To answer your question, Guest: idk why this title. I just needed something that would work for a series of OS that have nothing in common other than being about Peraltiago, and I wanted something that came directly from the show, and I love that ep so… that's it lol.
Anyways, this one comes from a prompt I received on Tumblr months ago and finally took the time to write.
Jake comes back home to the sound of giggles and muffled whispers. But, he who's usually welcomed by two little dark-haired girls running towards him the minute they hear the door open, this time strangely finds himself completely alone when he enters their house. Even Amy isn't here to greet him, despite her being on a day off.
He follows the distant, happy noises to where they're coming from then, which lead him inside his and his wife's room. He finds the loves of his life there, the three of them sitting on the bed, their mother in the middle of the two young girls, a binder spread open on her lap.
She's showing them something in it – something very funny, apparently, if he's to believe their laughter filling the air.
"Hi, babies! What are you guys doing?" Jake leans against the frame of the door, a grin lighting up his features while he watches them, their joy highly contagious.
"Daddy!" Ana and Sarah exclaim in the same voice when they finally notice their father before they exchange a look and burst into a new wave of giggles, their little hands covering their mouth as they do. The detective's smile turns into a frown, confused by their reaction. He shoots a questioning glance at Amy, who simply shrugs at him in return, acting as if she has no clue of what's happening while doing her best to contain her own laughter.
The whispers are back after that, loud enough for him to hear, yet he's unable to understand what his daughters say… because they're speaking Spanish.
When his wife first suggested their children should be raised with both their languages during her first pregnancy, Jake immediately found the idea quite endearing. He loved it when the woman talked Spanish with some of her relatives during reunions with her side of the family, after all – even if he couldn't understand a word of it.
He tried learning, once, shortly after they started dating 'for realz.' But he soon abandoned the idea – he didn't have the time to practice it enough for it to stick into his brain permanently, and in a matter of just a few weeks, he was back to square one, with no other knowledge than the simple 'hello,' 'thank you' and 'I love you.'
Still, he enjoyed the sound of it very much, when it came out of Amy's mouth – it was very soothing. Even more so after their first daughter's birth, when his wife started singing her lullabies in this tongue to take her to sleep – the same ones her own mother would sing to her when she was an infant too or, later, when she'd have anxiety attacks and it would be the only thing able to calm her down.
(The same ones she would sing to him after his time in jail, when he'd wake up all sweaty from an all too vivid nightmare and she'd smooth his hair and hold him tight against her chest, softly humming the words in a whisper in his ear until he managed to go back to sleep.)
He'd never heard, nor seen, something more beautiful before. So, despite him being unable to talk nor understand one of the two languages, in the beginning, Jake simply loved the idea of his children being fluent in both English and Spanish. That was, until times like right now, when they're exchanging words in their mother's tongue in secret, eyes drifting from the binder in front of them to him then the other, and laughing harder every time.
At least he understands clearly that they're (gently, of course) mocking him – and instead of backing up her husband, Amy seems pretty amused by the situation as well.
"Could someone share what's making you laugh so much? I wanna laugh too!" He approaches the members of his little family, trying to sound upset as he speaks, but his pout soon turns into another grin when his daughters suddenly close their mouth, chewing on their lower lip to prevent themselves from talking while watching him.
They look adorable, he can't help but think. A perfect mix between him and Amy.
He takes a seat on the bed next to them then, and that's when he sees it.
Carefully put aside in the binder is an old, rather shameful, picture of him with longer hair and wearing a ring nose, dating from when he was in high school. "You kept it!" He looks up at his wife, whose eyes are filling with tears for restraining herself from laughing too much – it's becoming harder and harder not to, given the falsely blaming look he's shooting at her right now.
"Of course I did," she finally lets out a chuckle, putting a hand on his tight and squeezing lightly, offering him an apologetic smile as an attempt to be forgiven. "It was too good to be left behind and forgotten. And it's a good thing I did: look how happy it makes our daughter seeing their father at the best of his style," she mocks him.
"You…" Jake sighs and shakes his head, but he can't help but release a giggle of his own, coming closer to his wife to circle her waist with one of his arms. She immediately eases against his side, letting her head fall onto his chest, with her eyes finding the picture again.
She tries to remain discreet, but her husband can feel her body stutter with her quiet laughter against him. "Wait until I ask your brothers for embarrassing pictures of you," he warns her, whispering into her ear. "You'll laugh much less when the girls will make fun of you."
"Is that a threat, Mr. Santiago?" Amy draws herself away from him so that she can meet his eyes, her own shining with amusement.
"Maybe…" he teases before he brings her back to her, planting a kiss on her mouth.
"Well, at least I'll understand what they say about me."
As if on cue, feeling left aside by her parents' banter, Ana tries to bring the attention back on her – she's not done having fun yet. "Estaba muy guapo, papa!" she teases him, pointing at the picture with a grin while joining the adult's embrace, soon followed by her older sister.
"What did she say?" he turns to Amy and is forced to ask, defeated.
"That you were very beautiful. Obviously, she's making fun of you," the woman mocks.
"You find this funny, huh?" Jake looks at his daughter, eyebrow raised in question, and when she nods, her bright smile showing her dimples, he draws himself away from his wife to grab the little girl without a warning and starts tickling her sides, making her small giggles quickly turn into loud, light bursts of laughter.
Soon Sarah and Amy are invited to join in, the whole family happily fighting together on the bed, filling the room and whole house with their sounds of happiness.
(Later that night though, when the girls are long gone and asleep in their own room and beds and Jake and Amy are curled up in their own, the man turns towards his wife with a serious look on his face. "You think you could teach me Spanish?" he asks, and the woman's eyes grow bigger at the question.
She feels like she's been waiting for that moment to happen forever.
"Oh my God, yes!" she ever-so enthusiastically answers, and starts rambling about making a schedule, and how they should divide his learning in different lessons, Jake watching her in silent, an amused, loving smile brightening his features.)
(When two years after that, they welcome a boy in their family, Amy's not the only one constantly talking to him in Spanish to get him used to the language from his birth. Jake is too, happily putting into practice everything his wife taught him with their newborn.)