Amy smokes.
It's not a big deal or anything. She doesn't do it all the time. It's not an addiction. There are just some times when she gets really wound up and anxious and a cigarette helps. The nicotine relaxes her, even if the smoke itself makes her grouchy when it burns within her.
She doesn't want people to know though, even if it isn't a big deal. Amy is perfect, as close to perfect as she can be, and everyone has to know that. Smoking, even just a little bit like she does, isn't exactly within the standard definition of perfect. So… it's a secret.
Amy's out on the terrace, avoiding the patio furniture like it's diseased; that's where the regular smokers stay, sitting in the chairs because they're too unhealthy to stand. Amy is in top physical form, she has to be, and she prefers to stand as far away from the door as possible. She leans against the low wall the precedes the steep drop to the sidewalk. She looks down as she takes an idle drag from the cigarette. The nicotine is beginning to work its magic.
"Santiago?" Her back stiffens at the voice she always dreads. He shouldn't be here, everyone's getting ready to go home for the night. She contemplates dropping the cigarette before he can see it, but she just started it, and knowing that there's so much goodness left keeps it between her fingers. Amy doesn't turn as Peralta saunters over to her, joining her at the wall and looking out over the edge. She tries to hide it by her thigh, but she can hear him sniff, and privately makes a comment about his big nose in her head. "Is that smoke? Are you…?" She cuts him a glance, and it's obvious that a lie isn't going to cover anything now.
"Shut up, Peralta." Amy mutters, and the prickling uncomfortableness of the moment makes her bring the cigarette to her mouth. Peralta watches her inhale without a word. It's only after she's breathing out that he makes his snarky comment.
"Why Santiago, I would never have taken you for the type." It's some weird sense of disapproval and it makes her angry. Who is he to disapprove of her?
"I'm not." She insists, glaring at him. "I'm not a smoker. I smoke maybe, like, once a month. It's not even worth talking about." Peralta holds up his hands defensively.
"Fine, you're certainly the expert on smoking here, not me." Amy doesn't dignify that with a response, just groans and rolls her eyes. She absentmindedly takes another drag. Peralta shakes his head with a slight smile. "You know those'll kill you, right?" It's such a cliche, it literally hurts to hear. He's obviously enjoying being the responsible one for once.
"Oh golly gee, I had no idea." Amy snarks back. "You've turned my whole life around, Peralta." That almost makes him laugh, she can tell by the stretch of his smile, and it isn't the reaction she expected. The surprise makes her cool off, and she looks away.
They stand in silence for a while, side by side, looking out over their streets. It's almost nice, and Amy can find the lull of the nicotine despite his presence. It isn't a cold night, but she can feel his warmth radiating beside her acutely like he's the only heat around for miles. But he isn't, because she's still got the embers of the cigarette between her fingers. She breathes deep and sighs.
"Anything wrong?" Peralta breaks the quiet air without looking at her. The question sounds oddly light, forced. "In particular, I mean." He continues when she doesn't respond. "To make you fill your monthly quota."
That's a tough question without an easy answer. There wasn't an event or something today that drove her to smoke. There are a lot of little things weighing on her at the moment: another bad date, her brother's imminent divorce, her mother's nagging for grandchildren intensifying, a long day with no progress in any of her cases, and the staggering realization that she will never be promoted if she can't even talk to her superior officer without practically giving grounds for a sexual harassment infraction.
"No," Amy tells Peralta, dropping the cigarette and rubbing it out, "Nothing in particular." She leaves him there, watching her smoke dissipate.
"Thought I might find you here." Peralta says as he walks through the door. Amy watches him sit heavily in a patio chair and rest his head in his hands.
It was a rough case. A violent string of attacks against Muslims, or at least people the attacker perceived to be Muslim, there was one Sikh man who had been caught up in it. At first it was yanking off their head-coverings while verbally assaulting them, but over the course of a week it had escalated into beatings. They'd only found the man responsible earlier that day, scoping out his next victim at a Halal market. Captain Holt was pushing for the hate crime statute, but for some unfathomable reason the DA was still hesitant to attach that to his sentence.
It had been tense for everyone, but Amy had felt so shaken when they brought the guy into interrogation and he just spouted the most bigoted disgusting nonsense. Peralta had made an excuse in front of the perp for her to leave, and she had never been so grateful for him. Amy had needed a cigarette to firm up her shaking hands. It was a good 15 minutes until Peralta found her on the terrace again.
"Yeah," Amy says, not even bothering to hide as she lifts the cigarette to her mouth, "I don't think I could've made it through that interview. Thanks for letting me out of there."
"What are you talking about?" Peralta replies with his fake serious voice. "I really needed you to run the perp's financials for the fiftieth time. You mean you didn't?" Amy laughs and shakes her head. "For shame, Santiago, disobeying a direct order from your primary. That won't look good in your permanent record."
"You're such a dork." She says, and her voice surprises her with its affectionate tone.
"You love it." He's combing through his hair with his fingers, looking away as he says the words without care. He doesn't mean it the way Amy's stomach seems to take it, flipping and twisting itself into knots. She quickly takes a long drag from the cigarette, clearing her throat through the suddenly awkward silence. Peralta, no, Jake looks back at her, eyes fixing on the cigarette. Amy thinks he's going to reprimand her for it like last time.
Instead he points his finger. "Can I have one of those?" Jake asks out of nowhere, gazing at the cigarette like it's a lifeline.
Amy blinks at him, her mouth open. "I… No." She says, shaking her head. "You don't smoke."
"According to you, you don't either." Jake says, sounding more forceful. "If Amy Santiago can do it, why not me?"
"You don't really wanna smoke." She says, her eyes flitting away from him to the city skyline. "You're having a bad day and it's clouding your judgement." Jake stares at her with some disbelief before she can see his expression close.
"Whatever." He says as he stands. "I guess I'll just binge on crap from the vending machine like a normal person." He's trying to play off his uncharacteristic surliness, and Amy wonders what he had to say to get the perp to confess. For all that he likes to play the badass, one of Jake's great strengths as a cop is bonding with suspects; he's a very affable person, whether you're cuffed to the table or not. Terry had said something earlier in the case, an offhand bit of psychoanalysis, "A bigot thinks everyone agrees with them." If Jake had actually listened, he would've, well, it might've made sense to…
Jake turns away from her with a half-assed dismissive wave and takes two long strides to the door.
"I like that you hate smoking." Amy blurts out despite herself. As she hoped, Jake stops his retreat. He looks at her, his brows drawn together with confusion, but the oddest hint of a smile on his full lips. Amy takes a deep breath as she looks at the stubby little cigarette in her hand. "I like that you think it's gross. You should, 'cause it is gross. It's the one consistent time when you're right."
There's something implicit in what she's saying. If his attitude towards smoking is right, then hers must be wrong. It's not an admission she feels comfortable with, and her hand moves to her mouth before she notices and stops. The cigarette looks back at her with its taunting smoldering face. Amy shakes herself, and she walks over to the patio table to snub it out. Jake watches her move closer to him with some kind of softness in his eyes.
"My dad smoked." He says, apropos of nothing. Amy stops and lets go of the stub in the ashtray. "All the time." Jake adds as their eyes meet. She can interpret so much unsaid from his gaze: I remember the smell of it more than him, and he loved smoking more than us, and I don't want to be like him. Whether any of that's true is a guess, but she knows he isn't about to elaborate. He talks to Captain Holt or the Sargent about his childhood far more than he does with her. For the first time she wishes that wasn't the case. Amy isn't sure how to ask, how to get him to open up, isn't even 100% sure that's what she wants.
The attempt stalls, and she ends up saying nothing. Jake gives her a fleeting but genuine smile, before he opens the door and leaves her alone with her ash.
"This isn't happening." Amy mutters around the cigarette as her fingers struggle with the lighter. It's a cold night, the wind biting at her exposed clumsy hands. She's got her heel rubbing on the just finished stub, but she can't get the new one to light. The lighter fluid must be getting low. She lets out a long stream of curses under her breath.
"Wow, am I a two smokes situation?" Jake's voice breaks through her agitation, and Amy whirls to face him. He's near the door, still in his t-shirt and jacket from earlier. In his hand is a drug store bag he didn't have before, with something square poking through the plastic, that he places on the patio table. He's got a smile on even if his eyes are apprehensive. "Should I be flattered?" He asks, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
Amy shakes her head incredulously. "You're a major douche, you know that, Peralta?" He looks away, and she's glad to see he isn't immune to her words, that he isn't just taking this lightly. "You can't do that to me. I have plans, got it, I'm gonna be Captain someday, and this… this… I don't know!" Amy tries the lighter again, but it's only going through the motions. "Damn it." She gives up on the second cigarette, jamming it and the lighter in her back pocket.
"What the hell does your career have to do with me?" Jake asks while she's occupied.
"I'm not going to let any impropriety get in the way of a promotion." Amy tells him defiantly. "I don't want those whispers that I'm sleeping my way to the top."
"Okay, first off," He replies calmly, ticking with his fingers, "In that scenario, clearly I'd be the one sleeping my way to the top. Second, you're getting way, way ahead of yourself. It was one—"
"In the break room!" She shouts shrilly. "At work! Where anyone could walk in! What were you thinking?"
"I was thinking I really wanted to kiss you." Jake answers with a shrug; despite the gesture, his voice is clear and confident, and his eyes are fiercely locked on hers. Amy can't find an appropriate reaction and ends up staring at him blankly. Jake takes a couple steps towards her, and it's supposed to look easy and nonchalant, but really it looks like he's trying to talk her down off the ledge.
"You were watching the surveillance footage," He begins steadily, "And you got this line on your forehead because you were squinting too hard, but you were really into it 'cause you're you and you wanna do the best work," Jake's rambling by now, "And you looked adorable but also kinda hot, and I wanted to kiss you so I did. It's that simple. Oh," He continues as if he'd only just remembered, "And then you ran away to smoke and freak out. Thanks for that, by the way, solid punch in the ego."
Amy breathes the chill air in deeply and sighs it out. She hugs herself tightly, having forgotten her coat in her haste to leave. It had been sudden, that's all, she needed to get away and think, which, as Jake had pointed out, meant over-thinking. For all her thinking and worrying, she can't quite fathom the turn of events. It demands a restructuring of her internal mental order.
"I'm not interested," At those words alone, she can see his expression fall into something sad, "In something purely physical. I have too much at stake."
"Oh, you thought…" Jake waves the incomplete thought away was a slight laugh. Amy doesn't see what's funny, and she wishes she could've had that second smoke. "No, I don't want something 'purely physical' either. That would be kinda pointless, uh, at this point." She tilts her head, and takes a hesitant step towards him, reducing the distance to two feet or so.
"You, Jake Peralta, can't possibly be suggesting that you actually want a serious relationship, with me no less." She says with a confidence that hurts.
"Woah there," Jake says with a furrowed brow and a frown, and she thinks she's got him down pat, "Why don't we take this one date at a time." That wasn't at all what she thought he'd say. Amy… finds herself dropping her crossed arms and swaying slightly towards him, like his smile and warm eyes are magnetic. "Since I picked the activities for what was arguably our first date," She rolls her eyes, with some fondness, at the memory of the Bet, "You can decide what we do for the next one." He says it like it's a bargaining chip, a 'but wait, there's more' at the end of an infomercial. It's his inflection here that makes Amy realize he's for real. Once his earnest interest is obvious to her, it takes far less time than she'd imagined to make up her mind. The 'what if's die away until all that's left is what she wants. She takes a deep breath, but her nerves are steadier than they've been in a while.
"A good restaurant, at least three stars," Amy says sternly, "Then we see that superhero movie with the hot shirtless guy. That's nonnegotiable." It takes him a second to process what she's saying, but once he does his grin is great and wide.
"I can and I will suffer through overpriced food and a half-naked man," He says proudly, "For you, Santiago." Amy smiles, and her eyes are drawn to his lips.
Now that her incredible anxiety has passed, she finds herself wishing she could've enjoyed kissing him while it happened instead of going stiff and still. Life is unfair, so he's probably a fantastic kisser. He's got a nice mouth, with full red lips, and as the day wore on his mouth was surrounded by the peeking of stubble. She wants to feel the softness of his lips and the scratch of his stubble all at once. Amy's leaning closer, gaze set on her prize, but Jake halts her with a finger to her lips.
"Hold that thought," He says quickly and breathlessly, "Seriously, one second." Amy's confused, but she nods, her lips brushing his fingertip. Jake walks backwards towards the door while keeping his gaze on hers. He reaches for the plastic bag on the table, something she'd completely forgotten about. As he walks back over to her, Jake pulls out a stick of gum and waves it at her. "Sorry, your breath is atrocious."
Amy grumbles but takes the gum, unwraps it, and pops it in her mouth. She has to admit, the spearmint does taste better than the cigarette. As she chews, Jake reaches inside the bag for the square shape. He glances at her curious face before drawing it out. She blinks when she reads the label: Nicotine Patches. Amy looks back at Jake, who seems apprehensive again.
"So, you said once, and I think I'm quoting it right, you liked that I thought smoking was gross." He says, fast like he's trying to get it all out before she can yell. But Amy has a tingling sensation going up and down her entire body; she's touched. "Yeah, smoking's really gross. I thought these might help, or not, but it's a start. Anyway, as sweet as our times on this terrace have been, I'd rather we talk and hang out without all the cigarettes." He doesn't have to repeat an old sentiment for her to hear it all the same: You know those'll kill you, right?
Jake wants her around. Amy might be the one who over-thinks, but he is definitely not taking this 'one date at a time'. He's thinking long term. No matter how much he'll claim that it's for his benefit, so he doesn't have to deal with the stink and bad breath, in this moment Jake's being selfless.
He holds out the box to her, but Amy doesn't crave the nicotine right then. She steps up to him and throws her arms around his neck and hugs him tightly. He's unprepared and thrown off balance, but he straightens quickly once he realizes what's happening. At first there's a tentative pat on her back that makes Amy snicker into his shoulder. Jake relaxes when he hears her laugh, his whole body softening with the release of tension, and his arms come up to wrap around her waist.
It's nice, he's solid, and his body gives off almost unnatural heat. For someone so immature, it seems odd that he has a nice masculine smell, not sweaty and gross like he has been sometimes; it's like leather and coffee grounds and gun cleaning oil and something else that reminds her of crinkled fall leaves. Amy's sure she smells terrible to him, but he doesn't seem to mind the remnants of smoke as his nose brushes the top of her head.
They hug for what ought to be a moment too long, but it's a comfortable warm embrace that neither is eager to break. But Amy pulls away, after much hesitation, because there's something she needs to say, and she wants to see his face when she does. She only moves far enough to see him, keeping her arms firm around his shoulders lest he get any idea about moving.
"Tomorrow?" She asks with a smile. Jake keeps his reaction steady, but she knows him too well; a single word from her has made him very happy.
"Seven?" He replied with an upward tick of one eyebrow. Amy nods, and he says, "Perfect." Jake closes those few inches between them, and her mouth parts in anticipation, but his lips land right under her cheekbone. It's a delicate press that is so chaste even as he lingers there unmoving. Amy's eyelashes flutter shyly as Jake pulls back all the way, stepping out of the embrace entirely. "C'mon," He says as he holds his hand out with little ceremony, "If you want your reputation intact, we better get back in there before they form a search party."
Amy smirks as she accepts the hand, and they walk inside together, the plastic bag swinging from his other wrist.
Based on the promo for episode 18. Hope you enjoyed this story. I cannot stop writing these cuties.
Laury.