Sam Swarek irked her. His casual confidence, the square set of his shoulders – the way those damn dimples of his played in his cheeks as he walked and talked through the day – but most of all, her unwanted, unwilling reaction to him. She had a significant other, she worked with said significant other, she woke up next to him every morning and made him coffee and drove to work together with him every day and still she couldn't stop her heart from going embarrassingly pitty-pat whenever Sam Swarek turned those sober brown eyes and creasing cheeks on her.
"McNally," he would say in the morning, cordial, though his eyes would already be laughing at her in some private joke she was not privy to. He would nod to Luke also, polite still but cooler; an ironic salute with a near-empty coffee cup as he sailed off to his desk or prep for parade. He would scrub his face with his rough, callused hands, still on the verge of sleep despite some four coffees, and it would take a rap on the back of his head from Noelle or, much preferably, the onslaught of a new, gripping case that would have him properly toeing the trapeze between life and death to fully discard the final remnants of drowsiness. Sam Swarek lived for these kinds of things.
And more often than not, Fate and the roster threw Sam and his favourite rookie together; though Frank liked to change things up – keep his officers on their toes, he'd tell Noelle over waffles laughingly afternoon shift day after being told tartly that she did not want to ride with Epstein for the sixth shift in a row – Swarek and McNally were making a name for themselves as a veritable dynamic duo, though Andy's being relegated to sidekick would later be taken by the aforementioned as an equally veritable insult. But they had a rhythm now, it was undeniable; the silent exchanges that were to them more than words, and it was with some apprehension that Traci looked on, and derisive jealousy that Luke watched. Shaw would only glance at the calendar that was always a few days late on the wall, and mentally count the days till the rooks were cut loose, and with them the leashes of their training officers.
But Swarek and McNally, observant of crime scenes and personality discrepancies, were blissfully oblivious – of the easy steps their routine had fallen into, like some dance they'd practiced over and over, the silent jokes as Swarek gestured to Diaz's undone zipper or at the heated way Barber slammed the phone on another pizza order. But nobody else missed the way Andy would turn to Sam before a deciding move, nor the way he glanced over at his rookie to gauge her reaction after his. They were partners, in more than just adjacent names on a roster.
And if Andy ever indulged in "what might have been" she pushed those thoughts quickly away – embarrassed and shamed by the sudden recollection of those sweet, sudden kisses, stoking a fire she hadn't thought to fan, or if she had, had thought too troublesome to kindle. Nobody had been more surprised than her – maybe except Sam – at the electric reaction they'd had, potent and volatile; where even as her mind was screaming at her, scratching at her with cruel reality she had been overwhelmed by desire and the petulant notion of oh, please, just this once and I swear I'll be good.
For Sam the possibility was something that always managed to crawl into his head at the most inappropriate times – like when he met Andy at work, stirring two coffees almost absently, bestowing upon her an acerbic jibe as he silently toasted; or when she walked in front of him and her head was right at his nose and he could smell the citrusy scent of her shampoo; or in the car when she was right there beside him and he couldn't touch her without having some kind of retribution thwacking him neatly between the ears for wanting something he couldn't have. Inside his head, it wasn't real – but once he said it, once he did it, everything would change. And probably not for the better.
God, it seemed, didn't really like to smile down onto Sam Swarek.
So he bit his tongue when Luke botched things, and tried to be there for his rookie when she came crying to his shoulder (and, like the sick bastard her was, enjoyed it), tried to be supportive, tried to offer sound advice that would actually help their relationship and not hinder it – because when push came to shove, more than he wanted his own satisfaction he wanted Andy's happiness. And it seemed that Sam Swarek, like a square block in a round peg, would only ever make her sad and confused. So he tried not to remember the heated night of lights-out, when she'd come knocking on his door, sad and needy and alone and had come onto him, let the record show, tried not to think about what might have happened if the lights hadn't flickered on, if he'd taken her home that first night of their partnership, protocol be damned, if he'd been a detective and Luke a copper. If he had met her first.