TITLE: Swim Until You Can't See Land
AUTHOR: Copycat
RATING: PG-13 for adult themes and language
CLASSIFICATION: Angst, Romance, Sam/Andy, Nick/Andy, Sam/Marlo
SPOILERS: Through 4x13
SUMMARY: So, the idea of declarations of love and continuing conversations started in ambulances is a nice one, but let's be realistic for a moment, because there's no way it's going to be that simple... Sam-centric take on what happens after the shooting in 4x13.
My first multi-chapter fic for Rookie Blue. I don't have a great record with the multi-chapters so I'm a little nervous. Therefore I will first go on forever about things you probably don't care about, but which seem important to me:
I feel a little bad for how Nick is portrayed in this story, at least in the beginning. Just remember that it's all from Sam's perspective and his judgment may be clouded by how they're both in love with the same woman and all that.
I don't know a whole lot about bipolar disorder, and I don't want to suggest that the stigma surrounding it is in any way justified, but Marlo did something wrong, and she did it because she's bipolar and there's no way of ignoring that. Blame the professional writers for that, I'm just trying to bring what they started to some sort of conclusion while we wait for them to do it properly. And hopefully better...
Also, IDK, I pretended the shooting happened on a Sunday. Did they say what day it is?
If picturing this moment beforehand had been an option, this is not what he would've imagined. If he had somehow been able too see himself waking up in this bed before it happened, it would not have looked like this.
Of all the scenarios that might have entered his mind, this never would have come close. And he wouldn't have wanted it to.
Given the choice, he might have decided to stay asleep for another couple of hours.
That way maybe Nick Collins' face wouldn't have been the first one he saw. His, "You're awake," wouldn't have been the first words he heard, spoken matter-of-factly, redundantly.
Sam wonders why he is even there, but there is only one answer he can think of, and he doesn't want "Where's McNally?" to be the first words he speaks. Maybe mostly because he doesn't want Collins to be the one who answers him.
"What are you doing here?" he asks instead. He hopes it doesn't sound as accusatory as it feels to him.
"We've all been taking it in turn, sitting with you," Collins replies, which is not what Sam is expecting.
Except maybe it makes sense - his timing was always terrible, so it goes to figure that he would wake up on Collins' watch.
"I should get the doctor," Nick says, getting to his feet. Sam notices the creases in his t-shirt and, when he moves in the light, his two-day stubble.
"What day is it?" Sam asks.
Nick turns in the doorway. "Tuesday. It's been two days." He flags down a nurse who in turn magics a doctor out of thin air seconds later and Sam's vitals are thoroughly checked, rechecked and deemed "very good, excellent in fact" before the doctor vanishes again and the nurse is left, looking somewhat awkwardly from Sam to Nick, clearly unsure what their relationship is, and mumbling something about changing a catheter.
Nick makes a tactful retreat but returns minutes later, and Sam assumes he has been waiting in the hallway for the nurse to finish.
"I called the station, let them know you're awake," he says, sitting back down in what looks like an extremely uncomfortable plastic chair.
Sam just nods against his pillow.
"You should probably expect lots of visitors tonight," Nick goes on. He looks like he's settling in for the long haul, like he's never planning on leaving. Is he under orders to stand guard or something?
"So everyone's back at work?" Sam doesn't know why, but he feels compelled to keep Collins talking. Maybe it's to give a reason for his continued presence, or maybe it's just so he can control the conversation himself.
"Yes," Collins says and then shrugs slightly and adds, "Well, Shaw is on sick leave, Price is still in the ICU and, uh, Cruz, Andy and I are suspended."
It doesn't escape Sam's notice that Andy is the only one to get a first name mention. "Why the hell are YOU suspended?"
Nick shrugs again, his face unreadable. "I knew, I didn't tell anyone."
"She shouldn't have told you," Sam says, feeling somehow vindicated for his anger about that, even if that wasn't really why he was angry about it.
"I'm glad she told me," Collins insists, disgustingly sincere. "She needed to talk, I'm glad I could be there to listen." The emphasis on the second 'I' is so slight Sam wonders if maybe he's imagining it.
"At the expense of your career?" he challenges him.
Collins waves him off. "It's not going to come to that, but even if it does, I did what I thought was right, I'll live with the consequences."
Sam is NOT imagining the way Collins sits up a little straighter, and while there's a unhealthy amount of military BS to the way he says the words, their essence is too close to Sam's own creed for him to be able to really resent them. "Well, good for you," he says, looking at the door to the hospital room, and if Collins hears the sarcasm in his voice he doesn't let on. He merely leans back in his seat, crossing his arms.
Sam is thirsty, but he doesn't want to ask Collins to get him something to drink and he's wondering how long it'll be before another nurse has a reason to come and see him, or when Collins is going to be replaced by someone else from 15. Anyone else, really.
He knows it's unfair, of course, and he has really, really tried to like Nick Collins, but in spite of everything he knows is right he has gone from relative indifference through mild curiosity to complete loathing, his feelings a function of Andy's, his dislike growing exponentially with her interest.
He chuckles slightly to himself. If his grade 10 Maths teacher had known that within ten minutes of waking up after taking a bullet to the stomach he was thinking about exponential functions, the poor man probably would have keeled over from the shock of it.
"Is everything okay?" Collins asks, clearly misinterpreting Sam's amusement as discomfort.
"Never better," Sam assures him, flashing a brief, insincere smile.
Collins nods. "Do you need anything?"
You to leave, Sam thinks. Out loud he says, "Some water would be nice."
"Of course," Collins says, getting up from his seat, looking like he feels that he should've thought of that himself. Funny, so they agree on something. On two things, Sam silently amends, a vision of brown eyes and sunny smiles flashing before his mind's eye.
He reaches out to take the plastic cup Collins is holding out uncertainly as if he isn't sure whether or not to hold it up to Sam's mouth. Snowball's chance in hell...
Sam's hand is unsteady but he manages a few awkward mouthfuls without spilling too much water down his front. Oh well, drinking lying down was never easy and the morphine slowly dripping into his IV probably isn't there to improve coordination.
He holds out the cup and Collins takes it from him, setting it down on the bedside table next to a bouquet of lilies. Lilies. Seriously.
They fall into a not entirely comfortable silence, but Sam no longer cares. He just doesn't want to talk to Nick Collins anymore right now.
He watches the morphine solution slowly dripping into his IV, feeling his eyelids get heavier.
When he wakes up again the sky outside the window is darkening. He turns his head to see that Collins is still in his chair, reading a pamphlet about coronary disease.
Sam wonders briefly if the real reason he's here is to smother him to death with a pillow and why he didn't just get on with it while he was asleep, but surely Collins is a much too stand up guy to ever even think dark thoughts like that.
"You saved my life," Nick says when he looks up and finds Sam watching him. Sam is surprised. Whatever he might have expected the younger officer to want to get off his chest, this isn't it.
"I don't know," he says. "I think it was the other way around."
"No," Nick insists. "He would've shot me first if you hadn't called out for him."
Sam doesn't say anything. He doesn't want to tell Collins that it wasn't him he was trying to save. He doesn't even want to admit that to himself.
"Why weren't you wearing your vest?" Nick asks after a silence Sam would have much preferred to continue.
Sam turns his head to look at the ceiling, but the crack that is forming from the wall behind his bed isn't coming up with any answers for him. "There wasn't time," he says finally.
Out of the corner of his eye he can see Collins nodding slowly. "I was wearing my vest, you should've let me take the bullet."
Sam turns to look at him, incredulous.
"I'm serious," Nick pushes on. "I'd have gotten a bruise, that's it."
"Unless he missed the vest, of course," Sam says conversationally, as if they're discussing the weather. "But if you're right, I didn't really save your life, did I?"
Collins shakes his head quickly. "That's not what I meant. I just, I feel responsible."
Sam laughs briefly, then winces at the pain this causes where a bullet went into his body two days before. There's a voice in the back of his mind whispering that he should just tell Collins that he is responsible, that Sam never would have been in that hallway at that moment if it weren't for Nick Collins. Because if he hadn't seen Collins kissing Andy he never would have left the barn, and they wouldn't have realized that Kevin Ford was there.
Things would have gone down very differently. But the end result wouldn't necessarily have been any better.
"Don't," Sam says simply.
Collins' smile in response is unconvincing, but he doesn't say anything else. When Oliver shows up ten minutes later he says a quick goodbye and leaves. Sam sees Oliver stretching to watch him walking down the hallway, his brow furrowed in confusion, but then he shrugs and moves to sit in the now vacant chair.
"This might be the dumbest thing you've ever done, Sammy," he says, the warmth in his eyes belying the harshness of the words.
"It's not like I did it on purpose," Sam argues, joking back. "Besides, it wasn't my squad car he drove up in."
Oliver winces. "I know, man," he says. "I'm really sorry."
Sam pulls a face. "Don't. It's not your fault." Funny how this doesn't seem to be anyone's fault.
Oliver sighs. "Okay then. That's that out of the way," he says dismissively, mentally pulling himself up. "Wanna grab a pint at the Penny?"
This time Sam is prepared for the pain that laughing causes, but that doesn't make it hurt any less.
Nick was right when he said Sam should be prepared for a lot of visitors, and when a nurse finally comes in to inform Frank and Noelle that visiting hours ended an hour ago and they need to leave, he is relieved to finally get some peace from the steady stream of well-meaning people who want to convince themselves that he's going to live.
Everyone has been there. Everyone except Marlo and Andy. He's not really surprised that neither of them have been there, but he isn't sure if he's relieved or disappointed. Part of him had expected Andy to come by and he spends the first ten minutes of solitude watching the door, because she might just have been waiting for everyone else to leave before sneaking in.
But the hall remains empty, his door doesn't open, and in the end he closes his eyes and tries to go to sleep. Just as he is drifting off the door creaks open and he smiles to himself. He knows her.
"Sam? Are you awake?" a familiar voice ask quietly. A different voice.
His smile fades, and he is thankful for the near-darkness that doesn't let her see that. "Marlo, hi. No, come on in." He sits up a little, adjusting the pillows behind him.
She doesn't turn on the lights and in the bit of light coming in through the closed blinds she only just avoids bumping into the bed on her way to the chair that has seated about half the people he knows by now.
"I would've come sooner," she tells him. "I just didn't want to run into anyone. I can't really—"
When she trails off he shakes his head in the darkness, unseen. "That's okay," he says reassuringly. "How are you?"
"I don't know," she says, and she sounds so defeated he wants to reach out and hold her hand but she's too far away, and he's sure that's on purpose.
"Everything's gonna be okay," he tells her, wanting the words to be true but well aware of how inadequate they are.
"I never meant for any of this to happen." There's a hint of desperation in her voice and Sam is instantly worried that she's back off her meds. It only takes a few seconds for him to dismiss the thought as ridiculous, but it is enough to make him realize why she didn't tell him in the first place. And to make him marvel at the fact that Andy managed to keep it a secret.
"I know that," he reassures her. "Everyone does."
She laughs humorlessly. "That's not gonna stop them from throwing me under the bus, though."
"They fired you?" He asks, surprised that the review board would have come to a decision that quickly. These things normally take ages.
"No. But it was-suggested that I might want to resign," she says, her tone making it clear that there has been no suggesting going on.
He hesitates, not sure what to say to that. He would have done whatever he could to make this all go away, to have it not have happened, but now that it has, he doesn't really see how she could just to back to work, even after a lengthy suspension. He might've thought a transfer would be enough, but even if Kevin Ford hadn't gone on a rampage, everyone still knows that she's bipolar now.
And while that really shouldn't matter, it does. Sam knows her better than anyone at 15, and even he isn't able to not let it be a factor. To not weigh her every move on a scale of 'How likely is it that she's losing it again?' because he's seen what can happen if she does. It's not that he wants to, and it's not that he thinks it's right or even okay to do it, but he can't help it, and he knows the others won't be able to either.
They'll be putting their lives in her hands, after all.
Through everything that has happened, he's had her back, because they were partners, and that's what partners do, but he's not one hundred percent sure he'll be able to trust her to have his after this. And if he can't, how will Oliver or Epstein or Price?
"I handed in my badge yesterday," she says, saving him from having to come up with the right words to tell her. "I'm staying in town until the investigation is complete and then I'm going. Unless..." She trails off and it takes Sam a moment to realize that the second half of that sentence is, "unless they decide to press criminal charges." Only after that does he wonder if maybe it's, "unless you want me to stay."
"Okay," Marlo says, as if they've just settled some big discussion during the silence that follows her 'unless.' "Look, I'm not very-" she stops herself and he can hear her fidgeting in her seat. "This is over, right?"
"What?" He's too shocked by the abruptness of the question to not sound surprised.
"Us, I mean," she elaborates, as if that's what's confusing him. "I can't just go back. Can you?"
"I guess not," Sam agrees, because there's really nothing else he can say.
"Do you want to?" She asks, sounding surprised by his tone.
He sighs. He hasn't had any time to himself yet, no chance to sort out his feelings about everything that happened right before Kevin Ford shot him. And what happened after.
Then again, that shouldn't really matter. He shouldn't be making decisions about his relationship with Marlo based on his feelings about Andy. Whatever those feelings are. "No," he admits at last.
"I didn't think so," she says, sounding more relaxed than she has since she walked in the room. Clearly this conversation went the way she wanted it to.
"Where are you gonna go?" He asks.
"I dunno," she says dismissively, and he thinks maybe she does know, she just doesn't want to tell him. He doesn't push her; it doesn't matter anyway, it's not as if he's going to follow her. "Have you, uh, has McNally been here?"
He shakes his head and then remembers that she can't see him properly in the near-darkness. "No." He doesn't add the, "Not yet," that is at the tip of his tongue.
She gets up and walks up to the bed. When she gets close enough, he can see that she is smiling. "Thank you, for everything. I really mean that," she tells him. "And I am really, really sorry."
"Don't be," he assures her.
She leans down and kisses him softly on the cheek, her full lips just brushing against the corner of his mouth. "Bye, Swarek."
He smiles at her while her face is still close enough for her to see. "Bye."
Marlo walks out and closes the door quietly behind her. He doesn't hear her retreating steps, however, but when he strains his ears he's sure he can hear her sobbing through the door.
TBC