Full Title: Two Wrongs don't make a right, but a double negative does make an affirmative
AN: Since I've been feeling a bit better lately I've been revisiting my WIP one shots folder on my hard drive, so now I present to you the finished version of this Peraltiago get together one shot. Even though I wrote the original/rough draft of this work in February 2016, better late than never, right? Anyways, hope you enjoy!
That Monday was the slowest day at a police precinct since police were even invented. The slowest day in history for cops and criminals (no robbers to catch, no nothin'). The slowest day since police even started being a thing, according to Jake.
It was the most boring day at work he had ever had. And it wasn't just him that thought the day was boring. Everyone was bored. Terry, Charles, Rosa, Hitchcock, Scully, and even Santiago was bored. She loved boring stuff. She got excited by boring stuff.
But even that Monday was too boring for Santiago.
Just paperwork, and then when that ran out it was just sitting there. There wasn't even enough paperwork to go around.
Jake never understood minesweeper and just clicked around randomly to blow stuff up, and he never had a hope of getting down the rules of solitaire. Eventually he resorted to just doing that select slide blue square with his cursor on his desktop over and over again because he was that bored.
He was so bored he couldn't even find the will to entertain himself. He couldn't be bothered to even try. Boyle kept trying to show him funny videos on youtube, but Jake was too bored to even give them a chance and just groaned every time Charles made the trip between their desks until he just stopped trying.
It was that boring.
He wasn't even tired enough to fall asleep, but he wished he was. Sleeping at his desk would be way better than this drag. But he was too awake to even get in a quick snooze and it was killing him. All this nothing.
Amy loved boring tedious stuff, but that day was too boring to even catch Amy Santiago's interest. She looked just as dead and faded as everyone else and started drawing circles on a sheet of paper because there was no paperwork to fill out after so long in. Jake would kill for some paperwork because he wanted something to occupy him other than banging his head on the desk, cause that got old (and painful) after 60 seconds.
About half an hour after Jake got home from the gray hell of work he got a text.
Amy:
Are you busy? Can we talk?
Jake:
I'm free as can be. You wanna come over? Or meet up or something somewhere
Not a second after he sent the text there was a knock at his door and he opened it to find his partner standing on the other side.
"I was already in the elevator when I realized I probably should have checked if you were even home first so it would be a little less rude," she explained looking like a mix between apologetic and hesitant as he let her inside.
"Is everything okay?" He asked out of genuine concern. Amy didn't do stuff spring of the moment, and she never just popped in on people. She always gave advanced notice on any and everything, and she never stopped by anyone's place for a visit just because she happened to be in the neighborhood. So he assumed it must be bad for her to forget to warn him until she was already in the hallway of his apartment building. He was actually afraid that someone might have died, but she didn't look sad so he hoped it wasn't a death related house call.
"Yeah, everything's fine. I just wanted to talk to you," she said with a half smile that made him doubt her reassurance. She took a deep breath before launching into what seemed to be a pre-planned opener into whatever she wanted to talk about.
"You know what, Jake? We're cops."
"Yeah, Ames. I know that."
"We could die tomorrow. We're always in mortal danger."
"I don't know where you're going with this..." he trailed off, half expecting her to go into an existential crisis of their chosen profession.
"I always think about what would happen if we go wrong and how that'll affect everyone we work with. But we could die literally any day. So screw everyone we work with, because if I die I want to have fucked you the night before. Or that morning. I put my life on the line and I've earned the right to be happy with you and not worry about everyone else being happy with us. But it's not like we know exactly when we're going to die, so we're just going to have to have sex on a regular basis. As in dating. You and me dating. Boyfriend girlfriend dating. This is me asking you out. If you want."
She realized that was pretty forward of her, but she decided that forward was what she needed to be. She needed to be forward and lay it all on the line exactly what she wanted from him. Because she wanted him. And from her speech it made it sound like she was sure he was going to say yes, but she wasn't sure. She decided to phrase it like she was sure so she wouldn't back down out of fear. But it was more than probable that he wouldn't want that anymore. Their timing with each other never matched up in a way that worked. But she decided that it was a good time for her and prayed that it was a good time for Jake too. A good time for both of them, at the same time. Instead of it being a good time for her and a bad time for Jake. But she went in with the hope that it was a good time for the both of them.
After she finished asking him out in a way that she thought might make him laugh (her rambling was unintentional and she didn't exactly think about phrasing the words that came out of her mouth, but afterwards it seemed like a style of confession that Jake would appreciate). But he didn't laugh, or even smile. Just silent with no response, and she realized that it probably was a bad time for Jake. Just another case of mismatched timing between the two of them.
"So let me get this straight, the most boring day since ever was the day you realize our job was so dangerous and basically yolo?" He asked, still trying to piece it all together.
"It was kind of like an epiphany," she explained. "Random perspective. You can say no. I totally get it if you've moved on from feeling all romantic-stylez about me" she informed him, dropping her confident act so he wouldn't feel bad about rejecting her when she seemed so expectant of him. Cause he was just standing there staring, and she figured that since he hadn't said yes yet he was just trying to find the best way to say no. She really did it overkill with that whole speech, didn't she? It definitely would've been a billion times less awkward if she just asked him out like a normal person instead of her almost dying speech. God, this was a huge mistake.
She wished she could just turn and walk straight out the door, but she knew she couldn't leave until he actually said a word. At least one word. She couldn't leave without him telling her yes or no. She needed an answer from him.
"God, please say something, Jake. If that sounds like something you want to do then okay, but if you don't just say no. Or something along those lines. If you don't want to do a whole romantic-stylez dating thing with me just say no and I can go," she pleaded for him to give her an answer so she wasn't just left wringing her hands in wait all night. Wringing her hands only a few feet away from him waiting for him to say a word.
"Nuh-uh. No way. Not at all," he said like she was crazy to even ask and her face fell flat. Of course she was hoping he would say yes, but he didn't need to be such a jerk about turning her down.
"Wait – I'm not saying no to you," he hastily tried to correct himself from her reaction. And he looked half frantic with flurried hands so she had no clue where he was going with it. "I'm saying no to what you're saying. I'm saying no to your no. You're wrong about how I feel. I mean, you're right, but your last few sentences were wrong. I mean... fuck," he swore before giving up and kissing her.
His hands tangled in her hair was so much better than seeing them fumble around in the air a moment before when he was talking. A moment before he shut up and gave her probably the best kiss of her life. Definitely the best kiss of her life.
She wasn't exactly expecting the kiss so when it happened all of the sudden her lips parted completely involuntarily and he took the opportunity to deepen the kiss and ran with it. When he was kissing her like that it wiped all trace of what he said from her mind. She couldn't remember what he said, couldn't even remember what she said. She couldn't even remember what she asked him or what she was doing there when Jake was kissing her like that. When Amy was nibbling on his bottom lip and scratching her nails down his scalp there wasn't anything else in existence. No words, no signals, no messages.
Just the kiss.
She sighed when their lips parted, but he leaned his forehead against hers so even without kissing she still had his breath mingling with hers and their hands still entangled in each other's hair, but he didn't make a move to separate any further than that.
"Yes," he breathed. "That's the word I was looking for. I'm saying yes. No to your no. Yes to your yes."
"You forgot the word yes? And you forgot any other word that could have sufficed?" She wanted to be mad cause he came that close to giving her a small heart attack because he forgot one of the most common words ever, but she couldn't stop smiling and actually chuckled because he was saying yes. He wanted that. Her. He meant yes.
"I kinda forgot most of the English language. And I forgot how to stop speaking too."
"You're such an idiot."
"Is that an epiph-y-thing-y you're just now having too?" And god, with that smile, there was definitely no way she could be mad at him now. And... she was pretty okay with that. She didn't mind.
"So, just to be clear, now that you remember the word yes, that is what you're saying?" Amy knew she probably didn't need to double check, but you couldn't blame her for wanting to hear it again. Truth be told, she wanted to kiss him again too. She wanted to hear him say yes one more time, and kiss him oh so many more times.
"Yup. Yes. We're dating now, no take backsies. You're stuck with me now that I remember word stuff."
"I think I can live with that," she told him, wrapping his arms around his neck and dragging his lips back to hers in a very, long awaited kiss. Now all they had to do was catch up on lost time.
Luckily, they had all the time in the world.
