Author's Note:

Thanks again to those who have stuck with this as it's continued to grow. Appreciate those who review, as always.

Decided to throw another curveball and introduce a little angst into this otherwise lighthearted story. Somehow this story has also morphed into my vehicle to comment around the edges about things that happened in season one. Enjoy!

Chapter 8: Revelations

"Wow! That was fantastic!" Sam sighed with contentment after Andy set the tray of the demolished wild blueberry French toast aside. "But I'm definitely going to have to go back to my normal morning routine tomorrow and get in an extra long run or I really am going to turn into a fatty," he patted his full stomach.

Andy snuggled into the crook of his arm and snaked a hand up under his t-shirt to pat his solid abs affectionately. "Like I said, I don't think a few days of indulgence will do any permanent damage to these babies," she smiled up at him.

"I don't want to take any chances. I've got the world's hottest policewoman to satisfy," he said with a quick kiss.

"Are you kidding? Do you have any idea what spending time with this charming, kind, affectionate twin who's taken over your extremely sexy body has done to me?" She began to stroke his stomach in a much more suggestive manner, "I can hardly keep my hands off you. I've never had someone like you pay so much attention to me. What happened to the hot but aggravating smart ass who seemed to always be impatient and irritated with the world?"

"I've only been irritated with you when you took reckless risks with your safety or made stupid bets with your heart," Sam said rolling over to brace himself above her. "But if you keep touching me like that, you might provoke a whole different kind of impatience," he said with a growl before giving her a long, deep kiss with significantly more heat than he'd allowed the past couple days.

~~~~0~~~~

"Hey, Sam, my Dad says a friend of his offered him his 4 season hockey tickets for the game tonight, but he's got a meeting. Do you wan to go and maybe see if Traci and Jerry want to come along?" she asked, holding her phone away from her ear.

Sam grinned over at her, "Hell yes! That sounds great. Call Traci and she if she can find a sitter for Leo. I'm sure Jerry will be up for it, especially if she can come too."

"I thought you might be stoked about a night doing something other than bubble baths," Andy laughed.

Sam grabbed her hand, "It wasn't exactly a chore. I had a great time with you the past couple days. But a change of pace to a good old fashioned brawling sport will be fun too," he smiled happily. 'Great time' is the understatement of the decade. He'd been on top of the world ever since they'd finally crossed the threshold from teasing banter into something moving steadily toward the kind of relationship a man builds his life around.

~~~~0~~~~

"So, uh, you two sure skated out of the barn fast yesterday," Jerry commented, aiming a sly look at Sam and Andy in the seat behind him.

"Yeah, you two totally missed all the action last night," Traci chimed in.

"At the Penny?" Andy asked.

"Well, it started at the Barn," Traci replied. "Round two of hazing Dov kicked in, and it kicked up quite a ruckus. Don't tell me you two still haven't heard about this?" Traci asked rolling her eyes. "Were you really so wrapped up in making googley eyes at each other all day that you didn't hear anything about it?"

"No, we have no idea what you're talking about, Nash," Sam said impatiently.

"Oh, ho ho. Strap in for a good story then," Jerry laughed. "Go ahead and tell them, Trace," he added as they made their way from the parking lot to the arena.

"Well, after Sam and Oliver gave Dov a hard time yesterday morning about his dippy tweets, a bunch of the rest of the guys decided they wanted to get in on the heckling. Of course, Gail was all over it. She's always trying to suck up to the senior guys and prove she can hang with them and be a regular part of cop pranks. And she was on desk duty with me, during which she never does any real work. I tried to talk her out of it, but you know she never listens to me.

So she Photoshopped a flier with a big picture of Dov with a goofy smile on his face and a thought bubble with Sam's picture surrounded by hearts and cupids. Then she gave one of the patrol guys the name of the surgeon who did the work on the Tranny Dov had to search their first day. He swung by the guy's office and picked up like a gazillion brochures about sex change procedures. Gail taped the Photoshopped thing to Dov's locker and they stuffed the brochures inside."

"Poor man-boy. He comes in knowing something was up because so many people were hanging around the locker room smirking at him. Even Noelle was hanging around camera ready. He walks in and finds the photo. He crumples it up, and does pretty well taking all the comments from the peanut gallery with good humor. So just when he thinks it's over, he opens his locker and all those brochures come spilling out.

That's when Dov lost it. He knew Gail was behind it. Things have always been pretty tense between them anyway. You know how he always rides her about the Peck clan, not to mention how they get on each other's nerves when she's with Chris cramping Dov's frat boy style at home. So the two of them had a big throw-down and poor Chris was caught in the middle." Traci shook her head. "It was pretty ugly. I'm still not quite sure who's speaking to each other yet."

"Wow, I can't believe that all went down last night," Andy said, stunned. "Sam, can't you do something to make the guys back off and leave Dov alone?"

"I don't think that's a good idea," Sam her shot down.

"Why not? You're involved. You started teasing him. You were a part of that picture Gail made. You could tell them they've had enough fun and games the way you shut down the tweeting about us. No one's made so much as a peep about us since," Andy pointed out.

"That's different. The line about commenting on a committed relationship is different from hazing someone for putting their foot in their mouth. They'll get tired of kidding him about it soon, if they're not done with it already. If I step in, it will probably just bring on more cracks about me protecting my 'girlfriend.' Even if they listen to me, it would only make things worse for Dov in the long run," Sam explained patiently.

"He's right, Andy," Traci said firmly. "Dov needs to learn the difference between prep school humor and how things work in cop world. And he also has to learn how to not let Frosty run all over him. He bottles up his resentment until he lashes out a little too harshly at her weakest points. A few tears and he backs completely off and is back to square one. She always wins. If he wants to stay friends with Chris, he has to learn how to neutralize her mean girl crap better. You and I and maybe Oliver can give him some advice behind the scenes, but I think Sam should stay out of it."

"Well, maybe when it blows over a little, you could at least be a little nicer to Dov. The man-crush crack may have been one of Gail's mean girl jokes, but it's true that a lot of his awkward wannabe 'swagga' is an attempt to try to be like you," Andy appealed to Sam.

"That's him trying to be like me?" Sam asked horrified.

"Sometimes, yes. Please, Sam?"

"OK, OK. Stop with the big brown eyes. I'll try, I swear."

"Shaw will be happy about that too," Jerry chimed in. "He's been grumbling about how he's all alone whipping the 'Wonder Twins' into shape. He says he has no partner in crime because you can't be bothered to pay attention one way or another to any rookie except McNally."

Sam threw up his hands defensively, "Alright, I get it. I'll pay the young pups some attention. Geesh. Frickin' Shaw should stop bellyaching. He should pay more attention to the important stuff instead of getting distracted every time he misses snack time or spending so much time dreaming up hazing games. Both times he was paired with Andy, near disaster struck," Sam grumbled.

"Well, the same thing could be said about you, friend," Jerry shot him a pointed look. "McNally's a bit of a trouble magnet," Jerry grinned to take the sting out of the comment.

"That's mostly Boyko's fault. Thank God, I got his timing for being kicked upstairs to HQ moved up. He did more damage than anyone to both Epstein and McNally," Sam vented.

"What are you talking about, Sam?" Andy said aghast. Jerry and Traci also looked at him with startled expressions.

Damn, why had he blurted that out?

Sam shrugged uncomfortably, trying to pick his way through the mine field he'd just opened up, "Boyko was about as useless as a paperweight his last few months while he was biding his time for the promotion to go through. He had no business pairing you with me the day right after my cover was blown. He knew that I was going to be cleaning up loose ends from that operation. He gave his blessing for me to do what I needed as long as it didn't blow back to be his problem. But he knew damn well that's not the sort of thing a brand new rookie should be exposed to that soon in her training. And he should've been more worried that I might take the opportunity for some payback. But he did it anyway for his own amusement.

If crap like that wasn't bad enough, he let his desire to show up other Divisions get out of hand. First he pushed Traci to fight when she didn't really want to. But when he micro-managed things to pull you and Dov out of the field only to give you the worst possible advice, that was the last straw. The absolute last thing anyone should have told the two of you was to 'get creative' and take more initiative. Both of you needed the opposite advice, to back off a little and let your TOs help you channel your energy. At that time what you both needed was to be content to listen and learn for a while until you got some more experience to sharpen your instincts rather than charging around half-cocked to impress him. Both Oliver and I had to bust our asses for weeks undoing the damage Boyko did. Andy, I know you thought I didn't think you were doing anything right for a while, but it wasn't your fault. It was all on Boyko."

"So you're saying because of that you did something to get his move out of the Division accelerated? And you never told me about it?" Andy asked, getting more upset by the minute.

"Andy, that idiotic talk he gave you two caused the two of you to rush headlong into a situation in which you were within a heartbeat of being raped and killed! Was it really so unreasonable for me to get him out of a position to be in charge of personnel after that? Even if I hadn't already been half in love with you, I couldn't have overlooked that," Sam tried to grab her shoulders while he was making his case.

But Andy stepped back out of his reach, "Maybe you were right, but how could you let my name become a part of something like that in central personnel files without even telling me?" Andy looked at him with deeply wounded eyes.

Sam sighed, "I went through unofficial channels to make it happen without your name having to enter into it. My under cover handler has the connections to make something as simple as moving up the timing of something that was going through anyway happen without leaving fingerprints. I probably should have told you, but he asked me to tell no one, including you, in exchange for pulling the strings for me. Andy, you're a terrible liar. I didn't want you to have to keep secrets any more than I wanted to break my word to him. Please don't look at me like I've betrayed you. I was trying to keep everyone safe and protect you."

"I… I need some space to process this," Andy choked out. "I'm sorry guys, I don't think I can sit through a hockey game right now. Here are the tickets. I'm going to catch a cab home."

"Andy, let me come with you. Let's talk about this…" Sam pleaded.

"No, you stay. I need a little time to think first. I need to swing by my place anyway. Come by afterward and we can talk then," Andy replied.

"You think I'm going to be able to just turn my feelings off after this and watch a hockey game?" Sam asked, incredulous. "Don't shut me out like this."

"Right. That's your prerogative, I guess? You know what, forget I said that. That was a cheap shot. I'm not shutting you out, Sam. I just need a couple hours alone before we hash this out. Can you just give me that space?"

Sam stepped toward her again, arm outstretched, ready to object. But then he took a deep breath and gave in. "OK. If that's what you need. But please open the door when I come by. I can't go to sleep tonight with this unresolved."

"I will, I promise," she said and tried to muster a wobbly smile of re-assurance that failed miserably.

"I hate this. I wish you wouldn't walk away in the middle of a discussion," Sam said, running an agitated hand through his hair.

"I know. I'm sorry. I'll be ready to talk about it later," she said before turning to walk away.

"I miss you already," he called after her. He was pretty sure he caught the sound of a sob.

"Go with her and make sure she's OK until she catches a cab, Nash" Sam said, never taking his eyes from the tense, forlorn figure walking away from him. He tried to subdue the panic pulsing through his system and resist the overwhelming urge to run after her. Every part of his being wanted to force her to continue this confrontation now.

Jerry put a comforting hand on his friend's arm. "She'll be OK, buddy. And you'll be able to talk her around. If this was an irreparable breach, she wouldn't have agreed to talk to you later tonight. Women hold onto the big betrayals a lot longer than that. She knows you didn't really do anything wrong, she's just hurt."

"I hope you're right," Sam sighed. "If I lose her now, it will end me."