Chapter summary: Just some good ol' fashion girl talk between two best friends. Romance, zombies, vibrators, and philosophy - same old same old.

"I, for one, commend him for that decision," Kylie said after Amy told her how Jake postponed the first time they would have sex because it wasn't 'romantic enough'. Amy didn't see the big deal and was perfectly happy with how things were about to go down in his car, and even though it was more than romantic enough for her, he was such a sap and it wasn't romantic enough for him. He said he wanted to make her first time romantic for her, which was undoubtedly true, but the whole deal was that he wasn't satisfied with the level of romance for Amy's first time cause he was sweet and adorable, and the complete opposite of a pragmatist.

Also, knowing Jake like she did, it wasn't a big leap to figure it wasn't romantic enough for him and he was just saying it was all for her sake.

He even told her that was at least part of his motivation. That he wanted their first time together to be special.

"Seriously, Jake, this is 100% unnecessary. If this is about my first time being special shouldn't I be the one deciding what is and isn't special? Your car felt extremely special to me. You could be planning this whole big thing that you think I'll find romantic, but when it actually happens maybe I'll actually find it less romantic than your car. Ever think about that, huh? Planning something just for me when I was very happy with the first plan is just stupid. You don't need to do this because of me."

"Maybe I'm doing it cause of me. You ever think about that, huh?" He replied in his sassy voice and she raised an eyebrow at him.

Jake sighed one of the most over dramatic sighs she had ever heard before dropping the sass. "Do you promise not to make fun of me for being corny?"

Amy was tempted to roll her eyes at his childishness, but it was also kinda adorable how embarrassed he was about being corny. She went along with his childishness and held out her pinky.

"Pinky promise."

Jake wrapped his pinky around hers and held it before disentangling their fingers and spilling his guts.

"I just wanted it to be a little bit more even before you told me it was your first time," he let out a defeated sigh. "Like I am so down for future car sexy times that will be a ton of fun, but I kinda wanted any time but the first time we had sex together to be in the backseat of my crappy car. You know? Like I thought the night and stars thing was pretty cool and made up for a little bit of the lack of romance in my junky car, like maybe compensated a bit for the negative romance points. In my personal romantic-stylez opinion. Night and stars and you, that was enough. It was perfect enough, but I still wanted it to be perfecter. Alright? And when you said it was your first time for anything and not just our first time together, the romance points dipped back to negative. There were too many anti-romance points and the positive romance points from the night and stars still left it in the negative. I want it to be perfect, and I still want it to be perfect. I wanna make it perfecter. Just let me use you as an excuse, please."

"Perfecter isn't a word. It's more perfect," Amy twisted her finger in the fringe at his forehead that looped into short curls with a silly smile on her face. Jake gave her a really? look from her automatic grammar correction, but it was an affectionate grammar correction so she thought that should count for something.

"I liked your math analogy though. It was pretty cute. The absolute value of positive and negative integers in regards to romance points. I think I might be rubbing off on you."

"Actually, I had to spend some time coming up with that. You have no idea the work I have to put in to talk nerdy to you. It's a lot."

Amy wasn't bothered by his sappiness, but she still wanted to complain to Kylie about it. One of them was supposed to complain about something utterly ridiculous and the other one was supposed to say supportive things amidst pointless whining. It was how their friendship worked.

What Kylie was not supposed to do was support the other side of the argument that Amy was complaining about.

"No! You're my best friend! You're supposed to encourage me to go out and have all the sex I want! You know that if anything even remotely similar happened to you I'd be supportive even if I didn't agree. I'd be like 'He didn't want to have sex 12 hours after meeting you for the first time? What a bastard. His loss.' I wouldn't say 'You know what, I actually see his point.' Even though you know that I would see his point about 12 hours, I wouldn't say out loud that I agreed with him."

It was the unspoken rule that they were supposed to agree with each other when being completely illogical when bitching about relationships. It was like a girl bonding thing. Kylie did have more relationship experience given that she was prone to casual sexual relationships, and Amy always bought chocolate ice cream when a serious one went bad and they'd spend the whole weekend watching 80's movies in their pajamas.

And now that Amy was in a fantastic relationship that was going great and perfect and she had nothing logical to complain about, Kylie's job as her best friend was to go along with her illogical complaining. It was part of girl code.

"C'mon, Kylie. We've been dating for months. I wanna have sex with my boyfriend already," Amy sighed. "I don't need you to be protective of me cause I already have seven overprotective older brothers to do that job. Plus, I'm an adult. Have been for years. I don't need you to be all older sister looking out for me, I want you to be my best friend right now. So don't try and shelter me or whatever, cause I know what I'm doing and I… I love him."

As soon as the words left her lips, she realized that was the first time she said it out loud. The first time Amy Santiago said she loved Jake Peralta out loud. She was pretty sure the first time she said she loved Jake out loud should have been to Jake, but she wasn't very good at the whole social-norms and relationship dos and don'ts to begin with.

"Have you told him that?" Kylie asked carefully, practically reading Amy's mind. Really, she was probably just going on Amy's expression because she had a horrible poker face.

"... Not yet…"

"Has he told you that?" She asked just as carefully.

"Not out loud."

"Is there any other way to say it?" Kylie had a gentle and knowing smile as she waited for the answer.

Amy tried to find the right way to explain how there were a lot of ways to tell someone you loved them without actually saying it, but she didn't think there was any way to sum up everything Jake did for her in some measly words. How to form some sentences that properly conveyed all the ways Jake let her know he loved her.

"Well, he hasn't said it yet, but he shows me. He always show me," she began and really wished she had time to write everything down in a coherent string rather than just rambling. She knew she didn't have to screen what she said to Kylie, but when her best friend was still in overprotective mode she wished she could say everything she felt. Say it right. And maybe if she could figure out how to say it right to Kylie, she could say it right to Jake. Tell him everything she needed him to know.

"Jake's not the best at saying stuff. And he's talked to me about how he's not the best at talking, and just those conversations are hard for him. It's hard for him to talk about how bad he is at talking, much less actually talking. But he tells me about it because even though it's hard for him he wants me to know that there's so much he wants to say to me that he can't work into words yet. And it's hard for him to admit that, and open up like that, but he does to me even though it's hard. He does for me even though it's hard. And that's just the talking part. That's just him talking seriously about talking. He tells me so much more about what I mean to him. Tells me how happy I make him. So maybe in not so many words, but he uses words that matter. And everything he does, with me and for me. Actions. He shows me he loves me in everything he does."

"So what's your excuse?"

The only sound that filled the air in place of Amy's dumbfounded silence was her best friend tapping her foot as she waited impatiently for an answer. She was wearing her no nonsense face that she always put on when she stopped coddling someone, cuing Amy in that she was trying to make a point with the question she just asked, but Amy had no clue what that point was. She had no idea what that question was even referring too.

"Huh?"

"What's your excuse for not telling him you love him yet? Jake's bad at talking and he acknowledges that, and that explains why he hasn't said it to you yet. By why haven't you told him you loved him yet? What's your excuse?"

"Um-" Amy blinked a couple of times, taken aback by her friends change of course of defensiveness. Instead of being overprotective of Amy she switched to a sudden defensiveness of Jake. It was a fair question. Whether she was caught of guard or not, it was a fair question that should've had a reason behind it. But Amy realized she didn't have an answer for it, at all.

"I - I don't know. I - I don't have an excuse."

"Are you not sure if you love him or not?" Kylie asked even more carefully than she asked the questions before it, back to supportive best friend mode.

"No, I'm sure. I know. I love him. Positive. I've known I loved him for awhile."

The line of questioning Kylie hit her with in their living room made Amy take a step back. Kylie asking her that question made her wonder why she didn't ask herself that question. Why hadn't she said I love you to Jake yet?

She didn't have a good reason. She didn't even have a reason. It wasn't that she was avoiding saying it him first, she just hadn't really thought about it much at all. How did that not even cross her mind?

Now that Kylie brought it to her attention, though, she didn't know how she hadn't even considered that. She felt like an idiot.

This wasn't something she could blame on her usual social ineptness, this was just Amy Santiago being an idiot. Those three words were pretty damn important. Just because Amy couldn't care less how long it took for Jake to say those three words to her she more or less left her thoughts there. Like a total idiot. She knew how happy he would be the moment she told him she loved him. And she hadn't even thought about that. Telling her boyfriend exactly how much she loved him hadn't even crossed her mind as of late. She couldn't blame that on her lack of social skills- that was just her being an idiot through and through.

Why hadn't she asked herself that question? Why hadn't she told Jake she loved him yet?

"You're half of the relationship, Amy," Kylie started speaking again, this time her tone of voice was what Amy recognized as her full-on therapist mode. "You and Jake. You're partners. You dated some guy in highschool, yeah?"

"Briefly," Amy scoffed at herself. It was a month long 'relationship' that naive 15 year old her went through that barely qualified as dating in the usual sense.

"Did you ever tell that guy you loved him?"

"No, not at all. It wasn't even 4 weeks when I was in 10th grade. It was hardly a relationship. Not an actual one. It was one of those high school things where we both thought we were kinda supposed to start dating at that age. I don't even think we kissed more than three times before we broke up. Of course I never said I love you to him, cause I didn't love him."

"So as your second boyfriend, Jake would be the first boyfriend you would say I love you to, wouldn't he?"

"Uh, I guess, yeah," Amy shrugged, not liking the way this psychoanalysis seemed to be headed.

"That doesn't strike you as something that might have some underlying meaning?"

Kylie had that whole wink wink nudge nudge going on, being as overt as possible as she hinted and winked and nudged. And it was incredibly annoying seeing that knowing and smug look on Kylie's face, and it was even more annoying the Amy was thinking that it might actually be possible for her to have maybe a little bit of a point. Possibly.

"Just because- that doesn't mean that's why. That doesn't have to mean anything. You're reading too much into it," Amy said, but even she could hear from her own voice that she didn't believe the words she was saying.

"C'mon, Amy. You said you've been sure that you loved him for awhile. Direct quote, Amy Santiago, circa two minutes ago. So you've been dating for months and you haven't told him just cause? Is that really what you're going with? You love your boyfriend and haven't come close to actually telling him that just cause you haven't gotten around to it yet? Really? Really ?"

Amy winced at that. She forgot that the absolute worst part about being psychoanalyzed by Kylie: most of the time she ended up being right.

And Amy always hated admitting she was wrong.

Amy hemmed and hawed for a couple seconds as she tried to think of a response that wouldn't end in her admitting she was wrong, but she couldn't find one.

"Well… when you put it like that… Of course it sounds like a bigger thing when you phrase it like that. When you say it like that it sounds like- it sounds like-"

"It sounds like you're scared," Kylie gently finished for her. "You sound scared, but Jake sounds scared too. I know you were scared early on cause you're you with people and relationships, and you felt comfortable letting him take the lead of setting up the progressions since you were pretty new to the whole dating thing. You were scared, and he made you feel safe. You're not scared anymore. But it sounds like Jake is. It sounds like he's scared, even if it's just with talking. But he's scared, Amy. He needs to feel safe, and you're the only one who can do that for him. You're the only one who can make him feel safe. You're the only one who can give him the words to make him feel safe. So tell him. Tell him you love him. And let him know he's safe."

"God, I think you might be right," Amy could barely suppress her groan because even she knew she was beat and couldn't keep denying it.

"I usually am," Kylie nodded, smug as could be.

Amy and Kylie decided to have a movie marathon that night. That was one of the greatest things about living with your best friend. Staying up late with a bowl of popcorn between them, watching something or other on the couch in their pajamas. The great thing about having your best friend as a roommate was that they could do this whenever they felt like it. It wasn't any trouble having what was essentially a sleepover when Amy could just yell out "Hey, you wanna watch some movies tonight?" And Kylie would yell back to her from another room. It would've been a bit more burdensome having what really was a two girl slumber party as often as they did if they weren't roommates. Movie marathons wouldn't happen every week if they didn't live together and actually had to coordinate to hang out. Luckily that wasn't the case, and they had a movie night just cause about 1.25 times a week, on average.

Tonight they were popping back popcorn while going through some classics of the horror movie genre. Frankenstein, Night of the Living Dead, and Dracula were in the line up. Amy wasn't paying that much attention to the screams on screen, focused on the small notepad in her hand and making a list. Trying to, at least.

She was trying to think up ideas for the first time she would tell Jake she loved him, but she was kinda blanking on it. Totally blanking on it. And staring at the blank notepad that was just taunting her.

She had to start a new page because the last page got filled with ideas that she scribbled out as soon as she finished writing each one when she realized how stupid it was. She hadn't been this frustrated by anything that wasn't an academic related challenge in a very long time.

"You look like you're gonna murder that notepad any second now," Kylie observed.

Amy hadn't even notice the movie had finished until she looked up and saw the credits were rolling.

"How do you know when it's the right time? To tell someone you love them? Or how do you know it's a good time and not a horrible time? When everyone says you just know when it's the right time, that you just feel it when the time is right, what does that actually feel like? What if it's the perfect time and I can't tell? Or what if it's the perfect time and I can feel that it's the perfect time, but I don't realize that the feeling I'm feeling is the perfect time feeling and I just let it slip by? Please don't tell me it's one of those 'you'll know it when you see it' emotions. What if I see it and I feel it but I don't even realize that's what it is. Realize that's what it means. What if it hits me and I don't even know it? I don't wanna miss it. What does the feeling that it's the perfect time to tell someone you love them for the first time actually feel like?"

Courtesy of the real talk from earlier, Amy realized what she needed to do, but was struggling to come up with a plan to execute it.

After Amy came to the conclusion that she needed to tell Jake she loved him, and soon, she was worried about timing. Timing was something that tended to be a big deal, right? Everyone made a big deal about timing when it came to saying it for the first time. Saying I love you for the first time- timing meant everything.

That's what they always said.

"I don't know," Kylie shrugged, and Amy looked appalled that Kylie wouldn't even make an attempt to explain it to her. "If that even exists, I've never felt it. I've never ever experienced a perfect moment to tell someone I love them. I've never had a feeling about any right timing. I think that's just a bunch of BS. There's no right timing and there's no foot popping moment- those are just made up to give romantic movies plot points. Those are movie tropes made up by lazy script writers who other lazy script writers incorporate their easy target plot point so much that it gets accepted as a rom-com fact. Who the hell has ever had an urge to pop their foot? Where the hell did that come from? What idiot made that up? There's no foot popping moment and there's no overwhelming sensation that it's the right time to say it. No woman or man on earth has ever felt the urge to pop their foot during a kiss. Maybe some people do get an overwhelming right timing feeling, but I never have. Every person I've said I love you too was because I wanted to tell them and I decided to say it, so I said it to them. There's never been any external factors that I noticed at least. There's no big sign, Amy. There's no signs at all. That's just a movie thing. There's never any signs that it's the moment, because the moment doesn't exist. The moment isn't a real thing, not in real life at least. So you can't just keep waiting around for the perfect moment to fall into your lap, because that's just a fiction concept or rom-com trope or whatever. There is no the moment in real life. There's never a perfect moment to tell someone you love them for the first time. You need to tell Jake you love him because he loves you, and any moment you tell him is gonna be the perfect moment. Every time you tell him it's gonna be a good moment for him. So you need to tell him whether it feels like a good moment or not. Even if it feels like a horrible moment to you, I know he's gonna be happy with whatever moment you choose just cause it's gonna be a good moment because you saying it is what makes it a good moment."

Amy thought that was a good point and it made a lot of sense, but there had to be more to it. She knew it wasn't as simple as that. Sure, Kylie could boil it down to a broad rule about there being no rules, but there had to be some rules. Her best friend was an idealist when it came to this sort of thing. One of those free spirit believe in the power of love sort of types, but in a realistic sense. Kylie was an idealistic but realistic romantic. Amy was not idealistic and she sucked at being romantic too. So giving advice in the big picture sort of way that Kylie usually thought in didn't work well when Amy needed details. Amy Santiago had never been a big picture sort of person, and she always got hung up on the details.

"What if the first time I tell him is right after his dog gets hit by a car? If he had a dog? What if I tell him 5 seconds after he hits someone else's dog that ran in front of his car? That is arguably a bad moment. What if he's choking and I say it for the first time before I give him the Heimlich maneuver? What if I tell him I love him for the first time when we're in a Mcdonald's drive through? That's the least romantic situation I can imagine off the top of my head right now. Those are awful times and you know it. You can't just say that me saying it will make a fast food drive through a romantic situation. Those are objectively bad moments. What do you have to say to that, huh?" Amy argued with the level of snark that was usually reserved for her brothers being idiots, not her best friend giving her advice. But she was beyond frustrated trying to figure this all out, so her immature smart aleck came out in this argument. "There are moments so bad that they can't be saved. You don't tell someone you love them in unromantic situations like that. Unromantic moments like that. Unromantic moments do exist so that means romantic moments have to exist too. Neutral moments probably exist too, but they can't be as good of times to say it as romantic moments are. I want a romantic moment to be happening- or at least a semi-romantic moment. Jake's the super sappy one. I want to give him a super sappy romantic moment when I say it to him for the first time, but I'm just not good at that type of stuff. I want a romantic moment to be happening when I tell him the first time. That's all. He'll like that. I'm not good at sappy. I just want to do this one thing sappy for him, but… I just want to tell him when a romantic moment is happening. I don't want to settle for a neutral moment."

Amy huffed and threw her notepad and pen aside and slumped deeper into the couch cushions. She really was hopeless in this department, wasn't she? She loved it when Jake did the super cheesy and romantic stuff for her. She didn't get why she was so bad at doing it back. She was able to recognize what was and wasn't romantic and the romantic stuff always made her so happy, so she didn't understand how she could be so bad at doing it back. Maybe she just wasn't creative enough. She actually researched ideas on occasion. Use the search term 'romantic ideas list' or 'romantic date ideas' or something like that and look at all the such-and-such relationship site top 50 romantic ideas. She could memorize all 50 of those ideas. She could memorize the whole list, but it never made a difference on how bad she was at actually doing something romantic. She sucked, through and through. That's all there was to it- Amy was dating the sweetest guy in the world and poor Jake had the most unromantic girlfriend in the world. She was definitely hopeless.

"Alright, be all nitpicky with my sage wisdom," Kylie elbowed her with a laugh and Amy had to roll her eyes. She also had to smile.

"I'll give you that there are romantic and unromantic moments. There isn't the one perfect moment, but I'll concede that there are situations that make for a more romantic moment. But you can't just wait for a romantic situation to fall in your lap. If you want it to be all romance in the air when you say it for the first time, you can't just twiddle your thumbs and wait around for romance to fill the air. You go make that romance fill the air. You rent a fog machine by the hour and fill that air around you with romance and you bring him to it and make it a romantic moment, and then make it a great moment when you tell him you love him. You can't be passive about it. You make that moment happen."

"That philosophy class you're taking is really paying off, huh?" Amy chuckled and stood up to switch the DVDs and get their next movie in the lineup started. She was starting feeling a lot better about it and a lot less frustrated, but she was ready to give her brain a break from brainstorming about romance. No more romance thinking tonight - now was time for some good old flesh eating zombies. Horror movies were downright relaxing compared to franticing over setting up romantic moments.

"Oh my god, we listened to audio version of our text book in class one day and after I heard the guy's voice reading it I had to get the audio version too. His voice is so soothing. Just lulls me to sleep," she gushed about the narrator and Amy had to smile at the reminder that her best friend was a total weirdo too. That's why they got along so well together. A big picture freak and a detail freak - it was the craziness in both of them that made them such good friends.

"It's like warm honey trickling in my ears every time I listen to it, and I don't even listen to it to learn, it's just his voice reading the textbook is like a bedtime story, so I turn it on sometimes just so he reads philosophy to me as I drift off. And I think I'm learning it in my sleep and it's invading my dreams. Last night I had a dream about the ship of Theseus. It really messed me up waking up with that paradox on my mind."

"You're insane," Amy told her, sitting back down next to her BFF and stealing the popcorn bowl when the movie started playing.

"Sometimes I forget that you have seven super overprotective older brothers, so the few times I do it it's infuriatingly old hat. Sorry. All my annoyingness is because I love you. But at least I'm not overbearing and sheltering your little innocent ears when it comes to sex," Kylie apologized the next morning.

"Ugh, talk about overprotective older brothers," Amy groaned into her hands. The spoon that she just let go clanked the side of her cereal bowl so loudly that it made her wince and she just groaned again. "I'm pretty sure they'd still like to pretend to themselves that their 22 year old sister doesn't know what 69 stands for and has never seen a porn video in her life. Michael is only a year older than me and all our older brothers had no problems mentioning sex around him once he was in highschool. 22 years, Kylie. And they still refuse to even say the word sex if I'm in earshot."

"I bet if you sent them a picture of you smiling and holding up one of your vibrators they'd faint," Kylie had a glint in her eye like they were two of the most mischievous co-conspirators in all of history before her face broke when she couldn't hold her serious expression any longer and split into a smile. "You know, Amy, you are the least innocent virgin I've ever met. I've never met another virgin who has her own vibrator drawer and readily admits to watching porn she feels like it without being embarrassed at all. A lot of the girls I know won't even admit to their boyfriends that they have a single vibrator hidden at the back of their underwear drawer. Those girls have sex with their boyfriends pretty often and they're still way more delicate when it comes to sexual topics than you. You should be proud of yourself for being the dirtiest virgin ever. I'm so proud to call you my best friend."

"See, I actually don't get that. Having a vibrator as a virgin makes perfect sense. You'd think that all virgins would have them. 22 years old when I found a guy who I really like and want to have sex with, but I didn't know when that would happen until it happened. With Jake. It only makes sense to assume that I was masturbating when I was 21, 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, and so on. It's the only logical assumption. The stupid assumption is that any girl who doesn't currently have a partner to get her off won't be getting off at all. It's the stupid assumption for anyone to think that the majority of single women aren't masturbating. It's stupid for anyone to be surprised to find out that a female virgin masturbates. The most shocking thing would be finding an 18 year old female who has never had sex and who has never masturbated before. That's the statistically unlikely option. Nobody should be shocked by the majority. It's the only logical assumption to make that a 22 year old virgin is well acquainted with masturbation. Why would I not be? I was more than fine enjoying my orgasms on my own. Now I have a person I want to share my orgasms with. I was very satisfied keeping my orgasms to myself these 22 years because I hadn't met a person I'd have more fun orgasming with than orgasming alone. There's the love thing too. I mean, the love relationship thing is what makes it more fun. Or whatever. You know what I mean. It's the only logical thing to assume that a 22 year old virgin woman has masturbated many times before."

"Yup, that's my girl right there. Perfect example," Kylie beamed with genuine pride.

"I'm a pragmatist, simple as that."

AN: Hopefully this chapter being 5,000 words will make up for how long it's been since I posted the last one. Maybe. Please?
Thanks for you patience, and have a lovely day!