TITLE: Dance The Way I Feel
AUTHOR: Copycat
RATING: PG
CLASSIFICATION: Romance, Fluff with a hint of Angst, Sam/Andy
SPOILERS: Through 4x08 For Better, For Worse
SUMMARY: Andy keeps her promise to dance with Sam at Frank and Noelle's wedding.
Author's Note: I don't know what's happening lately, but I seem to be writing a LOT. I'm actually really enjoying figuring these characters out.
Title is from a song by Ou Est Le Swimming Pool.
Sam looked around the room from his spot by the bar. A spot he hadn't left all night. All around him his colleagues – friends - were having a good time, laughing, dancing, basically enjoying themselves. Whereas he was over here, on the edge of it all, just observing.
He laughed to himself when he spotted Oliver, trying to convince Celery that he could do the robot dance. It was nice, seeing Oliver so happy finally, after years of watching him struggle to please a wife who had not appreciated him for a very long time. In the background Price and Epstein were watching him, laughing openly, Epstein's arm around Price's shoulders. It seemed that everyone was pairing up suddenly.
Not that he felt left out as such. Marlo wasn't going to be staying in Miami forever. It was just that things seemed to be changing, and weren't weddings the perfect place to get nostalgic?
He smiled slightly as McNally walked slowly towards him, a glass of champagne in one hand.
She came to a halt right in front of him, smiling back. "I told you I'd save you a dance," she told him before downing her champagne in one go and leaving the empty glass on the bar.
"That you did," he agreed, pushing himself away from the bar.
"You missed the ceremony," he informed her as they stopped on the dance floor and she turned to face him.
"I was working," she said, walking into his arms, taking his left hand in her right, placing her left hand on his shoulder.
"Yeah," he said, nodding slowly, resting his right hand on the small of her back, pulling her ever so slightly closer to him, until their bodies were almost touching. "And you do take your job very seriously."
"I do," she agreed, her eyebrows shooting up, her eyes widening as she looked at him, as if to emphasize her point. "I love my job, is that so wrong?"
He shook his head, smiling. "Not at all. But then again, your job is pretty great."
She grinned and nodded, a hint of the wide-eyed enthusiasm that had radiated off of her when she first started at 15 shining through. The enthusiasm that had both frustrated and fascinated him so much back then, an enthusiasm that seemed lately to have been replaced by experience and confidence. These were great qualities in a police officer, of course, but sometimes he missed the Andy McNally who would look at him, insisting she wasn't scared because she trusted him to have her back. The Andy McNally who didn't know any better.
"What are you thinking?" She asked softly, cutting through the fog of memories that had swallowed him up.
He shrugged, feeling her body move with his, her hand tightening on his shoulder rather than letting itself get pushed off by his movement. "I'm trying to remember if I tivo'ed Jimmy Kimmel."
"Sam," she sighed, not accepting his quip.
"I'm thinking 'What are you thinking?' is my least favorite question in the world."
"Yeah, well, it would be," she agreed. "Anyone wanting to know what you're thinking, that must be terrible for someone like you."
He laughed briefly. "Someone like me, huh?"
She smiled reluctantly, almost as if it was a Pavlovian response to his laugh, something she was powerless to stop, and his grin widened. "Mhmm. I mean, imagine the horror of anyone knowing what's actually going on in there." Her hand moved from his shoulder to his hair, one finger tapping his temple.
He shuddered as goosebumps shot up his arms at the touch that, in another place at another time, would have been a caress, and his arm tightened slightly around her. "If you knew what was going on in here, McNally, you would be terrified."
He had expected her to laugh and make some sarcastic comment in response, but instead she looked him straight in the eye, their faces mere inches apart, and said in a low voice: "Maybe I wouldn't."
His breath caught in his throat, in the same place that words always seemed to get caught in moments like this. If she could see into that place, they would've never gotten to where they were now. Or, maybe they would've been in this place, like this, but it would have been different. It wouldn't just be one dance, one brief moment with her in his arms, it would be normal. It would be how they were, always. Because if she could have heard all those words he had never been able to say, he wouldn't ever have had to let her go.
When he said nothing she smiled, amusement mingling with resignation in her eyes and she shook her head. "I guess we'll never know."
He half-shrugged, squeezing her hand as if that was some secret code and she would understand it. And it seemed, miraculously, as if she had, because she leaned into him, resting her head against his shoulder.
"McNally, these days I don't even know," he admitted.
"Sure you do," she told him. "You just don't know that you do."
He laughed, breathing in the scent of her shampoo. "Right. Okay. Whatever you say."
She squeezed his hand and he smiled to himself. She might have somehow understood him before, but he had no clue what she meant now. So he just stayed how he was, holding her in his arms, trying to pretend that for these three minutes at least, that was all there was.
All too soon the song ended and she pulled away. "Don't say I'm not a man of my word," she joked.
He snaked a finger under the neckline of her dress, pulling slightly at the material. "I would never say that about you," he assured her.
"You know what I mean," she insisted, her eyes on the hand brushing against her skin.
"Less and less every day," he said, letting his hand drop. "Thank you for the dance, you are released of your duty." He was joking, but even he could hear a trace of bitterness in his words.
She looked at him sharply, trying to decipher his meaning, once again struggling to work out why he was taking out his anger on her, when she didn't even know why he was angry. So, back to normal.
He smiled a detached smile, letting her think it was her fault, that it wasn't that he was frustrated with himself and his inability to be the person he needed to be. It wasn't that he hated himself because he couldn't be with her, for wanting to when he was with someone else now. Someone who, just like Andy, deserved better.
"Okay," she mumbled, shaking her head and turning away from him. Looking past her, Sam saw Nick seated at a table at the edge of the dance floor, watching them intently. Their eyes met for an instant, but then Nick looked away, as if embarrassed at being caught staring.
Sam looked down at the ground, sighing to himself as Andy walked away before he returned to the bar, reacquainting himself with the tumbler of whiskey he had left behind when McNally had interrupted his solitude, and which the characteristically omniscient bartender hadn't felt the need to clear away.
He took a gulp of the golden liquid and looked up just in time to see Andy sit down opposite Nick and smile in response to something he said. Nick's head turned and he caught Sam's eye again, but this time it was Sam who looked away first.
She was right, he did know what was on his mind. He just wasn't sure it mattered anymore.