Thank you for following me on this little journey. As always, I loved hearing from you and your reviews really kept me going.

Here's the final part of this story. I hope I managed to keep everybody in character.

Anyways, give it a read, tell me what you think and most importantly, enjoy! :)

Part VII - Business as Usual

When Andy and Sharon agreed things the next day would be business as usual they certainly did not have this in mind.

They were running late. Actually, Sharon was running late, and Andy was set to make it into work just in time since she ushered him out of the condo ahead of her while she dealt with the little bit of mess she alone had gotten herself into.

They were both standing in the hallway, ready to go, when Sharon's phone had gone off.

Sharon's face lit up when she checked it, and, knowing who she reserved that expression for, Andy had to smile at the sight. She only lit up like that if one of her two eldest children called or visited. But since both had the habit of calling this early on a workday, he couldn't say which one of the two it exactly was. Recently, he had been in on some of those calls. Sometimes they were quick and ended at home, sometimes they lasted as long as it took to reach LAPD headquarters, the conversation taking up the entire drive over there.

So he wasn't surprised when Sharon, of course, picked up, but his eyes grew wide, when he realized she was not bringing her phone up to her ear, but was keeping her eyes on the screen as she accepted the call. It was a FaceTime call, he realized.

"Sharon," he tried to warn her quietly, but it was too late.

"Hi, Emily," Sharon said, smiling delightfully when her daughter's live image graced her phone's screen.

Andy grinned, loving the way Sharon, without fail, always became positively giddy whenever she saw either her daughter's or son's face, but his grin quickly vanished to be replaced by a grimace, when the next words he heard were not a cheerful greeting in return, but Emily's shocked, "Oh, my God, mom, your face! What happened?"

Before her daughter even got all the words past her lips, Sharon's eyes got wide and she threw Andy a look of horror, realizing her blunder. He only threw an arm out and shook his head at her as if telling her, "You walked into that one yourself, my dear."

"Emily," she looked at her daughter again who was still busy shooting questions at her. "Emily," she repeated a bit more loudly as she made her way into the living room to sit down, knowing it might take a moment or two to calm her down. On the third try, Emily finally quieted down and let her mother speak.

"It's nothing," Sharon said reassuringly, having taken a seat on her couch.

She had more to say, but Emily incredulously repeated, "It's nothing?" She yelled her next words, "Mom, half your face is blue!"

In any other situation, Sharon would have groaned and complained about her makeup doing a poor job of hiding the bruise, instead she smiled at her daughter in what she hoped was a placating manner, and said, "It was work, a suspect got a little out of hand and-"

"Work?" Emily repeated, again sounding incredulous. "Where was Andy?" she asked. "Where is Andy?" she added quickly, narrowing her eyes and judging by the way they started wandering, she was clearly checking her screen for any signs of him.

"Morning, Emily," Andy said. He had followed Sharon into the living room and leaned over the back of the couch behind her now to let Emily see him.

"What the hell happened, Andy?" she instantly asked.

It was Sharon who replied however. "As I was saying, Emily," she started pointedly, her undertone clearly scolding her daughter's obvious rudeness, "a suspect got a little out of hand and he hit me by accident," she explained.

"How does a suspect hit you by accident?" Emily asked sarcastically. "And where were you?" she added, and although they could not really tell, clearly she was looking at Andy on her screen.

Andy however, checked the time, and sighed before addressing Sharon. "We're gonna be late," he warned.

Sharon sighed, too. "Emily, can I call you back later? We're running late, and I don't think this is a conversation fit for a car drive. I promise I am ok-"

But that only had Emily interrupt her to ask another question. "Mom, when exactly did this happen?" She was waving a hand in front of her face.

Sharon took a breath and decided to answer. "Yesterday."

"Yesterday?" Emily repeated. "When exactly yesterday? Last night?" she added and she sounded slightly hopeful, probably because that would explain why her mother hadn't called her. It would have been the middle of the night in New York after all.

Sharon lifted a finger at her phone, silently asking Emily to hold on for a bit, ignoring her protests as she muted the call and turned toward Andy. "I have to talk to her," she told him, resigned.

"What about work?" Andy asked, not disagreeing with her.

Sharon considered him for a moment then, finally coming to a decision, replied, "You go ahead." She rolled her eyes. "I'll have to call Ricky now, too. She's not going to keep quiet even if I ask her to," she added, sounding slightly exasperated.

Andy nodded, straightening up. "You sure you don't need any help with that?" he asked, tilting his head at her phone.

Sharon smiled, grateful for the offer but nodded her head. "Yes, this is not the first injury they've seen on me, but they always freak out, so," she trailed off, suppressing an eye roll. "Besides, it's best only one of us is late today," she added more seriously.

Andy sighed, knowing it was even more important now, considering the incident yesterday, but finally nodded, too. "Okay." He leaned down to peck her on the lips. "Good luck," he told her, already on his way to the door. "See you at work."

Sharon smiled and said, "Thank you." When the door closed behind him, she sighed and added quietly, "I'll need it."

She then finally went back to her call.

The moment the sound was on again, Emily let out an incredulous, "Mom, I can't believe you just muted me!" She was waving both of her hands in front of her face now.

Sharon sighed. Yes, she was definitely going to be late for work today.

...

Andy made it into work on time and found the entire rest of his team already seated at their desks.

"Good morning," Andy casually offered as he made his way toward his desk.

They had all looked up at the sound of footsteps approaching, but when their eyes fell on Andy, the briefly expectant looks he caught a glimpse of on their faces was replaced by that of disappointment and, instead of offering the same greeting in return, they just offered a barely discernible mumble of what was supposed to be "Morning." and returned to doing whatever they were doing before his appearance interrupted them.

Andy shot them a puzzled look, not that anyone was looking at him anymore. It took him a moment to understand what was going on.

There was nothing unusual about him being last into work. However, he knew that, ever since he moved into Sharon's condo, it was rather unusual for him to arrive without her, at least on days when he was not rolled out to a crime scene. Even when they took separate cars, they usually walked into the murder room together.

And just how unusual it all currently seemed to his colleagues, was written all over their faces.

Really, he should have expected this. Clearly him coming into work without Sharon, especially today of all days, was not what his team had hoped for.

But Andy just rolled his eyes and, hoping to ease their obvious worries, said, "She got held up with something." On a chuckle, he added, "We did not kill each other."

Instead of the desired laugh, all his words got out of them was a nod or a mumbled "Okay." or "Mhm." Judging by the looks on their faces, they either didn't believe him or didn't find the joke funny.

Andy sighed, concluding that probably both seemed to be the case. "Business as usual my ass," he muttered under his breath, but made no attempt to try clearing anything up. Instead, he just continued on his way to his desk. Apparently he was wrong last night. He and Sharon would have to address this after all.

When he sat down, he fished his phone out of his pocket with the intention of letting her know what he just walked into.

But at the last moment he decided against it. He would tell her when she arrived. They needed to figure out what to tell the team anyway and they wouldn't be able to do so via texting, especially if she was already headed this way.

"You done any time soon?" his text said instead.

"Finally. Heading to the car now," her text replied a minute later.

Andy smiled. He could easily picture the exasperated sigh she would have said that 'finally' on.

"What are you grinning about?" Provenza's annoyed voice startled Andy and he clumsily swiveled around in his chair to look at him.

"None of your business," Andy retorted in an equally annoyed manner, putting his phone away.

Provenza narrowed his eyes at him, but dropped the matter.

In response, Andy just rolled his eyes at him, but took a moment to give the rest of his division a look. There was none of the usual morning chit-chat and in the few seconds that he had kept his gaze on them, everyone had managed to at least once throw a glance into Sharon's office. He could guess that once he turned his back (or side) to them, he might be on the receiving end of similar glances.

He suppressed a groan and turned to face his desk again. The tension in the room could be practically cut through with a knife. Of course, he could have just tried telling them flat out that it was all back to normal again, but if their earlier reaction to him was anything to go by, they were not exactly in the mood to listen to him anyway, much less believe what he had to say. And since he really didn't want to start the day by losing his temper again, he decided to just try ignoring them until Sharon arrived. It was best they dealt with this together, anyway.

The decision, however, did not help his already ruined mood. He took it out on his computer by stabbing his index finger forcefully into its power button. As he watched the machine boot up, he actually found himself thanking the heavens for paperwork, of which there always seemed to be plenty of, whether they had an active case on their hands or not.

Maybe focusing on that would help him survive the heavy tension he was sitting in until Sharon finally made it into work.

...

"Oh, I'm so sorry I'm late," Sharon said, her familiar heeled, albeit slightly hurried footsteps announcing her arrival long before anyone ever heard her words.

She had texted Andy half an hour ago and in that half hour, Andy had not exchanged a single word with any of his team members, nor had they exchanged any words among themselves. So not only was the mood in the room heavy and uncomfortable, the silence was even more so. And it was starting to make Andy more irritated by the second. When he heard Sharon approaching, his relief over the mere prospect of soon dealing with this with her, was palpable.

He turned in his chair to look at her, noticing that his colleagues' heads had snapped up to eagerly look at her as well.

"Don't worry about it, Captain," Amy waved her apology off.

"I think you get a free pass after yesterday, Ma'am," Julio added jokingly although he also sounded like he meant the words.

Sharon smiled at the two and admitted, "Well, yesterday was why I am, unfortunately running late today." She then shrugged as if putting the matter behind her and added, "Anyway," she extended the smile to the rest of her division, "good morning everybody."

She then walked toward her office, casually taking in her team's returned greeting on the way, oblivious to the accusing looks aimed at Andy at the same time.

Only, Andy did notice them and frowned at them.

"Really?" he asked, unable to control himself any more, his earlier resolve to come up with an approach plan with Sharon obviously completely vanishing now.

Sharon stopped in her tracks to give him a surprised look, then looked at the rest of her division Andy had apparently aimed his question at. They did not look surprised, and, if anything, she would say they looked defiant instead.

But Andy ignored both her and them. "Really?" he repeated incredulously. "I've been here for half an hour and you've barely said hello to me," he waved a hand at Sharon, whose eyebrows shot up at being suddenly included in his unexpected rant, "and she's been here barely 30 seconds and," he paused, clearly looking for the right words, "and you," he tried, but then suddenly threw his arms out and simply ended his little outburst with a scoffed, "Ugh!"

Nobody said a word in response. They either shrugged or looked uncomfortably away. It took Sharon a second to fill in the blanks and figure out what had managed to rile up Andy that much this early in the morning and she only did so when she registered Provenza's angry glare aimed at him.

"Oh, for crying out loud," she suddenly let out, looking heavenwards. She took a few steps toward Andy's desk and flopped down her purse on top of it before turning fully toward the rest of her squad. That got their proper attention and they watched her even more surprised than she had been a moment ago. However, when she spoke, she leaned against Andy's desk and addressed him. "What was it you said last night, Andy?" she asked him, raising an eyebrow at him. Her voice was just slightly higher than usual, too, and Andy, slightly startled, snapped out of his irritated haze to look up at her. "They'll forget all about it?" she clarified, waving a hand at the team as if they were not able to see or hear her.

To everybody's renewed surprise, Andy instantly deflated and just half chuckled, half groaned. "Trust me, Sharon, I am more than aware of how wrong I was," he assured her.

She actually smiled at the begrudging undertone of his words and finally focused on her team. She pushed off the desk, to stand straight again, too.

"We have moved past yesterday's unfortunate events," she told them as casually as if she was informing them about the current weather. "I don't know what exactly is going on here right now," she added, waving a hand between them and Andy, "but I would appreciate it if you would stop and move past them as well." At the end of her sentence she gave her division a pointed look, making it clear that that was nothing short of an order.

Andy looked at her in awe. He had really had no idea what she could tell the team or how she could tell them anything in regards to them without it getting even more awkward, but this hit the nail exactly on its head.

Suddenly, they started talking to each other as if Sharon had not just all but scolded them like a bunch of school kids. What was more, it was as if him and Sharon weren't even in the room anymore. They exchanged an incredulous look with each other before giving the team a listen.

"Told you they'd figure it out," Julio told Amy, grinning rather smugly at her.

Amy gladly nodded in response and added, "They certainly don't look angry anymore."

"I guess the Lieutenant apologized," Buzz happily chipped in.

Provenza, not really participating in any of the conversations, rolled his eyes and muttered, "It's Sharon and Andy again."

At that, both Sharon and Andy shot the man an identically amused look and noticing it, Mike let out a "Ha!" pointing a finger at them. "In sync again, too!" he added.

Sharon's eyebrows went up and she aimed a surprised look at the man.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Andy got to his feet and walked toward them with his palms raised, effectively quieting them all down. Sharon only watched him walk by. "Whose side were you guys on?" he asked, stopping in the middle of the room. He sounded mildly offended and pinned Buzz with a hard look, too. "And what was that about me apologizing?" he added.

Sharon, standing behind him now, suddenly let out a soft laugh and he whirled around to look at her, practically bewildered now. "What's so funny?" he asked, still visibly agitated, but in a voice that was back to its lower and calmer tones.

The brief pause she had before answering, made Andy think that was not an entirely truthful answer. "You did apologize, Andy," she told him simply, probably not on purpose letting the team in on that little tidbit.

He only scoffed and turned around, not letting the team try responding, even though they probably weren't even thinking of trying since they were now busy chuckling over Sharon's quick reply. "And what's with the silent treatment, huh?" he asked them.

Amy readily answered. "Sorry, Lieutenant," she sounded genuinely apologetic, "we just assumed since you came into work alone," she let her shrug explain the rest of her thought process.

Andy rolled his eyes, he had guessed as much, but something else was bothering him actually. "And you take her," he waved a hand at Sharon, "side?" The question had Sharon shoot his back an unimpressed look, but he did not notice it.

Julio suddenly spoke up. "Well, we don't exactly want to get on the Captain's bad side, Lieutenant." His shoulders were shaking slightly with his barely held back laughter.

In support, the rest of the team, including Provenza, enthusiastically nodded, making Sharon laugh again.

Much to everyone's surprise again, Andy suddenly deflated and looking rather smug now, turned on his heel and walked back to his chair. On his way, he said, "Good, I was starting to worry you liked her more than me."

Sharon rolled her eyes at him before she could stop herself, but to everybody's shock, it was Provenza who verbally disagreed with Andy's conclusion.

"Oh, but we do, don't you worry about that, Flynn," he told him, highlighting his words by pointing a finger at him and giving him a pointed look over it.

For the briefest of moments, Sharon looked at her oldest Lieutenant in astonishment. She didn't need to look to her left to know Andy probably had a similar expression on his face. But then her look turned positively devious as she raised an eyebrow at Provenza and smiled.

"Is that so, Lieutenant?" she asked him, not bothering to mask her satisfaction over the Lieutenant's unexpected admission, but rather purposefully letting her voice take on that high note that would give it away.

He opened his mouth to quickly respond but lacking the proper response, promptly snapped it shut again. He did shoot Andy an irritated look. His sly grin would have annoyed him even if it weren't on his face because of him.

"Ma'am, I think you're making the Lieutenant uncomfortable," Julio told Sharon, knowing fully well he was pointing out the obvious.

"Oh, Julio," Sharon turned her attention to him and smirked, "I know," she told him, a grin threatening to spill over her face.

Everybody, sans Provenza, who shot her an unimpressed glare, burst out laughing.

Their laughter was quickly interrupted though, when Mike's phone went off. They could guess what it was about even before they heard his "We're on our way."

They waited expectantly for him to hang up and when he did, he grimaced and confirmed it, already getting to his feet. "We caught a case, Captain," he told Sharon. "Check your phones, address is on the way," he told his other team members.

"Just a second," Sharon raised a hand to hold them up, not wanting for them to scatter before she was sure the matter was settled. They all stopped mid-movement and looked at her so she asked, "Is this," she waved a hand between herself and Andy and them, "resolved then?"

At the question, Andy's head snapped up to look first at her then at his team members.

They exchanged a few looks between each other, then, almost in unison, shrugged and said, "Yes, Captain."

She visibly relaxed and she felt Andy, next to her, relax, too. "Alright, go ahead," she gestured for them to carry on. "Keep me informed," she added, back to business now.

They all nodded in acknowledgement and made their way out. Andy lingered behind though and stopped Sharon by touching her elbow when she started walking toward her office again, her purse in hand again, too.

"How'd it go with Emily and Ricky?" he asked when she looked at him.

She briefly smiled a slightly tired smile, and, sounding positively relieved, said, "Crisis resolved."

Andy chuckled. "Good," he told her, then hesitated for a moment, giving the now empty desks of the murder room a quick look, before saying, "About that, sorry, I didn't mean to put you on the spot like that," he sighed, "but they were driving me nuts."

She laughed. "Yes, Andy, I noticed," she told him, running a hand down his arm. "Don't worry about it," she waved him off, "at least we've cleared it up now."

Andy chuckled again and looked at the desks again. "I can't believe they took your side," he told her, disbelief evident and he was glad they were alone because he had a feeling there was a bit of whining in his tone of voice as well.

Sharon laughed and, deciding not to comment, nudged his arm gently, ushering him out. "Crime scene, Lieutenant," she said, teasingly, even though the order to get to work was anything but.

Andy laughed. "Yes, Ma'am," he said, turning around to catch up with his partner, whom he was sharing a ride with.

Just as he said that, they heard Provenza's impatient "Flynn, I'm getting old here!" coming from somewhere in the hallway.

"I'm coming!" Andy instantly retorted equally impatiently, but suddenly hesitated instead of actually walking out, looking as if something else had popped into his head, and he turned around to look at and address Sharon again.

She could guess what he wanted to say. "It's all fine, Andy," she assured him before he could speak up. "Go," she ordered, waving a hand at him, when he uncertainly nodded, "and please, refrain from punching any more suspects," she added, slightly more playfully than yesterday's incident probably allowed.

She expected him to just roll his eyes and go on his merry way but, instead he seriously asked, "You coming with us?"

Puzzled, she frowned a little and said, "No, I'm not."

Andy suddenly smugly grinned. "I think it's safe to say I'll easily refrain then," he told her, bobbing an eyebrow up and down.

It really wasn't a laughing matter, especially after yesterday, and they both knew there were actually plenty of reasons why he might still end up punching a suspect, her not being the only one, but she laughed at him anyway, watching him as he threw her a mock salute and finally went after his partner before he could yell for him again.

She shook her head on her way to her office. At herself. At Andy. At Provenza. At the entire team.

It worried her how much havoc a simple misunderstanding between her and Andy had managed to wreak on her division. That it would cause her division to take sides in the matter, worried her even more so, even if she was also ever so slightly flattered by the fact that they ended up siding with her for some reason. It was also slightly unnerving to see just how interested her team was in the resolution to yesterday's incident, and not just on a professional level either.

But she shrugged it off. Mixing personal with professional was simply unavoidable, no matter how much effort they put into trying to avoid it.

All they really could do was to continue trying then, she concluded as she put away her purse and took a seat behind her desk, especially in order to avoid a repeat performance of yesterday's fiasco.

She threw a glance into the empty murder room and smiled. It was all a bit awkward, really, and she certainly did not like it, but at least they had put it all behind them now.

She looked at the top of her desk and noticed the paperwork from the day before still sitting there, incomplete. She located her pen and started scribbling.

It was business as usual again.

THE END