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A year and a half into the zombie apocalypse and Jake was still loving it.
It probably helped that no one he actually loved had died yet, but as far as apocalypses went, they seemed to be in the clear.
There were definitely sacrifices of course. All the kegs in Holt’s command, (the 9 block compound that somehow managed to develop and maintain itself over the course of the first few months of the apocalypse) had run out a little over a month ago, and the liquor stock was looking more pathetic by the day. Jake’s apartment had not been in the span of Holt’s Command so he ended up moving in with Amy, which was totally awesome but he’d expected their eventual move in to be a decision not an oh-fuck-my-apartment-is-overrun-with-zombies-can-I-crash-with-you type of situation.
For the most part, the zombie apocalypse didn’t go the way he thought it would. He wasn’t traversing the 50 states looking for an asylum, he’d been one of the people to help build the asylum. He wasn’t alone, moping over the loss of all of his loved ones, he spent every night in his girlfriend’s bed curled around her. He spent his days helping Holt run the Command with his best friends. And even his mom had somehow made it into the Command, she’d taken over an abandoned apartment in Amy’s building with an old friend of hers. The food rationing wasn’t nearly as bad as he thought it would be, especially since he could survive on gummy bears and fruit roll ups (that one was hitting boyle a little hard).
He didn’t sleep more than two consecutive hours the first month of the apocalypse. He did kill nearly 987 zombies- not including bombs to clear the deadzone. Every five minutes Holt was telling him something else to do that was imperative. And unlike filing his paperwork in time or filling the tank on the cruiser, it was actually imperative
No one had any illusions. The three thousand person settlement that emerged at the end of the first month was purely because of Raymond Jacob Holt. Even now, a year and a half later, with the settlement slowly creeping up to seven thousand people, everyone knew that it was because Holt wasn’t a power hungry maniac with a vicious streak a mile wide. There’d been a ten-thousand person settlement somewhere in manhattan, that had been run into the ground by a post-apocalyptic dictator, which made Jake want to run over and shake the man shouting “HAVEN’T YOU SEEN MAD MAX?” but he’d been too busy helping reroute the survivors of the madman’s reign to the Greenlands sanctuary up north, or the Mountain Range to the south. Whoever else refused to leave the city ended up shuffled into one of the sanctuaries in the boroughs.
Holt managed to run a small city for the same reason that he’d been able to run a precinct. He did his job and he did it well.
It was because of Holt that the world didn’t end for Jake. In the wake of the zombies, Jake became a de facto sheriff to Holt’s mayor. Well to be more fair he was one of two de facto deputy sheriffs to Terry’s actual sheriff. Boyle and Amy had been tugged into helping run the small city, the only people in that first month who could still wrap their heads around things like “food rations” and “places to live.” Amy still muttered in her sleep “Frozen meat for families with small children.” Jake was still essentially just a cop. His job was prevent human on human murder in their increasingly dense little town, and to stop petty crimes from happening.
He also had the best job in the world. Ration hunting.
“Who is thirsty, my bitches!” Jake shouted as he kicked the door in and strode into the debriefing room. Everyone who had once been a cop was wearing their cargo pants and NYPD shirts, their guns and mace on their belts as if they were all just getting ready to head to the tactical village. The civilians who had made their way towards representing specific groups or the heads of other things (honestly Jake did not pay attention, he had a job to do and he did it and then he’d brag about being awesome over the water cooler to Amy) sat around, mixed in with NYPD’s finest.
“Terry does not like disruption during important meetings!” Terry helpfully shouted from beside Holt, who had just turned to fix a glare on Jake.
“Oh what about disruption of the awesome kind?” Jake asked, keeping his hands behind his back as he grinned widely. Before Terry could respond Jake pulled the bottles out and held out the tequila and vodka he’d been lovingly stroking for the entire car ride back to the command. “Of the Rosa-and-I-Just-solved-a-problem kind!”
“Is that my old friend José come to love me again?” Gina asked, snapping the bottle out of Jake’s hand, “Oh José how I’ve missed you!”
“How is two bottles enough to warrant solving a problem?” Holt asked, Jake just grinned and stepped back to point to Rosa who walked in with a box.
“It’s four crates,” She dropped the box on the nearest table, the bottles clanked ominously within it but Rosa didn’t seem to care.
“Plus a pallet of pads, ten boxes of motor oil, a shit ton of hamburger helper, ramen and sloppy joe mix and we also managed to fill up the tank in the trunk.” He clapped his hands before throwing his arms out again, “and that’s just we could fit in the truck-”
“Is there more pads?” Amy asked, everyone shifted to look at her, “No seriously, I don’t even care, we’re running out of pads.”
“I knew you’d ask that and sorry to report there was only one pallet of pads. No tampons either, because life is a cruel cruel mistress.” He rubbed his hands together, “but there is a lot more awesome stuff, clothes and non-perishables and frozen-”
“Get to the point Peralta.”
“Requesting permission for two helpers and an actual truck so we can go back tomorrow and raid the shit out of that Sam’s Club?” Jake grinned, nudging Rosa who just crossed her arms.
“Permission granted, you leave at first light. Santiago?” Holt shifted, and Jake could see that Amy was already furiously scribbling things down.
“Becker and Coops can go, I’ll have a list of essentials written up by tomorrow.” She flipped to the back of the notebook before looking up again, “we are at liberty to give bonus items.”
“That’ll be a bonus item apiece.” Jake and Rosa high fived at that while the captain continued, “thank you for the good work, now please sit, we were about to discuss what to do with the Mafia problem.”
“Is the solution to throw alcohol at it?” Jake slid into the empty chair next to Amy, passing the more comprehensive list towards her.
“Now, it seems it might be. Santiago?”
“We can definitely spare at least one crate. I’ll run some numbers and take another look at what exactly is in the crates before making a decision. I’ll let you know within the hour.” Amy smiled as she looked up from her notebook.
“That’s great news on all fronts. We need to keep the Mafia settlement happy lest we have a more than the undead on our hands.” Holt folded his hands on his pedestal, looking out at the small group crowded before him. Jake was fairly confident that everyone in that room, with the obvious exceptions of Rosa, Amy, Terry, himself and maybe Charles would be the undead on someone else’s hands if it wasn’t for Holt. No one took to being a post apocalyptic dictator more than Holt did, and for that Jake was thankful. Holt was always six steps ahead of everyone.
“I’ve requested that the Standing Government send us ten cows and one bull come the spring.” Apparently he was actually ten steps ahead of everyone. Everybody paused for a moment, casting looks at each other before looking back at Holt. The Standing Government- what they called the hollowed out remains of the actual government- was an army of Holts strung across the United States, trying to keep the infrastructure alive as the country slowly rebuilt itself. They transported city survivors were being sent out to farms where food was more accessible and workers were needed. They brought food back to the city settlements that put survivors who stumbled to their gates through quarantine. The also apparently had the power to move cows.
“Cows are a great source of milk, and eventually meat. I plan on stripping the turf off of the high school football field and turning it into a makeshift farm. Along with the cows I’ll be requesting a number of chickens, and lambs, along with whatever the Standing Government thinks would be able to survive here in Brooklyn, I need to create a task- put your hand down Santiago- a task force that would help start the Farm Initiative.” Holt picked up his papers, “I want everyone in here to either think if they’d like to run the farm initiative or know someone who has a large and varied understanding of wildlife. We’re also looking into turning parts of the deadzone into farm ground so we can better support ourselves without relying too heavily on the farms. Dismissed.”
Holt didn’t bother to wait for anyone to batter him with questions, he just walked out of the room and strode towards his office.
“Is it just me or is Captain Holt a little badass?”
xXxXxXxXxXxXx
All the years of scoffing in post-apocalyptic movies had finally come to fruition. Amy had spent years, nay, decades making fun of characters who made stupid decisions in TV shows and movies.
Did Amy miss being a detective? Absolutely. The high octane thrill of the first two weeks, when she racked up zombies and helped clear out the deadzone quickly fed into the second two weeks, where she’d have to kill zombies while rationing out the limited food for two thousand of her closest friends and climbing. It was better now that they weren’t all living crammed together in the fortified school. She didn’t envy Jake’s job either. To go from a detective to a glorified beat cop was a hard hit in her books, but he thought of himself as a deputy sheriff and if that made him happy then so be it.
Amy, on the other hand, was taking all those post apocalyptic movies and showing them who the freaking boss was, and the freaking boss was Amy Santiago. She could make a can of beans feed a family of four, she made a box of pads stretch a mile, she was making the rations her bitch as was evidenced by the fact that no one had gotten malnutrition (yet) and she was still wearing contacts (suck it zombies!)
But there were times when she didn’t like her job.
People came and sat in her perp chair and begged for things. Alcoholics begged for one more drop of liquor, lifetime smokers for one more pack a week, teenagers’ voices squeaked as they asked for condoms, and her job was knowing when to say yes and when to say no. And sometimes No was hard.
“Hey so I know what I want for my bonus item.” Jake leaned across his desk, which was still pressed up against hers, probably not the wisest thing considering that it meant people asking her for things were sitting back to back with whatever shitty teenager Jake had pulled in that day for trying to steal rations from old people.
Amy bit her lip, she knew what Jake was going to ask for his bonus item, it was what he always asked for his bonus item, and it was going to be on her to say no.
“Are you sure? You don’t want to think about it more? We have cheese! Actual cheese not kraft!” She offered, ignoring how Charles’ head popped up from across the room.
“Nope, one pack of condoms please!” Jake asked, just on the wrong side of too loudly, as Charles started to stride towards them, thankfully he was stopped by Rosa.
“I’m sorry,” she started, and his face dropped like a thousand bricks, “but we cannot give out that item at this time.”
She had told Jake last week that saying “we” made it sound less like “I, it is me and my fault that you cannot have this item you want” and thus made it less likely that people would throw things at her.
“What? Amy!” Jake stood up, coming to sit in the perp chair, “are we out of condoms? Please tell me we’re not out of condoms.”
“We’re not out of condoms-”
“Oh thank-”
“But I’m not giving you any. It’d be irresponsible!” Amy whispered back, leaning forward and casting a look around the room.
“Is this your very indirect way to say you want babies because that is probably not the best way to go about it.” Jake frowned at her, and she wanted to throw ten boxes of condoms at him just to keep him from going down that path.
“No!” She responded a bit too loudly when it sunk in what he meant, “no, it’s not that. It’s just imperative that we save condoms for people who don’t have any or are at a high risk of conception. We collectively have a strong health education-”
“Speak for yourself-”
“-that will assist us in avoiding pregnancy during these trying times, and also by the way, I know that you have enough condoms stockpiled to last us for two years if we had sex every day which given our schedules-”
“Okay well you don’t have to shout it out loud-”
“-Seems very unlikely. Jake, believe me, I want to give you the condoms, but I just can’t.” Amy sucked in a deep breath and looked up at her boyfriend. “Please don’t be mad at me?”
“I’m not mad at you,” Jake leaned against the desk, “I’m pretty sure that you’re just doing your job and this is the whole reason why Holt asked you to run the rations. Because you could say no to the love of your life especially when he’s doing this.”
Jake frowned, pulling the best puppy dog eyes that he could muster, “maybe give me the condoms?”
“Ugh Jake, don’t make this harder than it already is!” She frowned back at him, trying to give as good as she got.
“Fine! I’ll take the fancy cheese!” He stuck out his hand and Amy quickly scribbled the item request for him. Slapping it into his outstretched hand before grinning up at him. Jake stood up, and stuck the request out, slapping it into Charles’ chest, “but I’m not happy about the kind deed you just made me do.”
He turned and flounced out of the room, leaving Amy doing her best not to frown after him.
XxXxXxXxXxX
Everyone stockpiles something, it’s the apocalypse. Amy pretends to ignore the strong smells that come out of Charles’ pantry, Amy can admit that she has a wall of trashy fiction and dry non fiction, Rosa probably has more weapons than the armory, and Terry was stockpiling diapers until his baby stopped needing them.
Jake stockpiles condoms.
And refuses to address it.
“Honey I’m home,” Amy said, poking her head into the apartment, peeking around the corner to try and see if he was anywhere.
“Hey, do you want some beans?” Came Jake’s voice from the kitchen, “Or maybe some beans?”
He stepped out into the living room, “Now I’m seeing the benefit of having beans, but I think beans might do us some good. What do you think?”
“I get it, I get it. Rationing sucks.” She dropped her own bag of rations on the table, brown sugar oatmeal and canned corn, along with a week’s worth of army rations that the Standing Government had delivered to them. It was enough to serve the entire Command,and she was planning on making it last.
“Yes! Rationing sucks!” He pointed in the vague direction of Queens where the Mafia had ended up making their stronghold, “if we were the right hand men to the Mafia people, we’d be rolling in actual beef and milk- and alcohol!”
“If we lived with the Mafia people there’d be people starving under our supervision. This is a marathon not a sprint.” She moved towards Jake, noticing that even though he was mad at her he still hitched his hands on his hips so she could thread her arms around his waist. “We’ve got a national infrastructure, phones, a barter system, and a cure on the way, in a couple of years this will be a bad dream and we’ll be fine. We just gotta ride this out.”
“Well now you can’t ride nothing out because we don’t have any condoms,” Jake’s arms betrayed him, wrapping around her as she rested her head against his chest.
“Come on Jake, I know for a fact that you have more than enough condoms. What’s the big deal?” She took in a deep breath, happy that the zombie apocalypse hadn’t robbed her of him, even when he was annoyed he still rubbed her back.
“It’s just- sometimes the only thing that gets me through the day is coming home to you.” Amy hadn’t expected him to actually say what was on his mind, she leaned back, looking up at him, “I mean, everything is so fucked up. We can’t find your brother, the mafia could try to overrun us any day now, Holt is literally running an entire city and holding up a corner of a network with little no support from anyone else. I live for the hours where I can come home and pretend that I’m just staying at your apartment because we have to be at work early tomorrow, and pretend that I don’t have to worry about finding enough food and pads and alcohol to keep six thousand people from rioting, I don’t want to have to worry about having to get around smushing.”
“Get around smushing?” Amy parroted back, hitching an eyebrow.
“Yeah, I know you find all this-” he helpfully gestured towards his whole body before returning his arm to her back, “irresistible, and you’re not ready to help repopulate the world yet. Sometimes stopping short of smushing is fine and great, but I always want to have that option. The smushing option I mean.”
“See, I was just worried that you definitely didn’t want have kids,” she tried to say it in a joking tone, but her voice faltered, falling flat between them.
“Beans.” He shot back, dropping his arms to pull her up into a quick kiss, “How about them beans?”
Amy knew diversions when she saw them, especially when they were practically twenty feet tall shouting ‘I’m a diversion!’ but she lets it slide, because she’s not ready to talk about the future either, but she doesn’t want him on the other side of the room either.
“Or, instead, we can do something just short of smushing?” she asks, clasping her hands behind her back as she smiled up at him. Like a magnet he was back in her personal space, scooping her up as she giggled and bringing her back to their room.
xXxXxXx
Jake didn’t know any spanish. Well he knew some, things like puta and gracias. But he didn’t know how to phrase sentences and ask questions, for which he mostly blamed his 8th grade spanish teacher. Amy would only rarely slip into spanish, usually when he was too distracted to try and pick apart her words.
But he did know when she was talking to her mother about her brothers.
She was always quieter, her words sounded like they were being ripped from somewhere deep inside. She never finished her sentences, as if she didn’t want to bring down the responses she knew she wouldn’t like.
When he found her in the bowels of the precinct just before dawn, using the one phone that still worked, she could hear it in her voice.
“¿Donde…?” She trailed off, and he didn’t know what “donde” meant but he knew she was asking after her brother.
“okay, okay,” she said quickly, probably cutting off her mother, before saying another phrase in clipped spanish before switching to english, “I gotta go mom, Jake’s here and I gotta see the team off to- yeah, love you, bye.”
Amy swiveled in the chair, the phone clattering down onto the receiver, startling Scully enough to make him snort in his sleep but not actually wake up.
“Still no news?” Jake reached out and Amy actually took his hand, which wasn’t actually a good sign.
“Yeah, more and more names are getting spread around so there’s still hope.” Amy shrugged, tugging Jake towards the stairs to head back up, “I’m sure he’s fine, there’s rosters being driven around by the standing government. Maybe his name is in one of those?”
He hates how her voice cracks, and the hint of exhaustion, he wants to wrap her up in a blanket and watch Training Day and every stupid movie she has in her apartment. He wants to have her family a text message away, not scattered across the east coast in settlements. And he can’t give her any of it.
But what he can do is distract her, “Becker spent the morning throwing up, I guess he spent his ration on vodka and split it with Coops. Rosa moved to have Terry join us, we still need a fourth. Wanna play hooky with me to Patchogue and raid a sam’s club?”
“So romantic,” Amy threaded her fingers through his, “I’m down to clown.”
“So not what that means but let’s do it!” The smile on Amy’s face is a lot less forced and a little more natural, so Jake puts a hatch-mark in the win column for the morning. Holt may have an eight point plan for keeping the Command alive, but Jake has a hundred point plan for keeping morale up for everyone, especially Amy. Which means taking Amy out of their depressing little settlement and into Patchogue where she can spend the day doing things she loves most- shooting things and counting things.
“I was thinking that you should drive-” Jake started as he pulled a YA teen fiction book out from where he’d tucked it into his belt, keeping it pressed against his lower back, “-and I’ll narrate.”
“Where did you get this?” Amy asked, grabbing the book out of his hand and flipping it over to read the back, “it’s the only Percy Jackson book I didn’t have!”
If you had asked Jake before the apocalypse if Amy liked to read, he’d probably just shrug and nod. There’d been a few lazy saturdays where he’d laid with his head in her lap playing a videogame as she stroked his hair and flipped through a book. After the Zombie apocalypse he’d point to the leaning tower of books stacked against the bed, with the small fortress in the living room and then the wish list on the fridge, letting the evidence speak for itself.
“Yeah, they had it at the Sam’s Club, I stole it for you. I meant to give it to you last night but we got a little distracted.” He extended his hand for a fist bump and she just smiled at him, bumping her fist against his before taking the book.
The book is actually kind of good, it’s no Lord of the Rings, but it’s fast paced and funny. He’s always a sucker for a badass female lead. Rosa and Terry are mostly asleep the entire way to Patchogue, the roads have slowly but surely been cleared of cars and trucks over the last year and a half as Rosa and Jake push their way across the island looking for survivors and food. For some reason Amy sticks to the speed limit and obeys traffic signs. If she didn’t he’d be more worried.
It’s mostly uneventful, living in the apocalypse had been long periods of boredom punctuated with moments of sheer terror since the worst of it ended.
They’re able to get the truck as close as possible to the front doors, leaving the back closed until they get all the stuff together.
“Maybe we should’ve brought more people? To watch the truck?” Amy asks as Jake pulled a flatbed with the least amount of blood out.
“Nope, people watching the truck always get bit or die or do something stupid.” Jake paused as Amy stepped up and sat down on the flat bed, “it’s better for us to do this in pairs, quickly as possible.”
The list is simple, non-perishable food, frozen food, food that somehow magically has not perished yet (less likely by the day), hygienic everything, water, medicine, and more solar panels, if possible. Jake and Rosa have a system down, mostly that revolves around getting the biggest necessity on the truck first. They learned quick that sometimes they needed to evacuate at a moment’s notice.
With the added hands of Terry and Amy, they go quicker than usual, the medicine loaded up, food in the process when Jake wanders off to check for hygienic stuff they might have missed last time.
“Jake! What part of buddy system do you not understand?”
“Hey look, tampons!” Jake held up the box from the top of a display he hadn’t seen the last time they’d been there, “quick, put one box in your coat-”
“I know you’re joking but it’s painful, no one gets around the rationing system.” Amy’s so serious that Jake can’t help but bust out a wide smile.
“Maybe I’ll steal the box of tampons,” he stuck the box in his leather jacket, the square obviously ruining the line of his coat, “my self-sacrificing girlfriend hates pads but won’t justify giving herself tampons.”
“Oh come on, the rationing system has kept us all alive,” Amy shoots back as she pulled a flat bed over, they both start loading up the tampons and nearby toiletries (just because they’re in the apocalypse doesn’t mean they’re not going to brush their teeth).
“Okay fine, count it as my bonus item when we get back, but I’m taking the tampons since I can’t have condoms.” He said it with all the petulance he can muster when her smile is suddenly as wide and honest as it used it always be back when they weren’t fighting for their life every second of every day. And his heart clenches in his chest.
“Are you going to start hoarding tampons?” Amy tucked her hair behind her ears as she stepped around the flat bed, she stroked the line of his jacket, just over where the tampons are shoved in for safekeeping, “instead of hoarding mac and cheese?”
“First of all, everyone knows that Mac and cheese is only good when you have milk, and we never get milk rations because whoever runs rations hates us, and second of all, keeping you happy is my number one priority.”
Her fingers falter, and Jake can feel her fingertip against his chest through several layers and he panics, thinking he let something slip, something he shouldn’t have shown.
“Just during the zombie apocalypse?” She asked, her voice sounding low and shaky, as if it’s coming from the same place as “donde” had hours before, but she’s not worried about her brother now.
“Nope, forever and for always.” Jake has definitely shown his cards with that, but she’s grinning up at him, stepping up on her toes to press her lips against his own, the smile slipping into a kiss as he shifts his hands from his waist to her back, tugging her against him. The box cruelly pokes into his side, partially crushed as Amy tugs him closer.
“Hey lovebirds,” Rosa shouts from the end of the aisle, “we gotta keep moving, stop being stupid.”
With that, the moment is gone, but the warmth is still there.
They finish loading up the trucks with wide smiles on their face, the crushed box of tampons zipped into his coat.
XxXxXxX
As predicted, the zombies have come out on their way home. The way to Patchogue probably woke up some of the ones that had been in stupors along the side of the road. They’re like the world’s weirdest guard on the way back. Terry and Rosa aren’t asleep, their guns are trained on the lines of decaying stumblers.
Jake does his best to distract from the stumbling hoards, reading more of the book before asking things like:
“Do you think Captain Holt and Kevin Cuddle?”
“If the Cubs were made up of a bunch of zombies do you think they’d actually win the world series?”
“If Holt is our king, then is Kevin the royal consort?”
“Do you think Justin Timberlake survived the apocalypse? In another life I’m positive we’re the best of friends.”
For the most part, his questions have their intended reactions of causing small (and occasionally pained) smiles, and starting brisk arguments over the difference between Kings and de facto dictators.
They manage to cross into Brooklyn, where the first set of protective walls are, five miles outside of the command proper. It keeps the worst of the hoards out. Who knows how many are within the five mile radius. The second set of walls, just past the deadzone are more sturdy, resilient. Not a single zombie had been seen inside of them for almost a year and three months.
There’s a helicopter on the makeshift helipad on top of the school, Jake can just barely see the edge of it but he hears the whirring blades as he helps unload the truck. Amy’s rationing worker bees come out of the woodwork, cataloguing and organizing their impressive haul. It’s not long before Amy is pulled away with news that there’s a phone call for her.
Jake doesn’t bother to follow her, just mutters “I love you” at the same time she does, they’re both frequently too aware of how much they’re on the verge of dying to not say “I love you” every time they part. It was overwhelming at first, but now it’s as common to Jake as saying hi and bye.
Inside the precinct it’s a hive of activity, of course the kind of hive that won’t cause Jake to go into anaphylactic shock. Unfamiliar faces in Standing Government uniforms (camo pants and white shirts, which has always led Jake to believe that they stole their fashion concept from the Nine-nine) are scattered throughout the precinct.
“Peralta, you’ve returned. The standing government has brought us some good news and more army rations. They’ve decided to bring us soil, so we can develop farm lands at the edge of the dead zone.” Holt turned, gesturing towards the man dressed in camo, a wide smile on his face as he tried to get Gina’s attention. The man looked up just as Jake looked at him, and apparently got the simultaneous hint that Holt wanted to introduce him and that Gina was not interested.
“Captain Barton, I’d like you to meet Detective Peralta, he’s been integral to the survival of the compound. He’s helped with acquisitions and security.” Holt says “acquisitions and security” like it was Jake’s job to make sure that the vending machine is fully stocked, and the guns are kept with their safety on at a gun rally. It’s reassuring how consistent he is.
“Peralta? Any relation to Roger Peralta?” The man says by way of greeting, sticking his hand out with a grin. Jake takes his hand because that’s what you do, even though he’d much rather not be dealing with him at all.
“The pilot? He’s my dad.” His mind fills up with questions about the chopper, can I have a go? pretty please! but the captain looks saddened all the sudden, which was fine with Jake because having Roger Peralta for a father depressed him too.
“He was a good man.” Captain Barton’s voice dropped an octave, as if to lend gravity to the moment. Jake is a 100% positive that the floor he was standing on a second ago had disappeared entirely, and that he was suddenly floating in some sort of never world where dads died out of the blue.
“Was?” He asked, the captain’s face turning to a look of shock and confusion.
The Captain opened his mouth, hopefully to shout JK! lawls no seriously your dad is fine and is banging his way across Canada as per usual! But before he could say anything Amy bust into the room with a high kick and a shout.
“All eight Santiago siblings alive and accounted for! Suck it Zombie Apocalypse! Your weak sauce can’t take down this family!” She did her little fist-punching victory dance before striding over to Jake, her hand up in the air as Jake still struggled to take everything in, his father couldn’t be dead, devils didn’t die they just temporarily went to hell.
“Jake? Come on, high five me.” Amy said, her hand still high in the air. He can feel his brain sending messages to the rest of his body, but his body doesn’t move, still hovering over the absentee floor.
“Roger Peralta is dead, Santiago.” Holt supplied helpfully, the wide smile on Amy’s face turns to one of horror in a second, her hand drops.
“Oh my- I’m so sorry Jake I wouldn’t’ve- I just- oh no.” Her voice falters, and Jake wants to reassure her, but her arms are wrapped around him, and Jake breaks a little, somewhere deep inside where he was trying to keep it together, where he was making a game out of killing zombies, eating beans on end, counting his bullets and fully aware that someday he might have a put one in someone he loves, something just breaks.
xXxXxXxXx
“Statistically speaking it’s an impossibility that none of us lost anyone, and I’d rather it was my dad then your brothers.” It’s not equal on the scale of things. Amy has a massive sprawling family and she loves -just loves- them all so much. Jake only has his parents, and really of the two of them he only has his mom. His dad should be worth so much but he isn’t. Jake hadn’t even thought about him much in the last year and a half. “It’s just a shock, I thought he was unkillable. indestructible like the ring.”
“I’m so so so sorry-” Amy starts again, and Jake just picks up the sandwich he’d made out of peanut butter and jelly, taking a large bite out of it. “I shouldn’t’ve-”
“You should’ve! We have to celebrate the little victories. Let’s think of this way, my dad won’t live to spread whatever STD he definitely had, I mean four-hundred women? Christ!” He took another bite of the sandwich, the rations lady had taken pity on them and given them four slices of bread instead of the usual two. The news that Detective Peralta’s father has been dead for nearly a year (bitten in the course of flying survivors to safety, managed not to turn before landing which, damn it, is freaking cool) spreads like wildfire throughout the compound. The outpouring of sympathy is both reassuring and claustrophobic in equal measure.
He had moved quick to tell his mom before the gossip train got to her.
What made him really mad was that he’d seen that look on her face before, when his father walked out on them the first time, and the second time. Hell, Jake had seen it just a month or two before the apocalypse after his father gave up on them again.
Damn it, Roger Peralta wasn’t a goodman. He was a man who occasionally did heroic deeds while leaving a path of destruction behind him.
Yet Jake still felt the hole in his heart, seeping blood with no way to patch it.
“Still,” Amy slid between him and the table, landing in his lap and wrapping her arms around his head, Jake would never say no to a boob hug, so he leaned in for that reason and that reason alone. He didn’t need reassurance now that his dad was dead, he didn’t need to mourn that asshole. He’d been theoretically dead to Jake for years.
“I just don’t want to think about it,” he muttered, mostly into her chest. She just patted his head, before leaning back, swiveling to reach out to the book she’d left on the dining room table.
“Then let’s not think about it, okay?” He can hear the book crinkling open with the ear that wasn’t being reassured by Amy’s heartbeat. She read, her voice slow and steady, attempting to mimic his voices for the characters from hours before.
And if Jake teared up a little bit, it’s only because he was so damn proud of Percy Jackson.
xXxXxXxXx
“I think Amy wants to move to the Jersey Settlement.” Jake confesses to Boyle, a week after the candlelit memorial service his mother threw together for his dad. The ache is still there, but he sat shiva and he’s shed his tears. The world could end at any time and he’s not going to waste it thinking about his father. He’s got bigger things to worry about, Amy is spending more and more time on the phone with her mother, and writing long letters to her brothers in settlements that aren’t connected by phone. He’s standing on a rooftop theoretically checking the solar panels but in actuality he’s spying on the Mafia compound. Holt had pulled him aside and told him that the liquor (two crates) had gone far to sooth relations, but The Command is thriving, and Mafia has a lot of weapons.
“What?” Boyle shouts, a little high pitched as he does so. His arms dropped down to his side and he suddenly looks more serious than any situation not involving some weird kind of moose ball soup. “Genevieve and I are coming with you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! Also I didn’t say I was going,” Boyle tilted his head, giving Jake that look to which Jake just shrugs, “Okay yeah I’m totally going with her, but how do I tell her that without sounding like I’m just going for her?”
“You would just be going for her.” Boyle returns, frown still etched on his face, “there’s no other reason to go to Jersey.”
“Yeah, but I’m not going because I feel like I have to, I’d be going because I love her and I can’t stand the thought of my life without her, how do I say that?” Jake frowns, turning back towards Mafia with his binoculars, “What do I say? ‘Amy I love you and I’ll go to Jersey Settlement with you and comb my hair back with pomade and get a sick tan?”
“Okay first of all,” Jake spins around, the binocular scattering away as he tried to stand upright, his head light from the sudden movement. Amy has her hands hitched on her hips, and Boyle is just grinning proudly, “I haven’t said anything about going to Jersey and second of all-”
Amy paused, turning towards Boyle, “Charles, can you please go downstairs? I think this conversation is going to be a private one.”
“Of course, of course,” Boyle picked his way across the solar panels, turning around to give Jake thumbs up before heading down. Amy watched him go, suspicious that he’d turn back to help out.
“Second of all, what makes you think I’m going to Jersey Settlement?” Amy crosses her arms and glares at him, and Jake knows there’s no getting out of this.
“You miss your family, I can tell, and I know all your brothers are trying to get to Jersey where your parents are. If you want to go by yourself it’s fine, but I’m totally happy to go with you.” Jake awkwardly gestures towards Jersey, “I’ll put pomade in my hair and get a sick tan.”
“That’s sweet, but you’re not going anywhere.” At the sight of Jake’s frown Amy nodded and kept talking, “we’re not going anywere. I do miss my family, and I’m sure that I’ll see them again someday soon. There’s going to be a cure and life will go back to normal.”
As if to make a point Jake turns to look at the ruins of manhattan, before shooting another look at Amy, “Normalish. If anything my brothers and my parents are going to come here, I’m trying to convince them anyways. Jersey settlement is overloaded and we’re not at capacity yet.”
“You don’t have to stay for me-” Jake wants to finish but he wants her to want to stay for him, he knows better though, and he knows that’s not healthy.
“I’m not staying for you, I know if I picked up and moved you’d come with me, but the Nine-Nine needs me, the Commands needs me, us!” She sweeps her arms out at the solar panels “We figured out how to assemble these things and generate electricity for a make-shift hospital- that we also put together!”
“Yeah we did, And the directions were in German.” Jake grinned down at the panels, remembering fondly attempting to use his german accent for good.
“The directions were in german!” Amy pointed over the roof towards the deadzone, “we cleared out a mile of rubble, and in a month we’re going to turn half of that into farm land. We figured out how to get the plumbing to work. We’ve killed thousands of zombies by ourselves.”
“Definitely up in the thousands by now.” Jake agreed, nodding as Amy only picked up steam.
“Holt may be running this command by himself, but he wouldn’t have been able to do it without us- without all of the nine-nine.” Amy shrugged again, looking towards Mafia, “to leave now would be to abandon everything we’ve built.”
They both stand, quietly for a moment, staring out at the sparkling river. The hum of the command drifting up from the street level. She’s standing in front of him, on top of what they helped built together, with her hair flowing in the wind looking like she belonged on the cover of a trashy romance novel. And for a moment, just a moment, Jake loses his self control.
“I had a diamond ring on layaway.”
If Amy is shocked that he said it, it’s nowhere near as shocked as Jake is. He’d been sitting on that for a year and a half.
“What?” She finally asked her voice a little more high pitched than usual, and Jake just bit his lip before turning to her.
“So an anniversary was coming up, and I thought ‘why not ask Amy to move in with me?’ and then I thought ‘better yet ask her to marry me, I mean she’s definitely the one.’”
“What?” her voice was a little softer as she said it.
“Yeah, I had it all planned out. I picked out the ring, classic cut diamond- Gina helped me of course- I had this whole speech that I’d written on note cards to show you that I was serious. I went on for ten card about how I wanted to learn spanish so our kids would speak spanish at home, then I went on for another ten cards about how I want kids with you, my sense of humor, your sense of organization, hopefully your nose.” Jake turned back to her, “I only had one payment left.”
“Jake,” his name came out closer to a sigh then an actual word, and Jake knew he had to press on before he lost his ability to put this out in the open. They could die at any moment and he’d been sitting on it for a year and a half. Not even Charles knew.
“Then you know, zombies. I actually had a near death experience on our anniversary- remember?”
She did, a zombie had grabbed him by the leg and scraped a layer of skin off of him. She’d managed to bash the zombie’s head in with a baseball bat, but wrapping Jake’s leg had taken more skill. He had made a joke about their love healing him. She spent a week taking his watches so he’d take it slow. Worst anniversary everthey said with winks later.
“Jake,” Amy paused, trying to figure out what to say, “do you still want to ask me to marry you?”
“Are you kidding me? Of course I do, I’ve been trying to come up with an excuse to get to that damn jewelery store for months now. Stupid Manhattan. Stupid bridges burning down.” Jake shot another glare across the river at the island. “Stupid apocalypse.”
She lets out a laugh at that, a surprised burst of joy. It makes the tension that Jake has been holding in his shoulder for months now dissipate. “Listen, this isn’t the way I wanted to do it, I didn’t want you to think I’m just proposing because the world might end but we’ve survived this long so-”
Jake turned to her, kneeling on the roof to take her hand in his, she lets out another quick burst of laughter, more nervous than anything. “Amy Santiago, I love you. You’re the only person in the world who makes me want to deal with my emotions instead of repressing the shit out of them. I love that you won’t abuse your power during the zombie apocalypse and hoard tampons. I love that you keep muttering ‘take that zombies’ every time you put on contacts. I love that you can still make me happy even though we’ve had some legitimately awful days in the last year and half. I love coming home to you every night. I love looking up at you from across our desks when I know we both have way more work to do before we get to go home and rest. I love- I just really love you Amy. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you, however short the rest of my life might be. And I want to be irresponsible with birth control with you, especially if that means we can repopulate the earth together. Not entirely, that would be crazy, maybe just one.”
“Not eight?” She asked, a tear running down her cheek as she did so.
“Split the difference, we’ll have four.” He flapped a hand, “we can argue details later. Amy Santiago, will you marry me?”
Amy doesn’t even bother thinking before dropping to her knees in front of him, her arms are around him and she’s kissing him before he even had a chance to be nervous.
“Is that a yes?” He asked, grinning when they finally pulled apart.
“Yes, it’s a yes. Of course I’ll marry you, Jake Peralta. And as a side note, I don’t need the ring, and I would’ve said yes before too.” Amy moved to pull him into another kiss but he stopped her, grinning.
“Who said I didn’t have a ring?” Jake shoved his hand in his pocket, rooting around in the deep cargo pants amongst all the extra bullets. He pulled out the vending machine ball, grinning as he popped it open.
“Oh Jake!” Amy said with all the exaggeration a plastic ring he’d broken out of a Sam’s Club dispenser was worth, “I love it!”
“Good, it was very expensive.” He shot back with a grin as he slipped the finger as far as it would go on her ring finger. As she wasn’t the intended audience for plastic rings (4 to 8 years of age) it didn’t go very far.
“Aw, look it. Just like our first date.” Jake watched her smile down at the glinting plastic ring, and he’s suddenly happier than he’s ever been in his life.
Her gaze shifts from the ring to his face, and she’s smiling up at him with the backdrop of a ruined city and in the middle of a sea of panels.
“Quite frankly the best first date I’ve ever had and you didn’t put out.” Jake threaded his finger through hers, trying not to knock the ring off.
“Well I can definitely make up for it now-” Amy started to say seductively, before noticing the binoculars. “After we do some recon work?”
“Partnership in the sheets, streets and-” Jake paused, “I can’t think of something that rhymes that could mean marriage. It’ll come to me.”
Amy picked up the binoculars and looked through them, looking towards the Mafia settlement. Her hand firmly in his, the plastic ring awkwardly lodged between their fingers.
“Yeah, It’ll come to you.” Jake could see Amy’s grin under the binoculars, as wide (not literally) as his own.
“Yeah, it’ll come to me.”
The zombie apocalypse was definitely going way better than Jake thought it would.