#peraltiago soulmate au

[thelighthousemp3]

my blood was once my own (what have you done?)

Summary: In a world where two soulmates feel each other's physical pain, Amy still doesn't really understand the whole soulmates thing, and she's not sure if she really wants to understand it. She knows that she wants to meet her soulmate though, but she just doesn't expect her soulmate to be Jake Peralta (he sure gets hurt a lot, though). 

Notes:   I’ve been working on this soulmate AU for quite some time and I’m really happy with what I’ve managed to write! The title lyrics are from “Anyone Else” by PVRIS. Also, I wanna thank @exploding-snapple for reading this over and giving me advice and feedback on how to improve it and just being awesome in general, and @outofinspo and @cheddar-the-dog for reading this over for me and being so nice and supportive!!! love my mutuals so much :) <3

read on ao3 or down below

When Amy Santiago is merely three years old, she steps on a lego, even though there isn’t a lego in sight. She dismisses it however, because she owns a ton of legos (mostly stolen from her brothers), and as a result, there are almost always a few littering the floor somewhere. So, she simply scrunches up her face and continues walking towards her father’s study, in search of some paper that she could scribble on.

What she doesn’t expect, however, is the feeling of about a million legos pressing into the bottom of both of her feet. Amy howls loudly and drops to the floor, trying to understand why her feet are hurting so bad even though there isn’t anything there (She doesn’t know it, but a young boy named Jake Peralta has just been dared by his best friend to walk across a floor of legos, and Jake Peralta is no coward to back down from a dare). Amy wails for her mother, but instead, her older brother Tony comes flying into the room. And that’s how she finds out about “soulmates.” The concept is far too complicated for Amy to grasp, but nevertheless she tries, showering her parents and her brothers with questions every opportunity she gets.

Pretty soon, though, the whole incident flies out of her head and she forgets about “soulmates”, because she’s three years old and there are more important things for her to be doing (such as filling up Tony’s math workbook with doodles, learning to read, and building complex buildings out of legos).

When she’s four and well versed in the art of reading, Tony, after much persuasion, finally agrees to let Amy come to the library with him. Amy is thrilled. As soon as they get to the library, she goes straight to the “soulmates” section and pulls out a book that looks to be about twice her weight. What she doesn’t expect, however, is the thin paper slicing into her index finger as she delicately turns the pages. Amy yelps in pain, quickly withdrawing her hand from the book and staring and the long red mark. It’s the first time she feels completely aware of her soulmate, ever since the lego incident.

She tells her brother while they’re riding back home on the bus. “I hurt my soulmate today,” she says innocently, peering up at Tony with large brown eyes. “But not on purpose.” Tony assures her that it's "never on purpose," but Amy suddenly realizes that it could be on purpose. She steers clear from harm though, even if her soulmate is constantly getting scratches and bruises here and there. The more she thinks about it, she realizes that she could do anything— stub her toe, nick her finger on a knife— to bring her soulmate to be aware of her.

Five-year-old Amy reveals this to her mother when caught gingerly holding a kitchen knife in one hand. She had been wondering if she should leave a small scratch on the palm of her hand— it’s been a while since her soulmate has gotten hurt (almost three weeks; a broken record!) and even though Amy has been careful to not get hurt, she can’t help but wonder what would happen if she did. Would her soulmate know that she had gotten hurt?

"Amy, you can't deliberately hurt your soulmate," her mother chides. "You're supposed to love your soulmate and try to keep them out of pain." This starts a chorus of "Amy hates her soulmate!" through some of her more annoying brothers (David being the ringleader, of course), and Amy tries to protest it, but they persist. She doesn't mind, though, because her mother winks at her and slips her an extra cookie, which to Amy, is much better than reprimanding her brothers.

A few months later, one of Amy’s older brothers starts dating a girl from his class. When Amy finds out, she eagerly asks, “is she your soulmate?” And it turns out that no, the girl is not his soulmate, and Amy becomes very confused as to why they’re dating then.

“Well,” her brother says, sitting down next to her on the couch, “not everyone finds their soulmate, you know. And someone doesn’t need to be your soulmate for you to love them, because while the whole concept of “soulmates” is cool and all, it doesn’t always work out. So you can date whoever you want, Ames, and I want you to know that you can love whoever the hell you want.” It’s more difficult for Amy to grasp because a) she wants to end up with her soulmate?? and b) but now she can end up with whoever she wants??? “Basically what I’m saying,” her brother continues, “is that you’re in control of your own life, and fuck the universe.”

“Swear jar!” David shouts as he bursts into the room, pointing at the tall jar set at the edge of the mantle. As Amy’s brother rolls his eyes and gets up, Amy is left on the couch, contemplating what he has just said to her. She’s in control of her own life. That’s fine with Amy; she likes to be in control.

“Don’t overthink it okay?” he turns around and says to Amy, right after slipping a dollar into the jar. And so Amy tries to not give it much thought because after all, she’s only five and she still has years to figure her life out.

When Amy’s six years old, there is only one occurrence of her feeling her soulmate’s pressing pain, and it’s a strange occurrence too. Amy’s sitting at her desk in her bedroom, working on summer math problems, when something hits her lungs and sucks all the oxygen out of her. Well, it feels like the oxygen’s been sucked out of her, because it hasn’t really, of course. She’s just feeling whatever’s happening to her soulmate.

But Amy gasps, drawing in air and spluttering as she drops her pencil onto the floor. She manages to scream, once, twice, before her father comes running in. He holds her, telling her “Amy, mija! Breathe! Breathe!” and so Amy does, and it seems hard at first, but she breathes with all of her might, because everything is okay, right? Her dad still insists on taking her to the ER, where they tell her that no, Amy doesn’t have asthma, and no, there is no sign of any damage in her body. It must have been something that her soulmate was feeling.

The next day, the local newspaper has a heading on page two that says “EIGHT YEAR OLD BOY NEARLY DROWNS AND IS SAVED BY LIFEGUARD”. The newspaper doesn’t reveal the boy’s name, but Amy feels a pang in her chest as she reads it and she just knows that it’s her soulmate. She tries getting Tony to take her down to the news office, but he gently tells her to not “push things,” for after all, she’s only six. And after some time, Amy drops it.

Elementary school is fun for Amy. Easy, but fun. She breezes through worksheets and readings and even offers to help around the classroom with grading and organizing. And thus begins the “Amy is hurt” saga. She pokes herself with a sharp colored pencil on the first day, drawing blood. One day, she accidentally nearly staples her finger, and another day she steps on a thumbtack. The number of paper cuts covering her fingers increases as well, and David starts a jar called the “Amy is hurt” jar. The rules are simple: every time one of the Santiago brothers see a scar or a bruise or mark on Amy’s body, they put a coin into the jar. The jar is supposed to go to Amy when she finds her soulmate, but Amy knows that the jar will fill up far before this happens. But no matter how often Amy gets hurt, her soulmate gets hurt way more often, and this telling comes in the form of the constant stubbed toes and the sharp pokes and skinned knees and the occasional nip on the hand by what feels like teeth? Does her soulmate have a pet?

One morning, she’s in the fifth grade and sitting inside and reading a book in the classroom during recess time. Her teacher sits at the desk at the front of the classroom, grading papers. Amy’s enjoying the third Harry Potter book, when she feels a smidge of pain biting at her knee. She tries to ignore it at first, because who knows what her soulmate is up to? But it grows and Amy bites her lip— she lets out a sharp gasp which has her teacher look up with concern.

“Are you okay, Santiago?” he asks, but Amy’s eyes are welling up with tears that are threatening to spill out. Amy manages to nod, but as soon as she looks down at her knees, the tears spill out and give it all away. “Is it your soulmate?” her teacher asks, giving her a knowing look, and Amy nods.

“I’m okay,” she says, “it’ll go away.” And it does, about half an hour later when Amy’s in the middle of English class. Her teacher goes easy on her that day, which she’s thankful for, because Amy doesn’t think that she would have been able to read out loud properly that day. Her knee still stings for a few days after, but she manages to get through it all while cursing her soulmate (she ends up losing about ten dollars to the swear jar and then about ten more after she curses out David for ratting her out).

“I’m gonna find my soulmate before you find yours,” David tells her one weekend when they’re sitting on the couch at home, bored out of their minds. Amy has a geometry workbook out in front of her, but it isn’t appealing to her at the moment, so she’s just staring out of the window. She tries to ignore David and solve a question about circumference in her head, but he says it again.

“Did you hear me? I’m gonna find my soulmate before you, Amy.” David sits down onto the couch next to her and glances over at the workbook. “The answer is 36 pi,” he says, and Amy promptly slams the book shut.

“I know,” she says, seething. “And you’re never gonna find your soulmate before me. You probably don’t even have a soulmate, because no one will ever love you!”

Her parents, unfortunately, walk in right at that second. Amy’s picture is put on the staircase, as David’s picture gloats at her from up on the mantle. So she storms up to her room in a rage, vowing that she’ll find her soulmate before David.

Middle school hits Amy like a whirlwind. Suddenly, the number one conversation during lunch and break is soulmates. One girl claims that she’s already found her soulmate. The others place lunch money bets on who’s going to end up with who. They play truth or dare; the dares always ending up to be something like “go punch Sammy, and we’ll see if Ally feels it.”

Amy hates all of it. She sits in the corner of the cafeteria with her nose in a book, occasionally peering over it to see who’s just been dared to pinch who.

Near the end of sixth grade, one pair is actually proven to be soulmates, causing an uproar in the school. One girl had been dared to punch another guy in the stomach, and across the cafeteria, a different girl doubled over in pain. The kids lead a few more experiments, and prove the two to be actual, real life soulmates.

Amy doesn’t know what to think of this. The two kids literally didn’t know each other before, and they had just found out that they were supposed to be soulmates. How is that supposed to work?! And with that, Amy realizes that soulmates are actually much more complex and trickier than she had realized.

She soars through middle school fast, graduating the eighth grade as valedictorian (which really, had been a very easy feat, as most of the other kids barely knew pre-algebra while Amy was reading over her older brothers’ trigonometry and calculus homework). High school comes as a storm, and the real soulmates drama starts, because there are at least three pairs who are already matched up as soulmates somehow. And then there’s the whole intricate mess of teenage feelings and playing with love, which Amy really hates.

So she ignores most of everything outside of academics, leading the stenographer’s club (which she is self-elected president of) and the after-school study hall. She is soaring high with her grades, which are the best that the high school has seen in a long time (she manages to get 100-120% on most of her finals), and doing her best to just ignore soulmates.

Graduation comes with Amy giving the valedictorian speech, but yet again, soulmates drama ruins everything again. She’s trying to give her speech when one kid trips in the stands, and from across the hall, another kid yells out in pain. Two soulmates found yet again right at the end of high school, in the middle of Amy’s supposed moment.

She’s a little jealous, though, and deep down she’s scared that she’ll never find her soulmate like all of these people are finding theirs. Then she would have to lose the soulmate bet to David and live in shame for like, ever. But she disguises her jealousy as annoyance, and just continues with life.

She’s studying hard at college when her soulmate makes a comeback. The feeling of bruised knuckles and sore abs makes Amy wonder what her soulmate is getting up to, and she finds herself daydreaming of her soulmate in the middle of an art history lecture. Is he an athlete? Does he live across the world from her, or is he situated in New York? What does he look like? What would his voice sound like—

“Santiago, do you know who first introduced the concept of modernism?” Her professor’s voice cuts right through Amy’s daydreams like a sharp knife.

“Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier in the mid-twentieth century introduced modernism in architectural structure through their glass buildings,” Amy answers with confidence, and her professor moves on after giving her a short nod.

Her soulmate is working out; that much she knows. His legs and arms ache at night, and Amy’s sure that he’s been building some muscles. Why? She doesn’t know, but she hopes to meet him and find out one day.

One night, Amy’s sitting alone in her crappy Brooklyn apartment that she had just gotten for a pretty good rent price. She’s scrolling through her phone and staring at the pictures that David had just sent in the Santiago family group chat— the ones of him living it up and partying after his police training academy graduation ceremony. Amy had been invited to the party, of course, but she had made something up about finishing up some studying for university. She sits on the couch, almost asleep, when a dozen shards of glass seem to rip into her palms. Amy jolts awake and shakes out her hands with a little bit of fear rising up in her, because her soulmate it a real stupid-head and she sure hopes that he hasn’t done anything really stupid just now. A few seconds later, however, the pain dulls and her fingers turn cold, so she ignores the blood throbbing in her hands and falls back asleep on the couch.

She enrolls in the police training academy a month later, mostly because her papa was a great cop and she looks up to him, but also because David’s already gone through with the police training academy and Amy kinda sorta just really wants to beat David in life. Maybe if she can make detective faster than him, then maybe she’ll find her soulmate faster than him. It’s a weird sense of logic, but Amy just goes through with it and enrolls in the academy.

She’s top in her class there, as usual. At least, with the academic portion of training academy. She has to work a little bit harder with the physical part of it, so she ends up going to the gym nearly every night and giving it her all until she’s visibly improved.

Amy learns how to kick down doors and run miles faster than she ever could before. She memorizes all of the ten-codes and legal procedures for different types of crimes. She learns all of the ropes of the legal world, and suddenly she’s graduating from police training academy at the top of her class. (David isn’t invited to the party. The party consists of some of her fellow graduates and her old friends Kylie, and some other people she doesn’t know.)

Beat cop life starts… rough. Amy’s a Latina woman in a precinct full of white dudes, and she’s almost sure that most of them make fun of her— the way she has to be so precise with her paperwork, so organized with her desk, and perhaps taking notes at the morning briefing wasn’t necessary.

One guy sticks out of the rest, though. He’s nice to Amy, helping her sort through her paperwork and solve cases. He tells the others to stop when they start mocking Amy, and Amy just has to crack a smile because maybe being a beat cop isn’t going to be so bad. His name is Teddy, and it’s the first time Amy’s wished that someone in front of her is her soulmate.

He’s most likely not, though, because Amy gets pretty ragged up on the job; he gets pretty ragged up on the job, and besides, somewhere Amy’s soulmate is getting ragged up every other day too. Amy knows that Teddy isn’t her soulmate, because one day, she cuts herself on a shard of glass while they’re scouring the crime scene (she mentally beats herself up for ruining such a valuable piece of evidence) and Teddy doesn’t even wince. Amy even sees his face fall before offering to go get her a bandage or something to wrap her hand up in. Amy’s not sure whether she’s relieved or disappointed that Teddy isn’t her soulmate, but after she cuts her hand, she feels a thick needle poke into her skin and lets out a yelp. Granted, Amy herself had just gotten hurt, but her soulmate is nevertheless… a moron.

Amy climbs through her beat cop years with high spirits. The job is hard work but engaging and fun, and Amy’s stayed long working hours, worked overtime, and she’s just ready to get a promotion.

The promotion doesn’t come easily. Her captain is, well, gross. Amy works exceptionally hard for her promotion, devoting hours to studying for the detective’s exam, but her captain insists that it’s him, pulling some strings around for her to get her a promotion. It doesn’t make Amy feel good, so she files for a transfer almost immediately after ranking detective.

“The Ninety-Ninth Precinct,” she reads aloud, as soon as she receives her transfer papers. Her captain almost immediately pops up.

“Oh, I know the captain of the Nine-Nine. McGintley. You’ll do great there.” His voice makes her feel well, uncomfortable, and Amy tries sliding away from him. However, he persists, telling Amy about all of the wonderful things that could happen if she stayed in this precinct.

She moves to the Nine-Nine a day later. She’s greeted by a man with wildly curly hair— he’s wearing a sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled up as he shakes her hand and welcomes her to the Nine-Nine. Amy pushes her bangs out of her face as another, shorter, man walks up behind them. “I hear wedding bells!” he chirps, and Amy looks uncomfortably up at Detective Jake Peralta, who looks as uncomfortable as she feels.

“That’s Charles,” he says with embarrassment laced into his voice. “Sorry.”

“Uh, no need to apologize,” she says, “do you know where my desk is?”

He leads her to her desk and Amy starts her first day at the Nine-Nine with a high note. Jake introduces her to everyone. Detective Rosa Diaz greets Amy with a scowl as she polishes a large knife. Civilian Administrator Gina Linetti doesn’t even look up from her phone when Amy says hello. Detective Charles Boyle yelps with excitement, and Sergeant Terry Jeffords shakes her hand a little too firmly.

“But where’s the captain…?” Amy asks, looking around.

“Asleep,” Jake says. “We find it best not to bother him. Wanna play fire-extinguisher race, Rosa?”

“Yup,” Rosa says, tossing a fire extinguisher at him. Amy watches from her desk, mortified. The precinct is a hot mess, and Amy isn’t sure how they manage to even get any work done. She tries focusing on a case file, but finds herself distracted by the other detectives, all up to their shenanigans.

Jake had made a first impression on her, seemingly nice. She soon finds out that he isn’t.

As soon as Jake finds out that Amy is the Type-A, always wants to get her work done right, he starts teasing her, and it’s relentless. She ignores him most of the time, but sometimes bites back at his comments with her own comebacks, which she finds she’s getting way better at.

She adjusts to life at the Nine-Nine, and finds herself looking forward to her three alarms ringing every morning. She looks forward to banter with Jake, working silently on cases with Rosa, and listening to all of Terry’s stories about his kids.

Then comes the bet. Jake loves getting a rise out of Amy, so one day, he proposes a bet on who can make the most arrests. Amy decides to agree, much to his surprise. They come to the terms quickly— Amy gets Jake’s car if she wins, because she knows that he loves his car. He says that he’s going to take her on the worst date in history— she doesn’t believe him, because there’s no way that he’s being serious. Nevertheless, she continues doing her best to make arrests and get her numbers to climb higher than Jake’s.

The Nine-Nine is way better than her old precinct, even though Captain McGintley is pretty much incompetent.

That changes quickly. McGintley transfers out of the Nine-Nine, and in transfers Captain Raymond Holt, who is stoic and serious, and Amy’s sure that he’s going to be a wonderful captain. However, she embarrasses herself within the first minute of Holt’s arrival, which she doesn’t know how to get over.

She wants him to be her mentor; to teach her everything he knows, which Jake quickly finds out and teases her a ton for. She ignores it, as usual.

Life at the Nine-Nine under the eye of Captain Raymond Holt turns productive. They’re solving cases left and right (except for Hitchcock and Scully, obviously), and the bet has motivated the entire precinct even more. Everyone starts taking sides— Rosa’s surprisingly on Amy’s side (“Can’t wait to see you car be lit on fire by Santiago,” she had said to Jake), and Charles, ever the loyal friend, takes Jake’s side. No one’s really sure where Gina lies on the bet. Terry refuses to take sides, being the responsible sergeant that he is.

Amy’s 90% sure that she’s going to win. Jake is… annoying and she really wants to show him that she’s the boss— that she can stand up for herself and evade his teasing. Besides, Amy really doesn’t want to go on a date with him. He’s not her soulmate, after all.

Right as she thinks she’s gonna win, Jake brings in more arrests and the bet is closed.

Amy loses. Jake wins. She has to go on the worst date in the world with her not-soulmate.

Right away, it’s terrible. He has her put on an ugly dress that she hates. It doesn’t get any better, either. Or so she thinks. Right as Jake’s about to further make a fool of her, Captain Holt calls upon them to work a case, much to Amy’s immense relief.

And then it’s not so bad. Amy actually valiantly tries to focus on the case they’re working, but she finds her attention gravitating towards Jake more and more. She’s actually having fun on that rooftop on 397 Barton Street, and she finds herself playing one of Jake’s games (throwing up peanuts and catching them in her mouth) and it’s actually fun.

They end up arresting their perp in well time— going undercover and pretending to be a newly-engaged couple, which sails almost too smoothly. She and Jake work together almost too well. It’s actually rather unnerving.

Soon afterward, the Nine-Nine heads off to Tactical Village, something that Amy and nearly everyone else has looked forward to since like forever. Tactical Village is one of the best parts of being a detective, other than the paperwork and like, bringing justice to the city.

Amy is met with a surprise at Tactical Village— Teddy. She hasn’t seen him in ages, other than keeping up with his Facebook and sending the occasional text message that never really seems to hit it off.

Surprisingly, it isn’t awkward. They quiz each other on police codes, and through that, they hit it off pretty well. He even asks her out on a date, which Amy agrees to.

Amy's in a new relationship, and she's enjoying it. And so it doesn't feel very great when Jake Peralta confesses that he has feelings for her right before he goes undercover with the mafia. It leaves Amy confused as ever and wondering if Jake could potentially be her soulmate.

She's been pondering over why she had accepted Teddy's offer of going on a date…  Amy’s romanticized the idea of having a soulmate, and Teddy probably isn’t hers. She knows that, he knows that, so why are they suddenly going out? It’s a well-known fact that not everyone meets their soulmate in life, and sometimes something happens where soulmates don’t work or something.

Amy likes him, even though she ultimately wants to find her soulmate. Teddy’s nice enough, so going on a few dates probably won’t hurt.

And it doesn’t hurt. Teddy’s great. But if Amy's being totally honest with herself, he just isn't what she wants. He's not enough. Amy's not getting any closer to finding her soulmate by playing it safe and dating Teddy.

But she's also very conflicted on whether to break up with him or not. As everyone knows, soulmates can change, and what if Teddy ends up actually being her real soulmate? What if the universe sees them together and decides that they're a better fit?

However, Amy somehow knows that she's done the right thing when she blurts out "I wanna break up" as soon as she sees him carrying a bottled pilsner to their coffee date. It hurts a little bit but ultimately, Amy's made the right decision and she knows it.

By this time, though, Jake dating someone else. Which hurts, especially since Amy's been thinking of Jake's time undercover with the mafia. Sometimes, while Jake had been away, Amy had felt kicks and punches; bruises making her arms and legs sore. A little piece of her mind, deep inside, had wondered if it had been Jake.

She lets it go. Jake's dating Sophia. They might actually be soulmates. Jake hasn't said anything about them not being soulmates.

So Amy concentrates on work, harder than ever before. She pours all of her energy into working and making Captain Holt happy, quitting cigarettes, and finishing crosswords from the 1950s New York Times.

Three weeks later, Jake suddenly finds himself single just when the Nine-Nine is invited to a tactical-terrorist simulation by the Department of Homeland Security. Rosa and Amy have their little bet going on― whoever shoots more terrorists wins. Amy wins, obviously, but shortly after she shoots Rosa, she feels a pang in her own chest.

It feels exactly like a paintball has hit her, even though there's no paint on her torso at all.

Amy stares at Rosa. "I―"

"What?" Rosa glares at her with annoyance. "You just shot me, Santiago."

"Are you my soulmate?"

" What?" Rosa wildly looks around before returning her attention to Amy. "Why would you say that?"

"I― I felt a paintball―" Amy stammers.

Rosa punches her in the shoulder.

"Ow!" Amy jerks away from her. "What was that for?!"

Rosa shrugs. "I didn't feel that. You felt it. I'm not your soulmate, Santiago. But if you felt a paintball…" Rosa raises an eyebrow, "we better find out who else got shot." She stands up, pulling Amy up with her. "I bet it was Jake."

Red rises up into Amy's cheeks. "What? Why would you say that? No, he's not. I bet he wasn't shot. He probably has the whole situation under control. I bet he has Homeland Security trapped right now. Jake wouldn't get shot. Jake's fine," she babbles. Rosa sighs in annoyance and they go out in search for the rest of the Nine-Nine.

Jake had been shot. The paint marks the exact place where Amy had felt it.

Rosa looks at Amy with a questioning stare.

Amy glares at her, warning Rosa to keep her mouth shut. It could've been a coincidence; Jake probably isn't her soulmate. Still suspicion rises up in Amy, no matter how much she tries to keep it to herself.

A week passes by, and Amy knows that she's been acting weird around Jake. He doesn't seem to notice it, and before long, they're going out on a case together.

They're working undercover.

As a couple.

It kinda hurts, every time Amy looks at Jake and grins, pretending that he's Johnny and she's Dora. They're a newly-engaged couple.

The perp's date looks over at them adoringly. "Ohmygosh, are you guys soulmates!?"

"Yup!" Jake says, making eye-contact with Amy.

"Yeah," Amy adds, "I punched him in the shoulder once, and that's how we found out!"

"Oh my god, that's so cute."

"Yup!" Jake and Amy say in unison.

Ten minutes later, they're making out in front of the kitchen to keep their cover from the perp. It's like fireworks light up inside of Amy's head and heart as she pulls Jake deeper into the kiss, and it sort of feels like it's meant to be.

Oh shit, maybe Jake really is meant to be her soulmate.

After the case is over, though, neither of them talk about all of the making-out. Amy does her best to shove the memory to the back of her mind and forget all about it, but no matter how hard she tries, the kiss keeps on popping up in her dreams; haunting her at night.

She's in love with Jake, whether or not he's her soulmate. It fucking hurts.

Two weeks later, Amy gets a text in the Santiago family group chat. Her whole family is meeting up at the Santiago household, for a little family get-together. The invite says "All soulmates welcome!" and it causes a sort-of panic inside of her.

David is gonna be there. Amy's reminded of her bet with him from a while back, when they were kids― that David could probably find his soulmate before Amy could, and Amy has the urge to win against David in everything.

She needs to find her soulmate before the reunion, which is in less than a week.

No matter how much Amy slices her fingers with sharp edges of paper over the next four days, Jake just doesn't look up from his desk. He's not feeling it. He's not her soulmate. Amy is doomed.

But still, Amy needs a date. A fake soulmate. Someone to pretend to be her soulmate and help her win against David, because Amy is not going to let David have this triumph.

And who better to ask to be her fake soulmate than Jake? It would be pretty easy to explain, and Amy's still longing for Jake to be her real soulmate, so one night of pretending couldn't hurt.

So she musters up her courage and finally walks over to Jake when they’re about to leave the bullpen to go home, merely a day before the reunion. She stops him, placing a hand on his arm until he turns around to look at her questioningly.

“Uh, hey,” she fidgets slightly for a moment before confidently looking him in the eye, ”I need a favor.”

Jake looks at her questioningly, arching one eyebrow with interest. “I’m not gonna have sex with you,” he says, grinning from ear to ear as if he’s just won the award for comedian of the year.

Pink spreads across Amy’s cheeks and she looks away for a moment. “No! Gross! I would rather die than—ugh!” She gags in his face before taking a deep breath. “No, I need you to, uh, accompany me somewhere.”

Jake seems to consider it. “You know, that’s gonna come at a price,” he mulls a mischievous smile spreading over his face. Amy sucks in a breath—“Die Hard movie marathon!” Jake announces cheerfully, and Amy releases her breath. A Die Hard movie marathon couldn’t be so bad, could it? And then Jake says, “and you’re bringing the orange soda,” so Amy starts preparing for the longest day of her life.

“Wait, I haven’t even told you where we’re going yet,” Amy grimaces as Jake starts to leave, “I need you to pretend to be my soulmate.”

This stops Jake in his tracks and he turns back around to stare at her indecorously. “Why?”

“It’s really stupid,” Amy starts rambling, “but all of my brothers are going to be in town and I have this one brother—David—who I made a bet with when I was like twelve that I would find my soulmate before he found his. And I’m seeing David tomorrow—I don’t know if he’s found his, but on the offhand chance that he has, well, it’s really important to me to like, beat David.” She looks at Jake hopefully, who stares back at her with doubt.

Amy sighs. “I’ll bring sour candy to the Die Hard marathon,” she says, and Jake immediately brightens.

“I mean, if there’ll be food and the chance to find blackmail material on you, then whatever. I’m in,” Jake says.

Amy grins at him. “Great! Let me just show you the binder—”

“There’s a binder?!” Jake groans.

“I’ll bring three packs of gummy candy,” Amy says hopefully.

“Fine. Deal.”

The rest of the evening goes by with them looking at the binder; coming up with their story and how they were going to prove to David that they were actually soulmates. “We’re keeping it simple. We met on the job, obviously, and figured out that we’re soulmates during a sting operation, when you skinned your knee and I felt it,” Amy says. “No doubt David’s gonna try to prove it for himself, and pinch me or something, so you have to stay close to me and keep an eye out for him so that you can play the part.”

Jake rolls his eyes at all of this. “Boring. Can we get to the fun stuff now? Like, which one of your brothers is the hottest? Also, what if one of your brothers turns out to be my real soulmate? What if David turns out to be my real soulmate? Also, how hot is he?”

“Gross. I mean, you both suck, so you would suit each other.” Amy swats Jake lightly on the shoulder with annoyance. “But no, not happening. I’ll pick you up tomorrow at six. No funny business.”

Funny business happens at six o’clock PM that next day, when Jake emerges from his apartment decked out in an overlarge suit and green-tinted aviator glasses. He balances a top hat in his hand as he bows deeply to Amy. “After you, m’lady,” he says, blowing her a kiss.

Amy closes her eyes for a minute before groaning. “I knew that this was gonna happen,” she mutters, dragging him by the arm and to her car. She opens the trunk and grabs a plastic bag full of clothes, thrusting it in his arms and pointing back towards the apartment building. “Go. Change.”

Jake grins at her sheepishly but leaves, emerging from the building a few minutes later in the fresh clothes that Amy had given him. He looks much nicer, Amy has to admit, and she has to tear her eyes away for a second as he gets into the car.

They get to the Santiago household half an hour later to find cars parked all up the driveway. Amy parks near the side of the road, and the two walk up the steps of the house, arm in arm.

Camila Santiago opens the door. “Oh, Amy!” She pulls her daughter in for a hug before looking up at Jake. “Jake? What are you doing here?”

“Mama, he’s my soulmate.” Amy flashes a grin at her mother, who stands shell-shocked before a smile plasters onto her face.

“Oh my goodness, mija, why didn’t you tell me! How long have you two known?!” She's still staring at Jake with a kind of judgmental look on her face, so Amy sends a glare at her mother.

“It’s very fresh,” Amy says. “We found out a while ago and we’ve been keeping it under the wraps.” Oh, Amy Santiago is an excellent liar.

Jake sheepishly smiles at Camila as she raises an eyebrow at him, and steps aside to let them into the house.

Amy’s immediately shoved into the arms of numerous brothers—Carlos, Michael, Sammy, Tony, David—she can’t keep track of all of them, all who ask her about how she’s doing and how is work and—

“I found my soulmate,” Amy announces, her words directed at David.

David squints at her. “You’re definitely lying,” he decides, and in a panic, Amy pulls Jake forward.

“I am not. This is Jake.” Amy pinches herself in the arm and watches with satisfaction as Jake pretends to yelp. “He feels my pain, and I’ve found my soulmate before you, David. I win.”

“Actually,” David says, “I met someone who I’m pretty sure is my soulmate.”

“Not the same thing as being together with your soulmate,” Amy shoots at him, and he shuts up.

Introducing Jake to her father is a whole different story, because unlike David, Victor Santiago wants to know all of the facts, and he wants to know them now. Amy prays that Jake has the story right in his mind so that he doesn’t mess up and cause suspicion if questioned alone. “He’s a detective, Papa,” Amy says, “You know that. And you’ve met him before.”

Victor Santiago does not approve of Jake Peralta being his daughter’s (fake) soulmate, but it’s soulmates, right? Matters of the universe and the heart, so there’s nothing that Victor can do about it other than to grouse about it to his wife and daughter. “I can’t believe you got someone so dumb as your soulmate, Amy,” he criticizes.

Camila laughs. “I should say the same for myself,” she jokes. “I think that Jake and Amy may actually be a good match.”

“I mean, of course they’re a ‘good’ match if they’re soulmates, ” Victor reasons. “I’m just saying, Camila, not all soulmates end up working out like us.”

“Dad,” Amy cuts in, offended, “I like him. We’re happy.” And she turns around and looks at Jake,--who is immersed in conversation with Carlos Santiago—and a smile spreads over Amy’s face because truly, she is happy to have a partner like Jake who’s always got her back in stakeouts and weird family events. (Maybe, the only reason she’s suppressing her feelings for him is because he’s not actually her soulmate, and it would be unfair to both of their soulmates?)

As soon as Amy walks away from her parents, she’s cornered by David. “Are you and Jake actually even soulmates? You don’t seem to be very much in love,” he accuses, his eyebrows raised at his sister.

“What?” Amy feigns offense. “Like I said, it’s very much fresh—we only just found out—” she fumbles for words, tracking David’s gaze over to Jake, who’s sitting on the couch in between two of her little brothers, animatedly talking about Die Hard.

In a flash, David pinches his nails into Amy’s arm, keeping his eyes on Jake.

“Ouch!” Amy shakes David off in a panic, staring right at Jake.

Jake yelps, and covers the spot on his own arm with the palm of his hand. He looks up and meets Amy’s eyes, flashing her a bright grin. As soon as David looks away in defeat, Jake gives Amy a thumbs up.

The rest of the night seems to go by pretty smoothly, much to Amy’s relief.

Near midnight, Tony comes over, holding something behind his back. He sits down on the couch next to Amy, and it’s just the two of them. Amy relaxes a little bit, tearing her paranoid gaze away from Jake and allowing herself to face her brother with undivided attention.

Out of all of her brothers, Amy’s missed Tony probably the most. Sitting down and talking to him— just the two of them— it knocks a wave of nostalgia over her heart as Tony clears his throat.

“So, Ames,” he says, “you and Jake, huh?”

Amy fidgets a little bit. She doesn’t feel great lying to Tony, but she nods. “Uh, yeah! I know right, it’s crazy.”

“Congrats on finding your soulmate.” He pulls out a large jar from behind his back and presents it to Amy. There’s a little tape label on the jar; written in wobbly black sharpie letters, it says, ‘AMY IS HURT’. Amy recognizes David’s adolescent scrawl and the memory of the jar washes over her until she feels a little bit faint. It’s probably the nicest thing that David’s ever done for her.

“It’s probably not a lot of money, but—”

Amy knocks Tony over into a hug. She can feel her eyes welling up, and the fact that Jake isn’t really her soulmate is making her feel incredibly terrible.

“Are you crying?” Tony looks at Amy indecorously. “Ames, it’s not really that big of a deal, you know,” he says, and Amy just wishes that she could tell him. She wants to tell Tony so bad but she keeps her mouth shut, for the sake of keeping hers and Jake’s covers.

And then a thought suddenly occurs to her— what if she ends up meeting her actual soulmate later on? Soulmates can change— she’s definitely heard of it happening— but it would be a lot to explain to the family.  

She really just wants Jake to be her soulmate. It's all Amy wants.

Two nights later, Amy shows up at Jake's doorstep, holding a plastic bag full of packets of gummy candy. He opens it a minute later, wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants. His eyes light up as soon as he sees the candy in Amy's arms, and he grabs the bag from her ecstatically.

"I have the DVDs ready," he grins, ripping open a bag of sour gummy worms.

Amy tries not to stare at his bare arms so much as he leads her into the living area. The couch is covered in soft blankets, and the whole place looks cozy.

Amy might actually be looking forward to this Die Hard movie marathon.

Jake sets a bowl of popcorn on the coffee table in front as he starts the movie and sits down on the couch. Amy stiffly sits down beside him, not wanting to get too close. She's still reeling from all of the leftover feelings from the other night― wishing that Jake could be her real soulmate because she's still kinda in love with him. Like, badly.

"I'm not gonna bite," Jake laughs, settling closer to her on the couch.

Amy nearly flinches. "Title of your sextape."

"Okay, I'll admit, that was a good one," Jake says as the movie begins. The sextape joke kinda seems to relax Amy, and she takes a deep breath as she prepares herself for endless hours of watching Die Hard.

It isn't that bad, mainly because Amy's not really focused on the movie. She's more focused on Jake, who puts an arm around her shoulder about halfway through the movie. It sends a shiver running down Amy's spine, and she looks up at him.

"What?" he asks, "is that okay?"

Amy nods, and returns her attention back to the movie.

She can't believe she's so attracted to the guy who's just eaten four packets of sour candy and is currently shouting at the screen as John McClane does something "cool" and "heroic."

Amy reaches for the bowl of popcorn and pulls it into her lap. She picks out the more buttery ones, and apparently, Jake has the same idea, because their hands meet in the middle of the popcorn bowl. Amy fumbles with the popcorn and ends up dropping the entire bowl on the floor.

"Amy!"

"Sorry!"

And suddenly, both of them are crawling on their hands and knees, picking up stray pieces of popcorn off the floor.

It happens in a blur: Jake bangs his shoulder into the coffee table. Pain ricochets up into Amy's shoulder, and the popcorn spills out of her hands and back onto the floor where she sits in shock.

"Ames. Ames." Jake's voice is faint and far away. She doesn't know what's happening. And then the flashbacks start.

The headline, from when she was six. " EIGHT YEAR OLD BOY NEARLY DROWNS AND IS SAVED BY LIFEGUARD." And Jake, in the break room, years later. "I almost drowned when I was eight." How could Amy not put two and two together?!

That wasn't the only hint that had been dropped right in front of Amy's nose over the years. There was so much more. The bruises and injuries when Jake went undercover with the mafia, the paintball at the tactical-terrorist simulation, and literally everything else.

She's a terrible detective.

"Amy. Amy!" Jake's voice brings her back to reality, and Amy feels a tear dripping down her cheek. "Look, I know that this may not seem good, and I'm so sorry." Jake's voice is controlled and calming. Amy feels her breathing return to normal as she gets over the initial shock.

"I―" Jake continues, "I had my suspicions about this. I did. But I found out found out at the Santiago family reunion. You remember when David pinched you and I was literally across the room?" Amy nods, so Jake continues. "I actually felt that. It was genuine. That's when I figured out that… well, we're soulmates, Amy."

"I'm in love with you," Amy blurt out, and instantly, she wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him closer. He's practically on top of her now, and they're sitting on the floor and kissing against the couch.

It's the best thing that's ever happened to Amy, even better than being named valedictorian for about ten consecutive years. It's better than her mother's home-cooked meals, better than new binder tabs, better than everything and anything. It's so warm and nice and Amy's never been more in love.

Jake's hand is cupping one side of her face when they pull away. He tenderly strokes her cheeks and they make eye contact. Amy takes a deep breath.

"I'm glad you're my soulmate," she finally says after waiting a minute.

"Me too."

And just like that, they're officially together. Jake and Amy.

When they tell the squad, Charles shouts out, "called it!" and immediately faints from overexcitement.

"I told you so," Rosa smirks at Amy before fist-bumping Jake. Despite herself, Amy grins.

Captain Holt walks up to them. "I just wanted to say…" he looks at Amy for a brief moment, "I am very happy for both of you. I am also very proud of you."

Amy's grinning wider than ever. Jake takes the opportunity to speak.

"That you, Captain. But you're gonna wanna be careful with the compliments. Amy here has a praise kink."

Amy punches Jake in the arm. She immediately regrets it, though, because the pain just shoots right back into her own arm.

Four weeks pass and Jake and Amy are doing great. They're happy together, everything is going wonderful, and Amy's new life calendar is going exactly according to plan.

Unfortunately, Jake going into witness protection in Florida is not on Amy's life calendar, but it happens anyway. It sucks because he's so far away, yet so close because Amy can feel it every time he punches a wall out of frustration, every time he kicks furniture around and screams at the top of his lungs.

She's so relieved when the Nine-Nine road trips down to Florida to bail out Jake and Captain Holt because all she wants is to see Jake again.

But when she sees him, they're so out of sync and everything feels so wrong. Amy loves Jake, and she knows he loves her too, but whatever's happening is not working. All of that time apart hadn't been amazing.

Before long, they go out to take Jimmy "The Butcher" Figgis's team at the arcade. Everything ends up going pretty well, up until the part where Jimmy Figgis takes Jake at gunpoint. Amy knows what she has to do; she's just not sure if Jake's okay with it until he gives her the short "go ahead" nod.

And Amy knows that they're both about to be in excruciating pain, but she pulls the trigger and lets a bullet fly into Jake's leg.

Everything is a blur after that. Amy's in crippling pain, but she surges forward towards Jake until the squad is out to help. They get Jake to an ambulance, and Amy crumples onto the floor, holding her leg because it's exactly what's Jake's going through.

Rosa pulls her up and effortlessly carries her to the ambulance, where they're taking care of Jake. She grips his hand tightly as they work through the gunshot pain together, once more back in sync.

Life is nice and breezy, right up until Jake and Rosa are falsely convicted for Melanie Hawkin's bank robberies and sent to prison. The sentence is fifteen years, and Amy knows she's going to wait for Jake― after all, he is her soulmate― but Amy's not sure how she's going to make it through without him being constantly at her side.

She busies herself with working on his and Rosa's case, going through the case files hundreds of times over and over again until she finds herself sleeping at her desk late at night when everyone, even Boyle, has already gone home.

Amy doesn’t want to go home. Home is supposed to be with Jake, but Jake is in a prison facility somewhere far away. Amy knows that if she goes home to their apartment, she’s just going to end up missing him even more.

What's even worse is that Amy can feel it every single time Jake gets into a prison fight, and it sucks. She's not particularly concerned about herself feeling Jake's pain; she's more concerned about the fact that Jake is getting hurt and he's not safe.  

The nightmares hurt just as much. She dreams of him being taken away to the prison over and over again, waking each morning with the hope that Jake can't feel her emotional pain, because he's probably already worried as it is.

They make a breakthrough in the case when they finally figure out where Melanie Hawkins had been hiding the diamonds, and it's as if the weight of the whole world has been lifted off of Amy's shoulders because she can finally see Jake again.

Prison has changed Jake. Amy can tell. He flinches when she hugs him for the first time after they reunite. Amy takes a deep breath and buries her face in his shoulder and wishes that she could somehow feel Jake's emotional pain and just take it all away.

Amy wants to make things better for him, but she just doesn't know how. He's trying to act normal around her; she can tell. The way he brushes his teeth at night and hops into his pajamas and then into bed may seem normal, but there's a silence that lies underneath all of it that turns their domestic life mesmerizingly eery. They swing back into their routine until everything just feels like a robotic cycle, and Amy just can't take it anymore.

So when the Halloween Heist comes around, Amy doesn't expect Jake to be up and energetic about it. However, he's bouncing off the walls with energy and fierce competitiveness. It spurs Amy on to see Jake like this, so she immerses herself in the competition as well. It's nice to see Jake actually passionate about something, and it feels like they're clicking back together, so Amy vows to get that cummerbund in any way that she can.

Jake proposing to her is the last thing Amy expects when she thinks that she's sealed the win. It turns her whole heart into a strange whirlwind of love for him because as soon as she says yes and he puts the ring onto her finger, the whole world seems alright again.

They're together. They're okay. They're soulmates, and they're going to get married and everything is going to be okay. It's everything Amy wants― for life to be just the two of them against the world.

She wants to spend the rest of her life with Jake. Amy loves him so much and she knows that she's willing to feel his pain in the hardest of times because whatever happens, they're going to be in it together.

Notes: thank you and i hope you liked it! there IS a partner fic to this, set in the same universe, but it’s just dianetti instead of peraltiago! link: i’ll carry your pain (along with my own)

[amydancepants-peralta]

(all I wanna do) is grow old with you

A probably-too-long Peraltiago soulmate AU where your body stops ageing until you’ve met the one you’re destined to spend the rest of your life with.  Inspired by this post, and encouraged by @fezzle because her mind is amazing and we both fell down the rabbit hole on this one 😅

You can find the rest on AO3, because it’s waay too long to post on Tumblr. 🍕 

(all I wanna do) is grow old with you

Amy’s breath fogs up the glass of the mirror she’s facing as she lets out a heavy sigh, eyes taking one more scrutinising look over her appearance.  Same olive coloured skin, same dark brown hair.  Same smile, same shrug of her shoulders.  Once again, nothing had changed.

She had been five years old when her mother had explained the Rule of Life as they knew it - that once you reached your 30th birthday, your body simply stopped ageing, and the only way to kick it back into gear, was to meet your soulmate.  

To a young and idealistic Amy, it had seemed like the Ultimate Romantic Notion - that you couldn’t possibly grow old until you’d found the right person to grow old with.  And in her early twenties, when appearances and vanities paid more value than they should, she had been in no hurry to find The One.  Until she’d reached her Age Limit of 30, and realised that beauty lay within those who had found their other half.  Wrinkles and streaks of grey in heads of hair were enviable, not feared.  The lucky ones would walk the streets with pride, unable to bridle their joy as they gripped their partner’s hand with their own. 

Watching her family and friends grow older while she remained stagnant never seemed to get easier for Amy.  Standing in the sidelines as the next phase of their life would begin, she couldn’t deny that it stung a little when her youngest of brothers, Luis, had salt and pepper flecks of colour in his previously jet black hair at the last Santiago family gathering.  Or that her best friend Kylie now tried her best to conceal the crows feet that had begun to appear around her eyes, sunglasses framing her face whenever she and Amy met up for lunch.  

Try as they might to hide the changes in their appearance - which she knew was out of love for her, to not rub in that they had found what she hadn’t - the only thing that the people surrounding her couldn’t conceal was the overwhelming exuberance that radiated from each and every one of them.  That sense of completion - the elation that finally, the rest of their life can begin.

 Amy turns her head in profile one last time, a discerning eye tracing her hairline before giving up with a shake of her head.  Last night she had been on a date with a man named Gabe (a match from an online dating app that she’s definitely going to delete), and at the end of the night she honestly had felt as though things could be … kind of promising.  He was handsome, with similar interests to her, and while he spoke about investment banking maybe a little more than Amy would have liked, he certainly seemed like a worthy option when it came to her soulmate.  And so, with the freshly risen daylight’s sunbeams streaking through the windows of her apartment, and her alarm buzzing incessantly beside her, Amy had jumped out of bed, making a beeline for the mirror.

However, it would appear Gabe was not a match.  Her appearance had not changed in the slightest.  And today was just going to be another day, like all the others, without Amy knowing her soulmate.  

She gets ready for work with the clocklike precision that only a life uninterrupted can bring, casting one last downcast glance at her reflection as she turns to leave.  Perhaps the universe had a point - Gabe was definitely not the one for her.  But … he had to be out there, somewhere.  

*

It’s another ten hours before Amy is shuffling into her apartment again, finally home after what can only be described as a less than mediocre day.  

As a detective for the 99th precinct, she and her partner Rosa had developed a finely tuned friendship that had resulted in an impressively high arrest rate.  And today, they had been given the case of a jewellery store robbery - a robbery that had unfortunately turned rather high profile, as one of Brooklyn’s most well known residents, a celebrity chef named Cadi Nicholls, had been robbed in broad daylight, from the inside of a jewellery store.

Ms Nicholls had, despite several requests from various officers, been overly vocal about her ‘traumatic’ experience on social media, and in an effort to have the case closed before things turned ridiculous, Captain Holt had put his best two detectives on the case.

They had been so confident they would catch the thief.  Until they watched the security footage.

The perp appeared as if from nowhere, sliding Nicholls' diamond tennis bracelet right off her wrist without her even knowing, before yanking the sapphire ring she had just purchased out of her hand and running like hell.

Frustratingly (or conveniently, depending on who’s perspective you looked at it from), the security cameras outside had been out of order for days leading up to the robbery, so when it came to the getaway car the two women had absolutely no clues.  

Instead, they had spent the entire day interviewing countless witnesses, knocking on apartment door after apartment door until they tracked them all down.  All of which felt like a reprieve after finally escaping their interview with the chef herself; an hour long ordeal that she had insisted on live-streaming to her ‘concerned followers’.  

By late afternoon they had returned to the precinct, feet throbbing in protest, spreading out the case file over Amy’s desk as they re-examined all of the information.  The witness statements had been vague at best, and until they found a different camera that might have caught the getaway car they were officially out of leads.  

Exhausted, she had been on her way to Rosa’s desk to see if her partner wanted to get a drink of commiseration after their shift ended, when she noticed something that stopped her in her tracks.  Rosa Diaz was not a vain woman by any means, but right at that moment she had ducked her head down on the monitor, carefully shifting the strands of her hair into a specific position.  And as she moved them into place, Amy saw what Rosa had been trying to hide.

She had greys.  Only a few, and still ashy enough that it wasn’t immediately noticeable.

But she had greys.  Which meant that she was ageing.  Which also meant that she had found her soulmate.  

Her partner had looked up, eyes turning apologetic as she noticed Amy watching her, and began to explain.  “Her name is Jocelyn.  I didn’t expect to - ”  Amy raised her hand, halting the conversation as she plastered a smile onto her face.  

“It’s fine, Rosa.  Great, actually.  I’m really happy for you.”  

And she was happy.  Honestly.  Detective Diaz was a hard nut to crack, but underneath the leather-bound exterior was a kind, caring soul who genuinely deserved the best.  And obviously, this Jocelyn was it for her.  So Amy was happy for her partner.  

And also a little bit jealous.  Kinda defeated.  And almost certain that her soulmate simply didn’t exist.    

But mainly, happy.  

Now that she is home, Amy dumps her bag onto its respective hook, kicking off her shoes near the doorway and shedding her blazer before heading towards the kitchen.  She’s desperate for a glass of wine to take the edge off her less than average day, and had a Bordeaux stashed away in her cupboard laying in wait for the night that she could finally raise a toast to the person she is meant to spend the rest of her life with.  Clearly, that was never going to happen to her (and tonight was as good a night as any to enjoy a glass of red), and once she finally yanks out the cork with her cheap corkscrew, she abandons the tool on the counter, sauntering over to her couch with the bottle in one, and a glass in the other.

*

Less than an hour later, Amy has changed into her cosiest clothes and is perched on the couch, tipping the bottle upside down and frowning as no more wine seems to come out.  

Damnit.  Somebody’s been drinking my wine.  She cranes her neck, surveying the room with narrowed eyes as she searches for suspects, only to come up dry.  

Clearly, the perp has already fled the scene.

Her stomach growls as it protests at the lack of food - and abundance of wine - it had been given.  With only a slightly steady hand, Amy pulls out her phone from it’s position amongst the couch cushions, opening up a webpage to search for delicious food near me + quick delivery.  She had only moved into this apartment three months ago, after saving her hard earned money for far too long, and was still slightly unfamiliar (and yes, perhaps a little too drunk) to know what takeout options were nearby.  

The swirling symbol of a loading webpage disappears in a blink, the flashing logo of Sal’s Pizza taking its place.  She nods enthusiastically, because pizza is great and she doesn’t eat it enough, scrolling her way through the options before settling on the perfect combination and adding to cart.  

When this story gets told in the years to come, Amy will blame the empty bottle of wine for making her do this, but in the comment section of the order, she remembers a meme that her niece had recently shown her and types: send your cutest delivery boy.  Giggling loudly, she presses send before another thought could be made, and as the digital countdown comes onto her screen she stumbles into the kitchen, in search of another bottle.  

*

Jake Peralta rolls his shoulders against the stainless steel panels attached to the kitchen wall, legs feeling heavy as they dangle off the counter he’s perched on.  

It was nearly at the end of his shift at Sal’s Pizza, and the later hours of the evening always seemed to drag, but he’s thankful for a moment of peace.  

Sharing the delivery role with two other guys that he only knew as Scully and Hitchcock, he had spent the better part of the dinner rush covering their jobs as well as his own, both men claiming that they had gotten lost in the supposedly complicated streets of Brooklyn before returning to the restaurant several hours later, the pizza sauce stains still obvious on their chins.  Jake’s responding eye roll had been poorly concealed, and he had retreated to the familiar company of his buddy Charles, the chef, in the kitchen before he ended up saying something regretful.

That in itself had turned out to be a risky move, having to instead listen to Charles talk on and on (and on) about his recently discovered soulmate, Genevieve.  

And he’s happy for his best friend - really, he is.  But every single mention of their chance encounter, sparked by mixing up their specially ordered local delicacies at their nearby deli (his octopus ring pâté, hers rare eyeball soup, both horrifying) was just another reminder that Jake himself was no step closer to finding his.  Not that he’s even sure he wants to find his, but … still.

(Also, he was one more TMI conversation about their subsequent love making from taking the handle of both spatulas in the utensil jar and jamming them into his ears.)

The computer in the corner lets out an obnoxious ding! as an online order comes through, the attached printer grunting as it spits out a faded version for the chef.  Jake shuffles along the counter, butt squeaking against the steel as he rips the paper free, sneakers hitting the tiled floor with a slap as he slides it into place.  “Chet’s up, Charles.”

“It’s a chit, Jake.”  Charles looks up from his position on the counter opposite, hands concealed as he kneads out a heavy pile of dough.  “Do me a favour, read it out for me?  I’m a little tied up here.  Not as much as Genevieve was tied up last night, but still - ”

“One large deep pan, extra cheese, extra salsa!”  Jake cries out quickly, desperate to drown out the sound of whatever Charles was about to describe.  His friend nods in response, dusting off the extra flour from his hands as he heads over to another bench, the process of putting together a Sals Pizza so familiar it has become second nature.  

He glances back up at Jake, right hand mixing in the hot sauce.  “Any special requests on it?”

Right.  The special requests option, a relatively new addition, had been the catalyst for some truly strange demands.  After the horrifying command last week for the delivery boy to sing out the ingredients like a show tune upon arrival, Jake had been doing his best to avoid ‘special requests’ altogether.  With a hesitant glance, he narrows his eyes at the bottom of the receipt before letting out a laugh.  “Charles my good man, I believe I have been summoned.”

“Huh?”

Jake pulls the receipt off it’s holder with a flick of his wrist, brandishing it high in the air as he turns towards his friend with a smile.  “Says so right here.  Send your cutest delivery boy.  Clearly, that’s me.  I’m adorable.”

His friend gasps, spinning around to read the chit himself before turning to Jake in glee.  “Jakey!  This isn’t just any order.  This is fate!”

Tipping his head to the side, Jake scratches the side of his cheek as he studies Charles’ reaction.  “Fate has come in the form of a deep pan pizza?  Honestly, I’m not surprised … but I think I always imagined it would be meat supreme?”

Charles’ hands freeze on top of the pie, a few shards of grated cheese slipping from his fingers as he shakes his head at Jake.  “No, silly.  The person who’s ordered the pizza is your fate.  Not the pizza itself.  Your soulmate is on the other end of this delivery.  I’m sure of it.”

“Oh come on.  That’s ridiculous.  You don’t even know if this is for a person, or a company, or even some kind of robot that’s managed to gain sentience ..”

The chef’s head appears suddenly over Jake’s shoulder, peering at the details printed along the bottom of the receipt before giving him a solid side-eye.  “Says right here, Amy Santiago.  Sounds like a pretty great name for a soulmate, if you ask me.”

Rolling his eyes, Jake walks towards the oven, picking up the pizza peel from it’s holding place and lifting the next order into the grill.  “I keep telling you, Charles.  Not everybody is going to end up with their soulmate.  The whole thing is flawed.  It didn’t exactly work out for my parents, did it?”

“You’ve just gotta have faith, Jake!  The universe has greater plans than you or I could ever imagine, and sometimes you just have to let the signs guide the way.”  Charles countered, ripping the receipt from the order holder and shoving it into Jake’s shirt pocket, pointing towards the oven once his hand is free.  “Order will be up in eight minutes, Mr. Cutest Delivery Boy.  Don’t be late, destiny is waiting.”

It’s close to twenty minutes later before Jake is standing in the hallway of an unfamiliar apartment building, double checking the address on the receipt before raising his hand to knock (people are very willing to accept pizza when it is delivered, even if they haven’t ordered any - a fact he had to learn the hard way).  The pizza box in his hand keeps sending wafts of deliciousness in his direction, reminding himself that he’d unintentionally skipped dinner this evening, and he makes a deal with his stomach to fill up after this delivery.  

There’s a muffled sound of the Jeopardy theme song playing through the doorway when Jake knocks, and he hears the clank of glass against a surface before the door begins to swing open.  Twenty bucks says this is some nerdy professor, Jake thinks to himself, drawing on his biggest smile, ready to play the role of Cutest Delivery Boy to a tee.  

And then, his heart stops in his chest.

The woman that answers the door is crazy beautiful.  Beautifully warm toned skin with the most expressive eyes, her dark hair scraping her shoulders as she opens the door a little wider.  

“Heyyyyy, the pizza guy is here!”  The mystery woman smiles, leaning heavily against her doorframe as she gasps, pointing.  “And he brought PIZZA!”

If this was what nerdy professors looked like, I DEFINITELY would have paid more attention in class, Jake thinks to himself as he continues to smile, handing over the pizza to the woman’s outstretched hands.  “One deep pan, extra cheese, extra salsa.”  His voice switches into automatic pilot, reciting the line that had been forced into his memory, hands landing on his hips in the signature pose as he forces a too-wide smile onto his face.  “I hope we managed to fulfil your special request, ma’am, and it’s a good evening now that you’ve got a Sal’s Pizza.”

Her dark eyes blink dazedly for a moment before a deep blush rushes over her cheeks.  “Oh right, my uh … special request.”  They travel down Jake’s frame before heading upwards again, holding his gaze until she bites her lip.  “Yeah, I’d say you did, Pizza Guy.”

Now it’s Jake’s turn to blush, sweaty hands dropping from his waist and dangling uselessly by his side.  He’s always been a connoisseur of the Art of Flirtation, but tonight he finds himself more than a little tongue tied.  Inconveniently, Charles’ voice creeps into Jake’s mind.  Your soulmate is on the other end of this delivery.  She giggles at his obviously embarrassed reaction, shoulders bouncing as a squeaky hiccup escapes. 

Shuffling his feet, Jake’s brain switches into overdrive as he frantically tries to think of the perfect pickup line to make, but before anything incredible can be formed he begins to really take in his client’s appearance.  Her glazed over eyes, the vice like grip of her hand on the doorframe …. “Uhh, I’m always up for a bit of flattery, but … I think you might be a little intoxicated.  Do you know how much you’ve had to drink?” he asks, brows furrowing slightly as he watches the woman sway.

She shrugs, turning the movement into a dorky little side-to-side boogie as the ads begin playing on the TV in the background, an annoyingly catchy song about paper towels taking centre stage.  “Only a couple of glasses.”

Jake looks past her, taking in the incriminating evidence of two empty wine bottles sitting on the table next to the couch.  “Just a couple, huh?”

She follows his gaze, swinging her head back to him as a giggle escapes.  “Well, I mean … the bottles are made of glass, right?”

He can’t help but laugh, nodding at her observation.  “Yes.  Yes, they are.”

“See?” She laughs along with him, holding onto the pizza box with one hand as she begins stepping backwards, moving her feet into what he thinks is an attempt at the moonwalk.  Her feet, which may actually both be left, are dangerously close to tripping over each other, and just as he reaches out a hand in warning the two lefts connect - pizza box flying out of her hands as her arms begin to flail about, desperately searching for something to grab onto as she begins to fall.

Jake’s feet can’t move fast enough, and she hits her head on a small side table, landing on the ground with a thud before he can get to her.  She stays still, head twisted to the side and moaning loudly as he kneels down on the ground, paying special attention to her extremities in case she’s actually hurt herself.  “Are you okay, ma’am?” he asks.  Her receipt is still in his pocket, and he really wants to grab it out right now to remember her name, but it’s way too late for that now.  Damn my goldfish memory!  

“I’m … I’m fine.”  She swings out an arm, letting it slap against the hardwood floor near Jake’s crouched position as she turns to look at him.  “The floor is just a little spinny, that’s all.”

He stifles a grin as he looks at her determined face, already knowing that there was no point in explaining to this woman that the floor was, in fact, not spinning (or ‘spinny’, as it were).  Instead, he responds with “Yeah, spinny floors are the worst.”

She smiles at him, and his heart skips a beat just like the first time, and he kinda really wants to know her name.  “He gets it!  Thisguygetsit.” She slurs, pointing an intoxicated finger at Jake.  And he knows that she’s drunk … and he knows that she probably doesn’t have any idea what she’s saying … but tiny little butterflies begin to flutter in Jake’s stomach, gaining traction the longer she lays there, pointing her finger at him.  She’s adorable, he thinks to himself.

But, she might also be injured, and so he offers her a hand up, pretending not to notice the tingling sensation when her palm meets his.  She groans as he helps her up, right hand clapping onto her scalp, wrinkling her face and looking at him accusingly.  “How did I end up on the floor, anyway?” 

Jake grins at the woman, pointing with his free hand towards the discarded pizza box, explaining - “You were dancing away with the pizza, and tripped over your two left feet.”

Her eyes look at the box warily, looking to Jake, then back to the pizza.  “That makes sense.  I am left handed, after all.”  She nods, a movement quickly thwarted as her head obviously throbs in protest.  

Jake’s eyebrows knit together as he watches her clutch her hand to her head, and as she moves towards the couch, he clears his throat.  “Uhh, listen - I’m no expert, but I think you might be in danger of having a concussion.  Is there somebody else here, who can watch over you tonight?”

The woman’s head drops as she shakes her head slightly.  “No.  I live alone.  All alone.”  Realising the gravity of what she’s just said to this stranger, her head shoots up quickly, and Jake pretends not to notice her reactive wince.  “But I’m a cop.  A badass cop, in fact.  And I could kick your butt from here to next Sunday, Pizza Guy, so don’t you go trying anything.”

He raises his hands in mock surrender.  “Whoa there, officer.  My intentions are honourable, I swear.  I just think you might have hurt yourself a little bit, and you shouldn’t go to sleep until someone has made sure you’re okay.”  Pausing, Jake lowers his hands a little as the woman’s gaze turns less accusing.  “Is there somebody you can call?”

She shrugs.  “Rosa, I guess.”  Picking up an empty bottle, she shakes it, willing more wine to appear.  “Yeah.  Call Rosa.  Tell her to bring booze.”  She giggles, her face dropping just as quickly.  “Probably won’t come, though.  Too busy with her soulmate or whatever.”

There’s an odd mix of sadness and hope that comes from this woman speaking of her friend’s soulmate.  It was hard not to hear her bitterness, and Jake could feel himself beginning to reconsider his own opinions.  If someone as sweet as this woman is hasn’t found her match, maybe this whole soulmate thing wasn’t as ridiculous as it seems.  Clearing his throat, he twists his mouth to the side slightly before speaking.  “I’m sure if she knows you’re hurt, she’ll come over.”

Another shrug, the light from a nearby lamp catching onto her hair and making it shimmer a little.  You’re falling, Peralta.  “Maybe.”

He waits for a pause, and she looks up at him expectantly.  “Um, I … I don’t have Rosa’s number.” His tone is apologetic, which is crazy, because if anything it would’ve been weirder if he had known this Rosa’s number.  He wipes a hand across his face, trying to push some sense into his brain, and as he rubs his eyes the woman begins fishing around her couch cushions, pulling up throw pillows until she thrusts her phone into the air in triumph.  

“I do!  I have Rosa’s number.”  She unlocks the screen, handing the device over to Jake without hesitation.  He takes grip of it, watching with confused eyes as the woman shouts an answer to the game show host still on her screen before grabbing the remote control on the coffee table, fumbling at buttons until the TV switches to mute.  Turning her attention back to Jake, the woman’s eyes light up when she realises he’s still holding her phone in his hand.  “Hey!  I’ve got a great idea.  Let’s call Rosa!”  

If this had been anybody else, Jake is pretty sure by now he would have given up and left this crazy client to their own devices.  But there was something so wholesome about her vulnerability, so open to the complete stranger that he was, that he really wanted to make sure she had someone take watch over her tonight.  So with a grin taking over his face, he scrolls through her contacts until he finds (thankfully, only one) titled Rosa, pressing the call button before handing the phone back to the giggling beauty covered in crumpled sweats on the couch. 

She takes it from him with a smile, a surprised gasp escaping when the line connects and she calls out “Heyyyyy, Rosa!”

His heart squeezes a little as her face crumples into confusion, shaking her head in a futile response to the voice on the other end of the phone.  This woman is adorable.

“Whaaat? Noooo I’m not mad I’m not - I just got pizza and hit my head with it and now Pizza Guy thinks I shouldn’t go to bed and I know you can fix it so canyoufixitRosa?”

Shoving his hands into his pockets, Jake takes a quick glance around the room while the conversation continues.  It was a stark contrast to his own hole in the wall apartment, to say the least.  But oddly, he felt comfortable here, with the warm coloured tone painted on the walls, plush couches with ample throw pillows and the sweet smell of vanilla coming from … well, coming from somewhere. 

“Honestly, I’m fone - I mean, I’m fine.  It’s just … this pizza has stars on it and the couch won’t stop spinning and okay maybe I hurt myself?”  Jake watches as she drops her head into her free hand, voice lowering slightly as she mumbles, “Bring Joss .. Joz … Jocelyn over too if you want.  You totally should.  I’m fine.  Really.”

As though suddenly remembering Jake’s presence, the woman looks up and gives him a thumbs up, smiling in victory.  “You’re the besssst, Rosa!  I totally owe yo-” stopping abruptly, she looks at the phone in her hand with another giggle.  “She hung up.”

He laughs along with her, watching as she flips open the lid to the pizza box and digs out a slice, taking a step back towards the doorway, suddenly very aware that he’s been standing in a relative strangers living room for longer than normal.  “Well, as long as somebody is coming, I should leave you to enjoy your pizza ma’am.”  

Her hand pauses mid-way from her mouth, several ropes of cheese forming a bridge between pie and human as she turns her attention towards Jake.  The words are masked by a mouth full of pizza, but he makes out the words thank you, Pizza Guy! as he turns to leave.

And even though there is still a part of Jake that thinks this whole ‘waiting for your soulmate before your life can begin’ is a little ridiculous, he still sits in his car near the front of the woman’s apartment, waiting until a leather clad figure with dark curly hair appears, stomping up the staircase and slamming her finger on the same apartment number that he had half an hour ago before being buzzed into the building.  He tells himself that he’s just being a good person, making sure that a patron of his employer was safe, but there’s a tiny part of him that already knows that he cares more for this mysterious woman than he should.  

** this thing is 16k long, so find the rest on AO3! **

[disruptedvice]

Dancing around each other

Soulmate AU for @amydancepants-peralta for the @b99fandomevents summer 2019 fic exchange

Summary:

“Ah! Amy! Help!” Jake shrieked the moment she answered her phone, not really concerned about volume control since he was kinda trying to not die at the moment. It had gotten through four rings before she finally picked up, and this would've been it for Jake if it'd gone straight to voicemail.

Amy frowned, looking around as if he could see her, but soon brushed it off as her being paranoid. “Jake? What's wrong?”

“I've got the goose!” He shouted, jumping to dodge another swipe that could only be described as intelligent and intent. “The goose is here! The goose is here!”

Soulmate AU where one person finds a goose who leads them to the other person. The difficulty comes in not being mauled by a goose.

AO3 Link

________

Dancing Around Each Other ________

“Ah! Amy! Help!” Jake shrieked the moment she answered her phone, not really concerned about volume control since he was kinda trying to not die at the moment. It had gotten through four rings before she finally picked up, and this would've been it for Jake if it'd gone straight to voicemail.

Amy frowned, looking around as if he could see her, but soon brushed it off as her being paranoid. “Jake? What's wrong?”

If it was anyone else calling her, she would have already been freaking out by someone yelling help on the other end of the line, but this was Jake, so she was merely concerned, knowing this call had a 60% chance of being ridiculous. The man counted running out of gummy bears an emergency. Forgive her for being a bit skeptical of this phone call. Besides, the timing was too suspicious. Of all the times to call her out of the blue, he picked right now?

“I've got the goose!” Jake shouted, jumping to dodge another swipe that could only be described as intelligent and intent. “The goose is here! The goose is here!”

He had been trying to get away from it when he stood on top of the dining room chair that had more or less been pushed into the corner of the room, and boy, that was a big mistake. He was panicking, okay? He thought that standing on top of it would keep him safe and out of range. Now he was trapped, and currently being held hostage by a hostile entity that happened to be a goose.

It took Amy a few seconds to process what he was telling her, because really? Today of all days? She thought his random call was suspicious timing. Turns out she was in the clear, because today was the day Jake Peralta got his goose.

Normally she would step outside to take a phone call, but this place was practically deserted, so she didn't feel too bad about talking on the phone in the section she had found herself in. She was using her inside voice- and it's not like she was in a library or anything. Still, she set down the box she was carrying on one of the cheapy gray-ish blue vinyl benches and sat beside it, trying to make herself as unobtrusive as possible as she took this very important phone call.

“You're not supposed to let it corral you,” Amy said unhelpfully from the other side of the phone, like Jake didn't know that, like anyone didn't know that. It was a different story when you were the one being attacked in your own home first thing in the morning. Everyone knew you weren't supposed to let it corral you, but that was easier said than done.

It was a rampant goose that was supposed to get you to your soulmate, but geese are crazy and don't give a shit, so you were more than likely going to end up at your soulmate's feet bloody and maimed with a hissing beast flapping behind you.

You're pretty much screwed if your goose gets you cornered. Geese aren't logical. They don't care if snapping at you when you're trapped means it'll take longer for you to get to the person you're meant for. You're expecting reason from a beast. A violent, vicious beast.

“That's easy for you to say when you're not being hunted by a goose,” Jake pointed out, jumping on the unfortunately wobbly chair, trying to dodge another menacing- peck? Peck seemed too light a word for what it was doing.

Anyways, it didn't work. His shins were prime real estate, and he yelped when the bird hit him with deadly accuracy.

“You know you're not allowed to go to the precinct today,” his partner reminded him, again rather unhelpfully.

Amy seemed way too calm for his liking when he was fighting for his life right now. The least she could do was come over and shoot it before he was mauled to death.

Did guns even work on soulmate geese? He didn't know. He was too afraid to find out- he didn't wanna know what a goose with a vengeance looked like if he missed.

Amy was, of course, talking about the precinct's no goose policy. If a member of the NYPD happened to be unfortunate enough to have their soulmate goose show up one morning, they were absolutely prohibited from showing up to work that day. Because geese weren't picky.

Sure, they'd follow their victim and get them to their soulmate eventually, but they would absolutely peck the shit out of anyone within a goose-rage radius, which was very problematic in enclosed work spaces like a police precinct.

That left Jake alone fending off the foul water fowl.

He didn't know how much longer he could last. He had to get out of his apartment. Backed into a corner on a dumb chair with a goose trying to get at him and succeeding (oh god was it succeeding) was not going to end well for him.

He shouldn't have let it corral him.

Geese were way taller than he had any idea of. Who the hell needed a neck that long?

“Hey, maybe if you race over here and blare the sirens, it'll be distracting enough for me to slip by this goose without losing any fingers,” or toes, he noted, not sure whether or not he should be thankful that the goose had it out for his legs like they had personally wronged it. “Please come help me,” he begged, jolting again at another peck and bite combo. He was desperate here. “You don't have to fend it off, even though I would do that for you cause you're my partner. You don't have to risk death by goose for little ol me. I just need a distraction.”

Amy grimaced. “Sorry, Jake. Today's my day off- I'm in Manhattan with my brother,” the excuse just slipped off her tongue with an ease that maybe should have been a bit concerning, but no one had to know but her. “Just try and rush it and get out the door.”

“But I'll get bit!”

“You're getting bit now, aren't you?” It was a rhetorical question. From his pained yelps, she estimated the goose had landed at least six direct blow since their conversation started.

“I can't go out now. I'll get arrested for public indecency! This goose didn't wait for me to get dressed this morning.” Jake covered the phone with his hand as he leaned down, hissing directly at the goose, “No manners-!”

It snapped at him, and he realized that leaning down to scold a demon goose wasn't the smartest idea if he wanted to keep his movie star good looks. He wanted his nose to stay attached to his face, thank you very much.

Man, he really wished he wore more than boxers to sleep last night. But it was summer, and hot, so excuse him for sleeping comfortably in the privacy of his own goddamn home.

Even a pair of pajama pants meant his legs probably wouldn't have been bleeding at the moment.

Instead, he woke up to this.

Amy shrugged, but it took seeing the action reflected at her in one of the small titled mirrors on the ground for her to realize he couldn't see the gesture. “I don't know what to tell you. It's not gonna end until you get moving. Oh, and maybe don't get in a car,” she added, now that she thought of it. “I've heard it can be especially bad being stuck in one with a goose. But hey, look on the bright side-”

“The bright side is staring me down with teeth and monster tongues,” Jake said dryly.

She rolled her eyes and barreled right on. “Yeah, but you're going to meet your soulmate today.”

Jake blinked. He'd almost forgotten about that aspect. It was kinda hard to think about anything else when you were being attacked by a creature more dinosaur than bird.

“Sorry, I don't think there's anything I can do from here,” Amy told him, already out of helpful tips. She still hadn't encountered her soulmate goose yet. She was trying to be happy for him, though. “You're gonna have to figure this out on your own, Pineapples.”

Jake had a feeling she was going to say that.

“Okay, just- don't hang up. I'm fucking terrified.” _____

Jake slammed his bedroom door shut, pushing his whole body weight up against it, heart racing a mile a minute. He didn't think the goose was strong enough to knock down the door, but he locked his legs in place, his back pressed against the door like he was the only thing keeping it shut. His heart was racing a mile a minute as he panted into the phone, fingers curled around it in an iced grip.

“Made it to my bedroom, still have all my toes.”

There was a scratching of claws at the door that would've been eerie if it wasn't so frantic and determined. It felt like he was starring in his own psychological horror movie thriller and he did not appreciate that. Not at all.

“What if I just locked the door and stayed in here all day?” He asked, an edge of hysteria creeping into his voice. “Then I'll be safe,” he reasoned. “It can't get in here. It can't get me.”

“Jake, it's a supernatural goose. It got into your locked apartment with no trouble. I don't think one more door is going to stop it.”

Jake groaned. At least locking the door meant he might have enough time to get dressed without dodging beaks and feet. Weaponized feet. If he was lucky. _____

There was a hum of commotion outside the store, but Amy paid it no mind. It hadn't even been half an hour since their phone call ended, but of course it was still on her mind.

Sure, she felt a little bad for lying to Jake, but she'd already been here for two hours, and was only slightly closer to making a decision. She had it narrowed down to three options- the same three she'd been staring at for the past 15 minutes. This was going to be perfect- she wouldn't settle for anything less. No way was she ruining her surprise by rushing the choice, not even to hurry out of there to help her partner out of a jam.

While she didn't want to admit it to herself, there was a very small part of her that felt sick at the prospect of having to help Jake track down his soulmate.

What had started out a pleasant day shopping (really, she was just excited about her great idea) was instantly ruined by his phone call. Now there was a lead weight sinking in her stomach, because apparently today was the day.

Amy knew it was selfish. She felt bad enough for it already- Jake was her partner, but she couldn't make herself move from the spot when she knew what it would mean.

She couldn't help him when his goose would lead to someone who wasn't her.

She felt awful about it, but that didn't change the fact that she was standing in this Brooklyn store and staring at what she had picked out, just a short drive away from his apartment.

He'd find his soulmate with or without her help. That was how the whole soulmate goose thing worked.

Besides- she was only here right now because of Jake. That's the only reason she was even in this ridiculous store. She rationalized that it was okay for her to do this for Jake right now instead of helping him with his goose, and it was all good.

She still felt terrible about it. And wasn't any closer to making a decision. _____

The cashier was just about to swipe her card when the door to the store opened with a clamor (and the faint tingling of the bell from above).

Amy was more than a little surprised when she turned to see a disheveled Jake Peralta stumbling over a display case of shoes, panting and- oh my god, was he bleeding?

His arms were covered in red and pink marks, and she wasn't sure if it was a scrape or a small gash on his forehead, but it looked pretty bad all the same.

Jake haphazardly tried to put some distance between him and the goose that chased him in here, looking over his shoulder and thanking his lucky stars that the glass door seemed to be holding it back for the moment.

He leaned over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. He pulled his hands back when the pain signals from his brain reminded him his knees were still covered in very painful bites.

Amy still couldn't believe her eyes. “Jake? Are you okay?”

He looked up, just as surprised to see her as she was him. “Amy? What are you doing here? This isn't Manhatt-” Jake gasped. “You lied! On the phone! You lied to me!”

He surveyed their surroundings, trying to figure out where they were. He hadn't been paying attention where he was being chased with a demon bird on his heels, but once he took around, he instantly recognized it. He loved this place.

He turned back to Amy, more confused than ever. “And what the hell are you doing in a sneaker store?”

It was an honest question, but she seemed to take it as an accusation.

“What are you doing here?” She asked, sounding upset, angry even now that she had snapped out of the gawking she was doing. Like she had anything to be mad about. He was the one who had been lied to- nay, betrayed by the person he was supposed to trust most in this world- and Amy just left him to the jaws of the beast. Hung him out to dry.

“I have a goose snapping at my heels!” He pointed toward the door, not noticing that the goose was now gone.

Somehow, that wasn't his main concern anymore. He was much more hung up on the fact that he called her begging for help, and she gave him some made up excuse so she could continue shopping at a store not even five minutes away from his apartment (the goose had chased him around the block a few times- it took awhile to get here).

They'd been partners for what- eight years? She could've just said she was busy, but nope, she straight up lied to him when he was in a life or death situation that animal control couldn't help him out of.

And to be in this store- it was a low blow. How many times had she called his passion (obsession was how she usually phrased it) frivolous and immature?

Mostly, it was the lying that bothered him. He was maybe a little worked up from all the running and almost dying he did (if you'd ever been chased by a goose, you would understand why he was convinced his obituary would read water fowl related death, which was so not how the Jake Peralta was supposed to go out).

He was in a lot of pain too, though his jeans meant that an employee wouldn't be mopping up blood from the many wounds he'd aggregated as he made his way to where Amy was standing at the counter. At least he wasn't dripping all over the floor.

He was bleeding, with adrenaline pumping through his veins, and his partner had lied to ditch him for a sneaker store, so yes, he felt fully within his right about the chewing out Amy was about to receive.

It was even worse when he got closer. Her eyes widened, filled with concern as she took in his bedraggled appearance. Jake looked like he'd been through a ringer. It wasn't just his normal disheveledness- he was still panting from the run, face flushed, clothing all askew (his shirt even ripped in some places), and his jeans had a few too many of what appeared to be suspiciously fresh blood stains.

Plus, he looked mad. Jake almost never got mad. That enough was cause for concern.

“You lied to me! For a pair of sneakers!” He looked down at the box she was purchasing- a large pair of red, definitely male sneakers. “Those are so not your size.”

Amy winced, realizing only too late that she should've covered up her purchase when he started getting closer. She groaned in aggravation- now he knew, and this was all for nothing. “Ugh! Your damn goose ruined my surprise!”

“What surprise?” Jake tried to hold onto his righteous indignation, but he couldn't help the way he perked up at the mention of a surprise. He narrowed his eyes at her, curious but suspicious that maybe she was just trying to distract him from his very deserved anger.

Amy slumped over in defeat, figuring she might as well tell him since it was already ruined.

“You're always going on and on about your damn sneakers,” she grumbled, crossing her arms (and making a face that Jake would classify as unfairly cute). “I thought it would be a good birthday present. Of course I lied- I couldn't tell you I've spent way too long trying to decide if you'd like the red sneakers with the stripey thing better, or the orange ones with the yellow curly bits. And that was only after I ruled out the neon pair with the rainbow shoe laces because there's just way too many choices here,” she motioned vaguely towards the wall that was covered with what had to be hundreds of display shoes of various colors, styles, brands, and whatever the hell else was supposed to make one shoe different and distinct from the next. She now understood how Jake could spend hours in this store. “I should've just gotten you a gift card. I was planning on doing that too, in case you hated there, but I wanted to get you an actual present too, you know? I couldn't tell you I've been here all morning staring at shoes that look exactly the same and trying to decide which one you'd like better for a birthday present.” Amy looked like she was about to give up just from recounting her struggle in this god forsaken land of sneakers. “And they do, Jake,” she pressed, eyebrows pulling together in distress. “They all look the same. They all look like sneakers.”

Jake waited for her to laugh, or say she was joking. But she didn't. Santiago was overwhelmingly earnest and almost distraught, like this sneaker store had broken her.

“Amy, my birthday's in three months,” he deadpanned.

She just shrugged in response. “I like to get things done early.”

The realization hit them at the same moment- the significance that they'd both glossed over because of confusion, defeat, and feelings. The dawning comprehension on his face was mirrored on hers. Of what this meant.

“Your goose... led you here.”

“Yeah,” Jake agreed slowly, his speech just as stilted as hers. “It did.”

Amy looked around nervously, trying to clock all the people in the store. There was a young couple milling about a few aisles down, a couple stragglers here and there, at least one worker stocking the shelves, and of course, the cashier ringing her up. It truly was a mark of living in New York that- after his initial disruption of clambering into the store and making a mess- no one was even paying attention to them anymore. Except the cashier, since Amy was still technically in the middle of her purchase. All in all, there was seven people in the store, then her and Jake.

A gloom fell over his face at her reaction, misinterpreting it as Amy checking for other people that could be the soulmate his goose was herding him to, because she wasn't pleased with the conclusion that it was possibly leading him to her.

When duh, it was the exact opposite. She wanted to rule out any other option, because this had to be a sure thing before she let herself get excited about it, or really feel the overwhelming relief that was already threatening to bubble up.

“I'm never gonna get my goose!” Amy whooped with an excited cheer. Sure, maybe now wasn't the time to celebrate that since Jake was standing right in front of her after being attacked by a goose, but really, when was the appropriate time to celebrate one would never be attacked by a goose? Cause now felt right.

“Uh, what?”

“This means I'll never have to deal with a soulmate goose!” She grinned at him, because this was very good news (for her, at least). “Cause I already found you. I'll already be with my soulmate, so a goose won't need to show up to chase me to you! I'll never have to be attacked by a soulmate goose! Cause it got you first!” Amy laughed, utterly gleeful, and Jake was conflicted to say the least. Because Amy was laughing and looking so happy, which he loved, but she was also rejoicing in the fact that he got viciously mauled by a goose and celebrating that she'd never have to go through it because it happened to him, and he kinda wanted to be mad at her teasing and laughing at him like this, but his heart was confused, because he thought she was upset, but now she's smiling?

Just then, Jake felt the beak of death clamp around his leg with a vicious honk, and yes, Jake shrieked, and no, he was not proud of that.

The goose let out another terrifying honk before it made a mad dash forward, becoming a blur of feathers barreling towards Amy's legs.

She didn't have time to react before it darted over her feet, biting her knee, hard, almost as if to mark her beyond a shadow of a doubt that yes, the goose was definitely leading him to the human called Amy Santiago.

“Shit,” she cursed, her hand automatically going to her freshly bitten knee. She'd heard stories, but god did that hurt.

“You totally deserved that,” Jake said.

Amy looked at him aghast, about to shoot something back at him, but there was another predatory honk from behind her that made her jump.

She didn't waste any time hurrying over to Jake, convinced the safest place for her legs to be was right in front of his. She took his hands in hers for good measure (not like she really needed a motivation to hold hands with Jake- she was always looking for an excuse).

“So, you're okay with this?” He asked cautiously, sounding uncharacteristically vulnerable. Still, he interlaced his fingers with hers, almost without noticing himself. Amy did, her heartbeat speeding up at the simple action of entwining their fingers together, like it was meant to be.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “I didn't think it was gonna be me.” His face fell at that. Her eyes widened when she realized how he took it, and she rushed to clear up the misconception. “No! Like it upset me! Your call ruined my morning, because I thought you'd find your soulmate today and it wouldn't be me. I'm glad it was me. I wanted it to be me. I wanted it to be you,” she said, fervently, cupping his cheek, because she needed him to understand.

Jake smiled. “I wanted it to be you too.”

They didn't need the prompting of a rabid goose to finally get to kissing, but it certainly helped speed things up a bit.

For a kiss that was partially motivated by fear, it was a damn good one. All of the pain from being hunted by a goddamn bird was worth it the moment Amy pressed her lips to his. He could barely even feel all his wounds when Amy wrapped her arms around his neck, closing the minuscule distance between them, her body flush against his.

Amy could still feel the pain from her one knee bite, with a new sympathy and guilt for being so flippant with her celebration of never having to go through the goose mauling he just went through because holy shit did it hurt. But getting to kiss Jake was a good consolation prize, as far as she was concerned.

They were both grinning at each other like absolute idiots when they finally parted. If they weren't in public, she might have been tempted to go back for more, something a little more intense this time. By the way his eyes kept darting down to her lips and back to her eyes again, he was feeling the same.

“The sneakers are awesome, Amy,” he told her with a soft smile, lighting up at the way she absolutely glowed at the praise. “You have good taste.”

As if she couldn't smile any wider. She found she was okay with her birthday surprise being ruined- just this once.

“Yeah,” she murmured, fingers trailing at the back of his neck. “I think so too.”

[elsaclack]

imma just state for the record that while i really want you to get on writing the next chapter of the royalty AU, i also REALLY REALLY WANT YOU TO WRITE ANOTHER SEGMENT FROM YOUR OLD “JAKE CAN SENSE AMY’S FEELINGS” SOULMATE AU LAKSJDFLAKSDJF 😍😭💕 (idk if the old drabbles still exist online at this point but wow i think about that AU maybe once every 16 minutes, i’m a mess)

HELLOOOOOOO ERICA i’m not even sure if you remember sending this to me, it’s been sitting in my ask box for THAT LONG!!! but it’s been too long since i’ve been able to write anything i’m really REALLY proud of so i decided that tonight is the night!! and when i went to my ask box to knock out a prompt, this one literally started writing itself!!!!

lmao!!!!

SO YEAH u said another segment from the soulmates can feel each other’s emotions au and i thought what better segment to write than the one you liked the most out of the old ones that i STUPIDLY forgot to save/crosspost before i deleted!!! aka i rewrote it LMAO

it’s. Different than it was before but that’s because i had no idea what i was doing before and now i kind of have half of an idea about what i’m doing lmao it references one of the other one-shots and i’m about 95% sure i still have that one as a google doc so after i copy and paste this bad boy into a google doc, i’ll double check that i still have that other one too :-))))))))))))))

ANYWAYS THANK YOU FOR THIS AND THANK YOU FOR THE ROYALTY AU I PROMISE I WILL FINISH IT PLEASE ACCEPT THIS AS AN APOLOGY FOR BEING SO FREAKING LATE ON UPDATING LMAO

Amy’s front door is incredibly old.

There are places between the grains of wood in which the paint has seeped and morphed together before it dried, Jake notes.

He’s been staring at said grains for the better part of five minutes now - or, at least, that’s how long he’s been aware of the fact that he’s been staring at said grains. It’s really stupid, all things considered. Stupid that he’s paralyzed on her doorstep when he’s trudged across it more times than he can count. Stupid that he’s been standing her motionless for so long, he’s certain he looks like a weird stalker to any of her neighbors who might be looking through their peepholes out into the hall. Stupid that with every second that passes, the ice cream in this plastic bag melts a little more.

Stupid that every time he inhales, he feels her split and aching heart, feels her loneliness, feels her bitterness, all as real and intimate as if they are his own.

Something happened half an hour ago. He’s not entirely sure what - hasn’t tried sussing it out beyond the initial bombardment - all he really knows is that he was home, on his couch, content with his Jurassic Park with limited commercial interruptions, and then it felt like the whole earth was falling to pieces and he knew.

So maybe he is sure about what happened - she’d mentioned as she left the precinct earlier that she had dinner plans with Teddy tonight. And it’s odd, how beyond his immediate concern for her, he feels his own undeniable sense of hope rising. His soulmate - who doesn’t know she’s his soulmate - is single once again.

Finally.

Maybe, he’d told himself as he mindlessly snatched his keys off the counter and jogged out of his apartment. Maybe.

“Amy?” He calls as he raps his knuckles against the door. Her emotions flicker in a familiar rhythm against his breast - a split-second of surprise, a mix of confusion and apprehension, a lick of irritation. “Ames, it’s me. You home?”

(Of course he knows she’s home, but this is all for her benefit, he’s not going to come gallivanting in ten minutes into her single-hood toting ice cream and a declaration of his undying love and an oh, yeah, I’ve been meaning to tell you I’m your soulmate -)

Her apprehension and irritation are gone now, giving way to a much larger portion of pure confusion. “Jake?” he hears her voice moving, muffled, but close beyond the closed door. The light seeping out through the peephole flickers as her head moves by. “What are you doing here?”

“I was in the neighborhood,” he says as nonchalantly as he can. “Your drug store had a better deal on ice cream - two-for-one.” He hoists the bag up a little higher, as if the opaque brown plastic will back his claim. “I figured since I was already in the neighborhood, I’d come by with dessert.”

Her confusion grows more intense - the light has not returned to the peephole. “I told you I had a date tonight,” she says slowly.

He’s lucky she can’t feel his emotions - otherwise, she’d register the spike of panic jutting up in his chest. “Oh, that was tonight?” His voice cracks beneath the pressure of his scrambling ruse; the skin of his forehead is in danger of ripping for how grotesquely his brows have contorted into what he can only hope is an expression of shock. “I thought you said that was tomorrow!”

“No, tonight.”

“Maybe it really is time to invest in one of those planny-thingies.”

“Why, so you can keep track of my date schedule? And don’t pretend like you don’t know they’re called planners, you got me one for Secret Santa last year.” There’s a savagery to her tone echoed by a twist of pain in her chest; he opens his mouth, but her immediate pulse of regret gives him pause. “I’m sorry,” she says, now much quieter, and he can’t pretend to hide his concern any longer.

(It’s not like he’d have to work that hard to come up with an excuse - she’s practically an open book, especially to him, even with a closed door between them, and it certainly doesn’t help that he’s an amazing detective-slash-genius.)

“Are you okay?”

The pain in her chest seems to wrench a little wider, pierce a little deeper. “I don’t know,” she says, and the light in the peephole reappears a split-second before something solid thunks against the door from the other side.

(Her forehead, he’d be willing to bet.)

“Do you want me to leave?”

The part of her that seems to jump at that suggestion is a bit of a blow to his ego, but it’s nothing compared to what the skittish panic that flares to life the moment the question leaves his lips does. He hears her sigh again - hears the metallic sounds of a hand landing on the doorknob - hears silence. And then -

“No.”

- so small and quiet, he almost misses it.

“Do you want me to come inside?”

“I don’t know.”

And she really doesn’t, he notes.

“I promise I won’t judge,” he offers. “You don’t even have to tell me what happened if you don’t want to. If - if something, y’know, uh, happened. You don’t have to talk at all, we can just - we can sit and watch TV and eat ice cream and I can run my mouth until it’s just like white noise.”

She’s quiet as she deliberates. “What kind of ice cream?”

“Cherry Garcia, obviously.”

A pulse of gratitude and affection and something else he doesn’t exactly have a name for warms his chest as the lock on her front door slides out of place. “I just - I need to warn you,” she says before she opens the door. “Don’t say a word.”

She opens the door before he has a chance to clarify, and the moment she does he understands - it’s clear that she’s been crying. And he well and truly hates himself for the first thought that pops into his stupid reptilian brain:

She is the most beautiful person that has ever existed.

Her cheeks are red - rubbed raw from her swiping fingers and probably tissues to blot away any running mascara that streaked down toward her jawline. There are no tears glistening in her eyes or clinging like dew drops to her eyelashes, but the whites of her eyes are still a little bloodshot, and the browns of her pupils are intense pools of chocolate that seem to pierce his very soul in the brief split-second she allows herself to meet his gaze. Even her lips look darker than usual - probably stains leftover from whatever lipstick she’d so carefully drawn on just to haphazardly wipe away.

It honestly takes him a minute to even register the fact that her hair is thrown up in a knotted, wild bun, and that her frame is essentially hidden beneath the baggy layers of a massively over-sized Cheap Trick concert t-shirt and the rattiest grey sweatpants he’s ever laid eyes on. All in all, he’s very obviously walked into the immediate aftermath of an Amy Santiago break-up.

And she is the most beautiful person that has ever existed.

“I said don’t say a word.” she repeats, this time through grit teeth. He panics for a split second, ready to dump the ice cream on the floor and fling himself out the window if he’d subconsciously spoken that totally stalker-esque monologue out loud, before his awareness catches up to him and he realizes he’s been staring. Motionless and staring, actually. Or, well, more like motionless and gaping and staring. A quick assessment of her emotions confirms, she’s not feeling shock - she’s embarrassed and self-conscious. She thinks he’s judging her.

Well that simply won’t do.

“I’m just waiting for you to go turn the TV on so I can get spoons,” he says as he gestures toward the kitchen, hoping his bravado sounds more natural than it feels.

Suspicion has joined the maelstrom of emotions storming through her chest, but it only seems to manifest in her slightly narrowed eyes; she backs away a pace, and then two, before finally turning away and trotting out into her living room. He releases the breath still caught in his chest in one quick huff, and shakes his head as if to clear the cotton suddenly stuffed there as he makes his way toward her silverware drawer.

“It’s the third drawer to the right of the dishwasher,” he hears her call as he pulls the drawer open.

“I know,” he says, letting an ounce of indigence color his voice. “You think I don’t know where your silverware is?”

“I don’t know!” she says, and not for the first time he’s so grateful that she’s his soulmate - otherwise he’d be left wondering if she was kidding beneath the miles-thick layer of outrage ringing with her words, instead of feeling that little bud of amusement in the center of everything else. “Teddy never figured out where it was and we dated for nearly a year, you’ve only been over here, like, ten times!”

He’s also thankful for the wall standing between them at this moment - the wall that covers his involuntary wince, accented by stabbing the spoons through both pliant ice cream surfaces at the same time. “Well,” he says as he gracefully lifts both ice cream cartons and eases the drawer closed with his hip at the same time, “that’s the difference between me and Ted-odore - I’m a detective. I remember details.”

Her expression is equal parts disgruntled, thankful, and annoyed when he makes his way into her living room. “Teddy’s also a detective,” she reminds him as she plucks her carton of ice cream from his hand.

“Ah, but only I am an amazing detective-slash-genius,” he reminds her. They sit at the same time - her carefully, pulling a blanket from the back of the couch over one shoulder and folding a leg under her in one movement, him flopping back, the force of his body connecting with the cushions just short of hard enough to jostle the narrow table behind the couch.

It’s the end of the conversation for quite a while - long enough that they get through an entire episode of The Office without interruption, long enough that half of his ice cream is gone and his fingers are well and truly numb. It’s just long enough that he knows she’s absorbed in what she’s watching - her eyes never deviate from the screen, and the inner turmoil seems to quiet down to some distant back-burner in her mind. Just long enough, he thinks, for him to do a little surreptitious investigating from right here on her couch, without her ever noticing.

He turns to his right, away from her, pretending to cast around on the table behind the couch for a coaster upon which to set his ice cream. He already knows there’s a stack of three on the coffee table eight inches from his knees - the fourth is on the other side of the coffee table, beneath Amy’s quarter-finished ice cream - but he also happens to know that she has a nice set of geode-looking coasters stacked neatly on this table, equal parts artistic and utilitarian, and (if he’s not mistaken) identical to the ones he’d spotted at Captain Holt’s house some eighteen months earlier.

He pretends to grapple for them - they’re two inches to the right of where his hand is currently grasping - all while studying the scene laid out on the dining room table just visible from this angle. There are still dishes there - dirty dishes, if he’s not mistaken - which is, of course, highly uncharacteristic for the woman to whom they belong. It’s clear the meal was in progress when...something happened. Something abrupt and unexpected, something shocking - something that clearly rocked her to her very core, drudging up feelings of isolation and loneliness and a few others he recognizes from the dark weeks that followed his father leaving all those years ago.

He’s practically bursting at the seams with desperation to know why.

The light piano theme song plays over the end credits just as Amy loudly and pointedly clears her throat, and he winces as his fingers close over the coaster he was seeking. “You’re not as sly as you think you are, Mr. Genius,” she mutters as he rights himself on the couch again.

He sighs as he leans forward to set his coaster and carton on her coffee table. “You don’t have to talk about it,” he reiterates, and he knows from her quiet calm resonating near his heart that she truly understands that he means it. “I just - y’know, I wanna, um. Make sure that you’re okay, and stuff.”

She doesn’t look at him. The next episode is already queuing, seconds away from starting automatically, but her eyes are now glazed as she chews the inside of her cheek. Movement by her hip catches his eye - her fingers drum restlessly along the side of the remote, the only outward sign of her visceral inner turmoil, now back to center stage.

“I wanna talk about it,” she says haltingly, thumb mashing down on the pause button. “I do, I - I need to talk about it. I just -”

- don’t want to, he finishes in his mind after she falls silent again. Even if he didn’t have a front-row seat to the weighing of emotions happening in her gut, he could easily follow through her facial expressions - even the nano-expressions, the ones that really don’t even fully register before they’re gone, replaced by the next. 

“It - it sucks, okay?” she finally says. “This whole situation just sucks.”

He remains silent.

“We were, like ten minutes into dinner and everything was going fine. I was telling him about that perp Charles and I took out behind the bakery earlier, and how Charles refused to leave the scene until he’d sampled literally everything the bakery sold, and when I looked up I realized he’d spilled wine all over himself while I was talking but he hadn’t even noticed it because - because -”

She draws in a ragged inhale; he can feel it dragging like knives across his heart.

“I’ve never heard of a connection manifesting that late in someone’s life,” she says after a moment of composition. “I mean - I know it’s possible, obviously, I’ve read articles about it and everything, but I’ve never known anyone who’s had that happen to them. It’s always young kids to teenagers, that’s when it’s most common for the connection to start - Teddy’s thirty-seven years old. He didn’t think he was the receptive one in his partnership. He didn’t think he had a partner. But he does, and he felt them for the first time half-way through my story about Charles shotgunning a croissant. And it wasn’t me.”

The silence is thick and swelling in his head, and the temptation to scream the truth is almost overwhelming for all of two seconds. He’s not certain he would have been able to keep his composure, if not for her stark feelings of inadequacy roiling with her heartache radiating through his chest.

“That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you,” he starts, far more tentatively than he would like. She rolls her eyes. “Hey, I mean it. There’s nothing wrong with you, Amy.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” she mutters, “you’ve felt your soulmate since you were seven years old. All I’ve had for my entire life is radio silence. Every single one of my brothers is the receptive one in their partnerships. I’m the only one of all my siblings. My parents had already met and were dating as teenagers when their connection started. I am literally the only person in my immediate family who doesn’t feel a connection. It’s not that outlandish to assume I’m the defect, here.”

“Maybe you’re just not the receptive one,” he counters, determination growing with every ounce of inwardly-focused disdain he feels pouring through her very veins. “Maybe there’s someone out there right now who can feel everything you’re feeling, who’s hurting just as bad as you are because you’re hurting so bad right now. Maybe there’s someone who’s been looking for you for his entire life, who’s looking that much harder so he can prove to you that you’re not defective, you’re not a mistake, you’re not worthless.” She’s staring at him full-on now, brows furrowed, intently focused on his every word. “You’re one of the kindest, most thoughtful and amazing people I know, Ames. Your soulmate is out there and as soon as you find each other, I promise, this will all be worth the wait. Don’t be so mean to yourself because some chump missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime so he can go out hunting for a soulmate while covered in red wine stains. Okay?”

She seems to hesitate, before the corners of her mouth twitch against a smile. “Okay,” she says softly.

He’s not sure how and he’s not sure why, but he does know one thing: something in the air has shifted.

He isn’t able to put a name to it until three weeks later, when he finds himself back in that very same apartment on that very same couch, the very same ice cream in his hands, the very same episode queued up and ready to start on the television somewhere off to his right. He’s paying it very little attention, in all honesty - he’s far too enthralled by the gorgeous woman in the red dress on the other end of the couch, toeing off her heels beneath her coffee table and settling in in much the same position as before.

(Save for the silky black curls swept over one shoulder so as not to drip ice cream in them, of course.)

He’s watching her shift, watching the kinetic energy burn through her rolling ankles and curling toes and twitching nose and drumming fingers. She seems intently focused on her ice cream - the very same carton from which she’d eaten the last time he was here - but he knows there’s a level of awareness of his gaze on her.

Just as she knows that he knows.

It hits him here, in this moment: she knew.

“You knew,” he says. Her eyes flick up to his face and all at once, his suspicions are confirmed. “You knew!”

“Knew what?”

“The last time I was here, before I left, I felt something change. I couldn’t figure out what it was, but now I know - you knew I was your soulmate before I left that night, didn’t you?”

It’s the first time they’ve really talked about it since their confrontation in the evidence lock-up - since the electrifying kiss that followed it - and as her smile blossoms, her amusement peaks. “I had a feeling,” she corrects.

“What gave it away?”

“What, you mean how did I know? The kiss was a pretty good hint -”

“Yeah, but you weren’t really shocked after that. I mean, you were, but - not about it being me. What gave me away?”

“I knew three days ago when we were raiding the warehouse and I got ambushed by that guy and you came flying in before he could even pin me to the wall. But I had a feeling after you gave your little speech about how I’m basically the greatest human being on the planet and you mentioned my soulmate feeling emotions that I know I didn’t put into words.”

“Damn it,” he mutters, letting his shoulders fall back against the cushions behind him. She laughs, delighted, and the sound is like pure sunlight bubbling between his ribs. “After all these years, I can’t believe I just straight slipped up. Right to your face, too! I’d always assumed it would be Charles who screwed up.”

A wave of surprise washes over her, but she suppresses it a moment later. “We’ll talk more later,” she says with a smile. “Right now, I wanna try something else.”

She leans forward to set her carton on her coaster and a second later she pounces, pinning him back against the cushions, hovering over him. Her grin has gone Cheshire and her fingers are closing over his before pulling his own carton out of his hand; he releases a breathless laugh as she leans away, just far enough to reach the coffee table, before resuming her position over him. “This is new,” he says.

“It is,” she confirms. “Also new? You feeling unsure of something.”

“Hey,” he snaps, “I’m always unsure of things. You’ve never known because I’m good at hiding it.”

“Not anymore.”

She leans down before he can respond, until her lips are a breath away from his. He can feel his heart tripping in his chest and he knows she can feel it, too - breathless anticipation radiates and sparks like a livewire between them, igniting every last nerve ending, like a fuse lit seconds away from exploding. “Whoa,” he chokes, hands fumbling before landing on her hips.

“Intense,” she breathes back, apparently to enthralled by the build-up to dare take the plunge. “Did it always feel like this?”

“Never actually done this before,” he mutters.

She pulls back an inch - just far enough for him to see her roll her eyes in accompaniment with her wave of exasperation crashing through his chest. “I just mean - this, us, our - our connection. Was it always this intense?”

“No,” he shakes his head, acutely aware of the fact that his hands are still on her hips and he can feel the heat of her skin through the red material. “N-no, never. I mean - when you were feeling something intense, it was kind of strong? But now that it’s a two-way street, so to speak, it’s - everything is way more intense. Especially this.”

She hums thoughtfully, gaze fixated on a spot on the cushion just over his left shoulder, before she suddenly seems to remember herself and where she is. He grins up at her when she blinks herself back into focus - and the twist of affection in her chest is almost cruel for how blinding and savage it is.

“Wow,” she breathes, lifting up a little higher to press her fingertips to her sternum.

“Sorry,” he mumbles a bit sheepishly. “I just - I’m really into you.”

“I can feel that,” she says with a laugh. Her hand falls from her chest much closer to his face than before; he briefly closes his eyes at the feeling of her fingers carding through his hair, part curious, part reverent. “I’m really into you, too.”

He grins again before lightly pinching her hip, laughing when she thumps both heels of her hands against his chest in retaliation. “I can feel that,” he echoes before bending his knees, bringing her teetering forward, back to her original position of a breath away from his lips. This time he cranes his head up to catch her before she can draw back; like both times before, the meld of her lips against his brings everything else to a screeching halt. Her hands splay out gently on either side of his face as his slide up the dips of her waist to skim up her back, thumbs sweeping out over the defined ridge of her lowest ribs.

She pulls away after an eternity, after a split second, lips dark and shiny as she gasps for air; she closes her eyes when he reaches up to move her hair back over her shoulder, so that nothing impedes his view of her face. “You were right,” she mumbles breathlessly.

“Huh?”

“You were right,” she repeats, with a little more conviction than before. “This was worth the wait. You were worth the wait.”

It’s the last coherent thing either one of them says until morning.

[startofamoment]

that’s rough, buddy

Jake’s always had a complicated relationship with fire.

(A character study of sorts on firebender!Jake.)

Hi everyone! Welcome to this incredibly self-indulgent thing, in which I mash together my primary obsession of years past with my current reason for living. (Nevermind that they don’t intuitively mesh well. We’re just going to say that Brooklyn is kind of like Korra-era’s Republic City and call it good.)

An anon had asked me ages ago whether I had any headcanons on what type of bender each person in the squad would be. I hadn’t felt inspired to write an actual fic for this AU until the super talented @microfroggo took on my silly pitch to draw our boi Jake as a firebender a couple months ago. Because tumblr is tumblr, I’ll include the relevant links in a separate reblog down below – def check out Mikko’s work if you’re at all interested in getting something done!

PS: I should probably mention that I don’t do very much to explain the Avatar-related side of this AU. If you’re unfamiliar with the animated series, I’d recommend at least skimming through the wiki page so you get a basic understanding on the different forms of bending. (And honestly, if you have time, GO BINGE-WATCH A:TLA! I promise, you won��t regret it.)

PPS: FMA:B fans out there will note that I’ve included a little nod to everyone’s favorite Flame Alchemist… Because, yes, this is definitely just a gratuitous homage to all my hyperfixations. I’m sorry. (Not sorry.)

“That’s it. Use your breath, son.”

Jake inhales deeply then exhales, focusing intently on the small flame between his hands. He’s supposed to be making sure that it doesn’t blaze wildly or just die in the wind.

He’s done this particular exercise a bajillion times now. (Or maybe less – Mrs. Stratton did mention that he needed to work on his math.) Still, his dad says it’s very important to practice his control. Jake supposes that’s fair, given that it’s only been a few months since he nearly singed Nana’s eyebrows off while blowing out the candles on his blue birthday cake.

What he really wants to do is skip forward to launching fire missiles with his fists or propelling himself through the sky on flaming jets, exactly like he’s seen it done in the movies. But his dad says he’s got a long way to go before he can attempt anything more than a basic fire stream, so Jake just nods and does what he’s told. He’ll become a firebending master eventually.

Truthfully, though, Jake thinks that maybe if his dad weren’t working or golfing so much, maybe they’d get to train more often, and maybe he’d be able to progress to something other than breathing.

The funny thing is: when his dad officially walks out of his life, despite all of their training, Jake’s not sure he even still knows how to breathe.

--- 

 His mom’s an airbender, and Nana’s an airbender, and Gina and her mom are airbenders. So Jake wants to be an airbender. (If only it worked that way.) 

He’s unfortunately stuck as a firebender, with no one to teach him how to actually firebend, so he has to resort to copying the Ninja Lion-Turtles on TV. Raphael’s naturally his favorite, although he can’t make heads or tails of how to replicate his fire daggers.

He almost never experiments with bending at home, of course. He’s not the brightest, but he at least knows how dangerous it would be for one of his attempts to go wrong without anyone around to help extinguish the fire. On the rare instance that his mom isn’t at her multiple jobs, she lets him practice while she paints ceramics or cooks. She’s only had to run in with a bucket of water once, but, well– once is enough.

And yes, he could technically be enrolled in lessons… but that would cost money, and Jake would really rather have a full belly than a proper fighting stance. His mom is overworked and overwhelmed as it is; he couldn’t possibly ask her to look into registration fees at the local dojo.

 ---

 Occasionally, when he’s alone in the park with Gina, he’ll run through the few basic exercises he remembers then attempt some fire-jabs and kicks. He’s not supposed to, but he’s fairly certain that nothing will catch on fire in an open field and that, on the off chance that anything does, a patrol officer will handle it. Gina doesn’t mind at all and usually just uses the time to meditate. 

It’s on one particular trip to the park that it happens. He’s not even sure how he does it, just knows that he goes from buzzing from the inside out to shooting electricity from his fingertips. He lifts his hand up in wonder, trying to get a closer glimpse at the little iridescent bolts. He’s so enraptured that he doesn’t realize where his other hand is pointing. He doesn’t see the string of lightning hurtling straight toward his best friend.

Everything turns out fine in the end. The blast wasn’t strong enough – he isn’t strong enough –  to fatally wound her, but Gina still gets brought straight to the hospital.

“I’m okay, Jake,” she insists with a huff, waving off his umpteenth apology. “Besides, I swear I met Raava in the two seconds your lightning hit me. Did you know she’d be ethnically ambiguous? The scrolls have not done her justice at all.”

Jake chuckles, accepting the jello cup she offers him.

For the most part, he’s glad that she’s fine and that she apparently met the Avatar Spirit and that she still likes him enough to give him her dessert.

Deep down, he feels terrible. He’s never going to lightningbend again.

 ---

 Jake had assumed that he’d find his path in college and know what to do by the end of it. Instead, he’s a new graduate back in his childhood bedroom, freeloading off of his mom for as long as she’ll let him. He’s really just coasting through life and going through the motions, aimless.

Eventually, his clarity comes – not in a spark, but in a short-circuit fire erupting just a few houses away. 

He’s woken up by loud sirens blaring and screams echoing in the night. He acts on instinct, running out before remembering to put shoes on and running into the blaze without a second thought. The ground should be blistering hot beneath his feet, but he doesn’t notice at all. He keeps going until he’s parting walls of flames, ushering the family of nonbenders to safety.

In the thick smoke rising from the still-burning house, he sees destruction. In his hands, for the first time in a long time, he sees something good.

He thinks that maybe he should join the local fire department, that he should use his bending to help control and extinguish rogue flames. He thinks about it, and then thinks about it some more, and then figures that he probably wouldn’t enjoy the constant reminder of how devastating fire can be.

Months after mulling over it, he finally comes to a decision: “Mom? I think I’m going to sign up for the police academy.”

“That sounds like a great idea, honey,” she replies, pulling him into a tight embrace. “I’m so proud of you.”

 ---

 It’s rough because all the other trainees have been honing their bending for years, whereas he’d been spending most of his life trying to restrain the inferno inside him.

Most of them laugh; one of them actually slams him against the lockers and calls him a “sorry excuse for a firebender.”

“Don’t mind him,” a voice says. “He wouldn’t know a good bender if the Avatar kicked him straight into the Spirit World.”

Jake looks up from where he’s slumped on the ground and recognizes her as the fierce metalbender no one’s been able to talk to all week. There’s a distinctive scar through her right eyebrow, and he wonders whether it came from a freak accident. (He also wonders how she got into the men’s locker room, or how she knew he needed somebody, anybody.)  

“I’m Rosa,” she says, reaching out a hand to help him up. “Wanna spar?”

 ---

 He gets better. 

He trains with any firebender that’ll take him on, watches instructional videos, goes on Yahoo! Answers… Soon enough, he’s wielding whirling discs and shooting comets of fire like the best of them.

The only thing he doesn’t even consider attempting is lightningbending. At least not until he’s in his thirties, watching wide-eyed as his new captain generates a cracking stream of electricity out of nothing. It’s just strong enough to stun the escaped convict they’ve been tailing, no real damage done.

“You want me to teach you how to lightningbend,” Holt says without preamble the next day.

Jake opens and closes his mouth dumbly, feeling thoroughly seen and not quite knowing how to respond.

“Before anything, Peralta, I should let you know that not everyone is able to manipulate lightning. It takes a different level of power and a certain kind of–”

“I can do it,” he interrupts quickly. “I’ve done it before, sir, when I was a kid. I just don’t know how to control it.”

Holt regards him for a long moment before nodding. “We start at seven tomorrow.”

 ---

 Jake’s always thought that fire meant power and aggression and pursuit. Instead, it’s weakness when he’s face to face with particularly-skilled waterbenders – those who can render him useless, temporarily buried within thick sheets of ice; or who send downpours of unrelenting, freezing rain over his head.

(He thinks, as Amy smirks and bends a rapid torrent of water toward his sternum, flinging him halfway across the training room, that he’s weak for her in a different way.)

 ---

 It had never occurred to him to measure the intensity of his flame. He’s always figured that the fire he produced was hot enough – hot enough to take down perps, hot enough to never turn the heat on in his apartment, hot enough to discreetly keep Amy’s coffee warm throughout the morning. (If she’s noticed him repeatedly finding excuses to pick up her mug, she hasn’t said anything about it.)

Charles, of all people, makes him check. “Hey Jake, do you know if you can keep a flame constant at say 350 to 425 degrees Fahrenheit?”

Jake turns away from his computer screen to look at him, his brow scrunched together in confusion. “Why?”

“I was thinking of doing an open-fire roast for the precinct’s Turkey Day dinner this year.”

“Boyle, you want me to firebend our main course?”

“It would make me so happy.”

Noting zero sarcasm in his response, Jake shrugs then swivels his chair back to his desk. “Okay, yeah– But ask Gina if we can book the training room for this. I’m not firebending a turkey in my apartment.”

 ---

 It turns out that being a walking furnace really does have its perks. Or at least that’s what Jake realizes as Amy burrows into his side, pressing her nose into the crook of his neck.

“You’re warm,” she mumbles sleepily, exhausted from the day’s departmentally-mandated sparring practice and the just-as-steamy bedroom activities that followed.

(It had to have been well over their thousandth time facing off in the precinct gym, both of them familiar enough with each other that they could anticipate nearly all of their attacks… Except he really could never have foreseen Amy’s final move: completely disarming him, not with a tidal wave but with a kiss.)

“Warm?” he scoffs teasingly. “I think you mean hot.”

She groans loudly but cuddles closer to him still, her smile burning against his bare skin.

 ---

 He gets thrown for a loop when their major serial murder case boils down to a ring of firebenders, all stuck in their old way of thinking.  

“You’re not them,” Amy reminds him, running a gentle but steady hand down his back.

I could be, he thinks. Because even now – especially now – in the calm silence of the evidence lockup, he can feel the sheer power thrumming beneath his skin. All it would take is for him to get too angry or too drunk or too anything, and the worst could happen.

“You’re a good person, Jake,” she says, her tone more firm than before. “You always have been.”

He swallows thickly and nods, letting her pull him into a long embrace.

 ---

 If there’s one thing he’s wished he could do with his firebending, it’s healing. He’s watched Amy do it countless of times, stepping up as the precinct’s unofficial healer whenever necessary. He’s felt the soothing power of it himself – cool water coaxing at his skin, repairing everything from a black eye to a bloody nose to a stiff back.

Right now, watching the love of his life start to bleed out before his eyes… He’s never felt more helpless.

“Damn it!” Jake yells, pushing his jacket into her side, willing the bleeding to stop. With the shooter knocked out and cuffed in the corner, he’s finally free to assess the damage. “When is the ambulance going to get there? You need a healer, now! ”

“J-Jake,” she chokes out, bringing a shaky hand to his clenched fist. “F-f-fire c-can cauter-r-rize.”

He lets out a sharp gasp, his eyes wide with shock. “You want me to burn you?!” He shakes his head vehemently. “No, Amy, no. It’s too dangerous. I could kill you–”

“Y-you won’t,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. The open trust in her eyes makes him want to sob. “Jake.”

“Okay,” he says, wiping hot tears with the back of his hand. “Okay.”

 ---

 “Can you do the twinkling lights again, Uncle Jake? Pleeaaase?”

It’s bedtime at the Jeffords household, and two little girls are decidedly not asleep.

“Please, Uncle Jake? Aunt Amy? One last story and the twinkling lights?”

He meets Amy’s gaze and raises an eyebrow. She shrugs, her lips curling into a smile. “I suppose just one short book wouldn’t hurt. Right, Jake?”

He hums, feigning thought while glancing at the clock. “We might have just enough time before your daddy and mommy get back.”

Cagney and Lacey cheer as he switches off their bedside lamp, and then watch with glee as he fills their room with dozens of tiny, carefully-placed flames. He makes them flicker with a precise movement of his hands, makes them float like fireflies in the night sky.

The twins fall asleep soon enough, lulled by the soft tone of Amy’s voice and the amber glow of the lights.

Sometimes Jake forgets how enchanting fire can be.

 ---

 Yet again, he’s at the mercy of a waterbender.

This time, it’s his daughter, only two-weeks-old and somehow already able to cause ripples and waves as she moves a tiny hand through the warm water in her tub. She lacks any real control, which is perhaps the biggest problem.

“Amy!” he calls out, equal parts awed and panicked. There’s nothing much he can do right now, apart from maybe distracting the baby with a dancing flame. (Not that he’d allow her anywhere near fire, at least not yet.)  

 ---

 “I’m going to be a waterbender like Mommy,” his son declares one day, with all the confidence of a child that’s crossed the jungle gym for the first time. He’s a little older than most kids are when they start bending, but it’s too early to be concerned about it; he could just be a late bloomer. (Granted, it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t start bending at all. They’d love him just the same if he were a nonbender.)

“How about firebending?” Jake jests lightly, feeling a bit wounded but also kind of relieved.

“Hmm, maybe,” Max shrugs, before running off again to play.  

Of course, of course, when the boy eventually does start bending, it’s a scorching stream of fire that bursts from his small outstretched fist. He’d been mimicking the probenders they’d seen on TV the day before, copying their fighting stances down to a tee.

Jake meets his eyes and sees the same mixture of fear and amazement he’s come to know so well. He quickly takes control of the wild flame, tamping it down to a low ember before gently passing it back to his son.

Max nurses the glowing warmth between his two palms, staring at it in fierce concentration. It flares too-strong for a moment, then recedes but doesn’t fizzle out.

Jake nods at him and smiles, pride blossoming in his chest.

“That’s it. Use your breath, son.”

[readingallthefics]

Amy’s a month old, too young to remember anything, and he shows up on her skin for the very first time in the form of an explosion of color.

[sogytits]

Red String of Fate

It felt like something smacked me in the face, just full on full force hit me. Of course I reacted because something just hit me in the face, but no one seemed to have noticed all of them were still just walking along like nothing happened. The only thing off was they all has little red strings around their left pinky fingers, many of them extended through and beyond walls, some even seemed to extend into the sky. There even seemed to be some strings that were just passing through and not connected to anyone around.

“What the fuck” I whisper to myself, people starting to catch on to my freak out, considering I just stopped in the middle of a busy sidewalk. I had to get out of there, I needed to calm down and either get this hallucination to go away or figure out what was happening. I practically ran away. Luckily my apartment was only about a block and a half. As soon I got home I slammed my door and tried to calm down. After about 5 minutes of closed eyes and just breathing I was ready to see if it was still happening. It was. I rubbed my eyes and as I pulled my hands I noticed the string tied around my finger wasn’t the same red as everybody it was darker.

“Okay one thing at a time. I know this story, I’ve heard it before.” I walk myself through it still staring at my left pinky with the dark red string tied around it, that I couldn’t feel. “The red string of fate?” I whisper as if it’s going to answer if I was correct. “They’re a myth aren’t they? soulmates aren’t real.” I quickly turn to find by purse I threw off in my panic, to find my phone, there had to be something on this somewhere.

“You can see them now can’t you? I really hope they are real, otherwise this might be awkward. ” My roommate and best friend walked in and held his left hand up, so as soon as I turn around I saw that his string was the same blood red color as mine and was very much connected to mine.

“oh. Oh. OH” I said as it dawned on me what exactly that meant. “ I mean if they are I guess I couldn’t ask for a better one” I say a small smile on my face because I would be lying if I hadn’t thought about dating him, he was pretty much exactly my type, except not an asshole, so my type but good for me.

“They aren’t all romantic” he quickly said “we don’t have to do anything if you don’t want” he took a couple steps closer looking a little panicked like he was worried I was going to freak out.

“I mean it wouldn’t hurt to try would it. I mean we are soulmates after all” I explain waving my left arm to emphasize the tie we had. “you already know everything about me and I’m pretty sure I know just about everything about you” I slowly walked forward to meet him, no need to be shy about it with my soulmate I guess.

“Well not everything because I’ve never known you to be this bold. Ever.” He had a slowly growing smirk as he took couple steps closing the distance in our apartment.

The closeness was nothing new we had cuddled before but this was something different, new and just a little scary. Like standing on the edge of a cliff ready to jump. “ well it’s you, why would I be scared?” I tell him turning my head up so I could see him better.

“Now that’s a very good philosophy” he said cupping my face and leaning to close the space between us, kissing me.

[santiagoswagger]

In a world where soulmates exist, Jake and Amy are not each other's perfect match - but maybe that doesn't matter.

It all ends with a few thoughtlessly muttered words of anger and the loud, sharp bang of a slammed door.

What had started as an innocuous disagreement between two fraught, overworked detectives – over how messy his side of the closet was – eventually escalated into a full-blown screaming match. They both dug deep into their weapons arsenals, flinging weighted words across the room at each other like exploding grenades.

It’s not that hard to put your dirty socks in the hamper, Jake! It’s two feet away!

Yeah, well I bet my soulmate wouldn’t care about my stupid socks!

She didn’t come back that night.

The fact that they weren’t soulmates had always been an issue they skirted around, but it constantly simmered just below the surface. The symbols tattooed on their ring fingers from birth may not have matched but they were in love and they firmly believed destiny couldn’t get in the way of that if they didn’t let it. But Jake had hit a nerve tonight, throwing their missing connection in her face knowing full-well how badly it would wound her.

It had always bothered her more than it did him that they weren’t soulmates. Jake had never really believed in the concept, preferring to choose his own destiny, but he knew that as practical and logical as Amy was, she wanted to believe in it more than she would ever let on. Jake had never really looked for his soulmate; he had seen enough soulmate marriages implode, his own parents’ included, to know that even the perfect match couldn’t guarantee a lifetime of happiness. Amy had looked for hers but hadn’t come close to success. When they had fallen for each other, the mismatched symbols tattooed on their hands seemed so insignificant. He should have known the marks would be their undoing.

When Jake went into work the next morning, the dark bruises under his eyes apparent to anyone who could see, her desk had been cleaned out and she had requested a transfer to another precinct. The rest of the day passed by in a blur and he could barely think about anything but Amy – where she was, what she was thinking, why she was leaving the nine-nine. He got the answers he was looking for when he arrived at their apartment that night to find Amy standing in the middle of their now barren living room with bags packed and a few cardboard boxes stacked by the door. She wasn’t just leaving the nine-nine, she was leaving him too.

It isn’t working.

We’re just too different.

I love you but I can’t do this anymore.

He could barely hear her words over the buzzing in his brain. He couldn’t believe how badly he had miscalculated; he’d thought things were good. He knew they were good. Sure, they fought – even soulmates fought – but last night’s argument, harsh and vindictive, had been an anomaly born out of sleep deprivation and a frustrating lack of time alone together. He had taken things too far and he knew that, but he refused to let that be the end of them.

He began to bargain with her, realizing with increasing panic that she was about to walk out the door and never come back. He apologized over and over for the idiotic things he had said, told her he would clean his side of the closet and organize it the way she liked, promised to be a better man for her if she stayed. But her mind was made up; it was time they stopped pretending they could outsmart fate.  

She hugged him one final time, the engagement ring he had given her digging into his shoulder, functioning as a niggling, painful reminder of what could have been. She took it off of her finger for the first time since that Halloween night and left it on the dining room table with a clack of finality. They stared at each other, both pairs of eyes searching the other’s face, and Jake was sure she was remembering the same things he was – the laughter, the tears, the separations and reunions – and then she was gone. For good.

He sat on the couch all night after she left, numb and shattered, staring at the beige walls and wondering how on earth they had fallen apart so quickly. It was hard to believe that three happy years could be undone so completely in such a short amount of time.  

The next two years flew by in a haze. Jake threw himself into the job once again, convinced more than ever that work was all he had. If he was working on a case and trying to solve a difficult puzzle, his brain couldn’t be consumed by thoughts of Amy. But they always veered to her in the end. It’s wasn’t hard – she was everywhere.

Their lives had been so intertwined that he looked around wherever he was and saw her shadow hovering in places she once stood. She was in his car, laughing wildly as he blasted Taylor Swift from the radio and poking her in the shoulder until she begrudgingly sang along. She was all over the apartment they once shared: in the kitchen attempting to cook in her flannel pajamas, in the living room slouched against his shoulder while they watched Law & Order marathons, in the bedroom smiling up at him with dark eyes. Work was far worse; her ghost haunted him from every nook and cranny of the precinct where they fell in love. It took almost three weeks before he could even think of entering the evidence lock-up, and the sight of another body sitting at her desk across from him made him physically nauseous.

Amy keeps in touch with the rest of the squad and they keep him as updated as they think he can handle. She texts with Terry and Rosa every once in a while, and she sends Charles a long Facebook message six months after the break-up when he won’t stop bombarding her with desperate pleas to change her mind. Charles won’t tell him what the message says but Jake is too heartbroken to push the subject. He knows that she and Captain Holt have lunch at least once a month to continue her mentorship. Gina ignores her calls and texts in solidarity with her oldest friend, despite his protests. Amy never reaches out to Jake but it’s probably for the best – he’s not even sure he would be able to talk to her again without dissolving into a puddle of tears. But they’re still Facebook friends, the thought of severing all ties to her proving to be too awful to Jake. He thinks it might be for her too. That’s how he knows when she gets promoted to lieutenant, when her perpetually single brother Xavier finally finds his soulmate and gets married, and when she’s transferred to a new precinct in Manhattan.

That’s also how he finds out she’s engaged for the second time. This time, to her soulmate.

When the life event pops up in his Facebook news feed, accompanied by a picture of Amy and a handsome blonde man holding up their matching ring finger tattoos, Jake’s breath hitches in his throat and he feels the floor begin to crumble around his feet. He has to blink several times to make sure he hasn’t misread the words on his screen or mistaken her for someone else, but how could he? It’s Amy. He couldn’t forget her face even if he wanted to.  

According to some pretty excellent social media stalking on Gina’s part, her new fiancé’s name is Brad and he is everything Jake believes to be wrong with the world. He’s an investment banker with a WASP-y last name, and probably the trust fund to match; but he’s on the board of a big children’s charity so Jake can’t totally hate him, as much as he wants to. Her new ring is significantly bigger than the small antique ring Jake had once given her. He wonders if that’s what she thought about as Brad slid the ring on her fourth finger, if she remembered that night in the evidence lock-up just as Brad got down on one knee. The petty, bitter side of him hopes she did.

Gina, Rosa, Terry and Charles all take him out that night and he gets drunker than he has in years. He pounds back shot after shot of whiskey, half of him hoping he drowns in the alcohol and never has to live in a world where Amy Santiago is married to a douchebag named Brad. After five straight days of coming into work hungover, Captain Holt summons Jake to his office and levels with him – shape up or ride the desk. He says it kindly and with more sympathy than Jake thought Holt was capable of, and that’s how he knows he can’t live like this anymore.

He had been unconsciously waiting for her without realizing, waiting for her to come crashing back into his arms and his life and regretting ever leaving him in the first place. But she was going to marry Preppy Brad and have his Preppy Children and it was time for him to accept that. He could only chase a ghost for so long.

Things are better for Jake after that. He tries to regain some semblance of a work-life balance and starts going to the gym three times a week instead of the bar. It’s there at the gym that he meets Sarah. She’s a pretty brunette teacher and they begin talking when she makes fun of his pathetically low speed on the treadmill from the next machine over. He jokes that he’s a world champion slow runner, relishing her laugh; he’d forgotten how much he loved to make people laugh. He stops obsessively checking Amy’s Facebook page after that.

Jake and Sarah start dating soon enough and he thinks it’s nice not to be alone anymore. She’s smart and kind and tells great stories about her ridiculous students. She’s funny too, making him snort with laughter sometimes, but she never fails to call him out when he’s being immature. He needs that. She’ll even watch Die Hard with him. When she gets pregnant after a year together, Jake proposes. He does love her after all and he can’t imagine not being there for his kid, not in a million years. The proposal is low-key, over a candle-lit dinner at Sarah’s apartment, a far cry from the last time he proposed. That memory seems disconnected now, like a still frame from a movie he saw as a kid but only remembered in scattered fragments.

They get married at city hall when she’s six months along. It’s a quiet affair but his parents are there, along with the squad, and that’s all he really needs. Charles cries but Jake can’t help feeling like he would have cried harder if it were Amy wearing white and standing next to Jake instead. But he doesn’t care as much as he would have a few years before. He finally feels like he’s moving forward instead of constantly looking over his shoulder into the past.

Before he knows it, he’s a father. When he sees his daughter for the first time in the hospital delivery room, it feels like he’s been building slowly to this moment all his life. There’s something broken in him that is pieced together when she reaches a tiny, chubby hand out of her blanket to grab his finger and hold it firmly. He cries and it feels a little like healing.

Holding Mia Peralta for the first time, Jake thinks that maybe his daughter was always meant to be the love of his life.

Life with Sarah and Mia is good, but Jake can’t help feeling like something unidentifiable is missing, and he knows Sarah feels it too. There’s nothing wrong with the marriage, but it never feels quite right either. Jake and Sarah love each other, and they love their daughter even more, but after five years they both decide to go their separate ways. You can only continue to choose the wrong person for so long before you have to give into your gut feeling.

Six months after the divorce is finalized, Jake is standing in Shaw’s bar on a Friday night waiting for Charles and Terry to show up for a much-needed guy’s night out. Jake has Mia most weekends so nights out with his friends have become a rarity. He’s standing at the bar trying and failing to get the bartender’s attention when he becomes aware of the woman shifting next to him, attempting to do the same thing. She’s a few inches shorter than him and her face is hidden by a curtain of long, glossy black hair. Jake’s heart lodges itself in his throat, as it always does when he’s reminded of Amy. He clears his throat to force the memories down and that’s when the woman’s head turns toward him. He knows it’s her before her head makes it all the way around.

It’s cliché, but time seems to stop and the chatter that fills the crowded bar is silenced when his eyes lock with hers. He hasn’t seen her in so long, almost seven years, it’s almost like seeing her for the first time all over again. Her hair is longer than it was back then and she has a few new lines around her mouth and eyes but she’s still the Amy he once knew, all brown eyes and bright smile.  

“Jake,” she says. “Oh my god, it’s really you!”

She’s smiling, but he can tell she’s startled by his presence. Her eyes are widened slightly and flecked with panic. It reassures him that he’s as thrown by this impromptu reunion as he is. So, he does what he does best in any awkward situation: he turns it into a joke.

“Yeah, I gave my clone the night off. I was worried people were starting to like him better than me.”

That breaks the ice. The tension that had filled the air between them just a moment before instantly dissipated, replaced by their quiet laughter. Her shoulders lose their rigidity and the panic leaves her eyes, so Jake knows she’s feeling more comfortable around him now that she knows it won’t be awkward.

“What are you doing at Shaw’s?” she asks. “Oh wait, it’s your guy’s night with Terry and Charles, right?”

At his questioning gaze, she turns slightly pink with embarrassment. Her fingers clutch the highball glass in her hand like a safety blanket, her knuckles turning pale and white with the effort.

“Terry told me last week. We get coffee sometimes.” She looks sheepish. Jake thinks he’s never seen anything cuter in his life, inwardly cursing himself for the thought.

“Yeah? What else did Terry tell you at your super-secret coffee meeting?” He leans against the bar with his head turned towards her. She wants to say something, he can tell, and he’s going to make her spit it out.

She pauses, mouth slightly open and on the verge of speaking, and he can see her weighing her options internally.

She makes up her mind and ploughs forward. “He actually told me about your divorce. I’m really sorry, Jake, that’s awful.“ She lifts her hand on instinct, almost as if she was reaching for his hand, but she changes her mind and lowers it back down to the wood of the bar.

Jake smiles at her sadly. “Thank you, but it’s actually fine. I’ve got my daughter so things aren’t all bad.”

At that, Amy’s face breaks out in the most radiant smile, one that finally reaches her eyes. “Fatherhood looks good on you, Jake.”

He smiles right back, and he thinks that they must look like idiots, standing in this crowded bar and grinning at each other like mental patients. The spell is broken when a short, blonde woman comes over and taps Amy on the shoulder, gesturing vaguely towards the door. Amy nods at her and holds up an index finger: one minute.

She turns back to Jake. “I’m so sorry, but I have to go,” she says. “I told my coworker I would give her a ride home tonight.” He can’t help but think (hope, really) that she sounds disappointed.

“Sure, yeah, you should go. Drive safe.” Jake clears his throat, wishing he had a drink right now to keep his hands from reaching to hold hers. He awkwardly waves at her instead.  

She smiles kindly at the gesture, mouth closed but lips upturned in amusement. She can see right through him. “It was good to see you, Jake.” She places her highball glass down on the bar and gathers her purse and coat, preparing to leave.

“It was good to see you too, Ames.” Her name feels foreign on her tongue, despite the fact that it runs through his brain more often than he would care to admit.

She copies his awkward wave, earning her an impressed laugh from him, and then she’s gone.

He finally gets a drink and sits at his favorite booth in the back of the bar in a daze, staring at the wood grains on the table in front of him. Seeing her again after all these years of what ifs felt monumental, like something in the atmosphere had shifted. But maybe he was romanticizing the whole thing – after all, it had just been two old friends running into each other at a bar. That kind of thing happened all the time.

His head and his heart are wrestling with each other when Terry and Charles finally arrive, shaking off the snow dusting their coats as they make their way over to Jake’s booth.

“Jakey!” Charles exclaims, hugging Jake in his signature death grip. Terry smiles and shakes his head in Jake’s periphery. When Charles finally releases him, Jake gives Terry a normal, non-lung-crushing hug in greeting before silently slumping back down in his booth.

Terry gives him a curious look, the mama bear in him flaring to life. “Jake, is something the matter? You seem down.” Charles whips his eyes away from the bar menu at the words, his eyes suddenly frantic and fraught with worry.

Jake contemplates lying and keeping his thoughts to himself, but he’s learned the hard way that bottling up his emotions never guides him anywhere worth going. He sighs and grabs his beer bottle, taking a big gulp before answering. “I just ran into Amy.”

Charles gasps dramatically, flinging the menu down on the bar and raising his hands in the air while looking up at the ceiling in pseudo-prayer. “Oh my god, it finally happened! You guys reignited your passionate love and got back together! After all these years, my prayers have been answered!”

Jake rolls his eyes in response, though not unkindly. “Relax, Charles. We talked for a few minutes and then she left. It was just two old friends catching up. She’s still married to Brad.” He gulps his beer again in an attempt to swallow his contempt for the name he never can bring himself to say out loud. “She seemed happy.”

Charles scoffs predictably, but it’s Terry who surprises Jake. “Actually, I wouldn’t be too sure about that.” He shrugs nonchalantly, like he hasn’t just uttered eight life-changing words.  

Jake nearly spits out his beer, a little bit dribbling out of his mouth when his jaw slacks with shock. “What does that mean, Terry? What do you know that I don’t?”

Terry smirks. “She and Brad broke up last month. She told me last week when we met up for coffee. She’s single, Jake.”

Jake is stunned into silence for perhaps the first time in his life. He had been so caught up in seeing her again, breathing the air around her, that he hadn’t thought to look for her wedding ring, finally accepting of her soulmate marriage after all these years apart. He couldn’t believe it. He thought if anyone were to make it work with their soulmate, it would be Amy; she was too stubborn to let something that important fall apart, especially something supposedly commanded by the universe. The hopelessly romantic fragment of his heart begins to soar – Amy Santiago, the love of his life, is single again.

Charles, ever the cheerleader, excitedly smacked Jake in the arm. “Now’s your chance to get her back, Jake! Go to her!”

Jake smiled sadly at him, picking at the label on his beer bottle. “Charles, that ship sailed a long time ago. I’m sorry her marriage is over, but I can’t move backwards. I need to move forward, for my sake and Mia’s.”

Charles and Terry exchange a weighted look in the booth seat across from Jake. Terry nods once and a serious look takes over Charles’ face.

“Jake, I never told you about the Facebook message Amy sent me not that long after your breakup because I thought it would make things worse,” he says. “But I think I should tell you about it now.”

He pauses, waiting for Jake to react. Jake’s not sure what to think. Truth be told, he had forgotten about the message until now but he’d always been curious about it, especially since Charles was so emphatic in his refusal to tell Jake what Amy had written. He felt his heartbeat quicken and pulse begin to race, just like it did every time he was close to solving a tough case.

“It was a few months after your break-up and I was having a hard time with the news,” Charles continues. “I kept writing to Amy, asking her why she couldn’t be happy without her soulmate when you were clearly the best she could ever do, Jake. After a few messages, she finally responded. She said that she wasn’t sure if she would ever be happy without you , even with her soulmate, but she owed it to herself to try.”

Jake swallows harshly, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. He’s not surprised – Amy was always a rule follower. If she were destined to be with someone, she would do everything in her power to be with that person.

“There’s something else, Jake.” Terry shifts uncomfortably in his seat, drawing Jake’s attention away from Charles. “Last week at coffee, she asked me about you, how you were doing. She asked about your wife, asked if you were happy.”

“Terry, it’s okay. She told me you told her about my divorce.”

“No, Jake.” Terry shakes his head and laughs. “We were at the restaurant for two hours and she only asked me questions about you. She barely even looked at the pictures I brought of my baby girls.” He lifts his eyebrows and stares pointedly at Jake.

And he finally gets it. The tiny glimmer of hope that ignited when he first saw her in the bar that evening bursts into flames in his heart. A goofy smile bursts onto his face. He can’t stay here anymore, not when he has a woman to win back.

“I have to go,” he manages to stammer, feeling alive for the first time in years, flinging his limbs from the seat of the booth and jumping to his feet.

“I’ll text you her new address!” Terry yells at his retreating form. Jake only vaguely hears Charles sobbing with joy behind him as he darts out of the bar and into the night.

He decides to take the subway to his destination, hoping the wait will give him time to piece through his thoughts and decide what to say. He spends the entire journey tapping his fingers against his knee, thinking about how long they’ve taken to get to this point.

As the train rolls to a stop, he runs out of the station as fast as his out-of-shape legs will carry him all the way to her apartment. It’s on a quiet, tree-lined street, not far from their old apartment. He double checks the address Terry texted to him to make sure he’s in the right place before walking up to the door and pressing the buzzer next to ‘Santiago’. He feels a hopeful flutter in his chest at seeing her maiden name again.

To his surprise, he hears the door buzz and click open without hearing her voice come over the intercom to ask his identity. The Amy he knew had three locks on her door and kept her service weapon next to her bed when she lived alone, but maybe this newly single Amy is still getting used to being alone. Cautiously, he enters the building and heads for the elevator to her third-floor apartment. He barely gives himself a moment to wonder if this is a disastrously bad idea before bringing his fist to the door and knocking three times. The door opens in slow motion and he steels himself.

“You’re not the Chinese delivery guy.” She’s there, staring at him with widened eyes and a hint of a smile. Well, at least that explains her lax security.

“No, I’m not.” He smiles, eyes crinkling. She’s wearing sweatpants and her hair is in a messy bun, so unlike the rigid bun she wears to work, but she looks like home. “Can I come in?”

“Sure.” She steps back to let him in and he can hear her breathing deeply as he walks past her, almost as if she’s trying to slow her heart rate. He can relate.

The apartment is filled with half-unpacked boxes but still neat and tidy, covered with books, pillows and her beloved figurines – it’s perfectly Amy. He turns to take her in.

She’s staring at him with some trepidation, but he can see the resolve in her eyes too.

“Running into you tonight at Shaw’s wasn’t a coincidence, was it?” He cuts right to the chase and he can see her jump slightly in her socks at his candor.

“No,” she says softly, shaking her head for extra emphasis.

“Why?” He needs to know, needs to hear her say it so he knows it’s real.

She takes a deep breath, letting it out in a steady stream before answering. “Because I met my soulmate but I couldn’t stop thinking about you, about us. I thought I was doing what the universe expected of me by meeting my other half, but I couldn’t help feeling like the universe was wrong.”

They stare at each other for a moment before both moving to cross the distance between them in a few short strides, meeting in the middle of her living room in a searing kiss. Hands tangle in hair as they clutch at each other, kissing with seven years’ worth of emotion and desperation.

Kissing her gives Jake the most clarity he’s had in a long time. They have a lot to talk about, but talking can wait a little while longer. His relationship with Amy isn’t fate or coincidence; it’s a choice. It always has been. They may not have identical symbols on their fingers but they continue to choose each other time and time again. And maybe that’s better.

[thelighthousemp3]

why is writing so hard gdecfghyjhnbvcdfrtyhn 

[its-tortle]

fic recs for my love - 12.2020

except this time i can actually tag her! @hi-im-red, here’s your december list, bby 💗💗💗

STUCKY

✨[88,570] modern au - steve has kids and bucky flips the house next door 

[17,498] post catfa au - everyone survives, steve marries peggy but it gets complicated

✨ [3,959] shrunkyclunks - steve starts to frequent the community garden

[16,987] shrunkyclunks - post avengers 2012, steve thinks bucky's house is an airbnb and has nowhere else to go for christmas

✨[6,264] cafta - bucky offers to give steve kissing lessons (as bros do)

[5,446] modern au - art teacher!steve and dad!bucky

[2,361] cafta - pov of one of the uso showgirls and her friendship with steve

[3,566] catfa - bucky likes this new beefy steve ;)

✨[15,753] modern au - fireman!steve and policeman!bucky, frienemies to lovers

[7,994] post cw, nothing hurts - bucky's arm is magnetic and the team has fun

[45,376] modern au - internet friends to summer roommates to soulmates (by @musette22)

[2,287] pre-war and post-cw - bucky and steve and winter walks and snowball fights (by @captainjanegay)

✨[2,309] post tws - hanukkah feat recovering bucky (by @buckybees)

[6,312] pre-war - sarah and winifred are besties

PERALTIAGO

✨[4,894] amy becomes her niece’s primary caregiver

HARRINGROVE

[1,100] joyce notices their relationship by @cherrydreamer

✨[39,599] robin and billy become friends and billy fights with them in st3

(i tagged my mutuals, but if anyone else has the urls of any other authors on the list, please let me know so i can add them!)

[doyouever-daydream]

Masterlist

I actually had opened another blog for posting imagines but nevermind that. 

Criminal Minds

Spencer Reid x SSA (Y/N) (Y/L/N) 

Introductions

V-Day Babysitting Duty

SSA (Y/N) (Y/L/N)  bonding with the BAU

I'm every woman

Take me out to the ball game

Spencer Reid x Maxine Brenner (MAXCER)

Give me a try

BAU does blind dates

A story of boy meets girl (Spencer Reid x Female Reader)

Since we're alone (Penelope Garcia x Luke Alvez)

What are the odds? (Emily Prentiss x Aaron Hotchner)

Penelope Garcia x Luke Alvez (GARVEZ)

Oneshots

Wild Heart

Late night confessions

It only takes a taste

Red

3AM

New Year’s Day

You are the only one | Hold you like I used to

Friends with Kids (Movie AU)

Instagram Feeds (Social Media AU)

You’ve Got The Love

A Heart I Can Miss (Soulmates AU)

JJ knows better

Luna Alvez 🌙 (series)

Luna

Birthday wishes

Earth Day surprises

Rainy Sundays

Making Happy Memories

Like broken thunder & lightning in a bottle. (Series)

1. Love you on the weekends

2. I get carried away from you

3. This heart is burning up

4. Sit next to me

5. Stay cool, it's just a kiss

6. High voltage when we kiss

7. Maybe I’m afraid

8. I wanna get better

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Jake Peralta x Amy Santiago (PERALTIAGO)

Father’s Day

Ted Lasso

Ted Lasso x Rebecca Welton (TEDBECCA)

I Want Your Midnights

[captain-emmajones]

in this life, we do not meet

Soulmate AU: The first curse never happened. Killian died 300 years prior to Emma's birth. They both live a life of loneliness, haunted by a love they never met, until death comes knocking at their door.

in which i made an angsty text post and people requested a fic out of it, hope you guys will like it <33

2000 words 🔱 angst 🔱 ao3 

dedicated to my dear friend @b99peraltiago because you’ve always been so supportive of my works i had to write you a gift :’) (sorry it’s not peraltiago :’)) 

The lyrics in italics come from Sarah Bareilles Once Upon Another Time, I had it on loop while writing and I really recommend it for the mood™️.

ORESTES: Where have I seen you before?

MOIRA: In a dream.

ORESTES: A thousand years ago.

.

Once upon another time, Before I knew which life was mine,

As Captain Killian Jones stands at the end of his life, on decks of his ship, still terribly proud in spite of everything, the waves tenderly cradling his boat are his last companions.

His crewmen were reluctant to leave him behind. They had all wanted to go down with the ship. With him. He couldn’t allow it.

“You are a part of my crew, mister Smee, and therefore you are also required to leave this ship –”

“— but Captain, I am your first mate –,”

“— I am well aware of that fact, Mister Smee. However, this is my last dying wish: to be left in peace.” To die alone.

His hooked arm guides the ship’s wheel, as always, while he presses a bottle of rum firmly against his lips. To distract himself from this poison inside of him, this hellish burn radiating from his chest – not only loneliness but the poison the Dark One infected him with.

It was yesterday. Or a week ago, difficult to be certain.

A seagull lands in front of him, completely unaware of his inner struggle. She sings.

He had been so close to killing him, after years, and years, and years…. And then she had appeared.

(He thinks he saw her first the day Milah died. Well, he didn’t properly see her.

But, as he lied sobbing in the safety of his own cabin, he did feel the warmth of a hand over his closed fist.

And it had suddenly felt a little less terrible, the hole in his chest, less terrifying the future to come, without her.

Perhaps is there so much loneliness the human heart can take before it begins to manifest something, someone, that doesn’t exist.)

She is an angel he has seen in so many of his dreams, visions, whatever bloody curse he is under.

Back on this very ship, the crocodile had come to taunt him and the blonde woman had begged him not to kill him. She said there would be repercussions beyond this life, and he wanted to believe her. Perhaps there was no other choice but to believe her.  

From the first moment he had laid eyes on her, years ago, he had known he was supposed to love her.

Perhaps not in this life. Perhaps one in which he is nobler, better, good.

The burn of a knife plunged into his chest had cut his thoughts short, and he had fallen down on his knees in front of his whole crew.

“Enjoy the ride, dearie! Your death will be slow and painful, just like you made my life when you took away Milah!”

The giggles of the Dark One still echo in his ears, but it is a fight he has definitely lost. It is a fight for the living, and he is dying.

He clenches his jaw as a brighter ray of sunshine plays on his eyelids. He frowns. He is drunk enough to numb the pain in his chest but not this gulf roaring within his throat.

As he is about to die, the sum of Killian Jones’ life is a lot of pain and wickedness.

(There is a tear at the corner of his eyes, one he firmly wipes with his hand.)

Dying alone is, after all, more challenging for the nerves than expected by the brave Captain.

A deep breath, to fill in his lungs with the salty sea air, one he’s loved his entire life.

Perhaps is he not so alone after all.

He has been haunted all his life by this angel of beauty, of love, perhaps of death. As if, maybe – just maybe –  things were supposed to end differently.

Bloody nonsense.

A flash of pain. The bottle of rum escapes his hand as his eyes shut in agony, a fire he knows sent from Hell overcoming him. His knees bend down, and his hand tries to hold on to the wooden wheel.

“Bloody hell, can’t it be a quick death?”

He chuckles to himself. What did you expect? The comfort of a loved ones’ arms?

Soon enough, he is unable to see clearly, and his head hits the floor, a muffled sob he isn’t aware of echoing on the ship.

Be quick. Be quick. Be quick.

And then, somehow, as darkness engulfs him and there is nothing but pain, a relief. A cold, white hand on his face – there must some comfort in death.

A smile splits his face open. “Oh, there you are… just in time, love…”

He thinks he sees tears on her face, and his heart screams: someone cares, someone cares,…  

One last breath, one last pang of pain, and he is gone.

(When the Jolly Roger is taken back by pirates with bright eyes and hopes, rumor has it that it is now a haunted ship.

The crewmen avoid at all cost to walk along the corridors at night, for a white figure lingers there.

She has blonde hair and translucent eyes and she seems to be waiting for whom will never come back.)

.

Truly, it is a happy life.

Although King and Queen of Misthaven, Emma’s parents offer her nothing but softness and love. She grows up sheltered by their good heart. (The one they share).

Oh, she does live a good life – one of very few heartaches.

(The few she endures are fighting against Regina, but it is never a lonely fight. Emma’s light magic is too powerful for the Evil Queen and she bends the knee. They evict her from the kingdom.)

Except perhaps when she wakes up covered in sweat, heart about to explode in her chest, eyes filled with tears, and she aches for whom she cannot reach.

It is not for a lack of trying. She feels like she’s dreamed of him her entire life.

Her mother has a knowing smile when she confesses her worries. Together, they decide to create an enchantment to find him, whoever he is.

(His eyes are of a forget-me-not blue, his hair of a dark brown, and there is so much pain in the absent smile he paints upon his face.

She wants to save him. Little does she know she is too late.)

It is truly a good life, except for that one moment, maybe, when she finds herself near the sea and she thinks she has finally found him and she discovers a tombstone with his name on it.

(“How can you tell it’s really him?” her mother asks.

She finds no shame in her heart when she replies: “He told me in a dream.”)

If she can make out anything in between her tears, it is the date: 1755 - 1789.

“He’s been dead for three hundred years,” she whispers in this foggy morning, one hand over the marble.

The sea breeze is cruel against her cheeks.

“Some things are just not meant to be”, Snow White tries to comfort her.

There is a moan that she muffles against her palm. But we were.

Being brought up in this environment of true love and happily ever after makes this burn over her heart even more painful.

(The pain comes from the birthmark she’s got under her breast, the shape of a knife enchanted with poison.)

But it is a good life.

It is however a short one.

The birthmark seems to infect itself, and the poison takes her over in a week.

Their princess is twenty-eight-year old when Snow White and Prince Charming lose her forever.

.

Killian Jones has always been a man of action and this after-life is a long agony of waiting.

Tik tok, tik tok,… Times flies but never towards the future.

At least, there’s still rum.

Rum has no taste back there, but there is a comfort in the habit.

One look at the clock. 8:15. The time of his death. As always. He drinks a mouthful of rum, waits for the burn that doesn’t come.

It is incredibly lonely there. It never gets more comfortable, warmer, it is forever dull and cold.

.

He is sitting in Granny’s when the air shifts. The door opens, and he instinctively looks up from his drink.

And then, a miracle occurs: the clock ticks forward.

There she is.

After all these years. He swallows down, tries to remain composed. His heart is about to burst out of his chest. The woman of his dreams is wrapped up in a dark red dress, a crown on her head, and void in her green eyes.

His blood becomes cold as his gaze meets hers and something within him urges him to stand up.

Welcome her.

There’s a flash of light in her eyes and he knows she recognizes him too.

“Killian,…”

It is awful to hear his name in the mouth of someone who cares for him, after all these years of heartache.

It is freeing.

The ghost haunting him for centuries is finally in front of him, in the flesh, and they are both dead.

A smile. “Well, I sure as hell have been waiting for you, your grace.”

Her smile then doesn’t reach her eyes but does break his heart.

.

“So, you are a royal lady?” a roll of his eyes.

He is playful to hide his discomfort.

They are both sitting outside of Granny’s, echoes of once upon another time dancing all around them.

She’s gazing at the furniture, surely taken aback, and no vision allowed him to fully grasp a glimpse of her beauty. Nor her kindness.

“Was,” she smiles, looks up at him and dives into his eyes.

She takes his breath away.

“And you are a pirate?” she enquires back, playfully.

Something hurts, in his chest. His blood turns cold. “That I am.” He is disappointing her.

You disappoint everybody.

“Well, my mother was a thief,” she quickly adds, she is perceptive.

Tough lass.

He smiles at her. And it is terribly tempting to fall in love with her in the blink of an eye.

.

As things turn out, she is so willing to love him and he is unable to believe he deserves that kind of love.

“I’ve known you my entire life,” she assures him as they sit on a bench by the underworld sea.

She wants to reach for his hand but he is cold and distant and terrified.

The air in this goddamn hell is unbreathable, and perhaps is it because they are not supposed to be breathing. It constantly smells of smoke and ashes, and she still smells like her old self, vanilla and cinnamon, and hope.

“You don’t get it,” he mumbles, remains as far as he possibly can on this tiny bench. He stares at his knuckles. And exhales: “You were the only flicker of light in an ocean of darkness.”

So many times, the only reason he had hold on to life was her face under the sky of a starless night.

A pause. “But I never deserved hope.”

I never deserved you.

.

She surely doesn’t expect him to believe he is a villain. In her visions, she has never seen one. She’s only seen somebody incredibly lonely.

She knows she cannot save him unless he wants her to.

She understands. He wasn’t raised with tales of true love and happy endings – and for heaven’s sake they are both dead and their skin is cold, but lord is her heart beating for him in spite of everything.

He’s waited three centuries. She can at least wait for the rest of eternity.

.

It takes a lot of patience, and kindness, and affection, to melt the ice around Killian Jones’ heart.

Hades doesn’t help her, mind you, is quite determined to keep them both in the Underworld.

“We can move on,” she tells him, still by the sea, “Together. Start over on the other side. Be happy.”

He nods. It isn’t much, but it does give her hope.

And when she grabs his hand, he lets her.

.

It is a very bright light, moving on. For the first time in this life, they do so hand in hand, ready to face all of eternity together.

But mostly, I believed in yellow lights, and tire marks. Sun-kissed skin and handle bars, And where I stood was where I was To be… No enemies to call my own, No porch light home to pull me home, And where I was is beautiful Because I was free.

[fiercyy]

Under Cover: Chapter 2

Summary: Everyone is born with their soulmate’s name tattooed on their back. Some people spend their lives looking for their other half; some people ignore it completely.

Amy believes in fate but wishes she didn’t. Jake doesn’t believe but desperately wishes he did.

Here’s the thing about dating in a world where everyone knows their true love is out there waiting for them: there are certain social contracts and norms one must enter into if they don’t want to be a complete douchebag about it.

Because there are two kinds of people who date Other People: people who are looking to have fun in the meantime and people who, for whatever reason (disinterest, disbelief, impossibilities etc.), are looking for someone to spend their life with.

Placeholders or partners. It’s very important to be very clear about what you’re looking for in a relationship.

Even still, it’s dangerous to date. Anything can happen.

When Amy was seventeen she met an upperclassman named Eric. He was one of those guys who wasn’t super smart but didn’t slack either. He didn’t play sports and he didn’t participate in any other extra curricular activities. He worked at Blockbuster because he got cheap rentals on videogames.

And he thought that Amy was the greatest thing to ever happen to him. She couldn’t explain it. He would carry her books, sit with her in the library while playing on his Gameboy and offer her rides home from school.

He blushed when she, having been the butt of more than a few jokes, confronts him about whatever weird prank this has got to be. Admittedly, she should have waited until his shift was over.

“My tattoo says Amelia,” he mumbled with chagrin, staring at the counter that separated them.

Amy, at the time, did not understand the gravity of feelings that come with looking for your Soulmate. She was seventeen, she was compiling binders full of potential colleges, she was writing outlines of potential application essays. She was uninterested in dating anyone. She didn’t even know what language her Tattoo was supposed to be. She didn’t need anyone to make her complete, she was a whole person all her own.

(Eventually, in a fit of romanticism during her junior year of college, she approaches one of the professors from the linguistics department. After a few months she decides (with her roommate, Kylie’s prompting) that maybe actually learning the language her True Love speaks wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world. Even if she never meets him.

Amy takes lots of language courses in college. She feigns an interest in Greek and Latin so that people don’t ask.)

“Amy isn’t short for anything,” she lied.

“Oh. Sorry.” What he didn’t tell her was that Rebecca, a friend of his was in her gym class. When they were changing in the locker rooms she had seen the Tattoo.

Rebecca and Eric knew each other from Afternoon School at a nearby synagogue. ‘Yitzhak’ is written in neat, cursive Hebrew. The teacher, Morah Feldman always insisted that they address each other by their Hebrew names and Yitzhak was Eric’s. Rebecca, or ‘Rivka’, had told him immediately.

Eric, upon reflection, realized that maybe it was weird that it was ‘Yitzhak’ written on her back instead of Eric.

He left her alone after that. They had nothing in common, why would they remain friends?

Terry chose not to date at all until he met Sharon. Terry loves love for a reason. The world let him find her early.  

Rosa never believed in soulmates. Stupid and sentimental. Screw that noise. But she did believe in love. And fun.

When she was twenty and visiting family in Argentina, Rosa met Manny.

He was attractive.

Then he told her that he was into her because his Tattoo said Rosa.

There are a million Rosas, most of them are from Argentina.

She dumps him with far less kindness or consideration than she does Marcus, a decade later.

Jake also did not believe in soulmates. He was the kind of Dater who dated to find a partner. He didn’t need to look for his name on someone’s back to find forever. Sophia had said the same of herself.

For a while, it was really really good.

When she dumped him she said a whole slew of things about incompatibility, his behavior in front of her boss, fading attraction. And those things were all true and reasonable.

But mostly, it was because there was a new paralegal at work. His name was Andrew Xing and maybe Sophia believed in soulmates after all.

“So we broke a rule.”

“Yeah… I hope it wasn’t a mistake,” Amy groans, feeling guilty about how not guilty she feels.

“I Hope It Wasn’t a Mistake: title of your sex tape…” he gasps suddenly. “TITLE OF OUR SEX TAPE!”

Making sure she’s still covered by the sheets she turns to look at him properly and a shy smile spreads across her lips as she looks at the expression of abject astonishment and excitement on his face. You’d think he’d just seen the Captain breakdance or something!

She feels the immediate need to engage his mouth in more worthy pursuits.

Part 1 Part 2

[foolgobi65]

jake/amy + soulmates!au + childhood friends + “you know that your book is upside-down, right?” lmao idk too much about what ships you’re into but I saw you were into b99

I am into b99 and i love writing peraltiago!!! thank you so much for this prompt, I hope you like it!!

--

“Hey,” Amy says when she walks through the door. “You know your book is upside down, right?”

Jake looks down. Just like she said, the words of her copy of War and Peace are all jumbled, and not only because he has to look up half of them in the dictionary. He turns the book. 

Amy hangs up her keys on the little hook she has next to the door and takes off her shoes. “Why are you pretending to read on my couch?” She pauses. “And why War and Peace?” 

Jake shrugs. “I had the day off and got bored. Do you always come home this late?” 

Amy shakes her head, checking the watch at her wrist like a nerd while she walks towards Jake and flops down next to him. “My last class on Thursdays ends at 4, and it’s 4:45.” 

“Exactly,” Jake says, “it only takes you 40 on a usual day! That’s a whole five minutes off schedule, Ames!” 

Sometimes, he can’t believe that this is his life -- that by some act of God he grew up next to Amy Santiago, nerd extraordinaire, and spent every day after school being babysat by one of her older brothers while she forced him to finish his homework before they could even think about watching the Ninja Turtles. Gina of course was supposed to be doing homework too, but by fifth grade convinced Darlene that she was old enough to get an after-school apprenticeship with Darlene’s psychic, and “gone on to bigger and better things.” 

According to Twitter, Gina’s currently living it up on the beaches of Santorini, with fiance number seven. She still does tarot readings for Jake sometimes, via Skype -- Amy doesn’t believe in occult, but transfers Gina the money on Jake’s behalf in order to “support a friend, even if I don’t care for the way she makes her living.” 

Amy’s great. Sometimes, Jake can’t believe that this is his life -- that by some act of God someone as smart and pretty as Amy hasn’t kicked him out of her apartment for trying to read a fancy book upside down, and instead is asking if he wants a beer. 

“Sure,” he says, tamping down all his mushy Amy feelings like a good friend, one who doesn’t want to ruin their friendship now that it’s finally gotten back on track after last year’s whole Teddy and Sophia drama. “What do ya have?” 

Amy gets up and walks to the fridge which she probably wipes down more than she uses. Even now when she opens it Jake can see an old moldy lemon, three bags of take-out, and...a pack of Modelo. Sweet! 

“That’s good with me,” he calls out, seeing Amy’s ponytail bob in response. 

“Since you’re providing the booze we can watch Training Day,” he says magnanimously, taking the bottle Amy offers when she comes back to the couch. Later, he kind of wishes he’d said something cooler -- really that everything about this had been something dramatic like in the movies, full of rain and see-through cotton and someone picking up and twirling the other in the middle of the street. Soulmates are rare, after all, so rare that most people would think they were made up if there weren’t just enough out there for everyone to know it was possible. To wait, and hope, and usually be crushed when they realized it probably just wasn’t in the cards for them. 

“You’re sweet,” Amy smiles, before seeming to lean without really thinking about it, and kissing Jake on the cheek. Because she wasn’t looking her lips end up so close to his that it counts, just enough for whatever mystic shit makes people know they’re soulmates -- for them both, it’s like the world explodes. 

“Holy shit,” Jake blinks when he can finally see anything but the light and holymosesAmy. Amy Amy Amy Amy Amy. “Amy are we soulmates?” 

Amy’s looking at him too with the same wonder...no, she had another word for it, Jake remembers -- awe? Yeah he’s feeling awe too. 

“Yeah, Pineapples,” she croaks. “I think we are.” 

[letpercylive]

i have been saying this for years and i will continue to say it: percabeth and peraltiago are the same ships in alternate universes. hear me out.

percy jackson and jake peralta?? same person. annabeth chase and amy santiago??? same. person. their dynamics as couples, their individual personality traits, the progress of their relationship (they went from “at each others throats” to “kinda friends” to “friends” to “lovers”)... i just think about it so much. percy/jake with their father issues, their non-canon yet collectively accepted bisexual identities, their continuous efforts to challenge their superiors and their own beliefs, and the way theyre both undermined for their intelligence due to their “no thoughts head empty” moments. annabeth/amy and their strict organizational tendencies, their fierceness being complimented with a little bit of nerd, presented by their creators as a condescending know-it-all even though they do know it all and deserve their slight superiority complex, and how compassionate and supportive they are to percy/jake.

both pairs make their other half better people, pushing them to be their best and supporting them in ways no one else ever has. i dont believe in soulmates except when it comes to these two couples.

if someone wrote a pjo au with percy and annabeth as police detectives it would literally be an episode of b99. if someone wrote a peraltiago au of them as demigods i cant imagine them being anything other than percy and annabeth. think about it.

[stolethekey]

we could be a beautiful miracle, unbelievable

for @johnny-and-dora; sorry your assigned gifter couldn’t write you a fic! hopefully this is some consolation. i was dying at the idea of a soulmate au but the turnaround time was so short i couldn’t really gather inspiration for it, so here’s some peraltiago fluff + pre-relationship pining!! happy summer hope you enjoy

and shoutout to the crew at @b99fandomevents for putting so much work into this event!! thanks for giving me the opportunity to write an extra fic ;)

read on ao3

If Amy Santiago has a fatal flaw, it is not hubris.

It may seem like she is overly proud, at times—she can be prone to excessive humble-bragging, and Gina is the first to point out that she slips mentions of her achievements into daily, mundane conversations—but underneath the veneer of confidence lies a crippling self-doubt that refuses to let go of her thoughts. It’s the same anxiety that keeps her up at night, wondering whether she truly earned her promotion to detective and whether she should actually still be a beat cop. It’s the one that whispers remember when Jake beat you in arrests? at random times throughout the day, even though that bet ended almost an entire year ago and Jake’s fake date wasn’t nearly as terrible as she thought it was going to be.

Apparently, it’s called “imposter syndrome,” and she has it bad.

But Amy is nothing if not practical, and she’s mostly learned to manage it. She flaunts her achievements publicly so that the doubt stays buried in her mind, and her colleagues are none the wiser. In a way, she thinks, the uncertainty is helpful—it means she’s constantly pushing herself, constantly trying to be better, and that’s a good thing.

It’s a good thing, which is why she doesn’t question her decision to throw a New Year’s Eve party for the Nine-Nine.

Last year’s Thanksgiving fiasco is still fresh in her mind, and even though she knows that it is objectively questionable to be so hung up about a party that she tried to throw a full year ago, she can’t help feeling like she needs to make up for it, like she needs to prove she can organize a fun event for her co-workers that doesn’t end in eating takeout at the precinct.

Plus, everyone at the Nine-Nine is closer now, which is evidenced by the fact that Jake barely bats an eye when she asks him to dress up.

“Why, got a hot new boyfriend you need me to make jealous?”

She winces slightly, but the regret that appears immediately in his eyes is enough to make her force a smirk. “Yeah, it’s that flasher I arrested last week.”

“Ew—”

“What can I say? He really made an impression.”

Jake laughs, and she determinedly ignores the way her stomach jolts at the way the corners of his eyes crinkle.  

“So, six-thirty then? You can bring Sophia.”

His amusement fades into a soft smile that definitely does not make Amy feel warm and jittery inside. “I’ll be there. Sophia’s out of town, though—she’s spending the holidays with her parents.”

“Oh,” Amy says, trying not to sound too cheerful. “That’s too bad, seeing as I was planning on making my famous roast turkey to impress her.”

Jake snorts, but before he can say anything, Charles has somehow appeared at the edge of their desks, his face full of panic. “Amy, I love you, but please let me cook that turkey, please—”

“I was kidding,” she protests, trying to shove him away. “I’ve admitted defeat in the culinary world, okay? I’m gonna go get pasta beforehand.”

“Yeah, Charles, relax,” Jake says, grinning widely. “But you should still bring those octopus balls. Santiago loves those.”

Amy throws her stapler at him.

 ---

“Is this New Year’s-y enough?” Amy asks Kylie in the dressing room of the mall Express.

Kylie sighs. “Yes. It’s beautiful and you look beautiful wearing it, just as you have in the last ten dresses you’ve tried on. It’s just a house party for you and your coworkers, whom you see literally every day. There is no need to be this anxious.”

“I’m not anxious, I just want to make a good impression. If I’m asking everyone else to dress up, I have to look the part myself.”

“Mmmhmm,” Kylie hums, reaching over to unzip the back of Amy’s dress. “Well, whatever you’re not anxious about is going to lose his mind when he sees you in this. Seriously.”

“He has a girlfriend,” Amy snaps, shimmying out of the dress and snatching her leggings off the wall. “And this isn’t for him.”

It’s not, really, but as she walks out of the store with a shopping bag in hand, she wonders if it maybe is, just a little bit.

Her excitement is completely gone the morning of, as she wakes up with what feels like a throat full of sawdust and a sledgehammer pounding away at her head. She groans as she forces herself out of bed and into the shower, where she stays until the water runs cold and her shivering has gotten undeniably out of control.  

She steps out of the tub, wincing as the cold air hits her skin, and dries herself off as quickly as possible. The kitchen seems indomitably far away but she somehow manages to make it, pulling her sweatpants up as she walks down the hallway. It takes her what feels like an hour to make some tea and force some oatmeal down, and by the time she swallows her cold medicine her body feels like it has already run a marathon.

Ordinarily, her frustration at the situation would be more than overwhelming, but her head is throbbing, and as she types out a long, apologetic text message the only thing she can muster is a faint sense of defeat. Her eyes are already closing as she presses send, and she crawls back into bed with no more than a twinge of regret.

When she wakes up again, two things register in her mind: it’s dark outside, and her doorbell is ringing off the hook.

She gives a slight whimper of frustration as she slides out of bed, grabbing her sweatshirt and her phone on the way into the hallway.

“Unless I ordered some extra-strength Tylenol in my sleep,” she grumbles, yanking the door open, “I don’t want—oh.”

Jake’s eyes widen as they travel up and down her body, taking in her old T-shirt and disheveled hair.

“Sorry I’m late, I got stuck on the phone with my mom—um, did you prank me? Was this a pajama party?”

“No, I—I texted,” she manages to croak out, wincing at the sting in her throat. “Look—” She unlocks her phone and thrusts it halfheartedly at him.

“Oh,” Jake says, glancing at her open messages tab. “Um—you only sent it to Boyle.”

“What? Fuck—”

“It’s okay,” he says quickly, handing her phone back. “You’re sick, you were obviously just sleeping, I’m sorry—”

“No, it’s my fault,” Amy mutters. She wonders dimly how everyone but Jake somehow knew not to come, but the pounding in her head overpowers her brief curiosity. “Sorry, you could’ve made other plans—”

“Nah, I would’ve just been watching Die Hard.”

“Okay,” Amy says numbly. She tries to say something else, but neither her mouth nor her brain seems to be working properly. “I’m cold.”

Jake laughs softly, then steps inside, setting his eight-dollar bottle of wine on the floor. “Come on,” he says, turning her gently by her shoulders. “I’ll guide you back to bed.”

He watches her shuffle across her bedroom floor, drink a glass of water, and crawl back underneath the covers before backing out of the room. The gentle smile on his face as he closes the door is the last thing she sees before she drifts off again.

--

She wakes to the smell of chicken soup.

It’s wafting through her bedroom door, so she gets up and opens it, noting with some relief that the pain in her throat has lessened somewhat. Taylor Swift’s New Year’s Day plays softly as she walks down the hallway, and as she emerges into her kitchen, she sees Jake bent over the sink, his jacket lying on her couch.

“Hi,” she says softly, ignoring the way her heart skips at the sight of him washing dishes in her kitchen.

“Hi,” he smiles, pausing the music and turning to look at her. “How’re you feeling?”

“Better,” she says honestly, noting that a mini pharmacy now sits next to a glass of water on her kitchen counter. “You—um, you’re still here?”

“Oh—uh, yeah, I hope that’s okay—I was going to leave, but you seemed really sick, and I just—”

“No, I’m glad,” she mumbles, and he grins. Her stomach flips a little, and she clears her throat. “Is that soup I smell?”

“Oh, yeah.” He gestures at the pot on the stove. “It’s an old family recipe—my mom used to make it for me whenever I got sick, so I figured—”

Her eyes land on a bag on the counter and she freezes, her hand in the utensil drawer. “And those potato pancakes?”

“Um, I bought them,” he says, and he’s definitely blushing. “Just in case you didn’t like the soup.”

She can hear Kylie laughing at her as she makes her way over to the stove, trying to hide her smile. “I can like two things.”

He laughs, then grins at the noise she makes as the soup hits her taste buds. “Good?”

“This is incredible,” she says, pouring herself a hefty serving. “I can’t believe you can cook.”

“Well, I can’t, really. But I made my mom teach me that recipe after I moved out. Just feels like home, you know?”

She smiles as she brings the bowl to her lips. “Yeah.”

Jake puts the plate he was washing in her dish rack, and as he wipes his hands on her dish towel she feels a sudden surge of completely unwelcome affection. “So,” he says, wiggling his eyebrow at her, “feeling up to a game of Go Fish?”

She rolls her eyes as she brushes past him, grabbing the glass of water as she goes. “I’m sick, not an eight-year-old child.”

He snorts, but produces a deck of cards anyway, and as they settle onto Amy’s living room rug she tries her best not to get comfortable.

It doesn’t work, even as he has a girlfriend he has a girlfriend he has a girlfriend keeps parading through her thoughts, and she completely loses track of time as they laugh their way through every card game in the books and multiple rematches.

She has just triumphantly laid her final cards down in their game of Speed when something explodes outside, sending Jake shooting to his feet.

“Fireworks!”

She takes his offered hand and stands up. “It’s already midnight?”

“Guess so.” Jake pulls the curtains back as a shower of green bursts spectacularly through the sky. “Sorry you did all that work for a party that didn’t happen.”

“It’s not a big deal,” she says, and she finds that she means it. “There’ll always be more chances. There are plenty of holidays for me to torture people.”

He chuckles. “Still—it sucks that you got sick today, of all days. It’s kind of a shitty way to start the year.”

She gazes through her window, her eye catching his reflection in the glass. “Oh, I don’t know,” she says softly. “It’s not so bad.”

Amy can feel his eyes on her, and for some reason she turns to meet his gaze. She thinks there are flecks of gold in the brown of his eyes, and as the fireworks continue to explode the gold morphs into blues, then greens, then reds and yellows. She feels no desire to tear herself away from the kaleidoscope of color in front of her, and she swallows as a massive cheer arises from the ground beneath her window.

Jake clears his throat and looks away, his fingers playing at the hem of his shirt. She follows his lead, turning to watch the crowd beneath her building dance drunkenly down the street. A slight disappointment works its way into her gut, but there is a sliver of hope along with it—misplaced optimism, maybe, but a brief glimpse of something that could be.

And despite all the planning, all the agonizing and dress-buying for a party that imploded so suddenly, Amy feels mostly at peace. Her therapist would be proud, she thinks. She wonders how much of it is thanks to the presence of the man standing next to her, gazing at the explosions of color outside with an almost childlike wonder in his eyes.

There are times she thinks she missed her chance, but today is the first day of a new year. And what are new years for if they’re not for second chances, anyway?

Her voice is soft when she speaks. “Happy New Year, Jake.”

It takes only a moment before he answers, a slightly wistful smile on his face. “Happy New Year, Ames.”