Author's Note: I'm loving the direction of Nick/Andy this season and over this hiatus, these two have simply consumed me. I just cannot get enough of them so I finally just had to give in and try my hand at writing a McCollins fic of my own.

Disclaimer: I do not own Rookie Blue or any of its characters.

It had been a long day. Showing up at Gail's with donuts that morning felt like a lifetime ago to Nick. It was days like this where it was almost a necessity to go blow off some steam at The Penny. His fingers tapped on the bar absently as he got lost in his thoughts while he waited for the bartender to return with the drinks. His earlier conversation with the bank manager's wife, Cynthia, replayed over in his head much like it had been all day as if it were on an endless loop.

What were you holding out for?

Fireworks. I guess. And I found them…with someone else.

He glanced back at Gail who was sitting at the table that he had left just moments ago. Things had been different since he had come back from the undercover op. Of course things at 15 Division had changed. Six months was a long time to be gone. And that's what he had been telling himself for the last week. He just needed to get back into the swing of things.

That was why he had shown up at Gail's house earlier that morning with a peace offering in the form of donuts. He figured the familiarity of being with Gail would bring him some clarity. Unfortunately, the only clarity it had brought him was that she was pissed and he wasn't going to get off easy for going undercover for six months without so much as a good-bye.

Deep down, he knew what was different. What had really changed. It was him. He had changed. He wasn't the same guy that had left six months ago. As much as he tried to ignore it and pretend, he wasn't sure he was going to be able to for much longer.

He turned his gaze towards the front door. Nick didn't need to scan the room to know who wasn't at the bar yet. He had already done that when he and Gail had arrived. His eyes had been transfixed on the door despite his best efforts to tear them away which was why he was currently standing at the bar waiting for drinks for him and Gail.

Just then the door opened and he felt that pang in his chest that had become all too familiar in the last couple of months. Somewhere along the way, Andy McNally had snuck up on him. He wasn't sure if he could pinpoint the exact moment but it didn't really matter. It had happened. His best friend had become… something more. He let his thoughts drift briefly to the what-ifs.

Like what if he told her how he felt? What if she felt something more for him than simple friendship? What if Sam Swarek no longer mattered?

The door opened once again and all of Nick's what-ifs disappeared as Swarek came through it. Nick's eyes darted away from the door – Andy and Sam – as he pushed off the bar. Grabbing the drinks that the bartender had set in front of him, he turned and headed towards Gail. Seeing Andy and Sam together had been the clarity that he had needed.

His thoughts once again drifted back to his conversation with the bank manager's wife. He and Gail had a good thing. It was comfortable. Familiar. Maybe there weren't fireworks but that wasn't always what you needed. It certainly hadn't been what Cynthia had needed.

Setting the drink in front of Gail, he listened to her rant about all of the happy people in the bar before he blurted out, "Move in with me."

She took one sip as she listened to his words and looked up at him skeptically. "What? Are you drunk already Collins?"

"No," he told her. He sat down to look her in the eyes. "I'm serious. I wanna be with you as long as you'll have me. Even if you stay mad."

Instead of giving him an answer, Gail leaned forward and kissed him hard. He kissed her back, cupping her face in his hands before they broke apart. "So I guess we're moving in together," he said, smiling.

Gail was smiling too. "Nah, I already told Dov I'd move into Chris' room when he moves out."

Nick didn't understand. "So why are you so happy?" he asked, confused.

"You're such an idiot," she laughed. "Because you asked me."

Then she was kissing him again. Everything was as it was supposed to be. So he did what he should do and kissed her back. All thoughts of Andy and fireworks drifting away. That is until he heard her laugh from the table next to his and Gail's.

His thoughts betrayed him as his mind was flooded with moments from the last six months. The two of them horsing around at the lake house. He and Andy laughing as they watched a movie in their small apartment. Running a 5k every other morning together. Waking up before Andy to see her sleeping peacefully on the couch. Carrying Andy to bed after she had passed out while they were talking after a particularly exhausting day. The hesitation of their first kiss. The natural ease of their last kiss.

He told himself that it would pass. Those months hadn't been real. It had all been an act. There was a little voice in the back of his head that he tried to ignore but it was persistent. If that's true, then why does this feel like an act?

Nick leaned in, their lips almost touching before she burst out laughing. Again. He sighed, fixing her with an annoyed look. She at least had the decency to appear contrite.

"I'm sorry," she said, doing her best to wipe the smile off of her face. "I can be serious. I can." She sucked in a breath and let it out.

"You know that if they're going to buy that you and I are a couple then we have to be able to kiss in front of them without you cracking up every time," he lightly scolded, a teasing twinkle in his eye.

"I know, I know." She looked at him, scrunching up her nose slightly at him. "It's just…this is weird right?"

Nick leaned back and rested against the other end of the couch in his new apartment that Andy would soon be moving into. He had been laying the groundwork for his girlfriend of two months to meet the crew that he had infiltrated. They finally trusted Nick enough that they had told him to invite her to a very small party at the lake house the next day. If they were going to believe that he and Andy had been dating for the last two months then they needed to be able to be affectionate like a normal couple in love. Her words broke into his thoughts. "I mean, I know that this is part of our job but you're Gail's boyfriend."

His head fell back on the couch as he answered, "I'm pretty sure that ended the moment she decided she was going to France and I decided I was going undercover for months."

Andy tucked her legs underneath her on the couch and rested her arm on the back of the couch. "Yeah, but its Gail. You guys have been through worse than this and got back together." She was trying to reassure him but judging by the look on his face, it wasn't working.

"It's different this time," he replied, turning his head to look at her.

Deciding that it was best to lighten the mood, Andy asked, "Do you need a breakup buddy?" Her question had the desired effect on him as he cracked a smile. She smacked his leg lightly, grinning at him. "See, I had this kick ass breakup buddy a few months back and he taught me a few things."

"Kick ass, huh?"

"I might've been over-exaggerating," she teased.

Nick chuckled. "I was the best damn break-up buddy you've ever had." He reached over and tickled her side causing her to squirm away from him on the couch.

"You are the only break-up buddy I've ever had so I don't have much to compare you to," she told him laughing. She had nowhere else to go on the couch as both of his hands had found the most ticklish spots on her sides.

"Well, so far you're the worst and I don't need another break-up buddy to know that," he joked.

Andy poked his side in an attempt to torture him the same way he was torturing her. That didn't work. She continued to randomly poke in desperation to find his weakness even as she laughed uncontrollably. Her laughter was infectious and soon Nick was laughing nearly as hard as Andy. "Please stop," she gasped between giggles.

She only had to ask once as he immediately took his hands away from her sides finally allowing her to catch her breath. As Andy opened her eyes, she realized that in their playing around Nick had ended up on top of her on the couch. He lowered his head slightly, his eyes locked on hers. They had to do this. They couldn't avoid it any longer.

"Don't laugh," he said softly, searching her eyes for a moment.

For the first time that night, laughter was the furthest thing from her mind. "I'm not," she told him.

On instinct, he licked his lips as he moved closer. He hovered inches away, hesitating for a moment. This was new territory for both of them. Surprisingly, it was Andy that closed the distance between them, leaning up and pressing her lips firmly against his. Her first thought was that his lips were soft. Then she thought about how it didn't feel as weird as she had expected it would. Maybe it was because she trusted Nick. He had become one of her closest friends over the last few months and she was glad that she was on this undercover assignment with him.

Nick pulled back a bit finally but still hovered over her slightly. "Believable?" Andy asked in an attempt to prevent the moment from becoming awkward.

He nodded his head, smiling slightly. "Yeah, that should work."

Nick opened his eyes, looking around the dark bedroom in confusion. The walls of his apartment weren't the whitewashed walls that he and Andy had been sharing for months but then his eyes fell on a sleeping Gail and it all clicked into place. It had just been a dream.

He rested his arm against his forehead as he stared up at the ceiling. It was bad enough that he couldn't seem to get Andy out of his head when he was awake but now he was reliving their time together in his dreams? Closing his eyes, he tried to go back to sleep but after a few minutes his eyes shot open once more.

Sighing, he quietly slipped out of bed, grabbing his phone off of the nightstand before heading towards the living room of his apartment. He slid his finger across the screen to unlock the phone before going to his text messages and finding Andy's name.

Are you awake? He typed out and quickly hit send before he had the chance to change his mind. It was almost 2 a.m. so he figured that she would be sound asleep but on the off chance that she wasn't…

A reply popped up below the message he had just sent. Unfortunately. He worried that unlike his dreams, her dreams of their time undercover were of the more unpleasant variety like the moment when he had actually pulled the trigger of a gun in pointe blank range at her face.

Glancing back towards his bedroom, he saw that he was still the only one awake so he headed towards the front door. Once he was outside, he found Andy's name in his contact list. He smiled when she answered after one ring.

"You know they could have told us that adjusting back to normal life was not going to happen overnight," she complained without greeting him.

"Yeah," he agreed. "There were a lot of things that Callaghan failed to mention."

"What? Like how we would have to live in a shoe box for six months?" she cracked.

He chuckled as he thought about their old apartment. "You know, I kind of miss waking up on that couch."

"No you don't."

"You're right, I don't," he admitted, grinning. "We had some good times though."

"Oh my God, do you remember that night we spent hours assembling that bookcase from IKEA?" Andy asked.

"You mean the Bookcase From Hell?" he quipped, causing Andy to laugh. Nick remembered hauling the large box up the stairs in their apartment building, thinking that they would have it assembled in less than an hour. He was now fully convinced that whoever wrote the instructions for the self-assembly furniture got some sort of sick pleasure out of oversimplifying them so that inevitably things did not go smoothly.

"There were so many pieces of that damn thing scattered around the living room that we didn't know which piece went where," she mused, her smile evident in her voice.

Nick smiled as he thought about the two of them standing in the middle of everything that they had taken out of the box, looking at the directions, trying to figure out which piece they were supposed to start with. "Why did we even need a bookcase? Oh wait, I know. It was for all of those journals you kept while we were undercover," he teased.

"Hey, those journals helped you from having to stay in Mississauga longer than a week," she pointed out, laughing softly.

"And once we finally put it together, the bookcase did look nice," Nick added helpfully.

"It was a little wobbly." Both Andy and Nick laughed.

Nick knew why he was wide awake but Andy had somehow avoided that topic all together. The questions about her dreams that he'd had before he had called her returned. He was worried that it had nothing to do with a certain detective and everything to do with the moment he had pulled the trigger on her. Granted, he had done it to try and protect both of them but it didn't change the fact that it had happened. He hated the idea that something he had done could cause her any pain. "Are you okay?" he asked, his voice taking on a more serious tone.

"Sam and I talked tonight…" she trailed off.

"And?" he urged wanting to know what Swarek had said to her. When he had left The Penny earlier that night, he had seen Swarek with Marlo and realized that when he had seen Andy and Sam come into the bar together that it had not been because they had gotten back together.

"I told Sam that he broke my heart and he told me that I had gotten him back," she explained.

"So he's keeping score?" Nick interjected. "Now you're even?"

Andy sighed. "I don't know. I asked him why he was with Marlo and he basically told me that she's not complicated like me."

Nick thought that Swarek was a great cop but when it came to relationships and Andy McNally, the guy needed to grow up.

Andy's words broke into his thoughts. "It shouldn't be this hard, right?" She sounded exhausted, not just physically but emotionally. "Oliver told me to fight but… I don't know."

"Andy, he's the one that needs to make it up to you. Wasn't that what he told you? That he would do everything to make it right? Did you tell him that if he had meant that then waiting six months for you would have been a great first step?" He couldn't keep the frustration out of his voice. In the early days of their undercover op, they had talked about Swarek and his big love confession and how Andy felt about it. He had seen firsthand the damage that Swarek had done to her.

"No," she mumbled. "Where were you when I needed you tonight?" she asked, half-serious, half-joking.

"I was asking Gail to move in with me," he told her.

"Oh? What'd she say?" she asked, her tone neutral. He did his best not to read too much into it. It could just be because she was tired and couldn't muster up the energy to sound more excited.

"She's moving into Chris' old room when he moves out of Dov's place soon," he told her.

Andy didn't mask the incredulity in her voice. "She turned you down?"

"It's for the best. " He had secretly been relieved when Gail had told him that. Asking her to move in had been a knee-jerk reaction to something that had nothing to do with her.

She did her best to give him some words of encouragement but all that came out were incoherent sounds that could've been words but were unintelligible with her loud yawn.

Nick took that as his cue that it was time to say good-bye. "Hey, get some sleep, alright."

"You too. Good night."

"Good night, Andy." Nick sat on the front stoop a bit longer, holding his phone in his hand, completely oblivious to the fact that Gail had just overheard most of his conversation with Andy and was making her way back to bed, silently fuming.