Chapter Text
She is twenty-five and he is twenty-eight. It is 2009 and she is not in love with him yet.
She walks through the precinct doors and immediately comes face to face with a bundle of curly hair accompanied by a blue hoodie. A cool breeze blows past her as if pushing her inside. She says “I’m Detective Amy Santiago, I just graduated from the academy.” He shakes her hand before retrieving a packet of candy from his pocket and offering it towards her. She politely declines.
His name is Jake Peralta and he is a mess.
His workspace is a catastrophe and his paperwork is worse and despite the fact that he can solve a murder in a day, he somehow finds it impossible to find his way to a trash can to deposit the growing pile of wrappers accumulating under his desk. She is sure he means well but she’s been in the Ninety-Ninth for all of ten minutes and he’s already pushed half his mess onto her desk.
It is driving her insane.
The sergeant is a tall man with kind eyes and he must have seen the pained look on her face because he asks subtly if she would like to move desks. Peralta looks up wide-eyed as if he didn’t even know he’d done anything wrong. She says it’s fine.
It’s fine, she tells herself, the semi-constant state of disarray that his desk resides in is absolutely, totally, one-hundred percent, completely fine.
They get assigned a case as partners in her first week.
He immediately spills coffee in her car as he gets in and the fact that he’s exactly twenty-three minutes and thirteen seconds late does nothing to lessen her anxiety to solve the case.
She briefs him – despite him being the designated primary officer, despite her only being in the nine-nine for a week - because he’s late and he’s forgotten to read the intel. It’s a simple armed robbery, no hostages, no guns – just a perp with a knife and a shopkeeper who was quick to the panic button.
She’s driving to the bodega on the corner of 3rd and 4th street and he won’t stop talking. He talks about his breakfast, his new phone, his lost badge, his first pet, everything, but she steadily ignores his constant stream of words. He eventually asks her about herself and she says simply “I am going to be Captain one day” and he knows that she means “You will not slow me down.”
He stops asking her questions after that.
She is shouting at him in Spanish.
And Peralta, whose understanding of Spanish is wholly limited to “sí” and “señor,” cannot keep up. He looks to Rosa helplessly only to find she has resigned to raising an eyebrow and grinning.
Rosa finally says “Relajarse, Santiago!” and Amy stops.
“Did you call me an idiot?” he asks Amy.
“What?”
“Idioto? That means idiot, right?”
“Yes, Peralta, obviously.”
He grins for a second, forgetting her insult in light of his newly found translation skills. She groans out loud as she leaves the room.
When she returns, she finds that Gina stuck a neon yellow post-it-note to the side of their desks that read: ‘List of Places Peralta and Santiago Have Been Kicked out of for Arguing.’ Amy rolls her eyes and drops it into the recycling bin by Peralta’s desk. He just stares at it.
They both know what it will say without even reading it: the break room, McGintley’s office, the briefing room, the coffee shop down the road, Charles’ apartment, Gina’s apartment, Peralta’s own apartment, Shaws…
She sighs heavily and takes her break on the roof, watching the trails of smoke disappear from her lips into the air. When she returns, the post-it-note is gone and there’s a familiar flash of fluorescent yellow sticking out from his drawer.
He doesn’t mention it.
They’re sent out on a stakeout and he dutifully stays silent until she asks him to tell her about himself. He looks surprised as if she’s luring him into a trap and she immediately feels guilty.
(It’s been a year since their first case and her knowledge of him is still limited to just two facts she can remember from their conversation on the way to the bodega. She actually listens this time.)
She learns he’s an only child. He’s allergic to bees. He loves Die-Hard. His dad is a pilot but he left when he was seven. His mom is a teacher.
He asks her to tell him about herself and she complies. He learns she has seven brothers. She is allergic to dogs. She watches Jeopardy every evening. Both her parents were cops. Her mom likes painting.
His mom likes painting too. It must be a mom thing, he says. She laughs politely, compliantly.
He asks “Do you have a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, or whatever?” and she shakes her head and changes the conversation. He knows that she means: “I am not interested in you. This is not going to happen.”
He asks her out for a drink that night and she begins to object but he interjects and says “Just as partners, with the rest of the squad,” claiming it’s a “Trademarked Peralta Guarantee.”
She agrees.
(They drink until midnight, reluctantly at first until the alcohol and laughter drowns out any previous reservations she may have had.)
She just needed printing paper.
She’s working overtime with Peralta because the arrest numbers are due the next morning. She loses the impulse game of Rock-Paper-Scissors that he challenges her too, pulling the figurative short straw, and begrudgingly traipses towards the storage room he directs her towards.
Storage room twelve on floor three of the ninety-ninth precinct: the home of the neatly stacked printing paper that she needed for the arrest numbers. The issue, she soon learns, is that closet room twelve on the third floor is decidedly too small.
And the door closes behind her with an alarming clunk.
She tries to pull it open but to no avail.
And her brain automatically says “Shit. Fuck. Shit.”
She lets her back slide down the wall and starts to form an action plan, considers who she can call. She still hasn’t met anyone from the night shift. McGintley’s gone home. She definitely can’t ask Rosa. Charles lives too far away. Peralta’s friend Gina has only just started working there and she doesn’t know her yet.
Peralta is downstairs. She’s got Peralta’s number. She could call Peralta and risk him making fun of her until the day she dies.
She’s starting to breath faster and faster, feels panic rising and making its home in her chest as the walls get closer around her.
She calls him.
“Santiago, what’s taking so long? Have you gotten lost?”
She only manages to gasp out “Peralta… claustro— locked door,” but somehow he understands.
“Wait, I’ll be right there.”
True to his word, he appears, unlocks the door and sits in front of her.
“Hey, listen, it’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. Sorry, I didn’t know you were claustrophobic. We can go back to the bullpen, it’s much bigger out there.”
She nods, lets him help her up from her position on the floor and follows him to the bullpen. Things start to return to focus and she can see his worried face clear in front of her. She waits for the inevitable name calling or poked fun.
It doesn’t arrive.
Instead, he says “Are you okay, Amy?”
“I’m fine, Jake.”
She pauses.
“Thank you.”
“That’s okay.”
(They return to work for another hour without mention of the previous events and it only strikes her later that it’s the first time they’ve called each other by their first names and she swears it won’t happen again. Life resumes as normal.)