A/N: Inspired by Never Going Back Again by Fleetwood Mac, which I would again recommend listening to. Rated K+/T for a tiny bit of language. I've promised myself I'll write something happy/fluffy for the next one, given my ... complete inability to do so. This is a little bit angsty. I'm most of the way through the next chapter of Running on Empty, I'm just chickening out of writing the smut.
Set post-2x13, Sam PoV (again. Because as may have/be about to become apparent I don't get Andy)
Never Going Back Again
She broke down and let me in
Made me see where I've been
Been down one time
Been down two times
I'm never going back again
They drive in near silence, and if he couldn't tell how upset she was from that, the looks she keeps sneaking at him and the worried expression on her face would have clued him in.
"It wasn't your fault," he says, when he stops the car. No preamble - just flat, straight fact. He knows she'll understand what he's talking about.
"No," she agrees. "But it could have been. We both know that. We were so god damned stupid."
"Yeah," he has to concede the point. Then, "I'd do it again."
She bites her lip, closes her eyes. He can't quite read the expression on her face.
"Come on," she says, finally. "Let's get you inside."
He's taken them to his place, despite the fact that there's no food, because he knows she's still at Nash's. Come to think of it, she was supposed to sign the mortgage papers yesterday – she probably didn't get to the bank, in the end.
"There are some take out menus … what?"
"Bathroom," she says, "Now."
"What? Why?"
"Did you even see a doctor?"
"Yeah," he replies. "Cuts, bruises. Looks worse than it is. Nothing to worry about."
"And the broken ribs?"
He keeps his face blank. She sighs, eyes flashing with irritation.
God, but she's beautiful when she's angry.
"I can see how much pain you're in, Sam. And you're being careful, but your arm's stiff on this side."
She comes forward and pokes him in his right side. He jerks back, hissing; grabs her hand.
"Bathroom," she repeats, "Now."
She makes him sit on the toilet and pulls off his shirt. He looks at her face as she takes in the sight of him and … yeah. It's not pretty. His arms, face and torso are all covered in blotchy bruises in varying shades of grey, purple and blue with the occasional shallow cut for good measure. Like he'd told her, apart from the ribs – and yeah, they're going to hurt like hell for a few weeks but there's really not any treatment for 'em other than time – it's nothing to worry about, all cosmetic. He'll look worse tomorrow, better the day after and fine in a couple of weeks. He can see from her face that rationally, she knows that – knows there's nothing really wrong with him, but emotionally all that's registering is that he's hurt; that he could have been hurt worse.
She gets a cloth, cleans the cuts, traces her fingers over the bruises. He does his best to stay still, doesn't point out what she already knows; his injuries have already been seen to.
Finally, she speaks, "They give you any pills?"
"Yeah," he nods towards his jacket and she reaches in to the pocket to fish them out.
"But you haven't taken them yet."
"I had to drive."
She shakes her head, annoyed, clearly thinking that she could have driven. She pulls out the leaflet that goes with the medication and starts to read. So while she's occupied with that, he reaches out and grabs the bottle, swallows two pills dry.
"Sam!" she exclaims, "You're not supposed to take those on an empty stomach!"
He shrugs, "I'll be fine. Done it before."
She mutters something under his breath that he doesn't quite catch – something about hard asses and iron stomachs.
"Let's get you to bed."
"Why? You want to play doctor some more?" He gives her a grin, working the dimples for all he's worth.
In response, she pokes him in the rib again. He bites back a yelp, but can't keep the grimace off his face.
"Yeah," she says, "I didn't think so."
He waves off her proffered hand, instead grabbing the sink to haul himself to his feet. She hovers anxiously behind him as he makes his way to the bedroom and, yeah, pretty much collapses on the bed. The look on her face and the lack of talking and joking had already told him there wasn't going to be any doctoring except the medical kind in his immediate future. Andy vanishes off towards the kitchen while he tries to make himself as comfortable as it's possible for him to be with a couple of cracked ribs.
Five minutes later, when she reappears with water and coffee which she slaps his had away from ("You do not need to be awake any longer, Sam!"), the drugs have already started to kick in and he's smiling. He remembers he's only ever taken them on an empty stomach when he was alone, and about to crash out. He thinks that he'll probably come to regret his actions in the morning.
He reaches out and pulls her down onto the bed with him, so fast she stumbles and only just manages to catch herself from falling on top of him. He threads his other hand through her hair and kisses her. She responds for a little while, but eventually puts a hand on his chest and gently pushes away.
"Sam ..." she says softly, "We shouldn't be doing this."
She's looking down towards the blanket he's lying on, fingers tracing aimless patterns. Her hair has fallen forward, meaning he can't see her face.
"Give me one good reason why not."
Pain killers give him the reasoning ability of a five year old, but he's smart enough to have taken her hand before he spoke, to be rubbing circles on the back of her hand with his thumb.
"Because ..." she starts.
He moves his thumb to the inside of her wrist, running it back and forth.
"Because ..."
Touching her there seems to short circuit her ability to speak. He tries to red flag that little piece of information and file it away for later, though he somehow suspects that tomorrow every moment since taking those two little pills is going to be a blur.
"Because ..." she pulls her hand away, shakes her head as if to clear it, "We were stupid. We ruined the case ..."
"We didn't ruin the case," Sam argues. "We got Brennan."
She gives him a look that says, Really?
"Not in the way we thought we would ..."
"He was about five minutes away from killing you, Sam!"
"But he didn't"
"He could have!"
"But he didn't. No point worrying about things that didn't happen, McNally."
He'd slid into TO mode, a little. Because they're talking about a case, because he's trying to calm her fears, because he's used to it. She relaxes a little, he can see it. He reaches for her hand again, pulls her down to lie next to him, taking her left hand in his right and placing it on the other side of his chest. He buries his nose in her hair and just drinks in the scent of her.
On the edge of sleep, he mumbles, "I'd do it again, Andy."
He doesn't hear if she replies.
He wakes a few hours later. It's still dark out, but the bed is cold beside him. He looks around and finally sees Andy sat on the floor against his wardrobe, staring at him.
"You nearly died," she says softly and looks away from him. He's about to speak when he realises that she's crying, silently, and he thinks maybe she needs to get this out. "We were so stupid, so selfish. And now we've both got conduct unbecoming an officer," she breaks off to sob, "on our records."
She puts her hand over her mouth, shaking. He opens his mouth to speak (just what exactly he's going to say he doesn't know), but she cuts him off.
"I was suspended. You were suspended. We could lose our jobs. We could lose our jobs," She takes a deep breath and says even more quietly, so that he has to strain to hear her – and he's not sure he wants he hear what she has to say, "I can't lost this job. I can't. Being a cop is all I've ever wanted, it's all I know. And you!" Finally, she looks at him again, "You love being a cop! It'd kill you to ..."
She breaks off, looks at the ceiling, the floor, anywhere but at him.
Then, she whispers, "I'm not supposed to be here."
She scrambles to her feet, and says in a steadier voice, "Don't contact me until after the hearing."
He tries to sit up, to go after her, but the pills have worn off and his muscles have tightened while he slept. He groans his way to a standing position, but when he finally manages to stagger out to the hallway and his front door, she's long gone. He picks up his cell to try and call her, but it rings through to voice mail five times before her phone either runs out of battery or she switches it off.
The aftermath of the pills leave him woolly headed and cotton mouthed. He drinks some water, takes two more and goes back to bed. Going after her right now would be counter-productive, he thinks. She needs to cool down, get some perspective, stop thinking of him as the guy who was nearly murdered by Jamie Brennan – an idea his bruised face and stiff movements is only going to reinforce. She'll come back. When she's ready.
His zen attitude to their relationship lasts all of thirty-six hours, at least half of which he spends unconscious. He calls his sister, to let her know that he's back in the land of upstanding members of society. He is vague and non-committal about exactly what happened, but Sarah bullies and (verbally) pummels him until he gives up the details. He's brutally honest, takes most of the blame himself. The reaming out she gives him is worse than Frank's.
"Samuel Timothy Swarek! You are not seventeen years old! Hell, Sam! You're not even twenty seven years old! You do not have the excuse of youth or over excessive testosterone! But you put yourself, this girl and your case in danger, for sex?"
When he was 'brutally honest' he may have missed that part out, but Sarah has the ability to read between the lines, and hours of therapy have left her with next to no verbal boundaries.
He grunts and hopes she'll take it as contrition. It doesn't work.
"Jesus, Sam! I know how much you care about this girl! And you told me about Brennan …"
"I know, Sarah," Because despite the devil-may-care attitude he'd shown Andy, the same thoughts had been circling his head since Brennan had walked in and caught him with 'Candace'.
"He could have killed her!"
"I know, Sarah."
The quiet tone he has when he say it is enough to shut her up. Sarah sighs, and starts telling him all the family things he's missed while he was under. Interestingly, it's the danger to Andy's life she focused on when she was berating him and not his own, mostly he thinks because she'd long ago decided that he was big enough and ugly enough to look after himself.
Having completed his brotherly duties, he notices that he has a missed call from Andy, back from the night he went under … and a voice mail, which his phone reproachfully informs him is three days away from being deleted.
When he hears it, he realises why she didn't mention it. It makes no sense to him whatsoever, except for the part about making the next three weeks count. It also makes him smile, because no matter the consequences – the case, the bodily harm, the possible ramifications to their jobs, the fact that the entire division is gossiping about what they were doing -for him, it all boils down to one thing.
He'd do it again.
So here he is, a day and a half after Andy ran out on him, sat outside the grocery store closest to Nash's because Andy still won't answer his calls, trying not to think about how pathetic and desperate his behaviour makes him. Two hours of sitting in his (freezing cold) truck eventually pays off – he sees her going in to the store, thankfully without Nash or Nash's kid. He gets out of the truck, leans against it, waits until he sees her leave. Then he raises an arm and waves. She stops dead when she sees him, then walks towards him quickly, halting about five feet in front of him.
"Sam! What the hell are you doing here? We're not supposed to ..."
He cuts her off by closing the distance between them and kissing her. And kissing her, and kissing her. It works. She responds by pressing herself into him as much as the many layers the pair of them are wearing will allow, wrapping her arms around his neck.
Eventually, they break apart to draw breath. He disentangles himself from her and smirking, bends down to pick up the bag of groceries she dropped while he was distracting her.
He hands it to her and says, "Don't worry about the hearing. It'll be fine."
"What if it's not?"
He grins, "Then worry."
He's rewarded with the ghost of a smile.
"Best's not going to let us ride together again," she says, and he can hear the sadness in her voice.
Sam almost laughs at the idea, "No. He's not. But that's OK. I don't want to be your partner anymore."
"You don't?" Her eyes hold confusion, and sadness and worry.
"No. I don't want to be your partner at work. And I don't want to be your friend. Like I told you Andy, there's no going back."
It would kill him, he thinks. Seeing her every day, but not getting to touch her. Knowing that she wasn't his. Watching her date men who are beneath her, who aren't him. She gets what he's saying, he can see it on her face, clear as the blush that crosses her cheeks.
He wonders if it's the thought of what they did that evening that puts the colour on her cheeks, or the fact that she was the one who initiated it.
He turns to leave. He can't push her any more than he has, or she'll bolt. It's up to her now, to decide what she wants.
"Sam?" she starts as he's half in the truck, "I missed you too."
He nods, and leaves.
He spends the next couple of days in a scotch induced haze, terrified that he did or said the wrong thing, convinced that he should have bundled her into his truck and … used physical means to persuade her to give their relationship a try. If nothing else, it would have left him with something more than his memories and his imagination.
It's seventy four hours after he left Andy standing in the middle of the road outside a grocery store (not that he's counting) when there's a knock on his door.
And there she is, large as life, hair a little ragged, eyes a little wild. Her cheeks and nose are red from the cold and he finds himself wondering if she walked here from Nash's in this weather, because if so, he's currently looking at a crazy person.
The second he opens the door, she starts talking.
"I don't care. I don't care about my job. Let them fire me. I don't … I don't want to go back, either Sam. I want you. I want us."
She does care about the job, he thinks, but that's a conversation for later. It's not like there's anything either of them can do about it until the hearing, anyway. She's said everything he wanted to hear, and more, and is looking at him with nervous expectancy.
He pulls her inside and kisses her, sliding his hands under her top.
"Now," he says, before he gets too distracted and forgets, "What the hell was all that about the good candy?"