Finish That Drink (There Are Sober Kids in Africa)

Hey look, now I'm writing porn about Hallmark Channel actors

2016-04-08T17:54:52Z

SO, remember how I started watching this terrible message-y Hallmark show about 1910 frontier Alberta? Yeah, turns out I ship the show's actors too. SORRY HALLMARK, you keep releasing really wholesome behind-the-scenes videos and your leads touch each other a lot in interviews, I AM NOT MADE OF STONE (no, seriously, they really touch each other a LOT for people who I can only assume are not fucking).

Thus, fic. Specifically, a series of fics (locked to AO3 users only because these people are NOT FAMOUS and only have about 5 pages of google search results apiece).

Prohibition in Curls, When Calls the Heart RPF, Erin Krakow/Daniel Lissing, First Time, First Kiss, Explicit
Summary: The first time they kissed on the show, it took a million takes to get it right. “Sweet and romantic,” Neill kept saying, and Dan thought that’s what they were giving him, sweet and romantic, but then after awhile Neill dropped the “romantic” and just started saying “sweet,” and finally when they were about to lose the light he pulled Dan aside and flat out told him you can’t have visible tongue on Hallmark Channel.

Word Count: 11 500+

A/N: It's really hard to write an Australian accent. Set during Season 3 filming, NOT THAT IT MATTERS, no one watches this show.

Lift Up A Red High Heel, When Calls the Heart RPF, Erin Krakow/Daniel Lissing, Explicit
Summary: It’s one thing to have sex with your co-star in the shower, Erin thinks. It’s entirely another to move to a second location so you can enjoy the afterglow together.
Word Count: 10 000+
A/N: Takes place immediately after the first one, because why not.

Let's Be Elvis, Let's Be David Byrne, When Calls the Heart RPF, Erin Krakow/Daniel Lissing, Explicit
Summary: “So what’s going on with you and Dan?” Lori asks at the wrap party, tipping her glass at Erin.

Word Count: 15 000~
A/N: That's 36 000+ words of RPF about really un-famous famous people, for those of you playing along at home.

Happy Holy Week, here's a pornographic fic-dump about a Hallmark Christian Show

2016-03-26T15:41:32Z

SO, lowriseflare and I started watching this terrible message-y Hallmark show about 1910 frontier Alberta, mostly ironically, only then suddenly we were NOT watching it ironically and were in fact Very Invested in the kissing (there is like, surprisingly good kissing, you guys). So we wrote porn. As one does. Have I mentioned this is an explicitly Christian show about explicitly Christian characters set in 19-fucking-10? Because it is. We are basically writing porn about the modern-day equivalent of Road to Avonlee. Jesus would be so proud, etc.

You are always new series:

I have no limit now to my love [Jack Thornton/Elizabeth Thatcher, When Calls the Heart, R, 6400+ words]
A few weeks after Jack kisses Elizabeth for the second time (and third, and fourth, and fifth), he begins to wonder about chaperones.
Sex acts featured: grinding, light petting, shame

o let me have thee whole [Jack Thornton/Elizabeth Thatcher, When Calls the Heart, R, 8500+ words]

“So,” Jack says, standing across their brand-new bedroom on the very first night of their marriage. “Here we are.”
Sex acts featured: missionary position, fingering, chasteness

in a sweet unrest [Jack Thornton/Elizabeth Thatcher, When Calls the Heart, Explicit, 9400+ words]

The fourth night of their marriage, Elizabeth doesn’t bother to put on her nightdress.

Sex acts featured: cunnillingous (!!), not!missionary position, allusions to the Bible

Holy the air, the water, and the fire [Jack Thornton/Elizabeth Thatcher, When Calls the Heart, Explicit, 3700+ words]

It occurs to Elizabeth, as she’s lying in bed later that night, that she could do the same thing to Jack.

Sex acts featured: the chastest blowjob known to man, explicit reference to Adam and Eve, your authors' Catholic guilt

A/N: Titles are all from Keats. It is REALLY hard to get characters from 1910 with no sex education to fuck interestingly or well, p.s.

The one stand-alone fic that has no sex and that is probably the canary in the coal mine sign that your authors have a problem:

Fill for me a brimming bowl [Jack Thornton/Elizabeth Thatcher, When Calls the Heart, PG, 7500+ words]

Jack asks Elizabeth Thatcher for her hand in marriage one sunny April morning on the site of their future homestead, dropping to his knee in full uniform, shin sinking into the muddy spring grass. Aka, Jack and Elizabeth and class differences.

A/N: "It's like, a real-life problem that she can't cook, isn't it?" lowriseflare said one day, and I was like, "Oh yeah, objectively he really shouldn't be marrying her at all, she's a terrible choice of partner for frontier Alberta," and lowriseflare was like, "Huh. That's actually a very interesting conflict to me," and then we wrote this.

IN SUMMARY: if anyone in the world is interested in this dumb show, come talk to us about it, maybe? We are a sinful fandom of two, surrounded by Very Christian Hallmark fans (no, seriously, this show is for evangelicals and grandparents, that is the legit target audience, we are ALONE, please help us).

fic: before the world fell at our feet, Quantico, Alex/Ryan

2015-11-22T17:03:04Z

Title: before the world fell at our feet
Authors: threeguesses and lowriseflare
Fandom/ Pairing: Quantico, Alex/Ryan
Rating: R
Word Count: 3680+
Summary: LJ renaissance?

She loses her badge anyway, in the end.

THIS YULETIDE LETTER IS SO LATE, OH MY GOD

2015-11-22T16:41:15Z

I'm so sorry, Yuletgoat, apparently I've forgotten how to fandom like a sane, polite person. It's been years since I hopped on Ye Ol' Yuletide.

First of all, thank you so much for writing for me this year! Since this letter is so eff-ing late, please feel free to disregard it entirely. If not, here are some things that might be helpful!

General Likes/Dislikes

THINGS I ENJOY (though not, of course, all at once): Fic about women. Fic about women in love. Fic about women who are friends. Bechdel passes. The beginnings of relationships, when everything is shiny and new. Gen fic, of the super well-done kind where everyone is achingly in character. Magical realism. Tropey fic that takes the trope and turns it on its ear just slightly. Fic that is funny, or clever, or slightly sad. Details.

THINGS I DO NOT ENJOY: fluff, character bashing, fic that is a "missing scene" that basically just retells what we have already seen onscreen, established relationship fic unless there's more going on, kid!fic.

SEXY FIC: you know what, I'm going to cautiously say go for it, so long as it's in character.

IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS: lowriseflare can hang.

Quantico - Official Request:

I MEAN, on the one hand it feels like the show is telling me that Alex wants to fuck both of these people and I would love a fic that teases out the nuances of those relationships (although no straight up porn please). But on the other hand, if that isn't your bag, I would also really love a more gen fic about the three of them or even the whole damn ensemble at Quantico. My favourite parts of the show are the parts where it basically looks like FBI sleepaway camp, personally.

Ahahaha, okay, so clearly my policy was anti- porn-without-plot when I wrote this letter, but that feels hypocritical seeing as that's basically all I write, so. I TAKE IT BACK, do what you want. I would love a fic that's either Shelby/Alex/Ryan OR Shelby/Alex, Ryan/Alex OR gen, but please don't entirely ignore anybody. I really, really love the getting-together, first-kiss, first-time phase, so I would love a fic that explores that. No AUs, please, unless it's just a timeline AU. Oh, and please don't make the girls' relationship just a prop for Ryan/Alex, that would bum me out.

UnREAL - Official Request:

Honestly, do what you will, Yuletide Goat. Rachel/Quinn, Rachel/Adam, Quinn/Adam, everybody/everybody, a gen fic that's just about Rachel, or just about Quinn, or even just about Adam (although he is my least favourite of the three). I just really love UnREAL and how fucked up it is, and I want to see some fic. I leave it in your capable hands.

Actually, the above just about sums it up. I love UnREAL, I want five more seasons of it, and if I can't have that, then I want fic that explores how complex and messed.up. that show is. Anything that has Rachel using her powers of manipulation, be it professionall or personally, would be awesome. I love the inner workings about how the show is produced and the girls are maniupulated, so I would always love more of that.

Parenthood - Official Request:

Anything about Sarah Braverman, but I would especially love backstory - her growing up, her relationship with the other Bravermans, her moving out, the early years with Amber as a baby. Any of those things. I also, you know, half-ship her with Adam (I KNOW), but since he's not a character you can request, you definitely don't have to write that, Yulegoat.

Hm, I guess my thing about kid!fic doesn't really apply here, since I would love something that's set when Amber and Drew are small, or Sarah is first pregnant. I would also love backstory about when Sarah's generation are kids and/or teens, and how they are as siblings. And yes, I do ship Sarah with Adam, because I am TRASH. Also, also, I would love fic about Adam and Kristina first getting together as teenagers, but since you can't request him (THANKS FOR NOTHING, YULETIDE), that's obviously optional. All of this is optional!

OH LOOK, SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION + Prompts

2015-02-05T14:06:04Z

Remember how team threelowriseguessflares is writing books now? No? Well, here they are, in all their blue collar trilogy-y glory!

CRASH, a.k.a. the paramedics one: two paramedics! A Sam/Andy-esque age difference, only more pronounced! A widower! A gigantic Shameless-inspired family! Poverty! A craftsman! Man pain! Malk, now with vitamin R!

SINGE, a.k.a. the firefighters one: two firefighters! Italian families! Catholic guilt! Arsons! A heroine who is kind of chubby! Dark pasts! More man pain!

BANG, a.k.a. the cops one (yep, that's right): two cops! Shootings! Partners who are partners! Sexual tension! Your authors finally man up enough to write a character of colour! OUT MARCH 3rd, pre-order now!

Either way, in honor of BANG premiering soon, I'm taking prompts! Hit me, people! (Is... is that still a thing people do? Hello? Is this on?)

here's that OTP meme everyone was doing literally three weeks ago?

2015-02-05T02:02:07Z

Also, hi, hello, what's up LJ, community of 10!

Choose 5 OTPs.

Sam/Andy, Rookie Blue

Alicia/Kalinda, Good Wife

Mulder/Scully, X-Files

Miranda/Andy, Devil Wears Prada

Han/Leia, Star Wars

1. Do you remember the episode/scene/chapter that you first started shipping 5 (Han/Leia, Star Wars)?

I DO, IN FACT. I was 12 years old and watching the Original Trilogy on VHS for the first time. The Hoth fight scene, you want me to stay because of the way you feel about me. Also, I rewound that kiss a million times. ORIGINAL FLAVOUR NERD.

2. Have you ever read fanfiction about 2 (Alicia/Kalinda, Good Wife)?

HAVE I. At one point, I had probably read everything in existance, but I haven't checked in a while, so.

NO QUESTION 3? Bonus, choose-your-own-adventure per petragem's example: if you had to gender-flip OR queer-ify any pairing, which would you chose?

HAN AND LEIA AS LESBIANS. I was going to just straight gender-flip them but no, lesbians. Lesbians is the answer.

4. If 3 (Mulder/Scully, X-Files) were to suddenly break up today, what would your reaction be?

WHO IS TO SAY THEY ARE EVEN TOGETHER NOW, HUH? Probably they're dead in the invasion we never got to see, so. Fuck you, Chris Carter.

5. Why is 1 (Andy/Sam, Rookie Blue) so important?

PARTNERS WHO ARE PARTNERS. But no, actually, they are the most important of all, because they are how I met lowriseflare.

6. Is 4 (Miranda/Andy, Devil Wears Prada) a funny ship or a serious ship?

I mean, since they only exist in my mind, this is a kind of pick-your-poison situation, no? EITHER WAY, a May-December romance with an unhealthy power imbalance between two women who kind of hate each other--definitely a funny ship. For suuuure.

7. Out of all your ships listed, which ship has the most chemistry?

OH WOW THIS IS HARD. I was going to say the cops without thinking, but like--Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher had some sexual tension, yo. ...But no. Cops. Always the cops.

8. Of all the ships, which ship has the strongest bond?

What kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind of bond are we talking about here? Hm. Probably Mulder and Scully? Alien apolcolypses will do that. ALSO RIGHT THEY HAVE A LITERAL CHILD TOGETHER LOL, okay, yes, them.

9. How many times have you read/watched 2’s (Alicia/Kalinda, Good Wife) fandom?

HUH. Actually, not that much? Once on original airing, and then like once on rewatch? Plus I haven't even scene the last two-odd seasons.

10. Which ship lasted the longest?

Like, in my heart, or...? I think Mulder and Scully have been together longest, canonically (YES, I IGNORE STAR WARS EU FUCK THAT NOISE CHEWIE'S NOT DEAD). Unless is turns out Han and Leia are still on and popping in this latest movie, I suppose.

11. How many times, if ever, has 5 (Han/Leia, Star Wars) broken up?

Oh, who knows. In my mind, they both periodically try to leave each other for Luke.

12. If the world was suddenly thrust into a zombie apocalypse, which ship would make it out alive, 1 (Sam/Andy, Rookie Blue) or 3 (Mulder/Scully, X-Files)?

Hm, well everyone here carries a side arm and like, knows how to use it, so. BUT if there was a zombie apocolypse, Mulder and Scully definitely knew it was coming like 10+ years in advance, PLUS we have Dana Scully, MD on that team, so they at least have a head start. Then again, they also DEFINITELY already tried and failed to prevent the apocolypse, so now they feel guilty and responsible and have survivor's remorse, and God knows William probably got his brains eaten or something, so they might kill themselves out of despair. SAM AND ANDY IT IS.

13. Did 4 (Miranda/Andy, Devil Wears Prada) ever have to hide their relationship for any reason?

Oh for sure. EVEN FROM THE MOVIE AUDIENCE.

14. Is 5 (Han/Leia, Star Wars) still together?

Let's be real, that relationship ended in a messy space divorce.

15. SECOND BONUS: which couple has a threesome with someone else from their canon?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, either Sam and Andy bang Gail together or Han and Leia fuck Luke. Probably the second.

16. If all five ships were put into a couple’s Hunger Games, which couple would win?

Alicia and Kalinda, because Kalinda would kill EVERYONE. Alicia would never even notice she was in the Hunger Games, either, she would just think she was on a camping trip or something and be like, Kalinda, I hate you! Kalinda, why are you covered in blood! the whole time. Kalinda would stare pensively into the middle distance, END SCENE.

17. Has anyone ever tried to sabotage 5’s (Han/Leia) ship?

Oh sure Leia's twin brother did a bunch.

18. Which ship(s) would you defend to the death and beyond?

...None of them? I mean, death and beyond? Really?

19. Have you ever spent hours a day going through 3’s (Mulder/Scully) tumblr page?

I would kill myself if I thought either of those characters had a tumblr.

20. If an evil witch descended from the sky and told you that you had to pick one of the five ships to break up forever, which ship would you sink?

Alicia/Kalinda. Run, Kalinda! Run!

fic: forgiveness, I saved a plate for you (Rookie Blue, Sam/Andy)

2013-10-31T13:16:53Z

Title: forgiveness, I save a plate for you
Author: threeguesses
Rating: PG
A/N: The "lowriseflare and threeguesses wrote a book!" fic extravaganza continues. radleyboo prompted: Anything with Sam's manpain.

The third day after surgery, it’s agreed that Sam can walk around the hospital unsupervised. The nurse who tells him holds out the news like a gift, like here, shuffle through the waxed hallways with the other gimps and be happy about it. Sam just barely manages not to tell her where to go.

Still, there’s not a shit-ton of stimulation to be had lying on your back behind a privacy curtain, so eventually he drags his ass out of bed. His first trip, he makes it as far as the big bay windows in the hallway, spends a good ten minutes staring down at the smokers. Every hospital Sam’s ever been in, it feels like, there’s a group of them clustered exactly nine bylaw-mandated feet away from the entrance. More than clubs, more than bars, more than outside any office building in the nation. Hospitals.

They were outside SickKids too, Sam remembers, where Sarah got treated all those years ago. A wall of smoke in the atrium when his mom took him outside to run around. Sam was nine. He remembers the murals and riding in the big elevator, eating chicken nuggets in the hospital cafeteria. No one told him his sister was being treated for vaginal trauma. No one said the word rape at all. All that Sam knew was that there were boys, bad boys, and Sarah ran. “You did a good job,” he overheard their mom telling Sarah in the hospital bed. “You did exactly right.” Sam still remembers the way her voice turned sideways with tears.

Sam’s dad smoked.

So. Sam makes it to the windows, stands for a while, and shuffles back.

“Hear you can walk now,” McNally announces later, banging in with her go-bag over her shoulder. For the past two nights she’s been coming by after shift to sit by Sam’s bedside for an awkward half-hour, asking chirpy questions about his pain level whenever there’s a lull in conversation. By Sam’s calculations, she’s about one uncomfortable silence away from fluffing his pillows. She’s driving him up the fucking wall.

He’s never been more grateful for another person in his entire life.

“Just like Lazarus,” he agrees, watching her zip herself out of her dumb puffer jacket. She smells like the cold. Then: “Wait, who told you?” The nurses all hate McNally. Just yesterday, she was told off for laughing too loudly at her own joke.

Andy shrugs, shifting aside a plant so she can perch on the windowsill. Sam’s got about a million of them, everything from expensive bouquets to the tiny pots you can pick up at the supermarket. Oliver sent a giant, obnoxiously pink It’s a Girl! bear. “Carol? I don’t know, whichever one doesn’t hate joy.”

“I hate joy,” Sam reminds her, gesturing at himself. “That one is me.” When he first woke up from the morphine, he yelled and yelled and yelled. He told her to go back to Collins and leave him the fuck alone.

She went to get a coffee.

Now McNally just smiles, flicking the end of her ponytail free of her lipgloss. “Okay,” she says. “Then I hate joy, too.”

No, you don’t, Sam wants to tell her. You really don’t.

“Okay,” he sighs. “Pull up a chair, stay awhile.”

all of the things are happening at once

2013-10-28T16:56:59Z

Guess what you guys, team threelowriseguessflares' book has an official preview out:

See here for more, and follow us on Twitter @Ruby_McNally if you're interested in getting to know our other secret identity. (Double-secret? We have pseudonym upon pseudonym now, for real, it's a little ridiculous.) Also, we're still taking prompts over here for our once-a-week comment!fic countdown to release day. This is our ad campaign right here, please contribute to the cause, etc., etc. xox

GUESS WHAT YOU GUYS.

2013-10-20T23:18:48Z

Team threelowriseguessflares made a thing. An official thing. A thing with a publication date:

That's right, we turned porn into a marketable skill. Come check it out.

FIC: the sea would have left its shores [rookie blue, sam/andy]

2013-03-08T21:06:28Z

Title: the sea would have left its shores
Authors: lowriseflare and threeguesses
Fandom/Pairing: Rookie Blue, Sam/Andy
Rating: Haaaaaard R
Kinks/Warnings: Anal
Word Count: ~8,000
Summary: The one where Andy has a sexy dream?
A/N: I don't know, you guys. We debated for two days about how to make the prompt "Andy cums in her sleep" work, and this was the answer we settled on? ONE HUNDRED PERCENT MORE INAPPROPRIATE THAN THE ORIGINAL CONCEPT, OBVIOUSLY, BECAUSE THAT'S HOW WE ROLL. Next up: we tackle the one with the lactation kink? (FALSE, WE WILL NOT DO THAT. Please don't ask us.)

It isn’t a big deal, honestly.

They’ve just gotten back together--like, just just--and Andy’s hormones are basically jacked up to eleven all the time anyway, asleep or not. Not to mention she isn’t used to going to bed undressed anymore, no thick sweatpants to act as a barrier, and these things happen, okay? She barely even remembers the details of the dream. It jolts her awake though, that’s for damn sure, her thighs still glued together from last night and Sam watching from the other side of the bed, something on his face that looks momentarily like shock.

"What?" she demands, way more shrilly than she means to. Her heart is pounding, the last of the feeling still pumping through her veins. "What?"

"Nothing." Sam shakes his head, stares another minute. His face is sleepy, but totally alert. "But. Did you just--?"

God. Andy feels herself flush violently, in a way she hasn't since middle school, when Carli Wong pantsed her in front of the entire fricking gym class. "No," she says automatically. Then: "Did what?" Then: "Ugh, fine. Yes." She covers her face with both hands, then peeks. "Shut up."

"I didn't say anything," Sam grins. He rolls over, one hand sneaking up her bare thighs. "Good?"

Andy shivers at the contact, how his palm stutters a little along her sticky skin. Both of them are still pretty naked from last night, that is a fact. "Wasn't terrible."

"Mm." Sam's hand creeps higher, knuckles just barely brushing the hair. "Whatcha dreaming about over there?"

Andy groans. "Nothing." Then: "None of your business."

Sam raises his eyebrows, thumb brushing lightly over the damp curls. "Secret?" he asks, just quietly, and ugh, it shouldn't matter, but they just got back together and--

"Well, no." Andy shrugs against the sheets. "I mean--" She waves a hand at him, sort of spastically. "Duh."

"Duh." Sam's still grinning that same curly grin, like he really, really does not hate the idea that even her subconscious is--jeez. "Don't want to get any more specific than that, huh?" He opens her up a little then, slides one finger along the whole length of her so he can feel just how wet she really is.

Andy's legs fall open like a reflex, her not really meaning to make it so easy for him and not being able to help it. "Not particularly."

"Hm." Sam dips just the very tip of his finger inside her, then pulls back entirely. "Too bad."

"Ugh," Andy groans, throwing an arm up over her face. "I don't even remember, okay?" Not strictly true, actually--there were um, some specific appendages involved--but close enough. She wiggles her hips a bit, hoping to get the show on the road. Sam Swarek, she has learned from experience: definitely a morning sex person. "Let's just settle for the real thing," she says, trying to brazen it out. He still makes her shy about the weirdest things. "Maybe it'll jog my memory."

Sam traces quick fingers over her stomach, fussing with her hip bones. His grin is going nowhere fast. "I dunno, McNally. You seem pretty impatient for a person whose body just took care of itself."

"Shut up," Andy repeats, whining as he runs those knuckles up her rib cage and over the curve of her breast--which, yes, good, nice, but not exactly what she's after here. She lowers her arm and peeks at him through her eyelashes. "Anyway, I can go more than once."

That gets his attention: Sam's smile fades, replaced by something significantly less smug but no less predatory. "I know you can," he says, a little roughly. He flips his hand and plucks at her nipple, watches as it stiffens under his touch. "Gotta tell me first, though."

Andy rolls her eyes and takes charge, propping up on one elbow and reaching down underneath the sheets to grab him. Sam catches her wrist right before she does.

"Really?" she asks skeptically, nodding down to where he's tenting up the blankets a bit. "You wanna play it that way? Cause I could always just leave you hanging." She wouldn't, actually--getting there in her sleep is always a tease, this sharp directionless pinch between her legs that leaves her frustrated more than anything--but Sam doesn't have to know that.

Looking at his face, though, he might be calling her bluff. "Oh yeah?" He twists her nipple hard with his free hand, then runs his fingers down her belly to shove two inside. Andy's entire body curls. "I doubt it. Now tell me what it was about."

He leaves his fingers in place, just pressing; Andy resists working herself on them like a sex-starved maniac. "Was about you," she pants. "You and me." She reaches for him again, the other hand this time.

Sam's not buying, though--he pulls his fingers out to capture this wrist too. "What were we doing?" he asks, collecting her hands together up over her head.

Andy whines. "Reading the newspaper," she says as snottily as she can muster, Sam swinging one leg over her body so she's trapped underneath him, his knees on either side of hers. His cock bumps up against his belly, leaking a little, but he's got this expression like he'll wait her out all day. He might, too: neither one of them have to work until tonight. "Was really scandalous stuff."

Sam raises his eyebrows. "Cute," he says, transferring both her wrists to one hand and snaking his free one down in between them again. His fingers feel rough and thick and purposeful. He smells like sleep and like himself.

Andy raises hers back, remembering more than she wants to tell him. She struggles a little, just to see what he'll do.

"Don't get fresh," Sam tells her mildly, grinding her wrists into the pillow, words and deeds not matching up at all. Andy shivers. "Was it something like this?" He works a third finger inside, palm bumping up against her clit.

It was not, as a matter of fact. But it feels so good Andy seriously considers lying, making up a story about how he fingered her at their desks or something, just embarrassing enough that he'll believe her. She hesitates too long, though, and Sam backs off.

"No?" he asks, watching her face for clues like she's a perp he's questioning. "Something more involved, maybe?"

Andy whimpers, frustrated. There's no reason she couldn't just tell him, she guesses--it's over the line, sure, but not really kinkier than anything else they've done--but she finds she kind of wants to keep it to herself or at least make him work for it, to clutch it like a stone in her sweaty hand until she's sure it's worth giving up. She thinks like that a lot more since they got back together, Andy's finding, like she's holding a little piece of herself back. She doesn't know if it means she's more grown-up now, or just gun-shy.

Sam's not making a distinction, meanwhile, biting at her neck in a way that might or might not be friendly. "'Nally, sweetheart," he says, down by her ear; he's dropped low enough that he's pressed against her stomach, hot and hard. They slept at his apartment last night, morning light winking across the floor. "Wanna know."

Andy breathes out, chest moving against his. His cock is sticky, leftover from last night or still leaking, Andy's not sure which--he can never wait, in the mornings. She takes another breath. "Make it worth my while," she announces bossily, nudging her head at his. Nudging his head down, actually; she almost isn't sure what she means until she does it.

Sam figures it out real quick. "Oh, so it's like that?" He backs off her wrists slowly, trailing his hand down her arms. He looks, just maybe, like he can't quite believe her.

Andy gets both hands on his head and pushes. "It's exactly like that, yeah."

Sam nips at her stomach. "Bossy." She is, too, Andy knows it; that's another thing since they started back up again, not in bed so much, that was never really a problem, but more like if she wants to go out like a normal couple they are sure as shit going out like a normal couple, enough of his weird let's stay in and fuck like rabbits for a full weekend without seeing anyone crap. Not that they haven't been fucking like rabbits, exactly, but. There's a time and a place, Andy thinks.

Like right now for instance, maybe: Sam's spreading her open with two clever thumbs and licking thoroughly, one arm wrapped around her thigh to keep her still. Andy whines.

He gets her there real quick, how wound up she is from the dream and how well he knows her body. He might, if Andy is not mistaken, even be hurrying; he sucks at her clit with a single-minded intent, two fingers crooked inside like it's a formula, How To Get McNally Off. It works, of course--it actually works really, really well--but when Sam pops his head back up, looking hugely pleased with himself, Andy finds herself narrowing her eyes.

"Again," she tells him. Sam's eyebrows hit his hairline, and she shrugs airily. "Was some dream, is all I'm saying. But if you don't wanna hear--"

Sam growls, flipping her onto her stomach.

Which: crap, he means business. Andy pillows her forehead on one arm and tangles one fist in her hair as she opens her legs to accommodate him, shivering as the cool air hits everywhere she's most sensitive. It's not enough for him, though: Sam claps her on the back of her thigh with the flat of his palm, not gently. "Up," he orders.

Andy breathes in. "Now who's bossy?" she mutters; she shifts up onto her knees anyway, though, knowing he likes having her open to him like this, being able to see every private part of her. Sam bites sharply at the curve of her ass.

"You're gonna tell me eventually," he warns, sucking messily, lips and teeth and curling, clever tongue. He's got one arm wrapped around her thigh and the other hand on her ass, fingers digging in hard enough to leave a mark. Andy wiggles a bit, just to feel him double the pressure.

"It was like this," she murmurs into the back of her arm, holding still as he licks up up up. "Or, not like this, not doing this, but like--from behind."

"From behind, huh?" Sam sounds interested, but not particularly shocked or anything: there's no reason for him to be, duh, they've been doing it like that since the cover apartment, how she let him bend her over the counter in his sorry excuse for a kitchen, her up in the middle of the night for a glass of water and his fingers sneaking down between her legs. His mouth is so stupidly, incredibly warm. "We can probably make that happen. Where were we, hm? Gonna tell me that part?"

"No, like." Andy squeezes her eyes shut even though he can't see her, rolling her hot forehead back and forth across her arm. "Behind."

For an entire beat, Sam goes completely, heartbreakingly still. "Fuck, Andy." He's got his face right there, right where she means, and he licks her hard and focused and so so dirty. "Sweetheart, I--" He actually sounds at a loss for words.

Andy hmms, curling her arm to hide her entire face. "Was just a dream," she mumbles into her own skin, even as she's completely pushing back against him, looking for more of it.

"Do you want--?" Sam curls his fingers down between her legs, sliding them up inside her slippery body and pulling them out completely soaked. He draws them up and around, curious. "We could. But we'd need, um."

Andy beats her forehead off her arm. "Lube," she finishes, a blush everyone on her not covered by hair. "Yep."

Sam hums his agreement into her skin, circling with one gentle finger. He pushes inside, just a little, and Andy gasps. "Have lotion," he mutters, pulling back like he's afraid he's going to hurt her. "Could give it a shot."

"Can you use lotion?" Andy turns her head so he can hear her better. "Like, is that going to--?" She hides her face again, embarrassed, heart pounding a bit at the idea of trying it--like, teasing him is one thing, but jesus. "Ugh, sorry, this is not a sexy conversation."

"Andy." Sam huffs a desperate-sounding laugh, climbs back up her body so his mouth is right against the back of her neck. "Are you kidding me, sweetheart, you're the sexiest thing I've ever--"

"Have you ever?" she asks, interrupting. He wouldn't talk much about his past the first time they were together. Andy isn't sure if she wants to know or not. "I mean."

Sam bites lightly, teeth into the sensitive skin of her nape. "No," he huffs, warm warm breath through her hair. "I mean, not all--fingers, but not." He swallows, and Andy feels it through her whole body. "Not."

Not. Andy reaches back for him, cupping the base of his skull even as she keeps pressing her own face into the bed. He's hard as anything against the back of her thigh, poker hot. "So, um. We could--" She shifts her hips against the mattress, feeling feverish and impatient. "Please, Sam, just. Something."

"Okay." He kisses her neck and unwinds her fingers from his hair, holding her hand as he sits up to rummage through the bedside table. "You can use this," he tells her, dangling the bottle in her field of vision. "I use it to--so." He laughs, just this side of ragged.

That makes Andy turns her head, grinning a little. "Oh yeah?" His bedside table and a bottle of lotion, of course, just like teenage boys all over the world.

"Yeah." Sam grins back, a little sheepish. He kisses his way down her body one more time, Andy's face pressed into the pillows and her knees digging into the bed; she listens as he clicks the top of the bottle open, tugging restlessly at the hair at her crown. The lotion feels very, very cold. "I got you," Sam promises quietly, rubbing in circles she feels absolutely everywhere. "You're okay."

Andy nods into her elbow, whimpering as he works one finger in deep and easy, stretching her out as slow as he can before he adds another. Andy's hands make two fists in the sheets. It feels insane and a little scary, not painful exactly but more like she's teetering on the edge of something, like she's out of control and could spin out any second with nothing to catch her. She's tried real hard to avoid this feeling, actually, ever since they got back together. She's not entirely sure about it now.

(It's good, though. Sam twists his fingers a little inside her, so slow and so gentle, and fuck. It's really, really good.)

"Please," she tells him, lifting up a bit so he can get his other hand underneath her, rubbing at her clit gentle and familiar and so so slow. It's good enough to make her clench--which does hurt, actually, just a little. Andy freezes up, then bears down again deliberately, testing out the edges of the feeling.

"Okay?" Sam breathes, mouth just ghosting across her skin. His fingers twist again, careful. "What do you need?"

Andy tries rocking herself back for a second, controlling the penetration, but she doesn't have the leverage. She's literally too tight, Sam has to do all the moving. "I--" Christ, that's scary; Andy breathes. "Okay. Try another." They're going to need a condom, she realizes. If they're seriously going to--they're going to need a condom.

He re-ups on the lotion before he does it, the entire lower half of Andy's body feeling enormously slippery and unfamiliar, like possibly she belongs in the ocean. Sam presses a kiss against her spine. "You're amazing," he promises as he works a third finger inside her, this burn that's got her shifting against the mattress for a minute, trying to get comfortable. His fingers are steady and rough against her clit. “You're doing so good, Andy, jesus."

Andy whines in reply, liking the praise in spite of herself, how low and private his voice is. She spreads her legs as wide as she possibly can. "Sam," she manages after a moment, swallowing audibly. "I just--let's--we probably need--" Andy takes a breath. "Right?"

Sam nods against her skin, right there with the gist. "Yeah, um. I think I still have--" He plants a series of wet kisses along her spine and ass as he extracts his fingers, like maybe he can somehow distract her that way, all pay no attention to the man behind the curtain; Andy feels every inch just the same. "There you go," Sam murmurs when they're separate again, one last kiss where his fingers just were. "Perfect."

Andy shivers, feeling stretched out and underwater-foreign. She moves her forehead to a fresh patch of pillow while he rummages around in the bedside table again. Unclenches her fingers from the sheets. Tries to breathe. There is a long, quiet pause.

Finally: "Sam?"

"Yeah." He rubs both hands up her legs, warm. "Right here, I have one, I just--I don't want to hurt you."

The answer makes Andy's heart do a funny swooping thing, although she guesses I don't want to hurt you is a pretty low bar for romance; still, it always knocks her off her feet a little when Sam sounds unsure about anything where she's concerned. Just thinking about his voice the first night they got back together is enough to make her squeeze her eyes shut one more time. "You're not gonna hurt me," she promises, never mind that in reality she has no idea if that's true. It's not like she's ever done this before, either. "If you hurt me we'll stop," she amends.

"Okay." Sam seems happy enough to take her lead on things for the time being, digging the bottle of lotion out of the bedsheets. He rubs it into her thighs and ass for a long time before he does anything else, enough that Andy's heart is about to pound out of her chest with anticipation when she feels him shift his weight to line them up.

"Tell me," he says again, a lot closer than he was a second ago. "'Bout what it was like in your dream."

"I--" It was unrealistic, is what it was, them having standard tab A, slot B sex and then Andy begging him to switch. That was enough, in the dream--Andy was done so fast she doesn't even remember what her subconscious thought it felt like, just that she woke up throbbing. Basically, though, all of that pretty much adds up to: "It made me come," she tells Sam, rocking back a bit to feel him bump up against her. Everything is so, so slippery.

"'Nally." His mouth is right by her ear, these great desperate breaths. "All right. Slow, okay?" He's got one arm braced near hers, the other down between them; Andy feels him slide two fingers inside, checking, then the blunt head of his cock. "Talk to me," he says, pressing forward just barely.

"O-okay," Andy stutters. She's trying to relax, but it's hard. She slides a hand underneath to touch herself, more for reassurance than anything else. "Um." It's slow slow slow but it's definitely working, inch by weird, full inch; it hurts. "You talk to me," she tells Sam, breathing through the feeling. It's not a bad hurt, necessarily.

"You all right?" he asks her anyway--the way all her muscles are tensed up underneath him is making him tense too, she can tell, like he's taking all his cues from her. Andy counts to three before she exhales. The whole entire front of him is warm warm warm against her back. "Andy."

Andy nods. "Mm-hmm," she promises. "S'just scary." She opens her mouth again before he can get any ideas: "Don't stop."

"Won't stop," Sam murmurs into her shoulder. He presses in another inch like he's looking to prove it, Andy rubbing her clit a little harder to offset the burn. Not a bad hurt, no; it's not quite pleasure either though, like her whole nervous system is confused, a bunch of dragonflies banging around inside a jar. He feels enormous like this, it's crazy. He feels huge. "Don't be scared, though," he says quietly. "S'just me." Then, like he's remembering what she asked him all of a sudden: "Always wanted to try this with you," he confesses, so quiet she almost isn't even sure she heard him correctly. "Just you."

Andy whines, she can't help it, bucking into her own touch fretfully then backing up into him. "What's it feel like?" she gasps. Another inch now, getting down to where his cock is thicker; Andy reaches back to feel how much is left, fingers bumping over the slippery ring of latex. "Sam Sam Sam, tell me what it's like."

Sam groans. He's got his mouth on her shoulder and neck, biting like he does when he's trying to control himself, soft-toothed. "Tight," he says. "Fuck, Andy, you're so tight, I can't--" He breaks off, running his hands all over her body, rubbing her back like she's a little kid with a fever. "What about you?"

Andy doesn't really know how to answer that so she slides her fingers back down between her legs instead, crooking two up inside. "I can feel you here," she tells him, the scary thin wall of skin and how he's right there on the other side, pushing. "Can you--?" She moves her hand, fucking herself. "Sam. Does it--?"

"Oh, my god." Sam bites down hard on the meat of her shoulder, enough that there's probably going to be a mark there once they're through. He doesn't say anything for a second after that, like he's focusing, like he really needs to concentrate if he's not going to come before he's even all the way inside. Andy does it again, her fingers deep and slippery, and he growls. "You gotta stop that," he warns her, and now he's the one whose whole entire body has gone piano-string taut. "Fuck, you gotta stop, Andy, or--"

Andy hums into the pillows, pleased--she likes that she's not the only person who's like, a hair's breadth away from completely losing it here. It's distracting as all hell, too, or maybe she's just finally getting used to what this feels like, because the last couple of inches aren't nearly as intense as she's thinking they're going to be. She strokes against that thin thin skin inside her one more time, taking a chance--she's invested in this now, actually, wants to see it through until the end-- but Sam only inhales sharply. She pulls all the way out to rub some more. "Is that--" she asks when his hips are pressed flush against her, breaking off a little breathlessly. It's definitely more like pleasure now, if she had to choose, but he's also holding totally still, so. "I mean, are you all the way--"

"Yeah." Sam swallows. "That's it, I'm--fuck, Andy, you're so good."

Andy hums at a him a little, really more of a purr. It feels like an accomplishment now that he's there, a magic trick for the playground, look at what my body can do. Andy has a double-jointed thumb she used to show-off at recess; this feels a bit like that. "How good?" she asks playfully, rounding her back and then arching it, feeling the shift inside. "Hmm? Tell me."

"So good," Sam repeats, brushing through her hair. His hands are sticky with lotion, but it feels so wonderful Andy doesn't care. "You're perfect, god." He moves a bit, just gently; Andy would bet it isn't even intentional, but oh, it feels. "Fuck," Sam hisses, feeling too. "The best, sweetheart, I love you so much."

That's nice, hearing that, but it's maybe not necessarily the praise Andy is after? She rubs her clit hard, wiggling back at him again. And god, that's--there is friction there. "Am I good girl?" she asks, so quiet it's more breath than words.

"Andy." Sam says her name loud and clear and thrusts--not hard, even, but sudden, enough that Andy lets out a startled, animal gasp. Right away he gets an arm around her and holds. "Fuck," he hisses, mouth at her neck and her shoulder and her ear, wet and desperate. He's still got one messy hand in her hair. "Shit, sweetheart, I'm sorry, do you want--."

"S'okay." Andy breathes for a second, assessing. It's a shock, absolutely, the burn and stretch of it surprising--but not, all told, too painful to feel good. Like...kind of the opposite, actually. "Do that again," she instructs him after a minute, moving her fingers cautiously; it's kind of hot, how much he likes how much she likes to hear it. They've been at this a long time already. She thinks he must be starting to ache by now. "Like, a little slower."

"Yeah?" Sam waits for her nod before he does it, the drag of him completely unreal as he pulls maybe halfway out and then goes about fitting himself back inside her. She feels weirdly tiny, and incredibly full. "Good girl," he tells her once he bottoms out, low and secret; for the first time since they started, Andy's more confident than not that she's going to be able to get off like this.

"Again," she tells him, working herself over harder. She could make it happen just like this, she's almost sure, how well she knows her own clit enough to block everything else out, but it's not exactly the way she wants to-- "Do it for real, though," she adds. "Like the way you do it when we're--when it's normal."

Not exactly eloquent, but Sam gets the message anyway, arm around her middle and his mouth fused to her neck. "Yeah," he tells her, pulling out properly and thrusting back in, their standard rhythm slowed down to quarter-speed. He does it again, then again, Andy prompting him every time, and on the third go-round when he pushes back inside she fits two fingers into herself in the same motion, the heel of her hand grinding against her clit.

Sam stops, rigid-still again. "Is that--did you just--?" He can't see, Andy realizes, but he's definitely able to feel.

"Yeah," she confesses. "Just two, um. Two fingers."

Sam hisses, then bites her neck. And then: "Try three."

"Um. Okay. Yeah." Andy does what he tells her, holding them close together as she works them inside, actually forgetting to breathe for a minute. When she finally exhales it's all in a rush. "S'it feel tighter?" she whispers curiously. God knows it does for her, crap, between her fingers and his cock there's noplace for her to go at all, how she gets shoved forward every time he thrusts. "Sam--"

"Yeah." Sam sounds choked; the hand around her middle finds her nipple, his fingers still lotion-slick. "S'tighter."

Jesus. "Keep moving," she orders gently; bossy, sure, but she can feel it building now, this sharp edgy feeling that's way different than normal, down so low and deep in her tissue. "Crap, Sam, it feels really good now."

"Are you--" Sam cups her breast fully, rolling the nipple back and forth just how she likes. His hips are going slow and steady now, regular pulses. "God, Andy. You seriously gonna?" He's shocked, she can tell, probably not sure he'd get her there any more than she was.

She almost doesn't want to jinx it, how good and deep it's building, but. "Uh-huh." Then, after a particularly good thrust: "Oh, yeah. Definitely."

Sam groans, the fingers in Andy's hair tightening almost to the point of pain. She whimpers, but he doesn't let up. "Look at me," he says, head down next to hers and nudging. "Please, McNally. Need you to look." And the need, that gets to her a little: Andy looks. His eyes are so fucking dark, this heartbreakingly serious face on him and the thready tap of his heart against the flat of her back. She loves him, too. She always has. "You're perfect," Sam says again, still moving inside her; Andy makes a wordless sound, hangs on. "Come on, sweetheart. Want to feel you come like this."

Another few seconds and she gives him what he's after, the orgasm hitting like a goddamn earthquake, like nothing she's ever felt before in her life. Sam fucks her all the way through it. He talks to her, too, tells her over and over what a good girl she is--although she isn't, she can't be, not when she likes this so criminally much, how deep he's buried in her--jesus. She's loud enough to wake the neighbors, if they aren't up already. Works herself on her fingers and his cock until she's totally, completely done.

"Andy," Sam says, this voice like she's wrecked him. He pets up her side a little bit, soothing. Andy's whole body jumps.

"Fuck," she mutters, turning her face back to press against the mattress. Her neck hurts now, the angle she was holding it at to see him, but everything else is like boiled spaghetti. "Sam. Fuck." She can feel him deep inside, completely still again like he's worried it'll be too much. Andy wiggles her fingers, rubbing through the thin layer of skin, and he hisses.

"That feels really good," he confesses, this very low, private voice. He's still got one arm curved around the front of her body, hot and possessive. "You feel amazing." He's kissing her like he can't stop, her ear and the side of her face, sucking at the point of her jaw. Andy makes a decision, leaving her fingers where they are, all three of them.

"How tight was it?" she asks, genuinely curious. "When I--how tight was it?"

Sam exhales. Andy can feel how tense he is behind her, trying not to move, all this packed muscle from his shoulders down to his thighs. "Tight, sweetheart," he admits quietly. He shifts his weight a little, humming as she curls her fingers up inside herself; he tries thrusting again, just gently, slow and tentative like he was before. "You want me to--"

"No," she says, no hesitation at all; pull out is what he's going to offer, and that's the last thing Andy wants. She shoves herself back against him, hard and rough enough that they both gasp. "Stay. Wanna feel you come like this, too."

Sam groans. "Tell me if it's too much," he warns her, palming down her body and curling two big hands around her hipbones. "Andy. You gotta tell me, okay?"

His voice is soft and rough all at once, stalling out around her name like it's something precious. Andy wants to wrap herself in sound.

"Not gonna be too much," she promises, shoving up on her hands and knees and taking Sam with her, both of them fused from shoulder to thigh. Andy locks her elbows. "Just like this," she instructs. Sam groans, already moving with his head pressed against her back, desperate, but Andy wants him to go faster. Wants it to be as good as hers was. "Come on," she whispers, covering the hand he's still got wrapped around her hipbone. "Come on, Sam, fuck me."

And--yeah. Sam does.

It does hurt some this time, just a little, how swollen and sensitive everything is by now. Andy pulls in a ragged breath. It's nothing she can't handle though, on top of which it's basically cancelled out by how much she wants to feel this happen, how private and close it feels for him to have her this way. His mouth is warm and wet against her back.

"Just yours," Andy mutters, wanting to help him along a little. Since she got back from the undercover and they got back together that kind of talk works for him even more than it used to, and he doesn't even get weird and tetchy about it afterwards anymore. It's basically one of Andy's favorite tricks. "You're the only one, Sam, okay, the only one I'd ever, ever let do this to me. Only you, just--"

Yup. Andy thought that might work.

"Fuck," he gasps, fingers intertwining with hers as his thrusts go fast and jerky, pressing both their hands into her hipbone so hard it hurts. Andy doesn't care, though, because the noise that tears out of his throat is so after-dark private it makes her blush, heat shooting down her spine like someone took it out and dunked the bones in something molten. Andy is--yeah. Andy is probably going to want to do this again.

"That's it," she tells him now, feeling the heat straight through the condom. He's panting against her skin, these great shaky breaths that make his rib cage flare out against her back. "Love you so much." He always liked that, even before, but now he likes it enough to tug her head around for a messy kiss.

"You mine, huh?" he asks, just quiet. Andy almost doesn't hear, the kiss and how breathless he is.

"Yeah," she says when it registers, with a nod that might or might not translate, how close together their faces are. She drops down on her elbows and Sam follows, the weight of him crushing her a little in the best possible way. Her whole body feels dishrag-limp. "M'yours. You mine?"

(She never used to ask it back, when they were dating the first time. She didn't think he'd say no, exactly. She was just never entirely sure what he would say.)

But: "Pretty much, McNally," he tells her now, pushing her hair behind her ear so he can bump his nose against the side of her face. Then, shifting a bit like he's going to try and pull out as gently as humanly possible: "You ready?"

"Oh." Andy tenses back up a bit, she can't help it, the expectation of pain. "Yeah, um. Go ahead."

"You're okay," Sam tells her, kissing her jaw and her neck, way more tender than he normally is, like he's afraid she's going to break. He gets his mouth at her nape and worries it until she's relaxed again, then starts backing his hips up slow slow slow. It burns, no question--and not a good burn either, not anymore--but the way Sam's petting through her hair almost makes it all worth it. As soon as they're separate he tugs her up and around, rolling her onto her back so he can press his forehead against hers. "Andy," he whispers, touching his nose to hers.

"Yeah." She giggles a little bit then, nerves or relief or something, how she can't totally believe they just did that. That she wanted to do it in the first place. Sam's looking at her like he can't believe it either, dark eyes and that weirdly handsome face; Andy can feel how sloppy they are down in between them, the lotion plus how wet he got her, a sheen of sweat she hadn't even realized was covering her skin. "That was intense, right?"

"Mm-hmm." Sam huffs a laugh of his own, crow's feet crinkling up on either side of his face. "You okay? You need anything?"

She could use some water, actually. Wants him to stay right where he is.

"No, um." She threads both fingers up through his hair, sliding her legs along his. "Let's just hang out for a sec, okay? I want--" She wants to be held, pretty much. Wants Sam to cover her up, anchor her to the earth. "Don't move."

"Sure," Sam agrees, but he does anyway, rolling them over so she's sprawled out on his chest like a rug. He never gives her his weight for very long afterwards, prefers to pillow her on top and stroke her bare back; Andy guesses he likes her weight, too. "I'm not going anywhere," he promises. He hasn't even dealt with the condom yet.

"Mmm," Andy tells his shoulder. She could fall back to sleep like this, maybe. She could.

"So," Sam says, tracing down her spine. "Was it like your dream?"

Andy hesitates. It was better, actually, the hot slow stretch of it and the bone-deep pleasure, how powerful it made her feel to undo him like that. Still: there are limits. No way is she about to tell Sam he literally outpaced her wildest dreams. "Some," she admits finally, rubbing her nose along his collarbone and feeling shy. "Little different."

Sam raises his eyebrows. "Good different?" he asks.

"Ugh, stop fishing." Andy jabs him in the ribs with one bony elbow. She smiles anyway, though; he really isn't going anywhere, none of that anxious, restless energy radiating off him like she got used to the first time around. "Good different," she admits after a moment. "Yeah."

"Good." Sam combs through her hair, heavy and sticky with lotion from his earlier manhandling. "Sorry," he says now, lifting the tangled mess off her neck and flipping it across his chest, like maybe it's just so much laundry he can lay out to dry. "We could probably use a shower, huh?" It sounds a little like he doesn't want to move either.

Andy nods against his shoulder, drowsy and content. "Probably," she agrees. "Could maybe use some breakfast, too." She lifts her head to look at him, wrinkling her nose teasingly. "I mean, I'm just saying. You kind of owe me a hell of breakfast."

Sam laughs, real and startled, a white shining slice of teeth that lingers. "Kind of?" He touches up her spine for another minute, both of them quiet. Then: "Was better than I imagined."

That gets Andy's attention. "You thought about it?" she asks, popping her head up to peer at him. And like, obviously she thought about it--she dreamed about it, god--but. The idea of him thinking about it, of wanting it, makes her stomach do a weird flipping thing.

Sam makes a face at her: it's a relax, Rookie sort of look, the kind he used to shoot her all the time when he was her TO, except, like. Nicer. "Yeah, McNally." He slides his hand down the small of her back, grabs her ass and squeezes until she shivers. "I thought about it." His expression changes then, like possibly the thinking wasn't just a one time thing.

Andy shifts her hips, rubbing herself against his thigh, just lightly. She's not ready to go again, not yet, but she wants to get closer if she can. "How come you never said anything?" She's curious, actually; they've just--they've done a lot of stuff, is all.

Sam shrugs, this look like he might be a little--like he's definitely sort of sheepish. "Dunno," he says, pulling her harder against him, touching up the curve of her ass. He likes her there, Andy's always known, his hand finding its way into her back pocket practically every time they're out together. "Voicing the pitch always seemed sort of--" He breaks off, squeezing again. It makes her shiver, the memory of him deep inside. "You know," Sam finishes, pulling a face.

"Sort of seedy?" she supplies, giggling. She likes him shy, the once in a blue moon it appears. "I mean, sure." Her voice drops way down, imitating him. "'Sweetheart, let's experiment with other holes' is definitely kind of--"

Sam swats her, way lighter than he normally would, as if he's worried it'll hurt. "Shut up," he mutters, a stern expression that doesn't quite make it to his eyes. "Didn't know you'd like it too."

Andy grins, ducking her face into his neck again. "Well, it would seem that I like it," she reports, trying to do his voice some more but not really getting all the way there. It's just funny, that he'll tie her up and put her over his knee and let her lick him all over in a public bathroom while they're technically on the clock (once, that happened once, right when they got back together and both of them muttering this is is stupid this is so stupid the whole entire time) but he thought this was like, too far over the line even to mention. Andy doesn't know where her line is, honestly. It keeps moving on her the more time goes by. "So. Next time you wanna do something filthy and depraved to me, like. Raise your hand."

Sam snorts. "Raise my hand, huh?"

"Well, it's rude to call out," Andy says, tracing one thumb over his silky eyebrows. "Didn't you go to kindergarten?"

"Mmmhmm, twice even." Sam turns his head, kissing her wrist. "Got held back."

"Oh yeah?" Andy asks, trying not to let her whole body perk. He hardly ever talks about his childhood, even now. Andy will never know what made him want to tell her about the joke book that night all those years ago; her cut-up ankle, the moon, the alignment of Saturn. She's long since given up trying to recreate it. "Why?"

Sam grins against her arm, quicksilver. "Dumb cop." He opens his mouth, sucks a quick hickey; Andy lets him, liking the pull. Then: "I was a real shrimpy kid, late birthday. Was always kind of glad they did it, to be honest." He licks at the bruised place for a second, just soft. "Plus I missed a lot of it the first time, so."

So. Andy rests her chin on the back of her free hand, fingertips scritching gently through the hair on his chest. "Yeah?" is all she says, picturing him as a small, skinny five-year-old with a serious expression, wanting him to keep going. That's a thing they teach you at the Academy, that when you're trying to get information out of somebody the best thing to do is shut up and let them give it.

"Mm-hmm." Sam's tracing the veins in her forearm now, like there's something really important written there that needs his attention. "Moved a lot."

"Ah," Andy says, watching his finger draw looping patterns. After a second she makes a fist, trying to pop her veins like a teenage boy; it doesn't work but Sam smiles anyway, face still bent over her arm. His eyelashes are long long long. "That sucks," she tells him finally.

"Pretty much." Sam unclenches her fist finger by finger, tracing each one. "Always hated it, being introduced to the class in the middle of the year as the new kid. Got in a lot of fights."

"You were a scrapper, huh?" Andy can picture that just fine, actually, a kind of desperate, wiry strength to him as a teenager. But Sam shakes his head.

"Only when I was little," he says, looking up at her finally. "I stopped around grade five, grade six, maybe. I learned to stop."

"Yeah." Andy nods slowly, thinking about it. Takes a chance. "And this was with your family, or...?"

Sam startles a bit, shaking his head like he's honestly surprised. "System kid, McNally," he tells her, no hesitation at all. Then, still looking: "You knew that, didn't you?"

Andy feels her heart starts to pound a little, trying to calm it down before Sam feels it pounding, too. She did know that, she guesses, as much as you can know something that nobody's ever said to you before. As much as you can know something you don't even really want to imagine. "I mean," she says, feeling so, so careful. "You never told me for sure."

"Mmm." Sam thinks that over, feeling up and down her rib cage like she's a dog at the Westminster and he's checking for faults. "Guess I didn't," he concedes, rubbing the curve where her breasts pillow out against his chest. He must be able to feel her heart now, his hands and her thudding stomach right against his. It feels like it's beating all over Andy's body, like she's one giant ventricle. "I'm sorry I didn't."

Andy shrugs inside his grasp, trying to be easy and light. "S'okay. I--" She pauses, swallowing. "I guessed." The word drops out of her mouth like it's made of lead.

But Sam just nods at her, calm. "Yeah, I figured. Anyway, it was Sarah and I both. They tried to keep us together at first, but eventually--" He shrugs too, running his searching hands up to her face and drawing two lines across her cheekbones with his thumbs. "I guess it wasn't worth the effort. Sarah needed so much special attention."

"That sucks," Andy replies quietly, for lack of anything better. Her thoughts are skittering all over the place, how many follow-up questions she wants to ask him and how badly she doesn't want to say the wrong thing. She's so unused to him volunteering personal information about himself that now that he finally is, she doesn't totally know how to handle it. Supportive listing has never really been her strong suit.

Sam smiles faintly, pushing her bangs out of her eyes. "Yeah, McNally," he tells her. "Pretty much."

"I'm sorry." She touches back, rubbing up and down both his arms, the hard curve of muscle down to the knot of bone at his wrists. "Thanks, um. Thanks for telling me." She pushes up to look at him properly, lidded eyes and those Maybelline-black eyelashes nearly hiding his expression. He doesn't look like a person experiencing a watershed moment, but. "Not that you have to tell me anything," she adds in a rush. "Just--I don't know. Thanks." She cringes at the sound of her own voice, keyed up and pitchy. Probably this is the last sharing and caring session they'll have for a while.

But Sam smiles again, a little wider this time. "Got to keep the conversation moving somehow," is all he says.

That makes Andy laugh. "Now that you've gotten what you wanted out of me, you mean?" She drops back down to nip at his chin as he chuckles and just like that they're normal again, although maybe it's a new kind of normal now, Andy isn't sure. It feels like both of them are unfolding a little, or something. Whatever it is, she doesn't hate it. "You hungry?" she asks around a yawn.

She's thinking about scrambled eggs and bacon, holds my hand and brings me juice in bed, but Sam shakes his head and tightens his grip. "Stay for another minute," he tells her softly, and Andy does.

oh, why not

2013-02-23T19:23:11Z

Tell me about a story I haven't written yet, and I will give you ~~between one and three sentences~~ a paragraph (who are we kidding, I suck at brevity) from that story.

Because lowriseflare told me to, and she is a lady who gets what she wants. But mostly because MY GOD, LONG TIME NO SEE, LJ, I'M NOT DEAD, ETC.

FIC: so tough so early in the morning [rookie blue, sam/andy]

2013-01-04T03:08:04Z

Title: so tough so early in the morning
Author: lowriseflare and threeguesses
Fandom/Pairing: Rookie Blue/Stick It (um, kind of?) AU, Sam/Andy
Rating: R
Word Count: 24,000+
Summary: The one where he thinks she's a boy.
A/N: Another new year, another inappropriate AU! This one is like 90% my fault, I think? lowriseflare innocently prompted cross-dressing, to which I was like, "YES, OKAY, SO, how about an AU where Andy is actually Missy from Stick It, problem teen, and Sam arrests her and gives her a pat-down because he thinks she's a boy, only then there are surprise breasts, and probably they fuck later?" Yeah. This is that fic. As lowriseflare says: TOTALLY LEGAL IN CANADA.

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

FIC: And they all lived-- [The Paper Bag Princess, Political RPF]

2013-01-01T20:29:02Z

Title And they all lived--
Author threeguesses
Fandom/Pairing The Paper Bag Princess - Robert Munsch/Political RPF, Princess Elizabeth
Rating Gen
Word Count 4000+
Summary Elizabeth doesn't stay a princess for very long. In fact, she grows up to be someone else entirely.

Et voila, my Yuletide fic! For seawench, who wanted Princess Elizabeth, grown up and having adventures. WHICH I TOTALLY KIND OF WROTE, except for the part where I actually wrote about Princess Elizabeth growing out of fairy tales and into Elizabeth Warren? So, you know. ALMOST exactly the same thing.

Clark, Audrey's frozen from the waist down.

2012-12-26T22:13:49Z

Holy crap, you guys, this Yuletide was bananas. BANANAS. I got three, count 'em THREE, wonderful fics: the main, a treat, and a Madness drabble. Behold.

Three Men and a Chance at Love (3 539 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Three Men and a Baby (1987)
Rating: Teen and up
Characters/Relationship: Jack Holden/Peter Mitchell, Jack Holden/Michael Kellam, Jack Holden/Sylvia Bennington, Peter Mitchell/Sylvia Bennington, Peter Mitchell/Michael Kellam
Summary: Although Michael was the one who went to clubs and had been known to march in parades, Jack was the one who initiated the actual flirting, delighted at the opportunity to try something new. He was also the one who roped Peter into it. Quite possibly Peter would have lived out his entire life in middle-of-the-road, no-experiments heterosexuality, had not Jack been there to convince him otherwise.

THAT'S RIGHT, IT'S THREE MEN AND A BABY POLYAMORY FIC. I couldn't believe it when this popped up in my inbox. For real, I was so certain I wasn't going to get this request that my prompt read, in its entirety: "I MEAN, basically I just want happy fic where they fall in love and raise Mary? Isn't that what everyone wants after watching this movie?" AND HOLY CRAP, DID MY WRITER EVER DELIVER.

Guys, it has everything. Gradual re-negotiating relationships, HIV testing, Michael and Sylvia just not clicking romantically (of COURSE they wouldn't), Jack dispensing Hollywood style kisses, and a tie-in with Three Men and a Little Lady. Seriously. Run, do not walk.

A Lesson in Love (1 434 words) by Anonymous
Fandom(s): Parenthood (2010) The Giver - Lois Lowry
Rating: Teen and up
Characters/Relationship: The Giver, Jonas, Zeek Braverman, Camille Braverman, Amber Holt, Drew Holt, Sarah Braverman
Summary: Jonas learns about "it's complicated" via the Bravermans.

APPARENTLY WHOEVER WROTE THIS ONE KNOWS ME? Or, at least, knows my fic. I burningly curious, I will not lie to you. Either way, the concept is whip smart: the Giver shows Jonas a memory of the Bravermans to teach him about the more painful aspects of love. The scene Jonas witnesses is the fall-out of Sarah's failed engagement to Mark, and it is GLORIOUS. Seeing the messy Bravermans through the POV of Sameness is both hilarious and amazing.

a mother too (320 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: The Giver - Lois Lowry
Rating: Not rated
Characters/Relationship: Gen, worldbuilding
Summary: The Birthmothers are only a story the Community tells.

OH GOD, THIS IS SO DARK AND SO ACCURATE. Of course traditional births via Birthmothers would not be enough to provide the appropriate amount of newchildren. Of course the Community would genetically modify children to ensure Sameness. Of course they would cull the ones that aren't suitable.

TAKE IT, RUSS.

2012-12-17T19:50:03Z

The Yuletide Meme, courtesy of my entire flist. Naturally, I'm using it to stall on this year's Yuletide.

2008
A Basket of Cellophane
Life (TV), Charlie Crews/Ted Earley, Rachel Seybolt, PG-13
"I mean, I'm not Robin or Alfred, so am I Mary Jane?"

My first ever Yuletide! I had no idea how the offers worked, which is how I ended up writing slash for a show I only casually watched. It's still one of my favourite stories, honestly. It was a delight to write. I can't even remember what the prompt was, but do remember being surprised by how well it was received. Easiest Yuletide ever, and it made me an immediate convert.

2009
Intreat Me Not to Leave Thee
Life (TV), Karen Davis, Dani Reese, gen
Davis is Jack Reese's partner for a long time.

First of all, since it confused the crap out of all the reccers that year: THE TITLE IS FROM THE KING JAMES VERSION. IT REALLY DOES SAY "INTREAT". Other than that gripe, I really don't remember a ton about this fic? I was a bit unnerved to get Life again, I think, but I did enjoy writing about baby Dani Reese. Also, this was ALMOST Karen Davis/Dani Reese in a completely one-sided, creepy way, but I pulled it back at the last second. I still halfway wish I hadn't.

people come and go so quickly here
Wicked (Bookverse), Elphaba/G(a)linda, PG
Glinda doesn't remember very much of her school days.

My first treat. I remember less than nothing about this one. Upon re-reading though, boy, could it have used another edit.

2010
You Have Not Yet Learned To Crawl
The Good Wife, Alicia/Kalinda, R
The first time Kalinda kisses her, it isn't entirely a surprise.

Oh, writing this was so much fun. First time I ever tested out the pairing, and I still think it's the most in character I've ever had them. Also fairly well received, for being a femslash couple in a pretty tiny fandom.

Works and Days
His Dark Materials, Serafina Pekkala/Farder Coram, R
Farder Coram meets Serafina Pekkala during the last days of summer.

Boy howdy, all my treats certainly are moody, aren't they? I AM SORRY, UNSUSPECTING RECIPIENTS.

2011
As I Always Say
The Magic School Bus, Ms. Frizzle, gen
Ms. Frizzle has always enjoyed the third grade.

THIS WAS MY FAVOURITE THING EVER. Definitely the closest I ever got to Yuletide fame, and it was all thanks to the completely amazing prompt (which basically consisted of Ms. Frizzle = time lord, because of COURSE). I barely know Doctor Who, and I think I knew even less at the time I wrote the fic, but as soon as I saw the request I knew I had to try. It turned out to less of a crossover, more of an allusions of, but whatever. I loved it. I loved writing it. Plus it has bonus Mary Poppins, so I'm declaring it a win.

GOD BLESS US EVERYONE.

2012-12-07T02:51:17Z

Eff it all, I am EXACTLY this self-centered. Plus, you know what? This meme is freaking delightful. Everybody should get in on that action:

My thread over at the Holiday Love Meme.

❄

FIC: gathered love's adjectives into a suitcase [rookie blue, sam/andy, 1 of 2]

2012-12-06T18:41:35Z

Title: gathered love's adjectives into a suitcase, 1 of 2
Authors: lowriseflare and threeguesses
Fandom/Pairing: Rookie Blue, Disney!Sam/Andy
Rating: R
Word Count: 17 000+ (I don't know, maybe we should write a novel or something?)
Summary: Sam and Andy, after the task force wraps up.
A/N: I DON'T CARE, HE SAID IT TO CORRINE.

Andy's lying in a patch of sun on the carpet when Nick lets himself into the apartment, windows wide open and the first really warm day of the year. "Half an hour to pack," he tells her, no preamble whatsoever. "We're going home."

(Andy sits up so fast she gets dizzy.)

"Who pulled the plug?" she asks as she shoves underwear into a gym bag. Nick tosses her the pair with cupcakes on them, wrapped up in a pair of his old-man cable socks. What a kid in his twenties needs with so many pairs grandpa socks is beyond Andy. He even wears them to work out in, the weirdo.

"Dunno." Nick is tearing through their tiny kitchen, although for the life of her Andy can't figure out why. Trying to figure out what pot lids he wants to save, maybe. "Could be Callaghan."

Andy makes a face. "Could be." Of course, it could also be-- god, whatever. They'll find out when they find out. "Take the fleur de sel," she tells Nick, and zips her bag closed with finality.

*

It doesn't take them very long to pack up the bare bones of their lives for the last six months, jeans and boots and a ratty paperback or two. Andy leaves all her cheap, garish makeup on the bathroom sink. "Okay," she says, standing up and hefting her backpack onto both shoulders. She looks around the apartment one more time, feeling weirdly nervous to leave it: their ancient couch that sags in the middle, the bathroom door with the broken latch and a bad habit of creaking wide open mid-pee. "I feel yellow," she announces loudly.

Nick looks up from where he's struggling to shut his overstuffed duffel. Right at the beginning of the undercover when they were both totally freaked out one-hundred-percent of the time, they started categorizing all their emotions using the Terrorism Threat Advisory Scale. "About going back?" he asks. Andy nods, coming over to sit on it for him. "Yellow-green?" he continues. "Or yellow-orange?"

Andy thinks about that for a minute. It's important not to exaggerate when color-coding: each of them only ever got to red one time. "Yellow-yellow," she decides.

Nick nods as he finally drags the zipper shut, offers a hand to pull her back to her feet. "It'll be fine," he promises, sounding confident and easy. Still, he threads his fingers through hers and doesn't let go.

As it turns out, Luke decides to pick them up personally, police official vehicle and everything. Andy and Nick are in the dark about the plan until the moment the van pulls up. They spend the interim period kneeling fully-dressed on the couch by the front window, pointedly not discussing their other carpool options.

"Think they'll take us to the Barn?" Andy asks for the fifth time. She's alread sweating under her unnecessary scarf. It's springtime for sure, thaws and that dirty-melt smell under everything. She and Nick can't go outside until the last possible second, just in case anyone who shouldn't sees them with the bags.

"Maybe." Nick leans his whole body into hers. Both of them smell like Irish spring hand soap and the musty dryer in the basement. "My apartment is probably gross. I think I left some lettuce in the crisper."

Andy knows that already, actually. It's something they talk about a lot, how they left their apartments.

(How they left--)

Whatever. She still nods like it's the first time she's heard of it. Both of them are blurting.

"Calvary's here," Nick announces suddenly, nodding down through the dirty windows. Six stories down, Luke drives the van right up onto the curb.

"So," Andy says, swallowing. "This is it."

This is it.

*

"Hurry up," Luke tells them as they scramble into the van with their jackets and their luggage, before hi or how are you or sorry to uproot you with no warning whatsoever even though Nick promised Israeli couscous tonight and you had your mouth all set for it. The door's barely slid closed before they're speeding away from the apartment in what might or might not be the direction of the 15, Andy's not sure yet.

"Did we get made?" she asks anxiously. She doesn't think they did--they've been hugely careful, no contact with anybody at all (no late-night pickups at the Alpine Inn, that's for sure)--but stuff happens. She's not having the easiest time getting her bearings. "Luke?"

"You didn't get made," Luke says, eyes on the road. He's still got the beard, plus a navy-blue down vest like he might have a bear to go wrestle right after he leaves here. "Hastings rolled this morning. You're done. Guns and Gangs is grateful for your service."

Guns and Gangs is grateful, jesus. Andy makes a face at Nick in the backseat. Sometimes she randomly remembers how she was like a week out from getting married to Luke, and it feels like it happened to somebody else altogether.

("I don't even really hate Jo anymore," she told Nick, when the whole story came out over beers one night in the living room. "I mean, I wouldn't invite her to a chick flick or anything, but still."

"She doesn't really seem like the kind of lady to watch chick flicks, the way you describe her," Nick pointed out reasonably. Andy threw a pretzel at his head.)

"You'll get debriefed back at the station," Luke's saying now, turning the van onto Dundas. Suddenly the way Andy's sweating has nothing to do with her scarf.

Nick steps up to the plate like a champ. "Gang know we're coming back?" He actually manages to sound halfway-casual, weird Sesame Street phrasing aside. Andy feels like she's about to upchuck all over the TPS issue floor mats.

Luke's expression in the rearview suggests he hates Big Bird and any allusion to 15 being one big happy family. Probably he didn't go in for any of Best's 'we're all in this together' pep talks last year either. "Not sure, Collins," he growls. "I was a little busy figuring out how to safely remove you." Then, looking over at Andy: "Guess they'll figure it out when we get there." He might be shooting her some eye-messages, but Andy can't read anything with his mountain man beard in the way. She had the same problem when he told her Sam made detective.

("They were trying to promote him for years," was all Luke would say. "He has his pick."

"Does he know where we are?" Nick asked, but Luke just shrugged.

"I'm not the one who decides his level of access.")

Either way, Andy's hands are definitely shaking by the time they hit the parking lot. Nick feels very far away in the back seat. He reaches up and tugs the end of her ponytail as Luke's parking the van, though, and that helps a little. They've gotten real good at steadying each other out. Still: "Orange," Andy murmurs in his ear as they cross the slushy concrete, hands shoved deep in her jacket pockets to hide them. Nick's looking like possibly he's at a heightened terror threat, himself.

Inside 15 it smells exactly like she remembers, a coffee/floor cleaner/sweat kind of smell. The familiarity of it makes Andy's chest clutch. She remembers Sam telling her that once, how strange it could be to come back in feeling like a completely different person, not knowing who or what else might have changed while you'd been gone.

(206 bones in the human body, she thinks, apropos of nothing. Glances up at the empty detectives' bullpen and wonders again why he took the promotion after all this time.)

"Holy shit." That's Dov coming down the hallway in their direction, Gail close on his heels. Both of them are wearing their uniforms. He's gained back most of the weight he lost after the Tyler Marks thing, looks less like a little kid dressed as a cop for Halloween. "You guys are back?"

Andy shoots a look at Nick out of the very corner of her eye, picks up the baton. "We're back," she says, grinning widely. The expression feels a little weird on her face, muscles she hasn't used in a while--Lindsay, the addict she just spent half a year pretending to be, wasn't much for smiles. "Hey, guys."

Gail stares at them for a long, cool minute. Turns on her heels and walks away.

So. They're batting a thousand as soon as they get in the door, basically.

"She, uh. Missed you," Dov explains apologetically. Andy remembers when they found out Gail wasn't shit-canned after all, two weeks into the UC and her name coming up in a casual conversation with one of Luke's Guns and Gangs underlings. Nick waited until the guy left and then--very calmly and systematically--went into the kitchen and broke three plates so all the debris fell in the sink. Andy cleaned up the pieces while he took a shower. Later, when they were watching a blurry Friends rerun on the junked-out tv, she had him lie down with his head in her lap like Sam never, ever did, and set herself the task of scritching his unfamiliar hair until he fell asleep.

"Yeah," Nick is saying now, no inflection. His jaw is really, really tense. Andy doesn't know how to help him so she moves forward to hug Dov instead, breaking the moment.

Dov may feel more solid, but he definitely still smells like Axe and boy. "And I mean, obviously I missed you too," he announces somewhere in the vicinity of Andy's hair. He's hugging back hard, like he really actually did; Andy feels bad all over again for leaving without a word. 'Part of the job,' Luke had told her--Sam too, actually, way back in JD's one-room apartment when she was giving him hell for the disappearing act.

(He took it back later, though: "I'm sorry," he said, both of them laid out sleepily across the floor. "As soon as I left I wanted to come back, say goodbye properly."

Andy rolled up onto her elbows. "And what would that have entailed?" she asked coyly, blowing right over the admission.

He said a lot of shit in the cover apartment, is something she only noticed later. Copped to stuff he never quite acknowledged again.)

Anyway.

"Is Trace around?" she asks Dov. If there's someone whose arms Andy really wants to launch herself into right now, it's Traci.

Dov shakes his head. "Nah," he says. "She's out on a call with--" He breaks off mid-sentence, then: "A murder victim," he finishes lamely. "There was a murder, and she is...looking at the victim. Of the murder."

Andy laughs. "With Detective Swarek?" she asks, and oh, that is weird to say out loud. She keeps the smile pasted across her face; between that and the way Nick's grinding his molars to powder, they probably look like they just escaped from a nuthouse. "You can say it."

(So he's not in the building right now, then, is what that means. Andy doesn't know if she's relieved or disappointed.)

"You know about all that?" Dov asks, sounding surprised. "None of us knew what they were telling you guys and what they weren't. So do you know about, like--"

"McNally!" Luke calls impatiently, voice booming. He was picking up their reinstatement paperwork at the desk, is looking at them now like they're keeping him from something way more interesting (a North American Grizzly, probably). "Collins. You ready to do this, or what?"

Luke debriefs them one at a time, which Andy doesn't entirely appreciate, one because it reminds her of how they split up pairs of suspects to try and crack them, and two because she hasn't done a hell of a lot of important shit without Nick in the last six months and it makes her feel weirdly exposed.

Traci barges into the room halfway through her interview, though: "You," she crows, delighted, then holds up a hand before Luke can stop her. "I know, I know. Just one second." She flings her arms around Andy, squeezes tight and familiar, and if Andy's been doing a fair-to-passable job of keeping her feelings on the cool end of the color spectrum, at least outwardly--well. Possibly she has some yellow-orange tears to swallow down at the sight of Traci's face.

"Come find me the second you get done," Traci orders, planting a smacking kiss on her cheek when Luke tells her to get lost for like the fourth time, this time with the word order involved. "I'll call my mom and see if she can take Leo tonight, we'll go to the Penny."

"Sure." Both Andy's voice and shoulders go teenager-high, all this hunching vulnerable body language she doesn't love. Lindsay was real good at keeping her head up. "I'll find you," she promises, checking herself. Traci breezes out the door with a giant shining grin. For the first time since she arrived at 15 this morning, Andy feels like she has something to look forward to.

Surprisingly, Luke's expression is only mildly annoyed when she looks back over. "Just a few more questions and you're done," he says, capping his pen with finality. At first Andy wonders why the hell he's letting her off the hook after all that rank-and-file crap he was pulling on Traci not two seconds ago; like, at the very least he should chew her out for wasting valuable bear-trapping time or something.

Then she remembers he could conceivably still know her face well enough to tell she's about to lose it.

"I'm fine," she says quickly, shaking her head because nope, uh-uh. Pity from Luke is a rock bottom she is just not willing to hit. "All good, I swear. We can go through the rest no problem." She hopes Nick isn't waiting around for her outside.

"Relax, Andy." Luke is already stacking papers back inside the heavy manila file folder. "Collins answered the same questions. Your corroboration is just a formality."

"If Nick says it it's true," Andy declares, no hesitation. Which, apparently, is good enough for TPS records because three minutes later she's out the door, fully reinstated with orders to take a day off to unwind. ("Eat some salad," Luke says. "Read a book. Get some vitamin C." Andy would resent the babying if not for the fact that he saw her and Nick's fridge on the semi-regular and--yeah. Fruit and veg was not something drug addict Lindsay did a whole lot of.)

When she gets out there, though, turns out Nick's not the one waiting.

Andy actually gasps when she sees him, leaning against the bulletin board with his arms and ankles crossed, Toronto's Most Wanted leering down over both his shoulders. "Um," she says, stopping cold in the middle of the hallway (and god, god, she knew this was going to happen, that coming back meant dealing with everything she may or may not have run away from; there is no reason for the sight of him to send shock waves clear down into her bones). "Hi."

"McNally." Sam just looks at her, same unreadable, faintly amused expression on his face as always, eyebrows raised like anything from I need my keys back to I love you, let's get a dog could be lurking behind his expression and there wouldn't be any way to tell. "Welcome back."

"Thanks." Andy wipes her suddenly-sweaty palms on her jeans. She has no idea what to do here--like, do they hug? They didn't even really hug when they were dating, Most of their prolonged physical contact definitely came loaded down with a certain kind of intent--how it felt like foreplay even when he was brushing by her in the kitchen on the way to the coffee, his solid body warm against hers. They never quite learned how to comfort each other, or something. "How are you?"

Sam shrugs. "No complaints." If Dov's gained weight then he's definitely lost some, mostly in his face but around his rib cage too, Andy's pretty sure. She wonders for a second what happened there, if he'd feel different under her hands. The sleeves of his dress shirt are rolled to the elbows, those hard knots of bone in his wrists.

Andy swallows. She can hear the rustle and hum of 15 all around her, home sounds, a ringing phone and Traci laughing somewhere down the hall. Reminds herself that he's the one who broke her heart. "Sam," she starts, then completely fails to follow it up in any meaningful way.

"You're fine, McNally," Sam tells her, pushing himself up off the wall. Andy isn't though, all her nerves set to screaming terror-alert red. "Nash is waiting at her desk." He gets within a foot of her and stops, and Andy flashes back to that day she got shot, his heavy hands all over her face behind the trailer. ("What did you want, exactly?" she teased him later, when they were rehashing how long they'd liked-liked each other like a couple of six graders. "Like, what precisely was your game plan there?"

"I was going to kiss you," Sam said, completely steady.)

"You look good," he's saying now, that same oddly level stare. Andy feels the blush all over her body. Because god, she definitely does not, stringy addict hair that hasn't been trimmed in months and a gross old hoodie; it is possible she was standing here staring at his neat rib cage and wishing she'd washed her face, maybe took it to another level and applied some lip chap. He does not look bad, is all.

"Shut up." She's half smiling though, self-conscious and weirdly shy. As a rule she’s almost never been shy around Sam, that first time in the cover apartment aside. She wanted him to like her so damn bad.

"Uh-huh." Sam grins. Fast and shallow, sure, but it's still the first break she's seen in his expression so far. "Go find Nash," he tells her, and Andy wants to ask him all kinds of questions, try out how Dectective Swarek sounds in her mouth (she's going to have to call him 'sir' again, which was categorically not a thing either of them hated), but.

(But.)

She goes.

*

Andy heads into the locker room and has a shower while Traci finishes some paperwork, all her toiletries and a slightly musty-smelling tank top still in her locker just where she left them. She's doing up the hooks on her bra when Nick comes in.

"Sorry," he says, but then sits down on the bench beside her anyway--after all, it's not like it's anything he hasn't seen before. Andy pulls the tank top over her head and waits. She's known Nick to stay awake for thirty-six hours at a stretch and hardly show it, but right now he looks like he's about to completely drop. Judging by the expression on his face, he's definitely talked to Gail. "Are you sorry we did it?" he asks quietly.

Andy sits down hard, her wet hair cold and chilly against her upper back. She can feet it soaking right through her shirt to her skin, goosebumps rising. "I don't know," she says after a moment. They've had this conversation before too, usually late at night in the double bed they shared in the apartment, one or both of them having a hard go falling asleep. Their answers changed basically every single time. "Are you?"

Nick shrugs, stretching his long legs out in front of them. For the last six months, his name's been Lee. "I don't know either," he says.

Andy nods and rests her head on his shoulder. She always hung out with a lot of boys growing up, but she's never had a guy friend like Nick before. She doesn't actually know exactly what they are. "We're going to the Penny, if you want to come out for a while," she tells him. "Also, you owe me a couscous dinner."

That gets a smile out of him, just like she was pretty sure it would: "I'll meet you over there," he promises, heaving himself up off the bench and heading for the exit. Andy smiles back. Once he's gone she does what she can with the stubby end of an eye pencil she finds on the back of the shelf on her locker, pinches her cheeks until she's marginally less pale. Studies her unfamiliar face in the mirror for a good long time.

Waiting in the bullpen with wet hair makes her jumpy and cold. People keep coming up to say hi, and it takes Andy a good ten minutes to realize she's flinching a little with every new face. By the time Traci's paperwork is finished she's actually looking forward to the Penny, white noise and a steady supply of beer that will keep her sociable enough to pass for Andy instead of Lindsay. But when they pull into the parking lot Traci doesn't turn the engine off right away.

"Look, Andy. There are a couple of things we need to--" She blows out a breath, turning sideways in the bucket seat so they're facing each other. "There's some stuff. That changed when you were gone."

Somehow Andy doesn't feel like Traci's gearing up to tell her about the Penny's new decor. "Stuff."

"Uh-huh." Traci fingers the wheel, one of Sam's old habits; Andy guesses they must be riding together a lot. Then she changes tracks entirely: "Are you and Collins...?"

Oh. That surprises Andy maybe more than it should. "No-o. No," she says confidently, even though it takes a weird beat to get out. And like, they aren't, they've never even almost, but it is possible spending the past half-year seeing him at bedtime and in the morning and all hours of the day have kind of blurred the lines a little.

(By around month two they were climbing all over each other, no personal space left anyplace. Nick started it, Andy remembers, an arm around her shoulders during a Seinfeld marathon. For a split second before he noogied her, she was sure she was about to get kissed.)

"Just friends," she insists, smiling at Traci hard.

"Really?" Traci doesn't look entirely convinced.

"Really," Andy promises. Then, because she can't take it one more second: "Sam has a girlfriend, right?" She means to say it bluntly, to let Traci off the hook, but instead it comes out sounding more like a shrill, panicky accusation. It's cold again now that the sun's set; she can't believe she was lying on the warm floor of the apartment just this afternoon. "That's the thing? You can tell me, it's fine."

"Andy..." Traci shakes her head, one leg tucked up underneath her. "That's between you and Sam," she says vaguely.

Which--what? "Seriously?" Andy's eyes widen. "You're my best friend, and you're not gonna tell me?"

Traci makes a face. "Yeah, I'm your best friend," she says, more heat behind it than Andy's expecting. "And Swarek's not the only one you disappeared on."

Which--oh.

"Trace," Andy starts, feeling roughly two centimeters tall, but Traci holds up a hand to stop her.

"Look, it's fine. You had to do what you had to do, I get it. It was just kind of a long winter, that's all." She sighs. "Gail and Luke are sleeping together, is what I wanted to give you a heads up on. And it's not like Swarek asks my advice about his match.com profile or anything, but yeah, I'm pretty sure he's seeing somebody, too." Traci shrugs. "And I'm not sleeping with anyone, because if I even look at another guy I feel totally, bone-crushingly guilty, but it's been eight months and it just--it would have been nice to have you around, is all."

Oh, god. "Traci," Andy says again, sure she's about to burst into tears and honestly not a hundred percent certain which part of that was the worst part. It feels like somebody's scraping at her insides with a salad fork. "I'm really sorry."

"It's fine, Andy, I mean it. I'm really glad you're back." Traci unbuckles her seatbelt, smiles. "Let's go get drunk."

Andy takes a huge swallow of air. She wants a crying jag and a hug, not necessarily in that order, but she's a big girl and she can recognize she only wants it to make herself feel better, not Traci. "I'm really, really sorry," she says again, pressing her nails into her palms. "I'll just-- I'm buying, okay?" Even as she says it she winces.

Traci laughs in her face, but not meanly. "I missed you," she says, coming around the van to hug Andy herself. "I mean, I was pissed. But I missed your stupid face more."

So. Andy tucks that stupid face into Traci's neck for a guilty second. Tries not to feel like the lowest person alive.

*

Inside the Penny it's beery and humid, too early in the year for the AC to be on and all the cop bodies crammed inside working better than any radiator. Andy shrugs off Lindsay's jacket and looks around. Nick's here already, sitting at their old table in the back while Dov gestures his way through a story. Gail is nowhere to be found.

(Sam is. Down the corner of the bar with his back to her and Ollie at his elbow. Right away Andy decides to make someone else get the beer.)

"There they are," Traci declares, waving. She's got her hand on Andy's wrist like she wants to keep her close. "Hey guys!" The way she says it sounds rusty, and Andy wonders if they went out together at all, Traci and Gail and Dov alone. Figures probably not.

In any case, the band's definitely back together now; Dov gets up to usher them over like an air traffic controller, pleased as punch. When Nick catches sight of Andy his whole face lights up with relief, maybe the most overtly happy anyone's been to see her all day. Andy wants like hell to tuck herself under his arm like Lindsay and not talk to anyone else for a little while.

Instead she slips her first two fingers in his belt loop and yanks hard, this thing they started doing as a joke in the apartment. Sometimes it would take her three or four tries to get off the couch, both of them overtired and Nick pulling her back down again and again: he actually ripped a pair of her jeans that way once, which both of them thought was hilarious. Probably you had to be there. "Hey," she says, then hands him a twenty and sends him up to the bar for another couple of pitchers. Tugs his Levi's one more time as he goes.

"Just friends, huh?" Traci murmurs, eyebrows raised and her voice down low by Andy's ear.

"Shut up," is the best Andy's got.

She asks about Chris and the baby, about how Leo's doing in school; she answers all Dov's six dozen questions about their UC as best she can. She keeps half an eye on Nick up at the bar while he's waiting for their pitchers, which is how she notices Sam noticing him. Half a beat later, she watches him notice her, too.

(She loves him still, and badly. She thought it was possible she wouldn't by the time she got back.)

He nods once in her direction just like maybe it's three years ago, like he's never sucked a mark on her neck or talked to her until she fell asleep or helped her prove her dad wasn't a murderer; like he didn't leave her crying in a parking lot or take a beating in a farmhouse or tell her he loved her while she cupped a grenade inside her two shaking hands. Like maybe all of that was just junk she made up to entertain herself on a particularly boring stakeout or something, waiting for a suspect to show in the passenger seat of the cruiser on a rainy Tuesday afternoon.

Nick comes back and sets the pitchers on the table. Andy looks away first.

*

They all end up getting drunk as skunks, as per Traci's suggestion. And it's nice: stories from the UC are easier with Nick there to round out the double act, plus Trace has apparently landed a lot of really excellent cases since they've been gone (three words: Seinfeld pig man), which gets them through the first pitcher no problem. Midway through the second they decide to call Chris, who picks up sounding super annoyed and suburban and ends up staying on the line for forty minutes. He tells them stories about his kid in a quiet voice they all have to shush each other to hear, Denise asleep in the next room. Andy swigs back beers until she finds that spot where everything is funny and doesn't look over at the bar once.

(She's good at it, finding that spot. She used to worry she was too good until Nick pointed out that an alcoholic would get there and just not stop.

Now Andy always stops.)

It's still weird though, like reuniting with your high school friends after graduation and finding all the old alliances have shifted. Andy keeps directing all her reaction faces at Nick by accident.

"I'm off," Traci announces around midnight. Andy offers to share a cab, but apparently 'Dex is picking me up', which stings for absolutely no reason at all. Andy guesses she's glad someone has been stepping up to bat on the 'dead fiance' thing, even if it's Traci's ex. Dov leaves right after, shifty about to where and with who, and then it's just her and Nick.

"Swarek's still at the bar," he tells her. He's been facing that way all night; Lindsay and Lee always sat so they could watch each other's backs. "Want me to disappear?"

Andy hesitates. She doesn't, actually; actually what she wants to do is go over to his house, maybe have him come to hers; anything to avoid facing her empty, unfamiliar apartment by herself, whatever rotten six-month-old badness might be lurking there waiting for her to come back. It's been a long time since she slept by herself. She glances over her shoulder at Sam, at the clean pleats of his backbone inside his t-shirt. "Yeah, okay," she says.

Nick makes a face like he knows she's full of garbage. "You sure?"

"No." Andy swallows down the newest lump in her throat. God, she was really not expecting to lose it so bad once she got back here. She's got the distinct sense that she's been failing in one way or another since she woke up. "I want to hear about Gail first, though," she says. Nobody mentioned her all night, like maybe she went and totally evaporated or something. It was weird.

Nick rolls his eyes. "No you don't," he replies, which means he doesn't want to talk about it yet. "Text when you get home, okay?"

Andy promises she will and Nick kisses her on the temple; when the door to the Penny closes behind him she turns around and Sam's looking right at her, so.

So.

Andy takes a deep breath and walks over. "You know what you never told me about undercovers?" she asks, sliding onto the barstool next to his and wishing she'd kept Lindsay's gross hoodie from earlier. At least then she'd have someplace to hide. "How crappy the cable plan is."

Sam raises his eyebrows. He's barely got half a beer in front of him, two big swallows maybe; it occurs to her to wonder if possibly he was waiting her out. "Did I not mention that?" he asks.

"Nope." Andy shakes her head. Then, because she's too exhausted to beat around the bush and the last time they left it the ball was in her court: "Traci says she thinks you have a girlfriend."

Sam's eyebrows don't budge an inch this time, like maybe he was expecting the question. He picks up the beer and doesn't drink. "I'm seeing someone, yeah," he says finally, thumb running over the label. "You?"

Andy doesn't answer right away either. Her heart is somewhere around her knees, throat tight with tears or jealousy or both. (And god, she can admit it now; she thought he would fall apart with her gone. Which is awful, of course it's awful, but being wrong? It's absolutely one-hundred percent worse.) "Nope," she says brightly, pulling on what feels like a horrible smile. "No one."

Now Sam does look surprised. "You and Collins...?"

"Just friends." God, Andy wishes she fucked him. For one horrible second, she really wishes she did.

"Ah." Sam finally takes that drink, swallowing half the remaining beer in one gulp. "I missed you," is what comes out when he puts it down. His face crinkles up around the eyes as he says it, sincere, and that's what gets Andy in the end.

"Yeah," she laughs hollowly. "So much so that you ran out and started screwing someone else." Which is a valid point, but she doesn't even know if Sam hears it because her voice breaks hard halfway through, tears suddenly coming so thick and fast she can't even see the bar top. Which--god. It's just about the most inconvenient time she could have picked to lose it, right the fuck in front of him and god and the new bartender she doesn't know, but sure, McNally, of course. She's drunk and tired and she loves him, so of course.

"Andy." Sam looks like she backed up a truck over his dog. Why he picks now to look like that instead of eight months ago when he left her sobbing in a parking lot is completely beyond Andy. He reaches out, puts a hand on her arm. "Come on, sweetheart."

Which-- "Don't," she orders loudly, jerking away. Sam's eyes widen; even the bartender, who up until now was at least trying to give them some privacy, glances over in surprise. Andy really doesn't give a crap. He's just--he's not allowed to call her that after everything that happened (if he called it to somebody else while she was gone). It isn't fair. "Do not."

Sam backs off in half a hot second, both palms up and out like he wants to show her he isn't packing. "Easy," he murmurs.

"You take it easy." Andy shakes her head. God, this is embarrassing, to still care so much after all this time. To let him know that she does. "Look, I'm sorry," she tells him, sniffling, wiping under both eyes and trying to pull it together. Her eyeliner comes away smeared on the tips of her fingers. "This was stupid. I'm out of line. I'm glad to be back, I'll--"

"Don't be sorry," Sam says immediately. He's still got that look on his face, stricken, like she's the one who broke his heart and not the other way around. She thinks of that last night in the hallway, I'm going to show you every day until you believe me. Reminds herself that he left her way before she ever got the chance. "McNally," he says, and his voice is so quiet. "Look. Can you let me drive you home, please?"

Yeah, probably his new girlfriend would love that. "I'll get a cab," she snaps, and then of course they're both thinking it, Gail and Jerry and how everything can unravel in a second if you aren't paying attention. Or even if you are. Andy is so, so tired.

"No you won't," Sam says, even.

No. She won't.

There isn't anyone left at the back tables but Andy ducks her head anyway, watching the sticky floor as they wind their way out the door. She's tipsy enough that she has to concentrate. Closing down the Penny, jesus god--it's almost more embarrassing than the crying. She should have gone home when Nick did.

Neither of them says anything in the parking lot, nothing but this huge damning silence and the hollow click of Lindsay's boots, the beep of the automatic locks. It's the worst kind of deja-vu, just get in your truck and go. When Andy closes her eyes she can still remember that awful falling feeling, when she'd first realized which he'd picked.

The truck still smells the same at least, coffee and Sam. Andy looks around for clues, signs of someone else (perfume, maybe, earrings on the dashboard). But there's nothing. She really doesn't know why that's worse.

The whole ride is silent, both of them staring out the front window at the empty streets. When they pull up outside Andy's building Sam cuts the engine, an even deeper hush settling around them like a blanket. "I'll stay here while you walk up," he says firmly, quiet in the dark. The dome light went off with the engine and Andy can't read his face at all.

She snorts. "What, you want me to flick the lights or something?"

Sam just stares for a second, like possibly he can see her face just fine, inky blackness and all. He shrugs. "Or text me." Then, when her hand's on the door to close it: "I meant it, you know, what I said before you left. I love you. Still do."

Andy's sobbing again by the time she hits the landing. It takes her a whole stupid minute to find the light-switch, how unfamiliar her apartment is after six months. She clicks it three times and slides down the wall, buries her face in her hands.

*

She startles awake two hours later, still in her jacket, lights in the living room blazing and a headache bleating wildly in her skull. The clock on the cable box says 3:38.

Which--

shit.

Andy takes a deep breath and gets her bearings, mouth dry and sweat-sock sour. Did she seriously pass out crying sitting on her living room floor? She blinks at her dusty apartment, thinks of making a scene back at the Penny. Feels a hot rush of humiliation and regret. That was...not the move of a person who knew when to stop. "Stellar job, McNally," she mutters out loud.

(love you, he said, before she slammed the truck door. still do.)

Her phone vibrates anxiously inside her pocket: when she fumbles it out she's got four texts from Nick and three missed calls. The last one's from just a minute ago, must have been what finally woke her up. if i don't hear from you in ten I'm coming over, it says.

Fuck. Sorry sorry sorry, she texts back quickly, her fingers clumsy over the keys. Alive.

She must have scared him; it's not even thirty seconds before he replies. Nick's not a great sleeper anyway, she knows, but she feels like an asshole for keeping him awake. u ok? he wants to know.

Andy promises him she is and that she'll call him in the morning. Heaves herself up off the floor. She's full sober now but the room lurches a bit anyway. There's a weird smell too, kind of garbage-y in nature and coming from the direction of the kitchen, that she's in no condition to deal with at this particular moment. She should really wash her face and go to bed.

(seeing somebody, she reminds herself firmly. Curls her chilly hands around the back of a chair.)

She pees and walks around the apartment for a while, reacquaints herself with her life before she left. She stares at a fashion magazine from last November. Drinks a glass of water standing up at the sink.

Finally she picks up the phone.

"Hey." Sam answers on the third ring. It's his thick, sleepy voice, the one she associates with working doubles and slow, half-conscious sex in the middle of the night. For a few weeks last summer they worked opposite shifts, Sam letting himself into her place at six and seven in the morning (sliding one hand between her legs to wake her up).

Well. Andy's not sleeping now. "Is your girlfriend there?" she asks, instead of hello.

"No." There's a shuffling, the quiet sheet-whoosh of someone sitting up in bed; he must have gone to sleep with the phone on the nightstand. Which, Andy happens to know, is not a thing he usually does. She doesn't know how she feels about that, if he expected her to call or just hoped. "God, McNally. 'Time is it?"

"A little after four." She double-checks, pivoting to face the cable box. The numbers flash back at her in confirmation, neon bright and irrational. Screw that, though; Andy's hit the end of humiliation. "So you're alone?"

Sam actually has the balls to sound affronted. "Yes. Christ, do you really think I dropped you off and then booty-called somebody?" There's another question under that one, Andy's pretty sure (do you really think I told you I loved you and then--), but neither of them seems to want to voice it.

Then again: "I don't know what to think, Sam," Andy hisses. "You love me so bad, why'd you run out and find someone else?" Because that's it, really, that's the sticking point. She thought about him the whole time she was gone, and it stings worse than anything to realize he wasn't doing the same. Andy never thought she was a jealous person, but there it is. If she knew who the girl was, she'd claw her stupid eyes out.

"What was I supposed to do?" Sam asks tiredly. It sounds like there's no fight left in him at all. "You made your answer real clear. Just like you made it clear again tonight."

Which--what the ever-loving fuck?

"What the heck is that supposed to mean?" Andy demands, but it comes out oddly shaky. All of a sudden her knees are completely gone, ass connecting with the couch with a thump. "Sam. What do you mean, 'made it clear again tonight'?"

"What do you mean, 'what do I mean'?" Sam blows a noisy breath into the phone. "I don't know what you want from me, McNally. Did you want me to wait around for some particular length of time on the off chance you'd changed your mind whenever the hell you got back?" There's more rustling, like he can't get comfortable over there. "Is that what you wanted?"

Andy doesn't answer for a moment, picking at a loose thread in the arm of the couch instead--because yes, actually, of course that's what she wanted, but when he puts it like that she sounds insane. God, she hates this so stupidly much. It feels so, so bad.

"And if I had done that," Sam continues, like he's working through all the angles of a UC op, variable by variable, "would it have fixed things? If you had asked me tonight if I was seeing anybody and I'd said no, would we be back together right now? Is that what it would have taken?"

And no, of course not, but. "It's not about how long you waited or didn't wait," Andy insists. "It's about you being the kind of person who can go around fucking other people--" Her voice catches a little, imagining him doing it, imagining him with somebody else--"when you're allegedly in love with me."

Ooh, that blow lands. "First of all," Sam says, sounding really and truly pissed for the first time all night, "enough with the allegedly, all right? That's enough. I'm telling you I love you, and I fucking mean it." He hesitates and Andy can picture him so clearly, mouth opening and closing again while he lines up his thoughts. "Second of all, sweetheart: I was trying to get the hell over you."

Andy breathes in. "And?" she asks, curling her feet up onto the sofa.

Sam sighs. "Didn't take."

The rush of relief is so intense it actually makes her nauseous. "Yeah." By which she means hers didn't take either, of course, but Andy isn't ready to come right out and say that. Her heart is still scraped clean from last time. "What--what do we do now?" she asks instead, leaning forward to press herself into herself, bent knees against her chest. She wants to be held in a big, stupid way.

(It feels weird, offering Sam the reins. Andy can't tell if she means it as a test or not.)

Either way, he's not taking the bait: "Nothing." Sam exhales, a whump in the background like he lay down in a huff or punched a pillow or both. "Look, Andy, I don't know what you want. Do you want the stupid pitch again? Garbage duty and a dog?" Boo, Andy fills in automatically, Boo Radley. She told Nick and they laughed about it together, something that made her feel better for a hot second before she swung back around to feeling awful. "I love you, sweetheart," Sam continues, "I'd do it, but it doesn't sound like you've changed your mind about your answer."

Andy presses her knees into her chest harder.

"And if this is never going to be fixed--" He finally loses steam there, no more calm TO voice or UC variables; Andy pushes her wet face against her leg so she doesn't sob out loud. "We gotta stop, okay," Sam finishes after a beat, a little ragged. "We can't keep doing this to each other."

Andy wipes at her eyes angrily. There are a lot of things she could say in reply--a lot of things she should say, probably--but the one her mouth settles on is: "Why did you become detective?"

"So I'd know where you were." Sam doesn't hesitate at all when he says it, like maybe he's handed those reins right back over. "Know what you were doing, could make sure you were safe." There's a wry kind of smile in his voice when he adds, "Sure as shit wasn't gonna trust Callaghan to do it."

Andy takes a deep breath before she answers, tries to make certain her voice won't betray her. The knees of her jeans are wet with tears and snot. "You could have found out without doing that, though," she protests quietly. It's a nice idea, what he's saying--it's a good story-- but it doesn't feel a hundred percent true. "Everybody you know in Guns and Gangs, people owe you favors or whatever. Somebody would have told you."

Sam considers that. "They would have," he allows finally, and it's a long time before he keeps talking. "I don't know, Andy. I spent a lot of years telling myself I didn't want this promotion, all right? And maybe I actually didn't, or maybe--" He stops, tries again. "I don't know. I wanted it now."

"Right," Andy says dully. "And when you see something you want, you take it?"

Sam doesn't answer for a moment. Andy can hear him breathing across the line. It feels like there's a lot more space between them than just the distance between his apartment and hers. "Maybe," he says at length, and there's a tone in his voice Andy doesn't totally recognize. It occurs to her that whether or not he spent the last six months thinking about her--he definitely spent it thinking about something. "Not always."

This time, she knows he can hear the sob in her breathing. "I want to see you," she blurts, before she even knows it's coming out. "Not to--just--" She breaks off.

Sam swallows before he speaks, this soft catch the receiver barely picks up. "You want me to come over?"

Andy does and she doesn't, logic and animal instinct all mixed up. (But. She knows which one she wants more.) "Yeah. Yeah, come over and we can just--we'll talk, okay?" She wipes at her snotty face, this gross snuffle on every inhale. Already she's calming down a bit, though, a concrete plan and someone else in her dark empty apartment. "God, Sam." Now that she's getting her wish she has the urge to backpedal, be reasonable after the fact. "It's four in the morning."

"So I'll bring coffee."

There's not even a beat of waiting there, this jangling sound like he's already picked up his keys. Andy smiles, stupidly relieved. "Okay, yeah. Coffee sounds good."

Part Two (The Sexy Part)

FIC: gathered love's adjectives into a suitcase [rookie blue, sam/andy, 2 of 2]

2012-12-06T18:36:56Z

Title: gathered love's adjectives into a suitcase, 2 of 2
Authors: lowriseflare and threeguesses
See Part 1 for summary and warnings.

Sam brings coffee and Timbits, as it turns out, plus a breakfast sandwich each. Andy lets him in and he sets the bags on her kitchen table, grease already soaking through the paper. It's the exact same combo he used to get when they were dating. Just like magic the apartment travels back a year in time, fried sugar smells instead of dust and garbage.

"Didn't know if you were hungry too," Sam says, quiet.

She is, actually; she used the time between when they hung up and when he got here (twenty minutes, max; he must have sped) to wash her face and change into clean pajamas, and she feels enough like a human that food sounds like a really, really good plan. Andy nods and curls herself onto one of the stools. "Thanks."

(It's possible she deliberated a bit about the pajamas, sweatpants or a cuter cotton pair with little tie ups at the bottom that turn them into capris. Eventually she went with option B; good to know that six months on a dangerous UC op hasn't made her one ounce less ridiculous. She's still not entirely sure what she's trying to accomplish with him here.)

Sam's leaning against her kitchen sink, grey hoodie zipped halfway down. He smiles at her faintly over his styrofoam cup. "You're fine," he says.

"Sorry it's totally gross in here," she continues, oddly compelled to fill the silence now that she called him over in the middle of the night. She flung a trash bag that was basically biohazard down the chute in the hallway just before he turned up, for all the good it did. Her counters are covered with a sticky layer of dust. "'F'I'd known you were serious about taking out my garbage, I would have had you come do it before I left."

Sam just watches her, dark eyebrows barely arced. Andy knows she sounds nervous. The coffee is hot and bitter and strong.

"It couldn't be the same as it was last time," she says finally, brushing some of the powdered sugar off a Timbit with the tip of one finger so she doesn't have to look at him. "I have no idea if we could even--but if we tried. It couldn't be the same."

She catches some movement out of the corner of her eye then, thinks it might be him nodding. She wants to go over and press her face against his chest in the worst way. "I know," he says, steady and low.

Andy looks up at him then, finds him staring back and feels it physical as getting tackled in an alley. "You'd have to talk to me," she says.

"I know." He's standing up now, she notices, not leaning. The coffee and breakfast sandwich are set aside on the counter, like possibly this is something that's going to require his full undivided attention. "I would, I'd talk to you. You could tell me too, whenever you thought I wasn't being--you could tell me. And I'd do it different." Both his hands are curled inside the pouch of his hoodie, this weirdly vulnerable gesture Andy's never seen on him before. "You wanted to know something, anything, you just ask. And I'll tell you."

(Andy notices the auxiliary switch there too, from could to will. She sits up straighter on her stool.)

"Andy. Listen." Sam's voice is serious as Moses counting off the commandments. "Does this mean you want to try?"

There it is. Andy pushes away the Timbit box, suddenly nauseous. "I don't know." Only that's a lie, because she does, she wants. She wants so bad and so hard it hurts. But the answer is bigger than wanting. "You quit on me," she gasps finally. It's difficult to even get her mouth around the words, how heavy and awful they sound coming out--that particular bruise is still as fresh as the day he made it, apparently. Andy takes a deep breath and doesn't cry. "And I can't, Sam, okay? I really can't if you're going to do it again."

He's across the room in two steps. "I'm not," he promises, just a hair past desperate. It looks like he was going to touch her and then thought better of it, settled for crowding her knees instead. "Andy, please. Give me a chance."

"How do I know that, though?" Andy looks up at him, back straight; this close she can feel the heat radiating off him, his solid body fever-warm. If she moved half an inch they'd make contact. "How do I know that next time something bad happens--because other bad stuff is gonna happen, Sam--you won't just, like..." She holds her hands out like, poof.

"I--you don't, I guess." Sam shrugs a bit, helpless, chest moving with the force of his breathing. His fists are clenching and unclenching at his sides. "You gotta trust me."

And that--god. God. Andy thinks back to when they hardly knew each other, fresh paint and him looking at her more often than not like she was the most annoying human ever to walk the face of the earth, that weird instinctual certainty that he'd always keep her safe. That whatever happened, everything would turn out mostly okay in the end as long as he was around--like he was magic or something, like the usual rules didn't apply to him. That was the feeling that had her running to his house the night of the blackout and sent her back to the Alpine Inn, that had her blurting an I love you out of the clear blue sky without worrying at all what might come after. Andy misses that feeling more than anything. Doesn't know how she'd ever get it back.

"I'm sorry," she says. It comes out like a whisper. She called him here in the middle of the night, she wants so badly to make it happen, but-- "I don't think I can."

Sam sags then, his posture caving in on itself like he lost a world war while he was lacing his boots up. Just for a second, he closes his eyes. "Okay, sweetheart," he tells her slowly. "I--that's fair." He swallows, tucks his hands back into his pockets. "Try and get some sleep, okay?"

Andy nods. "Okay," she manages. It feels like a canyon's opened up inside her chest. "I'll try."

He stands there for another minute, like he's thinking about kissing her goodbye or something. She really, really needs him to go so she can cry. In the end he doesn't lean in for it though, just looks at her for one more beat and heads across the living room toward her front door. He's got his hand on the knob before she breaks.

"Sam." It sounds like a sob; Andy's off the stool and in front of him so fast she hardly even knows she's doing it. Grabs his arm with a graceless yank. "I want to try," she says, loud and panicky. "I didn't mean it, I want to try."

"Thank god." It sounds like he's talking to himself almost, quiet like an exhale or a prayer. Then, right away and urgent: "Are you sure? Andy, are you sure?" He gets both hands on her face, this electric contact that feels a fuckton more significant after months and months of not touching. "Because if you're not, or you change your mind in the morning--"

Oh god, she feels stupid, she was all geared up to--but no, fuck, she absolutely didn't mean it, she can't. Can't quit, can't let him go, and definitely can't wake up and do it all come tomorrow morning. "I'm sure," Andy gasps, cupping her hands over his and making him hold on harder. She wants to crawl inside his skin and stay.

"--I couldn't, okay? You gotta tell me now." Sam looks about ready to fly apart too, even as his thumbs start rubbing up and down her cheeks soothingly. It takes Andy a second to realize she's crying again, just a little; she squeezes his hands and tries her best to nod.

"I love you," Sam murmurs, just quiet. And god, Andy really hasn't been second-guessing his sincerity (she did at first, holding the grenade; it was part of the reason she left, actually, how it felt awful to hear instead of wonderful) but right now it's written all over his face with such ridiculous clarity she barely even needs the words.

And she can't. It's been an endlessly long night, and she's so tired and she missed him so much. She might not know if she can trust him the way she used to, but she wants to try. She does. "I love you too," she gasps, and it feels so scary and wonderful she says it again almost immediately. "I love you, I do, I'm sorry if I made you think--" She blinks away tears, checks her voice so she's still understandable. "Sam, you gotta know, okay? I never stopped."

He kisses her before she finishes.

Andy falls into him like an instinct, the warm coffee taste of his mouth and her arms winding tight around his neck, clutching. Sam keeps his hands on her face. It's a good kiss, deep and desperate, his familiar face wet with her tears. Andy never ever wants to let go. When he boosts her up, though, lifting underneath her thighs and her legs around his waist just like always:

"Sam," she murmurs softly, right up against his mouth. "Sam. You have a girlfriend."

"Yeah." Sam sighs low and quiet. He isn't moving anywhere, now that he's holding her; it's more like he wanted to get as close as possible and thought this might be the fastest way. "I want you."

Well. That is...definitely not something she hates hearing. Andy feels her whole body warm with pleasure. But like--okay, clearly her record on cheating isn't the best, but still she's not about to--to--

(It's Sam, though. It's Sam, and even though Andy knows it's wrong it just feels like he's hers first and always by default, or something. Even before they got together the first time she felt that way: like she ran him down before they ever even knew each other, so she had a claim.)

Sam's not finished, though: "Can I--can I just take you to bed?" he asks, and Andy's eyes widen. "Not to--" He shakes his head, frustrated. "We don't need to--McNally. Just let me take you to bed."

Oh god, Andy wants to. Her sheets are probably gross and musty, sure, but these pyjamas are nice and clean. Plus Sam smells so familiar, deodorant and coffee and the warm brown smell of his leather jacket, and it's possible all Andy wants to do is curl up with him in a mess of cotton and sleep for a year.

But.

"Sam." She pushes her face at his, not even really a kiss. "If we lie down together, do you really think we can just...?" She trails off, feeling stupid. It's a point, though--she and Sam have always fixed things with sex, way more than they probably should. As soon as an argument wound down (or, like--before it did, sometimes) they were always all over each other, barely any time to talk it out. He's very, very warm between her thighs.

Sam grins. It's a quicksilver thing, but it's still the first break in what feels like years. Andy's stomach swoops. "Yeah, McNally, I think we can probably 'just'." He leans her against the wall a bit, freeing up one hand to rub over her face. "You're exhausted, sweetheart. And in a couple of hours it'll be morning. I'll get up, and go over and--" He hesitates, as if trying to find the right phrasing. "--see her. Come back with coffee. You won't even know I'm gone."

Andy arches in his touch like a cat; everything he's doing feels stupidly good--too good, really, if this 'sleeping' plan is going to work. She selfishly doesn't want to hear another word about his girlfriend, even if it's to hear about how he's going to dump her in less than three hours. "Okay."

Sam smiles, nudges his nose against hers. "Okay."

He carries her into the bedroom, tipping her to one side once they're in there so she can reach down and flip on the bedside lamp. The room's a disaster, basically: clothes piled on the chaise and the linens all tangled, tissues on the dresser from a runny nose she had six months ago. "Sorry," she mumbles again. She wants to keep apologizing, weirdly, for the mess and the undercover and for walking away from him to begin with, for not believing that he loved her when he told her the first time.

"Shh." Sam sets her down on the mattress way more gently than he ever has before, like he's worried he's going to break her. Smoothes out the sheets a little bit. He unzips the hoodie but leaves his jeans and t-shirt on, punches the pillows a couple of times to plump them up. When he climbs into bed beside her Andy scoots towards him like a magnet. "Come here," he murmurs anyway, both arms curling around her as she settles herself against his chest. It is really, really ridiculous how good this feels. Sam cards his hand through her hair.

"Had you really never said it before?" she mumbles. She can hear his heart beating away against her cheek. "Like the psychic said?"

Sam's hand pauses. "I-- no, I mean." His breath puffs off the top of her head as he tilts his face down, looking for eye contact. Andy cranes her neck around sleepily. "I have. Not a--not a lot, but I have." He pauses, rubbing along the top of one of her ears. "Before you, I hadn't said it for a very long time."

Andy scritches at his chest a little, considering. He's definitely thinner, something she's investigating in detail the second it no longer counts as cheating. "I want us to work," she says finally. "Because when I say it to you, I--" She stops, fussing with the stitching on his t-shirt. Telling him it feels different with him seems a bit unfair to everyone else she's been with (not to mention it's hugely, stupidly revealing), but it's true. Gross or not, it's definitely true. "I want us to work," she finishes lamely, hiding her face in his shoulder.

Sam cups the back of her head to tuck her closer. "I want us to work too."

"Everyone gets one breakup," Andy murmurs, which is something Gail said to her once that always stuck.

"That so?" Sam asks. He's got his face tipped down toward hers, warm and close. It's taking basically all Andy's willpower not to slide her palm inside his shirt. "Well," he says quietly, planting a kiss against her temple. "Guess we can't break up again, then."

Andy smiles. "Guess not." Now that she's lying down like this she's so tired, jesus, can feel the last twenty-four hours hitting her like so many tons of bricks. She pulls the stale blankets up a little higher, covers them both. There's a part of her that doesn't want to sleep, though, that's weirdly afraid she'll wake up and he'll be gone again. That none of this is actually real. She wants to roll onto her back and pull him on top of her in the worst way. "Can you just talk to me some more?" she asks instead, reaching down and threading her fingers through his. Hand-holding's okay, she figures. Hand-holding is totally PG. "Just like, for a few minutes."

Sam squeezes. "Sure, sweetheart," he tells her easily, reaching over and flicking the light off, everything going blurry in the dark. "What do you want to hear?"

Andy rubs at his knuckle for a second, polishing up a worry stone. She can't see his face anymore, and it's making her strangely reckless. "I-- what's the first thing you're going to do? When you get back here in the morning, I mean."

Sam laughs, vibrating through her whole body. "You want to hear about that, huh?" he asks, tracing a whirl over her upper back. It sounds, just a little, like the answer isn't entirely PG.

And Andy--yeah, she definitely does. She missed his voice in the dark kind of a lot. "Tell me," she demands, fighting down a spasm of guilt. If they don't actually do anything, then it should be fine, right? She thinks that it's probably fine. Still, just as a preemptive measure, she scoots her hips back an inch.

Sam blows out a breath. "Sweetheart--" His hands are on her lower back now, rubbing along the curve. Andy wants to arch for him in the worst way. "I think you know what I'm gonna do." His voice has definitely dropped, more feeling than noise.

"Maybe." Andy smiles into the warm cotton of his t-shirt. She does know, actually, or she's got an idea at least; she feels sleepy and relieved and turned on in equal parts, like at any second she might open her mouth and start to purr. "Wanna hear you say it anyway."

"Oh yeah?" Sam's still rubbing at the small of her back, steady. He gets her bare skin for a moment, where her shirt's riding up. Smoothes it down again. "I'm gonna let you sleep, first of all."

Andy nudges him with her knee. "Sleep's boring," she tells him playfully. It feels weird and good to flirt with him again, even if it does make her kind of guilty. They're not doing anything, though. They're not. "Try again."

She can feel the curve of his grin against her temple. "I'm gonna get you out of those pajamas," he allows after a moment, thumbing along the elastic of her pants. Andy holds her breath, hoping he'll palm down lower as much as she's hoping he won't. "Show you how much I missed you."

He doesn't, in the end; Andy exhales as he moves his hand back up her spine, tries not to feel disappointed about that. "How much, exactly?" she asks instead.

Sam shifts his hips a bit, this telltale wiggle that has Andy biting her lip in guilty satisfaction. She likes knowing that it's getting to him too. "A lot," he tells her after a minute, swallowing softly. Just like that it doesn't totally sound like they're still talking about sex (and god, what is wrong with her--it is possible Andy only wants to jump his bones more). Sam smooths a hand up to the safety of her upper back, plays with her hair a little. "You really want a play by play?" he asks finally. "We're supposed to be sleeping."

"Sleep is boring," Andy repeats, shifting on the bed. Then, hiding her face: "Tell me one thing." She knows he wants her, she does, but. Some reassurance is always nice. Flirting with him is nice.

Sam exhales. "Gonna put you on your back," he says slowly, like he's picturing it. "Bring your knees up. Get you to make some noise for me." Andy whimpers quietly, and he rubs her neck soothingly. "Want to make you feel so good, sweetheart." His voice is like gravel.

Ooh-kay, yep. That about does it. Andy shifts on the bed again, pressing her hot cheek against his t-shirt. "Can't wait," she says after a beat, laughing a little sheepishly. It comes out choked.

"Me either." Sam lets out a deep, careful breath. "Close your eyes, okay? I'm right here."

He's right. She knows he's right. Andy flattens her palm over his steady heartbeat, tries to settle down enough to do the whole REM thing. After all, the sooner she falls asleep the sooner it'll be morning, and he'll go and come back and then they can just--well. Then they can just, she guesses. Andy remembers her parents trying to talk her into going to bed that way when she was a little kid, the night before Christmas or her birthday and her bouncing all over the place in her bedroom in the house they lived in when she was real small, the one with the flowered wallpaper from the people that had lived there before them. She remembers closing her eyes and having them pop right back open, like no matter how tired she felt her body was a high speed train that wouldn't stop.

Sam is hugely warm, though, and his hands feel so good on her neck and in her hair; she made Nick scritch at her scalp sometimes while they were watching TV, if she was feeling particularly sorry for herself, but that--yeah. That wasn't like this. Andy chances scooting closer and then a little closer after that, molding herself against his side until it feel like she might be able to melt into him altogether. Keeps her eyes shut tight.

"You could tell me, too," Sam says then, so quietly she thinks she might have dreamed it. "What you want me to do to you."

Andy breathes. When she answers she pretends she really is asleep, that the conversation isn't actually happening. "Hold me down. Want it hard." Sam makes a sound then, a word or a quiet exclamation, but Andy just shuts her eyes tighter. "Want you to be just mine."

She's pretty sure, right before she passes out for real, Sam tells her that he is. That that's all he's always been.

*

Andy wakes up to the smell of coffee and someone quietly rustling through the newspaper next to her. It takes her a moment to remember what the huge, delighted bubble in her stomach is, how it feels like a holiday and winning the lottery all rolled into one.

(Only you, he'd said in her ear. No one else.)

She opens her eyes and finds a Second Cup bag staring down at her from the dresser, sun filtering through the giant toilet-factory windows. The newspaper rattles again, a little louder; it does not, particularly, sound like the rattle of a person who has been waiting patiently for her to wake up.

"Morning," she grins, staying still and prone on the pillow. For no reason at all, she wants him to come to her.

Sam drops the paper into his lap, looking down at her. The smile on his face is--yeah. It's a pretty good smile. "Hey, McNally," he says, and just like that it feels like she's home for real now, like Dorothy waking up from her dream. "How'd you sleep?"

Andy shrugs into the pillows, feeling warm and giddy and hugely shy. Gathers a fistful of blanket inside her hand. "Hard." She keeps smiling back, she can't help it, and then they're just lying in bed grinning at each other, and she's legit dying to ask him if he broke up with his girlfriend and she doesn't have the first clue how.

"I did it," Sam says quietly, like he's reading her mind and wants to make it easy on her. "This morning. It's all done."

"Oh yeah?" Andy forces herself not to fist-pump. She does actually feel a tiny bit bad about it, now that it's done. Not a lot or anything, but. A tiny bit. "How'd it go?"

"It went." Sam scoots down in bed so he's facing her, tucks his arm underneath the pillow and gets his forehead right close to hers. The newspaper slips to the floor with a whispery swish. "Andy. It wasn't anything like this, you get that? We can talk about it as much or as little as you want to, but I want to make sure you know--" He blinks a little, those long long eyelashes. "It wasn't anything like this."

Andy looks at him in the yellow light from the window. He's got a day's worth of beard on his face. He's wearing the same t-shirt from last night, which makes sense obviously, but. It's almost like he never even left.

"I don't want to talk about it," she says.

Sam finds his smile again, slower. "Oh yeah?" He rubs a hand down her side, blunted enough by the puffy comforter that it stays friendly and PG. "What do you want to do instead?" It sounds like he's really asking, like he's trying just as hard as she is not to assume. There's enough direct light streaming in that his eyes are lit up, this amber quality in the brown you have to be at the right angle to see.

Andy bites her lip. Underneath the blankets she doesn't feel friendly or PG at all, wiggly and damp enough that she's pretty sure she must have dreamed about him at least once. But she's still shy, hugely conscious of how keyed-up she is: "Dunno." She blushes as she says it, scooting her face in closer on the pillow.

Close enough to kiss; Sam obliges, close-mouthed. "Can we do that?" he asks quietly, tugging at her bottom lip. When she nods he works a hand between her cheek and the pillow, licking his way inside. Andy sucks on his tongue and tries not to want everything at once.

Sam breaks away after a second, nudging his nose at hers. "Hi."

Andy grins big enough to feel the stretch. "Hi."

They make out like that for a while, until Andy's mouth is swollen and her whole entire self is humming with it, that high-school kind of feeling of anticipation building to a critical mass in her core. Sam keeps one big hand on her face. The other one wanders, though, under the covers but over her t-shirt, rubbing at the curve of her ribs and waist and hipbone like he wants to relearn the shape of her body as quickly as possible. By the time he pulls back next, she's breathing hard.

"Missed kissing you," she confesses. It sounds really stupid out loud but it's true, god, she missed his tongue and his taste and the scrape of beard along her chin, the way he bites at her mouth like he's staking a claim. Andy threads her fingers through his hair. "Like. A lot."

"Oh yeah?" Sam grins and kisses her some more, down along her jaw and neck and collarbone, sucking a bit in a way that makes her whimper. She wants him do it harder, to mark her up all over the freaking place. "What else did you miss?"

"S'top secret." Andy presses closer under the covers, opening her hips up and hooking her leg around his. Sam makes a sound deep in his throat. He's hard; she can feel him hot and thick right through both layers of fabric. Has to take a minute to remind herself they've got time. "What happened here?" she asks him quietly, mapping her hands up and down his warm, unfamiliar chest. "You feel different."

Sam smiles. "Lost some weight, McNally." He's easing onto his back slowly, gripping tight to her hips to take her with him. Andy winds up sprawled on top of him with her legs half-open, gravity pushing their pubic bones together way harder than before. Sam tugs gently behind both knees until she opens all the way back up. "Stress, maybe," he continues when she's straddling him fully. Both of them are breathing pretty heavy. "Wasn't eating so good for a while there."

"No?" Andy's curious enough to keep from pressing forward mindlessly. "Was it because of..." Only then that feels hugely presumptuous. Just because she wasn't eating (or sleeping, or feeling) well without him, it doesn't necessarily follow that--

But Sam's nodding. "Yeah. It probably was." He catches her gaze and holds it seriously, hot palm cupping her face again. "I didn't do so great, alone."

"You weren't alone," Andy points out. She feels hugely touched anyway, hands counting up and down the ribs she used to not be able to feel.

Sam rubs through her hair. "Wasn't with you."

Well. She likes hearing that way more than she should (she wondered, is all, back when they first broke up and how the absolute worst part was how cold-blooded he seemed about the whole thing, like he'd decided not to care about her anymore so now he didn't. She doesn't know if it would have made her feel better at the time to know that he was struggling too, but. It doesn't hurt to know it now). Andy smudges a kiss along the side of his jaw before she sits up.

"Take this off," she murmurs, reaching down and curling her fingers in the hem of his t-shirt. Sam lifts his arms obediently and Andy pulls it over his head, flattens her palms over his chest and looks down at him curiously. She runs her hands along his torso, makes herself go slow as she traces the lines of muscle and scrapes her nails lightly over the hair. "That tickle?" she asks, when his abs jump under her touch.

Sam shakes his head, watches Andy watching him. "Nah," he says after a moment, trailing his fingers up her arm. She can feel how tense his thighs are underneath her, knows he's trying not to buck; it makes her feel powerful in a way she's only ever felt with Sam. She wants to drag this out as long as they can. "S'good."

Andy nods and scoots a little lower, shifting her weight to her knees on either side so she can mouth her way from his sternum down to his navel, warm rough skin and the slightly soapy taste of him. "What about that?" she asks, glancing up.

Sam swallows audibly, thumbing at the vein inside her elbow. "Andy."

Andy smiles and kisses her way back up (slow, god, so so slow), brushing her chin along the line of whispery hair. She pauses to rest her cheek against the flat plane of his sternum for a second, closing her eyes, then detours around to one flat nipple. Sam's fingers circle her arm as she sucks, ribcage flaring out with each shaky breath.

"Okay," he says finally, stroking the thin skin on the underside of her wrist. "Come here." Andy sits up obediently and Sam follows her, propping himself on an elbow to reach for the hem of her tank top.

"Yeah," she says thickly, nodding in answer to his silent question. "Yeah, I want--" They're being so careful with each other, unnaturally polite like it's the first time all over again. Andy feels almost drugged, some combination of love and hormones. Between her legs she's slick as a river.

Sam rolls the shirt up inch by torturous inch, slow enough that Andy lowers her raised arms and makes fists in her hair, tugging. All her nerve endings feel raw. It's got a built-in shelf bra, the top--when he finally finishes peeling it off she's desperate, bare to the waist with her nipples standing up absurdly hard. It's not even cold in here.

"What do you want?" Sam asks, reaching out to run just the tip of his finger over her. "Hmm? Tell me."

"I want--" Andy loses the rest of it in a whimper and arches into him, her breasts feeling hot and heavy and tight. Her whole entire body aches from wanting. "Sam."

"Easy, sweetheart." Sam reaches up and pushes her sleep-mussed hair behind her ear, Andy turning her head to bite at his thumb as he skates it down along her jawline. She falls forward a bit as he cups her with both hands. "Talk to me," he says again, almost pleading. His eyes are flicking back and forth between her face and her swollen nipples; he squeezes once, just gently, and Andy whines. "Good?"

Andy nods, feeling overwhelmed and vulnerable. She can't decide what she wants more, his hands on her breasts or him spread out on top of her, the weight of him pressing her down 'til she can barely breathe. "Come here," she manages finally, sliding off him and rolling onto her back, her legs getting tangled up in the blankets. She's wet right through the crotch of her pajama pants. "Just--"

"Yeah." Sam's settling himself between her thighs in half a second, tugging her arms up over her head on the pillow and ducking down to suck a nipple into his mouth. When he looks up there's an expression on his face that breaks her heart.

"Love you," she says in a rush, rocking her hips into him helplessly. They said slow, she's trying for slow, but just-- "God, Sam. Love you so so much."

Sam surprises her by lunging back up to get at her mouth, both hands pressing down heavy on her wrists as he bites her lower lip clumsily, all his careful control gone. "Love you," he murmurs. It takes Andy a minute to realize what he's saying, quiet and slurred between kisses, but when she does she pushes herself at him harder. They both lose themselves for a while then, her tissue-paper pyjama pants and the scrape of his zipper, how good it feels to fit everything together. Andy moans against his mouth until their lips are buzzing.

"Okay." Sam finally tears himself away to rest his forehead against hers. "That's not--" He laughs raggedly, blinking a few times like he's trying to situate himself. "Missed you," he tells her, those pretty eyelashes practically brushing Andy's own. "Missed this." He noses into the crook of her neck for a second, sucking gently. "And we have all day."

Andy rocks up against him again, restless; she was close before he stopped. "I know." She tucks both feet behind his knees, curling her toes against the denim. Sam is kissing his way back across her chest, soft like he's trying to slow them both down. It only makes her ache worse. "Keep doing that," she instructs as he bites lightly, sinking his teeth into the curve of one breast. All of a sudden, Andy wants marks.

"Yeah?" Sam glances up, then bites harder, this sharp lick of pain that turns to pleasure almost before she even registers the sensation. Andy pushes herself against his mouth. As a reward he sucks hard enough to break blood vessels, then catches her nipple between his teeth and tugs, stretching the tip out with an electric jolt that's got her hips flying up off the mattress. "That what you want?"

"Mm-hmm." Andy nods frantically, not enough breath left in her body for actual language. He feels so good, jesus; she wants him to keep doing exactly what he's doing forever at the same time as she wants him to quit fucking around and bury himself inside. Her fingers clench and unclench in the pillows. "Sam--" she starts, struggling against his grip to try and reach for him, but his hold tightens around her forearms to keep her exactly where she is.

"You gonna let me have you?" he murmurs softly, the words hot and damp against her prickling skin. Andy almost doesn't hear him over the noise of her own whimpers. He's rocking himself into her again, slow and steady; she grips him with her knees and hangs on tight as he drags himself back and forth against her clit. "Should I keep going so you know you're just mine?"

Which--god. "Please," Andy says, more like a sob than an actual word; it's been so long and so lonely, is the truth of it, and she's falling apart a little bit here. The scruff on his cheeks feels like sandpaper as he mouths along her ribs. Andy thinks of how she's going to look when he's finished with her, breasts and neck and stomach all covered with red-purple bruises, and--

Yup. She is totally going to come before he even gets her pants off.

"Sam," she gasps, hovering right on the edge of it where the scrape of him is not quite enough. It feels so good though, oh god, so so good and Andy just wants-- "Gonna," she warns him, bucking under his hold again. Sam tightens his fingers and comes back up to watch, biting at one nipple with his eyes glued to her face.

"That's it," he whispers, turning the bite into a powerful suck. It hurts, fuck, it hurts but it's so good. "Let go." His pupils are completely blown, almost no irises left at all.

Only then Andy just doesn't for what feels like the longest time, wriggling helplessly, stuck in a limbo that's too much to stand. "Please," she begs, almost nonsensical. The drag of him through the cotton is wonderful and awful all at once. "Oh my god, please, you have to make me."

Sam lets go of one forearm, sliding his hand between her ass and the bed and lifting her up. "Shh," he murmurs, pressing them together tight and steady; Andy nearly sobs in relief, almost almost almost there. "I've got what you need." He picks up speed until he's basically fucking her through their clothes, nipping at her neck and chest and everywhere, sharp and punishing. Andy feels every drag of his mouth like a knife. "Mine," he tells her, panting into her neck. "Just mine, and now everyone's gonna know--"

Fuck, that does it. Andy tips back her head and keens, her entire lower body convulsing as Sam squeezes her ass rhythmically, dragging himself across her clit over and over and murmuring nonsense encouragement, how beautiful she is and how much he wants to fuck her. It seems like it goes on forever, wave after wave of relief. Andy gets the hiccups when she's done, shaky and overwhelmed.

"Sweetheart," Sam says quietly, lifting off and touching the soaked crotch of her pyjamas. It sounds like he's shocked.

Andy flinches hard--she doesn't mean to, shit, it's just so much at once, her whole body shorting out like a power grid in the middle of summer. Sam backs the hell off right away.

"No." God, that's the absolute last thing she wants, for him to stop touching her for even a second. She wants to climb inside him and stay. "Come back, come back, I just--"

"Okay, but--" Sam lets her wrestle him back down on top of her, cupping her face in his hand and kissing her purposefully slow. She's still hiccuping a bit against his mouth. It's like she can't get enough air in, or something: she's never, ever felt like this during sex before. "Take it easy, sweetheart."

"You take it easy." Andy doesn't even really know what she means by that, exactly, but Sam holds her there another minute until she stops shaking quite so embarrassingly much. She calms down eventually, though, enough to realize how hard he still is against her hipbone; she nudges until he's lying on his back, working his zipper with two unsteady hands. Andy pulls at his waistband, wraps her first around his warm, familiar cock--God, it's probably really tacky how much she missed this part of him specifically, but. Whatever. She totally did.

Now it's Sam's turn to go restless, hips shifting under her touch: "Andy," he says raggedly, sitting up a bit and reaching far enough to catch the waistband of her pajamas as she's ducking her head to lick along the warm, smooth underside. "Come up here."

"Uh-uh." Andy shakes her head stubbornly. She's fine now, really, she just wants to-- "Let me."

"I'll let you, sweetheart." Sam keeps tugging though, hand curving around her thigh like he's aiming to spin her clockwise toward the foot of the bed. For a second Andy can't figure out what he-- "Turn around."

Oh. Oh.

He wants to, like--to her, Andy realizes belatedly. At the same time.

"Sam," she says, this low, shocked squeak she one hundred percent can't help (because they've never--she's never--god). She does it though, lifting her hips to shuck off her pyjama pants with newly-shaky hands, swinging one leg over to straddle him backwards. She watches over her shoulder as she does it, ass hovering somewhere near the neighbourhood of his chest, weirdly shy. The feeling doesn't last long: christ, the look on Sam's face, like this is going to end him immediately. Like it's going to be the best thing ever.

"God, Andy." He curls both hands around her thighs, thumbs rubbing up under the curve of her ass. "Come here."

Andy wiggles back the last few inches inelegantly, dropping down to her elbows hard enough to jar the bed. But it completely doesn't matter because Sam's mouth is on her and--"Oh my god," she gasps, the feeling of his tongue licking across her clit, hard and messy. "Oh my--" She wraps her fingers around his cock like a reflex, the head bumping up against her chin. Sam groans against her and it's almost too much, how wound-up she still is, but Andy takes a deep breath and when she doesn't hiccup or come or die, she gets her mouth on him and starts sucking.

No way are they gonna last. Sam can't keep his hips still, rolling them underneath her in fits and starts; Andy taps his hip until he starts fucking her mouth a little, shallow pulses, then pulls off to rub at the leaking tip while he works a finger inside. He tastes just like she remembers, achingly familiar. Andy feels a surge of possessiveness, imagining his girlfriend. Wants to suck hard and long until he forgets anyone else ever did.

"You're gonna come," she tells him, resting her overheated forehead against his hipbone. "Just like this. You're gonna let me, and you're gonna come."

"Andy." Her name is like she's never heard it before, this low quiet beg deep in his throat. She likes the sound of it way too much. "Andy. I want to--"

"I know," she says. She wants it too, god, wants to feel him fill her up and cover her, but-- "After." She feels bossy now, has the sudden and distinct impression she's in charge here and wants to keep it that way for a while. She drops her jaw and takes him as deep as she can.

"Jesus." Sam groans like she's out to destroy him; Andy hums a little and closes her eyes to concentrate as his cock bumps the back of her throat. Sam's grip tightens. The way he's working her over with his mouth feels insane, the stretch when he pushes another finger inside her. It's--god. It's been a while. Andy breathes.

(She didn't want anybody else, is what happened. She was working a lot and there was Traci to think about, and then the undercover, but mostly: if she couldn't have Sam, she didn't want anybody else.)

"Come on," she urges now, pulling off long enough to get the words out; she remembers the way his body goes tight when he's on the edge of it, and he's close. "Wanna feel you, okay? Sam." Andy scrapes her nails along the skin of his inner thigh, gentle. "S'just me." She barely has time to get her mouth back on him before it happens.

"Fuck," Sam starts, clutching at her helplessly. "Please, sweetheart, I--" He muffles the rest against her body, coming in long, messy pulses that fill Andy's mouth and throat too fast to swallow. She stays with him all the way through it, though, choking herself a bit in the process. Finally pulls off to lick him clean.

"Missed this," she murmurs, rubbing up and down the packed muscle of his thighs. "God, Sam. Missed you so bad." He's relaxing by degrees now, stomach rising and falling underneath Andy's breasts and his face still buried between her legs; he pulled his fingers out so he could grab at her with both hands, so now it's just his lips and chin and tongue and--oh god--his teeth. Andy puts her head down on his lower belly and groans.

"Let me hear," Sam demands, pulling back to drag his scruff across the crease of her thigh roughly. Fuck, everywhere, seriously, he's just going to mark her up-- "Have to hear you." His voice is completely shot, as bad as if they'd been working a concert for hours and hours, this note in it that's strangely close to begging. Andy watches his spent cock twitch beside her cheek, fretful.

"Yes," she says, leveraging herself up on her elbows a bit. "Yes, anything, I promise, just--" Sam grabs her ass, bringing her down to his mouth again, and she loses the rest in a sharp whine.

The orgasm's not as violent this time, just this delicious roll of pleasure all down her spine and outward all the way to her fingers and toes. Andy squeezes her eyes shut against his skin. She works herself on his tongue while it's happening, too far gone to be self-conscious; Sam doesn't seem to mind, anyway, his fingertips digging into her hips and pulling her close. He sucks her clit obligingly until she's through.

"Sam," she gasps once she can talk again, this truly fantastic afterglow kicking its way though her veins. She tries to leverage herself up on her arms and stalls out halfway through, winds up sprawled out inelegantly across the mattress. "God."

Sam huffs a quiet laugh, a little breathless."Wanted to do that to you," he murmurs as she finally turns around and crawls back up his body, settling into his open arms and tilting her face up for a a kiss. He smells like her, the bottom half of his face damp and slick with it. Andy sucks at his chin, liking the taste. "Jesus, McNally. For months, I wanted to do that to you."

Andy hums against his mouth, pleased; it's barely mid-morning, the light all warm and golden where it's pooling on the sheets. "That so?" she asks, arching her back and stretching so her breasts press up against his side. "Because, like. I hadn't thought about it at all."

(He is, like. At least half-hard again already, is the thing.)

"Not at all, huh?" Sam nudges his sticky-wet nose at hers, smiling. He didn't even both trying to clean up at all, god, not even a cursory wipe at his mouth. Andy wants to smear herself all over him. "Who'd you think about instead?"

"Best," Andy says right away, getting a swat across the ass for her troubles. (That was also something she thought about when they were broken up, incidentally, how much she likes it and whether or not it was just with Sam, some of the other stuff they got up to, too. It freaked her out, having him responsible for so many of her likes and dislikes.) "Also Oliver." She gets a fist around Sam and holds, rubbing a thumb across the slippery head.

"Fuck." Sam pushes himself into her grip, cock twitching anxiously. The skin along the underside is ridiculously soft.

"Too much?" She'd back off but for the way he's working himself into it, intent like he's trying to get all the way erect as soon as possible. Still: "We have all day." He came hard, first time around. Andy tries not to feel smug about that and fails.

"No," Sam laughs, covering her hand with his and making her jack harder. "S'good. Too good, christ."

He's almost there already, god; Andy's grip expands as he stiffens. "That's it," she tells him, sucking at his messy jaw. "Want you inside, Sam." Her entire body is still humming ridiculously, as if someone opened up the top of her head and poured bucket fulls of endorphins inside. It feels like she could just slip onto him and come, like it would honestly take no more than that.

But Andy wants something different: "Have to hold me down," she murmurs into his mouth, just quiet. "Like you said. S'so I know--" Sam is rock hard now, clutching at her with suddenly desperate hands. "S'so I know I'm yours," Andy finishes, whimpering a little as she rubs herself against his thigh impatiently. There isn't a polite bone left in her body, all of her manners washed away by lust. "Wanna be just--"

"Mine." Sam's on top of her before she can even get the rest of the words out, all of him at once and so fast it hurts a little, the burn and stretch of him inside (again: it has been a while). It occurs to her belatedly that they probably ought to use a condom--he's been with somebody else, on top of which she has definitely not been as careful with the pill as she was back when she had a reason to be--but it's Sam, it's Sam it's Sam it's Sam, and when she opens her eyes and looks at him she can tell he's thinking the same exact thing.

"I don't care," she gasps as he pulls almost all the way out and then sinks back in again, these deep purposeful thrusts Andy feels absolutely everywhere. She pulls her knees up to give him a little more room, his hipbones grinding into hers every time he bottoms out. "I don't--do you care?"

Sam doesn't answer her right away, just grabs her wrists and slams them down against the mattress on either side of her head, all his weight and these sharp-toothed kisses along her jaw. Andy whines. He feels so ridiculously good inside her, thick and hot and filling, how much she likes it when he holds her down; back before they broke up she'd play at fighting it when he did this, more like wrestling than sex, but right now--possibly right now she just wants to lie here and take it. "I don't care," Sam mutters, and she realizes it just took him that long to put a coherent response together. "Don't care, want you just like this, I--"

"Please," Andy whimpers, pulling her knees back even further. "Just--" She doesn't even know what she's begging for, just that she wants everything at once. Him to come inside her, messy and everywhere, but also her own orgasm and him fucking her all the way through it, again and again until she's done. She turns her head and bites back, not nicely.

"Andy." Sam's hips stutter, spine snapping straight to bury himself, so deep it actually hurts. "I can't, I'm not gonna be able to--" It sounds like he's completely out of his mind.

Oh wow. Sam almost never loses it like this when he's on top and controlling the pace, razor sharp concentration that lasts and lasts. And after he's already come once and-- "Go," Andy whines, fighting his grip for the first time all night. "Go, go, go, please, ohmygod." She's gonna come. The second he does, she's going to too.

It happens almost even before she's had time to articulate the thought, both of them careening right over the edge of it like an out-of-control freight train, him shoving her down and her arching off the bed and both of them clutching, jesus christ, like neither one of them has any real say in what's happening anymore. Andy doesn't even know if it feels good at first. It feels, though, that's for sure--like getting caught up in a riptide and flung around in the ocean. Like taking a bullet in the vest. It lasts and lasts and lasts until she's shaking. She's hardly even sure when she's done.

Neither of them say anything for a long time afterward, Sam making no move whatsoever to roll off her, the feel of his heart echoing deep and hard inside her body. Andy lies underneath him, memorizing his weight. His hands come back online before the rest of him, thumbs stroking along her wrists like he's worried he actually bruised her; it takes another minute before she recovers enough to thread their fingers together.

"So like," she says, swallowing thickly. Her throat feels scratchy and hoarse. "I guess that part still works okay."

Sam huffs a quiet laugh into her temple. "Yeah, sweetheart," he tells her, squeezing her hand. She can feel him slipping out of her a little, the mess beginning to slide down her thighs. "I guess so."

Andy rubs her chin along his shoulder slowly. Her legs are loose and rubberized, heels slipping uselessly down the backs of his knees even though she wants to keep holding him place for--god, forever. "Um. Here's hoping the rest still works too?"

Now Sam pulls back a bit, up on his elbows with their hands still tangled together. "It will," he insists, nudging his nose against hers. "I'm playing for keeps." We can get a dog, yeah, only this time Andy believes him. And god, there's nothing to guarantee they're fixed for good, they still have to talk through a lot of crap, but just like that she's on the edge of dumb, hysterical tears of relief.

"Good," she chews out, gasping around a sob. For some stupid reason, she's still trying to play it cool. "I, uh. Love you."

Sam's face does a really nice thing then, not a smile but better. "I love you too," he says.

(So. That's not such a bad place to start over from, anyway.)

He stays exactly where he is for a while, the two of them breathing. Andy sifts her fingers through his hair.

THIS WORKED OUT OKAY LAST TIME.

2012-11-30T15:12:11Z

Pick a fandom/pairing, then pick a trope, and I'll tell you a little bit about the fic I'd write for that combo.

1. genderswap
2. bodyswap
3. drunk!fic
4. huddling for warmth
5. fake dating
6. secretly a virgin!
7. fancy dress
8. cross-dressing
9. forced to share a bed
10. truth or dare
11. historical AU
12. accidental baby-acquisition
13. apocalypse fic
14. telepathy
15. high School AU

can we just fast-forward through tomorrow?

2012-11-06T02:41:18Z

I'm exhausted, have a meme:

So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious but you have no idea about, or something obscure you just have to know. Ask away. All topics, within reason, are open for discussion.

Stolen from everyone, everywhere.

FIC: close to the telling [rookie blue, sam/andy]

2012-11-05T19:00:48Z

Title: close to the telling
Authors: lowriseflare and threeguesses
Fandom/Pairing: Sam/Andy, Rookie Blue
Warnings/Kinks: rimming
Rating: Hard R
Word Count: 7400+
Summary: The one where they get back together and sneak around.
A/N: Part One of the Sam and Andy: Dirty Secrets Trilogy. ...Which, now that I'm thinking about it, is probably the name of a porno somewhere!

The morning after Sam and Andy get back together, Nick rings her bell for a 7:30 gym date.

HER HAIR IS BIG BECAUSE IT'S FULL OF SECRETS.

2012-10-30T17:45:34Z

MEME TIME: I'm sure I have a reputation somewhere in fandom, so... what is it?

(This is going to be like that Honesty Box on Facebook from the mid 'aughts, isn't it? Where people are supposed to tell you about their true feelings and instead they send you pictures of dicks? Either way, jacked from lowriseflare, as per usual. Probably someone should come tell me I'm a follower.)

FIC: world lights up at its edges [rookie blue, sam/andy, high school au]

2012-10-19T01:07:24Z

Title: world lights up at its edges
Authors: lowriseflare and threeguesses
Fandom/Pairing: Rookie Blue, Sam/Andy
Rating: R
Word Count: 28 900+ (...yes, REALLY)
Summary: The one with the high school AU that is a MILLION WORDS LONG, JFC.
A/N: Yep. We finally wrote something too big for LJ, kids.

That's right. We went there.

Aaaand the fic, over at AO3: The first time Sam sees her is on the field behind the gym building.

say, what's in this drink [Dear Yuletide Writer 2012, the reprise]

2012-10-15T23:20:34Z

Every year, I'm pretty sure I almost cause my writer to default by not putting up a letter until the last possible second. NOT SO THIS YEAR.

Santa! Yulegoat! Other non-denominational identifiers! I'm pretty excited for Yuletide this year, mostly because my requests are all slightly ridiculous. If we've been matched, I like your style already. I promise I'm easy, and always remember OPTIONAL DETAILS ARE OPTIONAL. Fic is much more fun when the author writes what they want instead of adhering religiously to a prompt. For me and for you!

The Giver

God, this was one of my favourite books as a kid. I loved the world-building. I would take literally any fic that explored it in more detail. Why/how was the Community designed the way it was? How does it fare after Jonas leaves? Does it keep adhering to its rules? Does it change slowly? What happens to Fiona and Asher and Lily? Or maybe even backstory about Rosemary: how did she grow up? OR HEY, go crazy, write an AU where Jonas never leaves!
But seriously, Yulegoat, write what you feel; fic is always, always better that way. Those suggestions consisted of nothing more than me spit-balling (badly) in the span of one minute, and I'm not married to any of them.

Yep, that pretty much says it all. World-building: I am into it. Does the Community have myths? Is it too utilitarian for myths? I just don't know! DO WHAT YOU FEEL, ANON.

The Wire

I'm going to level with you Yulegoat: I kiiiiiiind of want a high school AU where members of the Barksdale Organization are all kids in the towers? Just a little bit? BUT if that is not your thing, I would also take backstory on Avon and Stringer setting up the drug crew. Or hanging out selling product when they were younger. Or anything!

Yep. (It's not my fault, though, I swear. That high school AU idea was suggested to me! I'm a very suggestible person!) But seriously, I admire you for tackling The Wire fic in any form. I've always been too afraid to do it myself.

Parenthood

(Wow, this is going to be a real gotcha because the tags won't let me select Adam.) BUT YEP, I may or may not want incesty crap with Sarah and Adam? I AM SO SORRY YULEGOAT. IT IS NOT MY FAULT LAUREN GRAHAM LOOKS AT HER TV BROTHER LIKE SHE WANTS TO BANG HIM.
But, no, seriously. Sarah is my fav, I would take anything centred around her at all. She doesn't have to be banging her brother, I promise. What was she like as a kid? I would take the Original Four Braverman siblings as teenagers/children in a heartbeat. Or maybe backstory when Amber and Drew were babies! She could even be banging Ray Romano! Go crazy, Yulegoat. Follow your heart.

Yeeeeeah, that's a complete gotcha. Ignore the incest, anon (unless you also happen to want completely inappropriate things from your wholesome family fare). I think Parenthood is a great fandom for Yuletide, which seems to tend toward gen and ensembles more than the average ficathon. So, if you want to, ignore the character-matching rule and write about any and all of the Bravermans. There is no fic for this show, literally anything you do will blow my mind.

Three Men and a Baby

I MEAN, basically I just want happy fic where they fall in love and raise Mary? Isn't that what everyone wants after watching this movie?

If we got matched on this, you are already the best person ever. End of story.

FIC: on creating the perfect land mine [rookie blue, sam]

2012-10-07T19:22:25Z

Title: on creating the perfect land mind
Authors: lowriseflare and threeguesses
Fandom/Pairing: Rookie Blue, Sam
Rating: R
Word Count: 7300+
Summary: The one where Sam meets a waitress.
A/N: We like creating blonde girlfriends for him kind of a lot, you guys.

Couple days after he breaks it off with McNally, Sam wakes up with a bitch of an ache in his upper back.