A/N This scene takes place during 2.11. Given the dialogue at the start of the scene is directly extracted from the show itself, it probably needs no further explanation to where it fits in.

Thanks to Becca for such a beautiful prompt. This one is for you…and the Twitterhounds. You all know who you are.

"You think the universe has a plan?"

Sam isn't 100% sure here whether McNally is referring to the Universe according to Andy, or the one that he's in right now –

That particular question is probably written all over his face, given what she follows up with in less than a beat:

"For us?"

This girl.

She is truly something out of this world.

"Oh yeah. It was undoubtedly fate that bought you into that bar tonight."

(Fate and late night conversations in booking only weeks ago, that is; the two of them on a string of graveyard shifts together. McNally entertaining Sam with her version of twenty questions - never anything too personal, like she was concerned that maybe she'd scare him away –

Most of the questions then were focused on Sam as a cop, more so about the times he'd gone UC.

He answered every single one honestly -

That side of life he was only happy to show.

Her. He was happy to share that with her.

Give her some hints without laying his soul all the way bare.)

The guilty McNally laugh that Sam's observation elicits prompts him to tamp down his own mega-watt smile.

"Okay. I might remember you saying something about it, but I didn't know you were going to be there." She glares at him, all kinds of lovely and beautiful. "I didn't".

Jesus. Sam will keep teasing McNally if she keeps smiling at him like this.

Also: He has to confess that having her at this angle, is doing a whole lot of things to a whole lot of parts of him –

"I never thought I'd ever see anyone I knew at The Alpine Inn." And if Sam wasn't laying it on the line before, he is now. He so is. "Least of all: You."

(Women like McNally do not cross Sam's side of the tracks. Jamie Brennan was on the money right there. Two years. Two fucking years –

Sam hung up on doe-eyes, a wide smile, and the biggest heart on the beat.

100% Andy McNally was always the girl that Sam couldn't –

Shouldn't.

Have.

The bright, light, shiny Andy McNally's of this universe do not belong in Sam's dark, crazy world.)

He is breath-taken by her persistence though. Her consistent searching and probing and delicacy and hope around, and about, him.

(Scores of people that have crossed Sam's path and only a handful ever really –

Sincerely.

Genuinely -

Gave a damn.

Andy McNally is possibly –

Potentially –

Maybe.

One of them).

"Like. My one chance to be. Whoever I want to be. And I choose Candace. Who works in insurance."

Sam watches on as the face of McNally changes at least 28 times. He doesn't like it too much when she doubts herself –

"Don't tell anybody this. But, I was Ernie the Zamboni driver."

That brings her back.

Mainly, it brings back the smile Sam likes. That smile she has when he knows McNally doesn't feel all alone.

He even earns a kiss for his efforts. Right on the mouth.

McNally looking down at his face as though she's more than impressed.

Sam looks straight back. He has always, always been very –

Impressed.

"I gotta go." Andy's smile turns serious as she swipes a thumb at Sam's chin. For all intents and purposes, it looks as though she wants to do the opposite of what she said.

Sam is more than prepared to give her the easy way out though. She came looking for him, after all. It's the least he can do. "We're being incredibly stupid."

McNally nods; resigned to the truth. "Yes, we are."

There's a pause between them then that makes Sam's heart clench. It's because he knows exactly what comes next –

"I can't ever come back here." She looks in the direction of Sam's chest as she says it, as though it might alleviate both of their pain. "Ever."

"No." Sam can barely breathe anymore, isn't even sure if he wants to if she's not around. Still, it would be completely unfair for Sam to make her hold his need. "Andy. You have to go."

She nods and nods and nods, moving her face toward his. "I do."

The start of the kiss is both beautiful and heartbreaking; the two of them fighting their way into the space of one another, breathing for…until it is almost against.

The battle raging inside Sam is near to dangerous. Two years of having her just where he wanted, and then –

This.

McNally moves further and further across him as the war continues. That strong, athletic body of hers is engulfing everything of Sam's.

He struggles against sobering thoughts of why they shouldn't be doing this, why Sam shouldn't even want to keep her in his heart like he does –

But his efforts in rationalization …or whatever the hell it is…are futile; every part of Sam slowly, slowly giving in to the every inch that she gives.

He closes his eyes for ten seconds, even counts them all out.

As he's doing it, he tries to imagine what it might mean if she wasn't serious –

No going back.

When his eyes do finally blink open, her face is right in front of his.

They stare into one another's eyes for a long, long while. Their breathing is still rapid and almost erratic, but it's gradually slowing down.

McNally surprises him by taking his face in her hands. Her body is wrapped tight around him as she does it, leaving no room for anything –

Especially no room for them to be apart.

That steady lion heart of hers beats against his own as she keeps looking; their eyes so close from the way their nose tips are touching, and their breaths intermingling against both sets of lips.

She's shifted her hips about to accommodate how hard Sam is against her; his own thighs prized inside hers, and his full length wedged in a spot that soaks a whole stretch.

Her voice is a quiet steady liquid as she asks him another set of questions; these ones more deliberate in their quest to understand Sam. (Or, well. Sam and whatever it is that he might be feeling for her).

It's the sound of her sincerity and uncertainty that makes Sam want to answer everything she questions right now –

"That night at The Penny. When you put Emily on the bus. Did you want me back then? Or. Did I read you wrong?"

Sam strokes his hands up her back lightly, swallows at the way her skin flushes hot with some bumps. He blinks underneath some vulnerability she's spreading onto him, but he does keep looking at her. The answer is both complex and simple. Back then he didn't know why. But still, he clears his throat and leaves his jaw slack. "Wanted you."

Andy nods. Her eyes glisten with the moonlight bouncing off them. She kisses him on the corner of the mouth and grinds her hips without coming off Sam. It's just enough for Sam to feel the pressure of her clit rub north and then south – long strokes from the smallest part of her that he's only just been privy to.

He watches on mesmerised as her face practically braces itself, and then releases. He listens closely to her breathing, lets himself drink in her tiny, almost fragile-like-crystal ah-sighs as she does it.

"You want me the night of the blackout?" Her voice isn't exactly strangled yet, but it's headed in that direction.

Sam realizes in that moment what he couldn't put his finger on first time around. It was complex for her too. It was never going to be just about 'sex.'

(Pretty much that first night Sam's convinced neither of them would have settled to quench the attraction with a fuck, even if it was extra-ordinary in every way -)

"Wanted you." He breathes this one with more intent, moving his hips an inch downward to get the head of his cock to where it will open her up.

Andy sighs hard on to Sam's lips as he does it, gives him a nip for good measure as she grips at the tip of his cock.

"What about when I got shot?" Her eyes go wild as she recalls that moment, triggering something else inside of Sam –

"Wanted you," he says helplessly, waiting for her to slide all the way on.

When she does, Sam has to hold his breath.

Andy gasps the whole way down, this slow stretch she's making him give her that has her panting and sucking at air.

Sam gets his hands right into her hair and mashes her mouth onto his. He releases the breath he was holding and keeps breathing hard as she continues to clench him like a vice.

It's the most intense fucking in all of Sam's life. McNally is tight beyond anything he can remember, but how wet she is around that basically makes Sam's brain blow to white.

"When…" she groans as she shunts her hipbones against his.

"Wanted you. Always. Want you." Sam tries appeasing her with a series of his own hip rotations, his hands now spilling down to clutch at her face. "Want. You."

"Always." Andy repeats as she tightens the grip of her arms, her hips, her legs, her everything. Her whole muscly body outside and in, pushing and pulling and squeezing at Sam.

There is nothing between them. Not an ounce of space. Nothing. Nothing except for everything and anything that is a part of her…of him…of them.

"Wanted you. Want you…." The words are barely coherent as they spill out of her while she comes on top of Sam.

He lets her take him, all of him. He lets her make love to him like she's the man.

She wrestles her way through it violently, her whole body shaking and shoving on to him to get as much of him as she can inside and on her. "Want you" and "always" she keeps repeating as though it's a litany or a prayer.

There's a point she hits on a messy thrust down after minutes and minutes of her searching him out that sends the coil in Sam's spine all the way up. It's when she stays in the spot that she makes him come -

His hips barely move because of the way she's trapped him, but the rest of his body bolts like lightning. It's enough to have him not thinking, but just letting himself go inside of her.

Sam doesn't know if he makes a sound as it happens, he just hears a whole lot of noise that could be either one of them –

And then silence.

A lot of silence as they keep rocking in this motion that Sam never wants to stop.

When it's over, Sam opens his eyes.

He can't remember when he closed them. He didn't think he did.

Andy is looking back at him. She has an entirely new sort of serious look on her face. Her jaw is dropped open, her eyes extra bright.

Beads of sweat cover the pair of them. The sheet resting over McNally's hips is basically drenched.

He puts a hand to her cheek when he notices a single tear that's rolling down from her eye.

"I wish I didn't have to go," Andy tells him softly.

Sam combs some fingers through her hair and just nods his head.

They don't have the time for it, but he showers her.

All told it's a slow and painful event; the both of them clinging on to one another as though their lives depended on it.

He soaps her down and washes her hair gently, and then dries every inch of her with his own towel.

They spend another five minutes or so at the door.

There are only quiet kisses and silence for most of the time.

There are also some very small, wistful smiles.

Andy rests her head on his shoulder eventually.

Sam strokes at her back.

"Be safe," she murmurs into his neck when they hear the cab's horn out the front.

Sam gets his arms around McNally and hugs her tightly, plants a kiss in her hair.

"Always."