Title | Fabricate A Bedtime Story
Fandom | Rookie Blue
Characters | Andy and Nick [hints at Nick/Gail and ex Andy/Luke]
Word Count | 680
Rating | PG-13
♥ | For
earnmysong, using
lowriseflare's Andy watches the 'The Golden Girls' when she's sick headcanon!
She’s on the couch in front of the television and right where he left her seven hours previously when he walks back in, grease streaked and sweat stained and grin firmly in place.
“Please tell me you have actually moved at some stage today. Been to the bathroom, showered; you know, things of a personal hygiene nature?”
The plastic creak of fake leather tells him she’s on the move and when her face pops up over the back of the chair, hair piled on top of her head and chin planted firmly on the cushions, he does have to admit to a fleeting burst of sympathy.
“You look like crap.”
“Yeah, well, so do you,” she says, biting, “so we’re even.”
He rifles through his jacket pocket for the carton of cold meds he’d collected on his way home. Unsolicited order delivered surreptitiously via the bug in his ear that has become his constant companion.
He tosses the pack in her direction, adds a casual “From Luke,” with a raised eyebrow because, while he doesn’t know the full story he does know that there most definitely was one; a story. And he knows she’ll cave and tell him everything soon enough.
Her eyebrows rise in reply, a more than pointed ‘it’s none of your business’ delivered, loud and clear.
He’s headed in the direction of the kitchen when he registers the sound from the television and stops short.
“Are you serious?”
“What?”
Her immediate defensive indignation tells him she already knows where this is going…
“Still?”
“Yes, still. There was a marathon on Hallmark and it’s what I do, okay. When I’m sick I watch The Golden Girls.” Matching pout, and he’ll admit she’s getting good at that.
“Firstly, you’re not sick. You have a bit of a cold and you’re being a wimp. Secondly, and I repeat, are you serious? We have cable. Free cable. I say make the most of that shit.”
He gets a surprisingly forceful sofa cushion to the face for his comments; catches the furnishing on the ricochet and holds it tightly to his chest as he leans into the door jamb, lets the side of his head rest against the solid wood.
“Anyway, little sister, don’t you want to hear about my day? It was very interesting. You’ll be disappointed you missed it.”
She sits up at that, spins to face him, more animated than he’s seen her in days. She is sick, he just knows he’ll never hear the end of it if he agrees with her, not to mention the fact that her timing could not be worse; seven weeks in and things are finally starting to heat up.
“What happened?”
He inhales; deep, and lets his eyelids slide closed for a beat in an attempt to gather up all the threads of the day into something coherent.
“Nick?”
This is the one place they’re allowed to use their real names, though mostly they still don’t; a wordless agreement that it would be safer to stick to aliases lest they slip up. Screw up. Her use of his name catches him unawares and he blinks away sudden images of blonde and red and black and hands on his face and skin against skin against skin.
Because, Gail.
And the end is almost in sight.
He exhales forcefully, looks up with a grin he knows she’ll decipher immediately.
“Thundercats are go, McNally.”
Her face splits, white teeth and eyes; bright.
“Thundercats are go?”
He tosses the cushion at her gently and she stuffs it back under her chin, grin still firmly in place as the news settles into the space between them.
“So, what now?”
“Now, I shower. And you take your meds. We have a briefing at twenty one hundred hours so, look lively, soldier.”
She throws him a badly executed mock salute, ruins the effect with her puppy dog eyes and a giggle that belies her position as an undercover police officer.
“Aye, aye, Captain.”