's big anniversary earlier this year. She loves her work, adores it, but she feels strangely happy to be able to put it away for a few days.

"What are the others doing for the holiday?" her mother asks, draining the beans over the sink as timba plays over Papa's radio. "Rosa and Jake and Terry?"

"Rosa, I don't know, who knows..." Amy rolls her eyes as she chops plantains next to her mother. "Nochebuena with some guy, that's all I got out of her, but she's working a few hours tomorrow so she's probably not leaving town, but it's Rosa, so I can't be sure. Cagney and Lacey are three now, so the perfect age for Santa, I think they're getting bikes but only with padded body suits and crash helmets... Charles is having Christmas dinner with Gina and his ex-wife and her fiancé, weird..."

"Don't judge, Amy," Nuria chastitises her daughter good naturedly. "And Jake?"

"Watching Die Hard?" Amy snorts. "He's taken on every extra hour going but he still has a gap between 6PM today and midday tomorrow, he says he's just going to marathon Die Hard and shotgun maple syrup."

"He won't spend the day with family, or friends?"

"Jake's Mom doesn't live in New York," Amy concentrates on the plantains, trying to ignore her mother's questions, answering the bare minimum, "and most of his family in Brooklyn are pretty strictly Jewish. As bad as I am, I'm pretty sure he's married to the job, so I'm not that sure how many friends he has outside of work."

"Tell him to come out here for the night!" Nuria makes the suggestion as she moves across the kitchen, colander filled with beans ready to add to the olla. She says it's like it's nothing, like inviting her work partner to the biggest event in the Cuban calendar is no big deal, to say nothing of the ocean of baggage that lies between them. "He can drive up after he clocks out, maybe he could pick up Monica from the airport on his way, stay for dinner and if he wants to, Alex's bed is there for him. Poor boy, no family at Christmas. Venga, cariñita."

She texts him. She rewords it over and over, but she texts him.

"Hi Jake - we need someone to pick my tita up from Newark and I remembered that you're free tonight. You could stay over for Nochebuena dinner after, if you want?"

He texts back almost immediately, even though Amy knows he's meant to be working, and he should not have his personal phone with him. She'd rebuke him if she wasn't so anxious about his reply.

"amyyyyyyyyyy yeah i can pick up ur tita, just gimme her name, digitz nd a time nd ill be there, u no i gon b the most deelitful partner n ur momma an errbody gon luv me"

She immediately regrets sending that text.

Amy continues to help her mother out with the Nochebuena preparations throughout the day. Her chopping progressively deteriorates as the day passes, and her mother eventually takes the knife off her. Trusting her daughter with little more in the kitchen, Nuria sends Amy into the living room with her grandchildren to decorate, paper chains and fairy lights. Nuria tries not to probe into her daughter's personal life - they did not raise their daughter to care about finding a husband - but she knows that there's something more to her partner that she'd like to see for herself.

She receives a text at half 8 from Jake - "got ur tita, gon charm the sheeeeeeeeeet outta her! she sayz its 30 to urs, i say i can do 20" - and that's when Amy grabs the rum. She can't explain how she's feeling, because it's Jake, and it's Monica and it's her family, all things that are so normal, but it feels like there's something bigger at stake here.

They're all sitting at the table, talking over drinks, when the bell rings. Nuria jumps to her feet at the sound of the bell, and she greets her sister at the door with a screech and a stream of Spanish that even Amy is struggling to understand. Amy closes her eyes, sighs, and stands. She makes her way into the hall, where her mother and aunt are still standing with their arms around each other, Jake grinning widely behind them.

"Amy!" Nuria grabs her daughter, pulling her over. "Dale la bienvenida!"

"Welcome to our home, Jake," she stiffly grabs her partner, planting an air kiss on both of his cheeks. "Jake, this is my mother, Nuria, and I suppose you've already met my aunt, Monica."

"Welcome, Jacob," Nuria wraps her daughter's co-worker into a hug, placing a kiss on his cheek. "So nice to see you again, thank you so much for delivering my sister safely. Will you be staying for dinner?"

"If I'm welcome, Mrs Santiago," Jake nods a smile, and Amy narrows her eyes at him. The asshole can be charming when he wants to be.

They follow Amy's mother into the 'good' living room, where the dining table is set up around the room, her brothers, nieces, nephews and cousins surrounding the table. The room is packed, and Amy can see Jake pale a little at the sight of all the people crowding the room, but she pulls him in and pushes a tumbler of rum into his hand, and dutifully introduces him to her brothers.

"Jake!" Amy's father claps a hand on his shoulder, and he and Amy jump at the boom of his voice. "Nice to see you on Nochebuena!"

"Nice to be here, sir!" Jake beams up at the tall man and offers him a handshake which her father accepts. Amy shakes her head again; so damn charming.

"Tell me, Jake - we've got a pig roasting outside, and it's going to be fantastic, but we know that you come from a different background, so we've prepared some ropa vieja for you if you're not comfortable with the pork."

"As long as Amy didn't make any of it, I'll eat anything," Jake grins.

"That's what I like to hear, Peralta," Miguel laughs, clapping Jake on the shoulder again. He leans in for a moment, and lowers his voice, "I'd stay away from the plantains if you want to avoid my Amy's handiwork."

"Dad!" Amy gasps, but Miguel has already walked away. She turns to Jake, hissing, "What was that all about? 'Oh, I'll eat anything!' Please."

"Anything to enjoy a Santiago in her native environment," Jake smirks.

He moves away from her when the food comes in, mingling with her family and friends. She watches him play with her nephews, showing off some of the tamer games he's invented for Jimmy Jab purposes over the years. She can't remember if he's met her brothers before, certainly never more than a few minutes at one of the ceremonies where they'd both been honoured, but he's getting along very well with them.

It's one thing she never really considers about Jake - she really only knows him in whatever bastardised version of a professional life they have, and it makes it very easy to forget that Jake's actually a very personable guy. Amy's never fantastic at these things, but she's okay with that, because she's happy catching up with her tita, but Jake is lighting up the room and it's so curious to her.

They go to midnight mass once dinner and sobremesa is finished, Paul and his wife staying behind with the kids. Everybody makes a big deal of Jake coming to mass - "Mira el judío, el judío viene!" - but he goes along with no problem, affably laughing off everybody's jokes.

Amy can't say she believes in God, but she believes in something, and something about parents as Cuban as hers has imbued her with a certain amount of fear and guilt. She doesn't go to mass regularly, but she'll go along when her mother goes and she's around, and she'll go for all the big events. If there's a God out there, he'll know that she's doing the best she can to be good, and he won't care that she skips mass every now and then, that she doesn't pray or doesn't say confession, that she occasionally indulges in things that are supposedly sinful.

She tries to put her head down and concentrate, but there's rum running through her, and a joyous feeling is nipping at her. She can't help from looking around her, drinking in her surroundings. Mateo is to her right, and it's all she can do to stop herself from crooning "Teo, Teito!" into his ear. Jake is to her left, and she keeps looking at him, expecting to find a good reason to laugh, but he's holding his own. He's not perfect; there's definitely missteps in the sitting and standing, but she catches him blessing himself properly, and she can hear him mumble along with the Hail Marys. He stays in his seat when they go up for Communion, but Amy can't help but side eye him even as the body of Christ melts beneath her tongue.

"Jake!" Amy grabs his arm as they wander out of mass.

"Amy?" he smiles down at her, bemused.

"How are you so good at that?" she blinks up at Jake. The rum - was it four, five, six of them? - is running right through her, freeing every faculty she prided herself on building up. "The church thing. The fitting in thing. The all of it."

"It's not my first Nochebuena, Santiago," Jake shrugs, but he doesn't shrug her arm off, continuing to walk with her.

"Rosa?" Amy blinks.

"I once gave Rosa a lift to work and when I tried to surprise her on her birthday a couple of weeks later she'd moved. That is not a coincidence. So that's a no to Nochebuena with Rosa."

"I'd move to get away from one of your surprises too," Amy elbowed Jake with a grin. "So where'd a little Ashkenazi boy like you experience Nochebuena?"

"Uh, my Dad, if you really want to know," Jake coughs, and Amy doesn't need to look to know that Jake's looking at his feet.

"Your Dad?" Amy stops, turning to face Jake.

"Yeah..."

Jake is looking everywhere but Amy's direction, and she can see that she's made him uncomfortable, but they're too far gone now. Amy's inadvertently invited him into her personal life, and she's somehow managed to worm her way into his. She'd feel guilty if she wasn't so far past the point of no return.

"I'm not Hispanic, not like you and Rosa, if that's what you're thinking," he sighs. "My Dad's family is Spanish. His parents, my grandparents, moved from Barcelona before the Civil War, so we had the Spanish version of Nochebuena, the Catalan version. It's not as big, but Grandma, my Iaia, used to make this soup thing with pasta and meatballs...and they do this thing, instead of Santa, called a Cago Tío? It's this log thing, and he shits out presents. Seriously. He doesn't poop, that's too PG for Catalans, he shits. You gather around it, and you sing to this thing - like 'O shitting log, o shitting log, shit a little gift for me...' Seriously."

"A shitting log?" Amy dissolves into giggles, pulling out of his arms. He somehow seems sturdy and fragile, all at once. "You Ibericos are weird. Peralta, that's a Spanish name, not Italian?"

"Catalan," he corrects her. "Very different things, Spanish and Catalan."

"I've heard you speak Spanish," Amy narrows her eyes. "You cannot speak Spanish."

"My family speak Catalan, different thing. I understand a lot of Spanish but I don't like to speak it."

"This is so weird," Amy shakes her head. "I never thought of you as anything but Jewish, just with the...well, your Mom and her Zion thing, and your Williamsburg thing, and...your face..."

"Well, yeah. Mom and her Zion thing. But Dad used to take me to Mass when I was a kid, that's where I met Gina. The two kids at Mass with the big noses, you know," Jake shrugs. "And when Dad left, we had nothing, and my Dad's church did nothing, his family didn't do much more, but the Williamsburg crew, they really helped out. So anything like this, Nochebuena and Christmas or whatever, it was out. My Nana bankrolled private Jewish schools; got a scholarship to Yeshiva...I just never had a chance to do these things."

"That," Amy stares Jake down, "explains so much."

"What?!"

"Your incomplete knowledge of every holiday!" Amy pokes Jake's chest. "Ho ho ho and a bottle of rum!"

"Ha ha ha!" Jake laughs falsely. "Let's all laugh at the kid who Santa forgot about!"

"Shut up, Jake," Amy shakes her head with a smile. "Santa's going to come to my nephews in the morning, maybe he'll have a present to give you before you have to head back for work."

"Really?" his eyes light up, and Amy can't hold back a laugh. He reddens at her laughter, and throws an arm over her shoulder. "I mean, whatever. There's no way Hugo's not going to share some of the Lego Santa's bringing with me."

They walk home together, Jake's arm over her shoulder. When they reach the house, Amy can smell rich chocolate and oil in the air, and she knows that her mother has made pre-bed churros and chocolate, just like the Nochebuenas she remembers. She and Jake polish the leftovers, trying their hardest to keep their rum fuelled giggles down. They try their best to tiptoe up the stairs, Amy dragging him to Alex's old room. She pulls him in, pointing out all the little souvenirs from a brother who was only older by fourteen months, pulling out the game of Simon Santa once brought.

"Thanks for tonight," Jake whispers as they stand in the doorframe, and his voice sounds oddly sincere. "For all of it. Nochebuena and Die Hard might be on a level plane. Maybe. And thanks for not being weird...about all that stuff. If I can't have Sophia and if I can't have my family then yeah, a good friend like you is a pretty good third place."

She gives Jake a kiss on the cheek and moves on to her room, taken aback by Jake's speech. She didn't know what she expected when she'd texted Jake, but she knows what her mother had in mind when she invited him. Sometimes she looks at Jake and she wants to kiss him between the eyes, to run her fingers through his hair and see just how curly it would get after a night in bed. There are other moments when she looks at him and sees all seven of her brothers and has to suppress an urge to throw him a challenge - a game of Simon, a race down to the deli to get sandwiches, a bet on who can make the most arrests. There are the moments when his behaviour is so infuriating that it's all she can do to restrain herself from wrapping her hands around his throat and squeezing, and she's frightened by how rare these incidents are becoming.

She lies back in bed and closes her eyes. She struggles to repress a giggle for a moment, remembering that Saturday Night Live sketch Jake showed her last year, the one with the girls bringing their boyfriends home for Christmas. This wasn't one of those nights. Jake has Sophia, and that's how things are. She spent last Christmas in the trainyards, tracking down Holt's stalker and trying to ignore her irritation at Peralta's continued unwarranted attention from the Captain. She couldn't have guessed that she'd spend her next Christmas in her childhood home trying to get a handle on her feelings for Jake. Next Christmas could find their relationship anywhere - they could be married, or they could be on other sides of the planet, furious at one another.

Amy rubs her eyes, sleep claiming her. She can't believe she was anxious about having Jake over; like anything involving Jake could be dealt with using the meticulous planning and preparation she usually employed in life. Tonight could not have gone half as well if she'd tried to plan something like it, and maybe that was something that applied to Jake. Qué noche buena.

Quick notes;
- It's a few hours past Stephen's Day here, but the memory of Christmas and Nochebuena/Christmas Eve stands.
- Apologies if my Iberica Spanish doesn't pass for Cuban Spanish.
- I come from a Protestant/Jewish background but I am also from a country that is 92% Catholic with a negative Jewish population so I hope Catholic school served me well and that I remembered mass correctly.
- Maybe I'll find a way to incorporate 'Back Home Ballers' into my next story.
- Hope you all had fab Chanukahs and a very happy Christmas/feliz navidad/feliz natal/bon nadal/nollaig shona!