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abvjTitle: with miles left to go
Summary: Set immediately post 3x03 when these two crazy kids are trying to navigate this whole relationship thing without actually, you know, talking about it.
Rating: pg-13
Author's Notes: 2,500 words. New to this fandom and these characters, so con-crit is both welcome and appreciated.
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lowriseflare. She knows why.
Andy watches Sam’s hands carefully as he dices carrots and onions and peppers into tiny fragments. She laughs a little as he begrudgingly starts on a potato, cutting it into paper thin slices because she has coaxed him into french fries with her mouth on his as she sighed her quiet please.
It’s oddly domestic, this whole scenario. Him cooking, her perched on the counter with her legs crossed at the ankles, and a beer bottle dangling loosely from her fingers. Sam is just innately good at these sorts of things – cooking, making her feel wanted, at home, safe. Which is, Andy will admit, something that still sort of threatens to unhinge her at every turn. It is also, however, something she is actively working through. On her own. For him. For them. For whatever this is between them that feels too good, too right to be defined by abstract titles.
(The term boyfriend rolls around in her head continuously, almost like a bad habit. She says it aloud sometimes when nobody is there to listen, trying it out, and hates the way it pops in her ears. It feels too trite, clichéd, almost derogatory, like it isn’t giving him or her or everything they’ve already been through together nearly enough credit.
Either way, Andy doesn’t like it.
She doesn’t really like to think of her and Sam in absolutes, but if she is forced to, she guesses she prefers partner. Because that’s what he is, really. That is what he feels like to her; she just doesn’t mean it strictly in the conventional sense. Which is okay, Andy muses, because she’s never really been a conventional girl.)
Andy catches Sam watching her out of the corner of his eye, sly little glances when he thinks she isn’t looking and she can’t help but think about how nice it is, being here like this with him. She watches the hard line of his shoulders as he makes something out of nothing, molds this meal for her that already has her mouth watering in a t-shirt and jeans, his fare bare against the floor. Sam takes his time, uses patience, holds the knife with precision, with ease, and after a short stretch of time Andy turns her eyesight from him to her hands. Twists her fingers around the sweating neck of her bottle, picks at the peeling label and tries not to think about his hands elsewhere – her hips, her back, buried between her thighs.
It doesn’t work. Andy can’t explain why, but the arousal hits her deftly in her chest, right under the hard bone of her sternum and travels down to coil warmly in the pit of her belly.
They’re getting better at the whole keeping their hands to themselves at inappropriate times thing, but it’s hard because Sam’s well, Sam and Andy’s a pretty physical person. And not just physical as in sex, but physical as in she feels everything but would rather fight or run or punch a bag full of sand until her knuckles are raw and bleeding than have a long, drawn out conversation about feelings. It’s just who she is. Reaching for him, an innocent touch of her hand to his, her fingers brushing against the crook of his arm, is the currency in which she says all the things she feels, but doesn’t exactly know how to articulate properly. It’s how she says all the things she just simply isn’t ready to say.
It is why she reaches for him now, just a gentle brush of her fingers to the nape of his neck, as she thinks about all the things she’d rather him do with his hands. It is why she smiles at the way he leans into her touch, his eyes closing for just a moment before he pulls away, turns his attention to the task before him. She busies her fingers with the peeling label of her bottle once more. Doesn’t look at him for a while.
It’s been a long day. Rewarding, but long, and she thinks of Dov then, of his day, of how his life has been altered irrevocably now that he has blood on his hands that he will never be rid of. Andy thinks of how he has never been entirely innocent, how he has already been touched by death in the form of his brother and wonders if he’s thinking of that tonight. If he’s thinking about how there are some things, some split-second moments in times that can alter the very core of somebody without them ever truly understanding them. It’s all Andy can think about and she sets her empty bottle to the side and reaches for her phone out of instinct, fingers gliding over the keys as she sends Dov a quick message consisting of only two words: you good?
His reply is I will be, yeah and it is almost immediate. This simultaneously soothes and stretches her nerves too thin.
Andy must be making a face because Sam’s suddenly in front of her when she looks up, his hands lemon-scented and freshly cleaned as they graze the bones of her knees. They are still partially damp and his fingers leave prints in their wake, water seeping into the fabric of her jeans and lingering.
“Epstein?” he asks. He’s just standing there looking at her and it shouldn’t surprise her that he knows exactly what she is thinking, but it does. Still, it’s a pleasant surprise.
Nodding, Andy situates her legs to make room for him between them. She anchors herself with her palms, curling her fingers tightly around the edge of the countertop; after a while the tips of her fingers start to go numb and she has to remind herself to let go. Sam palms his way slowly up her thighs before lingering at her waist. His touch teases the bit of exposed skin where her shirt and jeans don’t exactly meet and she feels it everywhere, from head to toe and all the places in between.
“You want to go be with them?” There’s no bite to his tone, no jealousy, or anger. Just understanding because he gets it. He understands.
She kind of does, but she doesn’t say it, would never admit it aloud even though Andy suspects that Sam already knows. It’s not even so much that she wants to be there at the Penny with Dov and Diaz comparing horror stories over shots of something that burns on the way down and hums under her skin. It’s more that it feels like she should be there. He’s her friend, her comrade, and if the situation were reversed, if it were her whose world was completely off kilter at the moment, he’d be there for her if he thought she needed it. But Dov has Diaz and Sue and also is slightly more adjusted than she is.
Besides, she has Sam right here and right now. He’s cooking for her, opening his home to her, trying his hardest not to mutter some smartass remark about her leaving dirty towels on his floor or smudging her makeup on the porcelain of his bathroom sink. She has Sam right here and now, looking at her that way (open and honest and just, well, beautiful ) and as selfish as it might be all she can think about is how much she missed him today. Which Andy realizes is somewhat ridiculous because they spent the day more or less together, but it wasn’t like this. She didn’t have him close, couldn’t touch him, kiss him, couldn’t feel his pulse quicken beneath her lips as she held him against her and buried her nose in the crook of his neck as she borrowed some of his strength and made it her own.
Shaking her head, Andy reaches for him, finally, curling her arms around his neck and pressing her lips to the corner of his mouth.
“I’m good here,” she tells him, and Sam smiles, just a little, before kissing her more firmly, his hand slipping under cotton and tracing along the curve of her spine. After a minute, he starts to laugh. The sound is light, pressing into her skin and she pulls away just a fraction of an inch, eyes knitted together as she looks at him.
“What?”
“Nothing. Nothing,” he says, still laughing, but he’s a kind of a crappy liar when it comes to her now and he knows she knows that, so he clarifies after just a moment: “I was just thinking about you with that suspect today.” He reaches up, trails his fingers along the bones of her jaw. His thumb catches the edge of her mouth. “I’m going to become your best friend. I’m going to visit you every day. Sit down!” he mocks. “Where the hell did that come from, McNally?”
Shrugging, she smiles. Her own laughter bubbles in the back of her throat. “I’ve managed to pick up a few things along the way. Don’t you forget: I’m not just a pretty face.” He laughs again and there are a lot of things he does right without even realizing and this is one of them: Andy loves the sound of his laugh. “Daresay I detected a hint of pride there? Admiration? Attraction?”
Sam doesn’t bother to hide his grin. He slants his head, captures her mouth softly and it kind of amazes her, even now, how much she just likes kissing him. How much she just likes to touch him in a simple, innocent way, with no intention of it leading anywhere. The sex is pretty great – phenomenal actually – but this, right here, having him close and just being is almost better.
Almost.
“A little bit of all three, to be honest,” he mumbles and Andy laughs quietly, interlacing her fingers where they meet behind his neck and leans up to kiss him. To really kiss him – not the soft and light leisurely kisses he had been begrudgingly dolling out since they got home, trying to keep her at a distance. Her mouth hardens against his, her legs finding their way around his waist to pull him closer as her tongue forces its way into his mouth. Sam obliges almost too easily as he kisses her back like it’s the first time all over again – eager, messy, a little rough around the edges. Andy responds in kind, always matching him inch for inch, whimpering softly as his tongue smoothes against the roof of her mouth. She squirms slightly, searching for friction, tries to inch herself closer.
The smile stretches smugly across his mouth, and Andy can feel it in her teeth. She should hate herself, maybe, for how easy she is with him sometimes, but this is what she has been angling for since the minute she walked through his door, so.
Of course they get carried away with dinner simmering next to them on the stove and his mouth moving down the smooth column of her neck, doing all the things he knows makes her ache for it. His teeth sink in here and there, his tongue darting out to caress the soft indentations left in their wake shortly thereafter. They’re rushed and leisurely at the same time. Sam likes his hands everywhere, tracing her skin and bones like a map he has long since memorized, but he kisses her like he can’t get enough now, like he’ll never tire of her or this or the feel of her fitting against him in all the right places. Andy loves that. Loves the intimate knowledge he has of what she likes and needs and exactly what buttons to push and when.
As his mouth slants over hers again, Sam’s hands fumble with the button of her jeans, then the zipper and she remembers the first time they did this, the way his hands had shook just slightly. They’re slick and steady now as they slide inside and smooth against her. She’s wet already for him and he grins against her mouth again at that knowledge, slides a knuckle against her and the cotton. Her response is primal, immediate, unconscious almost – her hips jerk forward, towards his hands, her back arches, forcing her shoulder to connect with edge of the cabinet behind her. It’ll hurt later, but right now she feels nothing except for his mouth on hers and his hands between her legs and the weight of his breaths as they press into her skin. Her palms smooth over the lines of his back, linger on his hip, find home around the edge of the counter once more. She holds on, digs her heels into the back of his legs.
Laughing, he pulls his mouth from hers, shifts until his teeth are grazing the line of her jaw.
“Easy, sweetheart,” he breathes somewhere near her ear. Andy’s face warms, the tips of her ears tinged crimson as his fingers dip under cotton and find her clit. His thumb rubs gentle, lazy circles. He teases her and she wishes she could hate him for it, just a little, for how well he plays her, for how damn smug he is as he does it.
Andy’s stubborn to a fault, though, even now, and bites her lip to keep from gasping, to control the sigh of content that catches in the back of her throat and yearns to be released. She leans her head back against the cabinet, tries to even her breathing and refuses to look at his face as he opens her up wholly to him.
“Your, uh, dinner… all that hard work is going to go to waste,” she manages to say even though she’s not sure why, even though it is more about the process of being able to make words than what they mean. The very last thing Andy wants right now is his attention elsewhere.
Brushing his lips to her temple, Sam starts to work her jeans down her legs with his free hand.
“It’ll keep,” he murmurs softly. “Besides.” He punctuates the word by curling a finger inside her; she can already feel her toes starting to curl, and her pulse quickens, her breaths starting to come in quick, jagged pants. “I’ve been thinking about this all day.”
It’s just enough and Andy gives up all notion of trying to appear as though he’s not slowly undoing her. She claws her hands up his back, nails sinking into the fabric of his shoulders as she pulls his mouth down to hers.
Sam’s smiling again – a little bit smug, a little bit something else, and his fingers start to move, his thumb back to drawing gentle, lazy circles around her clit. She loves his hands, his mouth, how good he is at unraveling her completely and when their lips meet again she nearly misses. Hits the corner instead.
Which is okay, probably, because she is more sighing against his mouth than kissing it anyway.
Summary: Set immediately post 3x03 when these two crazy kids are trying to navigate this whole relationship thing without actually, you know, talking about it.
Rating: pg-13
Author's Notes: 2,500 words. New to this fandom and these characters, so con-crit is both welcome and appreciated.
For
lowriseflare. She knows why. Andy watches Sam’s hands carefully as he dices carrots and onions and peppers into tiny fragments. She laughs a little as he begrudgingly starts on a potato, cutting it into paper thin slices because she has coaxed him into french fries with her mouth on his as she sighed her quiet please.
It’s oddly domestic, this whole scenario. Him cooking, her perched on the counter with her legs crossed at the ankles, and a beer bottle dangling loosely from her fingers. Sam is just innately good at these sorts of things – cooking, making her feel wanted, at home, safe. Which is, Andy will admit, something that still sort of threatens to unhinge her at every turn. It is also, however, something she is actively working through. On her own. For him. For them. For whatever this is between them that feels too good, too right to be defined by abstract titles.
(The term boyfriend rolls around in her head continuously, almost like a bad habit. She says it aloud sometimes when nobody is there to listen, trying it out, and hates the way it pops in her ears. It feels too trite, clichéd, almost derogatory, like it isn’t giving him or her or everything they’ve already been through together nearly enough credit.
Either way, Andy doesn’t like it.
She doesn’t really like to think of her and Sam in absolutes, but if she is forced to, she guesses she prefers partner. Because that’s what he is, really. That is what he feels like to her; she just doesn’t mean it strictly in the conventional sense. Which is okay, Andy muses, because she’s never really been a conventional girl.)
Andy catches Sam watching her out of the corner of his eye, sly little glances when he thinks she isn’t looking and she can’t help but think about how nice it is, being here like this with him. She watches the hard line of his shoulders as he makes something out of nothing, molds this meal for her that already has her mouth watering in a t-shirt and jeans, his fare bare against the floor. Sam takes his time, uses patience, holds the knife with precision, with ease, and after a short stretch of time Andy turns her eyesight from him to her hands. Twists her fingers around the sweating neck of her bottle, picks at the peeling label and tries not to think about his hands elsewhere – her hips, her back, buried between her thighs.
It doesn’t work. Andy can’t explain why, but the arousal hits her deftly in her chest, right under the hard bone of her sternum and travels down to coil warmly in the pit of her belly.
They’re getting better at the whole keeping their hands to themselves at inappropriate times thing, but it’s hard because Sam’s well, Sam and Andy’s a pretty physical person. And not just physical as in sex, but physical as in she feels everything but would rather fight or run or punch a bag full of sand until her knuckles are raw and bleeding than have a long, drawn out conversation about feelings. It’s just who she is. Reaching for him, an innocent touch of her hand to his, her fingers brushing against the crook of his arm, is the currency in which she says all the things she feels, but doesn’t exactly know how to articulate properly. It’s how she says all the things she just simply isn’t ready to say.
It is why she reaches for him now, just a gentle brush of her fingers to the nape of his neck, as she thinks about all the things she’d rather him do with his hands. It is why she smiles at the way he leans into her touch, his eyes closing for just a moment before he pulls away, turns his attention to the task before him. She busies her fingers with the peeling label of her bottle once more. Doesn’t look at him for a while.
It’s been a long day. Rewarding, but long, and she thinks of Dov then, of his day, of how his life has been altered irrevocably now that he has blood on his hands that he will never be rid of. Andy thinks of how he has never been entirely innocent, how he has already been touched by death in the form of his brother and wonders if he’s thinking of that tonight. If he’s thinking about how there are some things, some split-second moments in times that can alter the very core of somebody without them ever truly understanding them. It’s all Andy can think about and she sets her empty bottle to the side and reaches for her phone out of instinct, fingers gliding over the keys as she sends Dov a quick message consisting of only two words: you good?
His reply is I will be, yeah and it is almost immediate. This simultaneously soothes and stretches her nerves too thin.
Andy must be making a face because Sam’s suddenly in front of her when she looks up, his hands lemon-scented and freshly cleaned as they graze the bones of her knees. They are still partially damp and his fingers leave prints in their wake, water seeping into the fabric of her jeans and lingering.
“Epstein?” he asks. He’s just standing there looking at her and it shouldn’t surprise her that he knows exactly what she is thinking, but it does. Still, it’s a pleasant surprise.
Nodding, Andy situates her legs to make room for him between them. She anchors herself with her palms, curling her fingers tightly around the edge of the countertop; after a while the tips of her fingers start to go numb and she has to remind herself to let go. Sam palms his way slowly up her thighs before lingering at her waist. His touch teases the bit of exposed skin where her shirt and jeans don’t exactly meet and she feels it everywhere, from head to toe and all the places in between.
“You want to go be with them?” There’s no bite to his tone, no jealousy, or anger. Just understanding because he gets it. He understands.
She kind of does, but she doesn’t say it, would never admit it aloud even though Andy suspects that Sam already knows. It’s not even so much that she wants to be there at the Penny with Dov and Diaz comparing horror stories over shots of something that burns on the way down and hums under her skin. It’s more that it feels like she should be there. He’s her friend, her comrade, and if the situation were reversed, if it were her whose world was completely off kilter at the moment, he’d be there for her if he thought she needed it. But Dov has Diaz and Sue and also is slightly more adjusted than she is.
Besides, she has Sam right here and right now. He’s cooking for her, opening his home to her, trying his hardest not to mutter some smartass remark about her leaving dirty towels on his floor or smudging her makeup on the porcelain of his bathroom sink. She has Sam right here and now, looking at her that way (open and honest and just, well, beautiful ) and as selfish as it might be all she can think about is how much she missed him today. Which Andy realizes is somewhat ridiculous because they spent the day more or less together, but it wasn’t like this. She didn’t have him close, couldn’t touch him, kiss him, couldn’t feel his pulse quicken beneath her lips as she held him against her and buried her nose in the crook of his neck as she borrowed some of his strength and made it her own.
Shaking her head, Andy reaches for him, finally, curling her arms around his neck and pressing her lips to the corner of his mouth.
“I’m good here,” she tells him, and Sam smiles, just a little, before kissing her more firmly, his hand slipping under cotton and tracing along the curve of her spine. After a minute, he starts to laugh. The sound is light, pressing into her skin and she pulls away just a fraction of an inch, eyes knitted together as she looks at him.
“What?”
“Nothing. Nothing,” he says, still laughing, but he’s a kind of a crappy liar when it comes to her now and he knows she knows that, so he clarifies after just a moment: “I was just thinking about you with that suspect today.” He reaches up, trails his fingers along the bones of her jaw. His thumb catches the edge of her mouth. “I’m going to become your best friend. I’m going to visit you every day. Sit down!” he mocks. “Where the hell did that come from, McNally?”
Shrugging, she smiles. Her own laughter bubbles in the back of her throat. “I’ve managed to pick up a few things along the way. Don’t you forget: I’m not just a pretty face.” He laughs again and there are a lot of things he does right without even realizing and this is one of them: Andy loves the sound of his laugh. “Daresay I detected a hint of pride there? Admiration? Attraction?”
Sam doesn’t bother to hide his grin. He slants his head, captures her mouth softly and it kind of amazes her, even now, how much she just likes kissing him. How much she just likes to touch him in a simple, innocent way, with no intention of it leading anywhere. The sex is pretty great – phenomenal actually – but this, right here, having him close and just being is almost better.
Almost.
“A little bit of all three, to be honest,” he mumbles and Andy laughs quietly, interlacing her fingers where they meet behind his neck and leans up to kiss him. To really kiss him – not the soft and light leisurely kisses he had been begrudgingly dolling out since they got home, trying to keep her at a distance. Her mouth hardens against his, her legs finding their way around his waist to pull him closer as her tongue forces its way into his mouth. Sam obliges almost too easily as he kisses her back like it’s the first time all over again – eager, messy, a little rough around the edges. Andy responds in kind, always matching him inch for inch, whimpering softly as his tongue smoothes against the roof of her mouth. She squirms slightly, searching for friction, tries to inch herself closer.
The smile stretches smugly across his mouth, and Andy can feel it in her teeth. She should hate herself, maybe, for how easy she is with him sometimes, but this is what she has been angling for since the minute she walked through his door, so.
Of course they get carried away with dinner simmering next to them on the stove and his mouth moving down the smooth column of her neck, doing all the things he knows makes her ache for it. His teeth sink in here and there, his tongue darting out to caress the soft indentations left in their wake shortly thereafter. They’re rushed and leisurely at the same time. Sam likes his hands everywhere, tracing her skin and bones like a map he has long since memorized, but he kisses her like he can’t get enough now, like he’ll never tire of her or this or the feel of her fitting against him in all the right places. Andy loves that. Loves the intimate knowledge he has of what she likes and needs and exactly what buttons to push and when.
As his mouth slants over hers again, Sam’s hands fumble with the button of her jeans, then the zipper and she remembers the first time they did this, the way his hands had shook just slightly. They’re slick and steady now as they slide inside and smooth against her. She’s wet already for him and he grins against her mouth again at that knowledge, slides a knuckle against her and the cotton. Her response is primal, immediate, unconscious almost – her hips jerk forward, towards his hands, her back arches, forcing her shoulder to connect with edge of the cabinet behind her. It’ll hurt later, but right now she feels nothing except for his mouth on hers and his hands between her legs and the weight of his breaths as they press into her skin. Her palms smooth over the lines of his back, linger on his hip, find home around the edge of the counter once more. She holds on, digs her heels into the back of his legs.
Laughing, he pulls his mouth from hers, shifts until his teeth are grazing the line of her jaw.
“Easy, sweetheart,” he breathes somewhere near her ear. Andy’s face warms, the tips of her ears tinged crimson as his fingers dip under cotton and find her clit. His thumb rubs gentle, lazy circles. He teases her and she wishes she could hate him for it, just a little, for how well he plays her, for how damn smug he is as he does it.
Andy’s stubborn to a fault, though, even now, and bites her lip to keep from gasping, to control the sigh of content that catches in the back of her throat and yearns to be released. She leans her head back against the cabinet, tries to even her breathing and refuses to look at his face as he opens her up wholly to him.
“Your, uh, dinner… all that hard work is going to go to waste,” she manages to say even though she’s not sure why, even though it is more about the process of being able to make words than what they mean. The very last thing Andy wants right now is his attention elsewhere.
Brushing his lips to her temple, Sam starts to work her jeans down her legs with his free hand.
“It’ll keep,” he murmurs softly. “Besides.” He punctuates the word by curling a finger inside her; she can already feel her toes starting to curl, and her pulse quickens, her breaths starting to come in quick, jagged pants. “I’ve been thinking about this all day.”
It’s just enough and Andy gives up all notion of trying to appear as though he’s not slowly undoing her. She claws her hands up his back, nails sinking into the fabric of his shoulders as she pulls his mouth down to hers.
Sam’s smiling again – a little bit smug, a little bit something else, and his fingers start to move, his thumb back to drawing gentle, lazy circles around her clit. She loves his hands, his mouth, how good he is at unraveling her completely and when their lips meet again she nearly misses. Hits the corner instead.
Which is okay, probably, because she is more sighing against his mouth than kissing it anyway.
