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#ofc i didn’t want to offend any czechs
kamekamelea · 5 years
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Homework and hobbies for the prompt list???
the one where Jake gets a warrant that Pilsners are boring indeed
#34. Hobbies from this kids prompt list
This is far from my best work (sorry about that *hides*) but even though the idea was clear in my head from the moment I saw this request the words just wouldn’t form and this one has been in my inbox for so long I had to get it out of my system. Hope you enjoy it anyway, Anon! :) Thank you for sending the prompt 💕 it turned out silly but I like it :D
Thank you so much @cheddar-the-dog for beta-reading and your words of encouragement 💖💖 
Special thanks go to @rosalitadiazz and @vernonfielding for being my information sources on this one, your help is very much appreciated! :D 💕 
read on ao3
“Isn’t it weird our 17-year-old son is spending his Saturday with his Nana?”  
Jake asks his wife one day, getting suspicions after few weeks of Atlas staying all afternoons at Karen’s on work days (Amy responds that she finds it endearing, and hopes her own future grandchildren spend so much time with her when they’re teenagers). Jake’s totally aware of his son’s special bond with his Mum and is very grateful for it but still, call it 6th sense or work-related bias after so many years being a cop, he can’t help but feel something is off.  
Sure, Atlas and Karen’s bond is truly special, especially given the fact that he’s a teenager and kids his age are not mostly known for spending an awful lot of their afternoons with their Nana. But they have just so much in common, Karen being the only competent person supporting his love for cooking and helping him with developing his skills making with him all kinds of weird foods only Uncle Charles seems to enjoy.  
(At a very early stage of his life it turned out cooking is Atlas’ passion and since his parents aren’t very talented in that area, it was Jake’s mum who’s helped Atlas to discover his skills. As he grew older, he started making more sophisticated dishes, he learned to bake and make all sorts of pickled vegetables. He even made some jams one summer and the amount of jars full of sweet substance was so enormous, the whole family still has their pantry packed with it, even after a giveaway to the whole Nine-Nine squad). And his Nana was there throughout it all - such victories as the first batch of well-done pierogis for Mother’s Day one year, or a 5-level birthday cake for Jake. But she was there for the failures as well, like when a whole box with jars of pickled beetroots gone bad and Atlas, being a sensitive boy, cried all afternoon because of it.)  
Eventually, Jake convinces his wife to visit Karen later that day. “What do you say we pay my mum a surprise visit this afternoon?” To which suggestion she agrees eagerly, realizing Karen might appreciate them doing groceries for her.  
Jake knows he’s been right seeing the unpleasant surprise on his Mum’s face the moment she opens the door, seeing him at her porch with bags in his hands. 
“Jake?” Karen’s bewilderment, showing in her eyes being wide, is priceless.  
Busted.  
“Hello Karen!” a muffled shout comes from his car, where Amy is picking up the rest of the groceries they got for her. Conspiracy visit or not, his mum still is an old lady, who needs help with basic chores (even though she has a hard time admitting it).  
Jake gives his - still a bit in shock - mum a quick kiss on the cheek and heads straight to the kitchen, for one to leave the bags there and for two to get over with this mission on catching his son red-handed as soon as possible.  
The problem is, the kitchen is empty.  
“Amy, my love, Jake - would you like a cup of coffee? And cake?”  
“Oh, yes please!” his wife obliviousness of the situation really taking place (Karen trying to distract him from finding his son) is annoying, but Jake couldn’t clue Amy in, because she’d call him obsessive and would made an awful lot fun of him.  
“Mum, where’s Atlas?”  
He goes past her, ignoring her attempts to distract him from going further the hallway (while Amy’s still blissfully unaware of her husband and mother-in-law’s game, cheerfully asking about Karen’s well being).  
There’s no sign of Atlas all over Jake’s childhood’s house so the only place left for Sergeant Peralta to look for is the garage. And that’s where he finds his one and only son doing a thing he would never accuse him of, startling Jake and filling his heart with horror, simultaneously shattering it to pieces.  
HIS SON IS BREWING BEER.  
For a moment Jake thinks he’s having a heart attack, his legs suddenly too weak to hold him and Amy seeing him in that state rushes to his side and only then she notices the source of her husband’s sudden deterioration. There is a million thoughts going through her mind but there is one that is especially loud ‘HE’S UNDERAGE, HE’S NOT SUPPOSED TO DRINK ALCOHOL NOT TO MENTION MAKING IT’ but also a quiet one ‘How did my son turn into my boring ex-boyfriend?’ .   
She orders her son to go straight to the car and as Jake starts to feel better they all go home in a suffocating silence. Jake feels heartbroken seeing that his son shares a passion with his wife’s ex-boyfriend (especially when only last month Atlas confessed to him that “only the first Die Hard movie is good, Dad”) and doesn’t utter one word even when his wife makes a long and loud lecture to their son once they arrive at Santiago-Peralta household. In the spur of the moment she bans Atlas from making any more alcohol which results in Atlas shutting himself in his room for the rest of the evening.  
Mr. and Mrs. Santiago-Peralta spend the rest of the day questioning all their parenting choices, wondering when did they put him on this road to being a boring person. Especially Jake can’t see a moment when everything went wrong - his son has made so many explicit “Title of your sex tape” jokes ever since he was 13, he and Ana team up every year for a Halloween Heist, not failing to fool their old parents for 3 years straight now and they go together to the waterpark every year (just the two of them, some quality father-son time) -in Jake’s eyes Atlas is the most fun person he knows (but don’t tell Amy that).  
Their self-pity party gets interrupted by their 22-year-old daughter Ana, who enters demanding answers as to why everyone is acting so weird today. After telling her the whole story of the staggering discovery at Nana’s, she tells them how Atlas has been afraid to tell them about his new hobby for the longest time, knowing of their weird prejudice towards beers that are not Blue Moon (or Corona if they feel fancy).  
(Actually it was Ana herself, gutted by her parents taste in beers, who convinced them shortly after her 21st birthday - discovering there is more to adult alcohol-drinking-life than the cheapest beers in her parents’ fridge - to switch to Dos Equis (her personal favourite), so that the policy of ‘not drinking anything that doesn’t taste like piss’ is no longer on the table. Their resentment towards trying anything new beer-related was obvious and weird to their kids even.)  
Ana’s revelation actually makes them even more sad - to know their son kept a secret from them, being anxious of their reaction feels like a true parenting failure for the Santiago-Peralta couple. Sure, their interaction with Teddy has been traumatic for the both of them, the memory of it still giving Amy a Pilsner-TSD. But they see now so clearly it should have never influenced their behaviour towards their son.  
“He has foreseen you might react this way so he decided to keep his mouth shut. And Nana was his partner in crime because she’s just the best, obviously.” 
And they reacted in the worst way possible. Especially Amy seems to have huge regrets regarding her outburst.  
She has tears in her eyes, cursing herself for being so harsh before, and she’s overcome with the strongest urge to just hug her son and never let go (well she has this urge constantly from the second he was born but sometimes this need gets just unbearable just like in this moment) so she sprints to his room, apologizing and hugging him until he’s all abashed from the sudden affection coming from his mother ( “It’s okay Mum, I’m not even angry anymore. Could you let go, I can’t feel the half of my body, you’re crushing me.”).  
“We owe you an apology, Atlas. We should have trusted you with this instead of being so close-minded when it comes to beer.” Once Amy finally lets her son breath again, loosening her grip on him, Jake takes a seat next to him.  
“Where is your animosity towards beer coming from anyway?” Their son’s question catches them off guard and there’s no way for them to hide it, as they start to mumble incoherent excuses.  
“It’s... just that at one point your Mum was really sick of it.”  
“Title of your sex tape, Dad!”  
After Jake high-fives his son and his wife rolls her eyes with a fond smile forming on her lips, they make a promise to Atlas to never ever react that way to anything happening in his life and he assures them he will not drink his own beer (Jake doesn’t believe this promise for a second but Amy seems to be satisfied with his answer). As Amy makes a move to leave, Jake stalls, almost insecure and tries to make an attempt to fix what once was an unbreakable bond with his son (before he stabbed his back with the Die Hard confession and start this new “a-lot-like-Teddy” hobby) asking him about his new interest.  
(Of course he’s being overly dramatic - such a silly thing would never jeopardize his relationship with Atlas. Still, Jake can’t help but feel a bit left out, jealous even, of not sharing Teddy’s knowledge of beers so that he can impress his son and engage in this new passion of his.)  
“So, what is it you’re brewing there, buddy? Some good ol’ pilsners?” Jake’s knowledge about beers is really limited and he has never even tried expanding it, what he mildly regrets right now.  
“Pilsners, Dad? Really? Who do you think I am? Some old, boring Czech guy? Pilsners are like the worst type of beers! There’s nothing fun about them. They’re BORING. I brew Ales and sometime Weizenbiers but NEVER Pilsners!” 
His son is so indignant and almost offended Jake would think he has anything to do with THE MOST BORING type of beer his heart warms and he becomes overwhelmed with a wave of affection towards his son, resulting in him grabbing Atlas' round face in his palms and planting a very manly kiss on his forehead. They spend most of Sunday talking about Atlas’ new hobby (Jake actually learning a lot of new and surprisingly interesting facts about beer brewing).  
(Jake’s the first person honored to taste the first sip of next batch of Atlas’ beer and is pleasantly surprised finding out he actually likes it. When he pats his son on the back, showing his appreciation, a giant beam appears on Atlas’ face, the one, as Amy says, that makes him look exactly like his father.)  
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