Jake rested his head on his desk, covering it with a leather jacket while groaning.
He saw Scully walking by and called him back in his direction.
"Ohh... Scully" he said in a hoarse voice.
"Hey, Jake" Scully greeted, now walking in his direction.
"You've been alive forever. How'd you used to cure hangovers?" Jake asked desperately, hoping to find an answer to the piercing headache he was experiencing.
"Oh, I didn't drink. I was, however, extremely into cocaine for most of 1986" he admitted, sitting down near him.
˚✧₊⁎ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚flashback ˚✧₊⁎ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚
"I gotta tell you the truth, Hitchcock-- can I tell you the truth? You and me, man.
We're gonna be co-captains.
But first I'm taking you to Japan!" Scully blathered, not taking a breath between words.
"I'm already packed!" Hitchcock added getting up, while not wearing any shirt and pulling out a transparent bag in which there were his 'things'.
˚✧₊⁎ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚ end of flashback ˚✧₊⁎ົཽ⁎⁺˳✧༚
"I had three heart attacks that year and declared bankruptcy. Hitchcock turned out just fine" he chortled, getting up and walking away.
Amy was just waiting for Scully to leave to bring Jake the concoction she had prepared for him.
"My grandpa was an old-school cop. This was his hangover cure-- raw egg yolks" Amy sighed as she handed him the glass.
"Aaahhh!" Jake cried, closing his eyes.
"If you want a good diarrhea you should drink it" Y/n chuckled, sitting where Scully had sat before.
"You look like a corpse we just pulled out of the river" Holt irrupted in the conversation, squinting his eyes.
"True, you are so pale that you seem transparent" Y/n admitted, taking Jake's face in one hand and looking at both profiles.
"Wrong. I look like a cool rock star who oded in his own pool. Big difference" he corrected Holt, sniffling, still in Y/n's hand.
"I told you not to let Jimmy Brogan so. I assume you're not too hung over to do said work?" Ray asked, already knowing the answer.
"Pfft. Nope. It's like I never even drank" he lied, not opening his eyes but still looking in their direction.
"You seem more normal than usual actually" Y/n smiled, taking her hand off his face.
"And that's not a hangover cure" The captain added, pointing to the glass that was on his desk.
"What, that? Naw, it's just some... protein for my guns. I drink one every morning before I lift" he replied, finally opening her eyes, and grabbing the glass off the desk to drink it.
"So..." he took a sip from the glass and immediately regretted it.
"Gah!" He exclaimed, making a disgusted face, but he tried to hide it "so good! You can barely even tell it's a chicken embryo".
"You should drink it all. For your guns" Holt suggested, looking first at the glass and then at Jake.
Jake grunted, "yeah" he was about to drink it when Y/n took it from his hands, "thanks Jake, I think I'm a bit constipated these days, it might...help me. I'm going to drink it...privately...in the bathroom...alone" she added, slowly walking away from them and going towards the bathroom.
Jake smirked watching her go "what a bad luck, she needed it. Sorry, next time I will give you a demonstration".
"I can make you another one if you want" Amy announced, smiling.
"NO! No...thanks" Jake yelled, sitting better in his chair.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Amy wanted to see what Y/n had done with the glass, so she found an excuse to follow her to the bathroom.
"Y/n? Are you here?" she asked, looking into the bathroom through the ajar door.
"Amy? Yeah! Coming" Y/n shouted from behind the door.
"What did you do with the glass?" Amy exhorted, entering the bathroom and closing the door behind her.
"Oh? Nothing. I threw what was in it down the toilet" she admitted, pointing it.
"Ugh. You should have given Jake it. Why are you all of a sudden defending him? We usually teased him together" Amy interrogated, sounding confused, crossing her arms over her chest.
"I don't know" she replied, with a nervous tone.
Amy raised her eyebrows indicating that she didn't believe her.
"Ugh. Ok. It's just...yesterday, when he called me he didn't just tell me some information about polar bears..." Y/n sighed, not looking at Amy.
"And...? What did he say?" Amy curiously asked, getting closer to Y/n.
Y/n backed away, and turned her gaze to Amy "he muttered something, like, that he liked me more than a friend, that his life would be empty without me, and many other things...".
"What?!" Amy shouted, raising her eyebrows in surprise and throwing her arms in the air.
"Sssh! Don't shout!" Y/n whispered, placing a hand over her mouth.
"Mmh! Ok, I'm sorry!" Amy took Y/n's hand out of her mouth and tried to whisper.
"I don't know what to do! I don't think he remembers" Y/n pulled away from Amy and sat on the toilet.
"Are you sure you want to sit there? I don't think it's-" Amy made a disgusted face but was interrupted by Y/n "Amy! I don't care!"
"Ok-sorry. Let's talk about this problem" Amy said, lowering herself to the level of Y/n to face her.
"Do you think it's a problem?" Y/n asked, looking Amy in the eyes and resting her face on her hands, while his elbows rested on her thighs.
"It's only a problem if you don't like him back. Do you like him?" Amy interrogated, placing a hand on Y/n's knee.
"I don't know, we've been friends for so long. I do not know what to think" Y/n sighed, scratching her eyes.
"If he doesn't remember, don't bring it up again. Think about it and maybe, if you think you like him, tell him" Amy suggested, smiling lightly and massaging her knee.
"Yeah, you're right... thanks Amy" Y/n chuckled and hugged her.
"Don't worry about it. I won't tell Charles or all of Brooklyn will know" Amy muttered in Y/n's ear, laughing.
"Yeah, please" Y/n laughed back.
"I think we should go" Amy stood up and held out her hand to help Y/n.
Y/n took it and thanked her, they came out of the bathroom.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Amy and Y/n returned to their respective desks and sat down. Jake, as soon as he saw them coming, he murmured "Oh, why did I do this?", holding stack of reports in hand.
Amy pulled out her cell phone, "according to your text, you were having 'the beef light of my loaf'" she read.
"What? No, no. Why did I use this algorithm?
We're only tracking people who use the stolen cards. They might not be the same as the ones who stole them. Here, switch seats with me" he told Y/n, getting up from his seat, as she did the same.
"Oh, wow. Your butt's really warm" he commented, looking at the monitor.
"My butt's normal. Your butt's the weird one" Y/n replied, sitting in the chair Jake had been in before.
"Are you sure! Do you want to touch?" He asked, looking at her. She was about to reply but Amy interrupted her "could you flirt later?".
"Yeah, sure. We'll continue our flirting later.
All right, so if we ignore all these fraudulent purchases and go back far enough... here. Someone posted the stolen card numbers online from this ip address" he blurted, moving the chair slightly away from the desk and pointing his finger at the monitor, then first looked at Y/n and then at Amy.
"Not bad! You found the pattern" Amy smiled surprised, looking at the monitor.
Y/n was also surprised, she got up from the chair and went to look more closely at the monitor "bravo! How did you do this?" she turned to Jake, who still sat at her desk, their faces only inches apart. He looked first at her lips and then at her eyes, later he whispered "sometimes I'll teach you" and smiled, "yes, that would be nice" she smiled back.
All this happened under the incredulous eyes of Amy.
He got up and took Y/n by the waist, putting her back in her chair, "thanks for lending me your very warm chair" then he patted her head.
"All right, let's aspirin up and roll out!" He added.
Amy and Y/n rose to follow him.
_____________________________
Jake rang the intercom. Amy, Y/n and Brogan were behind him. They were all in front of a building, waiting for someone to answer.
"I'm glad you could be here for this" Jake said to Brogan, who nodded.
Finally, someone answered the intercom,
[beep beep]: Mike Halbrook.
"NYPD. Open up" Jake yelled.
"Put your head through the door" Brogan added. Y/n, Jake and Amy glared at him.
"My head?" Jake asked, confused.
Not even time to answer that Mike went out the window, ending up on the bins, trying to escape.
"We got a runner!" Amy shouted, running to try and catch him.
"Stop!" Y/n shouted at the same time, following Amy.
"Hands in the air!" Jake yelled, trying to run, but stopped immediately for the headache, "oh, wow".
Amy she caught up with him and hit him in the knee, knocking him face down on the floor.
"Good job!" Y/n smiled, helping Amy stop the guy.
"Hoo! Yeah! I'm never drinking again" Jake added, tired even though he hadn't run at all. Brogan came a few seconds later," Hey. You know, I was gonna take him out myself, but ladies first, so..." he said, trying to impress him.
"Relax, kid. Being too hung over to chase a perp? That's a classic old-school move.
You know, you are one of the last few good cops fighting against the rising tide of hair bags. Maybe your girlfriend too" Jimmy admitted, then pointing towards Y/n, who couldn't hear him.
"Girlfriend? Anyway. That's what you're gonna
say in your article?" Jake asked hopefully.
"Ah, don't worry, you're gonna come out lookin' real good. Especially after our talk in the bar. Ah... so many good quotes! Especially about Holt. Cops are usually afraid to go after their captains like that, but you, sir, are old-school" he smiled, and walked away.
"You know it" Jake muttered, then turning to Y/n and Amy, who had approached with Mike handcuffed in their hands.
"Oh, pineapples... what did you do?" Amy mocked him, but still scared of what Jake might have said, Y/n just sighed.
_____________________________
A cop car pulled up, so Amy put Mike in the back seat, and closed the door. Y/n was perched , with her arms crossed, on the car itself, and jake was looking at his phone.
"Oh, no. Brogan just sent me the quotes he's gonna run. I slammed holt like 50 times. Listen.
'Holt would rather I wear a tie than solve a case';
'Holt cares more about catching clerical errors than catching bad guys';
'Holt is way too verticulis'? That's not even a word!" He was reading from his phone; when he finished Y/n scoffed and looked in another direction, Jake noticed.
"Can I read the other quotes?" Y/n asked, walking up to Jake and reaching for his hand to pick up the phone.
"No!" He shouted, keeping the phone as far away from her as possible.
"Why?!" She demanded, confused.
"There are things you can't see and even quotes you can't read" he spatted, putting his phone in his pocket.
"Ok...".
"What were you thinking?" Amy asked, upset.
"We were just hanging out, being old-school.
He wasn't supposed to quote me. I was off the record the whole time. Oh, no wait. I wasn't..."
"You need to fix this, okay? Those quotes
cannot run. It would be devastating for Holt and the department" Amy shouted, scared of what might happen.
"I'll fix it. Brogan's a cool guy. We're friends now. I'll just talk to him, awesome dude to awesome dude. I should brush my teeth first, though, right?".
"Mm-hmm" Y/n and Amy nodded, wrinkling their noses.
"Yeah, that's terrible" he added, breathing out and then making a disgusted face at his own breath.
_____________________________
Jake and Jimmy were in a "Spa for men", Jake came after Brogan and greeted him.
"Hey, hey, Jimmy Brogan. Thanks for meeting me"
"Welcome to the schvitz, kid. The most comfortable place on earth. It's like crawling back into your mother" Jimmy greeted him back, telling a strange anecdote.
"Is that something people wanna do?" Jake asked, confused.
"What'd you wanna talk to me about?" Brogan replied with another question.
"So I read those quotes you sent me, and you... wrote them so good. The thing is-- but I was pretty drunk when I said that stuff, so... any chance you wouldn't print it? Even about the things I said about Y/n, I don't want her to read them, I don't want to ruin our friendship" Jake begged.
"Well, you said you were going on the record, and shouldn't your girlfriend know the things you said?" Jimmy answered, also confused.
"I was clearly not in control. And she's not my girlfriend, we are good friends" Jake tried to convince him.
"Well, maybe you should learn to handle your brown" Brogan dismissed him.
"Eew!" Jake made a shocked face.
"Look, you know that I think you're like the number one hero of the 20th century. But kinda feel like you're being unfair here" Jake tried to recover the situation, but Jimmy wasn't buying it.
"'feel like'? Listen to her, Suzanne Somers over here. Talk like a man" Brogan spatted.
"All right, I will talk like a man. You got me drunk and took advantage of me" Jake shouted, angry.
"Oh, come on" Jimmy added.
"Look, I'm asking you nicely... please don't print the quotes" Jake begged again, otherwise his work and social life could be shattered.
"And I'm telling you nicely, I'm printing them".
"No, you're not" Jake added, very angry.
"What are you gonna do about it?" He got up and chuckled. Jake also stood up...
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Hey, how'd it go with Brogan?" Amy asked as soon as she saw Jake walk into the office, Y/n just looked away from the files she was looking at.
"Perfect. Except I punched him in the face and made everything a billion times worse" he replied.
"What?!" Y/n almost shouted.
"Yeah".
_____________________________
"You punched Jimmy Brogan?! What were you thinking?!" Holt barked, really angry.
"I was thinking that I needed to protect this precinct. From things that I said about this precinct to a reporter while drunk and insisting he record me. I shouldn't have done it" Jake muttered, not looking at Holt.
"Unbelievable. Every time I think you might make a decent detective, you go and pull something like this" he scoffed.
"I thought I could handle my brown. Oh, I'm sorry. It's gross" he muttered again.
"Go home! You got the rest of the day to put your head on straight".
_____________________________
Jake walked out of Holt's office angry and self-disappointed, but Y/n stopped him by getting up from her desk.
"Jake! Stop!".
He stopped and turned to her "yeah?".
"I'm sorry, it's not your fault. You had a bad morning with a hangover. I should have thought you weren't clear-headed enough to convince that idiot" she exclaimed, putting a hand on his forearm.
He sighed and took Y/n's hand in his "why are you blaming yourself? You are not responsible for my actions, I made a stupid choice but on my own, okay?" She nodded slowly.
"Do you want me to take the afternoon off to keep you company?" She asked, in a soft voice.
"Don't be silly, see you tonight" he patted her on the shoulder and walked away.
_____________________________
Amy entered the room opposite the interrogation room, behind the mirror, and Holt spoke to her "got Halbrook to cop to every charge. Nice work, Santiago".
"Thank you, sir. Peralta figured out the pattern, though, so he should get credit for the collar" she admitted.
"I sent him home. He assaulted Jimmy Brogan" Holt was still stubborn about the situation.
"Yeah. But that caveman kinda had it coming, don't you think?" Amy asked but Holt made a confused face.
"Oh. He didn't tell you".
"Tell me what?" He interrogated, still confused.
"Never mind. If Jake didn't tell you, he must have had a reason. It's not my place" she explained, confident, this time.
"I'm disappointed in you, Santiago. I thought
you and I were close" he tried to convince her.
"I know you're manipulating me... but I love it, and I will tell you anything. So Jake went to the schvitz to talk to Brogan and at first he accepted not to publish the quotes, but he marked you as a 'homo', so Jake punched him" she explained.
"Thank you, Santiago. That'll be all" Amy left the room and Holt stared into space.
_____________________________
"Here she is" everyone applauded Rosa's arrival.
"Diaz, you did it. They found him guilty
on all charges" Terry affirmed, smiling.
"Huh. Boyle's advice worked" she said, pointing to Charles.
"So...where's your happy place?" He asked.
"I'm in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Inside it's just me and that stupid, slimy defense attorney. And I'm beating the hell out of him. I break a dining room table over his head. Then I rip off his arm and shove it where the sun don't shine. Then I reach down his throat and shake his hand" Rosa gave a very detailed description of her 'happy' place.
"Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna go ahead and schedule you for a psych eval" Terry mentioned, still smiling and walking away.
"I owe you one, Boyle. Thank-you dinner. Tomorrow night. Gribaldi's. It's all-you-can-eat linguini" she proposed,
"Yes!".
"Oh, my boyfriend's coming too".
"Your what friend now?".
_____________________________
Jake was entering the office with a cup of coffee in his hand, as soon as Amy saw him she showed him the newspaper.
"All right. Let's hear it" he said, sighing and sitting down at his desk.
"Well, it's even worse than I imagined" she replied.
"Did he mention Y/n?" Jake whispered, looking around to see if she was nearby.
"No, don't worry. Ahem 'the new face of the NYPD is perfectly embodied by Brooklyn's own Jake Peralta ...".
"That's not so bad".
"Who cowers behind his desk all day like the true hair bag that he is."
"There it is" he sighed, leaning on the chair.
"The old guard would have eaten a guy like Peralta for breakfast and unloaded him by lunch."
"Well, it's very colorful. And hurtful" Jake said, sad.
"You can ignore that garbage, Santiago. Jimmy Brogan wouldn't know a legit cop if he punched him in the face" Holt added and walked away.
Amy and Jake smiled, "well... guess I'm done
with this" Jake said, tossing Brogan's book in the trash.
"Not good enough. Go call Y/n" Amy affirmed.
"I don't know what you have in mind but I won't make myself repeat it twice" he replied gettin up.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Three, two, one..."
And so Jimmy's book exploded and everyone laughed.
"Thanks for calling me!" Y/n laughed, putting a hand on Jake's shoulder and he just smiled.
Everyone went back to the office but Jake stopped Y/n, grabbing her wrist "hey, I wanted to talk to you", she turned around and asked "what's wrong?".
"I read the quotes Brogan wrote about our conversations when I was drunk".
"And...?" She asked, afraid.
"I don't want what I said to ruin our friendship. I don't want to know what you think, you know by now what I feel, but please think about it. If things go wrong, our friendship will be ruined, and it's the only thing I love about this office. After the microwave, I don't have one at home" he said half smiling.
Y/n smiled and added "don't worry, I-".
"No! I don't want to know!" he plugged his ears and walked away.
"But-".
"Noooo!" He began to walk faster.
"Ok..." she laughed, "maybe one day I will tell you".
_____________________________