Yay. Ellie finally gets around to finishing this fic! Last chapter, let me know what you think, and as always thank you for reading.

Must give us peace

She watches from the couch as Provenza walks to the door, throwing a lazy wave behind him in her general direction when she wishes him a good night. Though he wouldn't usually bother, Andy gets up and follows him to walk him out, and a feeling of remorse washes over her. It's dark, nearing on dinner time, and there's little reason for her to linger much longer, especially since Provenza has done the honours of leaving first. The polite thing would be to follow his lead and excuse herself, wishing Andy a good evening and thanking him for his hospitality.

She doesn't particularly want to go. She's not sure if there's a deeper meaning to that feeling or if it's merely to be expected after spending days together, working, sleeping, eating… everything that isn't too intimate for a Captain and her subordinate to do. (She's not sure where the line is drawn regarding intimacy anymore. Sharing a bed? Cooking together? Showering, albeit not together…? It's all become blurred in the fog and confusion of a tough case, a late night, the company of someone trusted and close. It's dangerous and yet so comforting.)

She makes sure to shake herself out of her stupor before Andy turns back around and makes his way over to the couch again.

"And then there were two" he says.

She hums. "I should really be going as well" she starts, ignoring the way his face falls in disappointment. Her body language negates her words; she doesn't make any gesture to move from her place. "The workmen will be gone by now. I best go and open some windows to air my place out, assess the damage"

It's not a thin excuse – she hasn't been home in days, Rusty has been fending for himself, and she does want to check on the progress of her roof. These are all important things to contend with; she just finds the prospect of the real world daunting after being holed away from it in his living room all day. There was a certain lack of reality in their day – never once stepping outside, spending time together in a way they never have before, even the first moments in the morning waking up next to him. None of it feels real as she thinks back over it, and she knows it's the combination of sleep deprivation and new experiences, but the prospect of breaking the spell and returning home to sleep in her own bed and return to work again as per her usual routine… she doesn't know why it makes her sad, but it does a little bit.

"Will you stay for dinner at least?" he asks. His eyes look hopeful, not suggestive but more like a child hoping to stay up just one more ad-break past their bedtime.

She holds his gaze for a long moment, her mind whirring, until without thought she gives a small smile, and a faint fine. Almost immediately she corrects herself, belatedly adding, "Yes please, that would be lovely".

She gets up to follow him into the kitchen and they split off, her to look in the fridge again and him to look in the cupboard. There's left-over pasta from lunch, but neither of them suggest heating it up; it goes unsaid that they would prefer something else for dinner. Maybe something less… carb-y. With actual nutritional value. She opens the crisper in the fridge and lifts a dead bag of lettuce out to find half an onion, a sad stalk of broccoli, two carrots, a handful of beans in a plastic supermarket bag, and something she thinks was a turnip in a previous life. It's enough to make… something. Certainly something roasted or boiled, but definitely not steamed. The wilting veggies won't stand up to it. None of them have had time to go shopping lately, so she tries not to judge.

"I've got veggies" she says, a look on her face caught somewhere between horror and curiosity. "Kind of"

He pokes his head out of the pantry and holds up a container of powdered stock, a half bag of mixed lentils and a large lone potato. "Sad soup?" he asks.

She nods enthusiastically, pleased that they can boil the pathetic looking beans to smithereens before eating them. She's not the world's best cook, even though she does enjoy it, but even she can see that these vegetables are a day away from the bin without some serious intervention.

"Might as well get our three serves of veggies in one hit" he mumbles, placing the ingredients on the bench while he looks for a pot. She makes herself busy collecting the remaining items from the fridge while he half fills the pot with water from the kettle. He lights the stove and sets the pot on the heat, then dishes out a decent amount of stock and lentils into it and stirs. She watches as he opens the small cupboard above the stove and takes out the salt and pepper, and then a selection of herbs she can't read the names of.

She has always found it sexy when a man knows his way around the kitchen, and it takes all her willpower not say anything as she watches him for a moment, dishing out just the right amount of chopped leaves to make the soup his own. She knows, without a doubt, that she needs to leave right after dinner lest her mouth run ahead of her.

He leaves the lentils to boil for a bit to soften down on their own. Meanwhile she takes the veggies and washes them. This time around they share the preparation much more than he allowed at lunch; she peels the carrots and potato into the sink while he chops everything and throws it into the pot unceremoniously. She cleans up the bench as she goes, and he uses the large wooden spoon to taste test, adding one more pinch of salt before he leaves it to simmer lightly with the lid on, cracked just a little bit. They'll leave it to boil down and thicken.

"Anything else?" she asks.

"I've got some macaroni in the cupboard that I'll add just before it's done… give it some oomph"

She nods her agreement and leans back against the bench again. He mirrors her stance against his cupboard door with a smile.

It's around this time that she would ordinarily poor herself a glass of wine and go put on some relaxing music – maybe some Tchaikovsky from one of the ballet's, or a collection of Chopin. But she knows that (for good reason) she won't find wine in Andy's house, and she doubts very much that he has any kind of classical music collection. Classic hits, maybe – she knows he's especially fond of soft rock – but piano sonatas aren't really his thing, and she gets that; they weren't her thing either until childhood ballet classes demanded she get used to it.

"I've enjoyed today" he says to her, his tone soft but undemanding.

She smiles at him, fighting a blush. "Me too" she says quietly back, trying not to make too much of it.

He must notice her disquiet because he offers her a drink from the fridge – juice or soda? - and she accepts a juice just for the sugar hit, the exhaustion of the previous work day catching up to her the longer she goes without sleep. The darkness ushers forward a weariness, which is one more good reason to get home quickly after dinner; the last thing she needs is to fall asleep at the wheel and run off the road.

"We should do it again some time" he says.

With his back to her and his head buried in the fridge she can't analyse him; can get a read on what he means. This was a very specific set of circumstances; not necessarily something she would want to repeat if given the choice. Yet his house has been open and warm to her since the night before, and despite her tiredness she feels somewhat rested. She doesn't doubt the joy of his company; but to how to have it again, and for so long, without giving up ground to the thoughts in her head that she cannot afford to entertain.

She must stay quiet a breath too long, because he turns around with a large juice carton in his hand. "The movie day, I mean" he says, elaborating on a questions she wasn't even sure she was asking.

He gives a look she can't decipher – awkwardness maybe? Or self-consciousness? – and collects her a glass, pouring a decent amount for her drink. She accepts it with a soft thank you.

She waits a beat, watching him place the juice carton on the bench.

"It's such a rare opportunity" she says, shrugging. Neither of them can work out if that's an invitation to do it again or an excuse not to; she doesn't dwell. She hides behind her glass as she takes a long sip of her drink. Andy seems to get the hint and turns away, collecting a glass and filling it for himself before returning the carton to the fridge.

"I'm gonna go put the news on" he announces, fiddling with the gas nozzle of the stove a little to lower the simmering temperature. "See what's been happening in the world while we've been ignoring it"

Depressing things, no doubt, she thinks, but holds her tongue. The distraction will be welcome, and at the very least they can check tomorrow's weather. "Good idea" she says instead, and follows him with drink in hand to the lounge again, taking up their usual places. It's bizarre and entirely too natural that they don't question it – don't wait for each other to sit before they claim their places. Normal human behaviour, chides a disapproving voice in her head. But she's too aware of herself for that to be the case.

They watch the news in relative silence, Andy pitching in with that dirtbag or what scum whenever a crime is mentioned from outside their jurisdiction. Perfunctory comments, she knows, because he doesn't do well with sitting still and quiet for too long she has learned. She nods along, equally interested in reconnecting with the outside world in preparation of going home, even if it is in gruesome ways. It's nothing they haven't seen before; their whole professional lives have been dedicated to these stories; it's almost relaxingly familiar to hear the tragic story of a young family murdered in a gang shooting on the other side of the country.

At the end of the D-block she rises from her seat to take her glass back to the kitchen. She checks in on the soup – still a bit watery, the carrots and potato not yet cooked through – and takes a spoon from the cutlery draw to check the broth. Perfect. Just the right balance of flavours, maybe could do with another pinch of salt, but given Andy's recent heart troubles she won't suggest it unless he does. She uses the wooden spoon to stir right along the bottom of the pot, making sure none of the lentils have stuck, sneaks another spoonful of the broth, and then replaces the lid slightly ajar as it was before. She's suddenly very hungry, and the smell is not helping the situation.

She hears Andy come in behind her, the tell-tale sounds of ads on the television no doubt inspiring him to come and find her.

"How's it looking?" he asks.

"Half way there. I gave it a stir"

"Need the macaroni yet?"

"Not yet"

He salutes her, then takes her empty glass and his own, abandoned on the bench earlier, and rinses them in the sink, leaving them on the rack to dry rather than bothering to put them in his dishwasher. Another quirk she can't figure out – a tea spoon is upside down on the sink's edge, a couple of glasses and a single bread plate in the draining rack on the side; the dishwasher is only a cabinet over, why not fill it? She's never understood not loading it, since he obviously uses it for larger dishes; it's as baffling to her as Rusty filling a grubby glass with warm water and leaving it to fester for two days in the sink.

I rinsed it, he would say.

Maybe it's a boy thing, she thinks to herself, and she somehow managed to stamp it out of her eldest son with that exact mix of single parenting and an unbreakable iron will. The thought makes her suddenly proud of her son. She makes a mental note to check on him more frequently than she does, though it may annoy him. She took a step back when he finished college – made a deliberate choice to give him his freedom without an overbearing mother nagging him from half a state away. But suddenly her one phone call and occasional text a week doesn't seem nearly enough.

Or maybe she just misses the simpler days before she ran Major Crimes, when spending days in her subordinate's living room was unheard of, much less making soup for dinner like some ridiculous married cliché. She's never once lived that image, she doesn't intend to start now, and certainly not with someone who's place in her life she can't define; someone who sits in limbo somewhere between colleague and friend, the curiosity of 'something more' whispering to her from the recesses of her mind where she recognises how ridiculous it is to be having these ruminations in the middle of his kitchen.

Once again she berates herself for thinking too much on it, chalks it up to lack of sleep, and plants a smile on her face for Andy's benefit.

"Did I miss any important news?" she asks. "Any apocalypses we missed?"

He just grins at her, surprised as always at her display of humour. Part of her wants to be offended that he thinks she doesn't have one; mostly she's delighted she can still surprise him.

"I feel like that would have been called in"

"Not to us. Taylor banned us from the office"

He laughs at her. "Somehow I think end of the world is beyond even his pay grade. He wouldn't have a choice. Overtime and everything, we'd be called in to stand around and wait for the paperwork to let us do anything"

She laughs, not disagreeing with his assessment of the legal process even as she stands behind it. There's no love lost between Andy and Taylor; never has been, from what she remembers on the grapevine, much as she wasn't always tuned into it. Still, there are some truths so universally known in the force that they penetrate even the double-brick cast-iron walls of the FID home in the Bradbury Building. Many of those truths pertain to Andy and a certain partner of his.

Sometimes she thinks that half of his surprise comes from her knowledge of him and all the baggage he has carried throughout his time in the LAPD. Baggage that happened to land right inside a certain jacket over which she presided, lest the younger less experienced officers get scared off the job by Andy's particular interview style. Oh yes, she knows all about him, as he does her, the Wicked Witch, stone cold bitch, or whatever other nickname people lovingly bestowed upon her throughout her tenure.

They have history.

She looks at the man in front of her now and wonders at how much he has mellowed over recent years. The bravado and cheekiness remains, but gone is the open contempt and hostility; the charm he wore more as a defence than any genuine attempt to woo someone has softened into a casual flirting. The Andy of old was angry, short-fused, probably recited his twelve steps every morning and another half dozen times through the day too.

This Andy gets nervous about attending his own daughter's wedding. Gets to watch his grandsons dance on stage. Cooks her not one but two meals without question.

She likes this Andy.

More than even she realised just a day ago.

And once again she has managed to pinpoint for herself the exact crux of her ponderings.

She goes and sits into the living room again, leaving him to check to soup or follow her at his own leisure. He does both.

A half hour later they get up again to check the soup, and he turns the heat down and gives it a stir while adding some macaroni. They hang around the kitchen, not really talking, but not ignoring each other either; waiting the ten minutes or so it will take for the noodles to cook. She gets herself another small glass of juice without asking, and he watches with a look on his face that she thinks is bemusement but looks a little too fond to be sardonic.

He uses the wooden spoon to taste test a macaroni, huffing between his teeth when the broth is too hot – she almost laughs at him, and at his little oh hot hot hot. He ignores her, instead turning the stove off. She collects two bowls, holds them up as he dishes the food, grabs two clean spoons, and leaves his soup on the benchtop for him to collect as she makes her way into the living room to sit.

The evening news has given way to a new episode of some procedural she doesn't watch. She nearly burns her tongue as well when she takes the first mouthful, but carries it off with a little more dignity.

"How is it?" he asks, making his way to his seat with dinner in hand.

She nods, her mouth still full.

"For sad soup"

She grins at him and he smiles back.

The urge to leave has subsided again, and the feeling of comfort penetrates her skin like a warm blanket being placed over her. She goes back to her dinner, dutifully ignoring the little flutter in her stomach at the thought of going home again. She runs through a to-do list of house chores to complete to distract herself instead, and doesn't notice when Andy switches the program over.

"This is nice" she says quietly, looking down into her bowl and stirring her spoon around a couple of times to cool the edges.

"Yeah. It is" he replies.

She looks up at him and catches his eye. She thinks they're both talking about more than just the sad soup, but neither of them say anything more. Perhaps nothing else needs to be said, she thinks, or maybe they just don't know what to say – she can barely get her thoughts in order let alone say them out loud.

In any case, by her estimations she has less than an hour before she'll be home again, and this evening is proving to be the perfect ending to a strange day. She lets the quiet of the moment and the warmth of the soup and the pleasure of his company wash over her, and somewhere inside a peace falls into place where she hasn't felt it before. It feels like something known but long forgotten; like the innocence she hasn't acknowledged since childhood.

It feels like possibility.

Fin.

A/N: Yes, I did steal 'fine' from canon, but only because I think in that moment it's an echo to an earlier unseen moment, and I just freakin' love parallels okay. Also, this story was always very deliberately written as pre-ship, so sorry for anyone expecting mushy kisses but I thrive on angst and awkwardness and I'm not even sorry about it.

Reviews always welcomed, thanks again for reading.