A/N: In this chapter, you'll be disappointed with lack of Cooper inclusion, but I promise you, next chapter is very Cooper involved.

Sam had been sitting at The Penny for an hour with Oliver before he said anything about the current situation. But that was just Sam's process. Oliver knew he wanted to talk, and talk they would, but it had to be on Sam's time, when he was ready. Any pushing or prodding and he'd clam up like a shell. So he waited it out. Talked about trivial things like hockey, or work, or their kids. Oliver managed to get himself three girls in five years, so he had his hands full with them. His youngest is a year younger than Cooper. Andy always thought she and Zoe would set 'em up eventually...

"I did something stupid, brother." Sam says at last, after their conversation about getting new squad cars at work ran its course.

"What's that?"

Sam sighed, looked down at the bottle in his hands, and passed it back and forth on the bar top before answering and putting the bottle to his lips.

"I almost kissed Andy a couple of nights ago."

Traci has been doing a good job at keeping Andy's wine glass full on this girls night, as she recounts all the events with Sam over the last couple of weeks. Gail keeps assuring her that it's fine, the kids fine, Luke will get over everything. (Kids didn't really mellow Gail out too much. Course, she had twins. There wasn't a ton of post-baby bliss for her and Nick). Cooper was having a sleep over tonight at Gail's with Leo, the twins, and Nick, so the ladies were free for the night.

Traci kept telling her to be honest with Luke, lay it all out there, till him about her doubts. But Andy knows Luke. She knows he'll blow their entire relationship if he thinks she'll go back on her promise. They had a home together now, she couldn't just take a break because Sam was stirring up old feelings... could she? No, no, her son finally had a stable life. They had a stable life.

"Well, I'll go get those bridal magazines," Traci says, pushing herself up off her couch, running into her bedroom.

Gail keeps an eyebrow raised at Andy the entire time Traci is gone, but Andy keeps her eyes trained on her wine, drinking it often.

Traci was the biggest enthusiast on planning and Gail was the first to wed, which, who would've guessed? But it went like so; Gail, Andy, and then finally Traci. After keeping Jerry on a string for four years, she gave in. Never believed in monogamy, and she's the happiest of them all. She was there for every step of Gail's wedding, even through the thickest of bride-zilla moments, and her nearly decapitating Elaine.

All night with the Sam stuff though, Gail's been trying to keep Andy in check. Reminding her of her fiancée, as though she'd forgotten. Gail was so up and down with how she felt about Sam that Andy never bothered keeping track. It's almost like she couldn't decide if she liked Luke or Sam least, so she pitted them against one another when it suited her best.

But despite Gail's frankness, and harsh attitude towards the men in her life, the girls have been really helpful as bridesmaids for this wedding. Probably because she didn't even tell them last time...

They agreed on a small wedding. Family and friends only, but when early one morning after a really bad shift, Sam wanted to whisk her away to city hall, make it official as soon as possible, she went with it. She didn't have a wedding dress, but they stopped and bought her something, summery, and her. He wore slacks and an open dress shirt, no jacket, no tie. It was them. They stopped and picked up Jerry and her dad to witness, and they were ready.

She knew the case shook him up. She could tell from the way he asked her to just go with him, do it this morning, be his forever. When she made him tell her, her heart absolutely broke.

"We found a body today, and it belonged to a man who was engaged to a woman getting out of the sex trade. She had two kids. Since they weren't married, all his belongings, his apartment, money, it goes to his mother, and she won't give them a dime. And now that woman's stuck doing whatever she can to feed her kids." He kissed the back of her hand as they sat next to each other on their couch, shoulder to shoulder. "If I left you here with nothing, I'd wouldn't forgive myself."

She was going to protest, but when he put his hand up to stop her, she obliged.

"I know that that doesn't matter to you, that you'd be okay, and I don't even have much for you, but I want to know that you're going to be okay."

She couldn't argue with that. And she definitely could've told Traci and Gail, but they decided that they'd just throw a party after, in a week, something big. She just wanted to marry him as soon as she could. They were married in front of a judge and Tommy gave her away traditionally, cried, told Sam not to hurt his little girl, and 'welcome to the family son'. They didn't say their own vows, but that was okay, they were more of private people that way, especially Sam. And by noon, she was Andy Swarek, and she was his, and he was hers

The post-wedding party wound up being more of a second wedding. Oliver "married" them, Traci got to be a maid of honour, while Gail was her matron of honour, and Jerry was the best man... again. They had a ceremonious cake cutting. Andy shoved it in his face after he fed her delicately, trying not to ruin her lipstick. He retaliated, later, with the leftovers... in bed.

That night Sam confessed that their mock wedding would've been worth the wait, but he didn't regret getting her as soon as he could.

Looking back now maybe she was too young at twenty five to get married, and they did it wrong, but she saw their whole marriage that way most of the time. Maybe all they did right was Cooper. But if that was the case, why did she want to go back so badly? Why did she want to see if it'd be different now?

"So what kind of dress are you thinking of?" Traci asks excitedly, pulling her out of her thoughts, and throwing a magazine at her face.

"What're you doing brother? Coming back full force into her life?" Oliver asks once he's done updating his friend on the situation. "Be there for Cooper, fine. Spend a little time together with him, that's okay too. But, where Coopers not involved, don't involve yourself Sammy. You'll only push her away."

"Well I know that now don't I?" Sam says with a little fire. "I just, I just don't want this to fall through the cracks again Oliver. I know I fucked up. I know that."

Oliver pat his buddy on the shoulder once he began to clam back up and stare coldly at his beer bottle.

"I get it Sammy, I do. And you made some mistakes, the problem here is that you let her slip away from you. You've had six years to fix this. And you assumed it would fix itself." Oliver advises. Reason Jerry wasn't here tonight was that he didn't have the battle scars in his marriage that Oliver did. He and Zoe never had it easy, and they'd come close to separation themselves.

Jerry and Lidia didn't work out because they got married in college because the sex was great, but he and Traci were, they were a freak breed of couple. They had a lot of bumps in the road in the beginning, and most of it had to do with Leo's father, but Traci kept him waiting so long that they'd made sure they were solid. Maybe they learned from their friends mistakes...

"You two had a romance for the big screen brother, there's no denying that. Fire that burned wild." He waved a hand out in front of them, probably supposed to be a fire-y shape, but Oliver's a couple more drinks in than Sam. "But you let it burn down everything in its path till there was nothing left, and you thought that it would just keep you two going. That's why you gave her the separation." Oliver says sagely, always the voice of reason.

"I didn't think she'd forget so easily how good we were together." Sam says, hopelessness infecting his voice.

"You missed a lot Sammy, and I'm not trying to make you feel guilty, I know you are harder on yourself than anyone else but... but she covered a lot of it up when you were back. She failed to tell you what she wanted, and you failed to see what she needed."

Sam nodded at his friends words, and considered that maybe she'd made as many mistakes as he did. They both let it fail. She was tired of being alone, and his solution was take some time apart. He stayed away from UC while they were separated, oddly enough, and maybe that's why she'd seemed so much better. Cause maybe they weren't together, but she wasn't worried about him out there. He knew he made the wrong move when he refused counseling, but he was hardly the type to let some stranger come into their lives and judge them. It was his pride that got in the way of fixing things. Like Oliver said, he thought that what they had was strong enough. He thought it would fix itself.

The girls were done sorting through the dresses, and they'd consumed too much wine to stay on task. They mostly just critiqued the models and made up fake back stories until they got sick of flipping through the pages.

"Nick and I are looking at houses." Gail announces, not too cheery about it. "The boys are too old to be sharing a room. They're getting to be that age..." She then makes a gesture involving forming a lose fist and pumping her wrist and well... they get the message.

"And Lacy has more toys than we know what to do with." She groans. After having two boys at once, and finding out she was going to have a precious girl, they all went a little over board. They all had boys up until now, and... Lacy just got very spoiled.

"That's great, what neighbourhood are you thinking about?" Traci asks almost immediately.

Gail looks over at Andy with a bit of a guilty face.

"We were actually looking in your old area. And we noticed that your and Sam's old place... it's for sale Andy." Gail admits. "We're not looking at it, we want something cheaper, but I thought maybe you'd want to know."

And that hits Andy a little harder than she'd like. That house, there was a love/hate relationship that came with it, but it was their first real home together. I mean, they stayed in Sam's rented apartment for a few months after they got married, but when a pipe burst in the building, everything got a little turned upside down. They just kind of stayed that way.

Staying at her dads was supposed to be a temporary situation until they found something else, but Sam started talking about buying a home, their own place, their dream home. Before she knew it, he was working overtime like crazy, trying to save up. As soon as they started talking to realtors, it became obvious that with Andy's loans on their shoulders, they wouldn't be the sellers first choice.

"Andy, I do this, we pay off your debt, and we scrape together the last bit of the down payment for any home in that neighbourhood." He said, countless times.

Tommy was sitting with them at the dinner table, backing him up, telling her that with him gone, making more money, and her not having to feed another mouth he wouldn't have to be gone too long. Four or five months. She pulled a couple extra shifts here and there too, and they'd get their home.

Eventually he wore her down, and for the first time in a year and a half, he was back under. And for the first time since she was a kid, she'd wished she made him promise her he'd come home, at any cost. She wished she'd told him it didn't matter if they had the dream house or just any old house. But she let him go without saying any of those things.

Every phone call she got in those five months panicked her. Terrified that it'd be a hospital or his Sergeant. Every time someone knocked on her father's front door, she was afraid it's be a uniform ready to give her a notification.

But the day he came home, she'd never forget. Just walked right into the house, and grabbed her. Kissed her like he'd never kissed her before.

If they weren't at Tommy's she's convinced they would've done it on every surface in every room for the next two weeks straight. But eventually they came out of that 'Thank god you're not dead' bliss, and they had to get a move on with their lives. She basically forgot how hard those months were without him, just basked in thankfulness that he was home safe now.

Less than two months later he took her to the open house for the four bedroom house in the beaches. It had a front yard, a tire swing on an old oak tree. It had bricks and above it olive green wood paneling, the windows had white shutters. If she had to dream up the home she was destined to live in, it was this one. They didn't hesitate to put an offer on it, and they were so happy when they got it.

She still had the photo of them with the sold sign, somewhere. She was on his back, arms wrapped tight around his neck, grinning from ear to ear, and he did the same.

A month later they were moving in.

Jerry, Oliver and Nick all came to do the heavy lifting, moving the furniture, and the ladies dropped by for the actual unpacking and organizing. A week later, they all brought the kids, and had house warming barbecue.

The day they moved in was the day she found out she was pregnant.

"Wow." Andy breathed, letting the memories of their home hit her all at once. "Can't believe they're selling already, it's a great house."

Traci and Gail knew that that was about all the reaction they were going to get out of her, and she was relieved when they simply dropped it. But as she drained what was left in her glass, deciding that she was off for the night, she wondered if they'd recognize her if she stopped by and took a look around.

Traci was the first of them asleep, as usual, and Andy and Gail stayed up a little longer on the topics of their kids, and mundane things like sports and carpool... but somehow it got back to the other night, with Sam, and Gail just couldn't seem to help herself.

"Andy, you've got to leave Sam in the past. You know he always leaves you broken."

"Gail that's enough. I'm tired of everyone being on his back about that. He was trying to provide for us okay? That's all. He wanted to give us everything he never had. He did what he thought he needed to do to keep us happy!"

Gail just shook her head at her.

"How is it that when someone defends what he did, you easily back up your choice to divorce with 'he left, he wasn't there for me' but when I take that stance, you're ready to defend what he did, and that he did it out of love?"

"You do this with Luke and Sam all the time Gail, you put them up against each other and whichever one you hate less that day gets your vote. You don't know about my past being married to Sam. How hard it was having him leave-"

"No, Andy, shut up. I know how selfless it is to watch your husband go risk his life to give you one. Nick did three tours, remember? But I knew that he was going out there to fight for something bigger than us, and when he was done, he'd be mine. Sam did the same thing. He was taking care of these streets, so his son could be a little safer, you could be safer. I know I give him a lot of shit, but that's because he made bad choices, not because he left Andy. So don't tell me I don't get it. Because I do. Nick still has nightmares, ten years later." Gail says, shaking her head in what seemed like exhaustion.

Andy was up and over to her in a heartbeat, and realized that maybe they were too tired to be talking about things that were so much more than black and white. She put an arm around her friend and pulled her tight and let her collect herself before continuing.

Andy never really looked at Gail as the wife of a soldier. Andy never really thought to confide in Gail all of her fears about Sam, because Nick finished his touring a long time ago, before the kids were born. But holding Gail, Gail who was talking about Nick waking up sweaty and screaming, she couldn't help but wonder how much she'd kept inside. How much they'd struggled. How she stopped him from going back.

"I know he loves us, but he's so loyal, I can't help but wonder if he wants to go back..."

Andy's never heard anyone else speak her exact thoughts aloud before. She never thought it'd be Gail.

A/N 2: I hope I was able to make you all see why Sam returned to undercover. And how in real life that would take a bigger toll. Hope both of their perspectives were brought out.

Also, I know this chapter had kind of a different structure to it, but things'll be back to normal in ch 8 don't worry.