fic: Mechanisms of Flight
Title: Mechanisms of Flight
Author: poeelektra
Fandom/ Pairing: Rookie Blue, Swarek/McNally
Rating: M for Makeouts. Sorta.
Word Count: 3402
Summary: Cops gossip like hairdressers trained in the art of interrogation, and Oliver’s the worst offender. So Sam knows probably before she does that Andy has a third date with some guy she met at a laundromat, and that she’s thinking of bringing him to the Simcoe Day BBQ at the Shaws’.
Author's Note: Who's the laziest poster? ME, I AM. This belongs back after ep . . . 2.09? After some Stuff but before the other Big Stuff, i.e. when Andy was still being stupid and pretending Sam doesn't have the best face. Shitstorm of awesome from leigh57 and adrenalin211 for beta'ing fic for a show they don't even claim passing familiarity with, and to adrenalin211 for coming through like a champ with that one line.
So Andy’s off cops. He can wait.
He still grabs her at the end of shift, takes her to the mats to spar; or sometimes to the range to challenge his high score. Once, he buys her pizza from a questionable street vendor off of Bathurst. Twice she accepts a ride home from The Penny.
In the car on shift, they play “Guess the Perp,” a game of verbal Clue where he spins out old cases while she asks questions, tries to solve it faster than he did.
“Okay, my turn,” she says one afternoon, two cups of joe between them and a long, boring stakeout ahead.
“You been working some cases I don’t know about since you got here? Moonlighting in your free time?”
She pops a stick of gum in her mouth before folding the wrapper carefully and tucking it in her shirt pocket.
“Come on, it’s not fair if I’m always the guesser.”
He snorts, because one of Oliver’s kids said that to him just last week.
“Alright, hit me.”
It’s three minutes before he figures out she’s recounting the plot of a Law & Order episode, then another eight before she’s talking to him again. Sam doesn’t stop being amused all day, basking in her persistent pout and the companionable silence.
*
Cops gossip like hairdressers trained in the art of interrogation, and Oliver’s the worst offender. So Sam knows probably before she does that Andy has a third date with some guy she met at a laundromat, and that she’s thinking of bringing him to the Simcoe Day BBQ at the Shaws’.
“So, uh, yeah,” Oliver concludes after imparting this breaking news to him in the locker room one afternoon before parade. He’s leaning against his locker with one shoulder, trying not to look like he’s oozing sympathy all over Sam.
“You cool?”
Sam makes a face (and Christ, his image has taken more hits since McNally showed up than it did in the seven years before, and that’s including an undercover op that involved a leg wax and a gaff, and the one with the misapplied taser) and slams his own locker door shut with enough force to transmit his feelings without speaking actual words.
“Hey, your wife let you back in your bed? You wanna talk about that?”
Oliver stares at him for a beat, assessing. Then, because Oliver’s good people, claps him on the shoulder as they make for the door.
“Yeah, okay, we can play it that way. You know what sucks worse than your sleeping on your shitty sofa bed? Sleeping on a sofa bed in a house I’m paying the mortgage on with my daughter’s Nemo pillow for company.”
They turn in to the briefing room where Andy’s already plopped herself down-on the sidelines, near the spot he usually claims. Her eyes find his and she grins, simple and sincere like she is. Sam has to fight the inexorable pull. He thinks of Laundry Guy and severs their connection, taking the seat next to Oliver.
“I’m crying rivers for you, pal. You gotta like that fish, though.”
Oliver shoots a speculative glance that goes from Sam, McNally on the wall, then back to Sam again in a rapid circuit. Sam forces himself not to turn and look as Best takes his place at the podium.
“I do, brother. I do.”
*
What sucks worse than sleeping on a sofa bed alone when your wife’s upstairs on a king mattress, Sam finds out that weekend, is watching someone whose well-being you put considerable effort in to maintaining do the exact same stupid thing over again, expecting different results.
Sam smiles with his teeth when they’re introduced, and puts a little more enthusiasm in to his grip when he takes in pressed khakis and preppy boat shoes that are unsullied by use.
"Josh. Great to meet you. McNally here, she talks about you all the time."
The guy whose arm Andy is hanging off of looks both confused and interested, and the glimpse of that sort of ego puts a bad taste in Sam’s mouth. He pumps hard one last time.
“All the time.”
Andy's gaze is threatening to slice, but she’s deluded if she thought she could parade her latest mistake around a cop party-around him-and not pay for it with a little skin. Adopting a tone of disingenuous bonhomie, Sam angles himself more acutely toward Josh.
"So what is it that you do?"
Sam tunes it out and takes a pull of his beer for fortification. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Andy do the same, long gulps in such rapid succession that she might as well be shot-gunning it. Sam’s willing to bet it’s not her first. From somewhere in the run of sentences, Sam pulls out that Josh is in finance, whatever that means. And he likes his status symbols, Sam notes, running an eye over the subtly expensive watch.
Sam drops another nod and a pleasant smile where it seems like it might be appropriate, and Jesus, police work might be blue collar, but at least he can explain to someone what he does for a living in 20 words or less.
Andy is holding a fresh bottle now, still wet from the cooler, and he can sense the veneer of determination she’s laid down on her earlier agitation. A vacuous smile is pasted on her face as she listens with purported interest to Josh’s blathering about capital structure and asset liability. His ear catches on the phrase ‘risk appetite,’ and all of a sudden Sam’s hungry, famished, dying to bite into some red meat.
She wants to play around? Fine. He could do this blindfolded and with both hands tied.
*
Plate loaded and one bite in to a burger so raw he can almost hear it moo-ing, Sam insinuates himself around the fire, in a lawn chair next to Josh. At her warning glare, he shoots McNally a bland smile.
“So, Josh-you a big sports fan?”
Josh runs a hand down McNally’s leg as he replies, and the combination of his response and that proprietary gesture sets Sam at a low simmer.
“I’ve usually got a couple hundred on the Bruins in the office pool.” He smirks. “Made out pretty good this year.”
They’ve talked about it, of course, so he knows McNally is a Leafs fan by blood, how seriously she takes it. After her reveal during the poker game, Sam couldn’t resist a casual query, and got an invective that lasted five full minutes when he copped to following the Habs. The fact that he’s certain Josh didn’t get the same treatment makes him weirdly pissed and sad for all three of them.
Sam nods and chews a large bite of burger, like he’s giving it actual consideration.
“Yeah, the Ruins did alright this year. A little unpenalized back-breaking never hurt anybody. You think they’ll be able to beef up their power play enough to luck in to the playoffs again?”
Andy’s gaze could cut diamond clean now, and Josh’s face holds the pinched and obtuse expression of someone who is wise to the fact that he’s being obliquely insulted, but can’t quite figure how or what for. He forges ahead anyway, so well-meaning and club-footed that Sam would feel sorry for the guy, if-. If.
“So you’re a big hockey buff, then? You play any?”
Financier office pool Sam’s ass. This guy’s in over his head; McNally’s way out of his league. Sam keeps talking, heedless of the sensation that he’s diving headlong into purgatory by doing so.
“I’m can handle a stick. You guys gonna take in a game this season? You know, McNally here, she’s a real puck bunny.”
Andy cuts in with a bite.
“Oh really, Sam? And here I thought you spent your Saturday nights greasing your hair and reading the classics.”
A few feet away, Jerry is kneeling down next to Leo with a couple of graham crackers in his palm. Cognizant of the kids that are starting to approach the bonfire with sticks and marshmallows, Sam attempts to modulate his tone.
“Some of us can read books and have a few brain cells left over to spare for sports and the newspaper.”
Her face is red and Sam bares his teeth, grimly satisfied to have struck a nerve. He looks down, surprised to find his empty paper plate a crushed ball in one clenched fist.
“I want a hotdog. Josh, why don’t we get hotdogs?”
Andy’s gripping the other man’s arm with a force that negates her questioning tone; he has no choice but to follow, and in the wake of their retreat and Josh’s vague bewilderment, Sam finds himself alone.
*
It’s a barbeque, so there are a few running children, some Nerf balls being lobbed about, and endless conversations of nominal importance. Sam tries to get into it, tries not to be too obviously uninterested in everything going on around him, but his awareness is tied to wherever she is on the lawn, a constant lurking presence in his peripheral vision, like a gnat or the grail.
He’s driving, so promises himself he’ll cut it off after this beer; but he’s inhaled two burgers and a brat, tasted nothing on his tongue as he fed the restless hunger. The next time they make it in to his direct line of sight, Josh has one arm around McNally’s waist, hand tucked strategically in her back pocket. That McNally is still in the phase of life where people do that sort of thing should be just one more nail in the coffin of his desire for her. Instead he feels an inordinate amount of rage bellow through him, and is standing abruptly before he realizes he has no reason for being so suddenly vertical.
He makes a beeline for the house, drains the bottom half of the beer he was holding when the urge for an impromptu ramble struck, and drops it in the recycling bin where it clangs against the pile of empties already there. Sam detours down the hallway to the bathroom, taking in the family photos and framed finger-paintings that line the wall on the way. The last one is of Mia as an infant; Sam remembers holding her when she was that tiny, the terrifying realization that she required more care than a loaded gun. He’s never had a greater appreciation for how fucking easy Oliver makes all this look, stripper exile aside.
When he positions himself at the sink to wash up, the face reflected back is of someone he never thought he’d become. Sam flips the light off without bothering with a towel, and there’s a split-second of almost-black before he opens the door. He hasn’t crossed the threshold before she's pushing him back in, knocking the door shut behind her. In the dark he’s aware of her scent first, fruity lotion mixed with beer and charcoal. Her knuckles are digging into his chest.
"Whoa, McNally. I didn't know we were playing Seven Minutes in Heaven. Your boyfriend won’t get mad?"
She shoves off him, shoves him away like he's burning her.
"You wish, Sam."
And yeah, he does wish, so he stays quiet. That seems to throw her for a second before she remembers what had her cornering him, guns ablazin’.
"What the hell was that out there?"
"What was what? I can't be friendly?"
"Friendly?" she says incredulously. Then again as if to emphasize her disbelief.
"Friendly? I'll tell you something, Sam. You think I can't meet a nice guy? I can't be--can't have a normal thing with someone? Because I can. And I’ve got a father to do the knuckle-crunching handshake thing,” and wow, if she’s casting him as her father they’re not just on different pages, they’re reading different books.
“So you keep your, your--,” she's moved in close now to make her point, and Sam feels her hot breath more than he sees her, the faint nightlight that keeps a perpetual glow in here for small children doing little to illuminate their faces.
". . . your big meddling hands out of my business."
Then she grips his t-shirt with both fists and presses a kiss to his mouth-hard, like she's trying to be mean; wet, like she knows exactly how-and is gone.
The stupid Tinkerbell light stares at him, and Sam wonders about the size of his hands, and books and pages, and whether she was talking about him at all.
*
He almost heads straight for his truck. But he can feel the alcohol a little too present in his veins, and can’t shake the notion that he’d be giving McNally something he isn’t willing to give-yielding ground he wants to keep. So he braces himself on the countertop, runs the faucet until the water is streaming ice cold, splashes his face down, and rejoins the fray.
Someone bought sparklers for the kids, and in the deepening grey of nightfall, the bright flashes and pops give the whole scene the effect of a stop-motion video. Smiling faces and an atmosphere of drunken relaxation, and Sam feels like crawling out of his skin and leaving it behind, empty of him.
If his sense of her before was a pinging annoyance, it’s something preternatural now. Figuring the best offense is a good defense, he breaks his vow and grabs another beer. Enough booze might shave off his nerve endings, dull the senses just enough that he can make a home in oblivion, with her just beyond it.
He keeps tracking her though, the involuntary homing beacon refusing to be shut down, fueled by her taste in his mouth. A snapping, crackling stick of light crosses his field of vision, and in the pale yellow gleam it casts, Sam gets this snapshot of her: unadulterated laughter and leaning in to another man; face a study in girlish delight.
It’s that that makes Sam give in, rounding the house until the noise and the haste have receded at his back. He’s palming his car keys before he realizes there is still a bottle in his hand, backwash swishing around the bottom.
Long-neck plus keys, he registers. Bad math, Copper.
In lieu of getting behind the wheel, he takes to the sidewalk, a pedestrian in suburban flight. Shaw’s not the only one celebrating this weekend, and as he leaves the din of their party behind, the clamor of neighboring festivities shifts in and out of his range of hearing as he passes each one in turn.
He should let her go, is the thing. He wants her to be happy. Sam just can’t accept that some blond guy who crunches numbers-a guy who wears Dockers, and has truly shitty taste in hockey teams to boot-will make her happy. It might be paternalistic as fuck, but he’s pretty sure she doesn’t know what she wants. What she needs. But he’s got too much pride to tell her that before she figures it out for herself.
Dammit.
He’s sped up, and the increasing rapidity of his breath forces the blood faster-his head is clearing. Good. A beating heart is something to focus on. Sam pauses to take stock. Ten minutes at a quick pace don’t actually get you out of suburbia out where Shaw lives. In front of him, a tasteful two-story rises against the night sky, windows dark and an unlikely swath of bougainvillea dressing the wall below the porch banister. A big wheel and small pink tricycle litter the lawn, refuse of some child’s end-of-summer play.
Sam thinks of what it represents, what Shaw has back at his house. Refusing to inspect the niggling in his gut, he turns and resumes a purposeful stride to where he started from.
*
The party sounds are dimmer but still going strong when he lets himself in the front door, and Sam intends only to relieve his bladder before hitting the road, when his eye-or something, that buzz his short escape didn’t free him from-catches on something in the front room.
A short detour, and he’s staring at McNally’s form, half-sprawled on a pale blue love-seat. There's a Chinese silk throw pillow clenched in one dangling hand, like she intended to do something with it before passing out.
Andy’s the last thing he wants to deal with right now; but she’s also, strangely, as manageable a presence as she’s been all night, and he can’t stop himself from standing over her, just staring for several long moments.
Then he prods her with the toe of his boot.
“Hey, McNally.”
There’s a noise from her mouth that might be a protest; Sam’s not sure.
“Wakey-wakey, Princess.”
She definitely moans then, and her body rolls, head lolling over the side of the couch with what looks to Sam like dangerous intent.
“Whoooa there, Hotshot. Can’t have you booting all over Shaw’s couch. He’d have you buying him coffee for a month.”
He tries to rouse her with a brush to the shoulder, and lets one hand swipe back the curtain of hair in front of her face so he watch for a warning sign if she’s going to lose it. Despite his nudging, her body is still slumped in limp recalcitrance.
“Trust me,” he murmurs to her semi-conscious, unhearing form. “That is not a guy whose bad side you want to be on.”
After a spasm of indecision that doesn't last half a second, Sam speculates on where best to put his hands for this maneuver (a fireman carry would be easier, but having her dangling upside-down is more hazardous to his pants, he figures). He knows there is someone out there whose very presence calls dibs on this role. But she’s his partner, and they take care of their own at 15.
After some finagling, Sam gets an arm under her knees and manipulates her upper body until it’s draped against him, shoulder to chest. He heads for the basement den-less comfortable, maybe, but all the surfaces are wipeable. He’s in the dark hallway when the screen door slams, and Zoe is there with them. In the work of shadows composing her face, he sees her adept appraisal, the press of her lips. She points downstairs, her eyes a question. Sam nods.
“Sam.”
Zoe’s voice is soft and low, so full of empathy that there’s a tug in his chest, and the irony at having Andy in his arms when he doesn’t have her at all in the way he wants her-in the way that matters-threatens to derail him. Sam grits his teeth against it when she continues.
“I’ll go tell Josh she’s staying here.”
It’s intimate: his embrace of McNally, however innocent, now born witness to by someone who isn’t them; the whispers in the dark; the expression he can only half make out on Zoe’s face, mind filling in the missing bits because he’s seen it before. It’s the one reserved for sick children and stray detectives her husband brings home.
“Yeah. Maybe you should do that.”
The press of Zoe’s hand on his bicep is quick, a squeeze of solidarity, then she’s gone.
*
He dumps Andy, fairly gently considering the circumstances, on the couch in the cool of the basement, then takes a moment to look his fill.
The way it’s smashed into the battered old leather cushion, her face looks like it’s taking half her body weight. It’s the least flattering picture she’s ever made, but he still can’t leave. He tries to maneuver her uncooperative limbs and surprisingly heavy torso in to something approximating a comfortable sleeping position. For his efforts, Sam gets dinged by one arm that flounders for a moment before falling to rest again. Andy emits a garble of words that is largely unintelligible, but which sounds to Sam’s ears something like What the hell is going on?
“Exactly,” he murmurs, feeling affectionate and frustrated, edgy and off-balance at the sight of all unlikely 27 years of her curled in to the narrow crevices of Ollie’s couch.
Resigned, Sam lifts her head until he can shove the Nemo pillow under it; lifts her legs until he can insert himself under them, turns on ESPN and with a quick flick to the ‘Mute’ button, settles in to wait.
*
end
Author: poeelektra
Fandom/ Pairing: Rookie Blue, Swarek/McNally
Rating: M for Makeouts. Sorta.
Word Count: 3402
Summary: Cops gossip like hairdressers trained in the art of interrogation, and Oliver’s the worst offender. So Sam knows probably before she does that Andy has a third date with some guy she met at a laundromat, and that she’s thinking of bringing him to the Simcoe Day BBQ at the Shaws’.
Author's Note: Who's the laziest poster? ME, I AM. This belongs back after ep . . . 2.09? After some Stuff but before the other Big Stuff, i.e. when Andy was still being stupid and pretending Sam doesn't have the best face. Shitstorm of awesome from leigh57 and adrenalin211 for beta'ing fic for a show they don't even claim passing familiarity with, and to adrenalin211 for coming through like a champ with that one line.
So Andy’s off cops. He can wait.
He still grabs her at the end of shift, takes her to the mats to spar; or sometimes to the range to challenge his high score. Once, he buys her pizza from a questionable street vendor off of Bathurst. Twice she accepts a ride home from The Penny.
In the car on shift, they play “Guess the Perp,” a game of verbal Clue where he spins out old cases while she asks questions, tries to solve it faster than he did.
“Okay, my turn,” she says one afternoon, two cups of joe between them and a long, boring stakeout ahead.
“You been working some cases I don’t know about since you got here? Moonlighting in your free time?”
She pops a stick of gum in her mouth before folding the wrapper carefully and tucking it in her shirt pocket.
“Come on, it’s not fair if I’m always the guesser.”
He snorts, because one of Oliver’s kids said that to him just last week.
“Alright, hit me.”
It’s three minutes before he figures out she’s recounting the plot of a Law & Order episode, then another eight before she’s talking to him again. Sam doesn’t stop being amused all day, basking in her persistent pout and the companionable silence.
*
Cops gossip like hairdressers trained in the art of interrogation, and Oliver’s the worst offender. So Sam knows probably before she does that Andy has a third date with some guy she met at a laundromat, and that she’s thinking of bringing him to the Simcoe Day BBQ at the Shaws’.
“So, uh, yeah,” Oliver concludes after imparting this breaking news to him in the locker room one afternoon before parade. He’s leaning against his locker with one shoulder, trying not to look like he’s oozing sympathy all over Sam.
“You cool?”
Sam makes a face (and Christ, his image has taken more hits since McNally showed up than it did in the seven years before, and that’s including an undercover op that involved a leg wax and a gaff, and the one with the misapplied taser) and slams his own locker door shut with enough force to transmit his feelings without speaking actual words.
“Hey, your wife let you back in your bed? You wanna talk about that?”
Oliver stares at him for a beat, assessing. Then, because Oliver’s good people, claps him on the shoulder as they make for the door.
“Yeah, okay, we can play it that way. You know what sucks worse than your sleeping on your shitty sofa bed? Sleeping on a sofa bed in a house I’m paying the mortgage on with my daughter’s Nemo pillow for company.”
They turn in to the briefing room where Andy’s already plopped herself down-on the sidelines, near the spot he usually claims. Her eyes find his and she grins, simple and sincere like she is. Sam has to fight the inexorable pull. He thinks of Laundry Guy and severs their connection, taking the seat next to Oliver.
“I’m crying rivers for you, pal. You gotta like that fish, though.”
Oliver shoots a speculative glance that goes from Sam, McNally on the wall, then back to Sam again in a rapid circuit. Sam forces himself not to turn and look as Best takes his place at the podium.
“I do, brother. I do.”
*
What sucks worse than sleeping on a sofa bed alone when your wife’s upstairs on a king mattress, Sam finds out that weekend, is watching someone whose well-being you put considerable effort in to maintaining do the exact same stupid thing over again, expecting different results.
Sam smiles with his teeth when they’re introduced, and puts a little more enthusiasm in to his grip when he takes in pressed khakis and preppy boat shoes that are unsullied by use.
"Josh. Great to meet you. McNally here, she talks about you all the time."
The guy whose arm Andy is hanging off of looks both confused and interested, and the glimpse of that sort of ego puts a bad taste in Sam’s mouth. He pumps hard one last time.
“All the time.”
Andy's gaze is threatening to slice, but she’s deluded if she thought she could parade her latest mistake around a cop party-around him-and not pay for it with a little skin. Adopting a tone of disingenuous bonhomie, Sam angles himself more acutely toward Josh.
"So what is it that you do?"
Sam tunes it out and takes a pull of his beer for fortification. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Andy do the same, long gulps in such rapid succession that she might as well be shot-gunning it. Sam’s willing to bet it’s not her first. From somewhere in the run of sentences, Sam pulls out that Josh is in finance, whatever that means. And he likes his status symbols, Sam notes, running an eye over the subtly expensive watch.
Sam drops another nod and a pleasant smile where it seems like it might be appropriate, and Jesus, police work might be blue collar, but at least he can explain to someone what he does for a living in 20 words or less.
Andy is holding a fresh bottle now, still wet from the cooler, and he can sense the veneer of determination she’s laid down on her earlier agitation. A vacuous smile is pasted on her face as she listens with purported interest to Josh’s blathering about capital structure and asset liability. His ear catches on the phrase ‘risk appetite,’ and all of a sudden Sam’s hungry, famished, dying to bite into some red meat.
She wants to play around? Fine. He could do this blindfolded and with both hands tied.
*
Plate loaded and one bite in to a burger so raw he can almost hear it moo-ing, Sam insinuates himself around the fire, in a lawn chair next to Josh. At her warning glare, he shoots McNally a bland smile.
“So, Josh-you a big sports fan?”
Josh runs a hand down McNally’s leg as he replies, and the combination of his response and that proprietary gesture sets Sam at a low simmer.
“I’ve usually got a couple hundred on the Bruins in the office pool.” He smirks. “Made out pretty good this year.”
They’ve talked about it, of course, so he knows McNally is a Leafs fan by blood, how seriously she takes it. After her reveal during the poker game, Sam couldn’t resist a casual query, and got an invective that lasted five full minutes when he copped to following the Habs. The fact that he’s certain Josh didn’t get the same treatment makes him weirdly pissed and sad for all three of them.
Sam nods and chews a large bite of burger, like he’s giving it actual consideration.
“Yeah, the Ruins did alright this year. A little unpenalized back-breaking never hurt anybody. You think they’ll be able to beef up their power play enough to luck in to the playoffs again?”
Andy’s gaze could cut diamond clean now, and Josh’s face holds the pinched and obtuse expression of someone who is wise to the fact that he’s being obliquely insulted, but can’t quite figure how or what for. He forges ahead anyway, so well-meaning and club-footed that Sam would feel sorry for the guy, if-. If.
“So you’re a big hockey buff, then? You play any?”
Financier office pool Sam’s ass. This guy’s in over his head; McNally’s way out of his league. Sam keeps talking, heedless of the sensation that he’s diving headlong into purgatory by doing so.
“I’m can handle a stick. You guys gonna take in a game this season? You know, McNally here, she’s a real puck bunny.”
Andy cuts in with a bite.
“Oh really, Sam? And here I thought you spent your Saturday nights greasing your hair and reading the classics.”
A few feet away, Jerry is kneeling down next to Leo with a couple of graham crackers in his palm. Cognizant of the kids that are starting to approach the bonfire with sticks and marshmallows, Sam attempts to modulate his tone.
“Some of us can read books and have a few brain cells left over to spare for sports and the newspaper.”
Her face is red and Sam bares his teeth, grimly satisfied to have struck a nerve. He looks down, surprised to find his empty paper plate a crushed ball in one clenched fist.
“I want a hotdog. Josh, why don’t we get hotdogs?”
Andy’s gripping the other man’s arm with a force that negates her questioning tone; he has no choice but to follow, and in the wake of their retreat and Josh’s vague bewilderment, Sam finds himself alone.
*
It’s a barbeque, so there are a few running children, some Nerf balls being lobbed about, and endless conversations of nominal importance. Sam tries to get into it, tries not to be too obviously uninterested in everything going on around him, but his awareness is tied to wherever she is on the lawn, a constant lurking presence in his peripheral vision, like a gnat or the grail.
He’s driving, so promises himself he’ll cut it off after this beer; but he’s inhaled two burgers and a brat, tasted nothing on his tongue as he fed the restless hunger. The next time they make it in to his direct line of sight, Josh has one arm around McNally’s waist, hand tucked strategically in her back pocket. That McNally is still in the phase of life where people do that sort of thing should be just one more nail in the coffin of his desire for her. Instead he feels an inordinate amount of rage bellow through him, and is standing abruptly before he realizes he has no reason for being so suddenly vertical.
He makes a beeline for the house, drains the bottom half of the beer he was holding when the urge for an impromptu ramble struck, and drops it in the recycling bin where it clangs against the pile of empties already there. Sam detours down the hallway to the bathroom, taking in the family photos and framed finger-paintings that line the wall on the way. The last one is of Mia as an infant; Sam remembers holding her when she was that tiny, the terrifying realization that she required more care than a loaded gun. He’s never had a greater appreciation for how fucking easy Oliver makes all this look, stripper exile aside.
When he positions himself at the sink to wash up, the face reflected back is of someone he never thought he’d become. Sam flips the light off without bothering with a towel, and there’s a split-second of almost-black before he opens the door. He hasn’t crossed the threshold before she's pushing him back in, knocking the door shut behind her. In the dark he’s aware of her scent first, fruity lotion mixed with beer and charcoal. Her knuckles are digging into his chest.
"Whoa, McNally. I didn't know we were playing Seven Minutes in Heaven. Your boyfriend won’t get mad?"
She shoves off him, shoves him away like he's burning her.
"You wish, Sam."
And yeah, he does wish, so he stays quiet. That seems to throw her for a second before she remembers what had her cornering him, guns ablazin’.
"What the hell was that out there?"
"What was what? I can't be friendly?"
"Friendly?" she says incredulously. Then again as if to emphasize her disbelief.
"Friendly? I'll tell you something, Sam. You think I can't meet a nice guy? I can't be--can't have a normal thing with someone? Because I can. And I’ve got a father to do the knuckle-crunching handshake thing,” and wow, if she’s casting him as her father they’re not just on different pages, they’re reading different books.
“So you keep your, your--,” she's moved in close now to make her point, and Sam feels her hot breath more than he sees her, the faint nightlight that keeps a perpetual glow in here for small children doing little to illuminate their faces.
". . . your big meddling hands out of my business."
Then she grips his t-shirt with both fists and presses a kiss to his mouth-hard, like she's trying to be mean; wet, like she knows exactly how-and is gone.
The stupid Tinkerbell light stares at him, and Sam wonders about the size of his hands, and books and pages, and whether she was talking about him at all.
*
He almost heads straight for his truck. But he can feel the alcohol a little too present in his veins, and can’t shake the notion that he’d be giving McNally something he isn’t willing to give-yielding ground he wants to keep. So he braces himself on the countertop, runs the faucet until the water is streaming ice cold, splashes his face down, and rejoins the fray.
Someone bought sparklers for the kids, and in the deepening grey of nightfall, the bright flashes and pops give the whole scene the effect of a stop-motion video. Smiling faces and an atmosphere of drunken relaxation, and Sam feels like crawling out of his skin and leaving it behind, empty of him.
If his sense of her before was a pinging annoyance, it’s something preternatural now. Figuring the best offense is a good defense, he breaks his vow and grabs another beer. Enough booze might shave off his nerve endings, dull the senses just enough that he can make a home in oblivion, with her just beyond it.
He keeps tracking her though, the involuntary homing beacon refusing to be shut down, fueled by her taste in his mouth. A snapping, crackling stick of light crosses his field of vision, and in the pale yellow gleam it casts, Sam gets this snapshot of her: unadulterated laughter and leaning in to another man; face a study in girlish delight.
It’s that that makes Sam give in, rounding the house until the noise and the haste have receded at his back. He’s palming his car keys before he realizes there is still a bottle in his hand, backwash swishing around the bottom.
Long-neck plus keys, he registers. Bad math, Copper.
In lieu of getting behind the wheel, he takes to the sidewalk, a pedestrian in suburban flight. Shaw’s not the only one celebrating this weekend, and as he leaves the din of their party behind, the clamor of neighboring festivities shifts in and out of his range of hearing as he passes each one in turn.
He should let her go, is the thing. He wants her to be happy. Sam just can’t accept that some blond guy who crunches numbers-a guy who wears Dockers, and has truly shitty taste in hockey teams to boot-will make her happy. It might be paternalistic as fuck, but he’s pretty sure she doesn’t know what she wants. What she needs. But he’s got too much pride to tell her that before she figures it out for herself.
Dammit.
He’s sped up, and the increasing rapidity of his breath forces the blood faster-his head is clearing. Good. A beating heart is something to focus on. Sam pauses to take stock. Ten minutes at a quick pace don’t actually get you out of suburbia out where Shaw lives. In front of him, a tasteful two-story rises against the night sky, windows dark and an unlikely swath of bougainvillea dressing the wall below the porch banister. A big wheel and small pink tricycle litter the lawn, refuse of some child’s end-of-summer play.
Sam thinks of what it represents, what Shaw has back at his house. Refusing to inspect the niggling in his gut, he turns and resumes a purposeful stride to where he started from.
*
The party sounds are dimmer but still going strong when he lets himself in the front door, and Sam intends only to relieve his bladder before hitting the road, when his eye-or something, that buzz his short escape didn’t free him from-catches on something in the front room.
A short detour, and he’s staring at McNally’s form, half-sprawled on a pale blue love-seat. There's a Chinese silk throw pillow clenched in one dangling hand, like she intended to do something with it before passing out.
Andy’s the last thing he wants to deal with right now; but she’s also, strangely, as manageable a presence as she’s been all night, and he can’t stop himself from standing over her, just staring for several long moments.
Then he prods her with the toe of his boot.
“Hey, McNally.”
There’s a noise from her mouth that might be a protest; Sam’s not sure.
“Wakey-wakey, Princess.”
She definitely moans then, and her body rolls, head lolling over the side of the couch with what looks to Sam like dangerous intent.
“Whoooa there, Hotshot. Can’t have you booting all over Shaw’s couch. He’d have you buying him coffee for a month.”
He tries to rouse her with a brush to the shoulder, and lets one hand swipe back the curtain of hair in front of her face so he watch for a warning sign if she’s going to lose it. Despite his nudging, her body is still slumped in limp recalcitrance.
“Trust me,” he murmurs to her semi-conscious, unhearing form. “That is not a guy whose bad side you want to be on.”
After a spasm of indecision that doesn't last half a second, Sam speculates on where best to put his hands for this maneuver (a fireman carry would be easier, but having her dangling upside-down is more hazardous to his pants, he figures). He knows there is someone out there whose very presence calls dibs on this role. But she’s his partner, and they take care of their own at 15.
After some finagling, Sam gets an arm under her knees and manipulates her upper body until it’s draped against him, shoulder to chest. He heads for the basement den-less comfortable, maybe, but all the surfaces are wipeable. He’s in the dark hallway when the screen door slams, and Zoe is there with them. In the work of shadows composing her face, he sees her adept appraisal, the press of her lips. She points downstairs, her eyes a question. Sam nods.
“Sam.”
Zoe’s voice is soft and low, so full of empathy that there’s a tug in his chest, and the irony at having Andy in his arms when he doesn’t have her at all in the way he wants her-in the way that matters-threatens to derail him. Sam grits his teeth against it when she continues.
“I’ll go tell Josh she’s staying here.”
It’s intimate: his embrace of McNally, however innocent, now born witness to by someone who isn’t them; the whispers in the dark; the expression he can only half make out on Zoe’s face, mind filling in the missing bits because he’s seen it before. It’s the one reserved for sick children and stray detectives her husband brings home.
“Yeah. Maybe you should do that.”
The press of Zoe’s hand on his bicep is quick, a squeeze of solidarity, then she’s gone.
*
He dumps Andy, fairly gently considering the circumstances, on the couch in the cool of the basement, then takes a moment to look his fill.
The way it’s smashed into the battered old leather cushion, her face looks like it’s taking half her body weight. It’s the least flattering picture she’s ever made, but he still can’t leave. He tries to maneuver her uncooperative limbs and surprisingly heavy torso in to something approximating a comfortable sleeping position. For his efforts, Sam gets dinged by one arm that flounders for a moment before falling to rest again. Andy emits a garble of words that is largely unintelligible, but which sounds to Sam’s ears something like What the hell is going on?
“Exactly,” he murmurs, feeling affectionate and frustrated, edgy and off-balance at the sight of all unlikely 27 years of her curled in to the narrow crevices of Ollie’s couch.
Resigned, Sam lifts her head until he can shove the Nemo pillow under it; lifts her legs until he can insert himself under them, turns on ESPN and with a quick flick to the ‘Mute’ button, settles in to wait.
*
end