I Love You and I'm Sorry

Snow

Trigger Warning: panic attacks, self-harm, mental illness

Nobody worried when Jake was late for work. Honestly, they probably would've been more concerned if he'd showed up on time. He'd left the apartment (still in pajamas) to go get him and his wife some coffee. But even then, even Amy- and she was the queen of unprecedented panicking- didn't worry when it had been an hour, he still hadn't shown up, and he wasn't answering his cell. I mean, this was Jake she was talking about. For all she knew, despite the fact that there was none when he left, there was a traffic jam because goddammit this was Jake Peralta and it was a natural law of the universe that Jake Peralta had to be late. 

An hour became two hours, and still, no one worried.

Then two hours became three hours, and then four. 

Four hours was what did it. 

At about 11:02, Terry wandered casually into the bullpen. "Hey, have any of you seen Jake? This is nuts, even for him."

"You can skip the chill part, everybody's already lost their shit," deadpanned Rosa. 

"Yes. Santiago's respiration rate has increased by a factor of 8.7 in the last 22 seconds and Boyle appears to be showing symptoms of pre cardiac arrest. Of course, I'm sure you can see that I am a blubbering disaster,"  said the captain. 

* * *

Within the next 5-10 minutes, they had a plan. Only Diaz and Boyle were going to go out and search, after all, the precinct had to get some police work done. They couldn't put all their effort into this search, especially since there was still a chance that Jake was absolutely fine and he'd just spilled coffee on his shirt and had to go back and change and also to get more coffee or something Jake-ish like that. 

But they weren't really holding out hope. They'd decided to send Diaz in case Jake was in danger, which made sense. Boyle was the risky choice. He was good enough at handling trouble, but the squad's hunch was that this had something to do with Jake's strange behavior over the past few weeks. He had definitely been hiding something, and Boyle was definitely the type who might freak him out and overwhelm him if this was a personal problem, but he also might help to counter Rosa's lack of emotions and he would do anything for Jake. 

They'd considered sending Gina, but they needed somebody to stay and keep everyone together, which Gina was both surprisingly and unsurprisingly good at. They'd opted not to send Amy for similar reasons, along with the fact that she, in spite of being the closest to Peralta, was the most likely to be productive and functioning in the face of her stress. 

Diaz and Boyle started the search in the most obvious place: Jake's apartment. They did not find him there. 

"Of course he wouldn't be here. You know, lost things are always found in the last place you look," Boyle mused.

"Obviously you find stuff in the last place you look. Why the hell would you keep looking after you find it, dum-dum?" Boyle opened his mouth to argue, but Rosa shot him down with a glare.

After that, they drove to the coffee shop. He wasn't there either. 

"Alright, we'll split up. You go that way," Rosa pointed. Charles replied with a solemn nod.

As Rosa strolled through the snow-covered streets of Brooklyn, she did not worry and she was never going to have to awkwardly deny that she had feelings while everybody rolled their eyes at her obvious lie because she did not worry, she did not have feelings, and she would not have to lie. Even if there was a tiny chance that she would, she was too good at it to be conspicuous. Plus, she was known to punch anyone who dared rolled their eyes at her. Anyways, it wasn't like the snow was coming down in big, heavy flakes that weighed down her eyelashes and soaked through her beanie. It wasn't like she'd almost fallen flat on her face a bunch of times because the roads were covered in ice. It wasn't like it was so cold that if she were anyone but Rosa Diaz she might have shivered.