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vernonfielding · 4 years

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The lies, the secrets

Story No. 3 of my Season 7 Countdown Project! Also: I’m still taking prompts for future missing scene fics.

Summary: “My time undercover in the mafia was actually kind of lame. I mean, I wanted it to be badass, but I'm good at computers, so I mostly just helped them switch over from AOL.”

The story of how Jake became the mafia’s IT guy. Takes place during Undercover. (Read on AO3.)

What he doesn’t tell any of them, after he’s back, is that going undercover with the mafia is mostly just- really lonely.

Jake spends most of the first week alone in the crappy one-bedroom the FBI hooked him up with in Bushwick, waiting for one of the Ianuccis to get in touch. At night he lies awake on his mattress on the floor, mustard-yellow streetlight glaring through the grimy bedroom windows, and thinks that he’s already failed his assignment, that he couldn’t pass himself off as a disgraced cop for even one night. (The irony does not escape him.)

Then a guy calls Jake’s burner at 3 in the afternoon on the sixth day, and he introduces himself as Derek and says he’s downstairs. It’s now or never. Jakes takes a deep breath and blows it out hard, then steels himself and heads down. By the end of the week, he’s got a pierced ear and a gold-chain necklace and a cigar burn on the back of his neck, just below the collar of his new silk shirt. Years ago, before he’d gotten into the Academy, Jake had thought about getting a tattoo (“yippee ki yay” in calligraphy, very classy) in that spot and he’s grateful now that Gina talked him out of it. The burn was an initiation, and it didn’t hurt as much as he’d thought it would, but the scab is itchy and sometimes when he thinks of the smell of it he gets a little nauseated.

Leo Iannuci sends him out with Derek on a couple of jobs – mostly picking up cash from people they’re extorting from, but sometimes they’re the ones making the threats and Jake hates that part, hates it so much. Derek’s a nice guy, an Academy dropout who seems to shed his tough-guy attitude with his velour jacket every time they leave a bodega or laundromat or some other business where he’s had to smack someone around. Derek always does the hitting, never makes Jake do it, and Jake can’t decide if it’s because he likes the violence or if he just senses that Jake really, really doesn’t.

Either way, he’s grateful, and he has to keep himself from feeling too much fondness for Derek just because he protects Jake from the dirty work. Jake’s gotten that talk from the FBI: It’s natural to think you’re making friends, making connections, they’d said. But you’re not. Don’t ever forget that. Jake is always, always on his own.

About a month in, Jake is at Leo’s penthouse in Flushing, reeking of cologne that one of the Sals had doused him in while another Sal held him down, when Leo swears loudly and slaps the side of his computer, a rickety old desktop with a fan that sounds like it’s working triple-time.

“Motherfucker, it won’t let me fucking update!” Leo slams his fist down on top of the harddrive.

Jake looks around the room but everyone else suddenly seems to have important business on their phones, so he approaches Leo and says, “What’s the problem?”

Leo snarls at the computer. “I had to add some new clients to the ledger and now this son of a bitch won’t save the changes.”

Le’s “clients” could mean extortion victims or dirty cops or assassins-for-hire or any or all of the above. Jake hasn’t seen the ledger yet – he wasn’t actually sure there was one before this moment.

“You want some help?” he says, casually.

Leo finally turns his glare to Jake, staring him down long enough that Jake has to fight to keep from shifting on his feet and curling his hands into fists. “You any good with this shit?” Leo says.

Jake shrugs. “Yeah, I know computers.”

“All right, have at it,” Leo says, and gets up from the desk.

Jake sits, and Leo grips his shoulders, sudden and fast, fingers digging hard enough to bruise. And then just as suddenly he’s let go. He stays behind Jake, though, watching him click through open windows to find the source of the problem. It doesn’t take long.

“You’re using AOL,” Jake says. His voice sounds a little strangled to his own ears.

“Yeah, I guess,” Leo says. “So what?”

“So that’s your problem,” Jake says.

Jake’s definitely not an expert at computers, but he’s always had an affinity for the basics and it only takes him a few minutes to fix the immediate problem – an outdated file type that the desktop won’t recognize anymore. Jake saves the document, which, infuriatingly, is a table someone made in Microsoft Works. It’s so horrifically formatted that Jake can’t help but imagine the devastating stroke that Amy would suffer if she even knew it existed. She would seriously start bleeding out of her eyes.

Later that night, Jake smokes his first full cigar and convinces Leo to let him move all of their documents to a Google drive. By the end of his first full month undercover, Jake’s become the mob’s IT guy. It’s exactly as dope as it sounds. (It’s not remotely dope.)

+++

It takes him a couple of weeks to transfer everything to the cloud; he has to carefully rebuild all of the ledgers in proper spreadsheets. Leo assigns one of the Sals to keep an eye on him, but after the first hour Sal gets bored and retires to the couch to play Kwazy Cupcakes on his phone (the sound effects touch off a profound homesickness that Jake tries his best to ignore). So Jake has no trouble copying the ledgers onto a thumb drive that he later passes on to his handler. It’s almost all the evidence they need. Then it’s just a matter of waiting for the FBI to get its teams in place, to mark the right time and place to take down the biggest targets.

Jake does a few more jobs with Derek, and he just misses getting sent on a drug run that ends in a shootout and two of Iannuci’s guys in the hospital (Jake was back at Leo’s penthouse trying to figure out why his computer suddenly refused to talk to his printer). He knows he’s dodging literal bullets, but that doesn’t mean he sleeps well at night, or that his nervous system doesn’t light up like a Christmas tree every time someone racks a gun near him (which is pretty much all the time – mafia guys love cleaning their weapons).

Jake ends up giving a seminar to half a dozen Iannuci men (plus two women) on file encryption and two-step authentication and he feels a little guilty for teaching the mob how to evade hackers – some of whom will surely be cops – but weirdly, he’s starting to get bored, and he figures none of them are going to remember any of his lessons anyway.

The night before Marco and Angie’s wedding, Jake gets super drunk with a bunch of the guys and he sings “The Longest Time” with Derek, slopping rye whiskey all over their polyester shirts. The next day Jake’s going home. But that night, for the first time in 62 days, he forgets to be lonely.

End Notes:

Title is from Feed the Beast (Bash Brothers).

I know there is a lot of mafia-Jake fic, and that this take is not like the others. But I always thought Jake’s comment to Pimento about what he really did undercover was interesting and worth exploring. I don’t think it means the job wasn’t dangerous or super stressful for Jake, though my version is probably less so than some of the more violent takes some writers have offered (which are just as valid!).

I couldn’t decide if this story should be considered a missing scene for Undercover or Adrian Pimento. It fit better here for obvious reasons, but the revelation is in the later episode. But really, it doesn’t actually matter.

My darling beta @fezzle wisely pointed out that Jake the Computer Wizard doesn’t exactly fit with what we learn about him in Ticking Clocks. My solution/answer to this is that Jake is actually pretty good with day-to-day computer stuff (there’s quite a bit of evidence of this in canon – or at least, evidence that he’s not BAD with computers), but hacking-level stuff is way over his head. That’s why he starts Ticking Clocks full of bluster with the so-called security expert and then eventually has to admit he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Unfortunately, what he actually says is “I don’t know anything about computers.” That could be the writers just forgetting their own canon, but I choose to believe that it actually fits just fine with Jake’s “I’m good at computers” in Adrian Pimento. It’s all about context!

#b99 fic #b99 season 7 countdown project #missing scene #undercover #jake peralta #mafia jake

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qafgiftxchnge · 5 years

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2019 Queer As Folk Gift Exchange

IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR...YOU KNOW THE ONE...THE GIVING TIME

Welcome to the 2019 GIFT EXCHANGE!!!!!

Calling all writers, drawers, photoshoppers, vidders, layout makers, fanmixers, giffers, cartoonists, or whatever other medium you work best in. Sign-up to give a Queer as Folk gift and get (at least) one in return! Plus everyone benefits from all these contributions to our fandom!

----->QAF_GIFTXCHNGE Signup Form

*Sign ups close on NOVEMBER 1st, 2019 - 11:59pm Eastern

*Assignments will be sent out by end of November 5th, 2019. I will make assignments and pair you up with your gift recipient.

*Entries are due December 30, 2019 - 11:59pm Eastern (emailed to qafgiftxchnge @ gmail.com)

**If entries are received early, I'll start posting on the 27th of December

*Find submission guidelines below the cut. Let me know if you have any questions!

TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS!

Please follow this tumblr to get updates on check-ins and reminders.

~ All gifts must be submitted to me at qafgiftxchnge @ gmail.com with the subject line: 2019 GIFT, screen name, gift for: [name] - on or before 11:59pm Eastern December 29th, 2019. (this will give everyone a little extra time around the holidays)

~ Gifts will be posted December 30, 2019 to January 7, 2020

**If entries are received early, I'll start posting on the 27th of December -- or maybe even before Xmas!

~Fic gifts do not need to be epic multi chaptered sagas.

10,000 words MAXIMUM.

Drabbles are welcome.

I hope many of you will participate. Last year there were 28 gifts given, so come out, come out wherever you are, old fans and new! In the last few years, we've had double sign-ups from the start, as in people are sent 2 gifts to create if they've previously agreed. If you've struggled with this in the past, please don't choose that as an option.

This exchange will be held on Livejournal and Dreamwidth, and promoted by me on Tumblr and Pillowfort. I think I'll post to LJ and then import to Dreamwidth daily, with a final import mid-January to be sure all LJ comments are backed up on DW. If your main blog is on Tumblr or Pillowfort, I'll post any gift you make or receive here too right away for reblogging purposes. If you do not want your gift to be posted to certain platforms, please let me know in the sign-up. Reminder that some fic has been posted to AO3 by the authors after the xchnge - check it out at qaf_giftxchnge collection

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Please don't sign up if you may not be able to fulfill your gift. IF an emergency happens and you can't participate, please let me know as soon as possible so I can beg someone to stand in so that no one goes giftless.

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All submissions must be stand alone pieces created specifically for this fest. You may not submit a part of a work-in-progress as your submission, nor can you include fic/art/graphics that you've already posted elsewhere.

Submitting Your Work

All submissions should emailed to qafgiftxchnge @ gmail.com by the due date (Dec 30th). You can also share fics via google drive if that is more convenient.

In the subject line of your email, please include 2019 GIFT, your screen name, gift for: [name]. This makes it so much easier for us to find and organize your work.

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TO: <lj user="username"> FROM: <lj user="username"> TITLE: GIFT REQUEST: NOTE:

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There is no maximum or minimum for the gift exchange, but the mods ask that you keep your plot bunnies in control. 100,000 word fics will probably make us cry because we scan each fic for glaring spelling/punctuation errors. If you exceed 8,000-9,000 words (please please don't), the mods will have to break your fic into parts due to LJ character restrictions, and we will need to know where you want those breaks to occur.

Multi-chaptered fics will still be accepted, but nothing will be posted until the fic in its entirety is received. So please don't get in over your head if you're not going to be able to finish it by the due date.

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