1x19 Canon-divergence I saw someone suggested on Tumblr to fourdrinkamy: Amy hasn't put on any lipstick yet when Jake comes to talk to her, so he asks her out.

"Hey, before you go, I wanted to ask you something."

"Of course."

As she answers him, Amy is looking at Jake, her brown eyes piercing carefully through his core, with a small, inviting – curious, even – smile lighting up her face. For just a second, before he talks again, he switches his gaze from her and over to Charles, who's standing behind her and discreetly listening to their conversation.

The older man nods in reassurance, and it's all it takes for Jake to take a deep breath, putting his eyes back on the other detective's.

"I was just wondering… would you like… to have a drink or something? Or maybe dinner?" he spills it all out at once, shrugging as he speaks. He tries to play it cool, as if this is just some random question with no further meaning, when in fact he's just handed his heart on a silver plate for her to make whole –

Or completely crush.

He has a feeling this is leading to the second option unfortunately, seeing her smile drop instantly when his words reach her. She furrows her brows in confusion, and he begins to think all of this was finally a bad idea. He shouldn't have listened to his best friend and his dumb advice.

He should have simply done what he does best: repress his feelings, like he's become so good at doing through the years, instead of acting on them for once.

But then she eventually finds her voice, and he's startled by her answer. "When?" she asks him. It's not much, not a plain 'yes,' and she still looks puzzled by such a request coming from him – she's not so sure how she's supposed to take this – what it means exactly – if he's being serious or messing around with her, with a plan in mind. But at least she didn't push him away and denied it all right away.

It's enough to calm him down a little.

"I don't know. Tonight, maybe?" His mouth is dry, and he's a bit shocked too when realisation hits him that he's actually doing it, that he's asking Amy out, and when he starts rubbing his hands together in a nervous gesture, he can feel his palms starting to get sweaty. "Unless you already have plans, of course," he quickly adds though, noticing how something immediately changes in her expression as soon as he mentions tonight.

"I do have plans actually," she replies. She shortly pauses after that, before she goes on confessing, "I'm going out with Teddy again."

She offers him an apologetic smile, but all he can focus on is the excited glow which appears in her eyes when she starts speaking about the other man. "But we can still do that another time?" She tries to come up with an alternative to his offer when she notices how upset her answer apparently makes him feel. Jake doesn't seem to hear her, too lost in his own mind.

"Oh." He only eventually manages to let out a gasp, his heart clenching in pain in his chest as the woman's words keep going in a loop in his head. I'm going out with Teddy again.

It hurts.

For a moment Amy watches him in silence, not really understanding his reaction, nor why he suddenly looks so sad. "Wait, were you… asking me out?" she wants to know then, the only possible explanation she can come up with, despite how insane even just the thought of him being interested in her could be.

Of course she noticed how weirdly (and sometimes quite annoyingly, she has to admit) he acted during their whole day at Tactical Village, doing everything he could not to leave her and Teddy alone every time he approached her, but she thought he was just messing with her, like her partner always did. She didn't imagine there would be more to that.

Because after all, he did crush one of her dates (and his own, in the meantime) once already, simply to prank her into believing she was going out with a criminal.

So such actions aren't news, coming from him. What's new though – and seems pretty surreal still –, is that he might like her, if she's to trust his current behaviour towards her.

"Asking you out?!" Jake takes her out of her reverie when he repeats her last words with a laugh. She can tell he's forcing it, which makes her wonder even more. "Only in your dreams, Santiago! I just wanted to spend time with my friends," he tries to deny it all, joking being his best weapon for it, feeling too embarrassed to admit it –

That he does like her indeed.

"Charles was going to be invited too." He turns over to the other detective, who's still there listening to them from afar. "What do you say, buddy? Wanna grab a drink together tonight? Only you and me since Amy seems to have better plans already…" The more he talks, the more obvious it becomes there's something wrong with him.

From the other side of the bullpen, Charles shakes his head in disapproval, but doesn't make any comment. He simply backs his friend by agreeing to his request.

"Perfect," he answers his colleague and thanks him with a nod before putting his whole attention back to Amy. "Another time, maybe," he repeats what she told him earlier. "In the meantime, have a good date, and I'll talk to you tomorrow." He tries to sound casual, and even manages a smile at her, but no matter his efforts, it barely reaches his eyes.

"Okay…" the woman trails off, still startled by what's happening. She wants to say more, doesn't want to leave things this way between the two of them, but it looks like Jake is done with this conversation already, leaving her side to join their shared friend. She simply leaves too then, so that she can herself meet with Teddy.

"Why didn't you tell her the truth?" Charles asks when she's gone and it's only him and Jake in the room. He seems disappointed that the man didn't go through with his initial plan.

"You didn't see her eyes when she talked about going out with Teddy. How happy she looked just thinking about their date. I'm just too late. Now can we stop talking about it and just get something to eat please?"

The older detective wants to argue, but seeing the other so devastated, he keeps his mouth shut and follows him outside the precinct.

"I'm really glad we bumped into each other again. It's so great getting to spend some time with you again. I didn't like how we left things off last year."

Amy and Teddy have been sharing a meal at the restaurant for more than an hour now. And, though it started out pretty well, she soon found herself contemplating with her head stuck on her plate, and her mind lingering despite herself on the conversation she had with Jake earlier. To say that he didn't confuse her would be an understatement.

"Mmmhmm," she mumbles her answer, barely listening to – and looking at – her date. She feels terrible she can't seem to give him her whole attention like he deserves, especially after the first dinner they shared, and how greatly the things went between the two of them. It'd been a while since she had felt like this around a man, even if it was only their first date.

(Not really their first, though.)

Or she just didn't want to admit at that time that a man was making her feel like that already, a man she got to spend so much of her time with, and had known for so long…

A man who apparently had feelings for her too.

"Is everything alright? You seem a bit off," Teddy takes her back to the reality of the moment with his remark. She fully looks up at him then and lets out a sigh.

"I'm sorry, it's just…" She pauses, not really knowing how to word it. Not really knowing what it is either. What's going on with her.

But there's one thing she's sure of. That she has to put an end to this, because she can't give the man false hope. Even if she wanted to give him a chance, such a relationship couldn't work.

Not when she's already thinking about someone else while being with him.

He's a good guy – he doesn't deserve being hurt, so it's better to end things before they even begin, she thinks. Whether something goes off the previous talk she had with her colleague or not.

"It's Jake, isn't it?" he finishes her sentence for her, and it startles her that he would make such an assumption – though he's not wrong, technically. She opens her mouth to speak, but he stops her before she has the chance to say another word.

"Amy, I'm not blind," he tells her. "I saw the way he acted every time I came near you the other day. Is there something going on between the two of you?"

"I don't know." Her answer is genuine, and full of sincerity. It's true things have been ambiguous between them sometimes, if she thinks about it – even more so since that night he took her out when she lost their bet, and she learned about him turning off on a release team the morning after. She never got the chance to confront him about that, now that she remembers.

Still though, she doesn't know for sure if something could truly happen between the two of them.

"But… he said something to me today, and I think I'm willing to find out. I'm really sorry, Teddy."

"That's okay. I supposed I just missed my chance a year ago when I left."

An awkward silence takes over them after that. Amy doesn't know what she's supposed to do now – leave or stay, as her plate is still half-full – but then she decides it's better if she just goes, so she grabs her purse, and takes out some money to pay for her part of the meal, then gets up.

"It was good catching up with you," she says with an apologetic smile before they part for good, and despite everything, she means it.

"Ooooh, pizzas are finally here!" Charles excitedly exclaims when he hears a bang on Jake's door, grinning at him in an attempt to cheer him up. Not wanting to see anyone after the fiasco that had been his asking Amy out, the two men decided to simply order pizza from the detective's favourite restaurant and eat it at his place, only the two of them.

Jake stands up from his bed with a sigh, not even the thought of meat supreme being able to make him feel better, slowly walking to his door. He's been down since the moment the woman told him about her night plans with Teddy, and doesn't seem to have gotten slightly better since.

He takes a step back though, when he doesn't come face-to-face with a complete stranger when he opens his door, but with Amy standing in front of him, offering him a nervous smile when their eyes eventually meet.

"Wh–…" He's about to say something, but she cuts him off.

"I couldn't stop thinking about what you told me earlier, about wanting to go out together and… I think I'd like that." Her smile softens into something more genuine, gaining more confidence as she speaks. "Y'know, to have a drink or something. Or maybe dinner," she repeats his words from when they were still at the precinct.

Silence fills the room when she closes her mouth, with Jake processing everything she just let out, until a huge beam lights up his face as realisation hits him – hard. "Are you asking me on a date, Santiago?" he jokingly asks her, unable to act otherwise as it's difficult to believe that she's really here and bailed on her actual date to tell him all of this – that she wants to go out with him.

"Maybe?" she answers with an amused grin. "I mean, if pizza and wine sounds like a date to you?" She shows him what she's been holding in her hands, and he laughs.

"That sounds perfect," he pushes himself to the side to let her in, still smiling broadly, unable – unwilling – to stop his mouth from twitching up. "Although…" he trails off, but he doesn't have the time to warn her of the other presence in his apartment, since she catches a glimpse of him before the brunette can say a word.

"Oh, Charles's here." She doesn't even try to hide the disappointment in her voice when she sees their colleague standing in the middle of the room. He's obviously followed the whole conversation, given the smile he's presently wearing on his face too.

"I knew it!" he exclaims in victory when she enters, seemingly proud of himself, his eyes switching from one of his friends to the other. He quickly calms down though, when he notices Jake's glare at him, silently praying him to leave the pair alone. He obliges then, squealing as he closes the door behind him with a last excited, "Enjoy your night, guys!"

"So, you said you brought pizzas?" the detective asks when they're all alone in his now rather quiet apartment.

"Yep. They come straight from your favourite place. Meat supreme, display temperature, right?" she enunciates, and it makes him chuckle – a warm, happy sound.

"You know me so well."

She doesn't say anything back, simply smiles at him, then goes to his kitchen without asking, taking out two glasses out of one of the closets without even hesitating which one they're in once. And, as he watches her walk around his apartment as if she were at home there, Jake feels his heart suddenly get whole.

(Even more so when, later that night, after four glasses of wine, Amy unexpectedly cups his face into her hands and boldly kisses him, pressing her body against his.)