A/N: Well, this is it. The final installment. Much of this chapter has been written for well over a year, I kind of can't believe I finally get to post it. It's going to be strange to have this project completed. Huge thank you to everyone who has ready this story. I've enjoyed your reviews, especially your willingness to accept my unconventional approach at time to relationships and narrative.
Chapter 22: Wisdom, Justice and Love
"You're back on the schedule!" Andy held the phone several inches from her ear so Tracy's voice wouldn't make her deaf. "Frank just told me."
"Yeah, tomorrow's my first shift." She pulled a sheet up over her bare chest instinctively and could feel the vibration of Sam's silent laughter at her unnecessary modesty. Although, really, after talking to Frank practically in the throes, she supposed naked and sated should rank lower on the embarrassment scale.
"We're celebrating." Tracy declared. "Dex has Leo so I'm picking you up and we're getting drinks. You at Sam's or yours?"
"I'm at my place, but—"
"No! No way. No excuses. Sam gets you every night. I'm playing the best friend card."
Andy rolled her eyes. "Fine. See you soon."
Sam raised his eyebrows.
"Tracy is kidnapping me."
He smirked and leaned in for a kiss but Andy laughingly rolled away. "Sam!. I gotta get dressed."
"Five minutes," he insisted, pulling her back to him.
When Tracy knocked on the door ten minutes later Andy forgot her panties in her rush to put on something before she answered the door. Her face didn't stop flaming until they were three blocks away.
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The Penny was crowded. Andy didn't think she'd seen this many people on a non-Karaoke night since her very first night at fifteen. She and Tracy ended up at the bar because all of the tables were full. But three shots of tequila in and Andy didn't care that half her butt was numb from sitting backwards on the bar stool so she could look around the crowded bar. It was just so so good to be back. This is exactly what she needed, Tracy, a whole lot of tequila, and a bar full of people who knew her just as Officer McNally, the young cop who was part of the big bust a few weeks ago now coming back from a well-earned vacation. The complicated stuff, Sam and getting past the tension with Gail, could wait for another day.
Or, she thought it could. But then her eyes lit on a distinctive blonde on the other side of the Penny. Her stomach clenched when Jo locked eyes with her and began to weave her way towards the bar. Andy did not want to deal with this here, not with Tracy back any second from her quick trip outside for a goodnight call with Leo. She rose to her feet and gestured towards the washrooms. At least in the back hallway that led to the men's and ladies' they could talk without being seen by the entire station.
"Congratulations." Jo's smile lit up her face and she leaned in as if to give Andy a hug before pausing awkwardly and stretching out a hand to shake.
Andy took the offered hand warily, acutely conscious of the last time they had touched. "Thank you." She said, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. She wanted to be mad at Jo, after all it was Jo who had first dragged her name into this, but Sam told her how hard Jo was working to clear her, and instead of angry Andy is confused.
"When are you back on the rotation?" Jo's hand still clasped Andy's and she ran her thumb lightly over the back of the other woman's hand.
"Tomorrow." Andy wondered if she should pull her hand away. It was strangely comfortable, while at the same time horribly awkward. She was hyper aware of every muscle in her body: her shoulders slightly hunched forward in a parody of relaxation, one hip jutted out slightly against the wall, her mouth dry, head leaned a little forward at what suddenly felt like an unnatural angle. She shifted, but that felt unnatural too, like somehow she had flipped a switch in her brain that killed the natural filter which kept her from noticing every tiny movement her body naturally made and she didn't know how to move anymore.
"I wanted to apologi…" Jo's words were drowned out by a cry of outrage from the group playing darts and she pulled gently at their joined hands and pushed open the door to the ladies' with the other.
Someone was retching in one of the stalls. Jo wrinkled her nose and quickly backed into the hall. Not pausing to see if Andy was following along she dropped their hands and pushed into the men's room. It was a small room, one stall and a pair of urinals, and it was empty. She pushed the door closed and hoped the men in the bar could go ten minutes without needing a piss. It wasn't exactly the perfect setting for any kind of conversation, but at least it was pretty quiet and they wouldn't be interrupted.
"Tracy will be—" Andy started to say, she was standing so close to the door Jo wanted to laugh and tell her there was nothing to worry about.
"This won't take more than a minute." She said instead.
Andy nodded, but didn't more from her post next to the door. "Sam told me everything you did to try and help. I'm sorry I blamed you."
Jo could feel her eyebrows creeping up her forehead. "You were right." She said. "I jumped to a conclusion because I—There's no excuse. I let my personal feelings keep me from doing my job." She took a step towards Andy, half expecting to have to grab her to keep her from storming out. Not that she wouldn't deserve exactly that. "I loved Luke, and when he chose you over me I was hurt and I let that hurt override my instincts. I'm sorry."
Andy was quiet for a moment, allowing Jo's words and their full meaning to sink in. Eventually, when she spoke, she was surprised at how unemotional she felt. "For what it's worth, I should never have fought for Luke. Not when I found out about the ring, about you and him. Probably even before that…." She shrugged, at a loss for how to articulate the vague sense of regret she always felt when she thought back to that period of their lives. Even then, even when she had thought herself at her happiest, she hadn't really wanted Luke, not the way she always wanted Sam, or the way she thought Jo wanted Luke. All Andy had wanted was a stable, happy, normal life. Luke had offered her all of that, but she realized too late that what she wanted wasn't what she needed, or what would make her happy.
Things with Sam were messy, would always probably be messy and difficult, but Sam was what she needed. He filled in the little cracks in her heart and she thought she did the same for him. Even if she missed the excitement of their first few times, the forbidden element of sneaking into his safe house, or even the frantic, lust-fuelled need of that night during the blackout… she really did miss that. She wondered briefly if that was what Sam had felt with Gail and for the first time she thought she could probably get over it. Because that was something she understood. A little excitement, a little sex without all the love and commitment and baggage, was sometimes what you needed. There wasn't anything wrong with that, was there?
"You're a hell of a woman, Andy McNally." Jo said. Somehow she had moved even closer and Andy could feel Jo's breath against her skin, smell the hint of mango in Jo's blonde locks, and see the tiny flecks of dark in her light eyes. "I was an idiot to think I could compete with you."
"Maybe now we can be friends?"
Jo licked her lower lip and Andy found her eyes fixating on the pink dampness of the other woman's mouth as she answered softly, "I would like that."
"Why did you do it?" Andy asked, tequila, proximity, and something like arousal giving her the courage she needed to ask the question that had been burning in her mind for days.
"Do what?"
"Kiss me."
Jo reached up and traced two fingers over the curve of Andy's face, from temple to jaw. "I couldn't help myself." Her hand slid back, fingers scraping slightly against Andy's scalp as they slid through her hair. "You have the most beautiful mouth." She leaned in until her lips were almost on Andy's, "I just needed to taste you. Just once… or a hundred times. I needed to know what it would be like."
Andy wasn't sure who moved the final millimeter, but one moment she was caught in the blue of Jo's eyes and the next they were kissing and this time she had no desire to push Jo away.
If she'd had less to drink Andy might have wondered if there was something about Jo Rosati that made people cheat on the person they loved, like maybe she was an X-Man with the special ability to seduce committed people. And then she would have giggled to herself at the idea of an X-Man leaving Exes in her wake. X-Man? More like Ex-Man. But she hadn't had less to drink. She was actually quite drunk. And Jo was doing that thing with her tongue that made Andy's knees weak and it was pooling heat in Andy's belly and the only thought that crossed her mind was No one will ever know.
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Guy's night at the Penny – Dov's idea – was turning out less awkward than Oliver had expected. Or he was properly drunk. Whichever, Oliver leaned back a little in his chair and surveyed the bar feeling more content than he had in months. Dov and Chris were arguing the merits of some video game Oliver had never heard of, actually it might be a TV show, or a movie? Oliver didn't really know, but for once that didn't make him feel old. Probably in part because Nick looked just as confused as he felt. Also because this was the first time since they'd taken their seat an hour ago that Dov wasn't sneaking baleful glances at a blonde seated at the bar.
"I need to see a man about a dog," Oliver said, pushing his chair back and rising to his feet. He smirked at the baffled look on Chris Diaz's face. It was almost too easy to confuse the younger man, almost. Oliver wondered briefly if the winning naiveté was a genetic trait, or if Chris' son would have to learn it from his father.
It was rather remarkable still to Oliver that Chris could be a father. The once-rookies themselves still seemed like children. Adolescents now, rather than the babies they'd been when they first arrived at Fifteen, but children nonetheless. He and the other training officers had raised them as best they knew how, and now it was time to let them try it on their own, only stepping in when something went terribly wrong. Which seemed to happen all too often with this group. Shootings, abductions… he didn't think he'd ever seen a class so prone to getting themselves into ridiculous, not ridiculous "ha ha" more… bizarre, situations than this one.
He pushed the bathroom door open and came to a dead stop.
At first, all his brain could register were hands: lean fingers clutching at blonde curls, smooth pale skin disappearing between the brass teeth of a zipper, strong hands kneading soft flesh hidden beneath a layer of whisper thin cotton. It was funny, Oliver had never thought of hands as particularly erotic before. They were tools, capable of eliciting pleasure certainly, but in and of themselves, hands were… well, hands. But these hands, caressing, squeezing, pulling, thrusting… These hands were the most erotic thing he had ever seen. The sheer hedonism of this happening here was enough to brand the image of those hands firmly in Oliver's brain, no matter how much in the next moment, when faces and then identities filtered through the erotic fog and he realized just what this was, he would wish he could forget.
Jo Rosati had Andy McNally backed up against the side of the lone stall. The brunette had locked one hand in Jo's curls, the other kneaded her breast, and her head was thrown back in wordless ecstasy as Jo's hand, jammed forcefully inside the fly of Andy's jeans, worked back and forth in a steady rhythm, a slick sucking sound with each pull and push leaving no doubt in their unwitting witness' mind as to what was going on beneath the denim. Jo bit lightly at Andy's neck and, with a cry that sounded like despair, the younger woman's body tensed, shuddering in the intensity of her orgasm.
Tearing his eyes away, though he would never be able to un-see this tryst, Oliver fled back to the relative safety of the bar, signaling to the bar tender that he needed another drink.
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Andy opened the front door to Sam's place as quietly as possible half hoping she would find him asleep in front of a hockey game and that the awkward conversation that had to happen could be put off until tomorrow.
"Andy?" His voice floated to her from the bedroom and Andy cursed under her breath. She was neither sober nor brave enough for this conversation.
Taking a deep breath for courage, come on McNally! You can do this! Andy toed off her shoes and hung her coat before crossing to the door. She paused in the doorway, savouring the eye crinkling smile on Sam's face. She was going to miss that smile.
"What?" Slowly the smile dimmed as Sam realized she wasn't talking or moving closer.
"Sam, I did something incredibly stupid…" Andy began.
"I guess that makes us even." Sam said, cutting her off. He rose to his feet.
"No I—"
"McNally," He closed the distance between them. "Shut up."
His lips settled over hers and the rest of it didn't seem to matter so much anymore. This was home. Everything else was just a series of drunken mistakes. They'd both made their fair share, and maybe Sam was right. Maybe it didn't matter. This was where she belonged.
The End.