#definitely learnt a lesson in trying to do a slow fade type of ending to a very intense friendship two years ago…..

[pansoph]

it’s lowkey freaking hard navigating the vicissitudes of adult friendships…. one must be habituated with putting the big kid pants on and being hypercommunicative. Shaping the friendship with your hands rather than letting it take on its own narrative with collateral assumptions

[amyscascadingtabs]

this night is sparkling, don’t you let it go

She doesn’t fully comprehend how he gathers the energy for his signature boyish, goofy grin at one in the morning, but he does anyway and waves his phone at her. “I was going to play you my list of Taylor Swift favorites.”

“Ugh.”

“You said I could”, he reminds her with an accusatory expression that works all too well on her. “‘Sure, whatever.’ Those were your exact words.”

“Just keep it at a low volume. ”

Three times - all under wildly different circumstances - Jake plays Amy the same Taylor Swift song.

read on ao3

The first time Amy Santiago hears it is at the precinct.

She’s landed Jake Peralta as her partner for the money laundering case she’s currently working, and while he’s been peculiarly nice to her since he won their bet - even came to admit he enjoys working with her when she came close to taking a job at Major Crimes - he’s not the most efficient when it comes to going through pages and pages of income and transaction records. The fact that it’s currently one o’clock at night and Boyle broke the coffee machine trying to make chai latte in it aren’t helping their focus much either. She’s sticking with water as coffee-replacement, trying to attentively work through the records with her highlighter while Jake’s drinking something blue that can’t possibly be good for his heart, humming away on some upbeat melody and tapping his pen to the table in a drumming, repetitive manner. It would be a lie to say it doesn’t bother her, but she’s learnt from experience it’s a habit too ingrained in him for it to matter if she told him to stop.

He’s actually pretty charming like this, Amy notes. When he’s hard at work on a case without the pathological need to deliver a humorous line every other second, he suddenly becomes a lot more tolerable. She can even admit the messy, sleep-deprived look of his wrinkled flannel and tousled curls has a certain attractivity to it, especially in combination with the peering brown eyes flicking around the room whenever he gets distracted.

(It’s just the sleep-deprivation talking, though.)

(She doesn’t find Jake cute.)

(Really, she doesn’t.)

“Santia- gooo”, she hears just as she’s finished highlighting another dubious transaction in hot pink, the sudden noise causing her to flinch and her hand to slip, making an unintentional pink dot at the side of the paper.

“What do you want, Peralta?” She holds up the document in demonstration. “You’re ruining my notes.”

“Oh, come on, see it as a piece of art. Now your notes are just more unique.” She snorts at his creative attempt at avoiding an apology. “Anyway - you mind if I play some tunes? Helps me focus better.”

“Sure. Whatever.” She shrugs. “But no High School Musical soundtrack. Not again.”

“Pfft, you loved it when Boyle and I sang along to I Don’t Dance.”

“Absolutely didn’t.”

“And no, I won’t play High School Musical, even though it’s arguably the best Disney movie and musical of all time.“

“Absolutely isn’t.”

“Oh my god, Santiago, just let me finish.” She doesn’t fully comprehend how he gathers the energy for his signature boyish, goofy grin at one in the morning, but he does anyway and waves his phone at her. “I was going to play you my list of Taylor Swift favorites.”

“Ugh.”

“You said I could”, he reminds her with an accusatory expression that works all too well on her. “‘Sure, whatever.’ Those were your exact words.”

“Just keep it at a low volume.” She stifles a smile at the way his face lights up, jubilant over having convinced her.

Seconds later a slow ballad is playing in the bullpen. It’s softer, more tranquil than the music he usually plays until it picks up pace in the first chorus. Even then it doesn’t bother her much. She honestly truly enjoys the song, and because it’s late and she knows it’ll make him happy, she tells him so.

“It’s Enchanted”, he informs her, beaming with excitement. “It’s called that, I mean. It’s one of my favorites. I’ve always pictured this song playing at my wedding.” She raises a questioning eyebrow.

“You already have a song for that?”

“You don’t?”

“No?” This is brand new information to her, and she’s frankly finding it shocking. He never seemed the type who has a song picked out for their wedding even though they’re single to her - and she quite doubts he’ll ever be mature enough to want to get married. “I want something nice, instrumental. Live music.”

“Never said I didn’t want live music”, he retorts, pouting.

“I know for a fact you’re not allowed within five hundred feet of Taylor Swift, Peralta.”

“That was a misunderstanding!”

“Whatever you say”, she mumbles, returning to her documents and highlighter. Jake continues passionately singing along to the chorus, about a sparkling night and being enchanted to meet someone, and even though she’d deny it should anyone ask, she’s instantaneously grateful it’s him she’s working this late night with.

(He makes her laugh.)

She loses track of how many more times she hears the song after her and Jake become a couple. Truth be told, she loses track of how many times she hears any Taylor Swift song, because he plays them so often there's no use in keeping count. Amy's fully willing to admit some of the tunes are pretty catchy, and after a while she even begins to associate them with cherished memories from their relationship. Jake played Shake It Off on repeat to calm his nerves during their road trip to his first official Santiago Family Gathering, they've danced around the living room like fools to the soundtrack of both Blank Space and Style more than once and she beat him in memorizing all the lyrics to All Too Well when he bet her she couldn’t.

Enchanted still remains her favorite. It's the one song she can’t hear without remembering the time they were merely two competitive detectives, deadbeat on proving their skilfulness in whatever way possible, and how even when it feels like the universe has turned itself inside out since then and they’re oceans away from the people they used to be, they’re also in some ways entirely the same.

She whispers this, albeit in a much less coherent way than the thought appeared in her head, to Jake when they’re perched on Shaw’s bar stools after their unconventional precinct-curbside wedding, going through their shared Spotify library. They’re still giddy from the champagne and the exuberant joy of finally being married, and she has her doubts about whether they will be able to survive their first dance without unintentionally maiming each other, but Terry insisted on it being a crucial part of any wedding reception and so here they are.

“I think we’ve find our song”, Jake tells the bartender, handing him the phone so it can be plugged into the speaker system. “Ready, Mrs. Santiago-Peralta?” He says his own name after hers with unrelenting pride, and although they’ve agreed many times she is in no way his property for having married him, it's flattering.

“Ready.”

They make their way to what will serve as their dancefloor under close observation from their friends and the sound of Charles sobbing with happiness, hand in hand still trying to grasp the fact that they got here, they did it, they’re married.

The soft guitar of the melody she’d recognize anywhere starts playing, and she shifts focus from Rosa’s wolf-whistling and Holt’s modest smile to her husband.

“You know how terrible I am at dancing. It’s not going to be easier in this dress. You’ve been warned”, she advises him quietly.

“It doesn’t bother me”, he promises, and Amy knows it’s true.

This night is sparkling, don’t you let it go

I’m wonderstruck, blushing all the way home

I’ll spend forever wondering if you knew

I was enchanted to meet you

They’re mostly swaying back and forth, too enervated from their day of bomb threats and jealous exes and too aware of their limited skills in ballroom dancing to dare try something more advanced, but she likes it. It’s sweet and effortless, an harmonious oasis in the midst of Shaw’s buzzing atmosphere. He meets her eyes with an adoring smile as the tempo of the song slows down again, nearing the end.

Please don’t be in love with someone else, please don’t have somebody waiting on you, the lyrics repeat.

With what just having promised him the rest of their lives, matching silver rings on their left fourth fingers to demonstrate so, she knows there is no further need for her to prove she’s not in love with someone else. She kisses him anyway, the cheers and standing ovations from their friends fading to white noise with his lips under hers and his hands on her waist.

“I would marry you again any time, any place”, he says when they part. “I love you.”

She takes the chance to press another quick peck to his lips, grinning at the way she hears Charles squeal with euphoria from the couple’s uncharacteristic amount of PDA this evening. “I love you too.”

“Thank you for saying yes”, he whispers. “When I asked you to marry me.”

“Thank you for asking.”

Although several of the books on parenting Amy made sure to consume during the almost nine month eternity her pregnancy felt like said the same thing - that babies can recognize music played to them in utero after they’re born - it's still a partial shock to her when their daughter shows a certain affinity for Taylor Swift ballads early on. With the singer’s albums definitely playing throughout their apartment more often than Amy would like and Jake literally holding the phone to her bump while it plays his favorite Taylor hits at more than one instance, it really shouldn't have surprised her; but it does.

As with so many other lessons the couple learn on parenting, they discover it entirely by chance and in the middle of the night.

They’ve been parents for a long, exhilarating and exhausting week when they learn. In this week-long trial of parenthood, neither of them has had more than three consecutive hours of sleep or the opportunity to take a shower longer than five minutes, and it’s somehow all still been worth it. It’s only a little less worth it, possibly, when their daughter’s face is deep red and crumpled from exertion and she’s crying without stop, unflagging and indefatigable even though Amy has nursed her, burped her, checked her diaper a dozen times and walked at least forty laps around the living room in the middle of the night trying to bounce a screaming newborn to sleep.

“No success?” Jake stumbles into the living room just as she’s finishing lap forty-one. He looks disorientated either from the few minutes of sleep she told him to get or from lack of it; with the noise their progeny is making, she suspects the latter. She shakes her head in response, continuing the bouncing. “Did you try the pacifier?”

“Spits it out.”

“Want me to take over?”

“Please.” The smile she tries her best to give him comes out more an exhausted grimace, plagued by the soul-crushing sound of a panicked infant. Their daughter does go silent for a millisecond as Amy transfers her to Jake’s arms, a glimmer of hope burning before her parents eyes, but then the crying simply picks up where it left off.

“Man, you’re persistent”, he tells the infant before giving Amy a meaning look. “Much like someone else I know.”

“You’re not funny”, she mumbles and takes a swig from her water bottle on the dining room table otherwise covered in flowers and cards sent from family and friends.

“No, I guess that’s fair. She doesn’t seem to think so either. What’s bothering you, little Holly?” The sight of him talking to their baby in a soft voice and equally tender expression on his face is disarmingly sweet, and she wishes it wasn’t disrupted by the shrill soundtrack.

“I’ve vetoed Holly”, Amy reminds him warningly, laying down on the couch for at least a moment of physical rest. “And I don’t know what’s bothering her. I’ve tried everything. I think she’s just overtired and can’t figure out how to go to sleep.”

“Maybe we’re just trying too hard? Because she sure slept fine before she was born - she could be missing the environment. Must’ve been nice and comfortable in there.”

“Yeah, but I’ve held her so she can hear my heartbeat, and the bouncing should remind her of me moving around. I don’t get what else I can do.”

“Noise”, he states confidently. “I think she’s a little calmer when we’re speaking. Marginally, but still. And there must’ve been constant noise inside you, right? So this is way too silent for Johanna McClane.”

“I vetoed all Die Hard names, Jake. You give birth if you want to name a kid after those movies.” She hands him a lime green pacifier left on the couch table, but their daughter promptly spits it out again. “What are you suggesting in terms of noise then, baby-genius?”

Jake shines up at the nickname. “Ooh, nice title! And we haven’t tried music before, have we? Could be worth a shot.”

“Anything is worth a shot right now”, she agrees, stifling a yawn. “Hand me your phone. What should I play?”

“Just put on whatever I was listening to before.”

“I’m not playing her The Lonely Island.”

“Taylor Swift, then”, he says matter-of-factly. She scrolls down to the ‘t-swift favez’ playlist on Spotify and presses shuffle.

The first tones to Enchanted begin to play, and as if by magic, the crying lessens moderately. Amy hands Jake the phone so it’s closer to the baby, and by the time the first refrain ends their daughter is silent save the sound of her breathing.

They’re staring at each other in pure unadulterated shock as the newborn simply yawns her adorable yawn and closes her eyes against her father’s t-shirt.

“Put it on repeat”, Amy wheezes - a sentence she’s never said regarding any Taylor Swift song before. “Quick.”

Three plays later has a baby still fast asleep and two parents looking from her to each other to the phone in utter disbelief.

“So clearly my daughter.” Jake’s glowing from pride watching the sleeping copy of him continue her sleep, and Amy’s fighting both hormones and sleep-deprivation in order not to shed a tear of relief.

(She loses.)

She grows just a little bit tired of the song when their daughter is nearing one and still refuses to fall asleep through any other method than by being carried around the apartment as someone rocks her and plays the very same Taylor Swift ballad.

She also loves it more than ever, because now she’s learnt to associate it with the heartwarming sensation of a growing baby nestling her face into the crook of Amy’s neck, falling asleep before the end of the six minute track.

“I was really enchanted to meet you, Miss Leah”, she whispers a few nights later when the (non-Die Hard) name is finally settled on. “Always will be.”