*Very sorry if you got an alert about a second chapter! I've been having some issues with this site. This is the only chapter!
A/N: This is kind of AU considering I have no idea where season 5 would be taking us and I have no idea where they'll take Sam's family this season, but I hope you can use your imagination and pretend it's happening in s5. It's just a fun little oneshot to relieve some Sam/Andy sadness. The bulk of it was written in the s2/s3 hiatus.
Disclaimer: I don't own Rookie Blue
"Andy! Where's that bottle?" She hears Sam calling restlessly from down the hall. She fiddles around with the lid for what feels like an hour before she gets it. The first one she'd fixed up didn't have the lid on properly and literally got dumped all over the sink and counter. "I'm going deaf in here!"
"Shit!" Andy shrieks, testing the temperature on her wrist and proceeding to drop that bottle also, after being scalded. "Dammit! It's too hot!"
"Can you make another one?" he begs as he enters the kitchen, awkwardly holding his screaming baby nephew in his arms.
Andy clutches her pounding forehead before running her fingers through her hair. She runs across the kitchen and whips open the fridge door, looking for another bottle. "I'm just going to mix in some cold formula, even it out. Think it'll work?"
Sam gives her a look like maybe she's the insane person who agreed to do this. "Maybe we should just call and get 'em to come back. They left less than an hour ago," he pleads, his body language showing more discomfort than she's seen on him in a while.
"We're not calling them, Sam. We'll completely ruin their plans," she argues, hands planted firmly on her hips. "I'm on their good side and I'd like to keep it that way. Just," she walks towards him, fixing the positioning of his hands on the baby, "Cuddle him or something. Haven't you ever seen those baby shows?"
"You're with me for…," he pretends to need a minute to think, looking up at the ceiling, "most of my days off. Have you ever seen me watch a baby show?"
Andy lets out a surprised laugh at the frustration in his voice and really, at this conversation in general. "You're such a charmer."
Sam rolls his eyes. "Please," he practically begs, stepping closer to her, "take him and I'll make the bottle. Please, I'm dying here."
Her eyes widen when she looks down at his poor screaming face. "Oh… No! I can't, this wasn't part of the deal. I…," she rambles, cut off mid-sentence by Sam placing the four-month-old in her arms, leaning him against the front of her shoulder. With a flustered look on her face, Andy begins patting his diapered bottom and swinging lightly back and forth. She hushes him quietly and almost immediately, Ryan calms down, sighing quietly and cooing into her shoulder. Andy beams, her eyes shooting right up to meet Sam's. "Oh my god, did you see that?"
Sam chuckles, nodding to show his amazement. "I guess you're a natural," he tells her softly and she'd be lying if she said those words didn't hit her straight in the heart.
Babies have never been something Andy pictured herself being good at, not after everything that had happened with her mom. The first time she'd met Ryan, at the hospital after he was born, of course she'd held him, but he was sleeping and wrapped snugly in a blanket with nowhere to go. She's watched a hundred movies and she's spent time around Leo and Olivia; Andy knows how a baby works, but putting words into action? Not as easy.
"Either that or your boobs make him think you're Sarah," Sam grins when Andy affectionately rolls her eyes, reaching out to smack his chest with the back of her hand. "Look at him! He knows what he's doing!"
"You're lucky he likes me," she teases, still swinging while he calms. She can feel Ryan sucking gently at her neck, leaving a drool spot on her shirt. "'Cause I was about five seconds away running out of this house screaming."
Sam scoffs, crossing his arms. "Yeah. Right."
"Oh you don't believe me?"
"We're in the middle of nowhere in a place you barely know, where would you have gone?" he glares, challenging her.
Sam's sister Sarah and her husband live on three acres of land north of St. Catharines. Their eight-year-old son and six-year-old daughter both have hockey tournaments that require travelling for the night, and Sam is their unenthusiastic back-up babysitter. They'd seen Andy a few times in the last little while; first at Christmas and then after Ryan's birth. At first, she noticed a bit of hesitation from them, and she understood; Sam admittedly hadn't brought any women to meet his family in a really long time. However, when he was asked to babysit and Andy had overheard him trying to get out of it, she was shocked to hear him say 'you want her to? Because yeah, if she can come, I'll do it'.
"I don't really know," she says seriously, keeping a straight look on her face until he gets in her space and kisses her square on the lips on his way back to the sink. "God, I can't believe Sarah trusts us with him. Neither of us have experience with newborns."
"What?" Sam huffs. "I'll have you know I'm a very experienced babysitter."
Andy shakes her head jokingly. "Right. With kids, not babies. C'mon, let's put him to bed," she tells him, lifting Ryan up to pass him over.
Sam shakes his head right away, his hands flying up in protest. "No way!" he laughs, testing the newly warmed bottle on the inside of his wrist. "He likes you better."
While this babysitting thing isn't easy, Andy is really not minding seeing all these sides of Sam. He's great with his niece and nephew, but it's different seeing him with a baby.
"Fine, but I have to pee so," she leans forward and steps closer to Sam, "You have to take him till I get back," Andy smirks.
When she hands Ryan over to Sam, he whines a little, upset at the sudden movement. Sam's eyes meet hers to give her a look, but as Andy steps back, Sam tries quieting him and promptly lifts the bottle to his mouth.
"You sure he's not gonna scream again?" Sam says cautiously.
Andy grins when the cries immediately stop. At this point in their relationship, it's really, really not the time to be thinking about babies with Sam. However, that proud look that just formed on his face when Ryan calmed down, is really, really making her ovaries ache.
When she slips past to head to bathroom, Andy leans in from behind him, steps up on her toes a little and kisses the side of his neck. "You're fine," she murmurs against his ear, her teeth gently tugging on it when she feels his cheeks shift into a small smile, "In fact, you look better than fine," she giggles quietly, her palm running down his back before squeezing his muscular butt and walking away.
When she returns, she's surprised to find that Sam's already upstairs in the nursery. The door creaks just a bit when she pokes her head in. In the darkness of the room, Andy can see Sam in the rocking chair, snuggling Ryan against his chest. For a minute, she just watches, a smile forming across her face that'll likely be etched on there for quite a while. Sam rubs his tiny back gently and rocks back and forth, the corners of his mouth lifting just a little bit when he peeks down.
"Did you burp him?" Andy whispers from the doorway.
Sam nods, keeping his eyes cast down at his chest. "Mmhmm," he mumbles quietly.
Andy's teeth dig into her lip so that the next time he looks up, she's not grinning at him like an idiot. She hadn't prepared herself for the onslaught of emotions she feels just from seeing Sam cuddle with his baby nephew, but God, is it sweet. When he finally looks up and their eyes connect, she knows he has to be feeling something along the same lines.
It had only been five months since they figured their shit out, their ex-flings becoming a thing of the past. That's five long months of reminding each other to talk about anything and everything. Five months of upfront apologies and promises to never go back to what it was, promises of a future together. And five amazing months of the best make-up sex she's ever experienced; Andy gets flushed just thinking about the stuff they've done and the places they've done it. It turns out, Sam's detective get-up is something Andy really enjoys seeing around the station; he wears it well. All in all, working apart has appeared to be a blessing for them. By the end of the day you've actually been given a chance to miss each other, is what she's discovered.
Needless to say, children are nowhere near the front of their minds, but, Andy can't help noticing how it makes her feel to see Sam with a little dark-haired bundle, one that's falling asleep to the sound of his heartbeat.
She grins at him once more before turning around to head back downstairs and clean up the mess they'd made of the kitchen. She giggles when she feels his warm hands wrap around her stomach a few minutes later, his warm chest meeting her back.
"He's asleep," Sam mumbles.
After a deep sigh of relief, dries her hands on the towel in front her and reaches back to run her fingers through his hair. A satisfied moan leaves her mouth when Sam begins kissing and nipping his way up her neck, stopping only to suck on the sensitive skin behind her ear. When his hands start the slow journey up from her stomach, suggestively roaming her chest, Andy almost squeaks and spins around in his grip.
"Sam," she says sternly, winding her arms around his neck. His eyes are dark as the night sky and his mouth is doing that slightly-open-gaping thing it does when he wants to kiss her and not stop kissing her anytime in the near future. So, she pulls him in close and works her tongue into his mouth, only stopping when his hands start to tug on the hem of her shirt. "What? You wanna screw the clean-up and just go for it right on the kitchen table?"
His eyebrows jump and he grins, his hands gripping her hips her hold her tight against him. "I can think something else I'd like to screw," he whispers against her ear.
"Oh my God, you perv!" Andy teases between fits of laughter. "However, that is a pretty attractive table…"
"I was actually considering just lifting you right onto this countertop and…," Sam replies huskily, ignoring her comment and leaning in until she feels his warm breath on her lips.
"Sam!" she scolds playfully, cutting him off and shoving at him a little. He laughs and pushes back her against the counter, slips a thigh in between hers. "What's gotten into you all of a sudden?"
He mumbles something mostly unintelligible against her skin, but she thinks it may be 'I'm always like this' as he drops wet kisses everywhere; her neck, her collarbone, the tops of her breasts. Andy hears a small grunt leave his throat when she tightly squeezes his thigh with both of hers, tipping her hips forward to meet his. Even though she's not sure of what this very abrupt wanting is all about right now, she doesn't particularly mind it. Though Andy tries not to think too much of the fact that his thumb keeps stroking her stomach, right where it would grow if she was pregnant.
"It's your sister's house. We can't do this down here!" Andy stresses, running her fingers through his soft, thick hair.
"So let's go upstairs," he murmurs, his hands gently squeezing her hips and shifting her forwards against his leg. "You know you want to."
She puts her hands around his jaw and lifts his head. "Of course I want to" Andy smirks, intending to kiss him quick, his warm lips keeping her there for a few seconds longer than anticipated. "But we need to clean up," she emphasizes each word.
Sam groans, removing his hands from her hips and dropping his head to press against her chest. "You know, this was supposed to be the good part about babysitting," he grumbles, "As in, the part after the kid goes to sleep and I get to have you all to myself."
She smiles mischievously, lifting his head and stepping out from the minimal space between him and the counter. "Well then start helping me clean up because I'm not leaving their house looking like this when…," she trails off, realizing he'd already made his way out to the living room to tidy up. "Hey Sam?"
"Yeah?" He pokes back into the kitchen, a half-folded baby blanket in his hands.
"What if they have nanny cams?"
"Well if they're going to stick 'em in the guest room then I'd say they're in for quite a show," Sam calls from the living room, chuckling to himself.
Two minutes later, as Andy's rinsing out the formula-covered dishcloth, Sam strolls back into the kitchen, shirtless, with his belt unbuckled. Even with the 'you are impossible' look on Andy's face, he tugs on her hand and she follows his lead upstairs.