A/N: I wrote this awhile back (before and during S4) because I was processing Sam's view. I get Andy and I don't think she's selfish (no more than anyone else). She loves her career and should not be punished for that. BUT she does need to realize how much better Sam makes her life worth living.
Sam Swarek was never a man who thought of himself as getting attached to anyone.
Even his own parents. His father was in and out of prison as long as he could remember and when he was back on the outside in Sam's life, he was terrified of the older man's anger. The good days didn't last long, if there were any at all.
And his mom was around when she wasn't in and out of hospitals and a decent mother, but equally terrified of her husband's anger.
His sister and him were close, but they don't talk as much as they should.
It's not like he really let it bother him.
At least on the outside.
He was an angry teenager, tended to keep to himself until a group of kids from his neighborhood started getting into trouble and he followed suit just to stay out of his father's wrath (especially when he was drunk, which was most days and nights).
He also liked cars and stealing auto parts was easy to do for a punk kid living in Scarborough in the 1990s.
Girls liked him the older he got, but he never felt anything outside of the confusion of girls and what they wanted from him. He mostly just messed around with the ones who showed him attention or the ones he was friends with who were similar to him from shitty families. Experimenting was the next logical step in his 14 year old mind.
And as he got older, he never wanted to settle down because he saw that his own training officer, Charlie Fitzgerald, was the type of guy dedicated to his work more than settling down. (his father's work history involved stretches of unemployment and the odd manufacturing job here and there, and treating his family like they were pieces of shit-not really something ideal a teenager can look up to)
It's why when one doe-eyed rookie, Andy McNally knocked him down, burning him from a long UC, he felt something he never felt with anyone else. His world would turn upside down.
He couldn't pinpoint the exact moment he felt something for her either, beyond the simple "hey you're sexy, let me give you a ride home" sense that he usually got around beautiful women.
Attraction, he felt from the second she knocked through that door with those large brown eyes, dark hair, and scared-as-shit look on her face all the while in her navy blues.
He felt something else. Like he really, desperately needed to get to know her and where she comes from.
But with her being found, along with that kid Collins from a long 6 months had Sam feeling something he never felt before. This time it was that his emotions were too much to handle.
He wasn't sure what his mind was preparing for, she left him with no word and he was stuck living the simple life with someone else.
When his phone rang, her voice was sent straight to his heart and when he opened that truck door, she looked a little ragged, like she'd been running for her life, but as beautiful as he remembers. Maybe a little more so.
He keeps a picture hidden in his wallet from when they had a date on the first filthy hot day last summer when she came back from Temagami. Both of them looked close to drowned rats after he pushed her in the lake and she took him in with her, but it was his favorite picture of them because of her messy hair and bright smile staring at the camera while he was kissing the corner of that toothy grin. They were standing on the sand when she picked up her phone to take a quick picture of them.
He was getting himself a cup of coffee-black-after 6 months of drinking iced green tea with agave-turning over that new leaf, didn't want to be reminded of Andy-but he had that tingle in his hands like he would need a shit-ton of the blackest coffee from here on out.
Marlo is fun and professional and doesn't expect much from Sam. He likes that especially with his current tough exterior is on full display. He likes adapting; little changes in his life do him good (for now).
Andy, however, is too much at once and at the same time, not enough for him. She makes him want to tear down that exterior, but he doesn't exactly know what would happen if his walls came down and is terrified at the thought.
She's like a drug. But not a drug that would fuck up his body horribly, more like something that makes him feel better, or just makes him feel. (isn't that why people do drugs anyways? To feel something?)
However, since he had a taste of her, he doesn't want her out of his system and that withdrawal is a mother of a bitch anyways.
He thought he went through the withdrawal with his hellish hangover after she didn't show up at The Penny six months ago.
(Frankly, he can admit now, he begged and got desperate, searching for a quick fix he knew would never be enough because she was gone.)
He didn't realize it at the time, when he opened up to her and when she left, Andy had felt the same way. But what else was he to think? She ran away undercover when he made himself vulnerable to her.
When he did run away UC it was because he was getting uncomfortable and needed to escape.
(what he needed to really do was to realize that him and Andy were different in many ways, but running away, they were exactly the same)
And he also needs to understand that Andy is young and wants to focus on her career right now, which Sam wants her to do. She's an incredible cop. He would know. He trained her and mentored her. He wants her happy above all else.
He's one hundred percent faking it with Marlo.
Kinda like what Andy did with Luke (but without any commitments or expectations). Sam genuinely liked the fellow officer, but didn't feel anything beneath the surface and when it came down to it, he felt like something was missing from life.
Marlo is a friend, but he figures he's gotta try to move on, and if not Marlo, then who else?
He didn't want to scratch below the surface.
Nope.
It's where he was in his life right now.
And in many ways, Marlo reminded him of Andy (but he could never admit that to anyone who asked). It's like he was with Andy (but not really) in a safe way-walls up.
What he knew deep down (and what Oliver would mention), was that safe and easy was definitely not the way to enjoy life.
He was always edgy and dangerous by nature, but never with his emotions and he had a feeling that Marlo would never push for his emotions.
He was unsettled by it, but gave no shits because if Andy gave no shits then who was he to go against that?
It's why when he saw Andy in the doorway of the break room that he stopped dead in his tracks, staring after her. He didn't know what to say or do, only that he had to keep his feet cemented to the floor.
He did manage to drag his legs towards the door watching her walk off for her debrief with Blackstone and Collins.
He thought she was over and done with him, but he knew things just got fucked up because that's what Andy does to his life.
She turns it upside-down, but honestly, he would have it no other way and with no other woman.
Andy had the keys to his heart, just not the keys to his truck (yes he got the irony in that afterwards). He didn't want to give it more thought than it needed.
He was content living this way right now.
It's how he had lived life since he left living under his father's roof.
Complicated brought up the shit from his childhood.
Tears. Fighting. Hateful words. Tool sheds. (insert shitty moments)
(With Andy back and him spending part of his days and nights with another woman, it complicated things.)
Sam had it in his head that he was going to tell Andy how he truly felt.
Andy brought up complications, but she also brought out love, happy, smiles, and the greatest feelings Sam has ever felt in his entire life.
Andy was his comfort, his relief, his constant, the woman he was meant to spend the rest of his life with.
He finally was able to picture getting married and having children with her. Raising them to become better than his parents ever imagined for him. She helped him to see that life was worth living and things were worth being happy about.
The lone-wolf years of yesteryear were done and over with. Life isn't meant to be spent in isolation with impenetrable walls barricading the heart.
He can't keep this charade up any longer.