Written for somebraveapollo in Yuletide 2014.
Hoping that Hart's annoying qualities will cancel out with her return to fieldwork turns out to be the kind of wildly unjustified optimism Sam never should have indulged in: Hart unbridled is irritation squared. She's late to briefings, she chews with her mouth open, she snorts when she laughs, she has way more supermodel friends than any sane person should, she has a horrible habit of getting investigation insights at three a.m. and calling Sam to share them at once, she forgets to do paperwork until it's overdue, her desk is a mess and her car always stalls. Her taste in stakeout music is a case for justifiable homicide if Sam ever saw one. Sometimes Sam thinks that any day spent without murdering Hart is enough for her to be made into a saint.
Gracie also takes Sam's ugly, snapping anger like it's a thunderstorm, something beautiful and blameless, and meets it with anger of her own, never once backing down. Gracie laughs too loudly, but always gets the joke. Gracie's three a.m. ideas tend to lead them to the craziest places, but pay off most of the time. Gracie can cut down any asshole too big for his shoes with a line so sharp he's left looking for his dignity on the ground before she even closes her mouth; it saves Sam mountains in paperwork for the unavoidable violence she'd otherwise commit. Gracie takes Sam home to her cluttered apartment for awful TV dinners but buys ice cream by the ton for dessert, and lets her just sit quietly and let everything dissolve into comfortable white noise.
They solve fifteen cases in their first month together; Chief stops looking at Sam like she's something the cat dragged in and assigns them harder and harder tasks, and sometimes smiles in the way that makes Sam want to stand to attention.
Gracie matches her stride for stride and punch for punch and smile for smile, and if somebody tries to pry her away Sam will probably have to make sure they never find the body.
Sam is just rounding the corner when it happens. Nothing should happen, it's not even an arrest, only chasing down one of their scattered leads, talking to somebody who might or might not lead them to somebody else. So Sam stays by the car to talk to the Chief, and when she catches up, she's thirty steps away, and the guy sees Gracie, raises his gun and fires.
Sam sees everything at once – Gracie flying backwards, the perp's open mouth, her own gun snapping up – all in complete deafening silence. She drops him with one bullet, calls backup without hearing a single word she says. Everything is fragmented like snapshots: here she's where she is, then she's at Gracie's side, then her hands are tearing at Gracie's shirt collar. She can't see the blood.
The sounds snap back in and she hears her own voice, Gracie, Gracie, Jesus fuck, Gracie, don't do this to me, please, please don't, Gracie, sweetheart, and then Gracie sucks in air and coughs, and everything stutters to a stop.
There's a bulletproof vest under her shaking fingers, and a bullet splattered in the dead center of it – Jesus – and Sam stares at it dumbly, because it shouldn't be here, and Gracie must be dead and she must be mad.
Gracie, eyes tightly squeezed in pain, wheezes, "Promised... to show... to Priscilla's class after," and Sam stares, until the words sink in and she folds forward and leans her forehead to Gracie's, shaking in helpless silent laughter and not – definitely not, not under any circumstances – crying.
There are finally sirens in the distance, and Gracie says, "Fuck this hurts, fuck, fuck, ouch," and smiles at Sam, bright and unconcerned and high on adrenaline, and Sam looks at this smile and thinks to herself, I'm so screwed, and can't be bothered to care.
Sam is limping, coughing and cursing all at once; she feels like she swallowed half of the Hudson and the other half is slowly congealing on her clothes. She remembers with some nostalgia the good old days when her casework did not include entertaining chases and falling into the rivers, but what can you do? At least she got the guy, and got him with extreme prejudice.
The medic fusses over her for a while, crinkly foil blanket and oxygen mask and all, and Gracie hovers over both of them looking like she'd rather shove him away and do it herself. Sam floats on the feeling of not splashing in the goddamn cold river anymore a bit, but perks up sharply when they start making noises about "overnight for observance".
She pulls the mask off and says "No hospital" with as much authority as she can muster; not much of it, she looks and feels like a drowned rat.
The medic says "Ma'am" in such long-suffering way Sam considers smashing his teeth in just on principle, but Gracie looks at her over his head with something like understanding. She says, in her best perky Miss FBI voice that Sam hates, "She's not dying or anything, right? She just needs to be warm and for somebody to look over her and check if she has any problems with her breathing?"
Sam knows how it will go, so she checks out for a while, focuses on the flow of warm oxygen. True to form, Gracie extricates her from the ambulance not ten minutes later, blanket and all, and then it's Gracie's piece of shit car with the heating cranked up, and then the stairs up to her piece of shit apartment. Sam thinks she should maybe be worried about kind of losing the track of events here and there, but Gracie's here, so she doesn't give a fuck.
She comes to herself, a bit, when dumped unceremoniously on Gracie's bed, and tries to protest: she's caked with mud and dirt, and should probably be decontaminated before she's allowed to interact with anything clean (or at least as clean as anything in Gracie's apartment can be). She has to – she will – shower – her boots are squelching – she will –
Gracie kneels before her, a single graceless movement, and starts undoing her laces, calmly as you please, and Sam stares at her in disbelief. She makes some kind of noise, and Gracie looks up at her, bright eyes and flushed cheeks, and says: "Hey, partner, relax. I've got you."
Sam is cold and exhausted and halfway to being not all here, and if something went differently tonight she could have been cold and all the way to not here instead, her body dragged down by the river, and Sam thinks fuck this, and Sam leans forwards and kisses Gracie's worried mouth.
There's not a second of hesitation, oh thank God, not a moment, because Gracie matches her stride for stride, always. When they pull apart, Gracie says again, firmly, "I've got you, okay," and Sam says, "Yes," and closes her eyes.