FIC: like fingers through rings [rookie blue, sam/andy]
Title: like fingers through rings
Author: lowriseflare and threeguesses
Rating: R-ish
Word Count: 8500+
Summary: The one with Montreal (and Corinne).
AN: Thank goodness this is less graphic than our usual fare. My inner lapsed Catholic would NOT be okay with me posting porn on Easter.
The invitation shows up at the tail-end of April, all of Toronto smelling like wet pavement and rain. Sam finds it one morning with the junk mail, just shifts aside yet another offer from Cogeco and there it is: Mark and Aimé, save-the-date. It honestly takes him a good two seconds to realize what he's looking at.
Mark's the kid brother of his buddy Luc, from his old unit back in Montreal; the three of them used to go ice-fishing together weekends, freezing their balls off and swearing fit to peel the bark off a tree. And Aimé, if he's remembering this correctly, thinking of the right girl, was pretty close friends with--
well. It was a long time ago, anyway.
Sam scratches a bit at the back of his neck, then tosses the cardstock onto the counter and forgets about it, more or less, until McNally's rummaging through his kitchen later that night, looking for a snack.
"Who do you know getting married?" she asks, even though the names are right there on the front. When he comes into the room she's holding it by the edges, just delicately, fingers smeared bright with Dorito dust (which she apparently found before she found the invitation--Sam doesn't know if that means she was actively snooping or not).
He shrugs. "Friends from back when I was working at the 9." It feels weird to say in English, the nine. He's remembering more now, thinks he has the girl right--it would be going on ten years now, since Mark started dating her (and--yeah. Sam remembers what that was like, people starting to side-eye you after year four).
"Huh." McNally sets the card down so it's propped up against the kleenex box, careful. "You gonna go?"
Sam shrugs again, a reflex. The envelope was addressed to Sam Swarek and Guest. "Thinking about it."
(She knows about Montreal, for the most part, the long stretches of him undercover and how hard it all was on Corinne. "Well," McNally said when he told her, lying faceup in his bedroom in the dark. "We won't have that problem, at least." Then, off his curious expression: "I'm awesome at UCs."
And fuck, if Sam hadn't already wanted to marry her then--)
McNally's raising her eyebrows now though, has this look on her face he's seen right before she challenges Diaz to arm-wrestling, working out the odds in her mind. "Well," she says, casual, licking the orange powder off her thumb. "I think you should."
Twenty minutes after that, she's fucking him clear through the mattress.
So.
He doesn't actually bring it up until parade the next morning, gun-shy for no reason at all. The whole thing is oddly reminiscent of asking a girl to the prom, her and Nash sitting at the table in front of him. Sam almost feels like passing up a note, do you like me? check yes, no, maybe.
(The wedding's in eight weeks, is all. Which--whatever, they've been dating for over a year now, practically living together, so it shouldn't be a big deal. Right? Conceivably it should not be a big deal.)
In the end, he hooks a foot around her chair before Best starts speaking, pulls back until she bumps up against the front of his table. She swivels her body around to look at him, raises her eyebrows all exaggerated-like (week or so ago, sitting at a Tim’s drive-through with Ollie: "She's starting to pick up your expressions, brother, it's creepy”). Sam raises his right back. "So," he tells her. "Montreal. You wanna go?"
"What's in Montreal?" Nash asks right away, twisting around in her seat to listen; she's got an honest-to-god bucket of iced coffee in front of her, rattling it noisily.
"Wedding," McNally tells her, ponytail swishing as she cocks her head to the side. "People from Sam's secret French life."
Sam rolls his eyes. "Real mysterious," he says dryly. Andy's got this look on her face like she's about to say something else but here's Frank striding to the front of the room, Listen up people and a public transport groper to track down. She raises her eyebrows once more before she turns around.
(Which--yeah. Not a big deal.)
He's riding with Diaz, is headed out back toward the motorpool when McNally bumps into him hard from the right, shoves something into the front pocket of his uniform pants. "See ya," she mumbles, then scurries out the door behind Peck. Sam waits 'til he's out in the drizzle before he reaches for it: a sliver of paper she tore from who knows where, yes scrawled in a hurry and underlined once.
Diaz is looking over, curious. Sam rubs at his chin to hide his smile.
*
After shift (McNally and Peck end up catching the guy, a bus off the downtown circuit followed by a wicked foot-pursuit; the whole station's buzzing with the story), Sam comes out to find her leaning up against his truck. Her hair's still wet from chasing perverts through the rain.
"Tell me," Sam starts, throwing his bag in the back. "How did he get away from you on the bus?"
McNally throws her shoulders up, defensive. "The driver opened both doors, okay? Don't listen to Dov, he wasn't even there." She tugs him over by his belt loops, back up against the passenger-side door. Sam follows the momentum all the way into her, plants his hands on the wet metal of the roof. Andy tips her face up like she's angling for a kiss, only then she speaks instead. "So you, uh. Want me to meet these people?"
Sam cocks his head to the side. "That depends," he tells her, trying not to sound too eager. (He hasn't been great about keeping in touch with too many of them, actually, a message once every six or nine months: Luc, who beat cancer so intent on killing him that the priest came for Last Rites on two separate occasions; Jenna and Andre, who bred dogs and lived next door for years and years. It makes Sam good at his job, how easy it is for him to compartmentalize, but it's not a quality he so much loves about himself.) He slides one knee in between her thighs, the warm scratch of denim-on-denim. "You wanna meet 'em?"
"A wedding full of strangers who are automatically going to assume I'm a bimbo?" Andy sighs long and put-upon. "I guess so." Then she grins. "I mean, how else am I supposed to find out what you were like when you were my age?"
Sam snorts. "Think you're funny, huh?" Andy nips at his chin.
(He does want her to meet them, is the thing--pretty badly, actually, now that he's thinking about it. It's not like introducing her to Sarah, which was more nerve-wracking than anything else; here he gets to show her off just a bit, a collection of friends that are his alone. God knows she does it, at the Penny with the other rookies, Diaz and Epstein's weird admiration.)
Sam dips his head to suck at her pulse point a little, just friendly, everything still in full view of the station's back windows. Her skin tastes like rain. "Well," he tells her. "You have two months to think up questions."
Andy grins. "I'll make cue-cards."
Sam rolls his eyes and kisses her for real then, pushing her back into the truck's wet door. "Come on," he says, threading a hand through her damp hair. "Let's get you into a bath, wash the pervert off."
"Gail's the one he licked," Andy reports happily.
Sam smiles all the way home.
*
They don't talk about it much after that. Not that there's anything to talk about, really: Sam checks off the steak option for both of them, sends the reply card back in the mail. Books them a hotel room. May seeps into June. They're getting ready for bed one night, her in an old Academy t-shirt that just hits the tops of her thighs: "I got a dress for the thing today," she reports, mouth full of toothpaste. "Went with Traci after shift."
Sam looks at her in the bathroom mirror, braid unraveling all down her back (they haven't done a whole lot of the fancy-clothes thing, actually, UCs notwithstanding; McNally's a pretty low-maintenance date). "Oh yeah?"
"Yup." Andy spits with the enthusiasm of a girl who was definitely raised by her father, then smiles. "I think you'll find I clean up pretty nice."
"I...do not doubt that," Sam replies truthfully. He slips his hand underneath the hem of her t-shirt, squeezes her ass on his way out the door.
She refuses to show it to him, the dress, actually laughs in his face when he asks. "What are you, my personal shopper?" She doesn't believe so much in asking his opinion on clothes, McNally, always calls Traci instead. When she wants a compliment, she's blunt: "Tell me I'm pretty," she'll demand, planted in his lap with her chin tipping up.
(She asks for I love you's in bed the same way, tell me in his ear and her nails pricking down his back. Either way, it's possible Sam falls all over himself to give her what she wants.)
He actually owns a suit, a fact which Andy one-hundred-percent refuses to believe (like it's some kind of damn miracle, him in formal wear--Sam's torn between insulted and amused). To be fair, he hasn't worn it in years, not since Corinne at least. He tries it on a couple weeks before the wedding, just to make sure. Andy wanders into the bedroom as he's tucking in the shirt.
"Do you know what happened to my headpho--" she starts, then stops in her tracks mid-sentence, cocks her dark head to the side. She's dressed in leggings and a tank top, on her way out the door for a run. "Well, hello."
Sam snorts as he zips his pants up, shoots his cuffs. "Hi."
She stands there in the doorway for a minute, one arm crossed across her chest and her other hand coming up to cover this ridiculous corn-syrup grin on her face. She looks for all the world like a seven-year-old with a secret. Sam rolls his eyes at her, weirdly self-conscious all of a sudden. "Headphones are on the counter," he says.
"Uh-huh." Andy's still staring, one sneaker scratching at the back of her opposite calf. "You look hot."
Sam picks the jacket up off the bed and slings it on, settling it over his shoulders. "Told you I owned a suit," he says inanely. He feels a bit like a kid again, getting his cheeks pinched for wearing his Sunday best, only then he meets Andy's eyes and...doesn't.
"Uh-huh," she repeats, just slow. Bounces up and down on her toes a little. "Um. So--you got a tie to go with this ensemble, sailor?"
Sam does. She makes him put it on, then backs him into the wall beside the dresser and goes down on her knees.
(So. Not like Sunday best then.)
"You, uh. Planning on does this during the ceremony?" he pants afterwards. Andy grins a secret grin, slides herself up his body. Sam reaches for her--she's hot like a fever through her thin leggings--but she bats his hand away.
"Did it myself," she says proudly, sliding sticky fingers into his mouth. Sam closes his eyes.
*
She picks a fight with him the Thursday before they're supposed to leave, crawling all over him about the way he's handling their punk teenage witness--who, for the record, turns out to be a lying sack of shit, so Sam's real sorry if he's not showing enough sensitivity for the kid's difficult family life.
("The mom's in rehab," McNally reports, which stops him for a minute; then she slams the door to the interrogation room loud enough to rattle his teeth, and the feeling passes.)
They argue all the way home, loud and pointless: "Maybe I just shouldn't go to your idiotic thing," she finally snaps, after she tells him to drop her at the toilet factory. "If I'm so ridiculous."
That's when the penny drops (jesus christ, this girl, scared of the dark and throwing a tantrum on the playground; he loves her a stupid amount), but by then he's too irritated to play nice. "Maybe not, McNally," is all he says.
"I'm sorry," she tells him, letting herself into his apartment an hour later and pressing her face against his chest. "I'm nervous. I'm an asshole." Sam gets his arms around her and holds.
They make up ("It'll be fine," Sam tells her, both of them moving slow in the dark; Andy nods like she believes him) but stupid fights or no she stays nervous. It lasts straight through their Friday shift--Sam isn't riding with her but he can tell, three extra sugars in her coffee, loud bravado in parade. Traci teases her about the bouquet.
She goes red then, McNally. And just-- Sam thinks about it, has been thinking about it, first comes love, then comes... Well.
It's crossed his mind, is all.
Still, he gives her her space, heads down to Seaton House with Oliver to follow up on a disturbance. It doesn't help much; he ends up thinking about it the entire time he's doing interviews, truck all packed up and ready to go when they get off at four. Andy fiddled with her garment bag the whole drive in.
("They'll be too busy talking shit about my wayward youth," Sam told her last night, touching up the sweaty dip of her spine. The windows were open, hot air drifting up from the street. "Probably won't let you get a word in edgewise."
Andy half-grinned, half-frowned. "But you didn't have a wayward youth, Sam." She didn't say it--same woman for six years, co-signed lease on a house--but it hung there between them, twisting. "All those stories will be boring.")
It's a long trip, Andy fidgeting in the passenger seat beside him, flipping through the radio stations too fast for Sam to hear what's on any of them and her bare feet up on his dashboard. Her toenails are painted a purple so dark it's almost black. She decides she wants to drive an hour or so in and Sam lets her, pulls into a service station where she fashions an early dinner out of two different kinds of gummy candy, a bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips, and a bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper. An hour after that, she changes her mind and they stop again.
He doesn't mind, really. It's not like they're in a hurry, and when she's like this it's almost always better to just roll over and let her have her way. She'll mellow out eventually. She always does.
(Sam feels careful tonight, though. Isn't entirely sure why)
"So, like," she says, out of noplace-- it's the first time she's opened her mouth in a while. She's fussing with her hair, braiding and unbraiding; the sun's setting in the rearview, this rosy glow. "How pretty are we talking, exactly?"
Which--what? Sam blinks. "Come again?"
"Your French girlfriend." Andy shrugs twice in a row, fast, like a tic. "She's gonna be there, right? It's fine if she's a smoke show. I just want to be, like. Prepared."
"Andy--"
"Traci wanted me to google her, and I didn't, which personally I think shows a lot of maturity on my part. So." She crunches a chip between her molars, looks straight ahead. "How pretty?"
Sam rolls his eyes, sighing. The 401's dead empty now, seven o'clock and rush hour long past; pretty soon they'll hit Kingston. "Would googling really have worked?" he asks, stalling.
(Corinne was pretty, is the thing--is pretty, probably, although god knows Sam hasn't seen her in years--what with that warm skin all the French Canadian girls seem to have, dirty-blonde hair to her chin. Still, it's a different kind of pretty than Andy's, petite and those clacking heels she was always wearing to teach. Sam never saw her in jeans much, Corinne.)
Andy gives him a look, threads her fingers through her braid to unravel it; it looks like it hurts, how fast she pulls. Sam sighs again. "You know she's married, right? With kids?"
Andy pulls another face, duh. It's how she first found out, the both of them together for barely a month; Corinne sent a Christmas card, same as she does every year, her blonde little girls playing in the snow on the front. Andy asked; Sam told her. Simple.
(And, okay, honestly? A decade and change younger, plus no pregnancies--Andy would probably win whatever fucked up contest this is, those twenty-seven-year-old legs that go on forever. She's beautiful, McNally, a face with a view, but more importantly she's just young. Sam's annoyed all of a sudden, pissed that she's making him consider it; it feels crass to even think, let alone say.)
She must sense it, the energy in the truck going strange and tense, because she backs off more or less right away. "Okay, okay, don't tell me." She huffs a little, her I'm the reasonable party voice. "Was just trying to do a little police work here, is all. Isn't that what you're always telling me to do?" She makes her tone all low and exaggerated, wrinkles her eyebrows a bit. "Wait half a second for some credible information, McNally. Don't be running into situations half-cocked all the time like a lunatic, you're gonna get yourself shot in the face."
Sam smirks, he can't help it. Pissed or not, Ollie's right--her impression's getting good. "That's how I taught you, huh?"
"Yeah!" Andy pretzels her legs up onto the seat, still barefoot, picks at the seam of her jeans. "I'm not, like, insecure about how hot I am, okay? God. I'm just...whatever. Forget I asked."
Sam exhales. He isn't totally sure what to say to that so he doesn't say anything, just reaches out and rubs at the back of her neck a bit, underneath her hair (in theory he doesn't actually hate when she gets jealous, is the other thing, even after all this time; it makes him the woman in this relationship, probably, but it's also not untrue). "McNally," he tells her finally. Her skin is very, very warm. "Relax, okay?"
"I'm relaxed!" she protests noisily; still, she doesn't shrug off his hand. They ride like that for a while. He can feel her muscles shifting under his palm.
("Definitely should have googled her," she singsongs under her breath.)
*
By the time they pull into the hotel it's hours past sunset, Montreal buzzing and bright in the humid evening. They're staying at the Fairmount, which is too expensive for them by half, but since that's where the reception is they're sort of stuck (Mark isn't a copper, is the problem, he's an engineer-cum-business consultant--no doubt Luc'll bitch about the expense). Besides, they haven't ever been away together, one-year anniversary passing with gag gifts and one relatively fancy dinner. Sam figures it's about time for an occasion.
McNally's a zombie by the time he drags her up from underground parking, leaning against his back and yawning at check-in. Still, when Sam relays their information in French she perks right-the-fuck-up, leaning around to watch him with a shit-eating grin. Sam tries his best to ignore her.
"Oooh-kay," Andy says as the porter loads up their luggage (and seriously, a porter, what even; it's been a long time since Sam stayed anywhere nice). "This trip just got exponentially hotter."
Sam watches as the kid smirks under his brimmed cap, leads them into the elevator. So far no one's switched into English when talking to him, which means his French is still passable. He works his fingers through Andy's newly-fashioned ponytail, tugs. "That so?"
"I'm a simple girl, Swarek," she murmurs, still grinning (she seems more like herself now, sliding two fingers into his belt loop and yanking; Sam feels something in his chest loosen up). "Easy to impress."
Easy is maybe an overstatement, but she seems happy enough with the room, bouncing a bit on the featherbed and peering at herself in the magnifying mirror. "Yeah, you are definitely not meant to see your own face this close up," she declares. Sam thinks of Tommy's crappy apartment, wonders if they went on a lot of vacations when she was a kid--the odd camping trip notwithstanding, he's guessing probably not.
"You hungry?" he calls while she's in there, flipping through the guide on the desk. There's a couple restaurants down in the lobby, a bar that's probably got decent enough food--he'll take her out if she feels like she can rally, but she looked pretty wrecked downstairs.
"Not so much," she tells him, coming out into the bedroom--and, uh. Wrecked is really not the right word for how she looks. Sam feels his mouth fall open, just a bit. "What?" she asks, smirking, cool as anything. "Vacation underwear."
"Uh-huh." It's new, that's for sure, a whole lot of filmy lace Sam feels confident he would have remembered. Then, as he hauls his brain back online: "Tell me you weren't wearing that under your uniform." The cups of her bra are almost completely sheer, nipples drawn up tight underneath them. She's tanned practically everywhere now that it's summer, this all-over bronze that always looks like it should taste like chlorine and sunscreen. All of a sudden, Sam wants to test that theory out again.
Andy laughs. "Yeah, no way." She walks over and plants herself right in front of him, eyebrow quirked up like a dare. "I did get teased in the locker room, though. When I changed after shift."
"Other people saw this?" Sam curls his fingers around her hips, trying to think. He had plans to talk to her a bit, sit her down and let her ask every single question she could think of about Corinne, a sort purge before everything starts tomorrow, but--
"I'm just saying, there was effort involved." Andy tilts her chin up at him, cheeky. "So probably you should fuck me on this nice hotel bed as a thank you."
--yeah, okay, change of plans.
He has her keep the panties on ("Gotta get your money's worth," he murmurs, expensive hotel room and this pretty little thong), just pushes them out of the way so he can slide himself inside her, roughly and all at once. Andy gasps. Sam threads his fingers through hers and squeezes, hit hard by a sharp single-minded feeling he remembers from right at the beginning, trying like all hell to prove--something. Sam doesn't know.
Whatever it is, though, Andy's bent on proving it ten times harder--shoving him onto his back with her sharp knees digging into his rib cage, biting hard at the bend of his neck. His collar will cover it tomorrow, Sam's pretty sure, but only just barely; he wonders if maybe that's the point.
"Say you love me," she demands when she's right on the edge of it (she's holding off on purpose, sitting up on his cock with her shoulders pushed back, dark hair everywhere); Sam does. "Good," she tells him breathlessly, that stubborn twist of her mouth. "Now say it in French."
He has an idea of what she's after now, or pretty near--still, he isn't sure he actually wants to know, so he tries on a grin. "That really does it for you, huh?"
"Shut up." Andy scowls and shifts around on him without actually breaking her rhythm, thighs tensing against his body. She's got her lip between her teeth, worrying it. "Just say it, okay?" Suddenly she looks unaccountably young, even with the tips of her breasts swaying and that expensive thong stretched out just so (and god, it's stupid, but it's possible Sam half-wants to paw through her suitcase and put her in a pair of her normal underwear. The neon ones with dogs all over them, maybe. He doesn't even know where his head's at).
"Okay, sweetheart," he says instead. Threads his fingers through her fingers. "Je t'aime." It feels like school-perfect recitation at first, so he says it again like he means it. And then, because he's pretty sure it's what she's after and she can't understand him anyway: "Je n'aime que toi, d'accord?"
Andy hmms at him, rolling her hips. "S'that mean?" she wants to know.
Well, might as well go for broke. "Means, just you. Only you, okay?" For good, is more or less the sentiment he wants to express here.
Andy nods, her grin wide and wicked. "Yup," she says after a minute. "Totally does it for me." She's got her hands planted on the mattress now for leverage, this angle that gets him stupidly deep. "Gonna start making you wear a beret."
Sam smiles. She's all boss and bravado--too much to be real, almost, not with the anxious red marks she left in that bottom lip. She's got the toes of one foot tucked underneath him, cold against the back of his knee.
(He's just--he's pretty sure that's not why she wanted to hear it.)
She settles down after that, though, lets him fuck her good and proper; Sam rolls her onto her back and sucks her nipples until she comes. He finishes a couple minutes later, her arms muscled tight around his neck. In the end they order room service, but she falls asleep with her head in his lap before it shows up; Sam leans back against the headboard, one hand sifting through her hair.
*
In the morning, the fussy little itinerary the concierge handed over at check-in informs them they are expected at a breakfast downstairs. Andy gives Sam the third-degree about who will be there, how fancy it'll be, etcetera, but he basically can't help her out at all--since they RSVP'd, he's had next to no contact with anyone, save one email from Luc, chastising him for missing the bachelor party.
"Like, what do I even wear?" Andy shouts over the whine of the blow dryer. She's back to her regularly scheduled underwear today, standing in the bathroom in neon-yellow boyshorts and nothing else. Sam would maybe not hate it if they skipped the breakfast.
"I don't know, clothes?" Andy glares at him in the mirror and he shrugs. "Look, I don't even know if the bride and groom are going to be there. I think this might just be for the people who had to drive up." That would be nice. That way they could ease into things, introduce her to Luc and whoever else moved out to the suburbs to start a family. Sam knows for a fact he's not the only one back in uniform.
(Not that they're starting a fam--that that's why he's--whatever.)
In any case, they're barely past the enormous flower arrangement in the lobby and into the dining room before Luc's striding by the buffet table, jeans and a button down and a wide, tickled grin on his face. "Look at this asshole!" he crows. He throws his arms around Sam with enough genuine enthusiasm to make Sam feel like a real dick for not doing a better job of keeping in touch. "Where the hell have you been?" Before Sam can answer he tilts his head to the side, flashes another smile in Andy's direction. Switches to English. "Hi there," he says, all charm and charisma. He's got his hair in a stubby little tail now, like he's younger than he is; it grew in dark and curly after his chemo, never really changed back.
Andy grins back. "Hi."
Sam does that introduction and a handful more once they sit down at the table--Jenna and Andre plus Danny and Geoff from his old poker game, a couple neighborhood guys Luc and Mark grew up with. He keeps a steadying hand on Andy's knee. She's a champ, fussing over baby pictures and gamely telling the story of how she busted him her first day on the job; he might not even know she was nervous if not for the fact that there's an honest-to-god pile of blueberry muffins on the table and she hasn't so much as touched them.
He's up at the omelette station trying to figure out what he can order that she's most likely to want to pick at (nothing green, probably) when a small warm hand lands on his back, up near his shoulder blade. A second before he turns around he knows exactly who's standing behind him: ten years and a whole lifetime later, Corinne still wears the same perfume.
"Hi, Sam," she says, already in English and that soft half-accent that could never make up its mind. She looks both the same and different, hair a darker blonde all the way to her scalp and a shade of lipstick Sam thinks he remembers. A Christmas card every year and she never put herself on the front even once, just her fair little girls and a rotating selection of cats. "Mark said you were coming."
No one gave me a heads up on you either way, Sam thinks but doesn't say. "Hi Corinne." She still has to rock up onto her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.
"How have you been?" she asks as she pulls away, shifting the plate she's holding so the ketchup doesn't muss his shirt. She's mixed the omelette up into scrambled eggs, sausage diced over top in what is unmistakably a kid-friendly breakfast option. If Sam scanned the tables, he bets he'd find two little blonde girls waiting. "No, you know what, don't answer that." She's smiling, has switched back to French now. "That's a stupid question after all the time."
(All this time feels like forever and not long at all. It's not like he hasn't talked to her since, Luc's relapse and all of them holed up in the hospital. He called her three years ago when her father died, couldn't go to the funeral on account of being under. Ollie's the one who told him it happened.)
"It's not stupid," he tells her, trying to set both of them at ease; it's genuine affection he feels for her, a faint stab of regret for how unhappy he made her in the end. "It's not. I'm good."
"Good." Corinne smiles. "The girls are around here somewhere, the little monsters," she says, that voice that people use when their children are not in fact monsters at all (they talked about it in the abstract, a hundred years ago; there was once she was almost certain she was, Sam at the all-night drugstore to buy a test and completely unsure of what he was hoping for). "Crawling under the table, most likely. I'd love for you to--"
"Sammy!" That's Geoff back at the table with McNally and everyone else, all the social finesse of a blue footed booby. "Make yourself useful and see if you can track down some syrup while you're up there, will you? These pancakes aren't going to eat themselves."
If Andy wasn't looking before she's looking now, nakedly curious; Sam catches her eye for the barest fraction of a second before she's suddenly very interested in whatever Jenna's saying, fidgeting a little in her chair. She's wearing one of those long strapless dresses she and Nash like to bang around in in the summertime, all soft swingy cotton. He kept his hand on her ass the whole elevator ride down.
"Is that--" Corinne starts, breaks off. Never, in all the time he knew her, did Sam ever seen her blush; that hasn't changed either, but it's half a beat before she goes on. "You should introduce me sometime today," she says finally, smiling at him. It's her real one, warm and steady. "And you can meet Jean and the girls."
Over at the table, Sam can see Geoff being shushed by his wife, McNally's head turned resolutely away from both of them. Her hair is waterfalling over one shoulder, the line of her collarbone vulnerable and bare.
When he glances back at Corinne she's watching him with a knowing look. Sam had forgotten how oddly serene she could be--she was always the more mature one in their relationship, no question. It was amicable between them right up until the end, but Sam remembers wishing some days that she would just scream at him already. The calmness made it too easy for him to hurt her.
"I'd like that," he tells her, smiling back. She nods like they have an agreement, hitching up her plate of scrambled eggs. Before she goes, she hands Sam a bottle of syrup, suggesting mildly that he pour it over Geoff's head.
By the time he gets back to the table--he settles on bacon, tomato, and cheese for McNally's omelette, toast for himself--Andy's deep in conversation with Jenna, who's telling her about their old hazing rituals. Still, when he sits down her eyes flicker over to him once, dark and careful.
Sam squeezes her bony knee underneath the table.
Luc takes off pretty soon after that but the rest of them have time to kill before they need to get ready for the ceremony, camp out at the table with bloody marys and champagne. McNally pokes a bit at her eggs. Eventually they start to drift away in ones and twos, plan to meet in the lobby later on and head over to the church together; Jenna asks Andy if she can stop by and borrow some bobby pins which, weirdly, is the first thing to get a genuine smile out of her all morning.
("It's girl code," McNally explains in the hallway upstairs, the hush of her sandals on the thick hotel carpet. "It means she thinks I'm okay." Then she frowns. "I mean, I think that's what it means. It could just mean she needs bobby pins. I suck at girl code sometimes.")
Back in the room she flips through the channels until she hits on a documentary about K-9 drug units, German Shepherds in bulletproof vests. Picks at the polish on her toes while she watches. "So, uh," she says after a minute, chin on her knee and plucking at the bedspread. Her shoulder blades shift under her skin. "Training Officer Swarek." She makes a face. "Still glad you asked me to come?"
This girl. Sam feels his eyebrows shoot up immediately, incredulity and about ten other things he doesn't so much enjoy, but he tamps it down. Gets his ass on the bed and his hands on her bare back. Her skin is smooth and air-conditioning chilly. "Well, I gotta tell you, I've been living day to day wondering what that dress looks like."
Andy laughs, but it's half-hearted. "Seriously, Sam. I mean, like--" She gives the braided throw a particularly vicious twist, and a thread comes away in her hand. "I don't even speak French."
"McNally..." Sam is actually at a bit of loss for what to say, honestly. He wants to take to all the weddings, is the problem, drag her out to backyard barbecues and watch her hold other people's children. Wants her to get ideas.
(Fuck, he wants--he walks by jewellery stores sometimes, and just--)
He's just not sure how to say all that without freaking her out.
In the end he settles for kissing her bony shoulder, rubbing his nose along the line of her neck. "Go get changed," he murmurs against her skin, "and we'll go to this fucking wedding, and I will show you exactly how glad I am that I brought you along in whatever language you prefer."
"Right." Andy makes a face like nice try, buddy, but in any case she does what he tells her, is up and off the bed and digging through the big mirrored closet at the other end of the room. It's not a side of her he's seen a whole lot of, this girl who needs a lot of reassurance. He's used to her plowing right through. "You're building up this dress too much in your brain," she warns him. “We're not talking, like, Jennifer Lopez at the Oscars. It's just a dress."
Sam has no fucking idea what that reference means, but. It's not so much just a dress.
Andy's still futzing with the zipper as she walks out of the bathroom toward him, arms winged out and back. "See?" she says, fidgeting and huffing and blowing her bangs out her face, and uh. Sam sees. Bodice gaping or not, Sam sees.
(He knows she's pretty. Fuck, like, he's aware she's pretty, but honest to god-- they don't dress up too often, is all. Which--jesus, apparently that is a damn shame.)
"You clean up good," he agrees. It's maybe the lamest line he's ever given. Still, he's pretty sure Andy gets the gist either way, the stupid look that's no doubt all over his face. She's biting down a smile by the time she bumps up against his knees, kicks at his dress shoes a bit with one bare foot.
"Traci said it wasn't too slutty for a wedding, so." So. She finally gets the zipper, brings her arms down to her sides. Bounces a bit on her toes. "Presentable?"
Sam looks at her for a minute--all silky black fabric and the sweep of her shoulders, painted toenails against the hotel carpet. He feels like if she wanted she could hold his heart inside her hand. "Yeah, sweetheart," he tells her quietly. "I'd say that works."
*
The wedding's a full mass, which Sam probably should have anticipated but somehow didn't, all candles and Corinthians Chapter 13. Andy smooths her dress across her thighs. He's expecting her to fidget but instead she seems weirdly rapt, eight of them sandwiched into a pew and the heat of her skinny arm pressed against his side. She knows all the responses, when to stand and sit and bow her head. "Irish Catholic," she explains softly, when she catches him watching. "Duh."
(The next time he looks over at her is right in the middle of the vows, Mark and Aimé promising for better or worse and McNally swiping at her cheekbone with the back of one hand. "Shut up," she mutters, sniffling a bit. "Weddings, I don't know. Don't say anything."
So. Sam doesn't.)
When it's over they all emerge from the church blinking, summer in downtown Montreal burning away the incense-hush of the mass. The sun is hot and pricking across the back of Sam's neck. Everyone lingers there on the steps for a couple minutes, dicking around while various members of the wedding party get pulled aside for photos on the grass.
McNally lets him hold her hand while they flit around from group to group, small talk and more introductions with those who hadn't been at the hotel. She's quiet, though, and Sam still feels kind of foggy from the service. Something about the Liturgy of the Word, all that call and response. He doesn't know.
"Yeah?" he asks finally, jostling her wrist a bit. For some reason this feels like the most overt they've ever been in public, UC operations aside--something about the way she's leaning or their intertwined fingers, the fact that she's unmistakably his plus one.
"Yeah," she says, plucking at his cuff lightly. Sam slides a hand around her hip, and that's the position they're standing in when Corinne sidles up, two blonde kids in tow.
"That was nice, wasn't it?" she asks, wide smile and a blue dress with sleeves that flutter a bit in the warm wind. The girls match one another, pink and purple checks. "Or at least what we saw of it was." She's got one hand on the smaller of their curly blonde heads, holds her free one out toward Andy. "It is so lovely to meet you."
Sam feels McNally tense beside him, this barely perceptible tightening of muscle you'd never notice if you hadn't spent the last three years noticing barely perceptible shit about her, like it or not. Then she rallies. "Andy," she says firmly, this voice like she's reminding herself. Sam knows from experience she's got a grip like an ironworker.
"Girls," Corinne says, nudging the two of them forward a little bit. They're a trip to look at, like the alternate ending in a choose-your-own-adventure book--that winter-pale skin even in summer and the same serious eyes as their mom. "Can you say hello?"
The stutter over the h, the both of them, nearly identical lisps like Corinne's accent in miniature. She can turn it on and off, Corinne, something Sam had forgotten about her. Right now she's crisping out all her consonants like a Toronto native, which--yeah. Sam doesn't really know what to make of that.
Andy dips her head a bit to meet their eyes--she doesn't bend down to children ever, McNally, calls Leo 'dude' half the time, but she's weirdly good with them all the same. A couple weeks ago she was futzing around with a witness's baby at the Barn, bouncing it up and down the hallway between interrogation 1 and 2. Sam's pretty sure she was humming I'm On A Boat.
(Not that, uh. He was watching.)
"What're your names?" she asks. She repeats them back with the same pronunciation and everything, Adrienne and Isabelle. Sam feels weirdly proud.
They stand there for a minute after that, no one talking, sun beating down and a lull that threatens a genteel sort of danger. Sam clears his throat. "We should probably head back, no?" he asks. For a second he's almost overwhelmed the strong, impossible urge to loosen his tie.
Corinne's watching him with that knowing sort of look she got sometimes at the end there, the one that got under his skin in a bad way. "Probably," she agrees. "Andy," she says, though, just before they walk away; she lays one small hand on Andy's wrist, pulls her back and murmurs something Sam doesn't catch. Andy blinks a moment, then smiles.
"What was that?" Sam asks once they're back in the truck, AC blasting and her shiny little purse up on the dashboard. On the way over here she told him she was going to invent an evening bag specially designed to hold a gun.
Now she just shrugs, messes with the radio a bit; none of her presets work this far out. "She's a smoke show," Andy concedes finally, "but even I have to admit she's probably not an evil sorceress."
"Probably not," Sam agrees.
*
Back at the hotel the DJ's already playing the Jackson 5, flower girl and ring bearer twirling around the dance floor while uniformed cater-waiters pass hors d'oeuvres. Andy slides her cool hand into his. "I think," she says, silky black dress slipping down over one tan shoulder, "that both of us have more than earned a drink at this point, wouldn't you say?"
She's touching him more than usual, no question. Sam thinks about the mark on his neck, high enough that loosening his tie in any way would probably be a bad idea. "Yeah," he tells her, rubbing at the dip of one chilly wrist. "I'd say that's fair."
It's an open bar, thank god; "The only free part of this wedding," Luc grumbled back at the church, passing Sam the collection basket. There's already a line snaking out between the tables, two hassled-looking bartenders doling out drinks double-time. Sam watches a pair of little boys with matching bow-ties toddle back to their table, hands cupped around overflowing Shirley Temples.
"--not gonna happen," McNally's saying. Sam raises his eyebrows in question and she rolls her eyes. "Dancing." She taps at his foot with those strappy heels, swinging their joined hands a bit. "You're probably too cool, right?"
Eleven-year-old Michael Jackson is crooning about being blind to let her go. "Infinitely too cool."
They get their cocktails, eat their dinners, listen to an endless litany of toasts. Sam's knee nudges hers beneath the white linen tablecloth. He finally gets a chance to introduce her to Marc and Aimé, Aimé emotional and champagne-drunk and throwing her arms around Andy, we are so glad you both came. McNally doesn't flinch. Sam heads to the bathroom, meets the parents of the groom in the hallway; gets back twenty minutes after that to find she's eaten all his cake.
"Snooze, lose," McNally intones gravely. She's scooted over to sit next to Jenna, is chattering away full-stop. Sam kisses the edge of her mouth, tastes frosting.
(He dances with her anyway, later. She wants to, clearly, and Sam--well. Sam wants to make her happy. He flattens his palm across the low part of her backbone, rubs his nose against her temple; thinks it's possible there are more important things than being cool.)
"Are you glad you came?" he asks her as the DJ jerkily transitions again (one song, he said, which--yeah, not so much). He's been wondering. He's pretty sure she's having fun, laughing her ass off with Jenna and Carolyne, Geoff's wife who hails from Burlington of all places, but he wants to hear it from the horse’s mouth.
"Oh yeah." McNally flexes her fingers in his, grinning. "Couldn't leave you alone with the French smoke show." She rolls her eyes a little, and it takes Sam a moment to realize she's rolling them at herself. "Plus, you know. If I hadn't you would have missed out on my super attractive fit of jealousy."
Sam raises his eyebrows (it's possible he, uh, doesn't exactly find her jealousy un-attractive--she's always seemed pretty sure of where she stands with him, McNally, even way back before they were a thing, so. It's new, is all Sam's saying). "That a fact?"
"I don't know, Sam." Andy wrinkles her nose, clearly not crazy about the trajectory here. She tilts her face toward his ear so she can lower her voice--and also, he suspects, so she doesn't have to look at him while she says this. "I mean, you've always known every stupid gory detail about me and like, my life before we started dating. There's nothing mysterious about me. But you..." She trails off, waves her hand vaguely. "I mean, come on."
Sam turns his head a bit, presses his mouth against her hairline. "But me, what?"
"I don't know," she says again, visibly uncomfortable. ("God, I hate feelings talks," she told him once way back at the beginning, making up after one of their first real fights. "Maybe in the future we can just settle all our problems with a coin toss.") Sam rubs his knuckles up and down her back. "I'm glad I came," she tells him definitively. "Sorry for being a freak."
She's shifting in her heels, spine cording under his hands like something carved. Sam gives her the out she's after: "I'm glad you came too." Still, half of him wants to tell her that she's wrong, that he doesn't know every stupid gory detail about her life--all those years with her dad she never mentions, for instance. Whole decades Sam’s had to piece together from clues, like the fact that she burns most canned soups but can cook steak and potatoes like a champ, how her haphazard supermarket shopping looks a hell of a lot more like bargain hunting when he pays attention. They way she talks, you'd think she'd been born fully formed the moment she enrolled in the Academy.
But: Andy's relaxing into him like those were the magic words, the smell of hair product and sugar. Sam lets it go.
"Oh, also--" She hums a few bars of the song that just came on, some artificially smooth pop number. "Just so you know, this dress requires some really interesting structural underwear." Her hips slide into his, then away, like maybe she'd be dancing more vigorously if he wasn't here. "And by structural, I mean non-existent."
Sam feels his eyebrows shoot up, fast and hard (it's a party trick of hers, the no-panties thing; she'll pull it out every once in awhile, casual as anything, just to make sure she's got his attention. It has made for some interesting stakeouts, Sam will tell you that much). "No kidding," is all he says. Sometimes he wonders if it's maybe not the best thing, the way they use sex to smooth out whatever rough edges there are between them--that after a year and change it's still their go-to method of conflict resolution, arbitrary as a coin toss at the end of the day.
Still: they got through this wedding with a minimum of scarring, they've got another night in their stupidly fancy hotel room, and when Sam drops one hand and palms her ass--well. She's not kidding about the underwear. All of a sudden he can't figure out why they're not upstairs.
"You think it's bad taste to sneak out of here early?" he asks her quietly, tipping his head down close to hers. He wants to spread her out on the mattress and slick kisses all down her stomach. He wants the next wedding they go to to be theirs.
Andy raises her eyebrows back at him, surprised and not unhappy. "Yes," she says definitively, and smiles. "Let me get my purse."
Author: lowriseflare and threeguesses
Rating: R-ish
Word Count: 8500+
Summary: The one with Montreal (and Corinne).
AN: Thank goodness this is less graphic than our usual fare. My inner lapsed Catholic would NOT be okay with me posting porn on Easter.
The invitation shows up at the tail-end of April, all of Toronto smelling like wet pavement and rain. Sam finds it one morning with the junk mail, just shifts aside yet another offer from Cogeco and there it is: Mark and Aimé, save-the-date. It honestly takes him a good two seconds to realize what he's looking at.
Mark's the kid brother of his buddy Luc, from his old unit back in Montreal; the three of them used to go ice-fishing together weekends, freezing their balls off and swearing fit to peel the bark off a tree. And Aimé, if he's remembering this correctly, thinking of the right girl, was pretty close friends with--
well. It was a long time ago, anyway.
Sam scratches a bit at the back of his neck, then tosses the cardstock onto the counter and forgets about it, more or less, until McNally's rummaging through his kitchen later that night, looking for a snack.
"Who do you know getting married?" she asks, even though the names are right there on the front. When he comes into the room she's holding it by the edges, just delicately, fingers smeared bright with Dorito dust (which she apparently found before she found the invitation--Sam doesn't know if that means she was actively snooping or not).
He shrugs. "Friends from back when I was working at the 9." It feels weird to say in English, the nine. He's remembering more now, thinks he has the girl right--it would be going on ten years now, since Mark started dating her (and--yeah. Sam remembers what that was like, people starting to side-eye you after year four).
"Huh." McNally sets the card down so it's propped up against the kleenex box, careful. "You gonna go?"
Sam shrugs again, a reflex. The envelope was addressed to Sam Swarek and Guest. "Thinking about it."
(She knows about Montreal, for the most part, the long stretches of him undercover and how hard it all was on Corinne. "Well," McNally said when he told her, lying faceup in his bedroom in the dark. "We won't have that problem, at least." Then, off his curious expression: "I'm awesome at UCs."
And fuck, if Sam hadn't already wanted to marry her then--)
McNally's raising her eyebrows now though, has this look on her face he's seen right before she challenges Diaz to arm-wrestling, working out the odds in her mind. "Well," she says, casual, licking the orange powder off her thumb. "I think you should."
Twenty minutes after that, she's fucking him clear through the mattress.
So.
He doesn't actually bring it up until parade the next morning, gun-shy for no reason at all. The whole thing is oddly reminiscent of asking a girl to the prom, her and Nash sitting at the table in front of him. Sam almost feels like passing up a note, do you like me? check yes, no, maybe.
(The wedding's in eight weeks, is all. Which--whatever, they've been dating for over a year now, practically living together, so it shouldn't be a big deal. Right? Conceivably it should not be a big deal.)
In the end, he hooks a foot around her chair before Best starts speaking, pulls back until she bumps up against the front of his table. She swivels her body around to look at him, raises her eyebrows all exaggerated-like (week or so ago, sitting at a Tim’s drive-through with Ollie: "She's starting to pick up your expressions, brother, it's creepy”). Sam raises his right back. "So," he tells her. "Montreal. You wanna go?"
"What's in Montreal?" Nash asks right away, twisting around in her seat to listen; she's got an honest-to-god bucket of iced coffee in front of her, rattling it noisily.
"Wedding," McNally tells her, ponytail swishing as she cocks her head to the side. "People from Sam's secret French life."
Sam rolls his eyes. "Real mysterious," he says dryly. Andy's got this look on her face like she's about to say something else but here's Frank striding to the front of the room, Listen up people and a public transport groper to track down. She raises her eyebrows once more before she turns around.
(Which--yeah. Not a big deal.)
He's riding with Diaz, is headed out back toward the motorpool when McNally bumps into him hard from the right, shoves something into the front pocket of his uniform pants. "See ya," she mumbles, then scurries out the door behind Peck. Sam waits 'til he's out in the drizzle before he reaches for it: a sliver of paper she tore from who knows where, yes scrawled in a hurry and underlined once.
Diaz is looking over, curious. Sam rubs at his chin to hide his smile.
*
After shift (McNally and Peck end up catching the guy, a bus off the downtown circuit followed by a wicked foot-pursuit; the whole station's buzzing with the story), Sam comes out to find her leaning up against his truck. Her hair's still wet from chasing perverts through the rain.
"Tell me," Sam starts, throwing his bag in the back. "How did he get away from you on the bus?"
McNally throws her shoulders up, defensive. "The driver opened both doors, okay? Don't listen to Dov, he wasn't even there." She tugs him over by his belt loops, back up against the passenger-side door. Sam follows the momentum all the way into her, plants his hands on the wet metal of the roof. Andy tips her face up like she's angling for a kiss, only then she speaks instead. "So you, uh. Want me to meet these people?"
Sam cocks his head to the side. "That depends," he tells her, trying not to sound too eager. (He hasn't been great about keeping in touch with too many of them, actually, a message once every six or nine months: Luc, who beat cancer so intent on killing him that the priest came for Last Rites on two separate occasions; Jenna and Andre, who bred dogs and lived next door for years and years. It makes Sam good at his job, how easy it is for him to compartmentalize, but it's not a quality he so much loves about himself.) He slides one knee in between her thighs, the warm scratch of denim-on-denim. "You wanna meet 'em?"
"A wedding full of strangers who are automatically going to assume I'm a bimbo?" Andy sighs long and put-upon. "I guess so." Then she grins. "I mean, how else am I supposed to find out what you were like when you were my age?"
Sam snorts. "Think you're funny, huh?" Andy nips at his chin.
(He does want her to meet them, is the thing--pretty badly, actually, now that he's thinking about it. It's not like introducing her to Sarah, which was more nerve-wracking than anything else; here he gets to show her off just a bit, a collection of friends that are his alone. God knows she does it, at the Penny with the other rookies, Diaz and Epstein's weird admiration.)
Sam dips his head to suck at her pulse point a little, just friendly, everything still in full view of the station's back windows. Her skin tastes like rain. "Well," he tells her. "You have two months to think up questions."
Andy grins. "I'll make cue-cards."
Sam rolls his eyes and kisses her for real then, pushing her back into the truck's wet door. "Come on," he says, threading a hand through her damp hair. "Let's get you into a bath, wash the pervert off."
"Gail's the one he licked," Andy reports happily.
Sam smiles all the way home.
*
They don't talk about it much after that. Not that there's anything to talk about, really: Sam checks off the steak option for both of them, sends the reply card back in the mail. Books them a hotel room. May seeps into June. They're getting ready for bed one night, her in an old Academy t-shirt that just hits the tops of her thighs: "I got a dress for the thing today," she reports, mouth full of toothpaste. "Went with Traci after shift."
Sam looks at her in the bathroom mirror, braid unraveling all down her back (they haven't done a whole lot of the fancy-clothes thing, actually, UCs notwithstanding; McNally's a pretty low-maintenance date). "Oh yeah?"
"Yup." Andy spits with the enthusiasm of a girl who was definitely raised by her father, then smiles. "I think you'll find I clean up pretty nice."
"I...do not doubt that," Sam replies truthfully. He slips his hand underneath the hem of her t-shirt, squeezes her ass on his way out the door.
She refuses to show it to him, the dress, actually laughs in his face when he asks. "What are you, my personal shopper?" She doesn't believe so much in asking his opinion on clothes, McNally, always calls Traci instead. When she wants a compliment, she's blunt: "Tell me I'm pretty," she'll demand, planted in his lap with her chin tipping up.
(She asks for I love you's in bed the same way, tell me in his ear and her nails pricking down his back. Either way, it's possible Sam falls all over himself to give her what she wants.)
He actually owns a suit, a fact which Andy one-hundred-percent refuses to believe (like it's some kind of damn miracle, him in formal wear--Sam's torn between insulted and amused). To be fair, he hasn't worn it in years, not since Corinne at least. He tries it on a couple weeks before the wedding, just to make sure. Andy wanders into the bedroom as he's tucking in the shirt.
"Do you know what happened to my headpho--" she starts, then stops in her tracks mid-sentence, cocks her dark head to the side. She's dressed in leggings and a tank top, on her way out the door for a run. "Well, hello."
Sam snorts as he zips his pants up, shoots his cuffs. "Hi."
She stands there in the doorway for a minute, one arm crossed across her chest and her other hand coming up to cover this ridiculous corn-syrup grin on her face. She looks for all the world like a seven-year-old with a secret. Sam rolls his eyes at her, weirdly self-conscious all of a sudden. "Headphones are on the counter," he says.
"Uh-huh." Andy's still staring, one sneaker scratching at the back of her opposite calf. "You look hot."
Sam picks the jacket up off the bed and slings it on, settling it over his shoulders. "Told you I owned a suit," he says inanely. He feels a bit like a kid again, getting his cheeks pinched for wearing his Sunday best, only then he meets Andy's eyes and...doesn't.
"Uh-huh," she repeats, just slow. Bounces up and down on her toes a little. "Um. So--you got a tie to go with this ensemble, sailor?"
Sam does. She makes him put it on, then backs him into the wall beside the dresser and goes down on her knees.
(So. Not like Sunday best then.)
"You, uh. Planning on does this during the ceremony?" he pants afterwards. Andy grins a secret grin, slides herself up his body. Sam reaches for her--she's hot like a fever through her thin leggings--but she bats his hand away.
"Did it myself," she says proudly, sliding sticky fingers into his mouth. Sam closes his eyes.
*
She picks a fight with him the Thursday before they're supposed to leave, crawling all over him about the way he's handling their punk teenage witness--who, for the record, turns out to be a lying sack of shit, so Sam's real sorry if he's not showing enough sensitivity for the kid's difficult family life.
("The mom's in rehab," McNally reports, which stops him for a minute; then she slams the door to the interrogation room loud enough to rattle his teeth, and the feeling passes.)
They argue all the way home, loud and pointless: "Maybe I just shouldn't go to your idiotic thing," she finally snaps, after she tells him to drop her at the toilet factory. "If I'm so ridiculous."
That's when the penny drops (jesus christ, this girl, scared of the dark and throwing a tantrum on the playground; he loves her a stupid amount), but by then he's too irritated to play nice. "Maybe not, McNally," is all he says.
"I'm sorry," she tells him, letting herself into his apartment an hour later and pressing her face against his chest. "I'm nervous. I'm an asshole." Sam gets his arms around her and holds.
They make up ("It'll be fine," Sam tells her, both of them moving slow in the dark; Andy nods like she believes him) but stupid fights or no she stays nervous. It lasts straight through their Friday shift--Sam isn't riding with her but he can tell, three extra sugars in her coffee, loud bravado in parade. Traci teases her about the bouquet.
She goes red then, McNally. And just-- Sam thinks about it, has been thinking about it, first comes love, then comes... Well.
It's crossed his mind, is all.
Still, he gives her her space, heads down to Seaton House with Oliver to follow up on a disturbance. It doesn't help much; he ends up thinking about it the entire time he's doing interviews, truck all packed up and ready to go when they get off at four. Andy fiddled with her garment bag the whole drive in.
("They'll be too busy talking shit about my wayward youth," Sam told her last night, touching up the sweaty dip of her spine. The windows were open, hot air drifting up from the street. "Probably won't let you get a word in edgewise."
Andy half-grinned, half-frowned. "But you didn't have a wayward youth, Sam." She didn't say it--same woman for six years, co-signed lease on a house--but it hung there between them, twisting. "All those stories will be boring.")
It's a long trip, Andy fidgeting in the passenger seat beside him, flipping through the radio stations too fast for Sam to hear what's on any of them and her bare feet up on his dashboard. Her toenails are painted a purple so dark it's almost black. She decides she wants to drive an hour or so in and Sam lets her, pulls into a service station where she fashions an early dinner out of two different kinds of gummy candy, a bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips, and a bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper. An hour after that, she changes her mind and they stop again.
He doesn't mind, really. It's not like they're in a hurry, and when she's like this it's almost always better to just roll over and let her have her way. She'll mellow out eventually. She always does.
(Sam feels careful tonight, though. Isn't entirely sure why)
"So, like," she says, out of noplace-- it's the first time she's opened her mouth in a while. She's fussing with her hair, braiding and unbraiding; the sun's setting in the rearview, this rosy glow. "How pretty are we talking, exactly?"
Which--what? Sam blinks. "Come again?"
"Your French girlfriend." Andy shrugs twice in a row, fast, like a tic. "She's gonna be there, right? It's fine if she's a smoke show. I just want to be, like. Prepared."
"Andy--"
"Traci wanted me to google her, and I didn't, which personally I think shows a lot of maturity on my part. So." She crunches a chip between her molars, looks straight ahead. "How pretty?"
Sam rolls his eyes, sighing. The 401's dead empty now, seven o'clock and rush hour long past; pretty soon they'll hit Kingston. "Would googling really have worked?" he asks, stalling.
(Corinne was pretty, is the thing--is pretty, probably, although god knows Sam hasn't seen her in years--what with that warm skin all the French Canadian girls seem to have, dirty-blonde hair to her chin. Still, it's a different kind of pretty than Andy's, petite and those clacking heels she was always wearing to teach. Sam never saw her in jeans much, Corinne.)
Andy gives him a look, threads her fingers through her braid to unravel it; it looks like it hurts, how fast she pulls. Sam sighs again. "You know she's married, right? With kids?"
Andy pulls another face, duh. It's how she first found out, the both of them together for barely a month; Corinne sent a Christmas card, same as she does every year, her blonde little girls playing in the snow on the front. Andy asked; Sam told her. Simple.
(And, okay, honestly? A decade and change younger, plus no pregnancies--Andy would probably win whatever fucked up contest this is, those twenty-seven-year-old legs that go on forever. She's beautiful, McNally, a face with a view, but more importantly she's just young. Sam's annoyed all of a sudden, pissed that she's making him consider it; it feels crass to even think, let alone say.)
She must sense it, the energy in the truck going strange and tense, because she backs off more or less right away. "Okay, okay, don't tell me." She huffs a little, her I'm the reasonable party voice. "Was just trying to do a little police work here, is all. Isn't that what you're always telling me to do?" She makes her tone all low and exaggerated, wrinkles her eyebrows a bit. "Wait half a second for some credible information, McNally. Don't be running into situations half-cocked all the time like a lunatic, you're gonna get yourself shot in the face."
Sam smirks, he can't help it. Pissed or not, Ollie's right--her impression's getting good. "That's how I taught you, huh?"
"Yeah!" Andy pretzels her legs up onto the seat, still barefoot, picks at the seam of her jeans. "I'm not, like, insecure about how hot I am, okay? God. I'm just...whatever. Forget I asked."
Sam exhales. He isn't totally sure what to say to that so he doesn't say anything, just reaches out and rubs at the back of her neck a bit, underneath her hair (in theory he doesn't actually hate when she gets jealous, is the other thing, even after all this time; it makes him the woman in this relationship, probably, but it's also not untrue). "McNally," he tells her finally. Her skin is very, very warm. "Relax, okay?"
"I'm relaxed!" she protests noisily; still, she doesn't shrug off his hand. They ride like that for a while. He can feel her muscles shifting under his palm.
("Definitely should have googled her," she singsongs under her breath.)
*
By the time they pull into the hotel it's hours past sunset, Montreal buzzing and bright in the humid evening. They're staying at the Fairmount, which is too expensive for them by half, but since that's where the reception is they're sort of stuck (Mark isn't a copper, is the problem, he's an engineer-cum-business consultant--no doubt Luc'll bitch about the expense). Besides, they haven't ever been away together, one-year anniversary passing with gag gifts and one relatively fancy dinner. Sam figures it's about time for an occasion.
McNally's a zombie by the time he drags her up from underground parking, leaning against his back and yawning at check-in. Still, when Sam relays their information in French she perks right-the-fuck-up, leaning around to watch him with a shit-eating grin. Sam tries his best to ignore her.
"Oooh-kay," Andy says as the porter loads up their luggage (and seriously, a porter, what even; it's been a long time since Sam stayed anywhere nice). "This trip just got exponentially hotter."
Sam watches as the kid smirks under his brimmed cap, leads them into the elevator. So far no one's switched into English when talking to him, which means his French is still passable. He works his fingers through Andy's newly-fashioned ponytail, tugs. "That so?"
"I'm a simple girl, Swarek," she murmurs, still grinning (she seems more like herself now, sliding two fingers into his belt loop and yanking; Sam feels something in his chest loosen up). "Easy to impress."
Easy is maybe an overstatement, but she seems happy enough with the room, bouncing a bit on the featherbed and peering at herself in the magnifying mirror. "Yeah, you are definitely not meant to see your own face this close up," she declares. Sam thinks of Tommy's crappy apartment, wonders if they went on a lot of vacations when she was a kid--the odd camping trip notwithstanding, he's guessing probably not.
"You hungry?" he calls while she's in there, flipping through the guide on the desk. There's a couple restaurants down in the lobby, a bar that's probably got decent enough food--he'll take her out if she feels like she can rally, but she looked pretty wrecked downstairs.
"Not so much," she tells him, coming out into the bedroom--and, uh. Wrecked is really not the right word for how she looks. Sam feels his mouth fall open, just a bit. "What?" she asks, smirking, cool as anything. "Vacation underwear."
"Uh-huh." It's new, that's for sure, a whole lot of filmy lace Sam feels confident he would have remembered. Then, as he hauls his brain back online: "Tell me you weren't wearing that under your uniform." The cups of her bra are almost completely sheer, nipples drawn up tight underneath them. She's tanned practically everywhere now that it's summer, this all-over bronze that always looks like it should taste like chlorine and sunscreen. All of a sudden, Sam wants to test that theory out again.
Andy laughs. "Yeah, no way." She walks over and plants herself right in front of him, eyebrow quirked up like a dare. "I did get teased in the locker room, though. When I changed after shift."
"Other people saw this?" Sam curls his fingers around her hips, trying to think. He had plans to talk to her a bit, sit her down and let her ask every single question she could think of about Corinne, a sort purge before everything starts tomorrow, but--
"I'm just saying, there was effort involved." Andy tilts her chin up at him, cheeky. "So probably you should fuck me on this nice hotel bed as a thank you."
--yeah, okay, change of plans.
He has her keep the panties on ("Gotta get your money's worth," he murmurs, expensive hotel room and this pretty little thong), just pushes them out of the way so he can slide himself inside her, roughly and all at once. Andy gasps. Sam threads his fingers through hers and squeezes, hit hard by a sharp single-minded feeling he remembers from right at the beginning, trying like all hell to prove--something. Sam doesn't know.
Whatever it is, though, Andy's bent on proving it ten times harder--shoving him onto his back with her sharp knees digging into his rib cage, biting hard at the bend of his neck. His collar will cover it tomorrow, Sam's pretty sure, but only just barely; he wonders if maybe that's the point.
"Say you love me," she demands when she's right on the edge of it (she's holding off on purpose, sitting up on his cock with her shoulders pushed back, dark hair everywhere); Sam does. "Good," she tells him breathlessly, that stubborn twist of her mouth. "Now say it in French."
He has an idea of what she's after now, or pretty near--still, he isn't sure he actually wants to know, so he tries on a grin. "That really does it for you, huh?"
"Shut up." Andy scowls and shifts around on him without actually breaking her rhythm, thighs tensing against his body. She's got her lip between her teeth, worrying it. "Just say it, okay?" Suddenly she looks unaccountably young, even with the tips of her breasts swaying and that expensive thong stretched out just so (and god, it's stupid, but it's possible Sam half-wants to paw through her suitcase and put her in a pair of her normal underwear. The neon ones with dogs all over them, maybe. He doesn't even know where his head's at).
"Okay, sweetheart," he says instead. Threads his fingers through her fingers. "Je t'aime." It feels like school-perfect recitation at first, so he says it again like he means it. And then, because he's pretty sure it's what she's after and she can't understand him anyway: "Je n'aime que toi, d'accord?"
Andy hmms at him, rolling her hips. "S'that mean?" she wants to know.
Well, might as well go for broke. "Means, just you. Only you, okay?" For good, is more or less the sentiment he wants to express here.
Andy nods, her grin wide and wicked. "Yup," she says after a minute. "Totally does it for me." She's got her hands planted on the mattress now for leverage, this angle that gets him stupidly deep. "Gonna start making you wear a beret."
Sam smiles. She's all boss and bravado--too much to be real, almost, not with the anxious red marks she left in that bottom lip. She's got the toes of one foot tucked underneath him, cold against the back of his knee.
(He's just--he's pretty sure that's not why she wanted to hear it.)
She settles down after that, though, lets him fuck her good and proper; Sam rolls her onto her back and sucks her nipples until she comes. He finishes a couple minutes later, her arms muscled tight around his neck. In the end they order room service, but she falls asleep with her head in his lap before it shows up; Sam leans back against the headboard, one hand sifting through her hair.
*
In the morning, the fussy little itinerary the concierge handed over at check-in informs them they are expected at a breakfast downstairs. Andy gives Sam the third-degree about who will be there, how fancy it'll be, etcetera, but he basically can't help her out at all--since they RSVP'd, he's had next to no contact with anyone, save one email from Luc, chastising him for missing the bachelor party.
"Like, what do I even wear?" Andy shouts over the whine of the blow dryer. She's back to her regularly scheduled underwear today, standing in the bathroom in neon-yellow boyshorts and nothing else. Sam would maybe not hate it if they skipped the breakfast.
"I don't know, clothes?" Andy glares at him in the mirror and he shrugs. "Look, I don't even know if the bride and groom are going to be there. I think this might just be for the people who had to drive up." That would be nice. That way they could ease into things, introduce her to Luc and whoever else moved out to the suburbs to start a family. Sam knows for a fact he's not the only one back in uniform.
(Not that they're starting a fam--that that's why he's--whatever.)
In any case, they're barely past the enormous flower arrangement in the lobby and into the dining room before Luc's striding by the buffet table, jeans and a button down and a wide, tickled grin on his face. "Look at this asshole!" he crows. He throws his arms around Sam with enough genuine enthusiasm to make Sam feel like a real dick for not doing a better job of keeping in touch. "Where the hell have you been?" Before Sam can answer he tilts his head to the side, flashes another smile in Andy's direction. Switches to English. "Hi there," he says, all charm and charisma. He's got his hair in a stubby little tail now, like he's younger than he is; it grew in dark and curly after his chemo, never really changed back.
Andy grins back. "Hi."
Sam does that introduction and a handful more once they sit down at the table--Jenna and Andre plus Danny and Geoff from his old poker game, a couple neighborhood guys Luc and Mark grew up with. He keeps a steadying hand on Andy's knee. She's a champ, fussing over baby pictures and gamely telling the story of how she busted him her first day on the job; he might not even know she was nervous if not for the fact that there's an honest-to-god pile of blueberry muffins on the table and she hasn't so much as touched them.
He's up at the omelette station trying to figure out what he can order that she's most likely to want to pick at (nothing green, probably) when a small warm hand lands on his back, up near his shoulder blade. A second before he turns around he knows exactly who's standing behind him: ten years and a whole lifetime later, Corinne still wears the same perfume.
"Hi, Sam," she says, already in English and that soft half-accent that could never make up its mind. She looks both the same and different, hair a darker blonde all the way to her scalp and a shade of lipstick Sam thinks he remembers. A Christmas card every year and she never put herself on the front even once, just her fair little girls and a rotating selection of cats. "Mark said you were coming."
No one gave me a heads up on you either way, Sam thinks but doesn't say. "Hi Corinne." She still has to rock up onto her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.
"How have you been?" she asks as she pulls away, shifting the plate she's holding so the ketchup doesn't muss his shirt. She's mixed the omelette up into scrambled eggs, sausage diced over top in what is unmistakably a kid-friendly breakfast option. If Sam scanned the tables, he bets he'd find two little blonde girls waiting. "No, you know what, don't answer that." She's smiling, has switched back to French now. "That's a stupid question after all the time."
(All this time feels like forever and not long at all. It's not like he hasn't talked to her since, Luc's relapse and all of them holed up in the hospital. He called her three years ago when her father died, couldn't go to the funeral on account of being under. Ollie's the one who told him it happened.)
"It's not stupid," he tells her, trying to set both of them at ease; it's genuine affection he feels for her, a faint stab of regret for how unhappy he made her in the end. "It's not. I'm good."
"Good." Corinne smiles. "The girls are around here somewhere, the little monsters," she says, that voice that people use when their children are not in fact monsters at all (they talked about it in the abstract, a hundred years ago; there was once she was almost certain she was, Sam at the all-night drugstore to buy a test and completely unsure of what he was hoping for). "Crawling under the table, most likely. I'd love for you to--"
"Sammy!" That's Geoff back at the table with McNally and everyone else, all the social finesse of a blue footed booby. "Make yourself useful and see if you can track down some syrup while you're up there, will you? These pancakes aren't going to eat themselves."
If Andy wasn't looking before she's looking now, nakedly curious; Sam catches her eye for the barest fraction of a second before she's suddenly very interested in whatever Jenna's saying, fidgeting a little in her chair. She's wearing one of those long strapless dresses she and Nash like to bang around in in the summertime, all soft swingy cotton. He kept his hand on her ass the whole elevator ride down.
"Is that--" Corinne starts, breaks off. Never, in all the time he knew her, did Sam ever seen her blush; that hasn't changed either, but it's half a beat before she goes on. "You should introduce me sometime today," she says finally, smiling at him. It's her real one, warm and steady. "And you can meet Jean and the girls."
Over at the table, Sam can see Geoff being shushed by his wife, McNally's head turned resolutely away from both of them. Her hair is waterfalling over one shoulder, the line of her collarbone vulnerable and bare.
When he glances back at Corinne she's watching him with a knowing look. Sam had forgotten how oddly serene she could be--she was always the more mature one in their relationship, no question. It was amicable between them right up until the end, but Sam remembers wishing some days that she would just scream at him already. The calmness made it too easy for him to hurt her.
"I'd like that," he tells her, smiling back. She nods like they have an agreement, hitching up her plate of scrambled eggs. Before she goes, she hands Sam a bottle of syrup, suggesting mildly that he pour it over Geoff's head.
By the time he gets back to the table--he settles on bacon, tomato, and cheese for McNally's omelette, toast for himself--Andy's deep in conversation with Jenna, who's telling her about their old hazing rituals. Still, when he sits down her eyes flicker over to him once, dark and careful.
Sam squeezes her bony knee underneath the table.
Luc takes off pretty soon after that but the rest of them have time to kill before they need to get ready for the ceremony, camp out at the table with bloody marys and champagne. McNally pokes a bit at her eggs. Eventually they start to drift away in ones and twos, plan to meet in the lobby later on and head over to the church together; Jenna asks Andy if she can stop by and borrow some bobby pins which, weirdly, is the first thing to get a genuine smile out of her all morning.
("It's girl code," McNally explains in the hallway upstairs, the hush of her sandals on the thick hotel carpet. "It means she thinks I'm okay." Then she frowns. "I mean, I think that's what it means. It could just mean she needs bobby pins. I suck at girl code sometimes.")
Back in the room she flips through the channels until she hits on a documentary about K-9 drug units, German Shepherds in bulletproof vests. Picks at the polish on her toes while she watches. "So, uh," she says after a minute, chin on her knee and plucking at the bedspread. Her shoulder blades shift under her skin. "Training Officer Swarek." She makes a face. "Still glad you asked me to come?"
This girl. Sam feels his eyebrows shoot up immediately, incredulity and about ten other things he doesn't so much enjoy, but he tamps it down. Gets his ass on the bed and his hands on her bare back. Her skin is smooth and air-conditioning chilly. "Well, I gotta tell you, I've been living day to day wondering what that dress looks like."
Andy laughs, but it's half-hearted. "Seriously, Sam. I mean, like--" She gives the braided throw a particularly vicious twist, and a thread comes away in her hand. "I don't even speak French."
"McNally..." Sam is actually at a bit of loss for what to say, honestly. He wants to take to all the weddings, is the problem, drag her out to backyard barbecues and watch her hold other people's children. Wants her to get ideas.
(Fuck, he wants--he walks by jewellery stores sometimes, and just--)
He's just not sure how to say all that without freaking her out.
In the end he settles for kissing her bony shoulder, rubbing his nose along the line of her neck. "Go get changed," he murmurs against her skin, "and we'll go to this fucking wedding, and I will show you exactly how glad I am that I brought you along in whatever language you prefer."
"Right." Andy makes a face like nice try, buddy, but in any case she does what he tells her, is up and off the bed and digging through the big mirrored closet at the other end of the room. It's not a side of her he's seen a whole lot of, this girl who needs a lot of reassurance. He's used to her plowing right through. "You're building up this dress too much in your brain," she warns him. “We're not talking, like, Jennifer Lopez at the Oscars. It's just a dress."
Sam has no fucking idea what that reference means, but. It's not so much just a dress.
Andy's still futzing with the zipper as she walks out of the bathroom toward him, arms winged out and back. "See?" she says, fidgeting and huffing and blowing her bangs out her face, and uh. Sam sees. Bodice gaping or not, Sam sees.
(He knows she's pretty. Fuck, like, he's aware she's pretty, but honest to god-- they don't dress up too often, is all. Which--jesus, apparently that is a damn shame.)
"You clean up good," he agrees. It's maybe the lamest line he's ever given. Still, he's pretty sure Andy gets the gist either way, the stupid look that's no doubt all over his face. She's biting down a smile by the time she bumps up against his knees, kicks at his dress shoes a bit with one bare foot.
"Traci said it wasn't too slutty for a wedding, so." So. She finally gets the zipper, brings her arms down to her sides. Bounces a bit on her toes. "Presentable?"
Sam looks at her for a minute--all silky black fabric and the sweep of her shoulders, painted toenails against the hotel carpet. He feels like if she wanted she could hold his heart inside her hand. "Yeah, sweetheart," he tells her quietly. "I'd say that works."
*
The wedding's a full mass, which Sam probably should have anticipated but somehow didn't, all candles and Corinthians Chapter 13. Andy smooths her dress across her thighs. He's expecting her to fidget but instead she seems weirdly rapt, eight of them sandwiched into a pew and the heat of her skinny arm pressed against his side. She knows all the responses, when to stand and sit and bow her head. "Irish Catholic," she explains softly, when she catches him watching. "Duh."
(The next time he looks over at her is right in the middle of the vows, Mark and Aimé promising for better or worse and McNally swiping at her cheekbone with the back of one hand. "Shut up," she mutters, sniffling a bit. "Weddings, I don't know. Don't say anything."
So. Sam doesn't.)
When it's over they all emerge from the church blinking, summer in downtown Montreal burning away the incense-hush of the mass. The sun is hot and pricking across the back of Sam's neck. Everyone lingers there on the steps for a couple minutes, dicking around while various members of the wedding party get pulled aside for photos on the grass.
McNally lets him hold her hand while they flit around from group to group, small talk and more introductions with those who hadn't been at the hotel. She's quiet, though, and Sam still feels kind of foggy from the service. Something about the Liturgy of the Word, all that call and response. He doesn't know.
"Yeah?" he asks finally, jostling her wrist a bit. For some reason this feels like the most overt they've ever been in public, UC operations aside--something about the way she's leaning or their intertwined fingers, the fact that she's unmistakably his plus one.
"Yeah," she says, plucking at his cuff lightly. Sam slides a hand around her hip, and that's the position they're standing in when Corinne sidles up, two blonde kids in tow.
"That was nice, wasn't it?" she asks, wide smile and a blue dress with sleeves that flutter a bit in the warm wind. The girls match one another, pink and purple checks. "Or at least what we saw of it was." She's got one hand on the smaller of their curly blonde heads, holds her free one out toward Andy. "It is so lovely to meet you."
Sam feels McNally tense beside him, this barely perceptible tightening of muscle you'd never notice if you hadn't spent the last three years noticing barely perceptible shit about her, like it or not. Then she rallies. "Andy," she says firmly, this voice like she's reminding herself. Sam knows from experience she's got a grip like an ironworker.
"Girls," Corinne says, nudging the two of them forward a little bit. They're a trip to look at, like the alternate ending in a choose-your-own-adventure book--that winter-pale skin even in summer and the same serious eyes as their mom. "Can you say hello?"
The stutter over the h, the both of them, nearly identical lisps like Corinne's accent in miniature. She can turn it on and off, Corinne, something Sam had forgotten about her. Right now she's crisping out all her consonants like a Toronto native, which--yeah. Sam doesn't really know what to make of that.
Andy dips her head a bit to meet their eyes--she doesn't bend down to children ever, McNally, calls Leo 'dude' half the time, but she's weirdly good with them all the same. A couple weeks ago she was futzing around with a witness's baby at the Barn, bouncing it up and down the hallway between interrogation 1 and 2. Sam's pretty sure she was humming I'm On A Boat.
(Not that, uh. He was watching.)
"What're your names?" she asks. She repeats them back with the same pronunciation and everything, Adrienne and Isabelle. Sam feels weirdly proud.
They stand there for a minute after that, no one talking, sun beating down and a lull that threatens a genteel sort of danger. Sam clears his throat. "We should probably head back, no?" he asks. For a second he's almost overwhelmed the strong, impossible urge to loosen his tie.
Corinne's watching him with that knowing sort of look she got sometimes at the end there, the one that got under his skin in a bad way. "Probably," she agrees. "Andy," she says, though, just before they walk away; she lays one small hand on Andy's wrist, pulls her back and murmurs something Sam doesn't catch. Andy blinks a moment, then smiles.
"What was that?" Sam asks once they're back in the truck, AC blasting and her shiny little purse up on the dashboard. On the way over here she told him she was going to invent an evening bag specially designed to hold a gun.
Now she just shrugs, messes with the radio a bit; none of her presets work this far out. "She's a smoke show," Andy concedes finally, "but even I have to admit she's probably not an evil sorceress."
"Probably not," Sam agrees.
*
Back at the hotel the DJ's already playing the Jackson 5, flower girl and ring bearer twirling around the dance floor while uniformed cater-waiters pass hors d'oeuvres. Andy slides her cool hand into his. "I think," she says, silky black dress slipping down over one tan shoulder, "that both of us have more than earned a drink at this point, wouldn't you say?"
She's touching him more than usual, no question. Sam thinks about the mark on his neck, high enough that loosening his tie in any way would probably be a bad idea. "Yeah," he tells her, rubbing at the dip of one chilly wrist. "I'd say that's fair."
It's an open bar, thank god; "The only free part of this wedding," Luc grumbled back at the church, passing Sam the collection basket. There's already a line snaking out between the tables, two hassled-looking bartenders doling out drinks double-time. Sam watches a pair of little boys with matching bow-ties toddle back to their table, hands cupped around overflowing Shirley Temples.
"--not gonna happen," McNally's saying. Sam raises his eyebrows in question and she rolls her eyes. "Dancing." She taps at his foot with those strappy heels, swinging their joined hands a bit. "You're probably too cool, right?"
Eleven-year-old Michael Jackson is crooning about being blind to let her go. "Infinitely too cool."
They get their cocktails, eat their dinners, listen to an endless litany of toasts. Sam's knee nudges hers beneath the white linen tablecloth. He finally gets a chance to introduce her to Marc and Aimé, Aimé emotional and champagne-drunk and throwing her arms around Andy, we are so glad you both came. McNally doesn't flinch. Sam heads to the bathroom, meets the parents of the groom in the hallway; gets back twenty minutes after that to find she's eaten all his cake.
"Snooze, lose," McNally intones gravely. She's scooted over to sit next to Jenna, is chattering away full-stop. Sam kisses the edge of her mouth, tastes frosting.
(He dances with her anyway, later. She wants to, clearly, and Sam--well. Sam wants to make her happy. He flattens his palm across the low part of her backbone, rubs his nose against her temple; thinks it's possible there are more important things than being cool.)
"Are you glad you came?" he asks her as the DJ jerkily transitions again (one song, he said, which--yeah, not so much). He's been wondering. He's pretty sure she's having fun, laughing her ass off with Jenna and Carolyne, Geoff's wife who hails from Burlington of all places, but he wants to hear it from the horse’s mouth.
"Oh yeah." McNally flexes her fingers in his, grinning. "Couldn't leave you alone with the French smoke show." She rolls her eyes a little, and it takes Sam a moment to realize she's rolling them at herself. "Plus, you know. If I hadn't you would have missed out on my super attractive fit of jealousy."
Sam raises his eyebrows (it's possible he, uh, doesn't exactly find her jealousy un-attractive--she's always seemed pretty sure of where she stands with him, McNally, even way back before they were a thing, so. It's new, is all Sam's saying). "That a fact?"
"I don't know, Sam." Andy wrinkles her nose, clearly not crazy about the trajectory here. She tilts her face toward his ear so she can lower her voice--and also, he suspects, so she doesn't have to look at him while she says this. "I mean, you've always known every stupid gory detail about me and like, my life before we started dating. There's nothing mysterious about me. But you..." She trails off, waves her hand vaguely. "I mean, come on."
Sam turns his head a bit, presses his mouth against her hairline. "But me, what?"
"I don't know," she says again, visibly uncomfortable. ("God, I hate feelings talks," she told him once way back at the beginning, making up after one of their first real fights. "Maybe in the future we can just settle all our problems with a coin toss.") Sam rubs his knuckles up and down her back. "I'm glad I came," she tells him definitively. "Sorry for being a freak."
She's shifting in her heels, spine cording under his hands like something carved. Sam gives her the out she's after: "I'm glad you came too." Still, half of him wants to tell her that she's wrong, that he doesn't know every stupid gory detail about her life--all those years with her dad she never mentions, for instance. Whole decades Sam’s had to piece together from clues, like the fact that she burns most canned soups but can cook steak and potatoes like a champ, how her haphazard supermarket shopping looks a hell of a lot more like bargain hunting when he pays attention. They way she talks, you'd think she'd been born fully formed the moment she enrolled in the Academy.
But: Andy's relaxing into him like those were the magic words, the smell of hair product and sugar. Sam lets it go.
"Oh, also--" She hums a few bars of the song that just came on, some artificially smooth pop number. "Just so you know, this dress requires some really interesting structural underwear." Her hips slide into his, then away, like maybe she'd be dancing more vigorously if he wasn't here. "And by structural, I mean non-existent."
Sam feels his eyebrows shoot up, fast and hard (it's a party trick of hers, the no-panties thing; she'll pull it out every once in awhile, casual as anything, just to make sure she's got his attention. It has made for some interesting stakeouts, Sam will tell you that much). "No kidding," is all he says. Sometimes he wonders if it's maybe not the best thing, the way they use sex to smooth out whatever rough edges there are between them--that after a year and change it's still their go-to method of conflict resolution, arbitrary as a coin toss at the end of the day.
Still: they got through this wedding with a minimum of scarring, they've got another night in their stupidly fancy hotel room, and when Sam drops one hand and palms her ass--well. She's not kidding about the underwear. All of a sudden he can't figure out why they're not upstairs.
"You think it's bad taste to sneak out of here early?" he asks her quietly, tipping his head down close to hers. He wants to spread her out on the mattress and slick kisses all down her stomach. He wants the next wedding they go to to be theirs.
Andy raises her eyebrows back at him, surprised and not unhappy. "Yes," she says definitively, and smiles. "Let me get my purse."