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If there’s anything that Rosa hates about her job, it’s doing coffee runs.
Other precincts have fancy expensive espresso machines in the break room.
Other precincts have sugar that Scully doesn’t eat with a spoon.
Other precincts have consistently functioning kettles.
The 99 is kind of near a decent coffee shop.
Mostly people settle for the sludge in the break room because it’s easier (except Boyle, who has a French press in his desk drawer), but every so often someone will decide they need a properly foamed cappuccino or something and once one person mentions it, everyone wants one.
This time it’s Amy, which is at least forgivable in light of the whole smoking thing; a girl has to have some kind of vice. But by the time she has Scully and Hitchcock’s coffee (and cruller and donut and Danish) orders written down, she’s starting to look a little worried.
“I don’t know if I can carry all this,” she says.
Peralta jumps to his feet, having already requested a chili hot chocolate and a jelly donut, and valiantly offers his non-assistance in the form of dashing off to hide in the bathroom.
Somehow, everyone else ends up looking at Rosa. As if it’s her fault that Amy’s too delicate to carry nine coffees and a multitude of pastries.
“Ask Gina,” she tries.
“I have important filing to do,” says Gina.
Rosa suspects it’s the kind of filing related to maintaining her manicure, rather than paperwork, but now Amy’s looking at her like—oh, really, that’s probably what people call a puppy dog look, and maybe Peralta or Boyle could pull it off but on Amy it just makes her look like she’s forgotten if she put pants on. (She hasn’t. Forgotten, that is.)
“Let’s go, then,” Rosa says.
Scully passes her his frequent frappér card on her way out. It’s been stamped so many times Rosa is pretty sure it’s more ink than paper.
They’re on their way back to the precinct, each carrying a coffee cup tray and bag of saturated fat and sugar, when a pained yowl from down a side alley catches Amy’s attention. Whatever she’s seen that Rosa hasn’t, it’s obviously important, because she shoves her trayful of hot liquids at Rosa and runs, the donut bag banging off her hip.
It’s two teenage boys tormenting a cat. Amy puffs up like a pissed-off mother cat, complete with hissing. Well, yelling for them to stop teasing it, anyway. They look unimpressed until she flashes her badge, and then they bolt.
“You nearly soaked me in hot coffee for a cat?”
Amy crouches to scratch the scrawny animal under the chin and looks up at Rosa. “You can’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same.”
“Let’s get these drinks back before they go cold. I’m not coming back out if anyone’s order is screwed up.”
“Oh, Rosa. It’s a nice day. Can’t you enjoy anything?”
The fact that the cat then swats at Amy, hisses, and bolts does not in any way make Rosa feel better about Amy’s relentless optimism. Of course not. That would just be mean. Coffee runs and cat rescuing. Yeah. This is totally why she became a cop.
Amy straightens up, and then frowns. “Hey. Can you smell that?”
“Smell what?”
“I think it’s smoke.”
Rosa can’t smell anything aside from the coffee right under her nose, but Amy heads off down the alley and so Rosa has to follow her.
It’s definitely smoke. A small apartment building that looks like it should have been demolished about twelve years ago has flames dancing out of an upstairs window. Rosa looks at Amy, who’s already on the phone.
They set down the snacks and drinks out of the way, and then enter the building, pounding on doors with flaking paint, doors that sag under the impact of even a brisk knock.
“NYPD! Everyone needs to evacuate immediately!”
“NYPD! Exit the building, now!”
There’s no time for everyone stay calm, for move in an orderly fashion. Even though heat rises, the hallway is still stifling.
Amy directs people outside.
Rosa kicks in doors that don’t get answered, repeats the order to leave in Spanish, Mandarin, and vehement pointing.
Amy keeps casting glances toward the front and back of the building as they make their slow ascent. Rosa assumes she’s waiting for the FD; she’s a little surprised that they haven’t heard sirens yet.
The third floor is where they run into trouble.
Laying the palm of her hand against one door—3C—after a knock goes unanswered, Amy flinches back.
“This must be where the fire started.” She holds her reddened hand up for Rosa’s inspection.
“Okay, so find a fire extinguisher, and we’ll get them out down the back stairs.”
“Have you even seen back stairs? Because I haven’t.”
God. Okay. So that’s why she’s been making like a meerkat. “Not even a fire escape?”
“If we can get the back windows open, maybe, but I think they’re painted shut.”
“What the fuck is wrong with people,” Rosa says rhetorically, banging on the next door. Coffee run, cat rescuing, door to door idiot evacuation. She thinks she’d rather be back at the precinct picking Lohank’s face fungus out of her keyboard.
Amy dithers, looking from the scorching door to Rosa and then up the stairs.
“If there was anyone in there, it’s probably too late,” Rosa says, shooing a teenage girl wearing an Avengers t-shirt down the stairs. “Fire extinguisher. I’ll do the fourth floor and then come back down.”
The maybe-three minutes they’re separated while Rosa runs upstairs, yanks open four doors—having dispensed with the knocking—and clears each tiny apartment feels like forever for her; she can only imagine how it must feel for Amy, watching the door, waiting for it to turn black and crumble.
The sirens are finally outside when Rosa hits the third floor landing carrying a second fire extinguisher. Amy’s fiddling with the pin on hers.
“We really should just leave,” Rosa says, proving herself a liar by readying the extinguisher before swinging her foot at the door. It obligingly collapses in flames, sending her stumbling backward. Amy yelps and Rosa only has a second to feel the heat encasing her leg before it’s doused in foam.
“I think you’re right, there can’t be anyone in there.” Amy is yelling to be heard over the flames.
Rosa hollers into the fire anyway, “NYPD! Respond if you can hear me!”
The only sound that greets her is the steady thunder of the flames, punctuated by the lightning crashes of walls and ceilings caving in.
They get down to the second floor to be greeted by the wreckage of what was once—presumably—the floor of 3C, merrily burning right in the way of the stairwell.
Rosa takes a deep smoky breath and starts mentally enumerating all the people who are at fault for this, even as she’s making her way through the short hallway toward the back window, swinging her fire extinguisher at it without pausing. The extinguisher rebounds and she drops it.
“What kind of fucking idiot boards up a fire escape?”
“Back upstairs?” Amy suggests, but the flames are following them along the faded green carpet, turning it black.
Rosa turns and steps into 2D without any further attempts at smashing through the boarded-over window. Amy follows her, pulling her shirt up over her nose and mouth.
“Close the door,” Rosa says.
“But—”
“If you think going back that way is gonna work, you’re wrong.” She buttonhooks around the end of the sofa and into the kitchen, dumping a couple of cloths into the sink and soaking them. When she ties hers around her face it smells faintly of lemon. She tosses the other to Amy, who sniffs it gingerly.
“Are these coffee grounds? You want me to put this on my face?”
All Rosa can think is that this wouldn’t have happened if Amy hadn’t wanted real coffee in the first place. “Yeah. Quit being precious and put it on.”
Amy puts it on with no further protests.
Maybe going into the bedroom isn’t the greatest idea, but Rosa is pretty sure they stopped with the good ideas as soon as they stepped foot in the building instead of staying put outside and waiting for the FD. She shuts that door behind them as well and turns to survey the scene. Floor to ceiling window. Sliding door. Balcony. Balcony. She can work with that.
“You’re a genius, Rosa,” Amy says.
She isn’t. She just got lucky, in the same way that they got unlucky with everything else up to this point (coffee, cat, fire).
Rosa slides the door open to be greeted by the back alley smell of Dumpsters and urine. Great.
“Best case scenario, we jump and land in that Dumpster.”
“Worst case?” Amy asks, looking like she wishes she could just shoot the fire until it drops to its knees and asks her to stop. The room is oven-hot and getting worse. Amy’s face is beaded with sweat; conversely, the cloth over her nose and mouth is starting to look dry.
Rosa shrugs. “Worst case, we burn to death and ruin the 99’s perfect racial and gender balance.”
Amy stares at her in wonder. “We’re in a structurally unsafe burning building and you’re making jokes?”
Rosa just grins at her through the cloth, even though Amy can’t see it. She trundles the sliding door the rest of the way open and puts one foot experimentally out onto the balcony, which makes an alarming noise that sounds bizarrely like it’s squealing Amy’s name.
Then Rosa realizes that that’s just Peralta, down in the alley, squealing Amy’s name and jumping up and down like a tween cheerleader. Since he is on her shit list for hiding in the bathroom instead of assisting Amy with the coffee, as any tween cheerleader with a crush on the star quarterback is sworn to do, she mentally revises her trajectory toward the softest looking Dumpster with an eye to accidentally kicking him in the head on the way past.
She debates telling Amy about the quarterback thing but Amy will probably assume it’s just a reference to the misguided Shoulderpad Incident of 2010.
Amy joins her in the doorway, raises a hand to Peralta instead of shouting back (good conservation of oxygen, although she could’ve conserved even more by just raising one finger), and tests the balcony with a prod of her toe.
It collapses.
“At least we don’t have to worry about clearing the railing,” Rosa says, watching Peralta dodge the falling debris—with a tiny feeling of regret when he isn’t KOed by the long-dead houseplant.
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
Maybe their luck’s turned bad again and the balcony collapsing means they won’t make it, or maybe the two of them are due some fucking amazing karma (coffeecatfirebalcony).
Either way, they’ve run out of time to decide which it is.
The wall caves in, the fire roars through, and Rosa grabs Amy’s hand and leaps.