Work Text:
Amy is only one minute early to work on a Wednesday, and Gina cops onto it instantly, because she sees everything. Everything. She knows that Rosa cried in the bathroom after Gina forced her to go see The Fault in Our Stars and she knows that Amy Santiago is just on time instead of fifteen minutes early because she is stone cold hungover. The signs are all there: an uncharacteristically unkempt ponytail, a mug of black coffee that says Brooklyn Magnet National Honors Society: We Put The Cool in School, and the pièce de résistance: douchey giant sunglasses.
Gina slinks up to her desk as soon as she sits down, and Amy raises her head slowly.
“Sunglasses, Amy?” she asks. “The only people wearing sunglasses in the middle of winter are the vision impaired and those who regret everything they did the night before.”
Amy makes a miserable noise in reply.
“Based on your outfit and the vodka I can smell seeping from your pores,” Gina continues, “I’m guessing you’re both.”
“A friend from undergrad came into town,” Amy says, voice hilariously hoarse. “We did shots.”
“Was four drink Amy invited to this party?” Gina asks.
“Yes,” Amy replies, “and her friends five and six drink Amy, who threw up on a cab driver.”
“That bitch.”
Amy solemnly nods agreement.
Later that day, Gina leaves a six pack of water bottles and her very own emergency pack of ibuprofen on Amy’s desk while she’s away for lunch, and Amy looks confused for a few moments before she looks up at Gina and smiles. It makes something dumb happen in Gina’s chest, but, like, dumb in that special way, like how she felt watching Matt Bomer in Magic Mike.
Holy damn shit.
*
“Jake, advice,” Gina says, that very afternoon, dropping herself onto his desk.
“I don’t want your advice,” Jake says. “The last time I took your advice, I woke up in a different state next to a dude I’d never seen before, naked except for a Bernie Sanders campaign tank top.”
“But weren’t you a better man for it?”
“. . .yeah, probably,” Jake acquiesces, “but I don’t have time for a sexual crisis or money for a plane ticket. I spent my last paycheck on a personal snow cone machine.”
“Sick,” Gina says, “but I was actually asking for your advice.”
Jake’s smile is a little too quick.
“Well, well, well,” he says. “What can I do you for?”
“How did you get over your precious schoolboy crush on Santiago over there?” she asks, gesturing over at Amy, who’s debriefing Captain Holt on one of her cases in his office. Jake pauses for a long moment, stroking his chin.
“Love fades,” he says, eventually, making an ambiguous waving gesture with his hands, “Much like the feeling that I really needed that snow cone machine more than I needed to pay my electricity bill. Did you know snow cone machines run on electricity?”
“Insightful,” she says. “Useless but insightful.”
“Who have you got your steely raptor eyes set on?” Jake asks.
Gina glances back at Amy involuntarily, at the sound of her laughing obviously too loudly at one of the Captain’s jokes--or whatever he would call a joke, probably wry emotionless humor observations. She turns around to make up a new suitor, some hot dude that goes to the bodega near her place or something, but Jake is staring at her with huge eyes.
“Oh my lesbian god,” he hisses.
*
Gina drags him out of the room before he can blow her cover. Jake does a weird little dance in place, looking way more delighted than the situation calls for.
“You have a crush,” he says, “on a girl.”
“I don’t get crushes,” Gina says, poking him in the chest. “I get mind-blowing sex and then the peace and quiet of my flawless studio apartment and my own fantastic company.”
“You know, same sex marriage is legal everywhere now,” Jake says. “You can retire to Florida as Mrs. and Mrs. Amy Santiago. Learn how to knit. Watch the 700 Club.”
“You shut your damn mouth,” Gina says, “or I tell everyone about what happened at the ninth grade dance.”
Jake’s jaw drops.
“Holy crap,” he says. “You really do have a crush.”
“Ninth grade dance,” Gina repeats.
*
The thing is that this isn’t exactly new.
The whole liking ladies thing, especially, because Gina’s not about labels or turning down hot ass people when they want a piece of what she’s got, whatever gender or lack of gender said hot ass people might be. But the Santiago thing, specifically, because ever since the beach house, Gina hasn’t been able to stop thinking about Four Drink Amy.
Four Drink Amy is what regular sober Amy could be if she wasn’t so full of rules and decorum and posture. Four Drink Amy is the human equivalent of a tabloid Kim Kardashian nip slip cover but in the very best way. Four Drink Amy is the sexually suggestive weirdo of Gina’s damn dreams.
Until now, though, it hadn’t really bled into her daily life. She definitely wasn’t getting distracted every time Santiago bent down to pick up a pencil.
Santiago just bent down to pick up a pencil.
Gina whispers, as if independent of her body and all good sense, “Damn.”
She’s going to have to do something about this.
And she’s going to have kill Jake, who watched the whole thing and burst out laughing. She’s going to have to murder Jake and fuck Amy to get it out of her system so she can be raised from the ashes anew, more perfect than ever. Gina’s life is exceptionally difficult. She’s not sure how she manages to maintain her beauty when she’s so burdened.
*
“It would be unethical,” Gina asks, “to get Amy drunk exclusively to make out with her, wouldn’t it?”
“Yep,” Jake says, sitting on the floor of her apartment with a glass of wine, sorting through the DVDs that he brought. He had to bring the DVD player, too. Gina streams exclusively because she’s not an animal.
“So, we’re going to have to go in without the sweet embrace of booze,” Gina murmurs, staring sadly at her own wine.
Jake thrusts a worn copy of Point Break into the air momentarily before crawling on his knees to put it into the CD player. Once he’s settled next to Gina on the sofa, he turns to her and says, “I know this is crazy and I would not take this advice myself, but maybe you should try being nice and asking her out.”
“What, like, on a date?” Gina asks.
“Yeah,” Jake says. “Those things that people do before they make out.”
“Those things that people do before they make out are called tequila shots,” she says.
“That explains Boyle, I guess.”
“Nothing explains Boyle,” Gina says, “but tequila is the closest guess.”
*
Gina buys an extra latte the next morning and gets to work early. She’s sitting on Amy’s desk when she walks in, and Amy looks surprised. Probably because Gina’s early but also maybe because Gina’s wearing a sweater with Kanye West’s face on it because it gives her the confidence to be her best self.
“You’re suspiciously early,” Amy says.
“I bought you this latte,” Gina says, “because I am a nice person.”
“O. . .kay,” Amy says.
“So,” Gina continues, “You know how Four Drink Amy is, like, a delightful pansexual innuendo machine?”
Amy frowns.
“I’ve heard things,” she says, slowly. “Things I can’t recall.”
“What would it take,” Gina says, standing up to walk towards her, putting a little extra sway in her step, “to make sober Amy like that?”
Amy frowns harder.
“Did you promise someone else that they could date me in exchange for a favor? Because I almost had to move after I went out with your creepy landlord.”
“No, that’s not what I’m doing,” Gina says. She puts a hand on Amy’s arm. Amy stares at it like it’s going to explode and kill them both.
“Are you filming this for your vlog?” she asks, glancing around the room. Gina shakes her head, and Amy continues: “Is Jake going to jump out from under a desk and scare me? Am I being Punk’d?”
“Oh, Amy,” Gina says. “Oh, ye of little faith.”
Amy stares at her with big Disney princess eyes. Gina leans in just to see if she’ll shut them, and she does and it’s great. She wasn’t even going to kiss her but it’s too late now, because Amy presses up a little and then their lips are barely brushing, arguably the chastest thing Gina’s ever done with anybody. Not that it feels like it.
Amy makes a noise and pulls away, taking a big step back.
“Whoa,” she says.
“What would Four Drink Amy say?” Gina asks.
Amy opens her mouth like she’s ready to say something, but then, instead, she steps forward to put her hand on Gina’s shoulder and pull her into another kiss. Gina’s brain explodes. That’s exactly what Four Drink Amy would say. They pull apart when they hear voices from down the hall, and Amy looks terrified but also extremely kissed.
“Want to go to a movie or whatever it is people like you do?” Gina asks.
“Like a date?” Amy asks.
“If we must call it that,” Gina says.
Amy smiles. Gina’s brain is going to take awhile to put back together.