Hello again! Hope you are all well!
This is another request, so it's dedicated to the awesome Katie Hall-Bass (Mcswarek132 on wattpad).
Hope you all enjoy it!
To Katie Hall-Bass- thank you for the request, & yay! It's finally up lol!
...
An ocean of noise cascaded through his ears, his mind making a futile attempt to categorize each and every one of them. His concentration span wavered as each sound drew his attention away from the previous one that held him captivated for a split second.
He was warm, which probably meant that he wasn't dead; although he hadn't died before so he wasn't really all that sure.
The sound of shuffling material drew through all the other sounds that invaded his sense, his curiosity drawn to his left.
Cracking his eyelids open Sam found Andy peering at him, her face washed in some relief and some emotion.
His name from her lips sounded tense but yet so sweet as she murmured it in question.
He managed a smile, his heartbeat picking up on the monitor as he let his eyes leave Andy and take the room in.
He could recall most of what had happened for him to land up here, but the in between then and now was missing.
Not that it really mattered anyway.
Turning his attention back to Andy he couldn't help but see the heart she so vividly displayed on her sleeve showing exactly what she felt in that moment. All of her feelings and emotions on show for him to see.
Her eyes misted up slightly as her lips curved up at the corners. "Hi."
"Hi." Sam replied before pinching his eyes closed for a fraction of a second to give them time to adjust to the bright overhead lighting.
Taking the sight of Andy in again before clamping his lids closed a second time, he tried to memorize each and everything he saw.
That was the thing about Andy, when she was P'd off- you could tell. When she was happy or content, it was there. When she was afraid it showed and it ripped his heart out every single time he saw that particular emotion sprawl its way across her features.
Taking a moment Sam let out a long winded breath before making a decision.
This was what he wanted.
This was where he wanted her (well next to him and not actually beside him in a hospital room).
Now he just needed her to know that.
Opening his eyes Sam tried to put his always carefully schooled emotions on display so that she would see them. He tried to make his eyes smile, and his dimples flare as he looked at her and tried to convey what he was feeling.
"What?" Andy asked when the mood throughout the room changed.
"I.." Sam started but ended there too. Talking or rather NOT talking was what had put them where they were right now.
"I'm done faking it," Sam said and let his smile widen at his own statement. He knew that it was a phrase used between Andy and her friends when they were rookies.
Andy sat up straight and let her head tilt to the side as she waited for more. She wasn't entirely sure what he meant- yet.
"This is not how I wanted things to go," Sam's smile faded as memories flashed through his frontal lobe. Collins at the front of the images.
He wasn't really sure if he should have this conversation with Andy, but maybe just talking would get them over the last hurdle.
"I don't want to stay away anymore Andy." Sam said in a really hushed tone. It wasn't worth prolonging the inevitable anymore, so throwing caution out the window he just jumped right in there and said it.
Maybe if he'd done that a while ago things would have been different, better.
"Sam..." Sam lifted his hand up or more like wiggled his fingers, he needed to say this, needed her to understand. Even if his timing was wrong and she was still with Collins...
From there she could make her decision...
"When you left I was mad. When you came home I was pissed," Sam cleared his throat, a lump forming in his airway now that he was actually voicing the truth.
"You got too close, and I chickened out."
His last statement made Andy's brows furrow, her confusion as clear as day across her face.
"Uh-" Sam dropped his gaze to find Andy's hands fidgeting with each other. And again he chickened out and just couldn't say what he so badly wanted too.
"When I said I can't be a cop and be with you I meant it. When I said I couldn't stay here and be around you I meant it too," Sam whispered as soon as his gaze lifted and met hers.
In the split second it took for his words to reach her he knew that what he had said was true, it just came out wrong.
Andy's eyes misted up again, her lips rolling into a tight line as she took what he said to heart- the wrong way.
She scooted her chair back and moved to stand up but Sam's hand was faster than her reaction was and it went to rest over one of hers as it dangled at her side.
"Not what I meant."
Andy shifted around from foot to foot and tugged her hand back far enough so that his met thin air.
"There's more," Sam whispered nodding to the chair that she had just vacated.
Andy looked around the room like she would rather be anywhere but here before she let out a strangled sigh and sat back down.
"I missed you," Sam started with something easy, and short. Talking wasn't his thing, he was more of an actions kind of guy. But when the person you wanted the most had to see what they meant to you and they missed what you were showing them, then you had to follow plan B and talk.
"It felt like you ripped my heart out and took it with you when you left. Then I met Marlo and I tried to move on, but you were always there, always in the back of my mind."
His words seemed to strike a cord within Andy and she blinked rapidly before looking down.
She seemed somewhat remorseful about how things went between them when she left for Dakota and returned. But he would almost guarantee that she wasn't nearly as remorseful as what he was.
"I get how you felt now- the whole heat of the moment thing," Sam decided to go all the way; there wasn't really much left to loose anyway.
He had lost her already, so loosing something you didn't have wasn't really an issue to associate with worry.
"The heat of the moment?" Andy's voice sounded small, but his heart was doing cartwheels because just like he guessed she would- she walked right into the conversation he wanted to have with her.
"After the grenade, in the locker room?" Sam hinted at that moment, and the ones that preceded it. He'd leave the rest up to her to string together.
"Oh" Andy's eyes widened and he was sure that a light tint of rosey pink stained her cheeks. It was fairly dark in his hospital room so it was hard to tell for certain.
"Um...?" And there it was- exactly what he wanted. Her to question how he understood what she felt like when she covered his massive declaration up with a heat of the moment excuse on his behalf.
"The ambulance," Sam gave her a second before answering her silent question.
Her face contorted into sheer shock as she gaped at him dismissing her sweetly whispered admission as nothing more than something said in the heat of the moment.
"That wasn't..." Andy trailed off, Sam pushing her to continue by raising his eyebrows.
Andy let out a sigh that morphed into a growl as she realised that Sam had baited her and she'd fallen for it.
"I thought it might be the last time I get to say it, and you get to hear it," she shrugged towards the end, enforcing his ideology that maybe, just maybe she had said it because she was lost in the moment.
"No, that wasn't... It's not the same thing Sam," she argued in a haste as soon as silence flooded the room. "I didn't try and cover anything up, I was admitting what has always been there because I thought you were going to die. Yes, okay; I screwed up and I pushed you too hard before I just ended up pushing you away."
Sam found himself smiling- widely even though Andy's words were heated and spluttered out in a rush.
"What?" She asked noticing that his expression had softened.
He could feel a large amount of contentment sweep over him as he listened to her talk.
"Nothing," Sam said.
"Sam!" his name came out in warning.
"That means..." Sam let it hang just there hoping that she'd pick the sentence up there and finish it.
He raised and lowered his eyebrows a few time to add some less tense emotions to the moment as the lump in his throat began to grow.
"That you're an ass" Andy said and tugged her hand back. She was far from amused and was frowning as though she was in serious thought.
"When I woke up, you were sitting there watching me." Sam closed his eyes to relive the memory from moments before. He wanted to experience the wonder and amazement that he'd seen in Andy's eyes the second that his had cracked open.
In the past he'd seen many emotions cross her face, and many feelings bare themselves for him to see but this had been different. This was something on a whole new level.
Her face had been whisked away to a thought of the past, her lips tugged up slightly in the corners. But the thing that had unmasked her the most was her eyes.
They were twinkling as she immersed herself in whatever she was letting run through her mind, the shadows across her face making her look more like artwork than a human.
Andy shrugged when Sam reopened his eyes. She didn't see herself the way that he did.
"You looked beautiful," Sam added and Andy blushed.
"Really? That's what you want to talk about?" Andy huffed it out, her hands slapping the sides of her thighs.
Sam gave her a look that told her that she hadn't quite grasped the concept of what he actually wanted to talk about.
"What?" She asked on a whimsical breath that made Sam resist scolding her for the eye roll that accompanied it.
Sam raised a finger and wagged it so that she'd come closer. She obeyed his request and leaned in, his finger reeling her in more and more as she neared.
With her really close to his face Sam dropped his finger and leaned the rest of the way forwards so that his lips were right next to her ear.
"You know that some day, I'm going to marry you, right?" Sam whispered it, his mouth taking its time to pronounciate his words clearly so that there would be no misunderstanding exactly what he'd just said.
His breathing was stable, his heart rate steady and his insides calm. There was no freak out going on in his own mind, or shaking knees or wobbly words.
And absolutely no regret at having just whispered those words into her ear as her hair brushed the stubble on his chin and jaw.
Andy's reaction however was a little less than controlled as she gasped and backpedaled so fast that Sam felt dizzy.
Her face scrunched up as she stared at him, and he was sure that for one second she was about to run, and for another that she just may have stopped breathing.
Her face was blank for the first time although her eyebrows had shot into her hairline and a stray strand of her ponytail clung to her cheek.
And finally; there it was.
The first sign of hope, a small glimpse of what may be.
It was a small smile, but it was enough to tell him that he was on the right track.
"They need to stop giving you so many pain meds." Andy said as her cheeks flashed pink and she tilted her head forward just enough so that she had obscured most of her face from his view.
Sam instinctively knew that it was her defense mechanism kicking in, that's why she was averting. Or maybe it was Collins? He honestly had no idea.
Sam lifted his arm up and pulled his IV's cord closer. "I closed it when I first woke up."
Sam jostled it about. He was stone cold sober and hadn't had any drugs pumped into his system for hours; not since he first woke up and found her curled up in the chair beside his bed sleeping.
"When you first woke up?" Andy echoed and met his eye.
Sam nodded just as the door opened and a familiar face stepped into the room.
And she looked really mad.
Andy looked between the rooms new occupants and Sam while looking really uncomfortable.
Collins nodded Sam's way briefly before backing out of the room and closing the door behind him.
"Andy, Sarah. Sarah Andy." Sam introduced the women feeling squeamish.
He'd contemplated how this would go many times before now, but actually getting to this point was something he had been avoiding.
Andy's head snapped between him and Sarah, while Sarah gave him a stare that said so many words while her lips said nothing.
"I'm going to..." Andy threw her thumb over her shoulder and made a bad attempt to excuse herself as the tension between Sam and Sarah rattled around the room.
"Stay right here." Sam said and patted the side of the bed next to him.
"You can stay, really. I won't be here long." Sarah spoke and neither Sam nor Andy missed the tension in her voice as she shuffled her bag around on her shoulder.
"You okay?" Sam asked Sarah. She looked good, just really mad at him.
"Yeah, fine." She replied.
Sam glanced at Andy who was smirking. It seemed like all the women in his life liked to use that saying.
"What were you thinking?" Sarah blurted and dumped her bag down on he bed at Sam's feet.
She took a deep breath before waving her hand around in the air, her simple question re-enforced by her action.
That question was why Sam was hoping that Andy would stay a while longer.
"It's not like I planned on getting shot," Sam answered Sarah's question as calmly as he could.
His eyes swayed over Sarah and fell on Andy, she looked like she'd rather be anywhere but here.
"Am I interrupting something?" Sarah asked and turned around to look at Andy before turning back to Sam.
"No." Andy said
"Yes," Sam spoke at the same time.
Sarah faced Sam again, with raised eyebrows. It didn't take rocket science to see that she had walked into the middle of something.
Things had always been tense between Sam and Sarah, and it had been a while since they had actually been in the same room; but even she wasn't oblivious to the chemistry that filled the room now that Andy was in here with them.
At that moment, Andy's phone rang and she fished it out of her pocket before nodding towards the door and leaving the room.
"So, who's she?" Sarah didn't miss her cue to interrogate Sam as soon as Andy was out of earshot.
"Andy," Sam repeated.
"Arg. Do you always have to be so dense with me?" Sarah grumbled out, her hand finding its way to the bridge of her nose much the same way that Sam's did when he was tired or frustrated.
"Who's she to you Sam?" Sarah managed to bring her emotions under control and remain calm even though Sam knew that she was boiling over on the inside.
Sam looked down, just for a second and he wasn't surprised to find Sarah closer when he looked up again.
His mind scrambled to find a term to label what Andy was to him, but it just wasn't happening.
There wasn't really a single word that could describe what Andy was to him other than 'Everything'. But Sarah wouldn't understand, even if he told her that.
Sarah had been a loose cannon for many years. She'd spent time in and out of rehab on numerous occasions. She'd been arrested quite a number of times too. She'd never had stable in her life, no husband, no kids.
She used to create havoc and cause chaos wherever she went most of the time, but she had settled down over more recent years.
And now that Sam had it, or at least hoped he had who he wanted stable with, he kind of felt like he was taunting Sarah with it.
Sarah was staring at him, her eyes shifting between his as she searched for what he was struggling to say.
"You're more like him than you know." She stated randomly.
Her comment left a bad taste in his mouth.
"And your inability to see him for what he really is will never change." Sam retorted without hesitation.
This was the reason that they were never close, the reason that they never got on; because she had never forgiven him for what he had done.
Okay, sending your Dad to prison wasn't a great way to build a sibling bridge, but even now he didn't regret what he had done.
"He used to look at her the same way, you know. With that adoration, and love."
Her statement caught Sam off guard and he knew that his face divulged that.
She had just told him something that he had never known, and had been too young to remember or understand.
"And then she starting drinking and using, and just like that things changed."
Sarah's voice turned to painful as she stared off into space and relived the memory, but as quickly as it had made it's way into her mind, just as quickly it was gone again.
"She's..." Sam made a futile attempt to voice his wanton feelings about Andy, but he didn't get past the single word.
"She's the one I miss, she's the one I wake up thinking about." After a shallow breath he was able to find something to say.
And Sarah smiled.
She actually smiled.
"Then she's something."
To Sam, it almost sounded like Sarah was giving her approval, but he wasn't sure.
"And with you, there's no lemonade, just lemons. So you're just going to keep hurting her."
Sarah shrugged and reached for her bag so he knew that her visit was over.
But her words made him think...
She said a hasty goodbye and then retreated out the door, Andy having stayed away to give them some privacy.
Sam's mind replayed Sarah's words and he searched long and hard to prove her wrong; even if it was just to himself.
'You're just going to keep hurting her.' Ran through his mind over and over again and even if she didn't know it, she was right when she said that.
He tried to find a time that he hadn't hurt Andy, but he'd done it over and over again.
When he left her to search a storage locker on her own.
When he ignored her outside the Brennan farmhouse.
When he pushed her away after Jerry died...
It was a repetitive motion that despite his best efforts he just couldn't keep at bay.
Andy hung up after talking to Traci.
She had called to check on how Sam was and if Andy needed anything.
Sensing movement in the hall Andy looked up to find Nick hovering with concern.
"Hey." Andy said once she was done talking to Traci.
"Hi." Nick said smiling, although it didn't reach his eyes.
"He doing okay?" Nick added.
"Yup, great," Andy could feel her smile widen. She just couldn't help it.
"Thanks, you know for getting Sarah."
Nick nodded. Swarek deserved someone with him if things had ended badly.
And he understood how Andy might just need someone to lean on if Swarek took a turn for the worse.
The moment turned awkward before it eased into tense as Andy looked up at him and tried to shield the world from her emotions.
That was the thing about her; she just couldn't hide it- even if she tried too.
"Go, you should be in there." Nick nodded to behind Andy as Sarah made her way out of Swarek's room.
And he meant it. Andy should be there because it was where she wanted to be more than anything else in the world.
They'd had a brief talk before Andy was allowed to see Swarek once he was out of surgery and no matter how hard he tried not to see it, her feelings towards the wounded Detective had never really changed.
Nick had seen her reaction when Swarek went down and he knew that no matter what he said or did- she would always be Swarek's girl and never his.
Andy smiled and took a few steps back before she turned away and disappeared back into Swarek's room while his sister looked Nick's way. "Need a ride?" He asked and she nodded.
"Hi." Sam greeted her with a huge amount of enthusiasm when she made her presence known at his bedside.
"Hi," she blushed and Sam was relieved that some of the tension between them from earlier had ebbed away to be replaced by something else, something more.
She took a seat in the chair that she had occupied earlier and Sam followed her every move with his eyes.
He didn't want to miss a thing.
"You know I meant everything I said earlier," he said once she was comfortable and stilled. He was planning on leaving the rest of their talk for later, but then one thought had come to mind- What if they never got a later?
Andy looked down at her hands as they fumbled with unseen objects in her lap so Sam reached out with his own hand but barely extended it past the bed.
If she wanted to follow this route, then she had to make the decision so she had to go the rest of the way.
Sam's hand lingered in the air, his palm face up and his heart rate staggering until he thought that maybe his heart would stop beating.
"McNally, I don't want to waste any more time. And I don't want to be sad anymore."
Sam spoke honestly and tried to keep nothing hidden from view. It was pointless saying something that important and not displaying all emotion that you could muster.
"What?" Andy had yet to take hold of his hand and the single word whispered from her lips was sighed out in disbelief.
They were encased in silence, but it wasn't awkward or uncertain. In fact it was more like heightened chemistry that sparked around the room igniting it.
Andy's lips curled up at the corners suddenly, her eyes still focused on Sam as they sparkled and danced with a fire that Sam hadn't seen in a while.
Finally- she got it.
She understood what he meant, and what he wanted and it seemed to strike a cord with a positive effect rather than a negative outcome.
Sam was holding his breath, waiting for more while Andy let a huge smile take hold of her lips.
She took a tiny step forward and put her hand in his allowing him to wrap his fingers around hers and hold on to it.
"Me too." She managed to add after taking a few seconds to get used to the warmth of his hand.
Sam had the sense that this time things would be different, that maybe this time things would work out.
Suddenly getting shot didn't seem to be the worst thing that happened to him.
Suddenly getting shot was more; it was what brought him closer to Andy and what had put a future he wanted so badly so much closer.
Now; it was literally in the palm of his hand and this time there was no way he was ever letting it go...
*****Thanks for reading! Hope you'll leave your POV in a review?
Have an awesome day!
Jbj.