Captain Raydor's been hurt.

It echoed with his heartbeat, every thud beating out the Chief's words. Speeding up to the point his cardiologist would have a stroke – CAPTAIN RAYDOR'S BEEN HURT pounding in his ears. His throat went dry – he couldn't even choke out the vague words of sympathy the Chief expected to hear because his brain was echoing HURT…HURT…HURT.

And he couldn't leave the crime scene, because he had orders and they had a house full of bodies. Captain Raydor not showing up for the audit because she'd been hurt shouldn't matter a damn to him, but it did. He was a good cop, and he loved his job, but he didn't give a rat's ass who shot the rapper and his friends in this house, because Captain Raydor was in a hospital and nobody seemed to give a damn, because nobody in his division gave a damn about Sharon.

He couldn't ask them to give a damn, either, because Captain Raydor told him in no uncertain terms that she'd have his balls and his badge (in no particular order) if he ever let his department get wind of their affair, before Sharon slowly removed every article of his clothing and fucked him on her couch until he couldn't remember his own name.

Andy Flynn hated the word affair. Not on principle exactly, but as it related to his sexual history, he bristled at it. He was admittedly an asshole but he never cheated on his wife, or on the women he dated after his marriage fell apart. He especially hated it when Sharon referred to what was between them as an affair.

I'm married, she reminded him.

He stopped thinking of Jack Raydor as Sharon's husband long before she slipped that ring off her finger, and that was easily fifteen years ago.

What they did now, in the privacy of his house or her condo, it sure as hell wasn'tan affair. It wasn't some tawdry secret sex, though she reminded him every time that it was a secret. It wasn't just him showing up on her doorstep after a hard case, needing a soft place to quiet his mind. It wasn't a hurried fuck in a swanky club bathroom, squeezed in between finger sandwiches and champagne toasts at one of the many political fundraisers she'd dragged him to over the last two years. What they were doing couldn't be summed up in a single word, especially one as cheap as affair, and he wouldn't be so confused about what he was to her. What they were to each other.

What they were doing was more real. Wasn't it?

It was the reason he called her when he got his ass handed to him after one of his AA meetings. It was the reason that he was a dick to her when she invaded their murder room, but defended herwhen the rest of his team got salty about her presence. Whatever it was between them, he didn't know, but it wasn't just an affair. If it could be summed up in a word, it wouldn't be so goddamn confusing.

"Why are you such an ass when you have to share investigations with me? You of all people should know I'm just doing my job."

"Yeah, and you of all people should know that nobody likes an IA investigation." He lifted his head off her stomach, kissing slowly down her belly until he came to rest at the junction of her thighs. "Nobody likes a bossy woman sticking her nose in where it doesn't belong."

He licked into her, slowly at first, and then with more heat. "You're driving us all crazy."

She moaned, then hummed, and finally shouted his name as his tongue brought her to release.

"Crazy," he murmured as he found her mouth again. God, he'd never get enough of the taste of her on his lips as he kissed her. "We'd like you so much more if you'd just stay away."

"And it so easy, Lieutenant Flynn, to stay away, hmm?"

It wasn't hard to stay away from him; she'd proven that over and over again since the first time they'd slept together. Even when he'd been the one in the hospital, her brief visit wasn't enough to raise flags with his team, but was enough to remind him that even when she was investigating him, she was still there. Checking up on him, making sure he was ok. Hiding behind the Chief, making her little notes in her little notepad, but there. No matter how awful he was to her, she never stayed away for long.

No, what was hard was staying away from her. Fifteen years after the first time she put him on probation, and he still couldn't stop cursing her long enough to stay away.

And now she was in the hospital, and he couldn't go see her without his entire team figuring out that his feelings toward their FID liaison in the Tyrell Baylor case were possibly less than antagonistic and more than platonic.

"Agents Flynn and Tao, please visit the lab and gently remind them that we need our results immediately."

"Yes, Chief, " they echoed.

"GENTLY," she yelled after them. Fuck the chief, he'd get their results. He'd get them immediately, and he'd send them along with Tao.

USC Medical Center was just a short drive up the street from the county forensics lab.

It wasn't a police matter, what landed her in the hospital. An overeager agent's assistant rear-ended her on the 101. She should have been at Cedars, or at Kaiser because it was closer to her condo, but she wound up at USC Med because even LAPD insurance had its limits.

Whiplash, a broken nose from the airbag, and strong possibility of a concussion. I should have been there, he thought as he stood next to her bed

"I should have been there," he repeated, out loud this time, when her eyelids fluttered, then opened, her green eyes finally locking onto his presence.

She stared at him, her face blank for a minute, then she blinked a few times and reached out her hand to him. She was always slow to wake, his Sharon, and any other day, he'd have found her confusion charming.

Her hand was warm and soft in his, and he tried to take comfort in that as her eyes flitted across the room, then to the monitors and back to him. It only took her a moment, his Sharon, to figure out where she was and why he was hovering at her bedside. "

You should have been…where, exactly? Grocery shopping with me, instead of investigating the death of a rapper?"

Fuck the rapper. "Yeah," he says, hoping that the smile he gave her was convincing.

"Liar." She put on a good show for him, smiling back even though he knew from far too much experience that it hurt like hell to smile with a broken nose.

"You're gonna be okay," he said, because he was an idiot and he didn't know anything more soothing to say. He had other things he'd like to tell her, but she didn't want to hear them, so he said what he thought she wanted to hear. Standing next to her bed, squeezing her hand, he hoped she knew what he was trying to convey.

"I'm going to be fine," she reassured him in those clipped New England tones of hers. Nobody would ever know that they grew up less than a hundred miles apart. "And you need to get back to work."

Like hell. He was just about to argue when Tao ducked into the room. Tao gaves a stilted wave to the captain, then waved a folder to Andy.

"Interesting findings," Tao whispered. As if anything he said would escape Captain Raydor's notice. "Might need some follow-up. Maybe I should go back to the Murder Room and you should stay here to lean on any questions we might have for the lab?"

Andy flipped through the folder, seeing both the lab results and any questions Mike might have, along with their answers. Written in detail, medical terms spelled out phonetically, just in case someone might call for clarification. "Looks like a lot of questions."

"Might take all day," Mike agreed, then nodded at the woman in the bed. "Captain."

"Lieutenant."

Mike disappeared as quickly as he entered, and Andy didn't say anything for a moment. He didn't want her to know that he was rattled by the sight of her in a hospital bed. She wouldn't like that – it would be breaking the rules of their affair, that he might care too much about her. That he might want to find the punk that rear-ended her and beat the shit out of him. That he might very well open himself up to an investigation of excessive force, because Captain Sharon Raydor was hurt, and she was in a hospital bed, and he could no longer separate the head of FID and the woman he loved. Fuck the rules, he'd take a suspension if it meant that he could get rid of the pit in his stomach at seeing her so pale and fragile in that hospital gown.

He didn't want to upset her, but Andy Flynn was never very good at rules. But she was, and he wasn't not good at making her happy – not yet – but was better than he used to be. So he'd stay here with her and hope that's enough. "Seems I have some time to kill," he said. He let go of her hand long enough to pull up a chair to her bedside, then immediately sought her fingers.

"Seems you do," she agreed. She curled her fingers into his, then tugged him closer, and closer still, until he abandoned his chair and settled on the bed next to her, her head resting on his chest.

"We should thank him," he murmured. At this point, knowing that she was hurt, but not seriously enough that he couldn't revel in the warmth of her body curled around his, he'd thank anyone who cared to listen.

He'd never heard her make a noise like that, and definitely not when he was trying to be sincere. A snort that was definitely not in keeping with the carefully cultured, pristine image of Sharon Raydor echoed from a little south of his chin. "Mike Tao owes me," she said, and he'd never admit it, but he fell just a little more in love with how satisfied she sounded. "Thank him if you want to, but he won't say a word."

Of course he wouldn't say a word. Mike Tao might be the most boring person Andy'd ever met, but he was also the most loyal. Mike would never betray his teammate in Major Crimes as a matter of conscience, but he'd also never betray Sharon Raydor as a matter of personal integrity.

Thank God Provenza wasn't sent to the lab with him.

"So," he said, "you gonna get out of here tonight?"

She sighed, and he catalogued that alongside the other breathy noises he'd come to know from her. He loved them all, but this one - the one she made when he knew she was going to be fine - this one might have been his favorite. "The doctor says I have to have supervision for the next 48 hours."

He was gonna thank Mike Tao, and then he was gonna thank the doctor, and then he was gonna take her home and not let her out of his sight until she physically kicked him out of her condo. "I think that can be arranged."