#lots of 'if' statements in here. shoulda used a switch instead

[helielune]

if you have a work phone answer for your personal phone. unless you don't have a personal phone (????)

if you say other please elaborate 🥺🥺🥺 i know huawei has like a nonzero market share but i don't know if those users actually exist outside of the great firewall so i didn't put it in :)

for everyone: if you want, in the tags write which you have and vaguely where you live. also if you have any grievances with your phone os feel free to air them out bc that's kind of what sparked this in the first place

i'll give u a virtual human-sized hamster wheel if u rb. or a single apple. whichever u prefer.

[peralta-guaranteed]

i randomly remembered when enzo broke his arm around a year ago, i know it sounds mean but could you possibly do one of mac/maya doing the same (nothing major to cause it)

"It's okay." Amy hears herself repeat the phrase for probably the hundredth time now. "It's okay." It's probably supposed to calm them all down, all three adults and one little crying, screaming boy in the car, but it's barely working.

"It's not!" Jake hisses into her direction, the fear and panic and worry in his eyes more than obvious as he clutches Mac's head against his shoulder some more, tightens the grip around his back.

"It's gonna be, though." Rosa says from the driver's seat in front - she was clearly the calmest of all of them after what happened, so she'd grabbed Amy's purse, pulled their car keys out of it, and then pushed all three of them into the backseat before starting the car. And now she was making her way to the emergency wing of the hospital at about 15mp/h higher than allowed in the inner city. "The arm's broken, but not in a bad way. It's gonna heal."

"How can a bone break in a good way?" Asks the man who once stated that as long as his blood was still inside him, things were obviously good. Mac starts wailing a little louder in his arms.

"You're stressing him out." Rosa states, matter-of-fact, before slowing down just a little before a right turn so the kid in Jake's arms doesn't get jostled too much.

"It hurt." Mac sniffles and looks over at Amy with the reddest, most tear-filled eyes she's ever seen, and it takes a lot not to cry with him.

"It's gonna be okay, peanut. The doctors like uncle Jorge are going to fix it." She tries to calm him, and maybe Jake a little bit, who nods and scratches through Mac's hair like he does when he's trying to lull him into sleep.

-*-

They make it to the emergency room in record time, frankly, and if Rosa's rushed past some traffic lights and speed radars, Amy's not going to complain once the tickets come in the mail.

A bored-looking nurse informs them that there’s only enough space for one parent in the room during the x-ray and the cast and treatment, and Jake wants to debate for the first time in his life, because that’s obviously bullshit, but Amy puts a hand on his arm and then lifts Mac out of them.

“Sit with Rosa”, she says in that voice she’s started using after Mac, that mom-voice that’s always right, “Calm down, and we’ll be back before you know it. And it’s all going to be fine.”

She’s off with the crying toddler and nurse before Jake can really protest, and Rosa is already sitting in a corner of the waiting area, so he drops down next to her instead and buries his head in his hands.

“Dude, you’re blowing this out of proportion. Kids hurt themselves all the time. He’s gonna bounce back like always.”

“I broke his arm, Rosa.”

There’s a beat of silence between them as the weight of that statement settles. Rosa gives up her nonchalant pose to lean forward as well, trying to get into Jake’s field of vision, but it’s kinda hard when he’s staring down onto the floor.

“You did not.” She hisses. “Jake, you didn’t. He fell. He was climbing. It happens.”

“I helped him up on that tower, he’s too little for it-”

“It’s on the playground, he was gonna go for it eventually-”

“I was right next to him-”

“So were Amy and I-”

“You were talking-”

“So at least you were paying better attention-”

“I coulda grabbed him, I shoulda-”

“You did what you could, immediately and without question. It’s not your fault the kid drops faster than a cannonball.” Rosa ends their little squabble, and the old lady across them lets out a little harrumph, but Rosa shoots her the deadliest glare she can muster, which means a lot. “You were over there in a flash, Jake, I’ve never seen you move so fast.”

“Wasn’t fast enough. Wasn’t good enough.” He mumbles into his hands, rubbing across his face and his hair that’s already a mess. Rosa watches him for a moment, and calculates. Pieces together the evidence, like she does as a detective, and comes to a solution that most people probably won’t like, but those usually get her results.

“Do you want to leave?” She asks, and he looks at her like she’s grown a second head. “Amy’s got it under control, she told you. It’s probably gonna take a while, anyway, we can dip out for a drink to calm down and come back and they’ll be none the wiser.”

“Are you insane?!” Jake hisses back now, giving her exactly the reaction she’d expected. “I’m not going to leave my son in the hospital to go to a bar-”

He stops and stares at her, and it seems like his own detective brain is finally catching up with his panicked dad brain, because he sees what she’s doing. So she nods.

“You’re still good. You’re still better.” She says, and they don’t need to mention who he’s better than. It was the first of his stories that he told her, after he hurt something in his wrist at the academy - how that wrist never really healed right anyway, not since he was 5 and Bobby Linder drove over it with his tricycle by accident and his mom had to rush him to the hospital and his dad asked ‘what is that?’ with beer on his breath when he showed him the cast later. They’d known each other for barely a month back then, and Rosa was still refusing to think of anyone as her friend, but the way he’d looked at his wrist in its bandage and smiled the most broken smile she’d ever seen had set something off in her head. Something that yelled Protect at her every time he mentioned his dad later, something that made her threaten Roger Peralta with one of her knives after their graduation when Jake was in the bathroom ‘real quick’, but she knew he was hiding in there so no one could see his hands shake. Good thing Rosa never gave a damn about going into the men’s toilets anyway, because she sure as hell went after him when Roger had dipped out as usual.

She watches Jake’s tense shoulders drop with another sigh.

“Being better doesn’t make me good. That bar is set so fucking low.”

“I’m not having this entire discussion with you again, Peralta. We’ve been through this way too many times anyway. You. are. a. good. dad. One accident doesn’t change that.”

“Okay.” He nods, and she can tell he’s trying to imprint her words into his brain, so she continues.

“Mac’s going to hurt himself, and others are going to hurt him, and things are gonna go bad sometimes. You’ll probably be back here in the hospital a few times, considering how much he seems to love danger. And it’s going to be okay, just like Amy said, because you’re going to be there, and you’ll help him through it, and take care of him while he heals.”

“Yeah.” He nods again, and Rosa leans closer to him some more, and finally gets into his field of vision.

“And you’re not going to even think, for one second, that you could be anywhere as bad of a father as that piece of shit. And you’re not going to believe, whatever anyone says, that Mac doesn’t know how lucky he is to have you as a dad.”

He nods a third time, and she remembers how he jokingly told her once, after a few drinks, that the little screaming voice of conscience in his head always alternates between either Amy’s voice or her voice. She hopes she’s given him some new tracks to replay if he needs to.

“Thank you, Rosa.” He says, and leans back in the most uncomfortable chair either of them have sat in, and they’ve both been to prison. He tilts over when she leans back too, lands his head on her shoulder, and she doesn’t shrug him off for once. She can have a soft spot for the Santiago-Peraltas when no one else is there to see, she supposes.

“You looked like you wanted to punch out that nurse.” She says with a quick grin, and hears him snort.

“Was thinking about it. Not enough space for two parents, what kind of bullshit is that?!”

“You couldn’t throw a proper punch anyway.”

“Hey, I know how to hit people. I trained to do it just as much as you.”

They share a giggle as the exhaustion and stress of the last hour flows out of them, and the old lady across them seems mildly shocked rather than annoyed by now, but who cares.

-*-

Amy comes back with Mac in her arms an hour later, and they’re both all smiles. Mac sports an impressive new sticker collection on his shirt, and a lollipop that’s painting his lips orange. (Amy’s have a slight tint to them as well.)

The cast on his arm is bright green, and he carefully lifts it to show Jake as he switches from his Mama’s arms into his. (Jake had jumped up from his chair so fast he almost threw Rosa, who was also getting up, to the ground.)

“Like ninja!” he says around the lollipop, and Amy wipes a bit of spit away before it can drop on Jake’s shirt.

“Yeah, just like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, buddy.” Jake nods because of course he understands his kid’s train of thought better than anyone else, and kisses Mac’s temple, stays there a second longer for that perfect toddler scent, even as it’s mixed with hospital disinfectant and playground mud.

“Look, RoRo!” Mac yells into his ear and leans over to show Rosa as well. “Turtle shell!”

“That’s pretty cool, dude.” Aunt RoRo answers as she inspects the cast to see if it’s well done or if she has to go back there and punch out a nurse herself. “Let’s get you three home.” She says after concluding that the cast is acceptable enough to let the poor hospital workers alone.

-*-

She was planning to drop them off, park their car and then head for the precinct where her bike is waiting for her, but Amy invited her up for some coffee for ‘her nerves’, and Jake offered dinner as a thanks, and Mac absolutely needed to show her the new toy he got in that package from abuela, and then suddenly she’s on a playmat on the floor for an hour after Chinese takeout and pretending to be a Ninja Tortoise or whatever. That soft spot is gonna be more trouble than it’s worth, she thinks for a second before Mac smiles at her as his Jedi figure shoots lasers at her turtle doll, and immediately realises it’s worth so much more than any trouble. Mac looks at his cast a little worried, whenever he thinks no one is watching him, and god, could he be any more like his dad? At least she and Amy already have a good instructions booklet on how to handle him, in that case.

“That green cast is pretty cool.” She says when she catches him look once more. “But you know what would make it even cooler? Drawings.”

“Drawies? On my arm?”

“Yeah, buddy. We can draw on it with a sharpie.”

He’s up and running to Amy, asking for a sharpie, in no time at all and yep, he is just as easily distracted as his dad. Mac grins wide and unworried now as he climbs on Jake’s lap on the couch, asks Amy to draw something when she returns with a set of markers, calls Rosa over to draw something too.

Amy does a little bear, his favourite animal at the moment. Rosa does a rocket ship and a pirate ship, the two best ships in the world, as they both agree. Jake does a Ninja Turtle cartoon face yelling PIZZA!, which is obviously Mac’s absolute favourite the moment it’s done.

When Jake wants to cap the Sharpie after his work of art, Mac grabs his hand and pulls it back down. “Steady, peanut. Don’t wanna scribble over Aunt RoRo’s cool ship, right?” He says with a grin over to her as she rolls her eyes. Mac’s already tried to cover several walls, most of his storytime books, and the kitchen table with his drawings as soon as he’s handed any sort of writing tool, so Jake won’t let go of the marker just to be safe, but he does let Mac’s little hand guide his big one as he makes him draw a wonky heart, right on the cast over the back of his hand, and then places a kiss on the same place on Jake’s hand.

You’re not going to believe, whatever anyone says, that Mac doesn’t know how lucky he is to have you as a dad the little Rosa voice in Jake’s head repeats as he smiles at her, and she actually smiles back.