Chapter 2: Phone Calls & Signs

Author: WriterGirl89

Fandom: Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Rating: T

POV: Third-Person

Pairing: Jake/Amy

Summary: A restless Amy makes an important phonecall and... learns a few things.

Author's Note: Hey guys! Back with a second chapter because that seems to be what everyone wants which is amazing considering how apprehensive I was about writing this to begin with but, I still appreciate the feedback and the alerts and just… basically the support for this story and all your wonderful comments. Love you! Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Wah! Like you don't know!

…

Amy sighs as she flops onto her back when laying on her side doesn't work out for her to fall sleep and she all but gives up and just stares at her own ceiling, thinking, for the thousandth time, about the day's events.

Waking up in a grumpy mood.

The flowers that bring her out of it.

The card.

She breathes and out.

Jake…

He got me flowers. She thinks, watching the shadows of the dark forming and melding into her ceiling. He got me nice, probably pricy red and yellow roses. Tea roses. Her favorite flowers with the simpliest, most thoughtful card she'd ever gotten.

And it's not like she hasn't thought about it either. Now, here, in the restless dark of her apartment, she's woman enough to admit it.

Not him sending her flowers exactly but, just… him. There's shades of time she could faintly recall imagining what it would be like to be one of the girls he'd be interested in. To see how crazy he would get to grab her attention because she's worked with and known him for so long that she's been witness to the off-the-wall shenanigans he could participate in just to get the attention of the opposite sex.

It happens at odd and at random periods of her time and she's thinking about it now because it's not like he hasn't literally just given her the go-ahead to do so after he sent her goddamn roses!

And with that, she gets up and walks to her kitchen, suddenly thirsty.

Only, not without grabbing her phone first and she doesn't realize what her intentions are until she's standing near her refrigerator, looking through her contacts, her finger scrolling through it until landing on Jake P. and she pauses, opening up her frig and grabbing a water bottle.

She takes a large swig before moving over to her couch and plopping unceremoniously down on it, looking at Jake's contact photo.

It'd been a slow moving, paper-pushing day at the nine-nine and of course, being who she is, Amy finishes most of her work before the day is through and becoming rapidly bored, takes out her phone and starts skimming through it before her gaze finds her partner, fingers typing swiftly and face uncharacteristically focusing on his own work and without thinking, puts on the camera function on her screen and snaps a quiet photo of him totally unawares.

She looks at the snapshot that's now his picture ID with his contact info.

He's staring straight at whatever it is he's doing. Pencil tucked over the back of his ear. Jaw set as he concentrates. Eyes front and center. His dark tie contrasting with the usual plaid of the shirt that's rolled over his forearms.

She couldn't then but, she most definitely can now, appreciate her partner and his physical appeal.

He's handsome. There's no escaping that fact. Even though it's mostly been overshadowed by how much of a manchild he could be and of how much he could get under her skin in the worst - and best - way.

Still though, a manchild is still physically a man and in the privacy of her own thoughts, she could fantasize all she wants about how good a time she could give Jake Peralta in bed if she damn well pleases.

But, this? This is very different.

He's not being lewd - well, not as much - and he's not chasing her for a good time. He sent her a thoughtful bouquet of roses and Jesus, men, even men like him, don't do that unless...

She looks at her phone again, her thumb hovering over his number on her phone screen, thinking long and hard about it, her heartbeat speeding up as she thinks of hearing his voice, despite the fact that she's done it many times before.

She calls him.

"Hello?" He answers, voice deeper and a tiny bit groggy, she's sure, from sleep although he doesn't sound that much out of it so, she knows she's getting him just under the wire and feels only a little bit bad that she's possibly waking him up.

"What did you mean by it?" She blurts out without thought and immediately grimaces because this here is one of the reasons she should continue the trend of thinking before speaking because she ends up doing this instead.

He sounds startled and put out when he responds. "Who the f-? Amy?" His voice raises at her name and she hears him let out a small whistle after a brief minute. "Jesus Chri- Amy, wanna tell me why you're calling me at three in the morning?"

"Well, I-" She stumbles but, soldiers on anyway despite the circumstances. "I just wanted to know what you meant with the flowers today?"

His reaction is kind of like but, not really what she expects. "Jesus..." He exhales sharply in her ear and makes a sound of mild exasperation. "Are you still on that?"

She's only mildly offended by his tone and responses accordingly. "Hey! You're the one who bought them for me so, if you don't think that I'm gonna drill you on the issue, then you really have another thing coming!" She says, nearly yelling. "I'm confused and tired yet too geared and wired to fall asleep and it's your fault so, you better have answers for me, Peralta!"

God, why does she have to sound like her mother when she talks that?

There's a moment of silence after that in which all she can make out is his breathing, which oddly enough relaxes her, considering.

He sighs - a ragged sound of stress - and she can almost picture him running a hand over his face. "Can I, at least, have a few minutes to wake up?" His voice is somewhat gentled, seeming to want to appease her now. "Put on some pants or somethin'?"

She almost laughs then because why would he need pants for a phonecall and the laugh stops altogether when she pictures him lying in bed either naked or in his underwear.

And because it's Jake, she's pretty sure it's the former.

Either way, she makes a slight crack at his expense because she can. "Pants, Jake? Really?

"Yeah." She hears rustling in the background and a grunt from him. "It wasn't that freezing tonight so, I thought what the hell? Why? You still wearing your wool pajamas?" He teases.

She looks down at the tiny panties and tanktop she'd donned to bed. Her bare legs sprawled on her couch. "Yup."

"Uh-huh." She hears some breathing from him and after a couple of minutes, there's a long pause before he talks again and the sound of water running filters through the phone line. "Okay, talk to me."

She thinks about it.

"Amy?"

"Just..." She takes a deep breath through her nose, trying to clear her head. "...Just give me a minute."

"Okay." He says, the o sounding longer from his vocal cords and after she hears him make a sound that seems like he's having a drink, she has a brief thought that, somewhere in Brooklyn, there's a shirtless man standing in his kitchen in the middle of the night, waiting on her to start a conversation.

Life is... interesting sometimes.

"Alright..." She inhales and then exhales. "...Why'd you send me those roses?"

"Oh my God..."

"Just answer the question, Peralta!"

"We've been over-"

"No, we haven't!" She huffs. "I just said that they were thoughtful and sweet and romantic and you only said you meant it that way!" She's working herself up again and it's doing nothing to relax her breathing. "What the hell is that, Peralta?! You can't spring this on somebody out of nowhere with no fair warning and expect-"

"Out of nowhere?" He sounds outraged and she's stunned for a moment because it's actually the angriest she's ever heard from him and she can sense, through the anger, a small hint of hurt and it twirls her stomach something awful. "Out of now-! Are you fucking kidding me, Amy?! During this whole time, you never once- Gah!" He yells something away from the phone and she still finds herself flinching. "There were signs, goddammit! Signs!" He sounds almost manic now.

"What are you talking about, signs?" She hears herself utter in befuddlement. "You never-"

"Oh, really?" He says tauntingly in her ear and a shiver goes through her as his voice become something lower. More intimate. "Think, Amy. Take a peak inside that gorgeous mind of yours and think real hard."

She does and finds... inconsistencies in her own recollection. The car rides after her botched dates. Her favorite breakfast and coffee orders he seems to know better than anyone else at the precinct. The way he would look at her sometimes. The smiles. The comments on how she looked. The small, nice gestures anyone else would think is out of friendship-

"Oh my God."

"Yeah."

She's stupid. So stupid. And awful. She's a stupid, awful woman who's never gonna make it to be Captain because she's also a bad detective who can't figure out that her own partner likes her.

Or, you know, liked because he must hate her now. She'd hate her now.

"I'm so sorry." She says through her personal wave of embarrassment. "I just thought you'd never-"

"Well, I did. I am. And, you know, here we are."

There's a silence then. A lull in the conversation as she feels the fight drain out of her completely and the sound of his breath in her ear gives her strange comfort because she's really sure anyone else would hang up by now. "I'm really sorry."

"Hey..." His voice is gentler now and she allows it to soothe the demons in her brain telling her how terrible she is. "... Don't worry about it. As long as you're not rejecting me, we're solid."

There's an unspoken question there, she's sure, and that he's maybe waiting on her to gently let him down easy.

She doesn't.

She doesn't because it's very refreshing and very attractive to hear him be this honest about his feelings for once and more importantly, she doesn't want to.

There's another, more comfortable silence that follows before he talks, low and deep, in her ear.

"Hey, Amy?"

"Hmm?"

"Did you like 'em, at least? The roses, I mean?"

"Jake-"

"Come on, you called to ask about the flowers and now it's my turn." He's being more playful now and her lips lift at the corners into the phone. "I wanna know: Did they smell nice to you? Was the color combo not as nice? Should I have done better? Come on, give me details."

She thinks back to their day and paperwork and chasing criminals and that, through her surprise and continued mission to distract herself, she doesn't pull him aside and at least tell him how much she appreciates the roses.

This is better, though. She likes this better.

"They were beautiful. I've never seen anything so beautiful." She tells him sincerely, a smile he can't see creeping up on her face. "They were... They were perfect. They were a surprise but, yes, they were nice. I love them. Thank you. Really."

She can almost feel him smile himself from the other line and he sounds mighty pleased, too. "I'm glad you liked them." There's a small pause before he clears his throat and is back again. "And also, you're wrong."

"About what?"

"You're beautiful." He responses immediately and her breath hitches at the complete and utter honesty emanating from his voice. "You're the beautiful one." He tells her as if to drive it home. "All I needed to do was look at you and try to see if anything else could come close. Did I succeed?"

Oh, okay. She most definitely doesn't wanna cry right now because that is, without a doubt, the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to her and she feels her defenses wearing down more because he seems to be firing at all cylinders today. The flowers. Now this.

If this is just the beginning of whatever he's planning for her, she doesn't know if she'll survive what he'll do next.

"I..." She breathes out a shaky exhale. "...I don't what to say to that."

He chuckles, the sound pleasant and vibrating in her eardrums. "That's okay. I'll see you at work tomorrow?"

"Yeah." She knows it's late and that they have to hang up but, she's very reluctant to do so, surprisingly. "Goodnight, Jake."

"G'night, Amy."

...

A/N: So, yeah, there's definitely more where that came from and I was gonna add more of that material after the end here but, this seemed so nice on it's own so, I promise you guys there will be more material concerning the actual persuit and Jake's wooing of Amy so, don't be mad and if you find this too sickeningly sweet and it doesn't unlock your joy safe, I can't do it. I can't help you.

Thanks for reading! :)