#b99 2020 vision challenge

[macperalta]

//@b99fandomevents 2020 vision challenge//: 7 things to look forward to in season 7👀✨

[b99fandomevents]

Let’s ring in the new decade and celebrate the new season with a fun challenge open to all content creators of the B99 Fandom! 

Writers, artists, gif makers, video editors, and everyone else up to the task are welcome to produce something inspired by the one-word theme: new✨

Want to write a fic on Amy helping Jake outline his new year’s resolutions? Have a list of headcanons on Cheddar winning next season’s Heist? Need an excuse to turn your kickass ideas into something greater than great? Now’s your chance to share your awesomeness with the interwebs! 

For this challenge, we’re providing no additional guidelines – just asking that you stick to the theme and have your posts up by February 5th, 2020 (the day before the premiere)! Please also make sure to tag @b99fandomevents​ and include #b99fandomevents and #b99 2020 vision challenge in your tags. 

Happy creating! 

[amydancepants-peralta]

i love your precious heart

(chapter seven of we’re the fortunate ones) ♥️

season seven: i love your precious heart

For the longest time, there was a part of Jake Peralta that genuinely didn’t believe he was deserving of any special kind of love or affection.  Years of rejection; from the revolving doors made up of fathers, step-fathers and short-lived relationships, had led to the once quiet inner voices growing louder - reminding him every chance they could that any state of legitimate happiness simply was not meant for him.

(Dr. Marcia, the therapist he’s been seeing once a fortnight for a close to a year now, has helped him to understand this.)

This New Year’s Eve, standing here on the fire escape that runs along the outside of the apartment he shares with his wife, is not one of those moments.

Their plans for the evening had skewed slightly from their original schedule, partially because Jake had heard the sighs of dejection Amy made when she’d returned yet another ill-fitting dress back into their wardrobe.  Her body is changing in a lot of ways this year - some of them rapidly, others sneaking up on her so slowly it drove her insane - and when he remembered that Amy hadn’t really had the chance to go shopping for a decent range of maternity clothes yet, Jake had moved quickly to devise an alternative plan that seemed both spontaneous and not-at-all-related to a lack of party outfit options.  

Pouring them each a glass of sparkling apple cider (if Amy can’t drink, then Jake can’t drink - and he’s not interested in hearing arguments that suggest otherwise), he had googled events that were happening nearby, found one with fireworks, and with his brilliant detective skills had deduced that their fire escape will face exactly the right direction to watch the show without ever having to leave their house.  And maybe Amy had already been hoping that he would come to the same conclusion, or maybe she was just a really big fan of fire escape parties (he suspects, though, that it is the former) but either way, her dress had been swapped for sweatpants within minutes of Jake’s suggestion, and the relaxation on her face simply made her all the more beautiful.

They’d spent the entire evening rotating between the living room and the tiny space outside that Jake had stocked up with blankets and snacks, talking and laughing as they reminisced the year that was.  There had even been a sweet little slow dance, to a song playing on Jake’s phone as it stayed nestled in his pocket - and it would have been totally romantic, if it hadn’t been interrupted by some dude yarfing onto the street below.   Still, the feeling of holding his wife in his arms, while their baby stayed nestled in-between them, was something that Jake will hold onto forever.  

The breeze has grown colder now, the wind rustling through Jake’s hair as he waits for Amy to return from her seventeenth trip to the bathroom (sadly, not an exaggeration), and as he reaches into the storage box for another blanket for his wife, Jake finds himself looking back on the last few months with a smile.  Even now, there’s a tiny piece of his mind that is still incredulous that she is pregnant - that the two of them are having a baby.  In just four short months, there will be a tiny human that is part Amy, part Jake and wholly them, and he’s never ever been more excited for the future.  

He can still recall the moment it had all changed for the better - when Amy had turned to him with the brightest smile he had ever seen, and nodded her head.  He’d sat beside her on the floor of their bathroom for longer than he’d realised, staring at the plastic stick with it’s stamped lettering and two thin red lines that told him that Amy was pregnant.  His eyes had kept darting from left to right, his brain frantically trying to reassure himself that he was, in fact, reading it all correctly.  That the love of his life was carrying his child, and the world as he knew it was never going to be the same again.  It just … hadn’t made any sense, how easily it had all changed.  Every part of his life involved filling out some sort of paperwork or prior approval or whatever - it was a reality that he merely tolerated, but Amy adored.  But, in the blink of an eye (and a round of admittedly great sex), Jake Peralta was going to be a father.    

Deciding to start trying had been one of the most uncomplicated decisions of his life, and one that he hasn’t reconsidered for a second (it had surprised him at first, how easily it came to him - but that’s the thing about finally being in a secure relationship.  Even the things that terrified him the most, suddenly didn’t seem so bad when he knew Amy would be by his side).  But it had stunned him, how in just one moment, seeing the word pregnant on a little piece of plastic had made him fall in love with something (or someone, really) that he hadn’t even met.  

He had known, in approximately 0.0003 seconds after seeing their daughter for the very first time on the ultrasound screen, that he wouldn’t ever do anything that could hurt her.  That he will fight for her safety and security, with every fibre of his being, until the very last day of his life.  This tiny little shadow on the screen, with it’s echoing heartbeat and what thankfully looked to be Amy’s nose, was now the single-most greatest thing that Jake had ever done: and nothing was ever going to change that.  These past few months have made Jake understand his father even less, and appreciate Amy all the more, if for nothing else than the fact that she’d given Jake a second chance to show just how capable - and deserving - of love he can be.  

Hearing a soft grunt to his left, Jake turns his head in time to see Amy wriggling through the window frame, the swell of her belly turning what used to be an easy move into something that requires a little more finesse.  There’s a soft metallic thud that reverberates towards the empty streets below as both of her slipper covered feet hit the gridded surface, and she grins in triumph before making her way over to Jake.  

“Starting to get over this whole ‘needing to pee every half hour’ thing that I’ve got going on.”

Grinning, Jake leans against the balustrade of their makeshift balcony, ignoring the gentle dig of the metal against his skin.  “I mean, you know my feelings about water, hun.”

Raising an eyebrow, Amy shakes her head in response.  “Hate to tell you this, but all I’ve been drinking today is orange soda - and we both know that’s your genes at play here, Peralta.”  Amy winks at Jake’s responsive wince, cupping his chin in her hand as she pulls him closer for a quick kiss.  “It’s a good thing that I love you, huh?”

“Oh, it’s a very good thing, Ames.”  The best thing ever, actually, that she loves him.  She tells him a lot - even more so since falling pregnant, a side effect that has been hated by absolutely no-one - and every time feels better than the last.  

A car passes them below, the loud music pumping from the speakers and filtering it’s way up to the two of them, and Amy looks down at her sweats, turning to give Jake an apprehensive look.  “What a wild New Year’s Eve we’ve ended up having.  Maybe we should have gone to Terry’s party after all?  I mean, it is the last child free one we’re going to have for a long time.”

Slinging an arm around Amy’s shoulders, Jake pulls her closer to him, smiling as her hand wraps around his waist in a move that is absolutely second nature.  “No way, Ames.  I’ve got my two best girls here with me, and in five minutes I’m going to have the greatest seats in New York as that building over there lets off fireworks from their roof.  Terry’s party can suck it.”  

Right now, a bunch of fugitives could climb out from the sewer clutching diamonds from the biggest jeweller in town, and he wouldn’t move.  Bruce Willis himself could knock on the door, and Jake would tell him that he needed to come back tomorrow (please, please, please - come back tomorrow).  

This was his home - he’d built a world between these four walls, with the love of his life - the only one to run a hand over his scars, both physical and mental, and still call him beautiful.  His partner, in every way imaginable, and easily the greatest person he’s ever known.  And just when he didn’t think she could be any more magic, she’d begun carrying their child, and now he is absolutely certain that Amy is completely made of stardust.  

Even when her hormones are out of control, and she’s yelling at him for not mixing enough pickles into her ice cream.

There was nowhere he’d rather be, and nobody he’d rather be with.  Literally everything he needed, for the rest of his life, was right here in his arms.  

(Okay yes, technically he would eventually need orange soda and gummy worms and maybe some water if Amy insisted.  But there was a healthy stock of all that in their kitchen, and by ‘right here’ he obviously means their apartment.)

Amy hums - this sweet little hmmming sound that Jake knows to mean contentment ever since he heard it on their first night together, a sound that he’s heard a million times since then and just never, ever fails to transcend him - and she leans a little more of her body weight against him, blinking slowly as fatigue begins to set in.  There were countless books and testimonials that told them to get as much sleep as they could, because once the baby came sleep would become a long-lost memory, and Jake could tell that Amy was secretly dying to curl up into bed.  Baby-growing, it would seem, was a highly exhaustive task - and in all honesty the idea of curling up underneath the blanket with her for the rest of the evening sounded kind of amazing.   

Jake’s just about to suggest a retreat to their bedroom when he hears the first whoosh of a firework streaking through the sky, the subsequent explosion of light piercing his eyes as tiny blue stars litter their previously dark canvas.  Either the revellers had decided to celebrate early, or his watch was slow (entirely possible, he’d bought it for three whole dollars at their local bodega) - whatever the reason, Jake cannot help the smile that stretches across his face as more colours begin to light the sky.  

Now completely awake, Amy moves closer still to Jake, standing in front of him and gripping his forearms in her hands when they wrap around her clavicle.  From behind Jake can hear her tiny gasps as each bang and pop takes place, and after a minute he cries out in surprise, moving quickly to place his hands on either side of Amy’s pregnant belly in a protective stance.

Shifting her head to the side, Amy looks at Jake in confusion, pointing downwards.  “What’s with the sudden coverage, babe?”

Eyes wide and earnest, Jake nods in the direction of his hands, explaining - “I’ve got to protect the baby’s ears, Ames!  These fireworks are loud - and what if she’s asleep right now?  She’s part Peralta, and you and I both know Peraltas are NOT a fan of being woken up.”

Amy laughs, her nose crinkling up in that completely adorable way that Jake absolutely loves, shaking her head as her fingers link with his on either side of her bump.  “Our baby is totally fine in there, Jake.  But I love you so much for thinking of her right now.”  There’s a slight shift underneath Jake’s hands, and he can’t be sure if it’s a kick of just a general nudge from their daughter, but either way he takes it as a sign that their little one agrees with Amy’s statement.  Nodding; he smiles at Amy, suddenly feeling a little foolish - but perhaps, he’s just foolishly in love.  Above them, the fireworks continue to explode, only now they don’t seem so loud.

Moving one hand away from his, Amy cups the back of Jake’s neck, gently pulling him downwards for a soft kiss.  “Only five months in, and you’re already the greatest dad ever,” she whispers against his lips, pressing against them with her own once more.  He’s blushing by the time she pulls away, he can feel it in the sudden tingle of his cheeks, but all he can think about is the title greatest dad ever, and how much he can’t wait until those very words are emblazoned on a mug or some other kind of gift their child decides to buy him.  He wants it on hats, and shirts, on socks and a keyring and everywhere in between - because when it came to Jake and fatherhood, there was not a chance in hell that history was going to end up repeating.        

“Hey,” came Amy’s soft voice, pulling Jake out of his thoughts as her fingers return to the back of his neck and toy with the curls that live along the bottom of his hairline.  Briefly, he remembers that he meant to get his hair cut two weeks ago.  “You okay, babe?”

Taking a deep breath, Jake smiles and nods, waiting until Amy has turned to face him completely before tucking a stray strand of hair back behind her ear.  “Happy New Year, Ames.  I know I’ve said this before, but this year is going to be totally amazing.”

Amy nods back, giggling as Jake swoops in for a kiss.  “I’m going to remember this moment when we’re elbow deep in dirty diapers and our eyelids are being held up by toothpicks.”

Joining in on Amy’s laughter, Jake shrugs his shoulders in defeat.  “This is probably going to sound insane, and I’m definitely going to deny I ever said this when we’re in that situation; but even that sounds a little bit awesome, because it’ll mean that she’s here and we can hold her and talk to her and just love her for reals.”

“Totally insane, and I completely agree.”

It’s less than an hour later that both Jake and Amy are tucked into bed, the sound of Amy’s gentle snores lulling Jake to sleep as 2020 begins to stretch her limbs.  Their apartment is quiet, but filled to the brim with love - right down to the printed sonogram, sharing the space of a heart-shaped magnet with a photo of a young couple falling for each other - and there is a small room adjacent to the kitchen that is almost ready for it’s tiny occupant to arrive.  

As his eyelids grow heavy, Jake thinks back to all the years he and Amy had spent together, and how many times they’ve had to push back against all the things that have tried to keep them apart.  He knows now that it was worth it - all of it was worth it - because truly, the best was yet to come.  

[vernonfielding]

A moment of divinity

Story No. 12 of my Season 7 Countdown Project. This one is written for @andrewsambags and @madeofitzits, who are both such incredible assets to the B99/Newsomberg(/bespectacled-Jake/Andy) fandom.

This story is ALSO my submission to the B99 2020 Vision Challenge. Thank you to the organizers at @b99fandomevents for putting it together!

Summary: “I got to see the world through your eyes.”

The morning he accidentally switched contact lenses with Amy was one of Jake’s favorite moments of their first year of marriage. Interesting. Takes place during Casecation. (Read on AO3.)

Jake high-fives Amy on his way out of the shower and her way in. Once upon a time in their relationship they would have showered together if they were running late for work and needed to save some time (and more likely making themselves even later). But they’ve been married three months now and living together for two years and honestly, shower sex is super overrated. It’s crazy slippery and someone always bumps an elbow or gets soap in a really uncomfortable place and it’s too cramped to get the right angles or leverage.

Still, it’s fun watching Amy’s butt disappear behind the shower curtain.

Jake grins to himself as he turns to the medicine cabinet. The mirror is steamed over and he resists clearing a spot with his hand – Amy hates the smudges – and opens the door to grab his contacts. For a second he’s confused when he can’t find the familiar frog-face case he keeps his in, but then he remembers Amy made him throw the case out after he dropped it in the toilet. He sighs and takes out the boring blue case instead.

He’s only had contacts for about a year and he’s still not good at putting them in blind, so when he closes the cabinet door he glances at the shower, and Amy’s hazy (but still somehow sexy) profile under the water, and then rubs clean a corner of the mirror so he can see what he’s doing.

The first one pops in but feels weird against his eyelid, like it’s at the wrong angle (which yes, he knows is impossible, it’s a circle), but he blinks a few times and it seems to settle. The same happens with the second one. His vision is a little off but the bathroom’s full of steam so he just closes his eyes as he towels himself off and slips on the boxers he slept in.

He opens his eyes again as he turns toward the bedroom – and for a second he thinks he’s having a stroke. He doesn’t have any idea what a stroke feels like (he’s not entirely sure what a stroke is, actually) but the sudden blurred vision, the way the familiar lines and shapes of their bedroom have gone all sideways, and the accompanying vertigo must mean that something is very, very wrong. Jake stumbles toward the bed, hands flailing out in front of him because he can’t see, and practically collapses. His heart is hammering in his chest and he’s blinking madly, eyes tearing up.

His eyes – Jake laughs out loud when he figures it out. He’s put in Amy’s contact lenses. She’d even told him when he borrowed her extra contact lens case to be careful they didn’t mix them up.

He’s massively relieved that his brain isn’t going to explode (he’s pretty sure that’s what a stroke does), and he flops back on the bed, blinking up at the blurry ceiling fan spinning slowly overhead. His vision is still totally screwed up but the contacts aren’t actually uncomfortable, and as long as he just lies there he doesn’t feel dizzy.

It occurs to him that in a way, he’s seeing through Amy’s eyes. And he knows that’s not really how it works and that Amy would tell him he’s being ridiculous but- it’s also kind of true.

He smiles to himself as he pushes up on his elbows and slowly looks all around their bedroom, taking in the familiar and yet suddenly new surroundings. He squints at their matching bedside lamps and the floral prints hanging on either side of the headboard, the colors and shapes fuzzy, taking on new forms. The ferns on top of the armoire are a dark, muddy green, and their blurry arms seem to be waving at him in the breeze from the fan. The wicker laundry basket in the corner is a friendly looking lump, the bookcase a somewhat threatening dark tower, looming over the bed.

He knows this room so well that he could close his eyes and perfectly imagine the line-up of items on Amy’s dresser: the bottles of perfume and lotion, the silver tree that holds her few pieces of jewelry, the quilted box that her abuela gave her long ago, still holding the keepsakes of a child, shells and foreign coins and shiny buttons. He cranes his head to look behind him anyway, to see the shape of them from a fresh, Amy perspective.

He’s been seeing the world through her eyes for years now, really – as a partner and as a friend, as someone he loves and as someone he will spend the rest of his life with. But it hits him anew, now that he’s literally (sort of) seeing through her eyes, how incredibly lucky he is. No one else gets to be this close to her, gets to share her life with her and experience the world with her always at his side. His heart seizes at the power of that thought.

This woman – somehow he finds a way to love her more every single day.

“Jake!” Amy’s panicked voice shakes him out of his near-blind reverie, and Jake sits up, looking blearily toward the bathroom.

“What is it? Are you okay?”

Amy doesn’t answer right away, but Jake makes out her hazy silhouette in the bathroom doorway, steam puffing out around her so she looks like a dream, soft and ethereal.

“Ames?”

“Why am I wearing your contact lenses?”

Jake shuts his mouth. He blinks at her and though it doesn’t help clear his vision, he feels pretty confident that she looks annoyed. Perhaps very annoyed.

Then she tilts her head to one side, and he can feel her eyes on his face, and she says, soft this time, “You’re looking at the world through my eyes, aren’t you.”

“Maybe?”

Amy stumbles toward him, arms outstretched the same way his were, towel wrapped around her body, and when she bumps into his knees she grabs onto his shoulders and peers into his eyes (probably – even up close he can’t see too well).

She says, “You are a ridiculous goofball and I love you, so much.”

He beams back up at her and says, “I love you,” and he kisses her with his eyes – her eyes – wide open.

+++

Amy refuses to let him have his own contacts back after they’ve both taken the lenses out of their eyes.

“They’ve been in my eyes. That’s gross,” she says.

“But I’ve just been wearing your contact lenses for the past five minutes,” Jake says.

“Yes, and that was sweet, but also gross,” Amy says, and dumps his contacts into the trash, along with her own.

The thing is: Amy has a backup pair. Jake does not. He was down to his last pair and hadn’t gotten around to ordering more and yes, Amy told him ages ago to just get the daily disposables so he’d always have a huge supply on hand but he hasn’t yet.

“You can’t go to work blind,” she says, following him into the kitchen once they’re both finally dressed.

“What do you think I did before contacts?” Jake says.

“I try not to think about that,” Amy says. “Seriously, put on your glasses, babe.”

He rolls his eyes – his back is to her, so it’s safe – and squints into the refrigerator to make sure he grabs the orange soda and not the Orangina bottle. When he turns around, Amy’s right in front of him, close enough that he can see her just fine.

“Please?” she says.

She doesn’t wait for him to reply, just unfolds his glasses and carefully slides them onto his face, nudging them into place with a finger. The room snaps into focus, startling and satisfying at once.

“Better?” Amy says.

Jake shrugs and mutters “I don’t know” under his breath even though he knows he’s being childish. It’s only when he sits down at the table with his bowl of Froot Loops that he realizes he’s grabbed the Orangina after all.

When Amy hands him the orange soda instead, the smirk on her face is clear as day.

+++

No one at the precinct cares about his glasses. The only person who says anything is Charles, and he tells Jake that he looks like an international spy slash billionaire playboy slash Russian dancer.

“All three?” Jake says.

“Not all at once, but yes,” Charles says.

“Cool,” Jake says, and means it.

He’s still not planning to ever wear the glasses in public again, until he’s walking out of the precinct with Amy, their shifts ending at the same time for once, and she yanks him by his badge into a dark corner of the parking garage and mauls him with her lips.

“What was that for?” Jake says, panting, when she finally breaks away. His glasses have steamed up, and he reaches up to take them off so he can wipe them on his shirt.

Amy grabs his hand though and growls. “Leave them on.”

“Oh,” Jake says. And then, “Oh.”

He does eventually get new contacts. Just- not right away.

End Notes:

Title is from Bikini Babe Workout (Bash Brothers).

When I first saw the 2020 Vision Challenge (with associated squinting Jake gif) I immediately was like, oh hell yeah I’m writing Jake with glasses! And then I saw the theme was “new” and thought about Jake seeing the world through a “new,” Amy perspective. And well. Here we are.

At first I just thought it’d be fun to try to explain how they managed to swap contact lenses. But as I got started writing I had to ask myself, Why in the world would this be a top five moment for Jake?? That’s a weird top five, right? (I hope my answer is satisfying.)

This canon doesn’t match with my AC/DC canon (in which Jake already has contacts/glasses). But my rule for this project is that the fics only have to be compliant with actual canon, not my own canon. I know, that is too many canons. Just trust me, it’s all cool.

I would have been happy to have written an ending wherein Jake decides to wear his glasses every day forever and ever but – stupid canon. Here’s hoping for season 7 bespectacled Jake.

[joysmercer]

Arlo, Short For Arlington

Rosa tried to do something nice. Now she has a new puppy.

Missing scene from 3x12.

———————

Notes:

This is my (very last-minute) entry for the @b99fandomevents 2020 Vision Challenge, which was to create something with the theme "new.” Let's hope we see more of Arlo in season 7!

Read on Ao3

———————

When Rosa was seven years old, her cat ran away. Her parents broke the news to her and then promptly presented her with a new kitten. “Don’t cry over losing Mittens,” her mom told her. “See? Princess is here, now.” Rosa did two very important things that day: rechristened Princess as Shadow and learned that there’s no use grieving over something you lost. The way she saw it, everything—inanimate or not—comes into your life for a purpose, and once that purpose has been fulfilled, the best thing to do is move on.

Which is why it is absolutely ridiculous that Boyle has spent the better part of a week mourning the loss of his dog. Rosa can make allowances for a few hours, maybe even a day, but more than that is pushing it too far. Rosa doesn’t know why he hasn’t done so already, but it is definitely time for him to get a new pet to fill the “void” or whatever that Jason left behind.

So, after the fifth day in a row where they’ve spent too much time looking at pictures and not enough actually solving their case, Rosa walks to the nearest animal shelter and asks to see their dogs. As Rosa makes her way straight to the back, where the cheapest options should be, a yellow labrador puppy sticks his paw through his bars and whimpers at her as she passes by.

The worker escorting her around nods in the direction of the puppy. “His previous owners dropped him off ’cause he was too difficult to manage—after training him and everything too—and he’s probably going to be here for a while, now, poor baby,” she says, shaking her head and sighing dramatically in an obvious attempt to get Rosa to empathize with the dog’s plight.

Rosa checks her watch, and to her horror, realizes that she only has a few minutes before she has to leave for her oil-painting class. She needs to pick a puppy now. “You know what? I’ll take him,” she says, and the woman’s face lights up.

“Really? That’s amazing! Oh, thank you so much, you probably made his day! I just felt so bad for the little guy—he didn’t deserve any of it; people just don’t antici—”

“Mhmm, yeah, he’s potty-trained, right? There shouldn’t be a problem,” Rosa cuts in. “Where do I sign the paperwork?”

———————

 Rosa’s informed that the puppy’s previous owners called him Arlo, which she thinks is the stupidest name she has ever heard of. She refuses the complimentary collar offered by the shelter and decides to just let Charles choose what to call him.

That is, until Charles calls her insensitive and tells her to take the dog away, leaving Rosa suddenly responsible for a wriggling, nameless animal she never intended to have.

After a few hours of trying and failing to get any work done with the dog periodically whining or grunting or nipping at her ankles, Rosa decides to call it a day and figure out what to do next. Once she’s outside, she picks the dog up and raises him to eye-level, giving him her most threatening glare. “Listen up, pup. I don’t have time to go back to the shelter today, so you’re coming with me tonight. No making noise, no peeing indoors, and no doing dumb things. Got it?”

He leans forward, touches his nose to hers, and barks in her face. “No doing that, either,” Rosa adds. The dog grins back at her.

Rosa sighs. “Okay, let’s walk to my car,” she tells the dog, putting him down so he can follow beside her just like she’s seen Cheddar do with Holt. The dog, on the other hand, spots a squirrel and runs straight in the opposite direction. Rosa wonders if Holt would be willing to trade.

 ———————

“Good afternoon, Em! And who is this little fellow?” Will, the superintendent of Rosa’s apartment building, leans down slightly to scratch the dog behind the ears.

The dog, apparently liking the sensation, turns in Rosa’s arms, and she involuntarily takes a step back to keep her balance. “Oops! I’m still getting used to carrying him around with me. He doesn’t have a leash yet,” she giggles, immediately assuming the chatty-sorority-girl persona of Emily Goldfinch that she maintains around her neighbors. “A friend of mine couldn’t take care of him, but he was such a good boy that I just had to take him in!”

“He does appear to be a very good boy,” Will says seriously. “What’s his name?”

Rosa freezes. She looks around, desperately trying to come up with something appropriate that the dog actually had a chance of answering to, when she spots a pamphlet to Vassar College in Will’s hand. Perfect.

“My friend called him Arlington,” she smiles. “After the place in Poughkeepsie, you know, where we both went to college. Isn’t that, like, the cutest name ever?”

“Oh, Arlo for short! That’s adorable,” Will agrees. Rosa nods, wincing internally. She should have seen that one coming.

“Actually, my daughter is considering attending Vassar herself. Do you have any information about it?”

Two hours later, Rosa finally manages to excuse herself from the conversation and carries a now-sleeping Arlo up to her apartment, having never been more thankful for the year she spent working with a college counseling firm.

 ———————

 Rosa wakes up the next morning, not to her alarm, but to the sound of extremely agitated whining filling up her apartment. “Arlo?” she calls, sitting up and turning her lamp on. As light floods the room, she realizes that the dog bed in the corner where Arlo was supposed to sleep is empty. Where could he be?

She gets up and follows the sound out of her room and into the kitchen, where she nearly trips over something small and furry by the stove that turns out to be Arlo glowering angrily at the oven. Rosa squats down next to him and awkwardly reaches out to pat his back, and to her surprise, Arlo immediately relaxes at her touch.

After a few more seconds, Rosa crosses her legs fully and Arlo climbs onto her lap, his eyes still trained intently on the oven. Rosa reaches out and opens the door, just to check if she left any food inside that may have piqued his senses, but it’s completely empty. “See, there’s nothing here,” she tells Arlo, who sneezes and steps off of her, apparently satisfied with her demonstration.

Rosa shuts the door and stands up, but as soon as she does, Arlo starts growling and pawing at the oven, clearly agitated once again. Rosa steps to the side to survey the scene before her, and as she does so, her reflection in the glass disappears. Instantly, Arlo stops everything and cocks his head quizzically. An idea starts to form in Rosa’s mind.

“Arlo,” she says slowly, bending down to pick up the squirming dog up and place him on the counter, “Are you scared of your own reflection?”

Arlo whimpers and presses his snout into her hand, which Rosa takes as a yes. “You really are a dumb dog,” she says, rolling her eyes.

Rosa sighs and picks him up, careful to face away from the oven this time. “It’s okay. There aren’t any mirrors in my room,” Rosa tells him, surprisingly softly. Arlo’s asleep before she even steps out of the kitchen.

 ———————

Rosa’s about to leave for her 5 AM run the next morning when Arlo comes bounding up to her just as she opens the door, his tongue out and tail wagging.

“You can’t come with me,” she tells him sternly. “I’m training for the marathon and you won’t be able to keep up.” Arlo simply yips excitedly and jumps up and tries to grab the doorknob with his paws. “I’m serious, it’s too dark to go outside with you right now,” she repeats, trying to shoo him back indoors, but he refuses.

Rosa groans and picks up a stray sandal from the shoe stand. She throws it straight across the room, and while Arlo chases after it, she slips out the door. Finally.

Less than half a second later, she hears the unmistakable sound of someone scraping their nails against the wall. She pauses, praying the noise would stop, but it’s only followed by a bark, and then another. Rosa gives up and goes back inside the apartment.

“Okay, here’s what’s going to happen,” she tells Arlo. “You and I are going to wait until sunrise, and then we’re going for a walk. We’ll stop by that coffee shop by the precinct, and then we’ll go back to the shelter and drop you off so you can get adopted by a nice family. Okay?”

But Arlo is too preoccupied with chasing his own tail in circles to pay attention to what she’s saying. Rosa shakes her head and bites back a smile. Dumb dog. Whoever ends up adopting him would be lucky to have him.

Two hours later, Rosa’s eating a blueberry scone and sipping on some hot chocolate while Arlo plays with her shoelaces under the table at what is the only dog-friendly coffee shop in Brooklyn. (Technically, that’s not entirely true. This place also has a no-pets rule, but Rosa may have terrified them into letting Arlo come in.)

Rosa’s halfway through her second cup when her phone screen lights up with a picture of her and her sisters and a message reading, “Join Group FaceTime?” Rosa looks around. She doesn’t have headphones on her, but the shop is empty, so she hits Accept.

One of her sisters just got a promotion at work and the other has enough enthusiasm about it for all three of them combined, so Rosa is content with half-listening to their chatter while intermittently feeding Arlo pieces of her scone. Suddenly, Arlo dives across her feet to reach some stray crumbs, and she yelps, startled.

“Rosa, are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

Rosa sighs. “So, I’ve been looking after this dog,” she informs them offhandedly, and her sisters immediately start squealing (well, shrieking) with excitement. Soon, Rosa finds herself telling them about the events of the past two days.

“The little rugrat was scared of the goddamn oven, can you imagine?” Rosa laughs, holding her cellphone in one hand as she takes a sip of hot chocolate. “I don’t know how mom and dad did it when we got Mittens. One crazy night with Arlo and I’m already going nuts.”

Arlo barks at the mention of his name and Rosa feeds him her last bit of scone. She gets up to go order another one and continues, “Anyway, I’m going back to the shelter before work to drop him off. I can’t believe Charles refused to take him. I mean, when Mittens ran away, Shadow made everything better, instantly.”

There’s a pause as her sisters exchange a look. “What?” Rosa demands.

“Mittens didn’t run away—” “He was really old—” they say at the same time.

The barista hands Rosa a scone and she promptly drops it. “What? Why didn’t anyone tell me he died?”

“He never went outside. How would he run away?”

Rosa’s heart drops. “But he was—he seemed so—was he sick? Is that why?” She asks despite herself, then quickly shakes her head. “It’s fine. It was a long time ago. And Shadow made me forget about it anyway. Listen, I have to go, I’m going to be late,” she says quickly and hangs up.

She walks back to her table and grabs her jacket. “Come on, Arlo,” she calls, walking toward the door. After a few steps, though, she realizes that she isn’t being followed. “Arlo?”

Rosa looks around the small shop, but there’s no one else around. She tries to go behind the counter and check if Arlo is hiding back there, but the barista shoos her out. “I’m looking for my dog,” she tries to explain, but the barista shrugs.

“No dog back here. But there’s a reason we don’t allow pets—”

Rosa clenches her jaw and considers the repercussions of flipping him off, but then another customer walks in and it occurs to her that Arlo may have, somehow, run out and into the street behind her back. Panic rises in her chest and she starts sprinting to the door. If something happened to him—

“Ma’am, is this your dog?” Rosa turns on her heel to find a man in a chef’s hat holding Arlo.

Rosa breathes a sigh of relief. He’s safe. “Yep,” she grunts, taking him back and holding him close.

“I work at the Italian place next door. I guess he smelled the meat and ran through the connecting door in the back. You should really put him on a leash,” the man says sternly.

“Yeah, I know,” Rosa snaps, running her hand through Arlo’s fur to calm herself. Her heartbeat slowly returns to normal and she looks back up. “Thank you.”

The chef starts to leave, but turns back and calls over his shoulder, “He’s a smart one, that one. And he obviously trusts you. Puppies at his age would normally be wiggling everywhere if you hold them like that.”

Rosa looks down and realizes that the chef is right. While Arlo’s tail is wagging almost violently, he appears to be perfectly content resting her arms.

And, she realizes, she’s perfectly content having him there.

“Hey, bud, what do you say we skip the shelter altogether and you come home with me?” she asks. Arlo blinks up at her, and she smiles. “Yeah, that sounds good to me too.”

[meepmorpperaltiago]

New Year’s Resolutions

This is my fic on the theme “new” for @b99fandomevents - it’s inspired by the Iconic New Year’s resolutions scene from the sitcom Outnumbered 

As someone who prizes carefully planning her entire life with a variety of notebooks, binders and the occasional Excel document, running through a neatly planned list of “self-improvements” for the new year has always been Amy’s favourite personal tradition of that weird post Christmas-pre New Year time period where no one knows where they’re going or what they’re doing.

This year is no exception and for the start of 2027, as the mess of Christmas finally starts to get cleared away, she’s brought out the calligraphy set David bought her, to write out everything she wants to achieve in the New Year. Whilst she thinks the stereotypical resolutions like eating less chocolate or exercising more are a futile exercise, Amy likes to think of ways that her life could be better this time next year.

What she doesn’t expect is for a small hand to plonk down a sheet of paper right near hers, covered in handwriting that’s grown neater across the last year.

“Awww sweetie, have you made new years resolutions?”, she says to her daughter. Livvy nods proudly before clearing her throat and reading out the full list, in her best presentation voice. Amy smiles a little to herself – she really is her daughter.

“New Year’s resolutions by Livvy Karen Camila Santiago-Peralta”, she says proudly.

“Number one – I will make an effort to make my room even tidier. Number 2, I will try not to fight as much with Max and Ray when they annoy me, especially because they’re not as grown up as I am don’t know any better. Number 3, Mommy will stop nagging me. Number 4, mommy will stop trying to feed me broccoli.”

“Wait, New Years resolutions are supposed to be for you, not for other people”, Amy gently corrects her daughter. “I already have my own list, see?”

“Yeah, but you won’t write good ones, you’ll just come up with mediocre stock resolutions you got from a google search, like “I’ll learn Mandarin or I’ll go vegan for a week, when what we really all need is for you to stop nagging, because it’ll be no good if you just nag in Mandarin whilst making us all eat kale salads.”

Amy gives her a slightly stern look at that, and she puts the piece of paper down.

“I’m just being honest with you mommy”, Livvy says.

“How many resolutions have you made just for you?”, Amy queries.

“A few”, the seven-year old says nonchalantly as she strolls out of the room.

Amy looks at the list on the table. Livvy wrote 3 for herself. As she laughs to herself, she realises that, with her family, there’s no way her life could get any better in the new year.

[amydancepants-peralta]

we’re the fortunate ones

season five: enough of this terror, we deserve to know light. ♥️

Jake’s hand trails slowly up and down Amy’s back as they stand and talk to Terry, his movements ranging from palm-sized sweeps to finger tipped circles as the conversation wears on.  One of his most favourite things in life is to listen to Amy flip into Nerd Mode, and right now her voice is bright and full of passion as she explains the origin of Auld Lang Syne to her audience. 

“So really, it’s about acknowledging days gone by and raising a glass to all the moments - good and bad - that have passed,”  she concludes, glancing at Jake out of the corner of her eye as she raises her own glass in example.  Moving his free hand back up towards the base of her neck Jake takes the cue, finishing his own drink and resisting the urge to curl a strand of Amy’s hair around his fingers as Terry bids farewell a moment later, leading Sharon over to the bar for refills.

Once they are alone Amy shifts her weight to her right, leaning into Jake’s touch as his hand moves to her shoulder, and he presses a soft kiss to her temple.  Emptying her glass and abandoning it on the table next to Jake’s, Amy glances around quickly before looking up at him with those gorgeous brown eyes that never fail to pull him in deep.  “If you keep touching my back like that, Peralta, there is no way we’re making it to midnight.”

Jake laughs, dropping his hand to just the right spot on Amy’s lower back and pulling her closer.  “We didn’t make it to midnight, Ames.  If I’m remembering correctly, we didn’t even make it to eight.”  Her responding blush makes him grin, and he throws her a wink knowing full well that Amy’s reliving the same memory.

They’d both arrived home from work late (it’s almost as though the criminals of New York have no respect for their plans), and in an attempt to save time Amy had squeezed herself in on Jake’s shower.  And perhaps they’ve both been a little loved up lately - and maybe Amy just looked a little too sexy all soaped up like that - because showering quickly turned into other stuff and it hadn’t been long before Jake was being dragged out of the bathroom and into their bedroom (the rule was no sex in the shower after The Incident last June: fair, when he remembered the bruises they’d had in .. places).  What happened next had been as awesome as ever, and if there hadn’t been a party they’d already said yes to, Jake would have found it far easier to convince Amy to stay right there in their bedroom for the rest of the evening.  

“You’re still not off the hook for that one, babe.”  Amy mumbles, reaching up to fiddle with the collar of his shirt and bringing his attention back to the present.  “We were so late to the party, and I’m totally blaming that on you.”

“It’s New Year’s Eve, Ames.  As long as we’re here before midnight, it’s totally fine.”  He smiles at her, dropping his hand an inch lower as he rests his forehead briefly against hers.  “And I think you’re forgetting who initiated what before, thank you very much.”

“Can a girl help it if her fiancée was particularly sweet at work today and she wanted to show her appreciation?”  Tipping her head upwards, she bridges the gap between them with a kiss.  “And besides, it was round two that made us late, and that one’s definitely on you.”

Jake’s heart skips a beat at the sound of fiancée, part of his mind still in disbelief that such a title could belong to him - even if he was the one on bended knee in the first place.  Grinning, he shrugs in surrender, gliding his palm over her lower back again.  “Right right, fair call ... I guess the sight of my fiancée in that setup you’ve got going on under there was just too much for me.”  Amy laughs, her cheeks turning that soft pink that he loves to see, and he leans back in for another chaste kiss. 

“Oh god, we’re totally that couple at the party that are all over each other, aren’t we?” she mumbles, tucking her head into Jake’s shoulder in faux shame.  His smile is bright in response, sighing happily when Amy’s arms circle around his waist, telling him with her gentle grip that she has no intention of moving anytime soon. 

“We so are babe. But you know what?  I am totally okay with it.”  

As Amy hums her assent, Jake’s eyes flicker around the room, taking in the black and gold decorations that covered a very good portion of the venue Boyle had rented for the night.  He and Genevieve had gone all out this year, and once everyone learned to avoid the truly strange options on the menu, it was turning out to be a genuinely enjoyable evening.  

He finds Rosa in one corner, the grip on her glass of whiskey tight as she stands listening to Gina, who is undoubtedly discussing the other party guests.  Her stance is comfortable, and about as relaxed as Rosa gets,  but still Jake waits until their eyes meet from across the room before he can be sure that she’s okay.  

Their casual nights of drinking in silence had increased since they’d gotten out of prison, only now they weren’t so silent.  Memories of the darker moments behind bars would often stay collectively pooled at the bottom of their glasses, jumbling into a heap along the edge of their table before disappearing with the barman.  As the weeks and months passed by there were little reminders that would strike unexpected, stinging like a starving animal gnawing at unhealed wounds.  Other times they simmered slowly below the surface, waiting for the perfectly inopportune moment to strike.  The scars were fading, but they were there, and her family's reaction to her coming out had not helped things at all.  Surviving this year had brought them closer together, and with everyone around them happily celebrating the year that was, Jake wouldn’t have blamed Rosa for a second if she’d had the sudden urge to be Anywhere But Here.  

Gina turns her head to see where Rosa’s half smile is directed, and she gives Jake her best I got this face when his eyes flicker over to her.  The bright pink 2018 crown that she had worked into her hairstyle was doing it’s very best to attract just enough attention, glitter catching the light as the redhead gives he and Amy a once-over, shaking her head in mock disgust.  He brushes off his oldest friend’s glare, rolling his eyes in a completely mature response before returning his attention to Amy, tightening his grip around her in defiance.  Gina didn’t understand what this evening meant to them, and in all honesty he didn’t need her to.

It had only been a few months ago that Jake had genuinely begun to believe that a life with Amy was only ever going to be a dream.  The thing about prison was that it worked relentlessly at making sure that all inmates were aware that they’d become just another number - that the cement blocks that now made up your world would not acknowledge or mourn your disappearance when or if it occurred.  Unsurprisingly, the nights had turned out to be the hardest, and his overactive mind would spiral around him as his deepest fears began to infiltrate - all with one undeniable theme: you’re never going to make it out of here.

But by the grace of all that is good - and a perhaps not-so-legal acquisition of information - Hawkins’ reign of terror had been brought crashing down, and both Jake and Rosa’s sentences had been overturned.  Now; the air felt fresher, the sun looked brighter, and after a (slightly) hitch-less Halloween Heist, there was a sparkling diamond on Amy’s ring finger.  This was going to be their only New Year’s Eve as an engaged couple, and wild horses couldn’t drag them away from each other tonight.  

Amy’s hands sweep along his waist as though she can sense what he’s thinking about (let’s face it: she probably can), and she raises up slightly, dropping a feather-light kiss to Jake’s neck before whispering “We should probably go and at least pretend to socialise with the other guests, right?”

Shaking his head, Jake uses his free hand to curl the edges of her hair around his finger, the other maintaining it’s steady grip along her back, comfortable in the familiarity of her curves.  She had been so much thinner when he’d gotten back from prison, his arms wrapping around her more than they’d used to.  HIs observation of such on their first night back together had been shrugged off, added with the quiet admittance that their phone calls had fed her more than food, and it had cut him to the quick.  He’d counted far too many hours in scratchy orange jumpsuits, desperate in his need to clear his name from this wrongful persecution, but through it all his fight for a future with Amy had been paramount.  To see the physical proof that all of this had affected her as well somehow hurt greater than anything else he’d had to endure.

From that night on, their healing had been slow - but it was always together.

Mimicking Jake’s shake of his head with her own, Amy rests her chin against his chest, looking up at Jake with such an abundance of love that he truly wonders what good deeds he’s done in his life to be rewarded with her heart.  Amy Santiago was undoubtedly the love of his life - he’d known it long before he’d ever felt confident enough to say it out loud - and next year they were going to be make it official.  

“You know what?”  Jake asked, cocking his head to the side slightly, grinning when Amy raises her eyebrows in a silent question.  “In just 135 days, I’m gonna marry your butt so hard.”

“Oh yeah?”  He nods his head enthusiastically, and Amy’s eyes begin to crinkle as she mirrors his grin.  “That’s good to know, because in 136 days, I’ve got some pretty serious honeymoon sex planned for us. It would have been a shame for that to go to waste.”

“Not gonna lie, that sounds kinda amazing.”

“The binder I’m making is going to blow. your. mind. babe.”

Leaning down to kiss her, Jake whispers, “God I can’t wait to be your husband.” 

It was true.  Their wedding was going to be amazing (he’s been secretly compiling a list of Jock Jams to surprise Amy with, and its only halfway done yet already awesome), but truly Jake was beyond ready to be married.  To wear a band on his finger that told the whole world that he loves one person above all others, and that person was Amy Santiago.  To be able to refer to her as his wife, and to smile proudly when she called him her husband.  They were the tiniest of things, but when it all came together it was a life he couldn’t wait to start.  

Amy smiles up at him, craning up on her toes to steal another kiss and Jake sighs happily against her mouth.  Wiping off a smudge of lipstick from his lips as she pulls away, Amy shakes her head slowly.  “You know, it really is ridiculous how corny we’re being tonight.”

Digging his teeth into his lower lip briefly, Jake glances around the room again before shrugging.  “This is just our engage-moon period,” he states, and when Amy stares blankly he continues.  “I mean … there’s always a honeymoon period after you get married, right?  Then … by that logic there should be an engage-moon period, when you’re freshly engaged and everything just seems freakin’ awesome.”

Amy’s mouth turns down slightly as she studies him, that cute concentration face taking over her features, and if he didn’t love her enough already he might just love her a little bit more as she nods in agreement.  “You know what, you’re absolutely right.”

“And besides,” Jake continues, unable to contain his smile, “this year is going to be amazing.  We’re going to get married, you’re going to become a sergeant -”

“We don’t know that, Jake …”

“You’re going to be a sergeant,” giving her a pointed look he carries on - “the nine-nine will continue to kick crime to the curb and you and I are going to have super-hot married sex in every single room in our apartment.”  

Her laughter is loud, the carefree giggles bouncing onto Jake’s chest as her body shakes, and Jake can’t help but join in.  This is what he wanted - all day, every day, for as long as they both shall live.  

A steady voice breaks through their little bubble, interrupting their laughter with the statement - “If you two are about done with the lovey-dovey stuff, we can start counting down to the new year.”

Pulling away slightly, Amy wraps her right arm around Jake’s waist and clears her throat.  “Oh, hey Gina.”  With a smile, she accepts the glass of champagne that Rosa offers, taking a sip to distract herself from the embarrassment Jake can tell she’s feeling.

Reaching for the glass that Gina is holding out for him, Jake once again ignores her judgemental stare, choosing instead to secure his left arm around Amy’s shoulder in both comfort and solidarity.  Let the world cringe at how ridiculously sappy they were being.  If there was anything that the past year had taught him, it was that time was never guaranteed.  And now that a happy future was finally in their grasp, he wasn’t going to give it up for anything.  

The passing minutes are filled with casual conversation, ranging from stories about Gina’s newborn to the group comparing horror stories over what they’d discovered on the buffet, and as the hosts come over to join them, they begin to countdown to the end of 2017.  

When he looks back on photos from the evening, Jake can tell there was a cacophony of party poppers, blowers and calls of celebration, adding to the showers of confetti surrounding them all as the countdown falls to zero, but in all honesty the only thing that he can remember from that moment is Amy.  Her hand, curled around a glass of champagne and pressed to his chest as he pulls her in for a kiss that he definitely intended to be sweet but suddenly turned into so much more.  The feel of her lips, soft and bewitching as their tongues begin to tangle; her feet pressed in up against his own and her free hand touching his cheek, thumb stroking softly in the way that has always, always made his heart pound like crazy.  

They weren’t often ones for such public displays of affection.  But the past few years had tested them more than either could have expected, and it felt so good to show that FINALLY, love was going to win.

Jake’s smile is wider than he can help by the time they pull away, and when Amy chases his lips for another quick press, he’s only too happy to oblige.  

“Happy New Year, Jake.”  Her voice is soft, and her eyes are so bright and full of elation that Jake can’t help but lean in for another kiss. 

“Happy New Year, Ames.”

Still holding the champagne, Amy wraps her arms carefully around Jake’s neck and grins.  “We’re getting married this year!”

“It’s gonna be the best year ever.”

The roll of Gina’s eyes is almost audible.  “You guys are so gross.  But you also look really happy, so I’m just going to let it slide for tonight.”  With a shake of her head, she tips her glass upside down, shaking the last few drops into her mouth.  “Damn, being a mother really changes a gal.”

Rosa chimes in, her tone as factual as ever as she nods her head in Charles’ direction “Also, you should probably know Boyle just took like twenty photos of the two of you kissing.” 

“They’re for my scrapbook!”

“Dammit, Boyle!”

[amydancepants-peralta]

you’re the closest to heaven that I'll ever be

(aka, the epilogue I suddenly found myself writing) 🙈♥️🤷‍♀️

season eight: you’re the closest to heaven that I’ll ever be

On New Years Eve of 2020, the Santiago-Peralta household is strangely quiet.  

In the tastefully decorated living room a brightly coloured activity centre, complete with musical panels, sits neatly beside the beige sofa.  Three of the warmest blankets in Brooklyn share space with a knitted Ninja Turtle themed throw, and strapped to the door frame of the reading room Amy had once considered her favourite space is a purple and yellow Jolly Jumper,  a myriad of sensory developmental toys clipped along it’s edges.  

There are five different flavours of baby food on the kitchen counter waiting to be put away, and the bedazzled invitation to Gina Linetti’s 2021-a-thon lays forgotten to the side, mixed in with the letters and correspondences that neither Jake or Amy have done more than skim their eyes over.  Above the counter, below the precision-timed clock, hangs a framed photograph of the two of them on the night of their wedding, the happy glow of a freshly married couple still noticeable all these years later.  

Having just hung up from an unnecessarily long conversation with her mother, Amy leans against the kitchen counter, sighing at the familiarity of the curved granite meeting her lower back.  Mama Santiago means well; and as the mother of eight and abuela to five, has a lot of valuable tips and tricks up her sleeve.  But this is Amy’s first child, and as much as she wants to do everything exactly right, she also wants her and Jake to figure things out as they go.  A statement she’d had to repeat approximately eighty-nine times to Camila during that last phone call.  

Twisting the rings on her finger, Amy smiles at the thought of all that she and Jake had been through in the past year.  At eight months, their daughter Mia was tiny but fierce, and motherhood was both everything and absolutely nothing like she’d expected it to be.      

There had been offers to babysit from friends and family alike in the last few weeks, but all of them had been met with a polite shake of both her and Jake’s heads.  Sure, there were a lot of places that they could be tonight - and they’re probably missing out on an interesting experience at Gina’s - but truthfully, tonight there is nowhere they’d rather be than home.

(With any luck, they’d have their own wild night - and by wild, she means uninterrupted sleep for the next ten to twelve hours.  Baby Mia had only just begun to sleep through the night, and both Amy and Jake were approximately 4,167 hours behind on their own slumber.)

Shaking off the last remnants of the phone call from her body, Amy tucks her hair behind one ear and looks around the kitchen, noticing the bottle of champagne that her husband had pulled out of the chiller earlier was still sitting to the side, unattended next to a spare lid for their daughter’s favourite bottle.  Pouting her lips slightly, she glances at the clock, noting from it’s steady tick that it had been a good half hour since she’d heard from either Jake - and while silence in a house with a baby is usually a good thing, she’s also really curious what could be holding him up, and so Amy grabs the champagne with her left hand, shoving her phone into the pocket of her sweats with the other.  

The condensation from the neck of the bottle drips onto Amy’s fingers as she makes her way down the short hallway, her socked feet moving carefully across the floor lest a squeaky floorboard should wake their sleeping beauty.  Amy cranes her neck around the doorway once she’s reached her destination, and the sight inside simply makes her heart melt.

Jake sits inside their daughter’s room, on the oversized plush chair that a very pregnant Amy had insisted they buy, his eyes trained solely on their sleeping daughter.  The delicately embroidered pillow made by Camila, with Mia’s name sewn in shimmering thread, remained gripped in his hands, his body leaning forwards as though at any given second he was going to climb into the cot and join their daughter.  His eyes are soft when they flicker over to her, and he shrugs, giving Amy a sheepish look before turning back to Mia.  “I just can’t stop watching her sleep.  She’s so beautiful, Ames.”

Humming her agreement, Amy tiptoes into the room.  While a relatively tight budget had meant that the nursery had remained the same colour as the rest of their apartment, she and Jake had chosen softer toned items for all the trimmings, and the mixture of excerpts from some of her favourite children’s authors and photographs of family that lined the walls never failed to bring her a sense of calm.  Running her free hand along the edge of the dresser, she toys with the neatly folded onesie Jake had placed there earlier in the evening before resting the champagne bottle beside it, moving to stand beside her husband and run her hand through his hair.  He was absolutely besotted with their little girl, and it was her favourite thing in the world to see.

Jake starts at the moistness of her fingers, looking up at Amy before noticing the champagne and he rubs his face in exhaustion, wedding band glinting in the soft light from the lamp set up behind him.  “Oh right, I’d completely forgotten that I opened that before I put Mia to bed.”

Shrugging, Amy points her chin towards their daughter, moving both hands to Jake’s shoulders as she replies.  “It’s a good thing you did, really.  A popping champagne cork would definitely have meant saying good-bye to a sleeping Mia for the rest of the night.”

His laugh is soft as he nods, the memories of the first few nights with a screaming newborn still very fresh in both of their minds.  “It’s crazy, though … how much I miss her when she’s literally right there.”

Amy’s heart swells to twice it’s normal size, thrumming against her rib cage as it tries to compensate for the sudden and overpowering amount of love she feels for her husband.  She understands all the reasons why there was a part of Jake that was worried he would turn out to be a terrible father, but oh, how she wishes he could hear how sweetly he talks about their daughter.  Turning slightly, she grabs the bottle of champagne and nudges Jake over on the plush seat, rubbing her shoulder against his as she settles into place.  One of her favourite things about this chair - and the reason she’d been so insistent on buying it - was the fact that it was just big enough for two (if they snuggled); and in moments like this Amy would definitely consider it a worthy investment.  

Reaching for the bottle and taking a slow swig, Jake uses his free hand to rest against Amy’s thigh, fingers tracing gentle patterns that she knows are unconsciously done.  (They’d been together so long now that each of their bodies was an extension of the others, and she liked to think that the tiny swirls he made were representative to the myriad of coils in his mind, stretching and unfurling comfortably whenever she was around.)  In front of them, resting her tiny head in the cot that Jake had put together (and definitely hadn’t lost his cool whilst doing so), was their baby girl - and she was literally the most beautiful thing.

“I still can’t believe we made her.”

“I know.”

“And that it’s been eight months already.”

“I know.”

Jake smiles, nudging the frame of his glasses up with the edge of his finger (a Tired Jake at home has no time for contacts).  “She gave me the biggest smile tonight, when I lay her down and kissed her goodnight.  It was like she was saying ‘goodnight, daddy!’ … without being able to actually say it, ya know?”  His face scrunches.  “God, I sound really stupid right now.”

Amy shakes her head, unable to keep the blissful smile from stretching across her face.  “Not at all.  This morning, I swear she almost said ‘mama’, but then she just kinda spit up everywhere.”

His shoulders shaking as he chuckles, Jake turns his head slightly to leave a commiserative kiss on Amy’s temple.  “I’m sure she was trying to say it anyway, babe.”

Shrugging one shoulder, Amy looks up at her husband with a smile.  “Maybe, but I doubt it.   Her first word is definitely going to be Dada.”  At Jake’s incredulous shake of his head, Amy persists.  “She literally lights up when she sees you, babe.  It’s adorable.  You’re going to get first word, and I am totally okay with it.”

(Her first word, when she says it in a few weeks time, is in fact baba - aka, her bottle.  But, it’s totally a compromise between mama and dada, and the parents take it with glee.)

Picking up the blanket mysteriously knitted by Tia Rosa, Jake drapes the material over Amy’s legs before clearing his throat.  “So earlier this evening, I was scrolling through Facebook, and the sweetest photo came up on my timeline.”  He pauses, digging for his phone and unlocking the screen with the dexterity of a man who has definitely trained himself to text without looking down.  “See?” He continues, holding up the selfie he’d posted of the two of them last year, the festoon lights strung out on the fire escape casting their faces in a cool glow as they grinned up at the camera.  “Hard to believe this was only a year ago, right?  What a difference between then and now.”

“Oh god, that feels like forever ago,” Amy murmurs, her eyes running over the image as the memory of that night washes over her - right down to the feeling of their daughter still nestled in safely.  “You were right, though.  This year has been amazing. Even if we’ve forgotten what it’s like to have a quiet home for longer than five hours.”

“An amazing night is just another Peralta Guarantee, babe.”  Jake winks, grinning.  “And as crazy as it sounds, I’m all in for that screaming, Ames.  I mean ... I’d like it a lot more if it was two in the afternoon, and not morning, but I’m here for it all the same.”  He shakes his head at Amy’s offer of the champagne again, and she nods in agreement, setting it down on the floor.

Shuffling until her legs are draped over Jake’s lap, Amy reaches for her husband’s phone and types in her brother’s profile.  “Chris did the same thing earlier tonight - look, it’s the same photo I sent to you all those years ago.”  Jake smiles, eyes taking on a faraway look as Amy continues.  “Man, I was so stupid back then.  I was crushing so hard for you, and really thought that if I just put all my energy into my work, that it would just …. Go away, I guess.”

Jake nods, his arm wrapping further around Amy’s legs, rubbing the amazingly soft purls of wool between his fingers.  “If only we’d been able to talk to each other about it … I would’ve warned you it was fruitless.  I tried to forget how I felt about you for over a year.  Obviously, it did not go well.”

“Do you think if we had told the rookie detective versions of ourselves, sitting in that unmarked car down at the docks, that one day we’d spend our entire evening watching our daughter sleep, that we’d believe them?”

His chest constricting with a restrained snort, Amy feels Jake shake his head above her.  “There is no way I would have believed it for a second.  I would have hoped, but …”

Wrapping one arm tight around Jake’s midsection, Amy looks up at her husband, genuinely wishing that even the smallest part of the amount of love she has for him right now is detectable in her gaze.  “Lucky our heads caught up to our hearts, huh?”

Leaning in, Jake plants a gentle kiss against her lips.  “I’m thankful every day.”

A muffled snore comes from the direction of the cot, and Mia stretches out her fists as she slips further into whatever dream she’s having.  “Okay, seriously.  Our daughter is literally the cutest baby ever to be born.”

“She really is.”  And really, how else could they put it?  She was tiny and beautiful and adorable and all those other words that always seemed to fail to come to mind when someone asks them to describe their daughter, because how can you relegate something so life-changing to just a few words?  She laughs, a deep-from-the-belly kind of laugh, whenever Amy pretended to have a sneezing fit in front of her.  Smiles so brightly that even her godfather Ray finds himself smiling right back.  Grips her parent’s fingers with the strength of an army - and Jake swears that their daughter somehow took a seminar in utero, because she is her mother’s daughter - but Amy already knows that truly, both of them were 100% wrapped around their daughter’s little finger from the moment she was born.

Mia was a tiny tyrant, but their tiny tyrant; with deep brown eyes you could lose yourself in, messy curly hair, and a screaming voice louder than any infant had any right to have.   But it only took one look from her: one slow blink, or the resting of her head on your shoulder, and suddenly everything was okay again.  It took thirteen hours to birth her, and only one second to fall in completely in love, and Amy would do it all again in a heartbeat.  

As her eyelids begin to grow heavy, Amy rests her head against Jake’s shoulder, relaxing completely as the combined scent of his shower gel and their daughter’s baby powder fills her senses.  Before they close completely, her eyes shift towards the framed picture of her and Jake on their very first New Years Eve together as a couple.  Oh, how far they’d come.

*

It’s several hours before she opens her eyes again, ears picking up on an unfamiliar but persistent pop sound coming from the window in their daughter’s room, and as her still-snoozing mind begins to wake up, Amy realises that both she and Jake had managed to sleep through it all.  

Jake’s head is heavy on her shoulder, and as Amy cups his jawline in her hand and begins dotting kisses to his hairline, he mumbles himself awake, shrugging when Amy tells him that they’ve missed counting in the New Year completely.  

His hand grips Amy’s steadily as she leads him over to the crib, neither able to resist the chance to check that their daughter was still just as perfect as she had been several hours ago, and with a stretch of his limbs Jake allows himself to be pulled away from the nursery, grabbing the baby monitor from the change table as he goes.  

Both are asleep again before their heads even hit the pillows, completely unfazed at missing the countdown.  This house, after all, was going to be filled with celebrations for so many years to come - whether their family expands or they stay as a unit of three - that a new year simply meant a new beginning.  The future was ripe with possibilities, and they couldn’t wait to see what was in store.  

[amydancepants-peralta]

not a trace of doubt in my mind

(trying again as Tumblr ate my earlier post ... cheers for that!)

season four of the fortunate ones, my entry into the B99 2020 vision challenge.

not a trace of doubt in my mind

There’s a photo of Jake and Amy that rests underneath a heart shaped magnet on the fridge in Amy’s kitchen.  It’s been there since the previous year’s celebrations, anchored safely amongst the white metal after being rescued from the clutches of an overzealous friend, and for the past twelve months she has stared at it so often, it’s details are wholly committed to memory.  

It had only been taken a year ago today, but they seemed so young then; so carefree and in love - although neither of them had plucked up the courage to admit it yet.  

(That would come in another month or two, on a dance floor in the middle of the ocean where salsa dancing and bottomless shrimp were the most important things on their agenda). 

With scarcely an inch between them, this frozen in time version of Jake and Amy were simply two people rejoicing the freedom that came with finally acknowledging - if not yet in words, then certainly in actions - how they really, truly felt about each other.  Amy runs a finger along the edge of the photograph as she stands in front of it, lifting up the edges as though the movement could make her dress shimmer again like it had that night.  She envies the couple in the frame - they hadn’t had any idea of what was to come.

But then of course, nobody could have predicted six months of heartache.  Of Amy laying in her bed night after night, wrapped in one of Jake’s hoodies zipped up so high that the scent of him completely surrounded her, staring at all the photos of the two of them on her phone until she cried herself to sleep.  Of the pillow propped up in the bed beside her, pressed up against her back - a mediocre replacement for the real thing; but once she knew what it was like to sleep with Jake beside her, sleeping alone simply didn’t cut it.  

Months of dodging questions from family and friends and coming up with increasingly less plausible excuses every time his name came up, until finally under the cover of a room filled with music Amy had whispered the truth into her father’s ear, trusting that he would disseminate the information to the others with care.  Jumping just a little bit every time the phone rang, constantly living in a state of fear that this would be the phone call that told her what she was afraid of the most - that Figgis had found them, and that the only man she had ever loved this much had been killed. 

And then suddenly, he had been there - standing in front of her in a storage shed in Florida with horrifically frosted tips in his hair and a look of shock on his face, clutching his throat in response to the punch she’d just delivered.  He had been gasping for air, yet still he called out her name, and it was a sound she had begun to fear she would never hear again.

It would take a gunshot wound to his leg and a private moment underneath the flashing lights of the emergency response before either would feel like them again; but on the flight back home with Jake next to her, right arm resting over her legs and fast asleep on her shoulder, Amy can feel the pieces of herself that had been shattered six months ago finally begin to rebuild.  

She can hear him in her bedroom now, his footsteps creaking against the hardwood as he dresses from his shower.  It was comforting, to hear Jake move about with such familiarity - to open his own drawers and go to his section of the wardrobe: a part of him already living here long before any argument between who’s apartment they’re going to live in can be won.  

(And yes okay, Amy is always a fan of winning arguments.  But this argument in particular, she really REALLY wanted to win.)

From the corner of her kitchen the radio that had been playing some pop song switches to an ad for grout replacement, the overloud voice of the owner blaring from it’s speakers and startling Amy out of her reverie.  Tonight was New Year’s Eve, and despite numerous invitations from family and friends alike, Jake and Amy were spending the night in her apartment, just the two of them. He had suggested it a few weeks ago as the madness of the festive season had swirled around them:  a night that was just for them; where they could drink and dance and sing and make love as much or as little as they liked, and nobody could interrupt.  It had been such a sweetly romantic idea that Amy had pulled Jake in for a kiss as soon as he’d finished talking, and as of an hour ago both of their cell phones had been tucked away - do not disturb mode activated, not to be looked at again until the following morning.  

Reaching into the fridge for a bottle of orange soda, Amy glances one last time at the couple on the fridge as she closes the door, nodding her head to the beat as a new (and slightly more familiar) song starts playing on the radio.  The rest of her body catches up as she moves around the room, pulling glasses from their cupboard and mixing the soda with spirits, preparing a drink for both her and Jake as she dances around the kitchen happily.

The cap has only just been screwed back onto the bottle when two strong arms wrap around her middle, the familiar warmth of Jake enveloping Amy from all angles.  His breath is hot on her skin as he drops a kiss to the side of her neck, lips trailing higher and nibbling gently on her ear.  It’s a simple move, and one that he’s probably done a hundred times in the two years that they’ve been dating, but oh, how it still gives her tingles.  He holds Amy close as she sways to the music, hips locking up against each other, and slowly she melts into his arms. 

“Orange soda, huh?”  Amy feels the vibration of Jake’s chest as he speaks, and she smiles.  

“I guess you could say I’ve grown accustomed to it.”  Truth was, after Jake and Holt had been scurried into witsec, there were days that Amy had literally craved the flavour, being so used to tasting it in Jake’s kisses.  The oversized bottles that ended up monopolising the bottom shelf of her refrigerator had done very little to take the edge off - and served only as a placebo as she waited for her lover to come home.  

Jake lands another gentle kiss, this time to her shoulder, hunching slightly so that he can rest his chin there.  “Music, total privacy, my sexy girlfriend dancing, and orange drank.  This night is going to be amazing.  Honestly, whoever thought of this is a damn genius.”

A contented laugh falls out of Amy’s mouth as she rests her hands against Jake’s, linking their fingers together and squeezing.  “You just called my dancing sexy instead of dorky.  You must be in love.”

“Oh, completely.”  Shifting his hands to her waist, Jake turns Amy gently until she’s facing him, gifting her with a glimpse of his beautiful smile before pulling her in for a heart-meltingly sweet kiss.  

He had held her so tight the night he and Holt had to go away, tears streaming down his cheeks and pooling into her hair (only fair, because her tears had turned his shirt into a sopping mess), his arms staying wrapped around her waist.  His voice had been so heavy, so thick with emotion as he had looked her in the eyes, telling Amy that he needed her to know that she was the love of his life, punctuating his declaration with a kiss that had nearly set her heart on fire.  

He’d repeated the sentiment the first night they were together again, finally alone in the private hospital room that Jake’s being in Witsec had been able to afford them.  With only the steady beep of his heart rate monitor to keep them company, he had kept Amy close as he could while she lay on his good side, running his fingers through her hair and telling her over and over again how he can’t believe that she is finally here.  In the quiet hours of the night she learnt it all - the hot tub burritos; the terrible pizza and constant layer of sweat that remained on his skin.  Months on end where he couldn’t find the energy to get out of bed: that with not a single item of hers for him to cling to, the memories of them that would appear in his dreams was the only thing that kept him sane.  

But now finally - finally - with the masks of Isabel Cortez and Larry Sherbet long since banished to the back of their minds - night shifts were officially over and life was returning to normal.  And tonight was just for them.

There’s a steady tap against her kitchen window as rain falls quietly onto the world outside, and as Jake’s hands roam down from her waist and onto her butt, Amy sighs softly against his lips.  With her fingers tangling through his freshly cut curls, she lets the kiss continue for a while, allowing her body to be pushed up against the counter until she needs to break away for air, smiling as Jake rests his forehead against hers.  The pounding of his heart is obvious against her chest and Amy leans up for one more soft kiss, grateful to know that he is still just as affected by these moments as she is.  

Jake’s hands roam along the expanse of her back as he pulls away, his blinks as slow as his steps, and when Amy hands him a drink he smiles at her gratefully.  His hand pauses mid-way to his lips, his eyebrows raising as he begins.  “Oh!  I set up a surprise for you in the living room.  I meant to tell you earlier … I guess I got a little distracted,” he winks.  Blushing, she takes Jake’s outstretched hand, squeezing his fingers and following him to her surprise.  Her mind is doing a quick search on how long she’s been in the kitchen for - ie: how much of a mess could Jake have made in the living room - but no amount of calculations could prepare her for what her boyfriend leads her to.

He’d made a fort.  

In the middle of her living room stood a perfectly balanced mixture of blankets, pillows, fairy lights and bottles of wine.  Propped up by several of her dining room chairs, a soft cream blanket stretched on one side all the way to her television, repositioned to sit opposite the sofa for Optimal Fort Viewing.  On the coffee table sat a stack of DVDs (a healthy mix of her favourites and his) and two of her best-smelling candles were burning over in one corner - far enough away to be considered safe from being knocked over if any *ahem* other stuff ended up happening.  

It was the most dreamy setup; and something that a few years ago would have seemed completely ridiculous, but now that she was with Jake everything that once appeared crazy now felt … kinda perfect.  

Amy turns towards Jake, the smile on her face growing larger by the second, and tugs him closer so she can deliver a gentle kiss to his lips.  “This is amazing!” she whispers against him, and he nods, taking a quick sip of his drink before diving back in for another kiss.  

(And there it is - that familiar blended taste of Jake and orange soda and home.)

She loves him, more than she thought was possible.  Loves his happy smile; his arms that felt like they were made purely to wrap around her, and the way he looks at her like she just hung the moon (which, is obviously insanity - clearly it was him).  He bites his lip, that sweet little action that never fails to make her heart skip a beat, and another happy sigh escapes as he leads her to the little home he had built for them.  

Waiting until Amy has settled into her usual position - majority of her body leaning against his, lower body twisted slightly so that her right leg is thrown over his left - Jake dives into the edge of the couch cushions, digging until he pulls out his cell phone.

“Hey!  You know the rules - no phones, Peralta!”  she cries out indignantly, staring in horror.  

“Relax babe, it’s still on Do Not Disturb. I’m just going to order us dinner, and then it’s getting tucked right back into the bottom of Pillow Mountain, okay?”  Amy’s eyes narrow at Jake’s response, studying the sincerity in his face before nodding.  “So what are you feeling like?  Pizza?  Chinese?  Polish?  All of the above?”

Resting her head against Jake’s shoulder, Amy hums a non-committing sound.  From beside her, Jake clears his throat.  “Man, it’s a shame we can’t order from that Thai place that’s a couple of blocks from my apartment.  You know, the one that doesn’t deliver but has the really good Pad See Ew that you love?  Kinda makes you think that maybe moving into my place would be better, yeah?”

Amy moves quickly, lifting her head from his shoulder and dropping her mouth open at the sheer audacity of his obvious tactic.  Two can play that game, buddy.  “Sure, sure, yeah.  Except if we moved into your apartment, we wouldn’t be able to go to the coffee shop that’s right around the corner from here.  I’m sure you remember the one.  It has those chocolate muffins you’re low-key addicted to, and makes that coffee you can’t get enough of … what did you call it again?  Oh that’s right, the Elixir of The Gods.  We definitely wouldn’t be able to stop there every morning if we didn’t live here.  In this nice, spacious apartment that is definitely not covered in black mould.”

Jake laughs, rolling his eyes slightly as he brings up the menu for the nearest pizza parlour on his phone.  “Man, we are never going to come to an agreement on this one, are we?  I’m going to Uber Eats this sitch and just order us pizza and Polish.  Calories don’t count over the festive period.  That’s a fact.”

Amy nods, returning to her previously comfortable position.  “Good plan, babe.”  She pauses for a moment, shaking her head.  “As the whole apartment thing, I don’t know what we’re going to do.”  Her free hand snakes around Jake’s middle, resting her fingers along the side seam of his shirt and playing with the ridged material.  “I just … I love this apartment.  I’ve got a whole binder full of reasons why it was better than anything available in the market at the time.  And you’ve got practically a wardrobe’s worth of stuff here already.”

“But mine is in a cooler neighbourhood, Ames!  There are funky little pop-ups opening all the time.  Any day now, there’s going to be a stationery store for you to become obsessed with - I can feel it.  And … it’s cheaper, and closer, and …” Jake pauses, resting his palm on her knee and stroking there softly.  “I guess, now that you’ve shown me how to handle my finances like an actual adult, I’m a little less willing to part with my money when there’s a perfectly good option available for way less dollars?”

An argument over mattress replays in the back of Amy’s mind, and in an effort to distract herself she cranes her neck slightly, beginning a trail of gentle kisses along the side of Jake’s neck.  “We’d be sharing the rent, babe - not paying for two places we barely use.  We’d actually be saving money.”

She feels him swallow, Adam’s Apple bobbing and making his skin shift slightly as she continues her caresses.  His voice is an octave lower when he finally speaks, the hand on her knee tightening its grip.  “You know I can’t think straight when you’re doing that, babe.”

Amy nods.  She does know.  And so she continues, making sure he can feel her breath against him when she replies.  “Just think about it, Jake.  No thinking about which place to stay at each night, or having to buy two of everything in case you forget to bring it with you.  Just you and me, and a place to call ours.” 

Turning his head slightly, he captures Amy’s lips with his own, drawing her in for a heated kiss, moaning as his tongue laps gently at her lower lip.  “Consider me waving the white flag for now.”

She grins, moving her hand upward until it rests against his chest.  “Are you surrendering? You’ll move in here?”

“Wait, what?  Oh, my bad.  No white flag - Dido, nailed it - just ... no more apartment talk tonight, okay?”  Jake raises his eyebrows, eyes turning that warm melted caramel colour that always seems to have a direct affect on her pulse.  “I’ve thought of something way better that we can do with our mouths.”

A tiny kaleidoscope of butterflies begin to dance around Amy’s stomach, and she swears that she’s not a teenager sitting in front of her crush, but maybe tonight she is.  Her body leans forward without prompting, and she murmurs - “What did you have in mind?”

He moves away from her just as quickly as she moves forward, swinging his arm out in front of them and crying out, “Smile, babe!” - clicking the shutter button on his phone before Amy has a chance to respond.  It’s a mess of a photograph, blurry from the 0.03 seconds notice Jake gave before taking his shot, and Amy stares at him in confusion as he deletes the photograph, holding his phone out for another try.

“Ames?” He asks, raising his eyebrows at her digital reflection.  

Putting on her best affronted face, Amy shakes her head.  “Weren’t we about to do something with our mouths, detective?”

His right eyebrow raises slightly, darting his eyes over to Amy before returning to his phone.  “Ah, yeah?  Smiling is something you do with your mouth, babe.  Man, here I was thinking that you were the smart one.”

Smiling in spite of herself, Amy shifts her eyes to the ceiling.  “Whatever, Peralta.”

Jake’s breath is hot against her cheek, the sudden change kickstarting a parade of shivers down Amy’s spine.  “Don’t think I couldn’t see what you were doing before with those neck kisses, Santiago.  Payback’s a bitch.”  Her head swivels towards the sound, mouth already open for comeback; and his lips capture hers before she has a chance to speak, drawing her in for a deep kiss.  His tongue is gentle in it’s movements as it massages against hers, that familiar feeling of intimacy washing over her as he sighs softly into her mouth.  She’s absolutely beaming by the time Jake pulls away, tucking her head into her little nook at the junction of his neck and shoulder and gazing happily at Jake’s phone as he holds it up again for one last attempt at a photo.  It should have been impossible, to capture that amount of love in a single frame, but there it was - and only a few seconds later, it’s set as Jake’s screensaver, and Amy leans in to plant a tiny peck against the tip of his nose.  

“This is our first New Years Eve together where it’s just us.”  Jake mumbles, tucking his phone back under Pillow Mountain and using his free hand to knead the back of his neck.  “We’re at home, with nobody creeping around trying to take photos or whatever.”  His eyes land on hers, and Amy couldn’t pull away from his stare even if she tried.  “You’re not trying to find the man threatening to kill me, and I’m not halfway across the country with somebody else’s name pinned to my shirt.  Tonight is just you and me, Ames … and it really felt like it needed commemorating.”

“Absolutely, babe.”  Amy answers, leaning back in for another quick kiss.  The minuscule bulbs that stretched out over the edge of the blankets cast his face in a soft glow when she pulls away, and briefly she’s transported back three years; to a patrol car in the middle of the night with only the light of the surrounding docks to keep them company.  Things had been so different then, and yet somehow still the same.  (Only now, they get to kiss each other.  A lot.  And honestly, it’s the best.)  There were a lot of emotions swirling around her this evening, and for somebody who once knew the dictionary like the back of her hand, Amy is finding it strangely difficult to find the right words.  “You’re my best friend, Jake Peralta, and the love of my life.  You’re it for me.  And there’s no place in the world I’d rather be tonight.”  Her lips press against his again, moving her hands to the either side of his face as he blushes sweetly.  “I’m so in love with you.  Sneaky attempts at payback and all.”

Jake laughs, wrapping his arms around Amy’s waist and pulling her closer, pressing his lips against hers as she allows herself to be tugged into his lap.  She can feel her whole body melting against his as her arms rest against his shoulders, bending until her fingers are in his hair and his soft sighs are mixing with her own.  There are some things that Amy could spend the rest of her life doing, and this was very close to the top of the list.  

It’s a loud knock that eventually intrudes their makeout session, a mumbled delivery announcement barely audible over Amy’s TV playing in the background.  Reluctantly, Amy pulls away from Jake, reaching down to muss his hair up one last time as she stands, stretching out her limbs before walking over to the door.

The delivery driver can’t have been any more than eighteen: obviously ecstatic about working on New Years Eve with his wet, crumpled uniform stretched out over a Pantera sweatshirt; grunting in Amy’s direction as she takes the items, already turning to leave before she can even say thank you.  Kicking the door shut with her feet, Amy rests the pizza box along her stretched out forearm, balancing the container of pierogi’s on top and nudging open the lid so that she can breath in the familiar smell.  

 Mmmm.  They were obviously fresh - the steam still escaping - and they smelt just like she’d hoped.  Her shoulder begin to jiggle and; foregoing plates and cutlery in favour of containers on the couch with Jake, she makes her way through to the living room, butt shaking into a happy dance as she goes.  

Jake looks up from pouring out two glasses of wine and winces in Amy’s direction.  “Awww, honey.  I don’t think that’s doing what you think it’s doing for you.”

Bouncing onto the balls of her feet, Amy struts over to Jake with a curious look.  “What do you mean?”

He slaps a hand against the edge of his mouth, splaying out his fingers in a weak attempt to conceal his grin.  “You’ve got some real dorky dance moves happening right there, Ames.”

“Hey!  Just earlier tonight you called my dancing SEXY!”

“I mean, technically, I called YOU sexy, and then added the word dancing.  But then you said something about me being in love and I just really, really wanted to kiss you, so I just kinda went with it.”  His eyebrows lift, eyes turning soft as he takes in the pout that’s fallen over Amy’s face.  “And … ya know, if it helps, everything about you is sexy, Ames.  The dancing is just one of the more … I dunno, adorably awkward things you do.”

Settling back into the couch, Amy watches her boyfriend spread out their dinner order, dutifully laying out napkins in front of each before dishing out a generous serve of pierogis onto hers, lifting the lid on his pizza and grinning at the well-stacked toppings.  Pulling out a slice he grins in Amy’s direction as the melted cheese clings to the base, creating a curtain of strings between his hand and the box, and she cannot help but laugh at the joy on his face.  This man loves her, even with all of her dorky dance moves, and she just might be the luckiest woman on the planet.  

The hours of the night disappear amongst distractions; glasses of wine and hours of talking about everything and anything, until the quiet concentration of the last movie disappears into a serious session of kissing - Jake laying on the couch and Amy stretched out comfortably on top of him.  It had felt like forever since they’d had the chance to spend a night like this, and as Jake’s gentle hands roam over Amy’s body, she silently wishes for the night to never end.  The fort that he had made for them felt like a barrier - a shield protecting them from the rest of the world, and it might have been selfish; but tonight, this is exactly what they had needed.  

Tonight was about Jake and Amy: rejoicing in the fact that no matter how far the universe tried to pull them apart, the most simplest of truths was that they would always come back to each other.     

Slowly, Amy rears her head back; dropping a soft kiss to Jake’s swollen lips when he cranes his neck forward in a search for more.  Smiling, she presses her body against Jake’s, rolling her hips just so and biting her lip at his responding moan.  Beginning a trail of kisses along his jawline, she whispers into his ear - “C’mon, Peralta.  Let’s go bring in this new year with a bang.”

“Oh, hell yeah.”

Sometimes, the fireworks you make together are greater than anything the world can offer.

[amydancepants-peralta]

take your hands my dear, and place them both in mine 

(ch 6 of we’re the fortunate ones), for the B99 2020 Vision Challenge 🚨

On the final afternoon of 2018, as the sky begins to turn soft with the muted pastels of fading sunlight, Amy Santiago watches from her position at the kitchen window while her husband plays with her nieces and nephews outside.  

Their squeals of laughter are contagious; the joy obvious as the sound filters through the glass and settles warm against her heart, and Amy can’t help but join in on the mirth as Jake picks up Luisa, carrying her like a superhero as they chase Matthew and Mason around the backyard.  

As the sunlight filters through the tall trees, a stray beam catches the stones in her engagement ring, setting off a sparkle that the line along her wedding band is only too happy to continue.  Amy watches with a soft smile, moving her hand slowly to continue the show before returning to the task at hand.  

Around an hour ago she and her brothers had been relegated to Kitchen Duty, all marching dutifully into place at their mother’s command.  Each sibling had been clearly marked on a colour co-ordinated roster alongside a specific set of duties, all very necessary and time reliant, and Amy couldn’t help but notice that none of her tasks involved the actual cooking of the meal.  

(Honestly.  One time.  You confuse salt for sugar one. time. and you get banished.  For LIFE.)

After cutting up the beans and preparing the salad (from the ingredients that had been carefully and deliberately placed in front of her one item at a time by Tony, one of his jobs being of course to supervise his sister), Amy had sought out the solitude of peeling all of the potatoes by the kitchen sink.  It’s a task that once may have seemed like the worst of all of them - the sniggers of her younger brothers had not fallen on deaf ears - but really Amy knew the joke was on them; because now, she had the best view of all.

Jake and Luisa had caught up to Mason by now and, after giving her the only type of landing appropriate for a superhero, they had immediately begun a tickle fight - Matthew jumping on top of the huddle quickly as Jake takes a step back to take a breath.  With his hands on his hips he turns away from the children, looking back towards the house, and as he notices Amy watching from her window he raises his hand in a wave.  His smile is wide and bright as he mimes exhaustion, wiping one hand across his brow while the other points at the tickle fight still in progress behind him.  And although she knows he can’t hear her, Amy giggles at the sight, dropping the potato peeler into the sink so that she can wave right back.    

It had been Jake’s suggestion for all of the family to join together for New Year’s Eve, and Amy knew that it was partially because he was doing his best to keep the peace amongst himself and Camila, after his ‘and another thing’ rant at dinner a few months ago.  

Thanksgiving had been interesting, if not a little tense, as her mother continued to give Jake pointed looks from her position across the table.  But Amy had stayed right by Jake’s side, resting one hand on top of his thigh whenever his leg started to jiggle with pent-up nervous energy, and by the end of the evening - after a lot of talking - all three were on (slightly) better terms.  It may have been an awkward situation, but Amy didn’t regret Jake speaking up for her.  Most - if not all - of the topics hadn’t been wrong; and in actuality, it had felt great to finally have somebody in her corner.  He was trying, in so many ways, to get her parents to accept him as a part of their family (she had noticed the Duolingo app on his phone last week, and had already thought of some fun flash cards she could make), and it was about time that they met him half way.

She had reminded him late yesterday afternoon, after they’d finally made it to the Santiago home and found refuge in Amy’s childhood bedroom, that he needn’t try so hard to extend the olive branch.  And while he had given her his best bashful look before changing the topic by pointing out her adorably hand-made scale of the periodic table, Amy knew that Jake was taking everything she said on board.  Admittedly, it did feel kind of amazing to be together with all of her family for the celebrations - the first time in four years - but she wanted her husband to feel comfortable between these walls, for it was his home now as much as it was hers.  And someday - perhaps even someday soon - they would be bringing their own children to family gatherings.  

Jake blows her a kiss from his position on the lawn, and Amy smiles brightly, crinkling her nose slightly as the joy overtakes her.  There was such a stark difference to tonight’s planned festivities, compared to all those years ago when Amy was still very deeply pining for the man she could only call her partner.  It was hard to imagine now, standing in the kitchen a newlywed with the feeling of her husband’s kiss still lingering on one cheek, that there was ever a time when Jake didn’t know just how much she loved him.  Marrying him had been Amy’s easiest and greatest decision so far, and it seems crazy to her that she once believed that what she felt for Jake was ‘just a little crush that she needed to get over’.  Clearly she had been naïve.  There was simply no getting over Jake Peralta - her heart knew that now.

With his body still turned towards the window, Jake is completely unaware of his impending attacker - aka a surprisingly quiet Mason sneaking up on him from behind - and Amy can’t react fast enough to warn him as her nephew takes a running leap and knocks an innocent Jake to his knees.  With a light-hearted shout of terror Jake lands onto the soft grass, calling out in protest to the mutiny as Luis’s two kids run over to join in on the fun, and suddenly Amy has lost all interest in preparing for dinner.  Haphazardly running the peeler over the last few potatoes, she dumps the results in a bowl next to all the other vegetables, begging leave and dashing from the kitchen before her brothers can figure out where she’s going.  If she was being honest, it probably was for the best for her not be involved with food preparation - and besides, there was somewhere else she would much rather be right now.  

*

It’s much later in the night before all of the family have come back together, adults and children alike converging on in the yard as Victor organises the fireworks he had pre-arranged (a Santiago is, of course, always prepared).  Raising eight children had meant that he and Camila had needed to purchase a larger property than most, and it was times like these with the now extended brood stretched out across the lawn, that paying off their home for as many years as they did had turned out to be advantageous.  

Amy shivers slightly as the cool breeze cuts through her sweater, tucking herself into Jake’s warmth as he wraps one arm around her shoulder, an instinctive response to her chill.  Feeling herself relax as the scent of his aftershave begins to wash over her, Amy cranes her neck upwards, shifting up to the tip of her toes in order to leave a quick kiss along Jake’s jawline.  His lips move to meet hers before she can pull away, and Amy can’t help but smile at the familiar but still wonderful feeling of Jake’s kiss.

She can still recall the moment that she knew that she wanted to marry Jake - and much like his moment with her crossword puzzle, it was as ordinary as any other moment in their day.  They had been at Shaw’s, celebrating the closing of one case or another, and she had just set down her glass onto the table, a sudden tiredness washing over as the busier parts of her day finally caught up.  She hadn’t said a word, had not even begun to lean her weight against her boyfriend’s steady presence from his position next to her, when Jake was sliding out of the booth, announcing that he and Amy were going to head home.  He had stood up and turned towards her, holding out his hand with that beautiful smile of his, and in an instant Amy knew.  One day, this man that knew how to read her better than she knew how to read herself, was going to be her husband - and it was as simple and as complicated as that.  

Jake knew all of her - all of the tiny details that when pushed together, made her complete - and loved each part wholeheartedly.  He laughed at her jokes (even when they were terrible), danced with her at the most dorkiest of moments, and listened to her rant on about molecular theory and Venn diagrams like they were genuinely interesting topics.  He made her feel seen, more than Amy had ever felt growing up in a household of ten, and he was her best friend in every possible way.

She leaves a tiny kiss at the tip of his nose as they pull away and his skin turns an adorable shade of pink, just enough for her to notice underneath the garden lights, and she laughs as his arm moves down towards it’s favourite spot along her waist.  Opening his mouth to start a retort, his eyebrows raise instead as he looks down to his right, noticing Amy’s youngest niece Nina tugging on his free hand.

“Tío Jake?” Nina asks, her voice sounding so delicate amongst all the adults, and Amy feels a surge of pride at hearing Jake being referred to as Tío.  “Will you help me see the fireworks?”  

Looking around, Jake notices that all the younger Santiago children have been hoisted onto the shoulders of their parents, sitting tall above the crowd with their heads already focused steadily on the night sky.  Nina had the unusual position of being a twin, and with her mother currently in the final stages of growing her little brother or sister, had lucked out on the chance to be on her father’s shoulders.  It touched Amy - and Jake, she could tell from his expression - that Nina had turned to him for help, and before another word can be spoken Jake is nodding, stooping slightly to grip the five year old around her ribcage before lifting her gently onto his shoulders.   

The rainbow coloured studs that lined the edge of Nina’s impossibly tiny sneakers catch the light as they swing in front of Jake’s chest, and as Victor heads back to his family to begin the countdown, they all join in.  “Cinco, cuatro, tres ..”  

Amy loops an arm around Jake’s waist, smiling up at him as he counts down with the rest of the family.  “Dos, uno!”  With everyone cheering around them, Amy moves slightly to stand in front of Jake, pushing herself to meet him for a chaste happy new year kiss as Nina claps above them.  And then suddenly, the sky is alight with colour, and the crowd turns silent in awe.  

She knows that the first time she called a man beautiful that it was Holt, and it was her overactive brain blurting out words.  But she’d owned that phrase since that day, only pulling it out when absolutely fitting, and tonight couldn’t be a better candidate.  Her husband, standing tall with her (their) niece on his shoulders, looked beautiful tonight.  The colours of the fireworks flash against his skin as they light up the sky, reminding Amy of all the colours he’s brought into her life - of all the ways he’s changed her outlook from rigidly black and white to all the shades in-between.  

He was beautiful, for the way his eyes would light up with every whizz of another round hurtling towards the stars.  For the smile that grew larger still whenever the tiniest of sparks released a myriad of glittering sparkles, following their trajectory until they’d succumbed to the pull of the night sky and faded away.  For the way his hands never loosened their steady grip around Nina’s legs, so determined to make sure that she felt safe as she craned her body higher and higher towards the bright lights above, pointing out the shapes in the sky to any and all who would listen.  

The familiar smell of gunpowder begins to fill the air, and briefly it reminds Amy that she needs to go for platinum certification this year, but for now she buries her head in Jake’s shoulder, finding comfort in his presence and hoping that they can stay in this moment forever.

There was so much potential for what this year could bring, and with seven months of marriage under their sleeve and her biological clock beginning to tick just that little bit louder, Amy can’t help but begin to imagine them doing this all again in a few years time - only then, it will be their child sitting on Jake’s shoulders.  

Children was still a little bit of an untouched subject for them - and admittedly, this was a massive oversight on her end; but when your boyfriend is given death threats and yanked away from you to live somewhere unknown under witness protection, only to return and get framed for a series of bank jobs, the bigger things tend to fall away and you just want to go and get married before the world can try to split you up again.  But watching Jake right now as he reaches gently for Nina’s waist, muscles flexing as he lifts her wriggling body away and down towards the grass again, it’s hard for Amy to see a world where Jake wouldn’t want to be a father. 

Now that Jake’s hands are free, they wrap around Amy’s middle, pulling her closer as they stand and watch the last of the fireworks take flight.  They breathe in the silence as the rest of the family begins to pull away - for bedtime was most definitely in order for a good percentage of tonight’s guests - taking advantage of the peace to pull each other in for a slightly longer celebratory kiss.  

It’s only a week later that they receive a package from Amy’s brother David, the padded envelope holding a beautiful shot of Amy and Jake holding each other as the remaining fireworks burst in front of them (and it’s perfect, because of course David is a perfect photographer as well).  And once upon a time, all that Amy would have seen in the shot was another example of how her brother was better than her in everything that he did.  But now, as she searches through her storage cupboard to find the perfect frame for the photograph, all she can do is smile at the memory it held.  

Perfection wasn’t real, and praise was fleeting.  What she had with Jake was that all-consuming, forever type of love - and she wouldn’t change that for the world. 

[amydancepants-peralta]

chapter three: head over feet

(the latest instalment of we’re the fortunate ones - my entry into the 2020 Vision Challenge) ♥️🎆

Jake takes a long draft from the bottle of beer in his hand, resting his weight against the pillar in the middle of the room as he watches Amy talk to other attendees of the party in a corner.  

They’d all been roped into attending a New Years Eve party at this random loft in uptown NY, hosted by somebody that Gina called an acquaintance but didn’t seem to have a name (or a face, for that matter).  It was all very upscale, the widespread apartment floor decked out in hipster-luxe decorations and soft popular music streaming from the speakers installed into various points of the ceiling.  The well-stocked kitchen lay claim to copious buckets of alcohol - a virtual buffet of drinks lay waiting for consumption - and the Nine-Nine has spent the majority of their evening rubbing noses with a veritable ‘who’s who’ of New York.  He’s covered head to toe in a suit that - let’s be honest - makes him look way more suave than he is.  And maybe Jake is completely biased (because he definitely is), but he’s certain that Amy is by far the best dressed in the room.  Heck, best dressed in the CITY. 

Her dress is black, covered in this mystical shimmery material that seems to catch the light whenever she moves her body, and like a moth to a flame Jake is completely drawn to it.  There’s a smokiness to her eyes (and he doesn’t even know if that’s the correct term but wow those brown eyes of hers are drawing him in when they’re surrounded like that) and her lips are covered in a hot red lipstick, the kind that doesn’t seem to end up on his lips when she kisses him - a theory that he’s been oh so happy to test over and over.  Her hair is soft and wavy and perfect, just as perfect as she is, and Jake genuinely still cannot believe that Amy Santiago is his girlfriend.

It had taken him less than six days of being with her to figure out that what they had was different from all his past relationships.  To realise that until that kiss in the evidence lock-up, he had spent his whole life waiting for the rest of it to begin.  Everything before that afternoon was Pre-Amy; where things were okay but often disappointing, and his days were best spent alone.  

Now, his life was entirely with Amy:  where mornings began with sleepy cuddles and regardless of whatever the day would bring, there was always going to be her at the end of it.  A crazy intelligent, incredibly sexy woman with a heart of gold; whom’s opinion meant far more to him than anybody else’s.  

And a life Post-Amy?  Not gonna happen.  Jake would rather quit the force than consider it.  He’d had a gun pointed at his head a week ago, and her face had been the only thing to flash through his mind.  There have been very few times in Jake’s life where he’s been grateful for Boyle’s ability to appear unannounced, but that evening at Goodwin’s was absolutely at the top of the list.  Thanks to Charles, Jake had been able to wake up Christmas morning with the most beautiful woman in New York laying next to him, and that was honestly better than a thousand bottles of Heart Attack Soda.

She catches his eye from her position across the room, blushing slightly underneath his gaze before turning her attention back to the two other guests she had been talking to.  Jake stands a little taller and waits, knowing that her curiosity will grow too great, and after a beat her gorgeous eyes flicker back towards him and he smiles in victory, nodding his head towards the outside balcony in a wordless invitation.  Tonight has been great, but the countdown to midnight is creeping closer, and there isn’t anybody else in the world he wants to share his first moments of the new year with.  

Amy turns her head back towards the woman to her left, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear before nodding vigorously, still giving the illusion of the others having her full attention because Santiago’s are nothing if not gracious guests at any party.  But it’s the only signal Jake needs to rest his now empty bottle of beer on a nearby table and head towards the balcony, shifting a nearby potted plant in front of the doorway as a hopeful deterrent to others.  

It only takes her a few minutes to join him, and Jake can smell her perfume before he can see her, the warm smell of spiced vanilla pulling his attention away from the glittering city lights below.

“Pot plant blockage, nice move detective.”  Amy’s smile is coy, reaching out to smooth the tie he had begrudgingly put on earlier in the evening.  

Jake captures her hand as it moves to leave, pulling her palm up towards his lips and leaving a soft kiss against her skin.  “Do you think it’ll work?”

Her fingers curl around his, tugging him a little closer as she shrugs.  “It might.”  Taking a sip from her champagne glass, she winks.  “That, and just before I left I mentioned how good the fireworks were going to look from that balcony on the other side.”  Tipping the glass further back, she drains it all before continuing.  “There’s a whole crowd heading that way as we speak.”

Jake nods in approval, taking the empty glass from Amy’s hand and sitting it on top of the heavy brick balustrade.  “Genius.  My girlfriend’s a genius.”

“Damn right she is.”

“And gorgeous.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Uh, YEAH.”  Jake raises his eyebrows incredulously, lowering them with his voice as he wraps both hands around Amy’s waist.  “And kinda amazing.  Also?  Brilliantly nerdy, and sexy. as. hell.”

Amy looks up at him with the softest smile on his face, a look similar to earlier today when she snoozed her alarm (something she’s begun doing with increased regularity, not that he will ever bring that to her attention), cuddled into Jake’s side and rested in the nook between his neck and his shoulders.  It’s a place that has become her nook - a place that feels empty when she’s not there - and she gave him the same smile as now when the alarm blared ten minutes later, and Jake was forced to finally open his eyes.  

There are a thousand things he could say right now, about how much Amy has changed his life for the better, but then her hands wander down his chest, diving underneath his jacket and wrapping around his midsection, and Jake finds himself completely lost for anything to say except the one thing that completely terrifies him. 

He loves her.  There’s no question about it.  He’s probably been in love with her for longer than he can remember, but his heart had caught up with his head somewhere around October and for the longest time there have been three little words bubbling up to the top of his throat, threatening release every time Amy looks at him the way she does.  It was different, this feeling - an all-consuming, undeniable force that has changed everything for the better, serving to remind him that whatever notion he had thought love to be before he’d started dating Amy had been completely wrong.  

Emotions have never been comfortable for him; love has always seemed like a mysterious force before now, and he hates the defeated look that flashes across her face whenever she gets serious with her feelings and his doofus brain responds with a noice or a smort.  Amy deserves better than smort and - in further proof that she is, in fact, incredible - being with her has made Jake begin to believe that perhaps he can be honest with her about how he feels, and not fear the response.  To tell her he loves her without masking it with a joke, or adding it into a ramble that steers her away from the importance of what he’s truly saying.  

Amy head rests against his chest and sighs contentedly, squeezing Jake softly.  “Tonight has been fun, but this right here has been the best part by far.”  He nods, throat heavy with unspoken words;  letting his hands roam over the back of her dress and dipping to the small of her back before pulling her closer.  The rest of the world can have all their sparklers and streamers; no amount of revelry could ever compare to this.  This moment was all he could have hoped for, and he’s endlessly grateful to be able to say that it’s finally his.

In the distance Jake can hear the rest of the crowd counting down the final seconds, and as the world fades into the background with the muted sound of “eight, seven, six” he looks down to Amy, resting one finger underneath her chin and tipping her face to his.  Her eyes are sparkling, catching the light from the party still happening inside, and he doesn’t know how she’s done it but it’s just further proof that she is magic and before another thought can be made, her hands are on his jawline, pulling Jake down until his lips meet hers for the kind of kiss he’s been waiting his whole life for.  

The crowd cheers, the renewal of another year long forgotten as their tongues tangle sweetly, arms locked around each other.  Resolutions of catching bandits and jumping from rooftops fall by the wayside as Amy’s fingers run through Jake’s hair, and the only promise he makes for the new year is make sure Amy knows how I really feel about her.

It’s a blinding bright flash of light that separates them, both blinking in confusion as they seperate and turn their heads towards the doorway it has come from.  Boyle is standing there, because of course he is, his grin wider than the Hudson as he lifts a polaroid camera in glee, snatching the photograph from the front and blowing gently onto the developing film.  

“Happy New Year, lovebirds!”

“Ugh, Boyle!  How did you even know we were out here?!”  Jake responds.  He’s not ready to let go of Amy just yet, instead choosing to tighten his grip around her waist.  She shuffles a little closer in kind, resting her weight against him and presenting a united front as they stare down their friend.

“I sensed there was a precious moment happening somewhere around here, Jakey, and let me tell you - I was not wrong.  I am SO high on your relationship it’s ridiculous.  I cannot wait to frame this photo and put it on my desk, where I can stare at always!”  

“Jake!” Amy whispers, soft enough that only Jake can hear, and he flattens one hand her back.

“I’m sure it’s a great shot buddy, how bout you come over here and show it to us?”  Jake calls out to Boyle, throwing him his best ‘come over here and join us, we’re not angry at ALL that you ruined our private moment’ face.  It must have been convincing enough, and Charles scurries towards them, gripping the polaroid tightly in his dominant hand.  

Jake waits until Charles is close enough to feel comfortable before snatching the photo from his fingers, shifting his body (and by proxy, Amy’s) towards the light of the apartment as he examines it carefully.  

Admittedly, it’s a great shot - the two of them so wrapped up in each other that it’s hard to tell where Jake’s suit ends and Amy’s dress begins, save for the subtle sparkle of her outfit.  Her head is tipped up where his is tipped down - the towering heels that Amy had chosen for the evening making the distance between them seem just that little bit smaller - and they are completely and totally lost in their kiss.  It’s as plain as day that the two people in this photograph are in love, and Jake can’t help but smile as he takes it all in.  “I’ve gotta hand it to you, Boyle.  It’s a great photo.”

Charles nods eagerly, eyes widening into a mixture of confusion and horror as Jake flicks his wrist, tucking the polaroid into the inner pocket of his jacket lining, tapping the outside protectively as he goes.  “Wait, no!  That was going to - ” he huffs in frustration.  “If you guys want me to stop staring at you in the precinct, then you need to give me an alternative, Jake!”

“How about a selfie?”  Amy pipes up, pulling slightly away from Jake and resting her hand above his jacket’s breast pocket.  “One of all three of us, to commemorate the evening.  I think that would look great on your desk, Charles.”

Genius, Jake mouths in Amy’s direction as Boyle squeals in glee, quickly jumping into position in front of the couple and holding the camera up high.  Their smiles are wide, the genuine happiness palpable through the film as they seperate, Jake linking his hand with Amy’s and letting Boyle lead them back into the party.  Their friends were inside after all, waiting to celebrate the new year with them, and they could definitely sneak out of the party later once Four Drink Amy made her return appearance.

Jake had no idea what the new year would bring, but he had the strongest instinct that whatever would happen, he and Amy would face it all together.

[b99fandomevents]

Thank you to everyone who joined our 2020 Vision Challenge!!! ✨ 

Below the cut are all the amazing submissions we received. (If you don’t see your work here or notice any errors, please let us know!) 

7 things to look forward to in season 7👀✨ 

↝ by @amez-santiago

A moment of divinity | AO3

↝ by @vernonfielding​

“I got to see the world through your eyes.”

The morning he accidentally switched contact lenses with Amy was one of Jake’s favorite moments of their first year of marriage. Interesting. Takes place during Casecation.

Arlo, Short For Arlington | AO3

↝ by @exploding-snapple​

Rosa tried to do something nice. Now she has a new puppy.

Missing scene from 3x12.

let’s go (baby it’s cold outside) | AO3

↝ by @b99peraltiago

There’s a reason why Amy never went to see the ball drop on Times Square before — not even once since she first moved to New York City long ago now.

New Years and Nachos | AO3

↝ by @purplespam

The squad goes to Shaw's bar to shoot the shit and write some New Year's resolutions.

New Year’s Resolutions 

↝ by @meepmorpperaltiago​

inspired by the Iconic New Year’s resolutions scene from the sitcom Outnumbered

Resolution

↝ by @thejimmyjabs​

we’re the fortunate ones (spinning ‘round the sun) ☀️ | AO3

↝ by @amydancepants-peralta​ 

Peraltiago through the seasons, New Years Stylez.

[b99fandomevents]

Friendly(?) reminder that all entries for the B99 2020 Vision Challenge are due on February 5th!! We can’t wait to see the new✨ creations y’all come up with! 

[b99fandomevents]

Hi! I was wondering if you were planning on doing any fic exchanges soon? I only just found this blog and I'm really eager to try one :))

Hello!!! :) So at this point since it’s cutting a bit too close to the season 7 premiere, we are not planning on putting on a winter fic exchange. However! We did just post up the details for our latest event – the B99 Fandom 2020 Vision Challenge. We hope you’ll consider submitting something for this! If not, we’re hoping to host another fic exchange once the next long hiatus hits.