#but im a long time b99 lurker

[1wellorganizedmind]

Jake Peralta: Stepdad!AU

So this was going to be an actual fic, but, alas, any sort of narrative wouldn't come, so instead allow me to offer a series of (not at all canon-timeline compliant) headcanons about Amy Santiago's tiny daughter taking Jake in as part of the family:

When Amy starts at the Nine-Nine, she is Very Adamant that Jake will never meet Maya, largely because a) He's the worst, and b) Maya doesn't need to see her mother curse out a fellow employee, but mostly c) He's The Worst.

Except she only lasts twelve days, at which point Captain McGinley calls her in on her day off because he's finally realized that his new detective has started and he wants to meet her, even though they have met four (4) times and he's assigned two cases to her and Jake

It's supposed to be a short meeting and she promises a very teary-eyed Maya that she'll be real quick, but she needs to go in without Maya because McGinley looks like he might yell for some reason, Amy can just tell, and Sarge isn't here and Amy barely knows anyone else and Jake offers, basically

Maya is just v. v. teary when Amy blows her a quick kiss before entering McGinley's office

The meeting lasts exactly forty-seven minutes

Amy expects A Disaster when she gets out, or at the very least a very stressed-out Jake trying to pass her daughter off on someone else

But instead Maya is sitting in Jake's lap with two of his superhero figurines gripped between her sweaty little hands, patiently telling a story while Jake writes on a piece of paper next to her

"And then there's a dragon," Maya says breathlessly, and Jake nods along patiently

"Fire-breathing or bearded?" he offers, and Maya really considers it for a moment before deciding on bearded. "Got it, I've jotted that down."

"I thought no one was allowed to touch your dolls?" Amy asks when she gets to them, and she's a little stressed out about this whole situation because Jake is suddenly, like, a kind person? Who's been watching her daughter for forty-seven minutes and counting?

"Uh, obviously this is Red Metal Man and Mr. Star, okay."

It's not. It's Iron Man and Captain America, and Amy can tell because she's not totally out of the loop of the cultural zeitgeit, okay, and she sometimes pays attention to movie posters and has very definitely seen at least two of the superhero movies

"Plus I believe I said no Santiagos, and that was back before I knew there was a cool Santiago in the clan."

Maya, meanwhile, has grabbed a pen off of Jake's desk and is now leaning precariously over said desk and drawing on some of the large blank spaces Jake had left on the paper

And Amy realizes that Jake was writing down Maya's story but made sure there was room so she could draw

Jake grins at her sheepishly, braces Maya with one hand on her back to make sure she doesn't slip, and says, "It's her vision, and she's, like, a really good storyteller."

Amy swoons, but in a low-key, subtle way. Probably.

Anyway, but Jake is also The Worst, so it doesn't matter

After The Incident In Which Amy Santiago Most Definitely Did Not Swoon, they definitely become partners for realsies

Jake doesn't see Maya again until a few months later, when Amy's in a pinch and needs someone to watch her for, like, a half-hour while she runs over to her doctor, but it really gets the ball rolling and all of a sudden Maya only wants Jake to babysit her

And Jake is, like, hella into it. He's still mostly dating around and trying to run off on his own and be a badass, but he's really into this tiny four-year-old with a heavy lisp and too-big glasses who tries to tell him stories about dragons and butterflies and Mr. Star, who all of a sudden plays the lead in every one of her adventures

Also it's a great distraction from buying turntables and he has an excuse to go see kid's movies, on Amy's dime no less

So for years, whenever Amy has a date, she lets Jake know an appropriate number of days (fourteen) in advance, and Jake says yes 100% of the time, and never tells anyone that he very carefully rearranges any conflicts in his schedule so he can hang out with Tiny Santiago

Tiny Santiago likes this nickname approximately 37% of the time, but she really likes it when Jake starts calling her Killer Santiago after one incident in which she's running too fast and knocks him over onto his butt and he almost dies he's laughing so hard

Amy doesn't care for it

And literally every time Amy comes home pre-bedtime, Maya is sitting on the couch with Jake laughing so hard that her face is bright red and flushed, and her shy little stressed-out kiddo just has the best time that Amy doesn't have the heart to try to give Jake a break the next time she has a date

And then post-bedtime, Jake is always sitting on the couch alone, looking exhausted and happy and he always grins sleepily and drags his butt off the couch and makes a million sex tape jokes about her date and refuses to let Amy pay him

And at the precinct, as the years go by, Jake and Amy get more and more comfortable with each other, and Amy tells him about Maya's dad, who's never been in the picture, and she tells him about her plans to be the youngest Captain, "but it's hard, you know, 'cause I can't put in the overtime the rest of you guys can, and I can only keep working on cases after Maya goes to bed, and maybe not everything will work out 100% according to plan and that's fine because it's so worth it, but--"

Jake shuts her up and very specifically tells her that she's the second-best detective in the precinct, "and you'll obviously be Captain before I will, because I'm going to go out as a detective, chained to my desk, and also, like, Captains have so much paperwork."

Anyway so when Jake goes undercover, he can't stop to say goodbye to anyone, and he's had this crazy crush on Amy that's just started to become a thing, and he specifically asks her to tell Maya that he loves her and he's hella excited to show her Die Hard when he gets back and oh, also, he thinks Teddy is great but he likes Amy too, romantic-stylez, okaythanksbye

Amy manages a "You will not show my daughter Die Hard, Jake, she's SEVEN," but it's faint and she's pretty sure Jake didn't hear and there's that swooning thing again

Except he comes back, and it's not like Amy could exactly explain "oh, Jake just went undercover with the mob, I wouldn't worry about it" to her seven-year-old, so she just keeps saying that he's on a work thing and can't call or swing by

Terrible Mistake

When Jake comes back Maya is, like, level three-thousand excited to see him, and screams out loud in the apartment, which, okay, Maya Santiago would never, but here she is, screaming

But she's shy again when she calms down, and she mumbles a lot and basically doesn't laugh at all, even when Jake teases her by calling her Tiny Santiago again

"Killer Santiago?" he tries, and one corner of Maya's mouth twitches up against her will

So after Much Freaking Out by Jake ("She thinks I abandoned her, Amy! I abandoned her to the wolves!" "In this context, am I 'the wolves?'" "Yes, obviously!") he finally settles down and sits Maya down for a Very Serious Talk

The Serious Talk portion of it lasts approximately three minutes, but Jake very clearly states that he was, like Mulan, on an undercover mission and he couldn't call or swing by without revealing that he was Not Who He Said He was, and also that he quite likes her new glasses and would like for her to keep reading him Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and he remembers that they were on chapter twelve, right, and could she please help him finish?

He is Forgiven, grudgingly, but is v. careful to show up 100% of the time thereafter, including every french horn recital and spelling bee

which are, incidentally, unequivocably the worst, but Maya Santiago is so earnest and excited that it's hard not to be excited too, and proud!Amy is too much for Jake's weak little heart to bear

Because of the whole romantic-stylez thing, Amy tries very hard not to ask Jake to babysit when she's got a date with Teddy, for reasons of trying to be a humane person, but Jake starts begging her to let him babysit on any given night, for reasons of Trying to Make It Up to Maya, and eventually Amy gives in and things go back to normal

Until The Undercover Lovers Operation (title (c) Charles), after which things get both Complicated and also Fun

For their first date, obviously Jake can't babysit Maya so Amy ropes Rosa into doing it (rip both Rosa and Maya), and at least Maya gets to watch Frozen, even though they sit in complete silence for the duration of the movie

Most subsequent dates Maya comes with

After The Marriage (here we are, finally, at the stepdad part of this stepdad!AU), Jake finally moves in with them, and Maya is almost ten years old and going into the fifth grade and Obsessed with dragons

Jake and Amy specifically tag-team helping her with the following projects:

A presentation on the constellation Draco, which was chosen for Harry Potter reasons but also for dragon reasons;

A to-scale model of the coolest volcano Jake knows by name, which is Vesuvius, and which is also probably not to scale;

A book report on Anne of Green Gables;

A movie review of the action-thriller Catch That Kid;

A creative story about Captain America, yes I know it's not Mr. Star, Jake, I'm now almost a preteen, okay?

And multiplication tables, which Maya excels at and Jake largely nods along

Obviously Amy fact-checks the projects before submission, she knows what's up

They build blanket forts once a month, spanning the entire apartment, and camp out inside of it if it's just the three of them, but Jake and Amy also round Maya up to make one on the days she has friends coming over for a sleepover, and Maya Santiago's sleepovers are forever the best sleepovers to be at

Even though Maya's stepdad tries to tell embarrassing jokes every time

At least Amy laughs

A year or so into their marriage, Jake starts learning Spanish in earnest, because Amy's taught Maya her whole life and she's getting nervous that Maya will forget it as she gets older if she doesn't practice

He is Terrible, but he gets individual words at a time and commits to them so whole-heartedly that he eventually manages most of a conversation, so long as he only uses nouns and simple verbs and never, ever pronouns

Amy is not too proud to say she doesn't swoon over that a little, too

But also refuses to try to hold a conversation with him in Spanish, because every part of it, from pronunciation to execution to grammar, is terrible and it physically hurts her being

Jake is suddenly privvy to all sorts of stuff he wasn't before, like the Morning Ritual, wherein Amy packs Maya's lunch, kisses the top of her head, and asks Maya what she's going to do at school

"Be respectful!"

Sometimes this conversation is preceded with a thorough quizzing on Maya's multiplication tables, while Jake still nods along

A year or so after Amy makes Captain she has to miss one recital and is Devastated and implements Code Three, which means that Jake has to pull out her Code Binder so he can figure out that Code Three means "Emergency Shit-Hit-the-Fan Level of Planning: Come On, You Can Do This, Amy," and basically Amy's been preparing for this her whole life, but she just can't make it work

Jake, who, again, has willingly endured these recitals for years now with all of the required embarrassing enthusiasm, pleads with the school until they lend him a video camera from the A/V Club and he gets the whole thing on tape

Amy Santiago loves her phone, but she loves long-lasting, backed-up, physical copies of videos, okay?

Plus this means that Jake can set up a sheet in the living room with a projector he borrowed from the precinct so Amy can see the whole thing like she's there

And Maya cringes in embarrassment the whole time, partially because listening to yourself play is the worst

But mostly because of the loud whooping that drowns out the clapping when she's done

Jake's not the least bit embarrassed

And he washes the sheet the minute they're done

And either because of the washing-the-sheet thing or the video thing (there's no way for him to know), he gets to enthuasiasically make out with his wife on the couch when Maya disappears into her bedroom and it is The Best

Anyway mostly just Maya Santiago is a happy, independent, smart kid, and it's all Amy's doing and Jake gets to witness the whole thing

And then he gets to become a part of it

And he gets make both Santiagos laugh until they cry and make them pancakes on Saturday morning and calm them down when they get anxious and force them to watch Die Hard with him the exact day Maya turns eighteen, he's been so patient, okay

And Maya goes on to write about dragons forever, although she doesn't get to draw a picture on every page anymore

And Jake Peralta and Amy Santiago 100% cry when her first book gets published and Amy proofread the book between captain duties even before it went to the editor and was Very Pleased that there were no typos, and Jake read it with tears in his eyes and his entire review was "Noice. Smort." before he wrapped Maya in a hug

Maya is hella embarrassed by her nerdy parents, basically

In summary, I have a lot of feelings about the Jake we meet in S1 learning to be an Adult and finding a family by hanging with a miniature, dragon-loving Santiago kiddo.