Fandom: Rookie Blue
Pairing: Nick/Andy
Category: Romance
Rating: K+
TWO-SHOT
Disclaimer: I own Nick Collins. In my dreams. It's a different story in reality.
Synopsis: It wasn't fine. It was never going to be fine again. Spoilers for 4x13 "You Can See The Stars"
Author's Note: I have to say… that finale was shit. I have so many emotions and honestly, not one of them happy. I know McSwarek fans are over the moon, but I feel like I've been cheated. Surely McSwarek deserve more than just stories in an ambulance… their relationship isn't going to be mended in one night and the writers just glossed over the complexities of it. Ok, enough ranting. Nick in the last scene just broke my heart and I wanted to write something just for him. Come to mama, baby, and let me love you.
And we know it's never simple, never easy
Never a clean break, no one here to save me
You're the only thing I know like the back of my hand
And I can't breathe without you, but I have to
~ Taylor Swift, Breathe ~
"Go."
Nick could barely hear the words forming on his lips over the roar of blood in his head. What was he saying?
No, no, don't go.
The words screamed in his mind, tugged at his heart. He wanted to pull her back, wanted to grab Andy by the elbow and take her away from the madness of the day. But his hand reached out, giving her a slight push in the opposite direction.
"Go, it's fine."
It wasn't fine. It was never going to be fine again.
He supposed he should have known – deep down, somewhere in his subconscious, he probably did, but just never had the guts to admit it – that someday, one day, things would end up this way.
He just hadn't expected that it would be today. He hadn't expected it so soon.
He had hoped for time. He had prayed and wished to every deity that if he was given enough time, he would heal Andy's heart and make her his. He would have showed her how much he appreciated her, valued her, cared for her. He would have given her everything.
He had wanted this work – and still did – but he needed time. And now that time had run out.
As Andy paused, her tear-stained gaze meeting his eyes, he felt a little flicker of promise. She wasn't going willing, she wasn't going with wishing there was a better alternative.
Stay, the voice in his head shouted. But his lips remained pursed together, his voice losing its ability to make a sound.
And when she turned around, turned her back on him, he knew it was over. They were over.
Perhaps they had never begun at all.
He had always sorta, kinda known, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he loved Andy more than she loved him. He had seen her with Swarek, and he knew what they shared was something that came by once in a person's life, if they were lucky.
The morning when she woke him up, happy and contented, he had nearly confessed his true feelings. He said he liked what they had. What he really meant was, I love this. And I love you.
The words were too soon for Andy to hear, that much he knew. She'd given him a chance and he'd grabbed it with both hands, afraid that if he let his grip a little too loose, she would be gone forever.
But now… now it was becoming obvious that he never really had her at all.
They were friends, he would even venture to say that they probably were best friends. He had been the one she turned to when Sam first broke up with her, and he had thought of no one else when he wanted to talk about his problems with Gail. She was also the first and only person who knew why he felt the need to drown his sorrows in alcohol one day every year.
She alone who knew more than just what he liked on his toast every morning; she knew what made him tick and which buttons to push. She knew when to press an issue, especially when something was bothering him, but more importantly, she knew when to back off and give him the space he sometimes so desperately needed.
She knew him, inside and out, and he knew, there and then, that there would no one else after Andy who would ever come close. No one with whom he would ever lay himself so emotionally bare again.
The thought of that hurt, and as he walked away from Best, from the rest of his friends waiting anxiously in the hospital lobby, he felt the tight constriction of his vest.
The same vest on which his heart lay bared now felt like a noose around his throat, threatening to rob him of the very life it was meant to protect.
He couldn't seem to get it off fast enough, but instead of feeling relief when the Velcro loosened, a sense of loss suddenly overwhelmed him.
The burning sensation in his eyes forced him to blink, but he knew it wasn't enough to stop the onslaught. The reality of what he was losing tonight was creeping him up on him, and not for the first time, he wished that he had been first.
Wished that he had been there before Swarek. Wished that he had never met Andy, never known her, never played house with her. Never spent a weekend alone with her, never lost himself in her.
Now he'd lost his head over her, but she was walking away. To another man, to another life that had existed long before he was ever around and he knew there was nothing left for him.
As he closed his eyes and felt the first tear fall, Nick finally admitted what he had known all along: it was back to the beginning for him.
Without Andy.