As always I'm going to start by thanking everyone who read the last chapter many moons ago and special thanks must go to , seaford71, MkSC77, spindleofaspinningwheel, jujuone23, Rachel J, welshcwtch, Elaine Huang, froggy62, Irish04, Nicki, sundishine2 and the seven Guests for leaving such lovely reviews.

I'm well aware that it has been a very long time since I posted the last chapter (I think it may have been July 2019) but work (a little thing called Brexit not only destroying my country and my life but also my business), more than a little writer's block and just lacking the time have all slowed me down. But nevertheless I really appreciate your patience and I have plenty of chapters ready to be posted in the future because regardless of how long it takes, I will finish this story in the land of AU whether anyone reads it or not.

I imagine this chapter is riddled with typos but I've done my best to remove as many as I could. Even so, I imagine that every now and then you'll find that I've accidentally used the wrong banana…or word and that my grammar and punctuation, is, not, what, it, should, be. Feel free to keep any typos you find.

For reasons I can't remember or explain I had a note at the start of this chapter that read "Blow up dolls for MkSC77." Indeed this chapter does include the mention of a blow up doll but why MkSC77 wanted me to include it I simply can't remember. Hopefully she does!

This chapter picks up a short while after Chapter 43 finished, the day after Andy had received the all clear following his heart attack.

Enjoy.

At the End of the Day - Chapter 44

Eventful. That was the best word to use to describe Sharon's morning up until that point as she slowly made her way to PAB in Andy's car. She had finally gone to sleep for longer than a ten minute burst a little after 5am that morning, kept wide awake up until then from a combination of Andy, fresh from his recent all-clear and determined to make up for the lost time as well as to remind the one true love of his life that he was feeling better in every way imaginable, as well as her own list of worries, simply unable to stop herself from watching Andy sleep just in case anything happened to him. She was woken for the final time that morning by the feel of Andy's lips and tongue slowly making their way down her body and although it was an extremely pleasant way to wake up, not least because of the simply extraordinary things that man could do with his tongue, she was also in desperate need of some real quality sleep. In truth sleep was the one thing that Sharon didn't do all that well (and hadn't since her children were born) and sadly she had struggled even more since the courtroom shooting and then his heart attack but she was far from disappointed when her fingers threaded through his hair on the top of his head and she let out a long, low sigh.

From that moment to when she finally stepped into the elevator and headed down to the parking garage of their building four hours later, she faced a near constant battle to leave for work on time and resist Andy's constant attempts to lure her back into bed and call in sick (even after Rusty arrived home). It was a tempting offer, an oh so tempting offer but since she had left work not long after lunch just a day earlier with the sole purpose of falling straight into bed with him, it was an offer that she regretfully had no choice but to resist.

Once she was safely in the elevator, Andy's smile and trademark smoulder thankfully having zero effect on her once the door closed, her morning still didn't get any easier for her to navigate because she was then trapped in a metal cage with her neighbour from hell Mrs Rose, the same woman she had been so rude to just a day earlier when she got in the way of Darth Raydor and an orgasm. Sharon was still mortified by her behaviour, that she had allowed her raging levels of lust and desire to not only take control of her actions, but of her mouth too. In truth it wasn't like Mrs Rose didn't deserve it, never missing the opportunity to complain to her about Rusty and the noise emanating from their apartment and therefore making the few seconds a day she spent walking back and forth along that hallway to and from her front door, the worst moments of her day. So if what she had said to her a day earlier wasn't enough to cause the tension between them on the ride down to the parking garage to rise even further, Andy's extreme exuberance as he wished her goodbye had sealed the deal. She could feel her eyes on her the whole way down to the lobby, burning into the back of her head and turning a twenty second journey into one that felt like it took an hour. Much to Sharon's surprise, Mrs Rose didn't so much as utter a word but then she didn't need to, her disgusted sighs and disapproving tuts more than putting her point across to her. When they finally arrived on the ground floor, Mrs Rose immediately pushed past her and scuttled off, giving Sharon another filthy look as she did so and finally leaving Sharon alone on her journey to work in Andy's car.

When she finally pulled into the parking garage at PAB half an hour later she quickly parked up in Andy's regular spot, taking the opportunity to give her broken down car the stink eye when she passed it as if it had deliberately refused to start the day before just to spite her and her quest for sex. With the engine off she pulled down the visor to take a look at herself in the mirror, checking not only her make-up but also her hair too. To say that her hair had been blown around during her short journey into work was an understatement, driving there with every single window in the car wide open. The moment she opened the door she smelt it, the overpowering scent of Andy's extremely distinctive cologne and he hadn't even sat in it for nearly six weeks. If she hadn't spent the better part of the previous six months sharing a bathroom with the man more often than not, she would swear that he bathed in it every morning, going through at least a bottle a week. But much to her surprise he didn't, having the ability to make a little go an awful long way just like his partner, only Andy didn't buy his from a gas station (and also able to use it to thin paint too).

To begin with Sharon liked the smell of it, a huge smile on her face as she drove almost on autopilot and the scent made her think about the man she had spent a very large portion of the previous seventeen hours engaged in vigorous sex with, thinking about how happy she was, how relieved she felt to have her Andy back again and everything she was going to do to him when she got home and Rusty had gone to bed. It didn't last long though however, by the first set of lights she hit her eyes were beginning to water and she needed the fresh air before she passed out at the wheel. Even with the windows open she could still smell it, correctly assuming she was going to stink the Murder Room out with it when she arrived, still, it would make a change from Provenza doing it, the strength of his cologne making her extremely thankful she had a door on her office most mornings.

With the windows closed again she climbed out of the car looking and feeling a hell of a lot more relaxed than she had been the day before in that very garage as she tried to get home. The car locked and her purse in hand she made a quick dart towards her car and her broken heel that she still expected to see where she had left it, lodged in the grate just yards from her parking space and hoping to have another attempt at freeing it now that she wasn't feeling quite so sex crazed and desperate to get home. Sadly that didn't happen. Sharon stopped dead in her tracks when she that saw it had gone. But where was it? It couldn't have walked away on its own. She quickly looked all around her, even glancing up into the air to see if she could locate it. With her extremely bad luck over the previous few months (not including of course how both she and Andy had somehow escaped with their lives in that courtroom on top of his heart attack) it had probably got wedged in someone's tyre, giving them a puncture. It would just be her luck for it to be Deputy Chief Winnie Davis too! By the end of the day she would probably have reviewed the CCTV in the parking garage and be on her way to her office with Chief Pope, the video evidence and a hefty bill to pay.

Once again she felt conflicted, just like she did a day earlier when she eventually elected to go back into PAB and ask Provenza for a ride home. If she went and asked at security if they had found her missing heel they may start to ask questions about why she had just left it in the grate in the first place and what happened, why she needed to get home as quickly as she did with Provenza in tow and that was something that she was keen to avoid at all costs. So she elected against it, abandoning it to its fate just seconds before a voice behind her nearly scared her half to death such was the way she was lost to her thoughts.

"Everything okay Captain?"

She quickly spun around to face them. "Oh...erm...yes, thank you Frank" she replied quickly when she saw who was standing behind her, an officer of a similar age to Provenza but who had made his home in the quiet of the parking garage rather than the hectic Major Crimes. She straightened to look at him with a warm smile, more than ever determined to abandon her heel to wherever it was hiding while trying her best to pretend that she hadn't just had the crap scared out of her. "Everything is just wonderful" she insisted.

"Good to hear it. How's the Lieutenant?"

Sharon smiled back at him and not just because of the topic up for conversation, the sound of his name making her instantly smile. He'd really like that, 'the' Lieutenant she thought to herself, a title usually reserved for Provenza alone in their department for some odd reason which annoyed both Andy and Mike in equal measure as they felt they were overlooked even though they had the same rank. "Andy?" she repeated before she sighed with a sense of utter contentment. "Oh he's just magnificent Frank." Her smile was simply infectious and it quickly spread.

"Good to hear it" he laughed in reply. "Send him my best will you."

"You can do it yourself shortly. He'll be popping by later so that we can have lunch together before he tries to work out why my car couldn't start yesterday."

"I'll keep an eye out for him. Have a good day Captain."

"You too." With that they both set off in opposite directions until Sharon stopped dead in her tracks and needed to ask the question despite her embarrassment levels. "Oh Frank." He stopped and they turned to face each other again. "Yesterday, did you by any chance…" She couldn't finish the rest of the question for the fear that she was going to come across like a complete raving lunatic and be forced to explain why she simply couldn't retrieved it at the time.

"Captain?" Frank said in reply when he was unable to fill in the blanks himself.

"Never mind" Sharon finally said after a short pause. She gave him a friendly smile, her way of reassuring him that it wasn't a big deal and to ensure she didn't cause too much concern. With that she set off towards the exit again, hustling away as quickly as she could to PAB to make up for the time lost a day earlier.

In complete contrast to a day earlier when Sharon saw the world and his wife as she made her way to the parking garage, all of whom wanted a chat with her even as she sought to flee PAB as quickly as possible, but this time around she saw no one, making good time and getting into the elevator within record time of late (mainly because walking in with Andy proved to be somewhat of a distraction even on days when she was in a hurry).

She could hear the murmur of voices as she approached the door to her division, the sound of Provenza holding court as distinctive as it was a regular occurrence, knowing that he was in all likelihood complaining about his in-laws to anyone who would listen, Patrice forcing him to spend time with them over the weekend. The small ripple of laughter along with Mike's trademark 'Ha!' that followed then confirmed her suspicions. Rather than speeding up she stopped dead in her tracks when she was on the brink of the division as they laughed joyfully. She liked to listen to them especially when they were unaware of it. They truly were her division by that stage in her professional life rather than being Brenda's with Sharon acting as caretaker and she would do anything for them just like they would do anything for her too. They often laid their lives on the line for each other, more often than any of their loved ones would like. It was a bond that was indescribable to the outside world and part of it had been missing as Andy recovered, his vacant chair making a hole in all of their lives and not just Sharon's (and to a lesser extent Provenza's too) just like when Julio was suspended and Amy's jaw was healing. Thankfully, this time around, it wasn't going to last that much longer.

Sharon continued to linger by the door for a moment longer, unsure about how she should play it when she finally walked in. She was late. Not late enough that any other member of the division would be in a little trouble should they be that tardy but that didn't matter to her because she still always held herself to a much higher standard than everyone else, higher standards that meant she should not be late the morning after she left so abruptly and so very very early. But what did they know? How much had they been able to work out? Her behaviour had been suspicious to say the least a day earlier, taking several attempts to leave with everything she needed to get her home and that was before she had been forced to sneak back into the building and get Provenza to join her. As a result of her car trouble she had been forced to tell Provenza everything that was going on, admittedly he was one of her closest friends but it was far from a comfortable chat to say the least. But had he told anyone else about it since then? She assumed Patrice already knew all about it and that was fine because she would have told her herself after a glass of wine the next time she saw her but what about the rest of their colleagues? Did they know? She hoped not. Provenza knew better than anyone else (sans perhaps Andy) that she was an extremely private person so she trusted him to keep her confidence…but that didn't mean they hadn't worked it out for themselves in the interim.

With a deep and fortifying breath (just like the one she had taken before she had finally well and truly relaxed in Andy's arms the previous afternoon when he carried her to bed, letting all of her worries and all of the stress of the previous two months go…or at least that was the plan in theory) she headed into the Murder Room, her heels clicking on the lino of the floor beneath her and alerting her division to her presence, their heads lifting like animals around a watering hole who sensed a predator nearby.

"Good morning Captain" Provenza called as he turned in his chair to face her upon her arrival, smiling brightly and blatantly giving his watch the eye to acknowledge the time and lateness of the hour. "How nice of you to join us." It was a comment that only he could get away with, the grumpy senior Lieutenant who had managed to make room in the hearts of his last two Commanding Officers and quickly took up permanent residence in there, and as a result had earned a little more leeway than the others, and that included Andy.

In reply Sharon gave him the briefest of glares as she crossed her arms in front of her chest while he chuckled. "Yes, well as I'm sure you already know," she started to say as she then turned her attention to the rest of her division, "I'm still experiencing a little car trouble. But I want to say thank you to all of you for covering for me yesterday afternoon. It is very much appreciated but you have my word," her hand moved across her heart, "that it'll never happen again."

"It was our pleasure Captain" Buzz announced sincerely on behalf of the group, the rather grumpy text message he received from Rusty the previous evening telling him that he was staying the night with Gus revealing all he needed to know to fill in the gaps.

Provenza quickly swivelled on his chair and turned to look at Buzz. "And what exactly did you do may I ask?" he queried in regards to his contribution to the case once Sharon had gone home. He then turned to point at Wes. "The same as he contributed yesterday" he added with Wes spending most of the last week talking to the DA after his time living with a group of drug dealing Nazis. As Mike, Julio and Amy all laughed at him he once again turned his attention back to Sharon. "It was our pleasure Captain," he stated, echoing Buzz's earlier sentiment, "so please don't mention it." He then lowered his voice and looked at her from the corner of his eye. "Please! Don't mention it!"

Sharon stifled a laugh into the back of her hand and it was clear from the way that the rest of her team looked between the two of them, slightly puzzled, that they didn't know the full extent of what had happened a day earlier and that was just absolutely fine with her. "Even so, thank you." She stepped closer to Provenza's desk, a hand across her heart as she leaned against it. "From the bottom of my heart, thank you."

Keen to change the subject away from the sex life of two of his closest friends (not that the rest of the division knew that), and with how close she was standing next to him, Provenza simply couldn't fail to notice just how strongly his beloved Captain smelt like his partner. "Are you wearing Flynn's cologne? Ye Gods!" he grumbled as he fanned his hand under his nose. "It's like he's in the room."

Sharon laughed, long since having become immune to it that morning, nose blind to the extent that she could no longer smell it at all. "I borrowed his car this morning" she replied as she pressed her nose to her jacket sleeve to see if she could smell it.

"Yeah well, let's hope no one lights a match next to you, that's all I'm saying" Provenza added as if his own very unique cologne didn't smell strong enough that it was almost visible, making him look like an older and grumpier version of Pig Pen.

With more important matters to discuss that a poor choice in cologne, Mike sat to attention with a question in mind. "Well? How is he?" he asked. Sharon hummed in response and was so distracted by what she and Provenza were keeping secret, the reason for her very early departure that she had forgotten no one really knew just how good Andy was now feeling following his all clear. "Captain, how's Lieutenant Flynn?"

"Yes Captain," Provenza said as he swivelled his chair to face her again, his fingers yet again laced behind his head as he leant back, "please tell us. How is your beautiful boy feeling this morning?" He smiled at her, the look on his face making everyone laugh just as much as his question did.

Sharon rolled her eyes as she finally perched on the edge of Provenza's desk, she the only person who was allowed to do so, a fact that was noticed by them all (with the exception of Wes who was still learning the rules of his new division) along with the fact that Provenza made no attempt to move her or even pulled a face in response.

"Oh please, whatever you do, don't say that in front of him, Lieutenant, I beg you." They all laughed at the desperate plea from their Captain, even Wes although he didn't really know what was so funny and who they were really taking about. "Do you have any idea how much trouble I've been in since that day in the hospital? He's complained constantly" she groaned as she put her head in her hand for a brief moment as a visual aid to show the headaches it had caused ever since. "It's Badge of Justice all over again" she cried, everyone laughing all the harder because they knew how true it was and what she had endured.

"Well you were the one that was so desperate to find something for him to do during his convalescence" Provenza jokingly pointed out.

"Yes but something other than constantly complaining, Lieutenant" she clarified.

"Well I think it's sweet" Amy stated emphatically in regard to the whole 'beautiful boy' situation, having thought about it several times since.

"Me too" Buzz added.

"And I think the Captain really needs to get her eyes tested again" Provenza said and opting to double down on the conversation. "Are those lenses even real in those glasses or are they just made out of glass?" Again everyone laughed at him as Sharon just shook her head, much to her delight having the perfect comeback to use on him once he had dug himself a hole big enough to make it worthwhile. "Now forgetting the whole 'beautiful' thing for just one moment, Flynn is about as close to being a boy as I am to being..."

"A snuggle bear?" Sharon asked. She smiled at him smugly, knowing that her arrow had not only hit its mark but also scored a perfect bullseye. His face immediately dropped, giving her a look the likes of which he hadn't given her in years. As he continued to glare at her with venom a ripple of laughter went around the Murder Room.

"What?" Buzz asked as he laughed loudly, shaking his head and convinced that he was must be hearing things otherwise Christmas had come early for him.

"A snuggle bear" Sharon repeated as Provenza turned redder by the second.

"Ha! Snuggle bear? Oh my God!" Mike cried joyfully as they continued to laugh.

Provenza continued to give Sharon daggers even as he finally found his voice. "And where exactly did you hear that, Captain?"

Sharon continued to smile at him while she fought long and hard not to laugh, knowing that would only piss him off even more. "From your lovely wife, Lieutenant" she told him but it wasn't much of a surprise, it could only have come from Patrice. They all laughed again and this time Sharon made no attempt to hide it. "It was a couple of weeks ago before I came back to work and she dropped by to see us one afternoon, I told you all about this, right?" He nodded as he put his head in his hands, resting his elbows on his desk. "Well while Andy was taking a nap I may have told her about what I'd sadly accidentally said in front of you all while he was still in the hospital and how it was already driving him crazy." She shrugged her shoulders as she continued to make it abundantly clear that they were never ever to bring it up in front of him if they would like to continue breathing. "That he was suddenly dreading coming back to work again rather than worrying that he'd never be able to return because you were so utterly determined to torture him over it." She shrugged her shoulders again. "So Patrice told me what she likes to call you from time to time just in case I needed it."

Sharon continued to smile smugly at him with her arms crossed in front of her chest while everyone laughed at Provenza's torment. In truth it was actually the first thing Provenza had said to Patrice when he arrived home from the hospital that day, even before he had chance to tell her about the funeral. It wasn't a surprise for Patrice to hear it, she had heard Sharon call Andy it with her own ears from time to time when they'd all been out to dinner as a foursome. But the moment she saw the smile on her husband's face along with the tone to his voice she knew she had to even the score if only for the sake of Andy's blood pressure. At the heart of it Patrice really liked the both of them, Sharon and Andy were her friends too rather than just having to accept them in her life because they were her husband's friends so when she had chance to spend some quality time with Sharon all alone as she took time off from work after Andy came home from the hospital, to not just take care of him but to spend time with him and relax herself after everything that had happened (not just with Andy but in the aftermath of the shooting too), she wanted to give her a little something to use against her husband when rather than if she needed it.

Provenza looked up at her with an almost pained expression, him looking like he was in the middle of having a prostate exam. "Have you told him?" he asked, fearing the answer.

"No, not yet. I wanted to see if a deal could be reached between the two of us first Lieutenant, because by now I know how much you like the whole deal making process."

"A deal? This is blackmail!" Provenza cried.

Unable to hold it in any longer, Julio felt compelled to speak. "Snuggle bear, Sir? Really?"

His daggers quickly moved away from Sharon and over to Julio, having plenty to go around. "I happen to be an exceptional cuddler I'll have you know" he declared proudly which only resulted in more laughter, those that knew him best in physical pain as a result. "I knew it! I knew this would happen! I told him! I told Flynn that no good would come from him dating our Captain! That no good would come from allowing my Commanding Officer and my wife to become friends!"

"'Allowing?'" Sharon scoffed. "I hate to be the one to have to tell you this Lieutenant, but you're not allowing anything" she said emphatically which resulted in more laughter. "And Patrice only told me about it so that I had leverage should you try to aggravate your partner who just so happens to be my partner too and who, may I remind you once again, recently had a heart attack, should you try to aggravate him over my perfectly reasonable, private and apt term of endearment for him away from this building. So, if you don't want Andy to know about snuggle bear then you'll exclude the word 'boy' from your vocabulary altogether from this moment on."

"I'd suggest you should do the same" he shot back.

"Do we have a deal?"

Provenza looked at her amazed for a moment. "And after everything I did for you yesterday too?" he said rhetorically and not believing that he was essentially being blackmail after he had gone well beyond the call of duty a day earlier.

"Indeed Lieutenant. Indeed" she replied simply. As she spoke she shot him a glare with her eyes sparkling even though she knew she didn't need to do it, she knew he would never tell anyone about what had happened the previous afternoon and not just because the thought of their sex life traumatised him to say the least but also because he knew that she was such a private person and he would never do anything to hurt her.

"Fine. I'll keep quiet but only if you keep quiet."

"Then we have a deal" Sharon confirmed.

With the matter settled as far as Provenza was concerned anyway, Julio raised his hand into the air as he always did when he had a question or something he wanted to contribute to the conversation. "But what about us, Sir?" he asked him.

Provenza once again shot daggers at Sharon, not at all happy at the turn of events before he sat forward with real purpose, his hands clasped together on top of his desk to show that he really did mean business. "Well I'm not one for throwing my rank around willy nilly as you know, but if I don't outrank you then the Captain here," he pointed at her in the hope she was going to back him up on it, "certainly does so we're both ordering you all to forget this conversation ever happened. Okay?"

Mike nodded as he turned to face his computer again. "Sure thing, snuggle bear."

"Ye Gods!" They all laughed again as he put his head in his hands. Eventually Sharon's hand on his back prompted him to look up and ask the question he'd been so desperate to ask for nearly eighteen hours, him so far distracting her from answering Mike's initial query. "So how is Flynn anyway?" he said a little more quietly as he sat back in his chair to meet her eye. "I assume he wasn't just telling you what you wanted to hear yesterday."

Sharon sighed with contentment, a big smile on her face and so unbelievably happy it told them all they needed to know without the use of words. "Oh don't worry Lieutenant, I had all of the most important details in writing from his Doctor just to make certain that it was all on the up and up before I believed a word of it." Again they laughed since none of them expected anything less, with Provenza immediately thinking of Andy's long list of notes as he told him all about the clot before telling her in her official capacity as his Commanding Officer. "He's wonderful. Just, so so wonderful. Like his old self again." The smiles came her way almost instantly, every person there thrilled to hear it. "The grumpy, irritable, timid, almost frightened man I've been living with over the last six weeks has completely gone and I have my old charming, funny Andy back again."

They all understood instantly despite not knowing the full extent (aside from Provenza and Patrice of course) of what they'd been secretly dealing with when it came to Andy's level of depression. Aside from coming to see him a couple of times while he was still laid up in the hospital, they'd also all been to see him over the previous few weeks at home and it was easy for them to see that he wasn't himself, like he'd suddenly got so much older overnight and that spark that was usually there when they got to see him relaxed at home or in any kind of social setting with Sharon, like the day they helped him move into the condo with her was suddenly gone.

Provenza put his hand across his heart and pulled the surliest of expressions. "Oh I am so so sorry Captain" he told her as if Andy in his prime was the worst thing imaginable and he had to feel sorry for her. They laughed with Sharon placing a hand on his shoulder, taking it with the spirit it was intended.

Sharon's smile beamed in reply. "He's really really good" she told them joyfully.

"That's great Boss" Wes declared loudly, keen to add his voice to the growing crowd of well-wishers because of his position as the outsider in the group as well as now regretting taking a swing at his Captain's partner when they first met, not that any of them knew what laid ahead of them at the time.

"Really great" Mike added.

Amy stretched to briefly squeeze her hand. "We're so pleased for you both Captain."

Sharon's hand immediately went across her heart, overwhelmed by the kindness that was coming her way. "Thank you" she said and clearly feeling emotional. She then nodded as she took to her feet again, turning away from them for a moment and subtly wiping at her eye. When she faced them again she retook her previous position perched on the edge of Provenza's desk. "Thank you all, for everything."

"So Andy's back at work on Monday?" Mike asked.

"Yes" she nodded. "He's back at work on Monday now that he's fighting fit again. But you don't need to take my word for it, you can all see for yourselves just how good he's doing now because he'll be in later so we can have lunch together." Again they all smiled at this news, much like they did when they watched them walk into Mariana's makeshift wake hand in hand just over twelve months earlier. "Although at the same time something tells me he has ulterior motives for his visit."

"Like what?" Provenza queried.

"Like getting you to sign his return to work papers before he gets me to do the same thing over lunch."

"You mean you haven't already signed them for him?" Provenza asked with disbelief.

"Of course not." Provenza looked at her surprised and more than a little confused by what he was hearing for a moment until she elaborated further. "Lieutenant, he has to bring it to you first as his Supervising Officer before I sign it as his Commanding Officer."

"Ye Gods! The rules!" he cried. "I should have known!" He then pointed his fingers at Wes. "And let this be an early warning for you Detective, in this division the rules are not merely 'guidelines' but to be obeyed at all times."

"Isn't that what it's like in every division Lieutenant?" Wes asked with a frown.

"Oh great! Another kiss ass. Just what this division needed" he grumbled after having put up with years of first Amy and then Andy agreeing with everything Sharon said. Again they all laughed as Sharon gave Wes a sympathetic smile. She was already well aware that Provenza did not like him but figured it was because he saw him as Andy's replacement just like Andy did himself. But with the man in question coming back to work imminently she hoped that it would all smooth over and in a couple of months he would be made to feel at home in Major Crimes just like she and Amy had been years earlier.

"So, what happened yesterday?" Wes asked and uncertain as to why Sharon had thanked them all when she first walked in.

Sharon and Provenza shot each other a quick look, the situation like when Jack opened his big fat mouth and they all suddenly knew that Andy was seriously ill and it was no longer a secret. It was picked up on by Mike immediately and only added to his suspicions about why Sharon had left so abruptly a day earlier and much more importantly, had been behaving so erratically as she left, forgetting just about everything apart from her shoes.

"Nothing much" Provenza replied as he cleared his throat and was lost for words for a brief moment.

"I just left early to go and collect him from the Doctor's office that's all" Sharon clarified a lot more casually and almost dismissively as if it really wasn't a big deal in the slightest.

"Nothing worthy of discussion anyway" Provenza added before he cleared his throat again and Wes already knew that it meant he needed to drop the conversation if he didn't want to piss him off even more.

"By the way, where did you vanish to yesterday afternoon, Lieutenant?" Julio asked him, Provenza sudden disappearance a day earlier just as bizarre and uncharacteristic as Sharon's had been…at least where a ham wasn't involved anyway.

Provenza and Sharon shared another glance at each other before he quickly answered with a loud "Nowhere."

"You went somewhere" Buzz said and just as intrigued as Julio clearly was.

"I had to run an errand that's all. I had to meet a…to meet an old acquaintance" he told him to the desperate sound of Sharon trying with all her might to stop herself from laughing, not just because he was on the back foot but because he had used her code word for 'sex,' a word she had never expected to hear him say again.

"Okay and how were they?" Julio asked and refusing to let it go.

"Ye Gods I really don't want to know." Provenza quickly put his head in his hands again and it was all Sharon could do to stop herself from laughing, her hand covering her mouth while her shoulders shook violently, another wave of affection for her second in command hitting her since it was clear her secrets were always extremely safe with him.

"So, are we going to do anything on Monday to celebrate?" Amy asked and expecting there to be some kind of party.

Sharon shrugged nonchalantly. "I hadn't really thought about it."

Provenza laughed loudly. "I don't believe that for even a second, not with your sense of occasion anyway."

"That's what Andy said but I haven't" she insisted but was then met with the same look of disbelief that Andy had given her when he asked the same question. "What? I haven't!" she repeated. They continued to laugh which prompted Sharon to stand and pull her purse back onto her shoulder. "Haven't you all got paperwork to finish up?" she asked them with Darth Raydor putting in her first appearance in a very long time.

Again they all laughed, taking it as the joke it was but regardless they turned back to their work that they were slowly getting on with while laughing at Provenza's tales of woe when she first arrived. Sharon smiled at them as she took to her feet again, her purse resting on her shoulder again. She could hardly remember life without them anymore and more importantly she simply didn't want to, that enough to stir up emotions in her on what had already been an emotionally charged twenty four hours. She set off towards her office to likewise get on with her paperwork from the previous day until her attention was drawn to something rather unexpected.

Before Sharon had even taken two steps in the direction of her office, Amy received a text message, her cell vibrating on her desk. She picked up her phone as she glanced at Sharon with unexpected levels of glee and excitement before she opened the message. It was a picture message from the one and only Patrice Provenza and Amy's eyes widened with a mixture shock and joy when she saw the image that was contained within the message, laughing immediately with a hand across her mouth and meaning the scene quickly caught Sharon's attention too, coming to a standstill behind her.

"Oh my God!" Amy laughed as she raised her phone up higher so that Sharon could see it over her shoulder.

Instantly everyone's heads snapped up to see what was going on. "What?" Julio asked.

"Come here" Amy replied quickly, waving at them all to join her and with the exception of Provenza, they quickly stood and moved to stand behind her, looking at her screen from over her shoulder. Their reactions were immediate with all of them laughing loudly when they saw what had got Amy so amused and excited to begin with.

"Ha!" Mike cried, casting an amused look at Provenza.

"What?" he said in reply, really not wanting to get up and see for himself.

"No way!" Buzz laughed, moving in closer to get a better look.

"What?!" Provenza shouted again and by that point was starting to get fed up with the lack of information coming his way but at the same time he really didn't want to get up out of his chair if he didn't have to.

"It's a photo Patrice has just sent me" Amy finally revealed with a shrug and sounding like it was a common occurrence.

"That she..." He couldn't finish the sentence, his face turning red as his rage levels grew. "Well, how has she got your number?" he asked and almost foaming at the mouth with the way his two worlds had collided once again. Having Sharon and Andy close to his wife was one thing because he loved them both and they were his closest friends but having the rest of the division do it too, that was a step too far.

Sharon smiled at him. "I gave it to her" she told him with a shrug.

Provenza wanted to complain about it, wanted to scream the building down as he tossed his chair out of the window but it was a complaint that he had for 'Sharon' rather than 'Captain Raydor' and given how hard both she and Andy had fought to maintain that huge and often impenetrable wall between their work lives and their private lives, he likewise opted to bite his tongue until they were in a more social setting. With a vain in his forehead starting to pulse he asked "What's she sent you?" while still trying to maintain his disinterest.

"A photo from the wedding last week."

His face instantly dropped. "What?!"

Provenza and Patrice had attended Liz's wedding (the first ever Mrs Louis Provenza) on the previous Saturday afternoon, well technically Patrice had gladly attended while Provenza was dragged kicking and screaming and had been complaining about it ever since. Even the fact that he was welcoming back the other half of his pension into his life once again and getting the opportunity to spend time with his children and Grandkids wasn't enough to make him want to go but one look from Patrice let him know he had no other choice in the matter so off he went, dragging his feet with every step he took. He didn't enjoy it, in fact he hated every second of it and was determined to before they even arrived. Despite Patrice being without a shadow of a doubt the one true love of his life, it still felt slightly strange and almost wrong to sit there and watch Liz marry another man. He put that down to the fact that she was his first wife, his first real love and because they had children and now Grandchildren together, because despite their divorce and the hostility between them at times, she had always been there for him, through all of the heart break, through all of his other divorces and they had a bond that would never be broken.

Ever since that day the attention on him had been intense at work, all of them wanting to know what had gone on and if any of the other former Mrs Provenzas were in attendance too but he had remained stubbornly and annoyingly tight-lipped, even more so because of the way they were constantly teasing him about it every chance they had. The only person to know anything about it was actually Sharon and that was only because Patrice had told her all about it just a couple of days earlier when she called to check up on the both of them one evening, she'd even seen the photo (and plenty others) that was now making everyone else laugh which was something else Andy was yet to be made aware of too.

"Well you weren't telling us anything about the wedding and I was curious" Amy said with a shrug of her shoulders, her impatience being well rewarded in her opinion.

"Are they who I think they are?" Buzz asked as he pointed at the screen.

That told Provenza all he needed to know and he dropped his head in his hands once again with a quiet and solemn cry of "Ye Gods!"

"Yes, that is the Lieutenant with all of his wives" Sharon confirmed.

"Ex! Ex-wives!" Provenza was quick to correct.

"You look like you're being held hostage" Mike pointed out.

"That's because I was!"

The photo in question was of Provenza with a face like thunder (or as Patrice described him to Sharon over the phone 'like a Bulldog chewing on a wasp'), standing in the middle of all of the former Mrs Louie Provenzas along with the current one, each of whom wore dazing smiles to match their wedding attire. Liz had not been joking when she spent a few days in the Murder Room with Frank following the robbery at the jewellery store, she along with all of his other ex-wives really did meet once a month in the bar at the Hilton for a drink (and even though he also frequently joked about it to him, Andy had yet to join them as one of the collection since he had been with him longer than any of them). By that point they were all really close friends and had even reached out to Patrice to invite her to join them one evening too so when Liz was sending out the wedding invites, it was as natural to her to send one to the members of her little 'Provenza Divorce Club' as it was to send one to her ex-husband and her family.

The funny thing was, that wasn't even the worst photo that Patrice could have sent Amy from that day either with another one that had already been emailed to Sharon days earlier being the best of the bunch, an image that would amuse her for many years to come, one for her to look at whenever she felt a little down.

Provenza didn't want his photo taken with them just like he didn't want to be there at all but what Patrice wanted, Patrice usually got especially from him so he put his best suit on, took hold of her hand as tightly as he could without cutting off the blood supply to her fingers and off they went to the wedding. Once there he wanted to lay low as much as possible, hiding in a dark, out of the way corner during the reception and if that meant hiding from his children and his grandchildren too to avoid having to lend them any money or drawing any attention to himself then that's what he was going to do. As expected Patrice had other ideas and when Liz wanted to take a photo of all of them together he had little choice in the matter, pulled into the middle of the group of ladies, all of whom he had married (more than once in Heather's case) and the photo taken before he had chance to force a smile onto his face.

With a solitary photo taken Provenza went to flee and spend the rest of the evening in a very dark corner with several large glasses of wine in his hand but Patrice and Liz grabbed him by the hands and brought him back to them again. On the count of three and with no idea what was coming, every single former (and current) Mrs Provenza moved in to kiss his cheeks at the same time, the wedding photographer taking that many photos of his shocked face that the flashes temporarily turned the wedding into something that resembled an illegal rave.

It was hard to see from the outside just what Louie Provenza had, how he was able to attract as many wonderful women as he had during the course of his life, to marry them all (except Lauren) and then usually ruining his marriages by sleeping with the babysitter or just not being there for them because of work. No matter what he said to Andy while looking up at RACR, he wasn't exactly George Clooney in the looks department despite his kind eyes and warm smile when he put his mind to it. He was cheap too, Louie Provenza able to squeeze a nickel until Jefferson choked. His cologne came from a gas station and often burned your eyes as well as your nostrils if you spent too much time in his company. But he had a natural charm and charisma that could even put Andy to shame and very much like René Artois in 'Allo 'Allo it had women flocking to him in their droves.

It was actually a topic of conversation that took place as Provenza ran off in search of a stiff drink and some peace and quiet which meant Patrice was momentarily left alone with her predecessors, fully relaxed and enjoying herself.

Liz watched on with amusement as Provenza scurried away back to his table. "How the hell did the five of us all end up marrying Louie Provenza of all people?" she asked once she had turned back to her nearest and dearest.

"If you say that in front of anyone else make sure they know it wasn't all at the same time" Heather said, having married him twice herself, a fact that still surprised her.

"I'm serious! How did this happen?" Liz asked again.

Sharon shrugged before she finished her latest glass of wine, already feeling a little lose lipped as a result. "Because he can be a big grouchy stud when he puts his mind to it."

"I wouldn't say 'big' exactly" Patrice replied and talking more in terms of his height rather than anything else and therefore not immediately understanding why her predecessors were laughing at her. "What? What's so funny?"

"And this coming from the love of his life!" Liz laughed.

It was then that Patrice suddenly realised how that sounded and started laughing along with them as she blushed a little. "I didn't mean it like that!" she insisted as they continued to laugh at her unfortunate slip of the tongue.

"Which one is which?" Buzz asked as they continued to examine the photo having only met Liz and Patrice before (and not including Andy as his other wife).

"That's Liz, Heather..." Sharon said as she pointed at them one by one.

"That's the one he married twice" Mike added.

"And the two Sharon's" the other Sharon in his life said, filling in the remaining blanks.

"And how do you know that?" Provenza asked with yet more daggers.

Sharon stood up straight and smiled at him, her arms folded across her chest. "Because your boyfriend just so happens to be my boyfriend too" she noted smugly and earning another trademark 'Ha!' out of Mike because to Sharon in particular, it really did feel like she was in a 'thrupple' at times, three of them in their relationship (and the reason why they had a 'No talking about Provenza in bed' rule) but then again Patrice felt much the same way about both Sharon and Andy. "Plus, Patrice sent it to me about ten seconds after it was taken."

"What?" he cried once again and looking truly horrified. "I told Flynn this would happen! I told him!" he continued to cry with one of his biggest reservations against the two of them dating in the beginning being his much loved Captain knowing a little too much about his home life as a result.

Sharon laughed as she shook her head at him before Provenza watched her walk towards her office. As had become the norm since her return to work (and when he was recovering both before and after his surgery twelve months earlier) her hand skirted across the top of Andy's chair as she walked passed it. It was a permanent reminder of his absence and they'd all watched her do it multiple times while he was recovering as if she gained strength from it somehow. When her fingertips finally left it, almost dragging them away, she finally walked into her office and immediately put her purse away in the top drawer of the unit behind her desk. Before she could sit down and start to work her way through the huge mountain of paperwork left for her on her desk, Provenza stood up and strolled to her office, gently knocking on her door before tentatively stepping inside.

"Yes Lieutenant? What can I do for you?" Sharon asked and expected an update on what had happened after she left the previous afternoon rather than any sort of 'tongue-in-cheek' anger over how close she had become with Patrice.

"Have you got a moment Captain?"

"Of course." Provenza nodded and walked the rest of the way inside, quietly closing the door behind him. "Anything the matter?" she asked as she sat down on the edge of her desk to face him, her arms folded across her chest.

"No, not at all." He cleared his throat for a moment. The truth was he had a very long list of potentially awkward topics to discuss with her and there were some that he was dreading based on what she had told him a day earlier when he drove her home and she had taken the chance to reveal what had been weighing heavy on her mind of late but for his own sake and his own peace of mind if nothing else, they were conversations he needed to have with her regardless. "First of all and without several pairs of ears listening in on the conversation and asking a lot more awkward questions about where we both disappeared to yesterday afternoon," he started to say as he nodded out towards their colleagues and laughed with a little embarrassment, "I needed to tell you that, in your absence, the deal was signed without a hitch and all of our reports and the paperwork is on your desk." Sharon turned and looked at the stack beside her with a more than grateful nod. "I had intended to call you myself late yesterday afternoon and update you on our progress before I finally went home but I figured you were probably too busy at the time..." He paused as he frowned. "Which is something I really wish I hadn't thought of again" he said with a shudder and making her laugh again. "I looked everything over last night so you've only really got to sign off on it all."

"Thank you Lieutenant." She moved her hand across her heart, a sincere appreciation of how he had helped her of late, from holding her hand the entire time that Andy was being treated to the way he drove her home the previous afternoon. "I mean it, thank you for your help yesterday, for everything."

"It was my pleasure Captain although let's not make a habit of it okay?" he joked.

"You've got yourself a deal there" Sharon laughed.

"Good" he nodded before they laughed again but he quickly stopped and then looked more serious for a moment. "The other thing I wanted to ask was..." He paused as he took a step closer to her. "Is he really okay? Really? Like I said I would have called last night to check up on him but I didn't want to...you know."

Sharon laughed and put a hand on his shoulder to reassure him, seeing that some of her behaviour the day before may have left him wondering if she was being entirely truthful about the whole situation since it was perfectly understandable once he knew what was going on with Andy but still it was very unlike her to just drop everything like that and race home at the drop of a hat. At the heart of it he was just worried about his friends, both of which had experienced an extremely tough couple of months together.

"Yes, he is absolutely wonderful Lieutenant" he said with a smile. "Absolutely wonderful."

He smiled back in return, that a relaxed reaction he could believe. "So, you've got your boy back again?" he asked.

Sharon was sure that he would continue to use that word as a way to irritate Andy until one of them died but his use of it then, in that context and with warmth to his tone was purely out of love for the both of them. She laughed and started to get a little emotional as a result of it all, her sense of relief palpable. "Yes I think I have, I really really have" she told him joyfully. "I won't deny I'm more than a little worried about him right now and that all of the progress he made yesterday will be gone again by the time I get home but I guess I'll find out more when he stops by later." Provenza smiled and nodded, pleased to hear it. "But he hasn't stopped smiling since I got home yesterday."

"Oh I'm sure and I'm fairly sure I know he reason why too" he said with a roll of his eyes, a show of true disgust as she laughed. "Good." He couldn't help but smile back at her all too knowingly as he paused. "I told you you'd get him back didn't I?"

Sharon nodded and managed a small chuckle, forever grateful for the way he took care of her at the hospital despite his own fears about what was happening. But it wasn't just that. He had been there for all of them since the moment it happened, always on the other end of the phone and taking care of all three of them and if she was being completely honest she wasn't sure she would have got through it without him, at the least just providing her with someone she could talk to about Andy and who understood their relationship and just how far they had come as a couple. She'd been wanting to take him aside and thank him for weeks but the opportunity never seemed to present itself especially at a time when Andy wasn't very close by to overhear them. In truth the location and the situation was hardly ideal right there and then especially since she had left work earlier the day before and needed to play catch up but it didn't matter to her at that moment in time, life was on the verge of returning to normal and she was going to take the chance to express the full extent of her gratitude to the man she loved dearly while she could, the fragility of life made all the more real to them all in that time. She stood and walked to him before wrapping her arms around him and hugging him tightly, catching the brief awkward expression on his face due to their location and the blinds to her office still being open.

"Suddenly I'm wishing I'd closed the blinds" he mumbled as he responded in kind and then wrapped his arms around her, a quick glance at Mike and Buzz on the other side of the glass who were clearly watching them with a little concern.

"It's too late now" she chuckled.

With that he started to hold her all the tighter and despite his jokes on the subject, he didn't care who saw him embracing his Captain and friend in her office, his Captain and friend who he now adored more than anyone else except his wife and children. "Then I'll tell them all you looked like you were about to faint and I had to catch you."

Sharon laughed again before she pulled back just enough so that she could look him in the eye, not letting him go and with something on her mind and then as good a time as any to bring it up, the last few weeks teaching her not to put off what she could do or say right then and there because she just didn't know how long she would have the people she loved in her life. "Then please let me take the opportunity while it's on offer to me." She paused for a split second. "Thank you. Lieutenant, thank you, thank you, thank you." Beginning to tear up more than ever she let go of him and stepped back to her desk to get a tissue and turn her back on the Murder Room so that no one else would see how emotional she had become.

With one eye on realising she didn't want anyone else to know what was going on while still taking care of her as best as he could, Provenza stepped towards her but tried his best not to look too concerned even though he was, still not overly convinced that Andy was really okay again such was the way she left the day before, it so uncharacteristic even though it was fully justified in his opinion.

"Captain? Thank you for what?" he asked as he put his hand on her arm.

She wiped her eyes and then took his hand. "For absolutely everything." She fought hard to compose herself and give him a smile so that he could stop panicking about her. "I know for a fact that I wouldn't have got through the last six weeks without having you by my side to help us night and day. I've only made it this far because of you, Lieutenant."

"Oh well Captain, I didn't do all that..."

"Believe me Lieutenant, you did everything, absolutely everything."

Provenza looked away a little awkwardly and didn't want to be thanked for doing a job that came so naturally to him. Yes it was true that Andy had asked him to take care of her with a jab of his finger to his chest while he was still waiting to be sent up to the cath lab so he could be treated. And yes he was only taking care of his best friend's partner while he was sadly incapacitated like thousands of other people probably did across the globe every single day. And yes Sharon was also his friend too and he loved her with every fibre of his being, telling her as much himself for the first time after Andy went into surgery. But none of that stuff really mattered to Sharon. It didn't matter that it was common place and it was expected from a friend under those set of circumstances. During those long and torturous six weeks Louie Provenza had gone above and beyond the call of duty and he had continued to take care of her and Andy right up to and including the way that he had driven her home the day before so that she could finally celebrate Andy's return to full health (both in a physical sense and it also seemed a mental one too) with him as quickly as possible, at times in a way that was even detrimental to his own health. And he was still doing it, coming into her office to ensure that everything really was okay, that she was okay and that life was finally returning to normal once again.

By taking care of Sharon in the way that he did Provenza had taken some of the mounting pressure from her shoulders and therefore enabled her to focus solely on Andy and for that reason alone, to Sharon he was an absolute lifesaver as much as the medical staff who had treated Andy were, believing she wouldn't have made it through to the other side with her sanity intact if it wasn't for him constantly being by her side and holding her hand. Gavin and Andrea had been there too of course as much as they were able as well as Ricky flying down that first week while Andy was still in hospital but it wasn't the same, none of it was like having her rock by her side, like having Louie Provenza in her corner. Amy had taken it upon herself to call Andrea as soon as Andy was moved to the ICU after his procedure and while they waited with her for another hour before Sharon was allowed to go and sit with him in his own room, they both had extremely busy lives of their own and not even close to the same level of attachment to Andy as Provenza and Patrice did. Both Gavin and Andrea were always on the other end of the phone for her to talk to should she need them and they had been to see them several times after he was finally discharged from hospital (Andrea cooking them something that Rusty and Andy hid in their pockets before they could put it in the trash and Gavin bringing his 'house boy' over to clean the place from top to bottom one afternoon) but none of it was the same as Provenza and the way he took care of her, it now bonding them for life.

"Lieutenant, I am being deadly serious here when I say to you that I know I simply wouldn't have made it to this point without you by my side every step of the way."

She took a very deep breath in a battle to compose herself, easily breaking down completely if they weren't at work and if she only allowed it to happen. During the last six weeks Sharon had tried so hard to keep it all in around Andy as much as she could so as not to give him yet another thing to worry about on top of his own health. Given her latest battle it only served to highlight the poor choice in location they were in to have that particular conversation but that 'thank you' from Sharon simply couldn't wait a moment longer, what with them both of them more keenly aware than ever of the fragility of life and it was already long overdue. So Provenza allowed her the time to compose herself by staying silent before she continued to get it all off of her chest.

"And whether you like it or not Lieutenant, I consider you to be one of my closest friends."

They both laughed at that for a couple of reasons. Firstly it was just a funny thing for her to say given that she never ever called him anything other than 'Lieutenant' even on the rare occasions when he called her 'Sharon' like as they waited for Andy to have his angioplasty, a situation many would say definitely warranted a more informal vernacular between them but instead it was just another sign of how much she loved him and also respected him and she was just very comfortable calling him that. Secondly, during that time as they waited for Andy to be treated they'd both revealed just how much they loved each other for the very first time, it not a big deal really since they were by that point very close friends but they were also once enemies (on Provenza's side at least) and they'd come a long way in a very short period of time with both of them thinking that their friendship with each other was probably the most important friendship of their lives up until that point. And it wasn't like it was a shock that they felt that way about each other given the length of time he had spent under her command and all of the double dates and celebrations they shared with each other over the last year in particular on top of what had happened with Rusty, Provenza almost becoming her co-parent before the adoption which had and continued to help her out enormously. If that wasn't enough they now also had a love for Andy to bond them together too but no one knew (other than Andy) that they had said it to each other, actually used those words 'I love you' in a way that was not too dissimilar to how you would tell the love of your life how you felt about them for the first time, their close relationship unique and treasured by the both of them partly because it was just so unexpected from where their working relationship began. It was a bond they would have for the rest of their lives, seeing each other through their eventual retirements and loss of spouses and everything in between, their most unexpected friend becoming their best friend.

"And I will simply never ever be able to find the words needed to describe the depth of my gratitude for everything you've done for me and Andy over the last six weeks" Sharon told him and on the verge of completely falling apart, wrapping her arms around him tightly yet again. "Even if I live to be one hundred I will never be able to find the right words to truly express my gratitude, so instead all I can say to you is thank you, thank you, thank you."

He wrapped his arms more securely around her, one hand cradling the back of her head as he kissed her on the cheek, on the verge of getting extremely emotional himself. "Honestly, it was my honour and my privilege Captain." He paused as his eyes slipped closed and they just held each other. "And besides, it was as much for me as it was for you. Despite my better judgement I am pretty fond of the moron" he reluctantly confessed which caused her to let out a soft chuckle. "Don't you dare tell him I said that by the way because I'll deny it and tell everyone you're crazy! And you're living with Flynn so they'll believe me too."

"Don't worry," Sharon laughed, "your secret is safe with me, Lieutenant. You have my word." They pulled apart once again and he quickly offered up his handkerchief from the pocket of his pants. She laughed when she saw it since by that point and after the two awful months that she had endured, she had quite the collection of his handkerchiefs already. She took it and carefully wiped her eyes. "Thank you."

"It had to come in handy sooner than later" he replied as he gestured to the handkerchief. "As my Father used to say, 'A man should never ever leave the house without at least one handkerchief in his pocket, just in case he runs into someone who needs it.'" She laughed and nodded in response, Andy having a few things like that passed on from his Father too, her two senior Lieutenants gentlemen down to their very bones. "But seriously Sharon," he said as he put a hand across his heart, "you're my friend, and it has been my very great honour and privilege to help you through all of this."

"I know," she nodded with a smile, "but still, from the very bottom of my heart, thank you."

It didn't matter what Sharon said or how many times she said it to him even because he still didn't want to accept her gratitude on the subject, of the opinion that he simply didn't need to be thanked for being a good friend in upsetting circumstances, but at the same time he also knew it would be the only way to stop the conversation. "You're most very welcome Captain. Fingers crossed it is the very last time I have to hold your hand at that hospital or any hospital for that matter."

She nodded and sighed, the previous twelve months of her life filled with serious worries over Andy's health, constantly on the verge of losing him when she had only just found him in the first place. She felt like she had aged a decade in little under a year. "Agreed."

"And you'd better make sure Flynn knows that too because I'm telling you now, if he ever puts us through something like this crap ever again I'll kill him myself" he stated. Sharon laughed as she wiped her eyes again before she offered his handkerchief back. "Keep it" he insisted. "For your collection." She laughed and nodded again as she slipped it into the pocket of her jacket, thinking about the big box of handkerchiefs she was going to need to buy him for the holidays by way of another thank you. He stepped towards her and placed his hand on her shoulder. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Yes," she replied quickly with a bright smile, "I'm going to be just fine, thanks to you. It's just…" she sighed as she sat down on the edge of her desk again, "I have missed my Andy Flynn oh so very much."

It didn't need further elaboration because he had seen for himself just how depressed Andy had been since it happened and therefore how Sharon would miss him as he recovered and got back to his old self again. So Provenza nodded and as he watched his friend taking a few moments to compose herself, he was delighted to see how relaxed and happy she looked compared to the last two months and yet she also looked exhausted too. Her makeup was hiding a lot, a multitude of sins but he could still see it, Sharon looking older, thinner and more tired seemingly by the minute. Part of him didn't want to ask the question because he knew fully that some of her current tiredness was from spending half the night 'renewing acquaintances' with Andy and yet he felt compelled to ask all the same just to check on her wellbeing.

"Did you get much sleep last night?" he asked and fully aware that she was running on empty and had been for some time. She simply sighed at him in reply rather than smiling or blushing about it and that told him all he needed to know, even when they weren't busy 'celebrating' she was still hadn't slept, watching him sleep instead. "Sharon, you've..."

"I know. I know" she replied as she sighed again, not needing him to tell her what she already knew for herself. "But I just couldn't stop myself from watching him sleep all night."

"But it can't continue" Provenza said simply. She didn't respond and it was clear to him that she was going to keep on doing it until she made herself sick too. "Sharon, what do you think is going to happen to him if you take your eyes off him in order to sleep?"

"I don't know" she replied with another sigh. She knew she was being ridiculous and that keeping watch over Andy had no effect on his heart but stopping herself from doing it, being able to let that fear go was something that was proving extremely difficult. "But I'm working on it, I promise."

Meanwhile back in the Murder Room, all eyes were on the Captain's office and what they felt was the worrying sight of Provenza trying to do his best to comfort her, the two of them embracing several times already. It wasn't an uncommon sight to say the least, especially of late but with the way she had left so suddenly just a day earlier, it being so uncharacteristic of her in every way imaginable, they simply couldn't stop themselves from worrying about them and wondering if more was going on than they knew about, after all it wouldn't be the first time that the two of them had kept secret the poor state of Andy's health.

Amy was the first one to voice her concern, unable to take her eyes off them. "Something is definitely wrong" she said fairly quietly, her worries clear in the tone of her voice.

"Not necessarily" Mike replied with real confidence. They all turned to look at him, even Wes who also had a sense of unease about what they were witnessing. Despite his words they all looked at the Lieutenant more than a little disbelievingly given the circumstances and evidence to the contrary even though his tone of voice made it sound like he genuinely believed what he was saying. "Look at it like this," he started to say when he was met with scepticism, "if Andy was still sick or the Doctor had found something new yesterday, then I'm certain they would tell us and you can be damn sure if that were the case, then Sharon would not be here right now. She would be at home or at the hospital with Andy" he offered before he shrugged dismissively. "But she's here and so is Provenza and Andy is stopping by later for lunch too."

"But it wouldn't be the first time they've kept something like this from us though, Tao" Julio pointed out, the news of his blood clot catching them all by surprise and not just because it was Jack Raydor of all people who had let the cat out of the bag.

"And his problems haven't just been physical either" Buzz added.

Again they all turned to look at the latest voice in the conversation only with a real sense of curiosity this time around because it was clear that Buzz knew more than they did. But they had all been there that day at the hospital, after Taylor's funeral and saw for themselves just how angry and not to mention depressed Andy had become with very little progress being made since then too or at least so it seemed when they stopped by the condo to see him. As for Buzz, well he always spoke to Rusty every day anyway either in person or on the phone and those six weeks of Andy's convalescence were no different with the young man opening up to his friend more and more on numerous occasions. Rusty was worried about the pair of them, seeing his Mom's annoying boyfriend turn into a man he hardly recognised anymore, his Mom worried sick about him and as a result their relationship becoming more strained by the day. He had naturally voiced those concerns to Buzz when he found that he couldn't hide his fears any longer and needed to talk to someone about it, fearing that they were on the verge of breaking up given what Andy had revealed to him on the day he was discharged from the hospital, that he had tried and failed to get Sharon to leave him for her own good and Rusty's too for that matter (a conversation he had omitted in his heart to hearts with Buzz for obvious reasons). Buzz had done his best to reassure him and told him not to worry about it because it was a difficult time for everyone but it would all come right in the end once Andy was better, because they could all see just how much they loved each other and a rocky patch was not going to put an end to feelings that strong, especially since they had only just moved in together. He may have said it to Rusty in order to reassure him but that didn't mean Buzz didn't share some of the same concerns himself as a result of it, his own worries about his friend Andy Flynn but kept them to himself.

"You don't think that they've…they wouldn't have split up would they?" Amy asked.

"Are you kidding?" Julio scoffed. "Flynn worships the ground she walks on."

"And vice versa, you could see that at the hospital if nothing else" Wes added, keen to help ease their concerns as someone who was still completely neutral at that point and able to report on what he could see without any emotion getting in the way.

"And yet…" Amy shrugged.

"Exactly. And yet" Mike repeated.

Back inside Sharon's office Provenza was still searching for all of the information that would finally mean he went to bed that night and slept soundly for the first time in six weeks, both of his friends better in every way possible. "So he can come back to work on Monday?"

"Indeed he can Lieutenant" Sharon nodded. "Our full time dedicated but probably grumpy as hell desk monkey returns for a second spell chained to his desk on Monday morning, all being well."

Provenza nodded and to Sharon it properly looked like that was the end to the matter but he had another question on the tip of his tongue only this time he wasn't sure if he should ask it or not and yet he bit the bullet just to make sure all was okay, getting it all over and done with in one foul swoop. "And no more talk about you being better off without him?"

"No, thankfully." She smiled up at him as much as she was able.

The simple truth was that Sharon was extremely relieved that they hadn't yet revisited that conversation because it really wasn't one she wanted to have twice. Yet she was glad at the same time that she had told Provenza about it a day earlier, like a massive weight had been lifted from her shoulders just by saying the words aloud to another person. Before that car ride home she hadn't mentioned a word about it to anyone and that included Andy, her lips sealed around Andrea, Gavin and Patrice even though it was clear to them all that clearly something had happened aside from a heart attack. She hadn't intended to say anything to Provenza either as he drove her home but when Andy called her to tell her the good news a day earlier and he sounded just like his old self once again, it had only made her all the more worried about losing him again. Yet such was the sense of liberation she felt after telling him about that conversation, it made her wish that she had told him weeks earlier so that she didn't have to face it all alone.

"It's not been mentioned since that day in the hospital much to my relief, so I think I may have successfully managed to convince him that, without him I have nothing."

"That's not strictly true but I understand" Provenza told her, smiling brightly. "Good. I'm very glad to hear it. But, you know, I still might have to give him a good slap around the back of his stupid thick head if he ever tells me about that particular conversation himself" he was quick to warn her. They both laughed at that and she nodded, not needing to ask him to keep it to himself as he had made it abundantly clear to her already that he would never ever betray her trust like that even though he desperately wanted to scream 'What were you thinking?!' at him at the top of his lungs, having spent so long watching Andy moon all over her without ever finding the courage to ask her on that first real date only to discover that after he finally had everything he'd ever wanted, he had tried to get her to walk away from him. "So, back to work on Monday it is" he repeated again and getting another nod of confirmation from Sharon. "And you're okay with that are you?" he asked, Sharon looking back at him puzzled. "When he comes by later do you want me to sign his paperwork or do you want me to hold off for a little while? According to the rules," he said before he sighed and rolled his eyes as she laughed, not believing that those words were coming from his mouth, "he can't get you to sign off on it unless I sign off on it first. Ye Gods! Now even I'm quoting the rulebook!" he cried as she continued to laugh. "So, under those circumstances, I guess what I'm asking is, do you want me to sign off on his return or do you need me to play the bad guy on this occasion to keep him at home with you a little while longer?"

Again Sharon just smiled at him, appreciating the thought if nothing else. "I appreciate the thought Lieutenant, I really do, but yes, I want you to sign off on his immediate return. He won't be going out into the field for a very long time, if he does ever again in fact, despite already broaching the subject with me this morning," she told him with a roll of her eyes as Provenza laughed, not expecting anything less from his partner, "so there's no cause for any concern on that front but there's absolutely no reason why he can't stay right here in the Murder Room with me."

Provenza chuckled to himself. "Keeping an eye on him, huh?"

"Oh I think we'll all be keeping a very close eye on him from now on" Sharon corrected him although he was right, but she was still keen to ensure that to Andy, it never looked like she was mothering him. Provenza laughed and nodded, agreeing with her. "I don't know if he's said anything to you about it but he's been so terrified he was going to be forced to retire since the moment it happened. He desperately wants to come back to work and more than anything we need him to come back to work before Winnie Davis becomes Assistant Chief and ensures he can't."

"Is she really in the running?"

"According to Chief Howard."

"Ye Gods!" Provenza cried, his eyes bulging over what would be the worst possible outcome not just for the LAPD but for their division in particular, expecting that he would very quickly follow Andy and Sharon onto the scrap heap as a result.

"Oh and he knows by the way."

"He knows what?"

"That you'll be taking the lead on his clearances from now on rather than me" Sharon was quick to reply and clarify, her sigh that followed letting him know the kind of reaction that news was greeted with.

Provenza smiled and suppressed a laugh. "And how did he take it?" he asked, expecting to hear that his partner was still complaining about it, now that he had control over his destiny, at work at least.

"Not well," she replied with another frustrated sigh which only made Provenza laugh and her chuckle too despite knowing how pissed Andy was by it, "but that may have to do with the fact that as I was heading out of the door this morning..."

"Afternoon."

"As I was heading out the door this morning," she said again and ignoring him as he laughed at her, "he asked if we could talk about his potential return to the field."

"Already? He hasn't had one minute behind a desk yet."

"I know, that's what I told him but he wants to know why he can't roll out to crime scenes with the rest of you."

"Because he's not signed off on it yet, that's why! Moron!" he cried and received a simple shrug of 'I know' in reply. "Okay. Don't worry about it. This is why you've put me in charge of this situation after all. Maybe in a few months' time he can roll out if his Captain is there? Try that one out for size first?"

"Oh he'll just love that! I'll truly be babysitting him in his eyes."

Provenza chuckled to himself. "I don't mean to contradict you here Captain but until you two sit down and have some much needed and extremely long overdue conversations about all of this crap with him, you have no idea what he's thinking and for that matter, he doesn't know what you're thinking either." Sharon nodded at him with a barely contained roll of her eyes because it was all true and she knew it but that didn't mean she wanted to hear it. Provenza sighed and she knew he had something else to say to her and she probably wasn't going to like it. "Captain, I hope you won't take this the wrong way or think that I'm interfering..."

"I would never think you were interfering, Lieutenant." She smiled at him and despite rolling her eyes at him just seconds earlier over the same subject, she was happy for him to offer any advice he thought beneficial since it was all coming from a place of love and he only wanted what was best for the both of them.

"Right, so believe me when I say that this is coming from a place of love, but it's time for you to relax again Sharon." He paused for a moment to let that sink in as she just smiled at him and wondered if Andy had spoken to him about it as she had made her way into work because it was almost the exact thing that he had said to her that morning. "I know that it has been more than justified lately but you've looked like you've been holding your breath this whole time."

Sharon nodded but she couldn't answer him, not yet, feeling so emotional as he spotted her problem and tried his best to help. That panicky feeling in the pit of her stomach, the feeling that had been there since the moment she watched Andy grab his chest and then slump to the floor just feet from where they now stood was not about to go anywhere any time soon as much as she desperately wanted it too. But she had already acknowledged that she had to at least try, for Andy's sake alone if not her own and that was a good enough first step to take for now.

"Andy is okay now" he reminded her as he placed his hand on her shoulder. "Everything is okay now and everything will continue to be okay" he said with a shrug. "It's time to just let it all go."

She smiled appreciatively up at him as she fought to maintain her composure. "You're not the first person to tell me that today" she confessed.

Provenza chuckled, glad to know that Andy's head wasn't so far up his own ass that he failed to see how the love of his life continued to suffer over him. "Ordinarily I'd say 'Great minds think alike' but since we're talking about Flynn here, I'd really rather not" he quipped which thankfully made her laugh. "But he's right Sharon. It's time to let it all go."

"I know, I know it is." She took a deep breath, another attempt to keep her emotions under control. "But it's been so overwhelming and completely consuming of everything in my life of late, my time, my thoughts, my every action and not to mention the lives of my children, absolutely everything which means right now, I'm not entirely sure I know who I am without that sense of abject terror in the pit of my stomach all of the time anymore."

He took hold of her hand tightly in his and met her eyes, them almost burning into her. "You are a Captain, a Mother, a girlfriend and the very best friend and kindest person that I have ever known. And your life doesn't need to be put on hold a moment longer because of that hysterical drama queen." She laughed as she wiped at her eye again and nodded. "It's high time for you to let that panicked feeling go and to live your life again." She continued to nod at him with her head bowed, unable to speak as Provenza took her hand again and kissed the back of it. It didn't take much encouragement to have her back on her feet and with her arms around him again, the shoulder of his shirt absorbing the few tears that got away from her. When she was suitably composed again she pulled away and sat back on the edge of her desk, wiping at her eyes with his handkerchief. "But aside from Flynn, tell me, how are you feeling?" he asked, receiving a hum in reply with her confusion clear. "All of this has kind of drowned out Taylor and Dwight and you."

She hummed again with a little ruthful smirk. "God's vengeance is certainly swift, I'll give Him that and I nearly made Andy pay the ultimate price for my actions as a result" she said before she sighed, letting out a shaky breath.

"Sharon, it was just unfortunate timing. It wasn't anyone's fault aside from the guy who ate too many hotdogs and drank too much twenty five years ago. The same guy who struggles to keep his temper under control, not to mention his stress levels." She smirked, mentioning the 'S' word in front of Andy was like waving a red rag in front of a bull and coincidentally made his stress levels spike even further. "To blame it on yourself because of something that happened at work and what you were forced into doing in that courtroom it just crazy." Again she didn't answer, simply sighing instead. "You know I'm right here and I'm fairly sure Flynn will, if he hasn't already, tell you the exact same thing." Sharon just shook her head at him and he knew there was no point continuing because the only people who had a chance of convincing her that it wasn't her fault and a punishment for killing Dwight Darnell were Father Stan and Andy himself, so he took their conversation a step to the right. "How are you feeling?"

She smiled, that yet another conversation she had already had with Andy that morning but for some odd reason she felt she could be more honest with Provenza, not wanting Andy to worry about her. "Better than I was, better than yesterday but hopefully not as good as I'll feel tomorrow" she declared with a shrug.

"You look more relaxed today" he noted with almost a grimace as the other half to that statement was that 'sex had clearly done the trick' but he didn't want to say it. "Did you talk about, you know, it at all? Last night? About what he said in the hospital?"

"I wanted to but I didn't want to ruin the mood." Provenza went to reply but she sighed and that was enough to stop him. "We will, as soon as I pluck up the courage to have it out with him."

"It'll be tough I'm sure but trust me, if I know anything it's that you're both going to be a lot stronger for it moving forward."

"I can only hope."

"And forgive me, but since I've been given the opportunity, even though we're at work, I still feel like I should be offering you the apology" he then said as she noted he was deliberately avoiding her eye.

"Why would you need to apologise to me?"

He sighed and then looked up at her. "Because I was so useless when all of this started."

Sharon frowned at him confused as she shook her head, in her opinion Provenza being nothing short of her rock since the moment it happened. "What are you talking about? I'm not sure I would have got through all of this without you" she told him honestly.

He sighed and she could see that he really meant what he was saying and that through it all, no matter how he had helped her, this had been bothering him regardless ever since. "But when you really, truly needed me, when Andy first collapsed, you called my name and..." He shrugged, unable to finish the sentence.

At the time he had been able to offer her precisely nothing, not uttering a single word of comfort or help in that moment as Andy clutched his chest and struggled to breathe since he was just as lost as she was. It had been eating away at him ever since, talking to Patrice about it many times who of course told him to stop being so utterly ridiculous, but it was a lot easier said than done, him waking up in a cold sweat on a number of occasions in those six weeks with the sound of Sharon's desperate 'Lieutenant!' still ringing in his ears.

"What?" she asked and feeling frankly rather baffled. Provenza just shrugged again in reply so she smiled at him, hardly able to remember that she had said his name at all amongst all of the trauma that happened. "Have you been beating yourself up about this for all these weeks?" Once again he shrugged which only made her smile at him all the more brightly. "If you want me to be honest with you Lieutenant, I don't remember half of what I said that evening let alone what anyone other than Andy's Doctors had to say to me and besides, what could you have possibly done under the circumstances? For either of us?" He shrugged again before she smiled at him and then took to her feet to hug him. "Lieutenant, there are many things that I'm grateful for in this life, my children, my faith, being given the chance to help people on a daily basis at work. But it's only since I was given this job, the chance to lead this division, well..." She paused as she wiped her eye. "I have been given another son, I've found the love of my life and my best friend all rolled into one just inches from my office door and I have found you, a friend and a friendship that I cherish more than any other I've ever had in my life. You feel like you let me down that day? Well I've got some news for you Lieutenant, you are the one that got me through the last six weeks almost singlehandedly. You did that so believe me, you have got nothing to apologise for. Not one damn thing."

He nodded. "That's something you might want to keep in mind because you don't either."

"Oh well, we'll have to agree to disagree on that one Lieutenant but I'm going to try my very best" she promised him.

"You know you can always talk to me right?" he reminder her. "About anything and I do mean anything and that includes the moron we have in common. Right?"

"I do" she chuckled. "I do know that Lieutenant and thank you but I could tell you the exact same thing."

"I know." He went to leave but turned back to face her again with one final question. "By the way, he's not going to walk in here today with another black eye like last time is he?"

Sharon laughed and nodded. "Only if the way he constantly tortures Rusty in my absence had earned a response after I left this morning."

He chuckled and nodded at her, giving her hand another little squeeze before he moved to the door and then finally left her office, returning to his desk with a smile on his face and a contented sigh, his own shoulders looking lighter as a result. It took him a few moments to look up and see that everyone else was staring at him, looks of worry and surprise on their faces, all of them wanting answers. "What?" he asked.

Mike cast a suspicious glance over at Julio, seeing the smile of Provenza's face as a sign that they had nothing to worry about despite all the evidence to the contrary. "What are you smiling about?" he finally asked him.

Provenza laughed as he looked up. "Huh?" he asked as he played deliberately dumb for a moment before he pointed at Sharon through the blinds of her office as she looked at her stack of paperwork and couldn't help but smile as Andy popped into her mind once again, practically glowing despite her worries. "Because the Captain is smiling again, that's what I'm smiling about. It's been far too damn long" he added and earning nods of agreement all around.

Regardless Amy couldn't help but look concerned given what they'd just witnessed and both of their odd behaviour a day earlier. "But the Captain is okay, right?" she asked.

"Yes. Trust me, everything is just fine" Provenza assured her.

It was enough for Buzz, Julio and Amy to believe him while Wes was not entirely sure what was going on one way or another let alone that something unusual had happened. Mike on the other hand, although believing that he was telling the truth, he still couldn't help but be a little surprised by what he had just witnessed on the other side of that glass.

When he eventually spoke up it was enough to draw everyone's attention and not just because his voice had cut through the silence. "Do you ever wonder what the Provenza from ten years ago would think," Mike started to say, "if he saw what we've just witnessed taking place in that office?"

"All the time" Provenza didn't mind admitted. They laughed before he thought about it for a few moments, the idea popping into his head more than once since they had gone out on that first date and subsequent series of double dates. "I hope, that he'd quickly come to realise that he has one of the most important friendships of his entire life to come as soon as he pulled his head out of his ass and gave her a break." With that and after Provenza cast one last lingering look in the direction of his most beloved Captain, everyone turned their attentions back to their paperwork in front of them.

And with that the morning passed by fairly quickly in companionable silence with no roll outs coming their way which meant the division had a rare opportunity to finish up several reports that had been on the top of their 'To Do' pile for quite some time but had taken the back seat of late to active cases. Even with the distraction of a huge mountain of paperwork, Provenza still knew when Andy was due to arrive in the Murder Room because it seemed like no more than thirty seconds could pass by without Sharon's head snapping up from her own paperwork to see if she could see him walking towards her. He also knew why she was so eager, wanting to know if the same Andy she had left that very morning would be arriving or if his depressed identical twin would be back instead.

When he did finally arrive, a little after 1pm, Provenza smelt him before he heard him, in his opinion Andy's cologne being what they used after they'd tented a house for termites and causing his very recently eaten lunch to lurch in his stomach, and that was before his over the top and extremely happy greeting announced his arrival. With a smile that stretched from ear to ear, a trademark toothpick hanging out of his mouth and a bag of food in hand, Andy came bounding into the Murder Room full of the joys of spring, his leather jacket over the shirt picked specifically to match Sharon's ensemble, as usual not tucked into his jeans.

"Surprise!" he shouted, standing rooted to the spot with both arms outstretched by his sides next to Provenza's desk as if he had just scored the winner in the World Cup final and was waiting for his teammates to leap all over him in celebration.

Mike was the first to look up. "Andy!" Getting to his feet first and very quickly followed by Julio and then Buzz they greeted him, exchanging hugs and quiet pleasantries before they sat down again.

Amy was up next, hugging him tightly with a beaming smile on her face while Provenza and Wes remained seated, both for very different reasons. "It's so good to see you Lieutenant" Amy told him as she gave him one last squeeze and a kiss to his cheek.

"Thanks Amy. It feels good to be back and I…"

"Ye Gods!" Provenza cried grumpily, Andy's joyful and over the top (in his opinion anyway) greeting already wearing thin. "Who shoved a Bluebird in you? Turn the volume down will you, some of us have work to do."

"Thanks Provenza, I missed you too."

"Ye Gods!" he repeated as he wafted his hand under his nose dramatically. "Did you shower in cologne this morning or just bathe in it? What is that anyway? Erection by Hugo Boss?" he asked with disgust as everyone else laughed.

"You're one to talk" Andy replied.

"And what have our nostrils done to deserve this?" Provenza then queried.

"It's not for you. I just so happen to have a lunch date" Andy explained, waving the bag of food at him as he nodded towards Sharon's office.

"Yeah well, crack a window in the Captain's office will you, before you make her pass out."

By this point Sharon was up and standing in the doorway to her office as she watched Andy from across the room while he was greeted by everyone, ogling him to within an inch of his life in his casual attire. It was her Andy, he was still there and the depressed version was still absent. It was more than enough to make he let out a sigh of relief. But that wasn't the only sensation she was feeling. The jeans and the leather jacket he wore were enough for a little heat to pool at her core again and that was without the toothpick between his lips. Yes she was beyond fed up of sitting on them in his car and getting a very sharp poke in the ass just like she had that very morning when she sat in the driver's seat of his car and immediately got stabbed like a pin cushion. But in her admittedly biased opinion, that trademark piece of wood, that toothpick made her already handsome as hell boyfriend nothing short of sex on legs. Added all together and with the smile on his face and how happy she was to see him, he looked wonderful and healthy. He looked like the same guy she had kissed goodbye that morning, she just had to hope and pray it wasn't all an act for their friends and colleagues.

"Very funny" Andy replied with a roll of his eyes. He then looked up and smiled at Sharon from across the room, giving her a wink and getting a little wave in response. "It's nice to know you haven't taken your eye off the ball in my absence."

"The beard hasn't made a dramatic comeback I see" Amy noted.

Andy rubbed his free hand across his chin. "Well there was only so many times I could listen to Rusty compare me to a hobo before I took the hint."

"Not to mention that his girlfriend hated it" Provenza announced to the rest of the room much to their amusement. Sharon laughed into her hand as Provenza glanced up at her with a smile. Andy on the other hand just frowned at him unimpressed to say the least. "What? Am I wrong?"

"You make it sound like I do everything Sharon tells me."

"And? You don't?" Provenza asked with a grin, knowing he was right.

Andy was silent for a moment as he thought about it. Yes, he was the very definition of 'under the thumb' or 'whipped' because on the surface of it he did appear to do everything that Sharon told him or ask him to but there were reasons for it. Firstly because she was his Captain and therefore he was just accustomed to taking orders from her and following them without question and despite their whole 'I thought you were just the Boss at work and everything else is up for discussion' one already bled into the other, not that it bothered either of them. And secondly, Andy just wanted to make her happy so after two failed marriages between them, he was determined to do everything he could to make their relationship succeed and if that meant letting her have her way more often than not, so be it, it was a compromise worth making.

"But that's not the point" Andy finally said before the Murder Room erupted into laughter.

With a natural lull in the conversation while everyone continued to laugh at Andy as his face became redder by the second from embarrassment, Wes finally took to his feet with his arm outstretched to shake Andy's hand. Considering that he had spent the last few years of his life undercover with Nazis, his life constantly in danger, he actually found his latest position to be more intimidating and so was desperate to make a good second impression. His first had hardly been stellar even though he had no idea what was to come. His first encounter with any of them was when he threw a punch at Andy outside of 'Nazi Land,' the guy who, as it turned out, was not only third in the pecking order of his latest division but his new Commanding Officer's partner to boot. To make matters worse it was already clear that Provenza didn't like him and it was easy for him to see why since he could easily be seen as Andy's replacement even though he made the move before his heart attack. But even so, he had some serious bridges to build and there was no better time to start building them.

"Lieutenant." Andy stepped over to him and shook his hand, trying with all his might not to look at him like he was deliberately trying to steal his job. "It's good to see you back on your feet again" Wes said genuinely as he patted him on the shoulder.

"Yeah, thanks" Andy replied while trying his hardest not to sound sarcastic. His eye twitched towards Sharon and he knew that she was watching him and how she desperately wanted him to play nicely with their newest recruit. She had already told him that Provenza wasn't warming up to him as yet and she was eager that his presence not become another Badge of Justice, therefore Andy needed to lead by example.

"If I'd known at the time you were feeling under the weather Lieutenant, I would have taken a swing at Sykes instead of you."

A little ripple of laughter went around the Murder Room with everyone joining in with the exception of Provenza who continued to scowl at the cuckoo in their nest. "Yes Detective, it was hardly the best first impression, attempting to give the boyfriend of your Commanding Officer a black eye" Provenza told him. Again they all laughed while Wes looked shy about it.

"Why?" Andy asked, winking at Sharon as subtly as he could. "It's not like she hasn't given me one herself in her sleep before now." Again they all laughed at him except for Wes who looked baffled to say the least and yet didn't feel like he could ask the question, filing that away to ask Amy later, the one who had been teaching him all about the rules and habits of Major Crimes since his arrival.

"Too true but…" Provenza started to say before he paused as his eyes landed on the badge that was hanging from Andy's belt and had previously been hidden by his shirt when he first arrived. "What the hell is that?"

"What?" Andy asked before he looked down to his belt where Provenza was pointing and saw the visitor's badge attached to his hip. "Oh that! Can you believe they made me get this stupid visitor's badge before I was allowed up here?"

"A visitor's badge?" Mike asked with disbelief.

"Yeah. I was just about to come on up when Winnie Davis appeared out of nowhere and told me I wasn't going anywhere without one."

"She didn't come out of nowhere. Someone said her name three times into a mirror" Julio told him, getting a little scolding look from Sharon such was his obvious disrespect to someone who outranked all of them.

"Right, then she stood over me until I'd signed in."

"Well technically you don't currently work here so she has a point," Provenza noted loudly, "as annoying as it is."

"Aha but that is all about to change" Andy announced as he put his hand in the pocket of his jacket and pulled out his now completed paperwork that was just awaiting the signatures of Provenza, Sharon and finally Chief Howard himself before his return would become official. As he held it aloft for everyone to see, a ripple of applause went around the Murder Room, all of them thrilled by his imminent return. "Thank you, thank you" he nodded as he placed it in front of Provenza, going as far as to pick up his pen and put it in his hand for him. "I just need your signature."

Provenza dropped the pen immediately on principle. "Well, we'll soon see about that" he said as he picked up the form in both hands and proceeded to study it closely, taking his time as he scanned every word solely in order to piss Andy off as much as he could. Andy sighed and rolled his eyes in response before he cast a long suffering look Sharon's way.

"So you can come back on Monday?" Julio asked him.

"Only if I sign this" Provenza replied for him as he waved his paperwork in the air with Andy once again rolling his eyes as a result. "I'm sure we'll be able to find something for you to do." He cast a glance at Andy and waited for the reaction. "Nothing too stressful."

"Oh for God's sake! It had nothing to do with stress!" Andy shouted in reply as he took the bait on offer and sounded even more stressed than ever as a consequence.

"And how do you know that? Are you a Doctor?" Provenza asked him.

"No but it was my heart attack and I'm telling you and Nicole and Rusty and everyone else here," he replied as he made sure he met Sharon's eye, "that it was not caused by stress."

"He said while sounding stressed" Provenza mumbled, loud enough to ensure he heard.

Everyone laughed as a result with even Sharon turning around to face away from him with a hand to her mouth to stifle the noise a little, except Andy saw and heard her immediately, a hand moving to his hip. "You'd better not be laughing, Raydor" Andy warned her. Sharon didn't say anything in reply and only held her hands in the air innocently as she turned back towards him, signalling that she had nothing to hide.

Provenza picked up his pen and allowed it to hover in the air over the paperwork. "Well this is a little déjà vu" he said as his pen continued to hover in no man's land above where his name was printed. Andy put both hands flat on the top of his desk to lean in closer to him and his form, prompting Provenza to lower his voice. "And as you've been informed, I now have the power to return you to the field at some point in the very distant future too."

"And?" Andy asked once he'd finished rolling his eyes again.

"And a little ass kissing here and there wouldn't do any harm. I foresee a lot of rides to and from the bar when I'm too drunk to drive myself in the future." Andy rolled his eyes again, them almost falling out of his head such was his irritation. "And on that subject, do you want me to take a look at the Captain's car?"

"No, I can do it."

"Since when?" For once Andy opted to bite his tongue rather than respond the way that he wanted and then get a good telling off over his temper and stress levels, an issue that his partner was already well aware of which was why he kept doing it. As Provenza finally and slowly added his name to the paper he whispered "Is everything okay between the two of you now?" without ever looking up and drawing too much attention to himself and the conversation that was now taking place.

Andy was clearly a little taken aback even though he tried to hide it even though he didn't know exactly what he was referring to but he had a fairly good idea. Was it the argument they had in the hospital, just how lousy he had been treating her since it happened, how their relationship had become strained as he recovered or had Sharon told him about 'that' conversation, what had quickly turned into the most regrettable moment of his life in a past that had been littered with them?

In the end it didn't really matter because his answer was always going to be the same. "It is or at least it soon will be" he assured him.

"Good. Moron!"

That quickly clarified matters and Andy definitely knew they were now talking about that conversation but he couldn't blame Sharon for telling him about it, in fact he was glad that someone had been there for her and yet he was still a little surprised to hear it all the same. "She told you about that?"

"Eventually" Provenza replied quietly as he finally met his eye. "When she was left with no other choice but to try to explain away her erratic and rather worrying behaviour of late but the important question here is, why didn't you tell me about it?" Andy just stared at him for a moment with both fairly certain they weren't being overheard by anyone even though it was safe to assume that Sharon knew exactly what they were talking about. For once, Andy was lost for words and remained silent. "We'll talk about it later. Now go and have lunch and make it up to your girlfriend…beautiful boy."

Provenza gave him his paperwork back again and Andy quickly put it in the pocket of his jacket before picking up the bag of food from his desk. "Yes Sir" he nodded, stopping just short of actually saluting him. When he looked up Sharon was still waiting patiently by the edge of his desk for him, her hands clasped in front of her. He smiled as he approached her and winked, removing his toothpick from his mouth and putting it behind his ear. She smiled back and the moment he reached her she moved to kiss him on the lips much to his surprise but it prompted his extremely informal greeting. "Hey, babe."

"Babe?! Babe?!" Provenza cried with equal parts disgust and horror while also ensuring that there was enough humour in his tone for those that knew him the best. Andy turned around to face him with a sigh as Sharon and everyone else in earshot laughed at them. "Did I just hear you call our Captain 'Babe' in the workplace? Really? Really?!" Sharon smiled at him from over Andy's shoulder as she took his hand, a smile that suggested he needed to drop the subject before the words 'snuggle' and 'bear' fell from her lips.

"Yes but as you and Winnie Davis have already reminded me today, I don't currently work here" Andy replied before he waved his badge at them all. "See. I'm just a regular old visitor right now."

"Well unless I'm mistaken I've never seen a regular old visit kiss the Captain 'Hello' either" Provenza grumbled as Sharon continued to smile at him with a little bit of warning to stop him from pushing it too far.

Once more the Murder Room was filled with laughter as Andy turned back around to face Sharon again. In truth it was a sight, the two of them being affectionate towards each other, that they were actually pleased to see. They'd all seen them both since that awful day in the hospital obviously but the last time that the two of them were in that building together they heard a distraught and oh so tortured 'Don't you dare leave me Andy Flynn, don't you dare! We've only just got started' fall from Sharon's lips as he clutched his chest. Now they were both happy and healthy again and life was returning to normal. Under those circumstances they couldn't help but be overjoyed by the turnaround.

"Anyway, hey babe" Andy said again as he made a point of looking at Provenza again before he kissed her cheek. Provenza smiled to himself. From them going back to calling each other 'Captain' and 'Lieutenant' as a great wall came down between them at work to kissing each other hello in the Murder Room in front of the entire division, they'd certainly come a long way in a relatively short period of time considering that one of them had a major infatuation with the rule book.

It was actually the one part of their relationship that Sharon was upset about in a way, that they'd gone from calling each other 'Captain' and 'Lieutenant' in the immediate aftermath to their first date to their first real coming out as a couple in front of the division as she took his hand in the cemetery at Mariana's funeral, without having the opportunity to tell any of them herself what was actually going on between them, that they were now a lot more than 'just good friends.' They all knew however, of course they knew. Provenza was told before Andy had even asked her out to Serve, looking for a little moral support as well as trying to see if he would attempt to talk him out of it but the rest of the division found out directly from the LAPD King of Gossip himself, Assistant Chief Russell Taylor literally within minutes of him leaving the Murder Room following his extremely uncomfortable 'notification' by the pair of them in her office.

Prior to officially disclosing their change in relationship status to Taylor that late afternoon in July, their relationship wasn't exactly a state secret to say the least but Sharon wanted to keep it just between them for as long as possible because she still felt that her superior had to and should know first as per the rules. Andy knew better than to argue with her on the subject especially because the rules were always going to come first in their relationship when they were at work but luckily for all involved, he didn't mind in the slightest. In truth he actually found it kind of a turn on that no one knew in those first few weeks aside from Provenza and Rusty and not just because it allowed him the chance to stare at her legs during the day time without being caught since no one suspected that they relationship had finally evolved into something more. Although they never discussed it beyond Sharon's request to take it slowly and that Taylor had to know first (the only irrational demand that Andy was going to grant her throughout their relationship), it was in her mind for them to tell the rest of the division as a couple and together as soon as they had told Taylor, the timing of which had been all down to Andy's prompt in Electronics as he sought to get their relationship on the move, finally. In fact with Taylor all but running from her office as his levels of discomfort around personal matters reached those of Chief Johnson, and just as the rest of the division were about to leave work for the day, Sharon was getting ready to reveal that she and Andy were now dating (not just wanting to share their good news but also as a curtesy to them since their risk to enter into a relationship together could also obviously effect all of them at work if it ended badly). In a dream world that was what was going to happen, everyone finding out at pretty much the same times but they were once again derailed by Rusty (just like Andy had been when he was trying to ask her out on that first date), the young man showing up with Gus which left Sharon to tell him that Mariana wasn't there but was in fact dead and had been for over a year and that was the end of that, all thoughts of merriment and celebration long gone, put off until a more suitable moment.

Sadly, that moment never arrived and the short delay of just a single evening had made her planned announcement moot anyway. By the following morning every single person who had ever taken a solitary step inside of PAB knew that they were dating, Taylor practically releasing a press statement about it. No one from within the division said anything to them (even though many outside of Major Crimes had lots to say to Sharon and the mistake they all thought she was making) as the opportunity simply didn't present itself on top of them all feeling wrong to pass comment on what was just a rumour and a highly personal one at that but there were plenty of smiles and warm looks aimed in their direction when they started to leave work together a little more regularly before she finally took his hand in the cemetery. But Sharon felt like she owed them because her risk in deciding to pursue a new romantic relationship with their colleague could obviously affect them too but that only made the day they all helped Andy move in with her all the more significant in her eyes.

"Hey yourself" Sharon smiled up at him.

"I got you a present." Andy put his hand into the pocket of his jacket and subtly pulled out her missing heel that he had taken the time to find because he knew full well she wouldn't if it involved having to explain why she had abandoned it in the first place. She immediately snatched it from him with a gasp and hid it behind her back before it could be seen and end in a whole host of questions she didn't want to answer. Luckily for Sharon, it went fairly unnoticed except for Provenza who gave a small chuckle into his hand. "Are you not happy to see it again?"

"We'll discuss it inside" she told him with a little glare that made him laugh. Sharon laced their fingers together and went to lead him into her office, tugging him to follow her but he didn't move a muscle, looking at the wall where he collapsed instead, it being the first time that he had been back since he left strapped to a gurney and with his life literally hanging in the balance. She looked at him concerned. "Andy?" She let go of his hand and ran it around his shoulders instead as she wore a worried frown. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I'm fine." His voice was soft and a little quiet as it instantly caught the attention of the others in the room, all of them under the assumption that it would be hard for him his first time back in that room since he could so easily have died in it just six weeks earlier, with Julio in particular knowing exactly how he felt, not having stepped foot in a mall after the bullets he took on the roof of one. Sharon finally closed the remaining gap between them and squeezed his hand tightly. "I was just wondering where the shrine was" he told her, his grin exploding onto his face and lighting it up. Everyone heard him and laughed, his tone completely different to just a second earlier and it provided yet more evidence that her Andy was back again.

"The what?" Sharon asked as she laughed before she pressed her face against his shoulder.

"The shrine. You know the flowers and the candles and the 'Get well soon' messages and the balloons left where I...you know…"

"Fell on your ass and clutched your chest?" Provenza filled in for him.

Andy once again shot daggers at him while everyone else laughed. "Yes, that" he confirmed as he turned back to Sharon to enable him to address the question directly to her. "You've done nothing to mark the spot? Not one flower?"

"Flynn, if we built a shrine every time you fell on your ass or fainted in this room then there wouldn't be any floor space left for the rest of us to move around on. They'd have to seal off the floor" Provenza rightly pointed out and eliciting yet more laughter from the gathered group.

"Very funny" he mumbled before turning his attention back towards Sharon again. "You didn't even think about it?"

"A shrine?" Provenza repeated and again answering on Sharon's behalf. "You think we'd have a shrine for you? Really?"

"Hey, I know you've missed me even if you won't admit it."

"Huh! Like I'd miss a venereal disease" Provenza grumbled.

Sharon quickly linked her fingers with his again. "Well regardless, I have certainly missed you this past couple of weeks" she told him and not afraid to admit it in front of a crowd.

Again Provenza spoke up first. "Well you live with him too so you're clearly a glutton for punishment, Captain."

Ignoring him, Andy continued. "So where is it?"

"I had to move it. It was fire hazard. It was starting to concern Chief Howard. Come on" she said, finally pulling him into her office and closing the door behind them.

Once inside, Sharon immediately released him to enable her to pull the blinds closed to give them a little more privacy, especially from anyone who just so happened to walk into the Murder Room (such as Chief Winnie Davis for example, given that she was already roaming the building and it was becoming increasingly clear to all that she wanted to replace Fritz as Assistant Chief and she saw Sharon as not only her competition but also a real threat to her chances, already on the lookout for dirt to use against her) and saw them even if it was on her lunch break. What she didn't realise as she moved to close the blinds in front of her desk was that three of the panels that made up the curtain had got snagged on each other about half way up, leaving a big enough crack to allow Provenza to not only see directly into her office from his seated position at his desk but also gave him a perfect and direct view of the table and chairs were they were soon to be taking up residence, affording him the chance to keep an eye on them in his role as protector in chief for his two best friends.

As Sharon tended to the blinds, Andy suddenly came over all nervous, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand in that typical tell-tale fashion of his while he remained rooted to the spot in the middle of the room. "Have I just overstepped the mark?" he asked cautiously.

When she turned to face him not only was he frowning but he seemed almost pained and clearly regretted his choice in greeting along with the kiss at work. She smiled at him but it did little to dislodge his frown. "No, you haven't boy" she assured him before she quickly stepped back towards him. "We took everything so slowly and showed such patience in the beginning, you in particular, so that we could reap the benefits later on" she told him before she shrugged. "It's now later on." She smiled as she stood before him. "So, hey." She ran her arms around his neck and slowly kissed him on the lips, even if the blinds hadn't been closed she really didn't care who might have seen her or what they thought of them. It was lunch, they had no active case on the go and Andy was returning to work on Monday so therefore a kiss like that in the privacy of her office was fully justified.

He grinned back at her. "Hey yourself." She kissed him again as she tugged him towards the table so that they could finally sit down and eat before they were rolled out and their plans went out of the window. "Kissing one of your Lieutenants at work now?"

"Sometimes it's more than one."

Andy laughed before she kissed him again. "Who are you and what have you done with my Captain?" he joked.

"Under the circumstances I think it's perfectly acceptable" Sharon replied very matter-of-factly before she kissed him again. "Andy, the last time you were in this building you left it strapped to a gurney, with your life hanging in the balance. Your unofficial return warrants at least a little bending of the rules. And besides as Lieutenant Provenza has already pointed out, until you have everyone's signatures on that piece of paper you're just my visitor and not my Lieutenant so I think I can kiss you as much as I like." With that she pecked at his lips again. "Okay?"

"I told you we should have had lunch in my car and not just because it would have been fun to steam up the windows" he reminded her with a waggle of his eyebrows.

"Maybe next time" she laughed.

"Then for now, I'll use up one of my coupons" he told her with a wink as she laughed, Andy taking the chance to hold her in his arms for a little longer.

He had joked after Provenza and Patrice's wedding once they had finally climbed into bed and were able to relax after one of the most hectic and trying weeks of their professional lives, that he had used a coupon from his 'Affection at Work' book to steal that lingering hug in her office. He claimed that his book of coupons allowed him to steal a few minutes with her here and there at work during the course of the year and allowing him to step over the professional line between them when one or both needed it in a tough time.

Andy dropped the bag of food onto the table as he removed his leather jacket, putting it on the back of his chair. Sharon's arms were around him almost instantly afterwards, pulling herself flush against him as they just hugged for a moment, something that she had been known to do for a while at work by that point in their still growing relationship but it was still surprising to him on occasions. It was actually something Sharon had never envisioned doing in the past if she was being completely honest, spending time with her boyfriend in her office and sharing the odd kiss and cuddle over lunch but how many times had her predecessor done the exact same thing? How many times did she walk into Brenda's office and find her lips locked with her husband? More than she could count and that was only over the course of two years so who really cared what she did on her lunch hour?

When she finally pulled away from him she kissed him on the lips again. "You smell good" she told him, getting a wink in return. Sharon sat down at the table as Andy began to slowly retrieve the contents one by one from the bag of food, moving the containers to the table top. Sharon watched every single move that he made with a smile that spread from ear to ear, unable to take her eyes off him. "I've missed you these last few days. I wasn't joking with what I said this morning. I've spent so long worried about our personal relationship effecting our professional one that I failed to realise just how much I value your experience here." She took his hand and squeezed it. "How much I rely on you more than anybody else."

"I'll be back on Monday. Or at least I will be if you'd be so kind as to add your name to this." He pulled his form from the inside pocket of his jacket and placed it in front of her.

She laughed and didn't expect anything else from him such was his eagerness to get back to work again and so held out her hand in front of him. "Can I have a pen?" She was expecting him to quickly go and retrieve one from her desk but instead he was already prepared (not surprisingly), getting one from the same pocket his form was in. He handed it to her as she laughed again. With pen in hand he expected her to immediately sign her name and that would be that but instead she picked up the form and began to study it closely, taking her time, just like she did when Rusty wanted her to sign his undercover consent forms.

Andy waited patiently beside her for a moment as she continued to study it, missing the huge smile on her face as she deliberately teased him for as long as she could. Eventually he couldn't wait any longer. "Are you reading it?" he asked.

"Of course I'm reading it" Sharon shrugged until Andy's mouth dropped open and he looked at her agog. "What? You can't expect me to sign it without reading it first, surely. I'm your Commanding Officer right now and not your girlfriend don't forget."

His hand dropped to the back of her chair as he leaned towards her. "A Commanding Officer who kisses her Lieutenant in her office?" he asked, speaking so closely to her ear that she felt his breath on her skin.

"Absolutely" she nodded as she pushed his face away from her with the palm of her hand. He laughed as her attention went back to the form in front of her and yet she could still feel his eyes on her. It was enough to make her look up at him, worried that he felt let down because she hadn't just signed it without a second thought. "You're not upset by this are…"

He quickly cut her off with a kiss to her lips. "That Rulebook Raydor is doing everything by the book? No, I'm not." He smiled before he kissed her again. "I wouldn't have you any other way" he confirmed, pressing his lips to hers again until a little contented hum came from the back of her throat. Andy then stood back and allowed her the time and space to read every line, not putting any pressure on her as he kept his distance and continued to empty his bag onto the table. Satisfied that there were no sneaky clauses in there that would allow him to do more than his Doctor currently allowed, Sharon signed her name, folded the form and handed it back to him, that the very last professional decision she was determined to make for him. "Thank you Captain."

"You're most very welcome Lieutenant."

With the more formal issue handled, he put his form back in his pocket ready to be taken to Chief Howard after they had eaten lunch before he produced a single red rose from the bag and handed it to her with a wink. "For you."

She took it with a smile, appreciating it a lot more than the last gift he had offered her a few moments earlier. "Thank you." It was something that he did for her a lot, giving her flowers at work to brighten the darkest of days, only he usually had the habit of hiding them in one of her desk drawers rather than giving them to her directly, her surprise is discovering them when she returned from a budget meeting just as meaningful to her as the flower itself. She inhaled its scent as he finally sat down next to her with a muted groan, his knees cracking. "I'll keep it with my other present" she said as she put the rose with her broken heel on top of the table. "Where did you get this from anyway?" she asked as she gestured towards her heel. "I looked for it in the parking garage and it was nowhere to be seen."

"Security had it. Apparently they saw you fight with it on camera."

Sharon immediately put her head in her hands with a groan. "Oh God!" she cried with Andy making no attempt whatsoever to hide his amusement.

"The best thing was, I didn't even need to go and ask them for it."

"What?"

"I was heading straight over here when I heard 'Excuse me Lieutenant, I think that this might belong to your girlfriend'" Andy laughed, enjoying it far more than was wise.

"Well that settles it. I either need to walk home or you'll have to pick me up from outside the building from this point on because I can never show my face in that parking garage ever again" Sharon told him very matter-of-factly once again which made Andy laugh. "So what have you brought us?"

"I've got that salmon salad you like" he told her as he pulled the last of the containers from the bag and set them on the table. Sharon opened the lid of the box in front of her to reveal her meal and let out a pleased hum over his choice. "Is the kid here yet? I got him a burger" Andy announced as he raised the bag containing his food into the air.

"Not yet but he won't be long." Andy put it on the empty chair next to him before producing two bottles of juice from the bag along with the plastic cutlery and then depositing it on the floor. "Thank you."

She picked up her fork and started to tuck in as Andy just watched her quizzically. Finally he asked "What? No grace again today?" Sharon's war with God was still continuing, unable to stop blaming Him for their troubles of late, refusing to go to church and ducking phone calls from Father Stan despite his help after the shooting. She had prayed a lot since Andy's heart attack but she had never once allowed him to see it, her rosary coming out of the drawer of her nightstand only when she knew he was fast asleep. Despite Andy doing all he could to nudge her in the right direction, she simply didn't want to talk about it, leaving him with no other option but to periodically point out her omissions.

Sharon briefly looked at him but she wasn't prepared to be drawn back into that same old argument on the subject yet again and so Andy immediately dropped it, just like she did when 'stress' made its way into the conversation. With nothing left to discuss, Andy soon joined her and they began to eat in companionable silence for a while but he knew full well that she was dying to say something to him with the way she kept looking at him from the corner of her eye. Finally she couldn't hold it in any longer.

"How are you feeling?"

Andy laughed as he chewed and then swallowed, that the exact question he was expecting to hear from her. "Nice try Raydor, but you've used up your quota for today. You'll have to wait and ask me again tomorrow."

"I know but I didn't mean it like that." She stroked his hand as it rested on top of the table. "It's the first time you've been back here since..."

"Since I fell on my ass and clutched my chest as Provenza likes to call it?" She smiled gently and he nodded, still treading very carefully. "Yeah I know." He looked at their hands before he grasped hers more securely, his thumb stroking back and forth along her knuckles.

"If you needed to speak to someone about it then..."

"I'll call Matt when I get home" he replied, already planning on giving his sponsor a call even before she brought it up, a lot of news to give him from the previous twenty four hours.

"Really?"

"Yes. I promise." He paused for a moment as he sighed and looked around him. "The last time I left this building I thought I was going to die" he admitted before he slowly dropped his head and kissed her hand as her nails raked through his hair. It was the first time that he had admitted it, to her at least, that he thought he was going to die, it was yet another step in the right direction. She let him think for a moment, not saying a word until he finally straightened up and met her eye again. "It's good to be back."

"And I'm very, very pleased to have you back too." She smiled up at him and had they been at home in that moment she would have been in his lap and crashing their lips together but as it was her thumb just moved back and forth across his wrist.

"You just like to ogle me through the glass."

Sharon nodded enthusiastically. "Yes I do" she admitted and making him laugh. She picked up her fork and resumed her lunch but Andy didn't, taking in a deep breath as his hold on her hand seemed to tighten a little. She turned to look at him, knowing he wanted to say something just like she did with him a few moments earlier so she returned the favour and remained silent until he was ready.

"Since we've got a minute alone," he finally said, "and we were kind of distracted by other things yesterday afternoon," he said with a laugh, "and admittedly again last night and again this morning," he added as she laughed with him, "I wanted to take the opportunity to say something to you." He sighed before reluctantly meeting her eye. "I need to apologise to you."

Sharon frowned, more than a touch confused since he seemed more serious than usual or rather more serious than before his heart attack at least. At the very back of her mind she worried that it was over that conversation and the discussion she knew they needed to have (even before Provenza confirmed it) but was also desperate to avoid for as long as possible. "Apologise? What do you need to apologise to me for?" She smiled at him brightly, almost as if she was trying to show him that there was simply no need for it. "For making me leave work ridiculously early yesterday? For making me late for work again this morning?" she asked while the beginnings of a smile started to appear on his face. "For stopping me from doing all the work in bed when we already had a deal in place?" This time Andy did laugh as he nodded and knew he was going to be told off about that several times over the following few days but at the time he just wanted to show her how good he felt and that she had nothing to worry about and that meant taking control and lavishing her with attention. "So what for exactly?" she asked as she ran her free hand through his hair. "Oh and let's not forget about the way you told me you'd been given the all clear for," she paused as she smiled and her hand dropped down to adjust his collar, using it as an excuse to allow her fingers to brush his neck, "'active duty' on the phone yesterday afternoon and almost made me repeat every word to everyone out there" she added, pointing towards their colleagues in the Murder Room.

"What? You did?" Andy laughed.

"Yes! I did!" Sharon began to blush at just the thought and had never been more relieved that her brain had managed to cut her mouth off just in time a day earlier, an ability that Andy clearly had never and would never possess himself. "Did you not hear me repeating everything you said on the phone straight to Lieutenant Provenza and everyone else?"

Andy shook his head as he thought about it. "To be perfectly honest with you I was far too focused on making sure I gave you all the relevant details to get you to sleep with me to notice things like that" he admitted to much laughter. "I'm not kidding here. I was reading from my notes to make sure you had all the information I knew you'd want and then some to ensure you put out."

"And it obviously worked."

"Thank God!" Andy cried with a look to the heavens.

"Well if it's not that then what are you apologising to me for?" Sharon asked once she had managed to stop laughing, his cries of thanks almost like an orgasm in itself.

He looked at her shyly before he sighed once again, this clearly a conversation he felt they needed to have rather than he wanted to have. "For how I've been acting with you over the last couple of months. For how I've been behaving and dealing with this or rather how I've not been dealing with it I should probably say. I know that I've made the whole situation a thousand times worse for you when you were already suffering and…"

"Andy..."

"No please Sharon, let me say this to you, I need to say this to you." She smiled at him and then nodded, handing him the floor to do as he wanted, giving his hand a little squeeze of encouragement to boot. "I honestly feel that I owe, not just you babe, and Rusty too of course, but everyone else who spent any time with me over the last few weeks, I owe you all a massive heartfelt apology even if you and probably the kid too don't see the need." He sighed and then lowered his head to kiss the back of her hand. "I get it, okay. I know that I've reacted poorly to all of this," he started to say as he gestured to his heart with a flick of his wrist, "and taking it all out of you." When he continued Sharon only smiled back at him as again, a way to remind him that he was better and she didn't care about any of it because it was over and she still had him. "And that I've been perhaps a lot more depressed than I wanted to admit to myself since it happened..."

"But with perfectly good reason my beautiful boy, with perfectly good reason" she told him softly as she stroked his cheek with her fingertips. "I understood you didn't mean any of it, I've always understood Andy."

"Yeah but even so, that's still no excuse for treating everyone around me like utter crap, especially you, and making you worry about me even more than you were already" he said with a regretful sigh before he kissed her hand again, only this time it was oh so gently and extremely slow, it taking a few moments to raise his head again and she could easily tell that the conversation was hard on him, quickly anticipating exactly what he was going to say to her next and clearly dreading it just as much as she had been. His eyes locked on hers and there was a sadness there that had broken her heart on multiple occasions during the course of the previous six traumatic weeks of his recovery but if he was ever going to feel better about it, they needed to discuss it. "But more than that...Sharon...I have to apologise for what I said to you that day in the hospital." He didn't need to elaborate any further on the subject because she'd guessed right about where the conversation was headed. It was the one moment in their relationship that they both regretted the most and wanted to just forget all about as quickly as possible which was why she shook her head at him to try and stop him, not wanting to relive one of the worst moments of her life but he needed to say it to her anyway. "Sharon I have to do this, please let me. Please."

Sharon nodded in reply. "Okay." Her free hand came up to wipe her eye before it joined her other and gripped Andy's hand tightly. Very briefly it occurred to her that if she didn't keep a lid on her emotions, anyone could walk in and see how upset she had started to become, and not to mention that Rusty was due to join them at any moment but now that they had started they may as well finish, it not the time nor the place for that conversation but she wanted to see the end of it as soon as possible regardless.

"I know I hurt you that day, for what I said." Sharon immediately shook her head in a lame form of denial but he knew the truth. "I know I did babe and I've regretted it ever since."

She let out an emotional sigh. "I felt like you'd given up. Given up on me, on us."

"No Sharon, no. Never" he declared before he kissed her hand. "But it was tough feeling like I had gone back to square one again. I was angry and I was frustrated and utterly terrified even, but..."

"And you had every right to be but I really don't care about any of it. I hoped you'd know by now that, no matter what you're going through Andy, I'll always be here to take care of you, I'll always be by your side and holding your hand. Always" she told him as she wiped her eye again. "From long before that first date and until my last breath."

He smiled back at her. "Likewise sweetheart" was his swift reply as he kissed her hand once again. "But even so, I had absolutely no right to take it out on you Sharon, or to try to push you away like I did. I had no right at all especially since you were suffering still over Taylor and Dwight at the time too." He shook his head, horrified about some of the stuff that had come out of his mouth and aimed in her direction. "My overall behaviour since it happened has been simply unforgivable and I promise you," he declared as his free hand came up to join his other and held hers tightly, "and Rusty and Emily and Ricky too, I promise you all that I'm going to spend every second for the rest of my life trying and I can only try here, but I'm going to try it make it up to you somehow." She nodded, offering him a watery smile as she battled to keep her emotions in check. He kissed her hand again. "On an average day I don't think I deserve your love and your kindness or just picking me of all people to share your life with but I've deserved it even less over the last six weeks."

Sharon shook her head and finally found her voice. "I disagree."

"Sharon..."

"I don't care Andy. It's over." She squeezed his hand even tighter and just like the way she felt from the moment she returned home a day earlier to when she finally dragged herself into the elevator and set off to work, she didn't want to let go of him ever again. "I still have you" she said as she smiled up at him. "And no matter what happens from this moment on, from now until the end, I am going to love you my darling until my dying breath and beyond. So now," she started to say before she was forced into taking another deep and emotional breath, "I just want us to forget all about it and get on with living our lives together."

Andy smiled back at her. "I want that too." He bowed his head again and kissed her hand. When he looked up at her again he let out a rather sad sigh, the same sort of sigh that had sadly become far too common from him over the previous six weeks of his recovery and she knew that, at least in Andy's mind, the conversation was far from over. "But Sharon," he got out before he sighed again, "what I said to you that day in the hospital...after they had all left and...to even think such a thing about you, even for a second was...Sharon it was...," he sighed again, "babe it was simply unforgivable. And believe me when I say that I have never regretted anything more in my entire life and that includes not asking you out on a date any sooner than I did." With that they both managed to laugh as she wiped her eyes. "I know it's hardly the time and place to be having this conversation but I can't keep it in much longer." She smiled at him again in reply, having said pretty much the exact same thing to Provenza that very morning when she thanked him for everything he had done for them over the previous six weeks. "I just didn't want you to regret anything."

She looked at him confused. "Regret what exactly?"

He didn't respond immediately, his right hand moving to the back of his neck and rubbing it before he moved to his ear and gave it a swift sharp tug, neither of which were given any real conscious thought by him but huge signposts as to his levels of anxiety. "Me" he finally said. The way he looked at her afterwards, Sharon's heart broke all over again as he once more showed her and only showed her, just how insecure he could be at times. "Taking this chance with me because I know it was a risk, putting your faith and your love into a guy like me and I..."

"Andy, I've already told you, no matter what happens from this moment, I am never going to regret a second of the time that I have got to spend with you. And do you know why?" He shook his head. "Because I have loved every single second of it, even the last six weeks."

He managed to laugh again as he teased her. "You just like having me all weak and helpless and at your complete mercy."

She ran a hand through his hair, his eyes closing briefly as he nails scratched his scalp. "Yes, I believe I do" she confirmed with the appropriate levels of mirth the statement required. He laughed and nodded but soon sobered when she looked back at him with such seriousness of her own. "When I wasn't looking our 'nothing but friends' suddenly became 'something so much more than friends' until the moment I realised that I could no longer live without you." She shrugged and was so matter of fact about it all that it was as if it was nothing, but that was probably down to the fact that she had already revealed it to him once before on that day in the hospital. "And even though it has all happened by complete accident, at least on my part anyway," she said before they laughed because at times Andy certainly had been playing the long game with her even if he didn't expect her to actually love him in the same way he loved her in return, "it doesn't mean that I'm going to give it or you up without a serious fight."

He smiled at her. "Believe me, I've noticed." That much was clear to him when she called him an idiot and wanted to slap him when he tried and thankfully failed to get her to leave him, she was going nowhere unless he went with her. She laughed while he again kissed her hand. "Still," he said as he raised his head and once again seemed to look right into her very soul, "I am so so sorry, Sharon. For all of it. I'm sorry for even thinking it in the first place and thinking it about you of all people and I..."

Sharon shook her head to cut him off before she spoke. "Like I told you at the time my boy," she started to say before she paused to take a deep and emotional breath, her hand coming up to gently caress his cheek as his eyes slipped closed for a moment, just like they always did when a tender touch was offered in his direction by the love of his life, "please don't be sorry, just get better. That's all I've ever asked of you and that's all I will ever ask of you too. I still have you Andy, I still have you despite everything that's happened over the last couple of months and in the end, that's all that really matters to me. Still having each other and being able to resume our life together is all that matters, not one foolhardy conversation from when we were both more than a little depressed about the hand we'd been dealt."

He nodded and smiled back at her but it came with the same sadness and regret in his eyes that had been there since his collapse and still showed no signs of abating no matter what she said to him. She didn't blame him over it, over that conversation, stating that they were both in the same boat at the time, mentally speaking and therefore they were both equally responsible for it. Of course that was all complete nonsense and Andy knew that because he was the one that thought it, he was the one that said it, he was the fucking idiot that wanted to spare her a life being trapped with him and his formally clogged up heart even though it would well and truly break said heart to let her go. It was all his fault but she wouldn't hear it, not blaming him in the slightest and as a result, he loved her all the more.

"I know," he finally said for lack of a better response as he kissed the back of her hand yet again, "and likewise I know by now that you're sick and tired of hearing me say it to you but if I've learned anything over the last twenty years from my time with AA it's that I have to at least try to make amends Sharon, for all the wrongs in my life, whether you want to hear it or not." She nodded back at him and accepted that it was more important for him to say it to her as part of his ongoing battle with sobriety, than it was for her to actually hear it since it was what he had built the last twenty one years of his life on, making amends to those he loved and as a result it was her job just to listen. "And I know that your religion has paid a huge part in it but..."

Sharon managed a laugh even though she wasn't entirely sure what he was trying to say to her and how the situation involved her religion of all things, stopping Andy in his tracks as a result. "My religion? Andy, you make it sound like I'm the only Catholic in this relationship."

"Well you are," he replied before he paused, "kinda." He shrugged casually and Sharon had to laugh, conceded that he did have a point.

Andy had grown up raised as a Catholic in a strict Catholic household and he even attended a Catholic school but due to the Nuns who would beat him for the crime of writing with his left hand, his natural rebellious streak and the horrors he saw at work it meant that he and God were hardly the best of friends and AA aside, he only attended church because Sharon asked him to go with her (and usually begged him with sex often a good bribe too or at least waiting to ask him the question until she had her hand wrapped around an important part of his anatomy and his eyes were rolling back into his head because under those extreme circumstances, he would agree to practically anything she asked him, even though she knew he would go with her without it but liked to play that game of 'bribing' him all the same as if it was all quid pro quo) so in comparison to her lifetime of devotion to her faith, you could hardly call him a Catholic in the same way that Sharon was, despite both of them setting off from near enough the same starting point.

"Anyway, the point I'm trying to make to you is, you stayed married to Jack for well over two decades after you separated from him, even though it was all over and you had no intention of ever reconciling." Sharon frowned, not seeing the point he was trying to make. "Sharon," there was another brief pause as he ensured he found the correct wording to fully express himself, "you'll work on something forever rather than admitting defeat, even if it's not working."

She suddenly tensed, her shoulders up around her ears. "You don't think this is working between us?"

"What?" He suddenly looked horrified when he realised that she had taken it completely the wrong way. "Oh God, babe! No, that's not what I'm saying at all." He kissed her hands over and over again for a few moments as if to reinforce his claim that despite all of their worries of late, he was happier than he had ever been in his life and their relationship was one of the reasons why. "I meant you've already proven that you won't leave a relationship even if it's not really working."

"But this is working and even if it weren't right now, the situation is completely different, Andy." She was starting to get a pounding headache because it was quickly turning into the conversation from the hospital all over again, saying pretty much the exact same thing to him back then. "You were ill. You didn't abandon your family when you weren't cheating on me or drinking constantly. You had a heart attack" she told him as she wiped her eye, his comparison not like comparing apples to oranges but rather like comparing apples to a 3D picture of Jesus riding a unicorn, the two situations polar opposites in her opinion.

"I know but things look oh so different when you're feeling depressed."

Sharon let out a sigh that was more relief than anything else. 'Things look oh so different when you're feeling depressed' she repeated in her head. It was the first time he had used that word out loud with her or even acknowledged that he might be experiencing it to begin with. Depressed. Yes, Andy had been so terribly depressed over what had happened to him, just like how he felt stuck in hospital after his blood clot surgery when his life as well as their relationship was temporally put on hold for the first time. It was another huge step in the right direction for his recovery as far as Sharon was concerned, but she knew better than to draw any attention to it aside from a little nod of her head, his confirmation more than enough.

"I don't, or rather I didn't, I guess I should say now, I didn't want to do the same thing to you, Sharon. Making you feel like you were obligated to stay in another extremely one sided relationship once again, you trying to fix it, trying to fix me and missing out on a real life, a better life if and when this happens to me again. You deserve so much better than that."

It was no revelation to Sharon that he felt that way, Andy fearing he had become just like Jack, he was a millstone around her neck and he had started to suck the life out of her even though he desperately fought to be different and to be the man she deserved. None of it was rocket science and she had already figured it out herself weeks earlier, but it still eased her mind to have her suspicions confirmed even though she thought it was all nonsense and the two situations were not even remotely similar.

"Maybe," she said as her hand stroked his cheek again, "but I want what I've got. All I want is you my darling, just you, from now until eternity."

He sighed and for the first time since the start of that extremely difficult conversation, it was a sigh of contentment rather than frustration or sadness as he once again had it confirmed to him that Sharon wasn't going to go anywhere. It didn't matter what happened from that moment on, she would always be by his side, in that life and the next and that was the end of that.

"Well then, in that case," he said with his eyes suddenly locked on hers, "all I can say is how unbelievably sorry I am Sharon, for all of it. I regret so much about the last six weeks, that in particular and more than you will ever really know because, even if it's only for one day or twenty years, I can't live without you."

It was a battle and one she had fought many times since that first shot was fired at Dr Joe in the courtroom but Sharon managed to summon and then keep a smile on her face rather than completely falling apart into a flood of tears, and in the middle of her office on a work day no less. "Ditto" she told him simply, not capable of anything more. Just seconds later and she was up and on her feet, closing the short distance between them to cup his face with both hands, his coming up to rest on top of hers as she kissed him long and slow on the lips with not a single thought anyone who may walk in at any moment.

As it so happened, Provenza was the only person who could see them as they shared a very tender and private moment, noticing that the blinds had snagged just enough to give him a perfect view of them sitting at the table from his desk. In truth he'd had one eye on them at all times since Andy arrived in the Murder Room such were his still lingering concerns about the both of them. And sadly those concerns had only increased when he looked up and saw Sharon wiping her eyes. He jumped to the correct conclusion almost immediately as to what was going on in there and what Andy was saying to her, his very long overdue apology after that much needed conversation, making him all the more determined to cover for them and block any potential interference (and that included Rusty even though they were expecting him) until they were done.

Short on breath, Sharon broke them apart and rested her forehead against his. "Apology accepted" she told him without fanfare before she kissed him again. "But you didn't need to offer me one. Andy, falling in love with you was the easiest and the best thing I've ever done in my life. I'm not missing out on anything." She straightened up a little as her fingers raked through his hair. "No matter what those demons in your mind are telling you, you've made my life complete to the extent where I can't live without you either. So we don't need to say another word about it, we just need to live our lives again. Okay?" Andy just nodded in reply before she kissed him again, it lingering for far longer than any other kiss she'd ever given him in that building. Satisfied that she had made her point and more importantly that Andy had finally accepted it too, she sat back down again but she knew he had more to say even though she just wanted to forget all about it if that was possible. The day that Andy tried to get her to leave him was behind them now as far as she was concerned, they were starting their life together again with a blank slate and that was one thing she definitely didn't mind leaving behind.

Andy took her hand again, staring at her fingers linked with his until he finally met her eye and gave her a very weak smile. "I don't deserve you" he told her simply and not for the first time it must be noted.

Sharon sighed in reply, trying to make herself sound as disinterested as possible when in fact she was more than a little upset herself by the topic of conversation and this insane and unshakeable notion that he had that he wasn't even remotely worthy of her. She picked up her fork with her free hand to yet again show her disinterest in continuing the conversation since simply telling him he was wrong seemingly had no effect.

"We've already had this discussion, Andrew" she told him with a melodramatic roll of her eyes. "Many times in fact." In that moment he expected her to tell him that 'he did' and in complete contrast to how he felt, she didn't think she deserved him but instead a curve ball came his way, one that immediately lightened the mood. "We all know you don't," she told him with a casual shrug even as her hold on his hand unconsciously tightened, "but I picked you anyway. Learn to live with it."

Her quip had the desired effect and Andy immediately laughed and nodded, both of them so very grateful for the break in tension and the dispersal of some of the storm clouds that had started to gather above them in earnest. "And I've never been more grateful for anything in my life" he told her before he kissed her hand again, continuing to grasp it in both of his and forgetting his lunch altogether. "You, my angel in high heels," he started to say with a smile, pausing to kiss her hand yet again as she laughed at his description, "have been nothing but good to me throughout all of this mess, a lot more than I probably deserve given what I said that day. So, since this is the very last time we're ever going to discuss that particular utterly idiotic mistake, I need to say that firstly, I love you more than I ever thought was possible. I don't want you to ever forget that" he told her with another kiss to her hand. It wasn't his intention by any stretch of the imagination but her tears started up again, her fork being discarded so that she could give him the attention he deserved. "Secondly, thank you for taking such good care of me, even when I've been a less than stellar patient or boyfriend of late. And if nothing else good comes from the last six weeks, it has made me realise more than ever that I am without a shadow of a doubt the luckiest son of a bitch on the face of God's green the earth, to have you to share my life with. And thirdly, finally and for the very last time, I promise, I need to say how truly sorry I am for being such an ass to you lately."

"Just lately?" Sharon joked. They both laughed again as Andy nodded, his recent behaviour towards her as he recovered nothing compared to the way he used to treat and speak to her while she was still working in FID and she was reading him the riot act over his professional conduct. She sighed as she wiped her eyes again. "Oh Andy" she said softly as her free hand came up to stroke his cheek before he caught it and kissed her palm. She sighed again as she smiled at him lovingly. "My beautiful boy," she cooed, pausing briefly when his eyes lit up as they always did at the sound of those words coming from her lips and meant for his ears, "I guess it would only be polite of me under the circumstances to say something like 'Thank you' or 'You're most very welcome.' But the truth is Andy, I just don't care." She shrugged at him and he couldn't stop himself from laughing at her dismissive tone and demeanour. "I honestly don't care about any of it because you're here, you're here with me and you're healthy and ready to come back to work but what's more important to me than any of it is this," she ran her thumb along the curve of his smile, "I've got you back. You, my darling boy, the man I so easily fell in love with. The old you who sings to me every chance you get. The old you who makes me feel special with just a smile and who constantly makes me laugh like no other person I have ever met in my entire life. You don't need to be sorry about any of it" she told him before being met with a scoff of pessimism. "I'm serious. My God Andy, I did the exact same thing to you before all of this hell started. I locked you out on the balcony at the dead of night in your underwear just because you were trying to help and comfort me for crying out loud!" Again Andy managed to laugh and conceded that she did have a point but he was never going to admit that to her, or not for a while at least. "It's been tough on all of us and I know it's been even harder on you and that's without Russell's death but it's over now. I don't care what you said to me in the hospital. It's forgotten. It's gone and it's behind us. You're better now, in every single way, shape and form and that's all that matters to me. Everything else is behind us and you don't need to keep apologising to me, you just need to stay healthy so that you can stay with me for as long as possible."

Andy nodded at her. "I'm certainly going to try my very best."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"Sharon my love" he said before he kissed her hand again, only ignoring her lips due to the distance between them. She immediately shuffled her chair much closer to his in response, his left arm then going around her shoulders. "Your patience really does know no bounds and I'm not so sure that I'd still be here without you, but I promise you, one day, I'm going to find a way to repay you." He had never looked more determined in all the years she'd known him she briefly thought as, despite how closely she was now sitting next to him, he kissed her hand again. "But still, I am so so sorry sweetheart. I'm sorry I shut you out like that, that I stopped talking to you about how I was feeling and created that huge distance between us but I promise you now, I'll never do it again." She smiled at him with a little shake of her head because she knew she had done the exact same thing to him after the shooting and yet he was the only one doing all the apologising. Not wishing to discuss it a moment longer, she kissed him deeply, a move that was still a surprise to him given their location but he wasn't going to complain and willingly complied when she began to lead his lips on a merry dance. "Kissing your subordinate at work again?" he teased when they broke apart and she rested her head on his shoulder.

"I've already told you," she started to say with another tender kiss to his lips, "it's my lunch hour and technically you're still on medical leave until Monday so I think I can pretty much do what I like to you in here right now."

"Is this your way of telling me you want to try steaming up the windows?"

She laughed at him, returning her head to his shoulder as she attempted to pinch the back of his knee again, doing it just gently enough to ensure she didn't give him yet another huge bruise before she straightened up again with the goal of resuming eating her lunch. "No, it doesn't, more's the pity." She winked at him before she pointed at his lips, encouraging him to wipe the remnants of lipstick from them before Rusty arrived and gave them a disgusted roll of his eyes.

"Well you can't blame a guy for trying." She laughed again, wiping her eyes before she ate another forkful of salad. Andy however didn't move a muscle and just sat and watched her in silence for a moment. "Still, there has been something good to come out of all of this."

"Oh yes? And what's that?"

"At least I'm likely to die long before we start to irritate the crap out of each other" he joked almost flippantly with a smile and a shrug of his shoulders but not surprisingly Sharon found it far from funny to say the least. She shook her head at him rather than replying, once again fighting long and hard to maintain her composure, a life without him not something that she even wanted to contemplate let alone discuss or joke about. She continued to eat, a frown fixed to her face as she refused to respond to his 'joke,' prompting Andy to do likewise as he picked up his fork, the two of them sitting impossibly close to each other while they finally began to make a dent in their meals. Silence fell again for a few moments as they ate until he couldn't stop himself from saying it. "I really don't know why you put up with me" he said as if that was grounds for committal all on its own, deliberately not looking at her.

"Oh, well that's an easy question to answer" she said as she turned back towards him and forced him into looking her in the eye, nudging his shoulder with her own until he gave her what she wanted. "I'm in my sixties and you're already house trained. Who has time to start from scratch at my age?" she teased.

"Thanks babe" he laughed.

"You're most very welcome" she replied like she had just handed him the single greatest compliment of his life. Again Andy let out a little laugh as she stole a quick kiss from him, a little reminder that she was only teasing. "Added to that, I love you so very much."

"What do you see in an old decrepit guy like me?"

"Do you mind!" Sharon shouted and sounding highly offended. "That's my incredibly sexy and not to mention extremely charming and funny boyfriend you're talking about." Again he laughed while at the same time didn't believe a single word of it. He felt better in himself on a number of fronts following his all clear, returning a very obvious spring back to his step, and yet at the same time he felt very old and very tired and extremely decrepit, no matter what Sharon thought. "Andy, I couldn't stay away from you even if my life depended on it."

"Even when I'm treating you like crap?" He shook his head again because he knew she had long since grown tired of hearing it even though in his opinion if he lived to be one hundred, he would never be able to say sorry enough to her. "I'm sorry."

"Andy I've told you a million times, stop apologising."

"I can't help it."

"Try. Anyway, if anything, it should be me apologising to you."

"Sharon, you did not cause me to have a heart attack" he told her for the tenth time.

"I think we'll have to agree to disagree on that one but it's not what I meant." She paused as she dropped her fork again and plucked up the courage to say it to him, what she had been bottling up since the ride to St Leo's in the back of the ambulance. She didn't want to say it but she felt like she needed to, just like how Andy had needed to talk to her earlier. She had sat quietly and listened intently while he laid his soul bare and apologised to her, whether she thought he needed to or not, and now it was her turn to do the same. It had been eating away at her even before Provenza had encouraged her to speak up earlier so she was finally going to do it, she just needed to find a way to get the words out without sobbing to the point of dehydration first. "I should be apologising to you…" she began to say before she swallowed and fought to keep her emotions in check, "for the morphine."

Andy's response was as swift as it was animated, it a shock for him to be hearing it to say the least. "No, Sharon, absolutely not." He quickly let go of her hand so that he could stretch his arms out wide either side of him. "Look at me. I'm fine. No relapse. No need for guilt and no need to apologise to me. You did absolutely nothing wrong" he insisted.

"I disagree" Sharon replied with a shake of her head.

"Babe, look..."

"No Andy, if we're going to do this then we might as well do it properly."

That was all it took for Andy to nod at her in reply and allow her the time to fully unburden herself even though he was going to immediately dismiss everything she said to him, but she had allowed him to do the exact same thing not twenty minutes earlier, so he remained silent, affording her the same courtesy she had shown him. Sharon sighed, her emotions already getting the better of her and she had barely begun, prompting Andy to take her hand and squeeze it all the tighter as a result.

"I ignored my feelings for you for so long because I was naturally cautious about committing my life to another addict," she told him with Andy immediately kissing the back of her hand again, the simple gesture coming across like a heartfelt 'Thank you' as he recognised the risk she had taken back then, taking him on, "until I was simply unable to ignore how I felt about you for a moment longer." She wiped at her eye. "It's turned out to be the best decision of my entire life but…" She took a deep and shaky breath. "But I feel like I've jeopardised that for you and I..."

"You've jeopardised nothing babe, not one damn thing."

She took another very deep breath to stop herself from completely breaking down as she prepared to tell him exactly how she'd been feeling ever since, how he'd been looking at her. "You say that Andy and I don't think you're conscious of it, but the way you've been looking at me since..."

"Is all in your head, babe. I promise you."

He answered quickly but he didn't have the faintest idea what she was talking about. It was the very first he was hearing about it and in truth he was horrified that she had thought that about him, for even a second, that he had been looking at her differently ever since, that he blamed her over it. Still, it did make him think for a moment. Had he really been looking at her differently, with a tinge of anger or God forbid disappointment because of the morphine he'd been given? That she had allowed him to have? He prayed that he hadn't and it was all in her head since Sharon had been dealing with enough of his shit during those long six weeks without that too but if he was a betting man, he wouldn't put money on it, having felt so unlike his old self of late.

Sharon lowered her head and sighed and Andy could see instantly that it wasn't enough to ease her concerns. He looked at her for a moment and was completely lost as to what to say to her about it, to make her feel better about something that wasn't even real to begin with, in his mind at least. What was real was the anger he felt towards himself. Sharon had been torturing herself about the morphine, about his sobriety and yet somehow he had missed it. He had been so self-absorbed of late, his head stuck firmly up his own arse to the extent that he had missed her suffering and even worse, failed to comfort her over it.

He couldn't help but blame himself for it because they still hadn't sat down and had the long and well overdue conversation about his addiction that he had promised her long before he ever moved into the condo. That conversation sadly seemed even further away than ever with everything else they had been dealing with, so Sharon still didn't fully understand all that he had been through over the previous two decades and how bad it had been at times and how he had managed to get sober again, almost completely on his own. But just like how Andy felt over that conversation, Sharon felt like she had betrayed him and the trust he had given her by allowing him to have the morphine in the back of that ambulance and it wasn't a feeling that was going away anytime soon.

To Sharon, it wasn't enough for Andy to just dismissively shrug his shoulders about it all, to mumble that he was okay and not to worry about it because it was something he needed and that was the end of that. For example, Andy, Provenza and Father Stan had all said the exact same thing to her about killing Dwight Darnell, telling her that she had no other choice and her action had saved lives, but none of it had any effect on her mental well-being. She needed to hear it from the lips of Wildred Darnell herself and in fact Sharon only started to show signs of improvement after Wildred had told her she fully understood why she had to kill her son in that courtroom while again also acknowledging that she had no other choice. She needed to hear the same thing from Andy about the morphine, to hear him say that he understood her choice, understood that she had no choice about it if she was ever going to feel better about putting his sobriety and therefore his health too, in serious jeopardy.

"Okay." Andy straightened up as he took both of her hands in his again while she continued to stare off into space and deliberately avoided his eye. "Sharon sweetheart, I need you to look at me" he all but ordered, squeezing her hands to ensure she was listening. She slowly turned to meet his eye, revealing to him just how upset she was about it all. "Just last year, I nearly died, without ever telling you how I really felt, how much I love you, that I adore you. So I made a vow back then, after my surgery, to ensure that I never kept something like that from you ever again and I need you to keep that in mind right now. Okay?" She nodded in reply. "Firstly, I swear Sharon, I'm not hiding anything from you or bottling up any sort of resentment or anger or whatever towards you. Consciously, unconsciously, in my sleep, in the bathroom, here, home, whatever, I just don't feel it. I'm sorry to say that it's probably this crazy sense of guilt you're feeling that makes you think that because I swear, none of it is coming from me." Sharon nodded and accepted it because it wasn't a huge surprise to learn that it was all in her head rather than real but once the idea had popped in her mind, she had no way to get rid of it again. "Secondly and much more importantly, you don't need to feel guilty about it." He kissed both of her hands while he allowed that thought to settle in her mind. "Babe, I fully understand that you had no other choice but to allow them to give me the morphine. I know that. I understand and I would have understood even if I hadn't told you to do what you felt was right all those months ago. Remember? We agreed. You became my medical power of attorney and I told you to give me the drugs if I needed them. Right? And I needed them. You did exactly what I told you to do. You did. I'm sorry that you were ever put in that position to begin with but you don't need to feel bad about it a second longer. I had a heart attack and I was given morphine to ease the agony of having an elephant sitting on my chest. And that's it" he said with a casual shrug of his shoulders, all but gritting his teeth together for a second as he described the pain he experienced. "You didn't pour a bottle of scotch down my throat or, I don't know, shot me up with every kind of opiate you could find or anything. It was morphine, given to me by a Paramedic in the back of an ambulance while I was having a heart attack. Given to me to make sure that I would still be here right now to hold your hand," he said before he kissed it again, "and to tell you what a complete idiot you're being about this." The humour in his voice made her laugh, it another welcome piece of light relief and from Andy's point of view it made a nice change for Sharon to be the idiot in their relationship. "It wasn't a betrayal of my trust or unnecessary or any other ridiculous notion that you might have floating around in that head of yours, okay?" He pulled his hand away from hers and put it on top to show her his sobriety ring. "You see this?" He held it up to show it off to her. "You know what this means to me, what it symbolises and how proud I am of it because I managed to get sober without the need for rehab. That was something I did completely on my own and for my kids but also for myself." He paused briefly as he looked at his ring glinting in the light. "I trusted this ring and my sobriety and my life with the one person I love more than any other in this world, the one person who I trust more than any other. And that's you." He kissed her hand again. "You did what I needed, what I told you to do and that means you helped save my life as much as the Doctors at St Leo's did. You did Sharon. I am only here right now because of you, Sharon Raydor always by my side no matter what and no matter how hard and foolishly I tried to push her away. Right?" She nodded and then opened her mouth to reply but nothing came out other than a sigh, a sigh practically overflowing with emotion. "And although you've got nothing to feel sorry about and you haven't done anything wrong, I'm going to say it anyway in case it'll help. So here goes, I understand that you had no other choice and you had to let them give me the morphine that day so I forgive you for it, Sharon. I forgive you even though there's nothing to forgive. Okay?"

She nodded as she pulled one hand away to wipe her eyes. "Okay."

"I don't blame you Sharon. I don't blame you for anything and that includes the medically needed blip in my sobriety. If it can even be classified as a blip since I can't remember most of it and hated what I can."

"Exactly and I did that to you."

"No you didn't babe, the Paramedics did that to me and they would have done it even if you weren't there with me. They were right to do it which means you were to right to give your permission and therefore, you are not to blame for it or anything else. You are not to blame for my continuing health worries because only I am responsible for the state of my heart, not you. You never once poured a bottle of scotch down my neck or pushed a hotdog on me some twenty odd years ago. Right?"

"But after you were thrown from the car..."

"It was a completely different situation, babe."

"You didn't want the opiates" she reminded him, at one point practically begging him to take them when he ended back up in the ER again following his partial collapse in her office but he still refused, wanting to do it without them if he could.

"Because I had a choice in it back then."

"And I took that choice away from you in the ambulance."

"No you didn't. I gave it to you, willingly when you became my medical power of attorney."

"But I still forced them on you."

"No you didn't" Andy once again insisted. "After the dust up with the car I had a choice and I made that choice because I could live without the drugs then. Sure, it hurt like hell and that local anaesthetic did next to nothing but it was nothing I couldn't live with in the short term, just like I did after that asshole stabbed me. But in the back of that ambulance I no longer had a choice and neither did you. It was the right decision for me to avoid them back then just like it was the right decision for me to have them in that ambulance. It's as simple as that."

"I know" she said as her hand went across his heart. "And yet."

"And yet only this, you Sharon Raydor, you are the reason that I now take care of my heart." He cupped her face with both hands. "You" he said before he kissed her tenderly on the lips. "You not only make me want to be a better man but a healthier one too and that means I'll take and do whatever I need to in order to spend as much time as I can with you. You're the person I want to share my life with, you're the person I am sharing my life with you and that includes you having the final say over what's best for me when I can't make that decision for myself, to say what's best for my health. And believe me, there are no better hands I could put my life in." He kissed her on the lips again before he got up from his chair in order to crouch beside her. "Come here."

He quickly wrapped his arms around her, drawing her to his chest and holding her much more securely than was possible while sitting next to each other and so she immediately responded in kind. They held each other in silence for the longest time, Sharon's eyes closed tight as she rested her chin on his shoulder and took one deep shaky breath after another, breathing in his aftershave and basking in the comfort his warmth provided her. When she eventually started to calm down he kissed her cheek and felt compelled to ask the question.

"Have you been keeping all of this bottled up since then?" he asked her softly while at the same time he felt frankly mortified that he had been so wrapped up in himself, that his head had been so far up his own ass that he had completely missed it. She was suffering just as much as he had been and torturing herself and he had missed all of it, offering her hardly any comfort during that time. Her only reply was a quiet hum as she held onto him a little tighter. "Sharon" he said with a sigh and another kiss to her temple. "You've got to stop blaming yourself for everything, you hear me? You did not cause my heart attack and I do not resent you over the morphine. Case closed. The end. Okay?" She let out another hum as she turned her face more into his neck, taking another deep breath of his cologne. Silence fell again as they held each other, Andy still kneeling beside her until he laughed. "We really make quite the pair don't we?" he mused joyfully and making her laugh. "Both of us needing to apologise when..."

"You've got nothing to be sorry about."

"And neither do you. Sharon. It's over. It's time to let it all go for your own sake as well as mine. Taylor, Dwight, me, my heart, the morphine, everything. It's time to let it go and live your life again, for both of us to live our lives, our life together again. Okay?"

"Okay." She pulled back just enough to look him in the eye and pose the same question to him. "Okay?"

He laughed and nodded, the two of them determined to move on, together. "Okay. Okay." He kissed her on the lips again before he went back to hugging her tightly. They stayed like that for a while as Sharon fully regained her composure and Andy just enjoyed being able to hold her like while they were at work, taking the chance to comfort her over something he had regretfully completely missed.

With the way a couple of the blinds had managed to snag on each other when Sharon had tried to close them earlier, Provenza still had a clear view of what was taking place inside his Captain's office, keeping a close eye on proceedings throughout. He wasn't being nosy as he kept glancing up to watch them, far from it, but rather because away from work, the single most unlikely couple in the entire world (aside from himself and Patrice of course) were his two closest friends and he loved them both dearly. And now that he was fully aware of what had been going on between them of late, the issues they had been struggling with, mostly in silence, he was determined more than ever to be there for them when they needed him.

Provenza had been staring at them with concern for several long moments by the time Andy knelt by her chair and they held each other, Sharon visibly upset by whatever they had been discussing. As he watched them he became so consumed by what he saw playing out in that small office that he completely missed Mike taking to his feet to go to the Break Room and get himself a cup of coffee. So when Mike quietly and subtly cleared his throat right behind him to get his attention, Provenza nearly jumped out of his skin, a hand across his heart.

"Ye Gods! Isn't one heart attack in this division enough for the year?"

Mike chuckled in reply as he sipped on his coffee, his usual 'Ha!' missing as he tried not to draw too much attention to the conversation they were having, or rather, the conversation they were about to have once he had apologised for startling him. "Sorry."

Provenza was quick to pick his pen back up and resume his report, not wanting Mike to see what he was so distracted by to ensure their privacy remained intact. But it was already too late, Mike just about being able to see enough of their emotional embrace as he headed back into the Murder Room with his coffee, pausing just a few steps inside as he sipped his drink and worried. Like the rest of their division, he had done very little but worry about the two of them for six long weeks, the situation not helped by witnessing just how depressed Andy had become of late. Combined with the way Sharon fled the building a day earlier and followed by such an emotional embrace, he couldn't help but worry even more. He stepped towards his desk and then stopped, glancing at the rest of their colleagues hard at work and not paying them any attention in the slightest, presenting him with a very small window of opportunity to ask the question.

He turned to face the murder board before committing the biggest sin of them all, perching on the edge of Provenza's desk, lowering his head just enough to be able talk to him and not be overheard by anyone else. Provenza's eyes immediately bulged like a Bulldog chewing on a wasp and he was just about to blow his top when he recognised the worry on Mike's face, moving closer to him. Mike subtly nodded over his shoulder towards Sharon's office which prompted Provenza to glance at them too as they still held each other, realising that he had seen them too and needed some reassurance.

"Should we be worried?" Mike asked. It was hardly above a whisper but Provenza heard him loud and clear.

He smiled up at him, putting his hand on his arm for a moment as he shook his head with an emphatic and unmistakable 'No.' "Not at all" Provenza insisted with a smile, it sounding less than convincing due to the quietness of his voice.

"Really?"

"Trust me." That was all it took for Mike to be satisfied since he did trust him, implicitly so, both as a friend and a colleague and Provenza saw his shoulders relax quickly as a result. "Now if you wouldn't mind, get your ass the hell off my desk!" His voice got louder by the syllable until he had gained the attention of the whole division, making them laugh. Mike patted him on the shoulder as he got up and sat back down at his desk with work resuming for all except Provenza. He took one more look at his friends as they still held each other and then picked up his pen but not before he gave the edge of his desk, the area that had just been violated in his eyes, a quick wipe with the back of his hand since Sharon had his latest handkerchief. "It's about time I had some barbed wire or broken glass fitted around the edge of this thing since people can't seem to take a hint."

They all laughed again even as Amy turned around in her chair to face Wes and received a grateful nod from him in return. As part of his 'education' on his new division, the second thing Amy had told him (with the first being how important the rules were to their Captain and to never even consider breaking one) was that he should never ever even think about sitting on Provenza's desk or chair under pain of death. Even leaning against it would result in venom being sent his way and potentially the loss of a limb or two. He had been glad of her advice so far especially when it came to the Lieutenant since Provenza clearly didn't like him for as yet unknown reasons, but he still had an awful lot to learn before he was going to feel as at home in Major Crimes as Amy did.

Back inside Sharon's office, Andy was still knelt on the ground next to her at the table with their arms wrapped tightly around each other in a loving embrace. While Sharon continued to sniff with the emotion she has been bottling up for so long by that point, Andy mostly managed to keep his composure intact unlike during that conversation in the hospital five weeks earlier. As such he saw it as his job to bring the smile back to her face in the only way he knew how, or rather, the only way he could while they were still at PAB.

"You know Raydor," he finally said before pausing to kiss her just above her ear, "you're right."

"I'm always right" she declared and making him laugh. She was almost arrogant in her tone and delivery, the use of which was solely to make him laugh and join him in trying to lighten the mood a little. She'd been spending way too much time with Provenza lately he noted to himself and was reminded of how much he owed him. "Right about what?" she asked as she pulled back just enough to see his face again.

"About being able to steam up these windows over the course of just one lunch hour" he said as he looked around them and she laughed. "Especially since I've only just been cleared for active duty and I don't exactly have the miles under my belt right now."

"Oh yes, I quite agree with you on that one. You'll probably need to build up to it over the course of a couple of months first before you move onto a room this size" she told him with a grin that matched his own. "And in the meantime, we practice."

"It's a deal" he laughed. "And maybe we wait until Provenza isn't sitting quite so close as to hear too."

"That sounds like a plan."

"Good" he nodded. "Do you know what a good stepping stone would be as I work my way up to steaming up your office windows kind of stamina?" Sharon laughed as she shook her head at him. She was never going to have sex with him in her office, that was a rule she was never ever going to break (no matter how much of Julio's incredibly strong eggnog she could consume at one of their Christmas parties) but it was still fun to joke about it with him. "My car at that secluded spot by the beach again" he told her with a waggle of his eyebrows.

As her eyes squeezed together from her laughter, another stray tear managed to get away from her, much to her annoyance. "Sorry" she told him as she dropped her right hand from around him and put it in the pocket of her jacket to pull out Provenza's handkerchief, wiping her eyes with it.

As Sharon wiped at her eyes Andy let out a quiet chuckle when he immediately spotted his partner's initials stitched into the cotton, but this time in a colour he had not noticed before amongst her ever growing collection of his handkerchiefs. It had to be a new one and that could only mean that tears had been shed again that morning and just like the previous six long weeks, Provenza had been taking care of her for him.

"What's this now? The tenth one of these," he asked her playfully as he gently tugged on the handkerchief in her hand, "he's given you?"

She nodded and laughed in reply before she admitted "Something like that."

Andy took the handkerchief from her and gently wiped her cheeks for her, doing it ever so carefully so that he didn't ruin her make-up. "I know plenty of other guys," he started to say as he tenderly removed her tears, "who would get insanely jealous if they found another guy's monogrammed underwear in their girlfriend's pocket."

"It's a handkerchief Andy," she laughed, "not underwear."

"I think you'll find that handkerchiefs sit right alongside underwear and socks in the same drawer according to the bureau organisation rulebook."

"There's a rulebook for organising clothes in a bureau?"

"Don't act like you don't already know Raydor" he replied with a grin, his clothes arranged in a very specific way at home, all of which were put away by Sharon after the move one night while he was still in the hospital, his solitary drawer expanding to half a dozen as well as half the closet. Sharon just laughed at him as he finished wiping her eyes but he paused and looked closely at the purple initials on the handkerchief before he handed it back to her. "Is this a new one?" he asked.

Sharon quickly stuffed it back into her jacket pocket while she thought about what she was going to say to him. She considered lying to him about it but it wasn't for long, wanting him to know that Provenza was still taking care of her, acknowledging that there weren't enough bottles of merlot in the world for them to thank him for his kindness.

"It is" she admitted shyly with a little nod of her head. He smiled back at her in reply before he quickly wrapped his arms around her again, ignoring the way his knees were protesting as he remained crouched down on the hard floor. "And after my sudden and apparently rather erratic departure yesterday afternoon, he just wanted to make sure that everything was okay." She pulled back just enough to look him in the eye and stroke his cheek. "That you were okay."

"And?"

"And in-between thanking him for his extraordinary kindness and friendship over the last six weeks in particular, I may have got a little upset" she confessed quietly as she fought to hold off her latest batch of tears.

"Come here" Andy replied quickly and she willingly went back into his arms, them holding each other very tightly. "I owe both him and Patrice a big bottle of wine and an expensive thank you dinner very soon."

"We both do, if for no other reason than him having to listen to all of my worries recently" she explained before she let out yet another emotional sigh. "And that's without the way he held my hand the whole time you were in surgery once again."

"Are you sure he wasn't putting a move on you?" he joked with Sharon laughing before she swotted the back of his head playfully, causing him to grunt with great exaggeration. "Next weekend, we'll take them out to dinner and give them a proper thank you." She nodded in agreement once again but didn't respond verbally, her hold on him only tightening. "What a mess, huh!" he said after a short pause. He pulled back just enough to put his elbow on the table, resting his head in his hand as he tightly clutched hers in his other and gazed up at her adoringly. "When did we stop talking to each other?" he asked and not for the first time since Dwight Darnell fired that first shot in the courtroom.

Sharon shrugged as if she had no clue when it all began, and yet knew that she had started it, holding back and shutting him out in the immediate aftermath to the shooting and with one thing leading to the next and suddenly were they both riddled with anxiety and worries but not feeling like they could openly discuss it with each other for the first time since they had become very close friends years earlier.

She ran her hand through his hair, his eyes closing for a brief moment as her nails scratched his scalp. "I don't know but it ends here" she stated emphatically.

"Yes it does" he asserted. He then kissed her one more time on the lips before he took his seat again. Andy picked up his fork immediately as the matter was put to bed once and for all but Sharon carefully wiped her eyes first, hoping that she hadn't ruined her make-up. Andy watched her with a smile until she was done. "Stunning" he told her with a wink.

She laughed as she squeezed his hand. "Charmer!" With that they both began to eat again, Andy's left hand clutching her right and not ready to let her go at a time when she was still so upset and worried about him despite her best attempts to hide it. Sharon was more than content to eat as they were, their fingers linked together and still feeling like she needed that constant physical connection with him as a reminder that he was still there and that it was finally time to try to move on. After a few moments she realised that she still had something else she wanted to say to him, another apology to make even though she knew he was going to immediately dismiss it yet again but it didn't matter because she needed to say it to him regardless. She sighed before she spoke, prompting him to look up at her. "I still feel like I need to apologise to you."

Andy tried his best not to roll his eyes but it was difficult as he asked "What for exactly?" He didn't know how he was going to do it or even if it was possible but if they were ever going to move on with their life together then he needed to get her past the drugs amongst other things, the two of them desperate for a longer conversation about it that he was still trying to put off until the appropriate moment. "I needed the morphine, Sharon" he told her with another shrug. "That's all there is to it."

"I think we'll just have to agree to disagree about that one my darling but it's not what I was talking about."

"Then what?" he asked. His smile beamed at her as if she had never so much as told a little white lie in her entire life (with many people already of that opinion when it came to Sharon Raydor and in truth both he and Rusty had joked with her on numerous occasions over what she had to say in Confession given that she was such a stickler for rules but her relationship with Andy had provided her with all the material she could possible want and then some more recently) much less have grounds to actually say sorry to him about anything else. "What could you possibly need to apologise to me about?"

"For yesterday."

Andy frowned at her, baffled to say the least because from his position, with the exception of half an hour on the treadmill and a rather uncomfortable conversation with Rusty, it had been one of the best days of his life and no apology was needed. "For yesterday? Forgive me for being a little dim here babe, but I thought we both had a fabulous time yesterday. And last night. And again this morning." She laughed as he waggled his eyebrows at her and then kissed her hand. "I know I sure did."

Sharon laughed at him again, her hand going down his cheek. "Trust me Andy, the feeling is more than mutual but I actually meant that I'm sorry for yesterday morning."

He frowned again, having no idea what she was talking about and unable to remember a single crossed word. So far living together had proven to be a little harder than they'd both hoped but most of that had been related to his heart rather than them irritating each other after the move. Before he sold his house he had spent more time at the condo than at home so they already had experience of living together and knew what was coming, the good and the bad. She knew how he liked to abandon his shoes everywhere, wet towels receiving the same treatment and he'd never finished a cup of coffee in his life let alone remembered to put the cup in the dishwasher. Likewise he knew that Sharon had a very settled life and since he was moving into her home and making it 'theirs' then he needed to adapt to that and her way of life, like how the dishwasher needed to be stacked and where the post and keys lived for example. They irritated each other at times but that wasn't exactly new, it all part of living together and yet he couldn't think of single thing that he'd been forced to bite his tongue about the previous morning and that would warrant an apology. She hadn't used his razor to shave her legs, she hadn't stolen any of his socks and she hadn't ran a tap in the kitchen while he was in the shower so he had no idea what she was apologising for unless she had 'borrowed' yet another one of his shirts but given how happy he was, how much he had enjoyed those seventeen hours together completely alone, he really didn't care less about any of it. He was so happy that life had returned to normal again that she could shoot him in the balls with a nail gun and he wouldn't care less.

Sharon sighed before she spoke which made it clear to him that regardless of how he felt about what she was about to say, it had been bothering her and so he had to take it a lot more seriously if he was going to be able to comfort her. "I'm sorry I didn't take you to see the Doctor myself yesterday" she said with another sad and remorseful sigh.

"What?" Andy laughed, his astonishment clear. "Are you kidding me with this?" he added with another shake of his head. "I know all about Catholic guilt babe, I soaked up enough of that crap myself while those demons were hitting my left hand with a stick but now you're just making up stuff to feel bad about."

"No, I'm not. Andy, I put my job before you once again yesterday morning and yet that was something I swore I was never going to do ever again."

Once again he looked at her like she speaking a foreign language and unable to think of one single instance where she had put work and her job before him because from him point of view when it came to their working relationship she had only ever put him first and that included the way she was insisting he go back to work and was doing everything she could to facilitate it. "When have you done it before exactly?" he asked, still feeling utterly baffled by the whole conversation. "Sharon, you took over four weeks of leave just to spend it with me, so you could take care of me while I recovered, despite the fact that I've been frankly vile to you of late and the worst patient alive. How on earth is that putting work before me? That's the complete opposite in fact."

"I wasn't just talking about yesterday. I was talking about the last time too."

"With my clot?"

"Yes." Andy continued to stare back at her with a baffled expression on his face while she was likewise confused why he couldn't see what was so blatantly obvious to her. "Andy you were dragged across a parking lot and then thrown from a moving car." She fell silent as she waited for a response but Andy simply shrugged in return as if it was a common occurrence and it happened to one of them in the division at least once a week rather than him nearly dying as a result of it all. "You had to go to the hospital for crying out loud! Did I drop work immediately and drive over there to be with you and hold your hand while you were being treated? No, I didn't. I stayed here and I carried on working until you practically fell out of the elevator and into my lap." She dropped her head to her hand with another sigh. "I didn't even speak to you on the damn phone afterwards."

"Well that was my fault not yours. I left my phone in the car and I didn't think..."

"You didn't need to think about me Andy. You were the one that was injured. The moment it happened I should have dropped everything to be by your side but I didn't, instead I put work before you for the first but not the last time."

"Are you forgetting that you rode with me in the ambulance that evening?"

"No."

"Exactly."

"But by that point the case was already over all bar the shouting so there was no decision for me to make. Then to make matters worse, the day before Thanksgiving I left you alone with Rusty and the turkey I was supposed to be preparing for you in order to come to work."

Acknowledging that she was building a convincing case he nodded. "Okay, granted but there's no need to beat yourself up over it because you didn't know what was going to happen and I was fine when you left."

"You weren't fine when I left you the second time" she replied instantly with real emotion. She was starting to upset herself again since from her point of view, she had continually left him time and time again during a moment of real need in the past just like everyone else in his life had, but he wasn't just in need, his life was literally hanging in the balance. "Leaving you bloodied and bruised and in need of life saving surgery while I went back to work" she reminded him as she wiped at her eye.

He smiled brightly at her with all of it water under the bridge as far as he was concerned. And he understood, he always did. He never once saw it as Sharon leaving him like everyone else had in his life over the years. He was her Lieutenant and they had worked side by side for years before they started to share their lives together so he understood that work came first and it wasn't like she could do anything at the hospital to help at the time, do anything so that he didn't need the surgery. Although he wanted to spend time with her, as much as possible especially when he was worried, scared even and desperately trying to summon up the courage to tell her that he loved her, he understood that work came first and he wasn't alone in that hospital.

"I know but even murderers don't wait for idiots with blood clots," he told her with a grin and was pleased to hear her chuckle despite the fact that she was still upset, "and the two minions you left behind made sure I stayed out of trouble so I wasn't alone."

"But that's not the point Andy. I've always done it. For God's sake even when Emily and Ricky came for Christmas I abandoned them and Rusty to discover who killed Santa." Andy couldn't help but laugh about it even though he could tell that in her eyes it was anything but funny and she hated herself because of it. "I have repeatedly put work before you and my children again and again but after your surgery I swore that it was the last time…until yesterday morning arrived and instead of holding your hand while you spoke to the Doctor I was here, watching a moron stuff his best friend into a wood chipper on CCTV" she said with a groan as she put her head in her hand again.

"Do you think I care?"

"No but I care Andy, I care. It still could have gone either way yesterday morning and yet I wasn't there for you during your appointment, sending one of my 'minions' with you yet again instead."

"Wow!" he laughed. "The kid is just going to love that nickname!"

The smile on his face and the enthusiasm in his tone made her laugh but only briefly as she soon stopped, angry and disappointed with herself. She stared into his eyes. "Even if the sky was falling in, I should have been with you yesterday" she told him in almost a whisper.

Andy sighed and he knew that this was yet another thing it was going to take time to stop her from feeling guilty about, adding it to the ever growing list. "Sharon, your dedication to this job, your passion and sheer determination to get it done, to get justice no matter what and not to mention just how good you are it for a rookie let me remind you," he told her and again thankfully managed to get a little chuckle out of her again, "it was one of the things that attracted me to you in the first place."

"Really?" she asked with a smile.

"Yes…along with your legs obviously and then discovering just how good you smell when we danced together at Nicole's wedding" he all but groaned and earning another soft laugh out of her. "Sharon, with this job you make the world a better place for everyone, including me and I really wouldn't have you any other way."

"Again I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this subject Lieutenant." He laughed and kissed her hand again. "But I guarantee it Andy, it will never ever happen again" she stated emphatically. "I promise."

"I'll be honest, I hope I never need to go to the hospital again for it to happen, babe."

"Well that's definitely something we can both agree on." He laughed in agreement before her left hand came up and stroked his cheek again. "But still, I am so sorry my boy."

"Well in that case, let me say that I forgive you so that we can forget all about it. Okay?" She gave him another small smile and nod of her head, acknowledging her intention to try if nothing else. "Good." He sighed as he looked around them for a moment. "So much for always keeping 'us' at home, huh?"

She laughed and nodded because he had a point, her desire to keep their relationship out of the Murder Room never really coming to fruition no matter how hard she tried after those first few months together. "Well since you're currently only a visitor here," she reminded him as she tugged on his visitor's badge, "we're only bending the rules a little rather than breaking them altogether and besides, I don't know about you but I was struggling to keep some of this in any longer."

He nodded at her with a smile. "I know the feeling but it's now time for a clean slate" he replied with it now Sharon's turn to nod in agreement. "I'll make you a deal." He clutched her hands in both of his while his eyes locked on hers, this a deal and a promise that they were going to make with each other that would never be broken. "I'll stop apologising for generally scaring the crap out of you time and time again and making you worry about me and basically completely ruining our honeymoon period and..."

"Not ruined, just postponed."

"Right, well I'll stop apologising for something I couldn't control and didn't do on purpose if you finally stop blaming yourself for something that also wasn't your fault and for having to put your job before your boy toy. Okay? Do we have a deal?"

"Yes, I believe we do" she confirmed with a smile.

"Good, and now we move on with life and forget about all of this…all of this shit. Right?"

She nodded in reply, not capable of anything else as her emotions threatened to spill over yet again. With a trademark cheeky wink he kissed her chastely on the lips a couple of times before they both resumed eating their meals again, those extremely difficult conversations and their respective apologies now behind them (for now at least) and it truly was time for a fresh start and for them to finally move on. Andy still kept a firm hold of her right hand as he tucked in, their fingers linked and resting comfortably in her lap below the table, Sharon not yet ready to let him go completely. They ate in relative silence for a good long while until a huge smile quickly made its way to Andy's face which meant Sharon knew immediately that some complete and utter piece of nonsense destined to make her laugh hysterically would be falling from his lips shortly. She couldn't help but smile back at him even as she elected to stay silent and wait for him to say what he found so amusing rather than asking him.

Eventually he looked at her from the corner of his eye before he spoke. "Do you know what the worse part of all of this crap has been?" he asked.

"That you nearly died just two weeks after we finally moved in together?"

"Aside from that" he said with another wink. Sharon managed a little laugh in response and expected to hear yet more detailed complaints about the catheter they had fitted him with before he was sent upstairs for his angioplasty, claiming (jokingly so) that it still hurt him six weeks later and that it was inserted so far into his bladder that he could practically play a tune with it. "That we've had all of these fights lately, some real hum-dingers because I'm basically an asshole and had no control over the crap that has come out of my mouth and yet we've had zero chance to engage in any major make up sex afterwards." The response was immediate and Sharon laughed hysterically at him with no control over it, that a perfect tension breaker after the previous half an hour or so, the sound of her laughter music to Andy's ears. "Don't laugh! I'm being serious here! What is the point of having a fight if you don't get to enjoy some vigorous make up sex afterwards?"

"If this is your way of telling me that you're going to start picking fights in the near future just so you can get a little make up sex out of it, I've got some bad news for you my darling."

"That's not what I was saying at all" he lied.

"Really?" she asked with her suspicion clear. In reply Andy just grinned at her until she laughed again. "You have a one track mind."

"In my defence, it's incredibly difficult not to get aroused to the point of blindness when you raise your voice even a fraction, babe" he told her honestly and earning another chuckle as she shook her head at him. "And then when Darth Raydor also puts in a more than welcome appearance, well, it's literally all I can do to stop myself from throwing you down on the nearest desk and giving Provenza a heart attack too."

She laughed again, the noise loud enough to carry through the glass surrounding her office and all the way to Provenza's ear in particular, him looking up and smiling as he saw them laughing together again after what was clearly an extremely emotional moment not that long ago.

Sharon sighed as she gazed at him happily. Oh God how she had missed this Andy Flynn over the previous six weeks. Once upon a time (and not that long ago in fact), she had stood in the Conference Room with Brenda as Andy shouted at her almost aggressively, a real venom to his tone. Had he not already been beaten to a pulp, it would have been hard not to slap him such was the attitude on display. In her FID days she always tried her hardest to remain neutral and not allow her personal feelings to impact on work but as attractive as she found him at the time and indeed from their first meeting almost twenty years earlier, she did not like him. In fact she'd go as far as to say she loathed him. Then it all changed. She was at a point where he made her heart skip a beat when he smiled at her, lightheaded when she woke up in the morning and saw him lying next to her, breathless when he kissed her and when he made her laugh. Her life, every single aspect of it would be poorer without him in it. How had that happened? She didn't have an answer but she was going to cherish him for every second for the rest of her life now that it had.

"What am I going to do with you?" she asked him, her hand running through his hair again.

His face lit up with that trademark smoulder and it was all she could do to stop herself from letting out an aroused moan in response. "I have a few suggestions."

She laughed again. "I'm sure you do. So, are we adding all of this make-up sex to the list?"

Andy scoffed like it was the most ridiculous question he had ever heard in his life. "Like you even need to ask." Again Sharon laughed at him and not just because they had already had that conversation as recently as that very morning when he was joking about retirement and using the spare time at their disposal to catch up on all of the sex they'd missed and now they had more to add. "So that's the ten nights that Gavin wanted you to spend with me plus…"

"Ten? I thought it was only seven this morning?"

"I know but given the way you could barely keep your hands off me over a seventeen hour window in the not so distant past, I think we both know the number should be a lot higher, probably closer to fifteen or maybe even twenty" he told her smugly and earning another quiet chuckle. "And that's probably a conservative estimate by the way. Then we've got the three months from the appearance of that red dress that I've still not seen to when we first slept together, plus last Valentine's Day and then the last six long weeks of medical enforced abstinence, which fell during our honeymoon period let's not forget," he continued to list to the sound of yet more laughter, "and I don't know about you, but I had plans to be at it like rabbits if the kid was with Gus. And then finally, there's a lot of make-up sex because I've been such a huge ass to you lately."

"Just lately?" she asked with a smile.

"Well I can add the last twenty five years of me being an ass to you if you like but you should be aware that I'll probably be dead from exhaustion within the first two years."

"Two years?"

"Of nothing but nonstop sex."

"And you really think you can last two whole years?"

"Yes" Andy replied confidently. "Do you know why?" Sharon simply shook her head as she continued to laugh at him. "Six times in seventeen hours baby." Andy immediately put his hand up into the air and she gave him another celebratory high-five as she laughed.

"Is that it?"

"For now but I'm sure I'll think of more given enough time."

"I'm sure you will" she laughed.

"Added all together and we now have roughly five and a half if not six months, of nonstop hot, athletic, sweaty, jungle sex to catch up on. We're definitely going to need to retire to find the time to do it, babe."

"And to think, some people find themselves at a loose end when they retire" she joked. He gave her another waggle of his eyebrows, his intent more than clear which made her laugh again. "Tell me, will I be spending all of our retirement lying horizontally or will I be permitted to stand up from time to time?"

"You mean before you get vertigo?"

"Something along those lines."

"Of course!" Andy replied with a grin and Sharon guessed what he was going to say next before he even opened his mouth. "Who doesn't love a good old-fashioned knee trembler?" he added as expected but still making her laugh. "The good news about all of this is," he let out softly as he kissed her hand, "we hit our first rocky patch head on and we survived it. We're still together," he said before he kissed her hand again, "stronger than ever. It didn't break us babe. Right?"

She nodded before she leant over towards him and kissed him on the lips. "I love you."

He grinned back at her, looking dopey like he always did when she told him that she loved him mainly because he just still couldn't believe his luck. Sharon Raydor loved him. She loved him. "I love you too" he replied before he kissed her back.

With that the comfortable silence returned as they continued to eat their lunch until Sharon had to break it. "So, tell me, now that you have permission to do what you want and when you want once again..."

"Within reason."

Sharon laughed and nodded as her hand again stroked his cheek. He was still anxious about the state of his heart but that wasn't all that surprising given what had happened to him but she hoped it would ease with enough time. The real surprise for Sharon was that unlike his recovery following his blood clot, he wasn't trying to run before he could walk. For once he was content to take everything slowly, take his time and not do anything to jeopardise his recovery.

"Right, within reason," she chuckled, "so what do you want to do this weekend?"

It would be a lie to say that they had barely left the condo since the morning he was finally released from hospital but they hadn't been out a lot. Andy had been more than happy to allow Sharon to mother the crap out of him as he recovered and he was perfectly content to rest up as much as possible with Sharon by his side until he was given the complete all clear. So aside from his Doctor's appointments, they had gone out for a bite to eat on couple of occasions, over to Nicole's too for dinner one evening and to Provenza and Patrice's house for the afternoon but that had been it. He was suffering with a little cabin fever (Sharon was too at times for that matter) and that was clear but he never once grumbled about it to her. Yet at the same time Sharon still suspected he'd want to do something as dramatic as drive across country over the weekend before he went back to work, to just live for two days and do anything he wanted before he returned to his desk.

Andy's answer was immediate and came with a casual shrug. "Nothing."

"Nothing?" Sharon repeated after a few moments, her surprise clear.

"Yep."

"You don't want to do anything?"

"Well not nothing exactly but I don't want to do anything that means leaving home for too long" he replied, resulting in immediate laughter from his lunch companion. "What?"

"Andy you've been climbing the walls for weeks, desperate to get out and have your sense of freedom back and now that you're clear to do what you want again you suddenly don't want to leave?"

"Well I'm not completely averse to taking you out for something to eat at some point over the weekend if work allows of course," he told her with a shrug, "but what I really want to do is for the both of us to stay home, relax, crawl into bed and catch up on some seriously missed s...leep." The delay between the start and the end of the word was enough for him to ensure that Sharon immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion, causing her to laugh as she pressed her face into his shoulder and realised her mistake. "What are you laughing about?" he asked as he tried to act as innocent as possible as if she was the one with the dirty mind but even so she saw straight through it. "You've got a one track mind Raydor. Not everything is about sex."

"This from a man who keeps track of missed orgasms in our relationship."

"Ah but that's more about balancing the books than it is sex."

Sharon laughed as she pointed at his nose. "Andy, your nostrils are flaring."

"I've told you before, that's arousal" he joked, her laughter only increasing. "But even so, I think a nice relaxing and quiet weekend on the whole is just what the Doctor ordered."

Sharon tensed immediately, worried that after the 'exercise' he had done over the previous twenty-four hours that he suddenly wasn't feeling well as a result and he'd done too much too soon which was what she had been so concerned about. "Why?" she asked as her hand moved to his forehead to see if he felt hot. Since his high temperature had extended his stay in hospital no matter how many times they told his Doctor he was just naturally hot, she had taken to checking his temperature every couple of days ever since to keep track of it in case something like it ever happened again. "Are you feeling…"

"Sharon," Andy said calmly as he took her hand from his forehead and kissed it, "I'm fine. I promise you. If I start to feel even a little under the weather, trust me, from this moment on I will tell you immediately. I promise you."

She hummed in reply with more than a splash of disbelief to her tone. He'd promised her that before, when his medication related dizzy spells had resulted in the immediate need for surgery, he'd held her hand and promised never to keep something like that from her ever again. Although he had mentioned to her that his shoulder and neck were troubling him on a couple of occasions, the true extent of the pain and discomfort he felt had been kept from her given she had enough to worry about at the time.

"Yes, you've said that before but I'll believe it when I see it, Andrew."

"Yeah okay" he laughed. "Point taken. But anyway, I was thinking more about you when it comes to having a nice, quiet, relaxing weekend at home."

"Me? Why?"

"Sharon, believe me when I say, and this is not me complaining or me being ungrateful for everything you've done for me of late because I seriously couldn't be more grateful to you for all of it." He took both of her hands again and squeezed them tightly. "This is me saying to you that you look exhausted babe," he told her kindly as she nodded, acknowledging his point rather quickly, "and I want to take care of you for a weekend while you get yourself some sleep rather than watching me sleep all night so that you don't end up in a hospital bed yourself before too long. Okay?"

She nodded, supressing her emotions once again. "You have no idea how much I'd like that" she told him with a chuckle. "But sleeping, having a peaceful night without all of the anxiety in the pit of my stomach, well that's a lot easier said than done."

"Do you know what might help you sleep a little better?"

"Sedatives? A mallet to the back of the head?" she suggested and beginning to feel like she was never going to sleep soundly ever again because if her guilt over Dwight and worries about Andy were not enough lately to keep her awake, just knowing that Phillip Stroh was still out in the world had been robbing her of sleep for close to two years by that point.

"Both fabulous ideas and I'd normally say 'An orgasm or two' but I tried that last night and it still didn't work."

"Yes but that doesn't mean we should give up trying altogether."

"Oh I agree" he told her with great enthusiasm and making them both laugh happily. "But I was going to suggest that you just stay in bed this weekend. Admittedly we've had a lot of other things on our minds since then but that night I got out of bed and found you sitting in the living room in the middle of the night, I made the decision to cuff you to the bed if you did it one more time. Don't make me have to do it."

"I wouldn't dream of it," she laughed, "but I'll only stay in bed if you stay with me."

"I think that's an arrangement I can agree to" he replied with a wink before he kissed her hand. "As long as you let me pamper you a little tonight."

"I was under the impression you spent most of yesterday pampering me."

He grinned at her, that boyish grin she found so irresistible. "I was thinking more along the lines of cooking you dinner while you soak in the bath with a very large glass of wine, let me make it up to the most wonderful and patient woman in the entire world for taking care of me in my time of need."

"I think I could agree to that."

"I thought you might."

"But are you sure you're really feeling okay?" she asked.

Andy paused with a deep sigh before he turned to face her a little more. "Do you want the truth?"

"Always" she replied with a nervous smile. "Now more than ever."

"Okay" he nodded and immediately felt her tense, her shoulders up beyond her ears as she anticipated another health related bombshell to come her way. "Well the first thing you can do is stop yourself from panicking, okay?" he said with another warm smile that made her relax, releasing the breath she wasn't aware she'd been holding. "There's nothing to panic about. I promise you Sharon. Okay?"

"Okay" she nodded, letting out another deep breath. "I'll try."

"Good." He paused as he gave her another reassuring smile in an attempt to calm her fears given what he was about to say. "The answer is no. I'm not feeling okay right now" he told her even though he knew she'd panic and so quickly continued to make sure she didn't fret too much. "I am absolutely exhausted." His head dropped to the table with a loud clunk as he shut his eyes and groaned, revealing just how tired he really felt.

Sharon laughed, her suspicions finally confirmed and it wasn't anywhere near as bad as she feared. She knew he was going to be tired, she always knew when he was tired but actually getting him to admit it was a lot easier said than done. "I see. What a shock" she said with sarcasm dripping from every syllable. She could practically hear him rolling his eyes in reply despite his face being pressed against the table.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah" he groaned.

"Did you have a nap after I left this morning?"

"Yes" came the instant reply but he didn't lift his head meaning his voice was rather muffled against the table, causing Sharon to run her hands threw his hair.

"Really?"

With his eyes remaining closed, he turned to face her so that she would be able to hear him a little more clearly. "About twenty seconds after you left and I closed the front door."

Sharon laughed, surprised but very pleased to hear it. "How long for?"

"About ten seconds before Rusty asked if he still needed to keep checking if I was dead or not" he grumbled and making her laugh again. "Then I had a couple of hours."

"I told you that you needed more sleep last night."

His head snapped up as he rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, yeah" he whined again before he smiled at her to ensure she knew he was only joking. She laughed in reply as he kissed her hand and then rested his head in one hand, gazing up at her. "It was worth it though."

"Oh so worth it" she replied lovingly. "But what about tonight and round two?"

"Yeah, I might need to take a rain check on round two tonight" he confessed with a real grimace and in reality was loathed to admit it, the fact that he didn't have the stamina he did ten years ago let alone twenty.

"Oh good. Me too" she confirmed, both of them laughing.

"Didn't this use to be so much easier?"

"Yes it did, but remember we were so much younger back then" she pointed out, everything from sex to hangovers and beyond much easier to recover from back in their twenties. "You hadn't had a heart attack and I hadn't had two children."

"Oh yeah, now I remember."

"Not to mention that I was a lot more flexible back then too."

"I find that very hard to believe" he replied with a waggle of his eyebrows.

"Are you chatting me up at work Lieutenant Flynn? Again?"

"Well technically I'm not back at work yet, remember?"

"Of course" she laughed. "In that case, since you're so tired, why don't you forego all of the pampering you had planned and what do you say to an early night instead? You get the TV out of the closet again and we can watch a movie in bed? What do you think?"

"I think that sounds like heaven on Earth" he told her with a kiss to her hand.

After the whole 'climbing the stairs' nightmare discussion with Rusty a day earlier and the young man being more than aware of what had been going on in his absence, if they were to avoid yet more excessive screaming and troubling Dr Joe while he still recovered, then they would need to watch their movie with the bedroom door wide open to ensure Rusty knew what kind of 'early night' it really was. But Andy really didn't care in truth, more than happy to make any and all accommodations when it came to Rusty in order to live a quiet life with his Mother.

"You know that bastard had me running on the treadmill for over thirty minutes yesterday, right?" he complained. It wasn't completely unexpected news given the reason he was at his Doctor's office to begin with but Sharon still smiled when she realised that she had so far been able to avoid his rant on the subject. "Too bad you weren't there. I needed you to go and remind that son of a bitch that I had a heart attack just six weeks ago."

"I think that may have been in your notes" she laughed.

"And yet he made me run anyway. He had that automatic blood pressure cuff sitting on his desk throughout too. I warned him immediately that if he tried to send me home with that thing attached to my arm, then I was going to shoot him."

She laughed as she shook her head at him. "Were you really running for thirty minutes?"

"And then some" he confirmed. She smiled at him and ran her hand through his hair again. That explained some of the tiredness he had the day before that she tried her hardest not to be worried about, or at least tried to worry about him without him noticing it. "But with that in mind, six times in seventeen hours seems even more impressive doesn't it?"

"It does indeed," she laughed, "extremely impressive."

"I mean just the catheter alone could have done me some real damage down there" he said for what felt like the hundredth time as Sharon laughed and rolled her eyes at him. "Why do you always laugh at that? It went up so far I could almost feel it right behind my damn eye. It hurt!"

"Oh Andy, my darling," she replied as she cupped his face in both hands, "I know you had a heart attack and I know how much it hurt but until you've had a baby literally rip you open from the inside, you don't know what real pain is." With that she kissed him on the lips as she patted his cheeks and then pulled away from him.

Andy was unusually quiet for once in response, his only answer a grimace as he crossed his legs, like her description alone was enough to cause him sympathy pains. Eventually the grin returned as he said "I still think you should let me beat him up for you," extracting revenge on her eldest son for the damage he did to her body during childbirth. "I could do it over Christmas. Give him a dead arm and tell him 'That's for the damage you did to my favourite place on Earth.'"

Again Sharon laughed as she swiped at his arm. "That is still not the compliment you think it is" she told him once again.

"I'll fully understand if you want to brag about it." Sharon frowned, not about to tell a soul about the compliments that Andy paid to her 'Lady Garden,' let alone actually brag about them. "I'm talking about six times in seventeen hours just six weeks after a heart attack" he clarified. "I understand if you feel the need to brag about it."

"You mean you want me to brag about it more like."

Andy shrugged, acting as innocently as possible. "Only a little."

She laughed again. "And does this have anything to do with the rather young and some may say, incredibly handsome and athletic Detective who has recently joined our division?"

"The thought never crossed my mind."

"With all of your experience you'd think you'd be able to lie to me better than that by now" she laughed, earning a glare that quickly turned into a smile in reply. "I'd still take you over fifty of him any day of the week."

"At work or in bed?" he asked after a brief pause, making Sharon laugh as she swatted his shoulder again. "Did they ask you where you flew off to yesterday afternoon?"

"No but I'm sure they all knew what was going on from that phone call."

"I think they probably knew what was going on when you left work in a lust inspired frenzy in the middle of the day with that crazed look in your eye."

Sharon swotted at his shoulder again in retaliation. "There was no crazed look in my eye and it definitely wasn't a frenzy!" she replied and clearly lying. She had seen it for herself whilst in the elevator and she hardly recognised herself, her desperate desire to get home all but consuming her.

"Sure, tell that to your shoe and the wall by the front door at home."

She grinned back at him. It still made her heart flutter when Andy referred to her condo as now being his home, their home even if he was mocking her about the damage she'd done to it. The same was true of Rusty calling it 'home' of course but in a different way as Andy had chosen to commit his life to her whereas circumstance brought Rusty into her life and now their home.

"Home?"

"Yes, home." He grinned at her and then closed the gap, kissing her on the lips.

Back in the Murder Room, Provenza was sitting back in his chair, his hands crossed behind his head and smiling at the scene that he had witnessed play out through the small gap in the blinds. Yes, things seemed a lot better and although he had by no means been watching them without break, he had still seen enough to give him hope that they'd both said what they needed to in an attempt to clear the air a little. And yet once again he had become so distracted that when Amy spoke he very nearly jumped out of his skin and fell backwards.

"I'm going to grab a coffee" she announced as she stood up. "Anyone want one?"

"Please" Provenza nodded as he regained he balance, handing her his cup. "Thank you."

Buzz took to his feet to join her. "I'll help."

Amy moved to set off towards the Break Room but then stopped and sent a long lingering look at her Captain's office, unsure if she should interrupt their lunch to offer up a cup of coffee or not. At a loss of what to do she turned to Provenza. "Should I ask the Cap..."

"Not right now. Leave them be" Provenza replied with a friendly smile but with all of them still feeling a little concerned about them both, it only made them worry all the more.

Amy nodded at him but she remained rooted to the spot and sending another lingering look over her shoulder at the Captain's office. She turned and exchanged a look with both Buzz and Julio, not one of them having the full facts and worrying as a result but it was Buzz that voiced it first. "Is everything really okay Lieutenant?" he asked Provenza.

Provenza crossed his hands behind his head and leant back in his seat again, rocking back and forth a little as he nodded. "It's becoming that way Buzz." That wasn't enough for any of them sadly, Mike now once again giving the conversation his full attention and turning in his seat to face him. "Look, they'll be fine" he stated once again. When he only received a vast assortment of blank and concerned looks in return he sat forward again, his hands coming together on top of his desk.

The problem was the whole affair was no one's business but Sharon and Andy's regardless of how much he actually knew by that point. So if anyone was going to tell them the truth then it had to come from them but even so, it was clear that their friends were worried, deeply worried in some cases. They had all seen how depressed Andy had been, witnessed his spikey demeanour in the hospital and then just under twenty four hours earlier they had seen their Captain flee from the Murder Room as if her hair was on fire, doing it in a way they had only witnessed twice before, immediately following his heart attack and when he collapsed a day before Thanksgiving a year earlier. Under those circumstances and with all of that information to hand, limited as it was, he acknowledged that they had every right to be worried about them.

"Listen, all of you," he said before he made sure he met the eye of every single person in attendance and paying close attention, even Wes who was just trying to fit in, ensuring they were listening to him, "they're both going to be fine. Trust me, we've got nothing to worry about." Again he made sure to make eye contact with each and every one of them, finally getting satisfied nods in reply because they did trust him and if Provenza said they had nothing to worry about, then they accepted that and took him at his word.

Back inside her office neither Sharon nor Andy knew of the attention they were getting on just the other side of the glass as they enjoyed a rare lunch date but in that moment they only had eyes for each other anyway so it wouldn't make much difference. They were still trying to do all they could to reconnect properly after a rocky patch that had stretched off and on for nearly two months by that point. They had spent the better part of seventeen hours reconnecting on a physical level but as they had already noted that very lunch time, for a couple who never seemed to stop talking to each other, so much had been left unsaid between them of late. Their usual ease as they talked to each other, them bouncing off each other had also been missing periodically since Taylor died but that was slowly coming back along with the laughter they always shared, teasing each other constantly.

With that in mind, Andy grinned at her as he continued to eat, mischief spread from ear to ear across his face for Sharon to see. "So, tell me," he said between mouthfuls of salmon, "did you apologise to Mrs Rose for your lust filled rantings at her yesterday on your ride down to the parking garage this morning?"

"No I didn't and by the way," she started to say before she let go of his hand to allow her to take a swipe at his shoulder, giving him the stink eye at the same time, "I really must thank you for that this morning!"

"Ow!" He laughed as he rubbed his shoulder like he had just been shot in it rather than only receiving the slightest of contacts. "What was that for?"

"You know what that was for, Andrew."

"But are you thanking me for the massive amounts of sex in seventeen hours just six weeks after a heart attack that I was able to facilitate for you or…?"

She laughed as she blushed again. It had been a simply divine seventeen hours but if she ended up with another UTI at her age as a result of it, she was going to murder him. "No, I wasn't" she clarified with a glare. "I meant for shouting that in front of Mrs Rose of all people." The that in question was a light hearted 'See you later gorgeous! You too Sharon' seconds before she and Mrs Rose stepped into the elevator that morning. On the torturous ride down to the lobby Sharon wanted to slap him as much as she wanted to wrap her arms around him and never let go ever again because before that moment his choice of words, the tone of his voice as he announced loudly for all the world to hear 'You rock my world Raydor!' had made her melt like never before.

"Hey, I was brought up being taught never to tell a lie."

"Well that's a lie for starters" she laughed.

"But in light of being completely honest with you," he said as he took hold of her hand yet again, kissing the back of it before he continued with his trademark smirk, "I was absolutely looking at your legs and your ass this morning." He shrugged as she laughed before he then continued. "And with that humongous sweater and skirt that looked like she stole it from a fish trawler, not to mention her extremely pissed face that surely only a Mother could love, Mrs Rose was also pretty damn gorgeous too." She continued to laugh as he leant towards her. "But nowhere near as gorgeous as you, Raydor." She laughed and kissed him again, her hand cupping his cheek. "You know, I could get used to this."

He waggled his eyebrows at her as he kissed her hand again, the this he could get used to being the current freedom he felt with her in her office. Back when he was joking to Taylor that he was a little surprised they didn't have a chaperone as they continued to date 'in the old fashioned sense of the word,' he never dreamt that fourteen months later he would not only be living with the love of his life but they had gone from barely touching each other at all during that first month and everything in their relationship being done by the rules and with a great wall standing between their professional lives and private lives while at PAB, to them sharing an intimate lunch in her office with her lips unable to stay away from his for too long. Even with the blinds closed and it being her lunch hour, it was still not the kind of activity he ever anticipated getting up to with her in there but it once again went to prove that he still had an awful lot to learn about her and he simply couldn't wait.

She laughed. "Well don't" she told him as she playfully pushed his face away from her and he laughed along with her. "Once you get Chief Howard's signature on that form you go back to being just my Lieutenant Flynn in this building and there is absolutely no kissing in my office from that moment on."

"What about after a cup or two of eggnog at the Christmas party?"

She smiled at him playfully. "Only time will tell" she replied with a wink.

"Best take advantage now then" he suggested, taking the opportunity to kiss her on the lips. "Oh, and ow by the way!" he complained as he rubbed his arm from where she smacked him moments earlier, laughing as he did it. "Do I not have enough damn bruises on me right now without you giving me another one? With all of the vigorous sex we've had lately, I'm bound to be covered in them." She laughed and shook her head, beginning to blush. "Don't shake your head at me! If you look at my back you'll see a map of your orgasms yesterday" he told her with a thumb in that direction as she continued to laugh at him, her cheeks quickly turning redder and redder by the second. "Ignoring the scratch marks I'm sure you'll find down my back, there'll surely be an imprint of your heels on my ass."

She laughed, covering his face with her hand out of sheer embarrassment. "Then you should have let me do all the work like we agreed."

"I'll let you take charge in the morning" he promised with a wink. "Unless I manage to get my third wind before then."

"Third? What happened to second?"

"My second wind came and went some time yesterday afternoon. If you want me to be totally honest with you I'm more on my seventh or eighth wind by now, anything to make sure that my lady is completely satisfied." He winked at her which made her laugh and blush even more. Andy ran his free hand through his hair, deliberately so and then immediately winced dramatically. "Not forgetting the damage you did to my scalp when all that filth fell from your lips" he teased, her cheeks now the colour of beetroot. "You still don't believe me do you?" he asked, his claim over one four letter word in particular that had fallen from her lips being immediately dismissed with a laugh.

"No. I don't" she replied emphatically while still avoiding his eye as her embarrassment reached new heights.

"Because I've lied to you so often in the past?"

"No, because I think you just like to try to make me blush."

"Yes I do," he confirmed with a laugh, "but it's also the God's honest truth. I'd say 'Next time I'll stop when you say it' but I really don't want to suddenly develop a bald spot back here." He ran his hand through his hair again while Sharon took another playful swipe at his shoulder. "Ow! You're always beating me."

"You're always doing something to deserve it" she told him on a laugh. "You know, that was the very first time I've ever done that, yesterday." She nodded her head towards the door in a clear indication she was talking about leaving work early and nothing else.

"Really?" he asked with a certain amount of disbelief, getting a nod in reply. "Because I have personal experience of us doing it together before. Many, many times in fact even if it was six weeks ago."

She shook her head and laughed, having anticipated that response. "I didn't mean that. I meant playing hooky from work" she clarified.

"Oh really? Not even once from school?"

"Not from work, not from school, not even to get out of church. While all of my friends were cutting class to go to the movies or to drink in the woods by Mr Ashton's farm, I was busy in the library, studying for my finals."

He gasped in mock shock. "The library? You? Really? I'm shocked!"

She swotted at his arm again as he laughed. "Oh you be quiet! Just because you never opened a book before the age of eighteen." He laughed as she sighed and shook her head. "And how did I spend my first ever day playing hooky, at the age of sixty five no less? By having what can only be described as an unseemly amount of sex." He grinned at her, a grin that was the dictionary definition of smugness personified. "Oh shut up!" she told him once again, a hand on his face to playfully push him away as he laughed. "I've told you before, it's not polite to look that smug when it comes to sex." He laughed again, catching her hand and kissing it.

Just ten months earlier and she had said the exact same thing to him when she received an even smugger grin. At the time they were in bed, sharing their very first night together after that journey home and after that letter. While Sharon lay there panting, her eyes closed and feeling convinced she was actually floating after she had discovered the simply spectacular things Andy Flynn could do with his tongue, the man in question lay next to her and waited for her to come back to reality. When she finally opened her eyes and saw the look on her face she had no choice but to laugh as she pushed him away from her and told him to shut up, informing him for the first time that it wasn't polite to look that smug.

"You were never once tempted to play hooky before? Not even at school?"

"No, never. Do you know what that means?" she asked him and receiving a shake of the head. "It means that you Andrew Flynn, my beautiful boy, are an incredibly bad influence on me." He laughed and nodded, it being noted by both of them on more than one occasion that she had also rubbed off on him a great deal at the same time. "But do you know what?"

"Tell me."

"I wouldn't have it or you any other way."

"That's good because I'm far too old to change now, Raydor." She laughed as their lips came together again, it lingering again. "But if it eases your conscious a little, the fact that you've been playing hooky to have some serious nookie," he joked, waggling his eyebrows at her as she laughed and blushed again, "just remember that sex is so very very good for my heart so you could say that yesterday was a slightly unorthodox way of you doing your very best to ensure that I stay nice and healthy for the foreseeable future. Just like when I climb stairs with Rusty," he said with a smirk at the double meaning that phrase now had between the two of them, "only completely naked and a hell of a lot more fun." He waggled his eyebrows at her again as she laughed. "What? It's true! A medical professional stated as such himself to me only yesterday when he was crowing about what a fine specimen of a man I am" he declared almost arrogantly. "And not to put too much pressure on your shoulders babe, but I'm relatively sure that every orgasm I have adds at least another day to my life. So, thanks I guess," he whispered as he kissed her on the lips, "for the extra week."

"Then you're most very welcome, my boy" she laughed in reply. "And while I freely admit that sex is good for your heart, I hardly think it's on a par with real exercise like going for a run or a swim."

"Maybe not but having sex burns the same amount of calories as doing the ironing."

She laughed, that fact clearly from his random 'Did you know…?' collection. "I'll give you sex but ironing absolutely cannot be classed as exercise."

"I know but that wasn't my point."

"Then what was?"

"Hopefully that little thought has made itself a home in the back of your mind somewhere. Then the next time I get the ironing board out, you'll have me naked and flat on my back before I've even had chance to fetch the laundry basket."

Again she laughed hysterically, pressing her face into his shoulder as he smiled, pleased with himself that he had her laughing like that again, and without too much effort or alcohol. "I love you, my beautiful boy" she told him as she kissed him again.

Andy continued to smile before he winked at her. "I love you too." He put his arm around her, drawing her closer to him before she rested her head on his shoulder, her head tilted slightly so that her face and her nose were pressed against the crook of his neck.

While his thumb drew little circles on her hip, Sharon took a big, deep breath of him, the scent of his cologne mixed with a smell that was all Andy making her eyes slip closed. It was by no means the first time that she had stopped dead in order to truly appreciate that she still had him in her life and it probably wasn't going to be the last time either before they were able to put the whole sorry saga behind them once and for all. But Andy understood and during the six weeks following his heart attack, when she seemed to grip him a little more tightly than usual, he had given her what she seemed to want and need, just holding her until she was ready to move on again.

And so they stayed like that for a short while, sitting in silence with her head on his shoulder and savouring the time they still had left before Rusty arrived and joined them. Eventually she sat up again, Andy kissing her on the cheek but he never letting go altogether, keeping hold on her hand while they both resumed eating and Sharon turned her attention back to where the conversation had first started.

"I dread to think how many times you played hooky from school alone" she said, shaking her head in dreaded anticipation of the answer.

Andy shrugged dismissively. "It wasn't all that often." Sharon simply smirked at him in reply, not believing a word and knowing him far too well to fall for it. "Okay, well it wasn't as often as you clearly think it was anyway." She laughed to herself, Andy already crumbling without any pressure which meant she expected to hear a traumatising story very shortly as he told her everything. After a short pause he dropped his fork and took a quick swig of his juice before regaling her with the latest story of his troubled youth. "When I was about thirteen or fourteen I met a girl who went to the all-girls school just a few blocks away from my house. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we hit it off right away and so we agreed to skip school and meet up on the Friday afternoon in a cemetery so…"

Sharon held up her hand to stop him. "What? You met up with a girl in a cemetery?" Andy nodded with a shrug of his shoulder as if it was a common hangout for kids his age. "Was she alive?" she asked, laughing at her own joke and giggling all the harder at the unamused expression on his face.

"Of course."

"But why?"

"Why not?" Andy shrugged.

Sharon shook her head, bemused. "Okay, please continue."

"So we decided to meet up during the day and enable us to have some time alone which meant that we both needed to get out of school. Now it was easier for her to get out of school because all she had to do was claim she had 'women's problems' and that was that."

"I think there's a little more to it than that."

"Really? Then how come it's always an immediate end to any conversation?"

"Because men get all squeamish when it comes to menstrual cycles."

Without even realising it Andy flinched at the mere thought of it, thus proving her point. "Okay but still, it was always easier for girls to get out of school with that one, boys had to be a little more inventive" Andy continued to grumble.

"Before we go any further, did she have a name?"

"As a matter of fact her name was Sharon" he revealed with a crooked smile.

"Really?" she asked, getting a little nod in return. "And what did she look like?"

Andy looked at her adoringly, making a point of it before he answered the question. "She couldn't hold a candle to you."

Sharon laughed again as she pushed his face away, his attempt at charming her having zero effect for once. "So how did you get out of school?" A little smile quickly made its way to his face as he sighed, knowing that not only would she disapprove by what he was about to say but that she would also laugh at him. "Oh God!" she cried from the anticipation, covering her face with her free hand.

"Why do you always expect the worst?"

"Because I know you Andrew Flynn, better than anyone."

He paused for a moment as he thought about it. "Yeah, okay" he nodded and she laughed at how quickly he had crumbled once again. "Well, like I was saying, I couldn't get out of school with a simple 'Women's problems,' which meant I had to be a little more creative. So, "he said with a very brief pause, "I decided to rub nettles all over my face."

"What?" Sharon laughed. "Didn't it hurt?"

"Like a son of a bitch but I had no other options."

"And your date wouldn't be turned off by all the bumps and the constant scratching?"

"If I'm being completely honest I didn't think that far in advance. I just wanted to do enough to get me out of school as quick as possible."

"And they just let you walk out of school? Without your parents? With a face like that?"

Andy shrugged at her casually. "Sure" he replied, surprised when Sharon looked back at him stunned. "Look, it wasn't anything like the fancy ass place where you went to school or even anything like St Joseph's for that matter. It was crappy. You know how they used to beat the shit out of me and that was just to make sure I didn't use my left hand" he said with yet another shrug. "They didn't give a crap."

"Even so, Andy."

"Even so, it was the late sixties, babe. Kids had only just stopped working up chimneys and in mines," he pointed out which made her laugh, "so walking myself home from school in the middle of the day when I was feeling a little ill and covered in a rash was nothing."

Sharon laughed with a shake of her head. "So what happened?"

"Nothing, she didn't show. I spent the rest of the day and night with my hands and face covered in lotion while still in agony and it was all for nothing."

"Your hands too?"

"Of course. How else would I rub it on my face?" he shrugged. Sharon couldn't stop herself from laughing at him, unable to speak. He smiled at her because it was a great weight off his shoulders to see Sharon so relaxed like that again after all that had happened. "You forget that I was thirteen and horny."

"You're always horny."

"Erm…thank you, I guess?" he replied, unsure of the correct response. They both laughed again, Sharon's head coming to rest on his shoulder. Before she had chance to reply her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. She sat up straight and pulled it out, quickly tapping away at the screen. "Your other lover?" Andy asked.

"Other?" she asked, looking up from her phone. "I'm exhausted just with you."

"You know that's not a denial right?" he pointed out. Again she laughed, kissing his cheek before she turned her attention back to her phone. "Something important?"

"Not really. My budget meeting has been pushed back by an hour." She finished up on her phone before putting it face down on the table. "Maybe word has gotten around and Chief Howard already knows that you're here" she said, meaning that perhaps he was giving her extra time over lunch rather than anything else more sinister. Andy just sighed in response and that was enough to cause her a little concern. "What's the matter?" she asked as she ran her hand through his hair.

"Nothing." He shrugged his shoulders as he played with his fork for a moment. "I wish I was coming back to work today, that's all. I just want to put my badge and my gun back on and be useful again."

Andy didn't say it but then he didn't need to, Sharon already well aware that he was still worried about his return to work and he would continue to worry about it until his return was officially signed off by everyone he needed, specifically Chief Howard, and he was back sitting behind his desk again. Instead of telling him once again that he had nothing to fear (because if it hadn't done the job the first seven or eight times she'd told him, it wasn't suddenly going to change with one more) she simply put her arm around him and smiled.

"I want that too but you've only got to wait just a few more days, be a little more patient."

"You know that's not my strong suit right?"

She laughed in reply. "You say that but from my perspective boy, you've been nothing but patient with me since the very start of this relationship." She laced their fingers together. "You've been far more patient than I deserve."

"I'd have waited forever for just five minutes with you."

She smiled back at him, swallowing hard as she battled not to cry again. "I'm glad you didn't have to" she finally told him.

"Me too and not just because I'd have had Provenza as my nurse over the last six weeks. But what a five minutes they would have been!"

Sharon laughed and nodded. "Look on the bright side, at least you've got another few days to enjoy being a bona fide Badge Bunny until then" she told him, grinning from ear to ear as she waggled her eyebrows at him in the same way he liked to do to her.

"You seem to like that label a lot more than I do."

"I can neither deny nor confirm that, Lieutenant" she told him as she picked her fork up and resumed her meal with a smug smile on her face.

Andy laughed before he told her "You can be such a little pervert at times, Raydor." Now it was her turn to laugh again, that the very definition of the pot calling the kettle black. "And speaking of which, did you by any chance move my letter from the Doctor sometime this morning?" he asked.

She had attached it to the fridge door as a joke the previous evening just like she had done with that first letter he gave her, the letter than changed everything a little over ten months earlier. But they both knew that due to the content of it, Andy being given the all clear to do most things, including having sex again, they needed to remove it before Rusty saw it if only to stop his horrified screams pissing off Mrs Rose more than usual.

"No I didn't get around to it. Funnily enough I kept being distracted all morning by..."

"A ridiculously handsome stud muffin?" Andy supplied for her, a touch of mock arrogance to his tone.

"It's like you read my mind" she laughed in reply. "I was going to say distracted all morning by a nuisance but I like yours much better."

Andy smiled up at her as he kissed her hand. "So you didn't move it?"

"No."

"I was afraid of that."

"Why?"

"Because when I went to move it, it had already gone. Which means..."

"Oh no" Sharon groaned as she briefly dropped her head to the table.

"Exactly. I didn't see it so I guess he either placed it on top of the trash, moved it to your desk or he's kept hold of it to finally show Dr Joe in their next session." They both laughed long and hard at the thought, not knowing that they were once again drawing attention from those seated in the Murder Room and making them smile. "I didn't hear him screaming while I was napping so maybe he didn't turn it over and read that I'd essentially been prescribed sex and plenty of it."

"Really?" she laughed in reply with a little surprise. "I obviously didn't read that part."

"It was more alluded to rather than a specific prescription."

Silence fell for a few moments before she said "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure. My record is eight times in seven hours but I was only twenty at the time."

"I didn't mean that" Sharon laughed as she pinched the back of his knee. "Tell me, how long have you known Rusty wanted to change his major?"

Andy smiled at her because he knew she'd been desperate to ask that question since that morning, shocked she had managed to hold out as long as she had. "What are you more excited about here?" he asked. "The fact that the kid wants to become a lawyer like you did or the fact that he told me about it first?"

She thought about it for a second because there was simply no denying that in the very beginning of their relationship the idea of Rusty opting to confide in Andy of all people was nothing short of fantasy so with that in mind it couldn't fail to make her heart sing. "I'd say it's pretty much even right now" she told him with a grin. Andy laughed as he took her hand and squeezed it, their fingers once again linking together. "Well?"

"If you must know he told me about it yesterday. On the way back from the Doctor's office he was a little...agitated I guess is the most appropriate word, during the car ride."

"Even more agitated than you were?"

Andy frowned at her, perplexed as to how she knew about his levels of agitation as they had slowly made their way back to the condo through the heavy LA traffic. "How do you know I was agitated on the drive home yesterday?"

"Because you hoped a vast amount of sex was going to be on the table for you the moment you called me and gave me the good news, that's how" she laughed.

"Yeah okay" Andy reluctantly conceded after a short pause, nodding as Sharon laughed. "Anyway, I asked the kid if he was feeling okay and if there was anything wrong and told him that he could always talk to me about stuff as long as it hasn't got anything to do with Gus. Then by the time I'd finally managed to convince him that I wasn't a raging homophobe, but rather being utterly terrified that you would literally kill me if I gave him some more really bad romantic advice, the kind of which that ended with him going to the movies with a balloon," he explained with a roll of his eyes as she laughed, "and that I wasn't about to break if he asked me a question and he could still, would always be able to talk to me about stuff, he told me rather nervously about what it was he wanted to do but he was anxious because he was a little worried about what your reaction would be."

"My reaction? Why would he be worried about my reaction?"

"I don't know" Andy replied with a shrug, still a little confused about that himself even with Rusty's hesitant explanation. "I guess the kid was worried that you'd think he was a flake for switching so soon or that you'd be disappointed in him or something."

"Oh believe me, I'm far from disappointed."

"That's exactly what I told him. He wants to do the same thing that you wanted to do but didn't or couldn't I guess I should say, so I told him you were always going to be very happy about his decision to switch to law."

She hummed as she pondered the road not travelled and how different her life would be at that very moment if she hadn't remained with the LAPD and followed her dreams instead. "I am but even so," she started to say, her eyes locked onto his and very quickly getting lost in them, "despite not having the life that I wanted as a child or what I had planned for myself when I went to college, I think my life turned out just perfectly without law school." With that she smiled at him before she leant across the table to kiss him on the lips. He deepened the kiss as one hand came up to cradle the back of her head because it was not lost on either of them that there was a very real chance that they would never have met (unless she was helping her client sue him and the department) had she not opted against law school when she finally had the opportunity to go.

"I think so too" he agreed, kissing her again as he wore that cheeky grin. "But I also told the kid to go and speak to Hobbs about it" he added, turning the conversation back to where it had started and Rusty's sudden change in direction.

"Andrea? Why?" Sharon asked, frowning as she ate and missing the obvious for a moment.

"Because they have interns at the DA's office don't they? Kids that are going to law school, right?" Sharon looked at him with surprise as she nodded, not having thought of that so far and was frankly thrilled that Andy continued to act in a fatherly way towards Rusty despite the way he had initially treated him when they first started dating. "Maybe you could speak to her about it, get her to take him on part time as her minion or something, gain some real life experience that way."

Once again Sharon was thrilled to hear that Andy had put so much thought into it, not least because he had managed to do it while she had him 'otherwise distracted' over the previous twenty-four hours but at the same time she couldn't stop her mind drifting slightly and she smiled as she noted a little something that he had missed.

"Experience other than being in the witness box in Judge Grove's courtroom a couple of times?" she noted, Rusty having more involvement with the justice system than most his age.

"Exactly. Experience that doesn't involve the Judge ogling the crap out of his Mother."

Sharon laughed again as she pinched the back of his knee, Andy never once missing the opportunity to claim that Judge Grove, despite being happily married, had a huge crush on her. "Yes, instead he'll get a little experience of a Lieutenant doing it here instead."

"I think the kid is pretty much immune to that by now. Or he's learnt to wretch a little more quietly lately" he suggested with a shrug. Again Sharon laughed at him while her smile just beamed over at him. "What?"

"Andy, I think that's a wonderful idea. Thank you for thinking of it" she told him sincerely before she kissed his cheek, quickly wiping any traces of lipstick from his skin immediately afterwards.

"Don't act so surprised. I have been known to have a good idea from time to time, it does happen" he told her, Sharon laughing at his sense of mock offense. "And besides, with the kid working so close to Hobbs, he may be able to get some really good dirt on her for me so that I have some extra ammunition the next time she threatens my balls with a nail file." It was a remark that inevitably caused both laughter and for his knee to come under attack yet again. "You know, if she sleeps upside down in a cocoon or something."

"Will you please stop being so mean about my friends" she all but ordered him for about the hundredth time, pinching his knee again as he laughed.

"I'm not being mean, I'm stating a fact and a legitimate fear" he said in his defence as she rolled her eyes at him and tried her hardest not to laugh. "You weren't there the night they attacked me in the parking lot. I didn't see her walking up right behind me while I was opening the door because the woman doesn't have a reflection!" With that Sharon crumbled and couldn't stop herself from laughing at him and his habit of exaggerating. "It's not funny! You look the next time she comes over, she'll have no reflection in the balcony doors."

She laughed again but it soon stopped, replaced by a frown and a sense of guilt as she took his hand more firmly in her own again. "I'm sorry" she told him in nothing more than a whisper.

"You didn't know those two psychos were going to threaten my junk with a nail file when you told them we were dating. At least I hope you didn't" he joked because if he was being completely honest about it, he had expected a lot worse from Sharon's nearest and dearest when they first started dating such were her battle scars and his reputation.

"I didn't. I promise" she confirmed, absolutely livid in truth when Andy first told her about the way Gavin and Andrea had all but threatened to kill him if he even so much as thought about making her cry. "But that wasn't what I meant."

"Then what?" His smile beamed as he once again sought to show her that she had nothing to apologise for, him needing the morphine and her not causing his heart attack clearly still top of the list. "What are you apologising for now?"

"For locking you out on the balcony in the dead of night in just your underwear."

Andy laughed happily at first until he realised that it wasn't a joke and she really was still that upset about her behaviour that evening, the way that she had literally completely shut him out after Taylor's death. With everything that had gone on since, the state of his heart taking all of the attention, he had failed to notice that it had been playing on her mind ever since.

"Are you really still upset about that?" he asked.

She shrugged as she avoided his eye, a tell-tale signal that it really had been eating away at her, Sharon's avoidance of eye contact very much like his flaring nostrils where the truth was concerned. "Well you did have a heart attack less than a week later."

"But not because I'd spent ten minutes locked out on the balcony in my underwear." He didn't get a response, verbally at least, Sharon shrugging her shoulders as she sighed and continued to avoid his eye. "Hey, look at me." He kissed her hand until she finally looked him in the eye. "Don't worry about it unless this is your way of telling me you want to make us all square by letting me lock you out there completely naked? I'd be up for that."

It was so typically Andy to turn concerns he thought were ridiculous into a joke and there were times when she wanted a serious conversation that it drove her insane but it was yet another example of the way he tried to take care of her in any way he could. With that in mind she opted to go with it for once, letting him lighten the mood to fix her troubles.

"I'm sure you would," she laughed, "but you weren't completely naked at the time."

"I know but you're the one insisting on making it up to me, therefore doing it as naked as the day you were born is the only way to make us all square."

"Is that so?" she asked, getting an enthusiastic nod in reply. "And where are you in this scenario?"

"Taking photos from the couch obviously."

"Oh of course!" she laughed, resting her head on his shoulder for a moment before she gazed up at him. "You wouldn't come and join me?"

"No way! I'm not falling for that one again!" he announced with zero wiggle room in his tone, the evening he spent locked naked out on a hotel room balcony until Provenza arrived to rescue him already once too often in his mind. Again Sharon just laughed at him as she wrapped her arms around his, her head on his shoulder and her lips lightly grazing his neck. "Although, if anyone had the power to lure me out there, it's you."

"Is that supposed to be a compliment?"

"Oh definitely" he confirmed before pushing his lips to hers as she laughed.

Back on the other side of the glass in the Murder Room, Amy, Wes and Julio were all missing in action, opting to eat their lunches in the Break Room rather than sitting at their desks like Provenza. As Mike and Buzz continued with their paperwork, Provenza was trying his best to do the crossword in the paper as he slowly picked at the lunch Patrice had sent him to work with. Long before Andy had his heart attack Patrice had been trying, largely in vain, to get her husband to eat a lot more healthily and prolong their time together, but since that awful day in September and Andy's collapse Provenza had begun to wonder if he would ever see a pizza ever again let alone a hotdog.

Mike watched on with amusement as Provenza slowly moved his chunks of cucumber from one side of the plastic container to the other with his Spork, like he was a ten year old boy and trying to give the impression he was eating as his Mother studied him closely. As he set about moving his lunch for the sixth time, Mike couldn't stop himself from letting out a loud chuckle, immediately catching Provenza's attention.

"What?" he asked him, unable to see the funny side of what Patrice called his 'lunch.'

"Have you tried eating it?" Mike asked in reply, sharing a smile with Buzz when he laughed and revealed that he too had been 'watching the show.' "You never know, you might enjoy it."

"A man cannot live on vegetables alone" Provenza declared.

"Lieutenant Flynn seems to manage" Buzz reminded him with a shrug.

"And yet he had a heart attack anyway!" Provenza answered immediately, as if that was all the proof he needed to show the world that eating healthy was anything but in reality and therefore he didn't need to bother with it. Buzz had heard that argument before from both Provenza and Rusty and so just shook his head at him. "I still don't understand how Flynn can have a heart attack and yet it's me and my stomach who pay the price for it."

"How dreadful for you Lieutenant," Buzz muttered as he turned his attention back to the paperwork in front of him, "to have a wife who loves you and wants to keep you alive and with her for as long as possible. I feel so sorry for you."

"Ha!"

Provenza was just in the process of giving both of them a dirty look when Rusty walked into the Murder Room, his backpack on his back and his camera in hand. "Hey guys" he called as he came to a stop besides Provenza's desk, that always his first port of call regardless of why he was at PAB.

Provenza immediately turned to face him. "And good afternoon to you Mr Beck" he replied as he very quickly dumped his cucumber into the trash can next to his desk before he leant back in his chair, his fingers linked behind his head. "Why do we have the honour of your company today?"

"What? Suddenly I'm not allowed to be here without a valid reason?" Rusty asked.

"Not if Winnie Davis becomes Chief" Provenza replied, his contempt audible.

Mike's head snapped up with alarm, this the first time he had heard that particular name associated with the vacant role of Assistant Chief. "What?" he all but cried. Provenza simply shook his head at him as he sat forward again, letting him know that they'd talk about it later, at a time when their Captain's son wasn't in earshot to hear that all of their futures in the LAPD may be in doubt if she were to get the job.

"So, what can we do for you?" Provenza asked him.

"I'm here because Buzz and I are going to do a follow up post for my vlog and Andy said he was going to bring some food in. Is he...?" he started to ask as he looked up at Sharon's office. With the blinds drawn he had no idea if his would-be Stepdad was there or not, especially as Sharon had driven his car into work that morning so its presence in the parking garage gave nothing away.

There was a fairly large part of Rusty (just like Sharon and Provenza too for that matter) that still couldn't completely relax even knowing that Andy had been given the final all clear by his Doctor. Although the heavy 'surveillance' of him, as Andy liked to call it, had been scaled back somewhat, the more time that went by then the better he felt and yet he was still not left alone for too long at a time just in case, Sharon arranging for Patrice and his sponsor to drop by every now and then when Rusty went out and she was back at work that last week. The whole idea was for Andy to be taken care of by those that loved him whilst not being aware it was going on but of course he knew, he always knew.

With that in mind Andy had been alone from the moment Rusty went to college that very morning until he arrived in the Murder Room with lunch and his permission forms, and it was the longest he had been alone since it happened. So naturally, Rusty was a little worried about him as a result, a small part of him always overly concerned that something would've happened to him in his absence at a point in their relationship when he could no longer imagine his life without Andy Flynn being a huge part of it anymore let alone Sharon. He hadn't wanted a Stepdad and given the choice he wouldn't have picked Lieutenant Flynn for the job (despite how kind he had been to him after Sharon took him into emergency care, especially when it came to his disappearing act at the bus station and his continued help in understanding his Mom's addiction) but now fifteen months into their relationship, Rusty loved Andy and wasn't prepared to lose him just yet…despite the horrors of knowing what he did to his Mom behind closed doors.

"Flynn is currently in the middle of a very long overdue and much needed dinner date with his girlfriend in the Captain's office" Provenza told him with a nod towards her office.

Rusty turned to look, bending over slightly and leaning on the desk in front of him once he saw the gap in the blinds so that he was the same height as Provenza and could therefore easily see inside. He observed his Mom and the love of her life happily holding hands and laughing, both of them looking like a huge weight had been lifted from their shoulders, the complete opposite to how it had been over the previous six weeks of his recovery. As Rusty watched on his expression kept changing second by second, from a smile to a grimace and back again, over and over, and showing that while he was pleased to see that life had finally returned to normal again for all of them and that there would be no more extended hospital visits (for the time being at least anyway aside from routine check-ups), at the same time he couldn't help but feel a little disgusted and horrified too since Andy had tried and failed to pay him to spend the night with Gus so that they could have a celebration in private. The truth was it was all he was going to think about from that moment on when he saw any stairs in front of him, in fact he very nearly didn't make it into the building at all as a result, those handful of steps outside giving him Vietnam style flashbacks, unable to stop picturing what Andy Flynn's sex face looked like.

Provenza spotted his grimace immediately and so wheeled a little closer to him, anticipating what was going on in his head and hoping to God that he wasn't causing Sharon and Andy any trouble like he knew he did when they first got together (seeing it with his own eyes as did Buzz rather than hearing it directly from Andy or Sharon, the difficulties they were facing with Rusty while he adjusted to having a 'Mom's boyfriend' in his life again).

"And what did you do last night?" he asked, treading very carefully. The moment he was told why Sharon was rushing home during an active case a day earlier and in combination with the added spring in their steps upon their arrival at PAB, he rightly assumed that Rusty would have sought a little sanctuary elsewhere and not just to give them a little privacy.

Rusty sighed in reply with a little shudder that seemed to go from the tips of his toes all the way to the ends of his hair, Provenza suppressing a chuckle into the back of his hand as a result. "Well, even though Gus was working late and his weird roommate was home alone and stuffing a dead raccoon with cotton on the kitchen table while he listened to a medley of death metal," he told him with a roll of his eyes while he rubbed his ear as if he was still able to hear the deafening noise, "I decided to spend the night at his place anyway. It was…" he said before he paused and sought the correct wording, "the least traumatising option, shall we say."

Provenza laughed and nodded, muttering a sympathetic "Tell me about it." Rusty went to ask what he meant by that but immediately thought better of it, he didn't like nightmares at the best of times and it would surely only make them all the more frequent if he told him all that he knew from that traumatising car ride with Sharon a day earlier. "But come Monday morning, Flynn can finally return to work and life can go back to normal again, allowing them to pick up exactly where they left off six week ago." Rusty didn't answer, not even offering a nod of the head which made Provenza once again feel a little worried about it all, like he had been when they first started dating and all of them could feel the frost in the air between them, both Buzz and Provenza having a quiet word in his ear about it without the need of being asked. "Which is a very good thing, right?"

Realising what was going on, Rusty replied instantly and with great enthusiasm. "You really don't need to tell me that Lieutenant. I live with them and I am so very glad and relieved to have the old Andy back in my life again." He smiled as if he was reinforcing his declaration, getting one back from a rather relieved Provenza. "But if only they could not 'pick up where they left off' in communal areas or during the day time." He pulled another grimace, looking every inch like a young man who was being slowly poisoned.

Provenza laughed, having great sympathy for his plight. "Well, you're always welcome to come and spend the evening with me and Patrice if Gus is working and you need a place to escape."

"Thank you Lieutenant."

With that Provenza picked up his pen and returned his attention back to the paperwork on his desk, not looking up as he spoke. "I could use someone to climb up on my roof and clean out the gutters" he muttered.

Rusty just smirked at him with a shake of the head, giving Buzz a wave before he walked to Sharon's office. He took a deep breath before he knocked on the door but didn't open it and walk right in, waiting for permission first to ensure the coast was clear and he wasn't about to interrupt anything.

"Come in" Sharon called from inside. Rusty immediately opened the door and then stepped inside, his makeshift parents smiling up at him from their chairs as he did so. "Rusty!" came the joyful cry before she wiped her mouth on her napkin and then gave him her complete and undivided attention.

"Hey" he replied, stepping no further forward into the room.

"Hey kid."

He continued to linger by the open door, keeping his bag on his back and his camera in hand while he ensured that he wasn't intruding on a real date and that he was perfectly welcome to sit down and join them. "Can I come in or do you..." he said, pointing back and forth.

"Yes you can come in" Andy told him with a roll of his eyes as he used his foot to push the chair next to him away from the table slightly so that Rusty could sit down. "What the hell do you think we're doing in here?" he asked, giving Sharon a baffled look as she laughed.

Again Rusty grimaced. "I try not to think about those things where possible, Lieutenant."

Andy laughed as he gestured towards the vacant seat next to him, not giving the formal nature of Rusty's greeting a second thought since they had reached the point where he only used it when they were at PAB usually unless he was feeling a tad uncomfortable in a more private setting. "Just get your ass in here and sit down" Andy told him as he pointed at the chair.

Rusty nodded before he dropped his bag and camera onto Sharon's desk and removed his jacket. "What happened to the blinds being open and hands in view at all times?" he asked, the humour in his voice coming through loud and clear.

Again Sharon and Andy laughed before he shrugged. "What can I say? I'm a love machine." It wasn't loud by any stretch of the imagination but it was loud enough with the door open for Provenza, Mike and Buzz to hear across the silent Murder Room.

"Hey!" Provenza shouted from across the room. They all laughed in anticipation of what was to come as Rusty moved back to the open door and waited to close it until the conversation was over. "Some of us are trying to eat out here!" he added, waving his pot of beets in the air since he had already disposed of his cucumber. Sharon and Rusty laughed at him along with Mike and Buzz while Andy looked at Sharon less than impressed. With a little nod from Sharon, Rusty then closed the door, smiling at Provenza as he did so.

"You hungry?" Andy asked him.

"Sure." Rusty went to sit down and join them but stopped and gave Andy a cautious look instead. "But what is it first?" he asked. "Because I'm not eating goat pellets, even if they have been moulded into the shape of a hamburger."

"You never know Rusty, you might enjoy it" Sharon replied, encouraging healthy eating in her family more than ever after Andy's most recent health set back.

Rusty just stared at her shocked for a moment as Sharon smiled back, a sparkle to her eyes that had been lacking of late. But that sparkle soon looked more pleading than anything else since she knew that Rusty had seen her hide the very same 'goat pellets' in her napkin and right under Andy's nose when she had been offered some in the past, desperate that he not find out. Rusty smiled back at her because that was a secret that could wait for another day when he could best use it to his advantage.

"No I won't," he stated emphatically, "because I've already tried it and I'm fairly certain it's what evil tastes like." Sharon immediately laughed, in total agreement on the subject but it quickly turned into a cough when Andy looked at her. "I'm not eating that goat pellet crap ever again."

"It's tofu mince," Andy told him for the thousandth time, "and that's not what I got you." He picked up the bag from beneath his chair and dropped it into his lap. "Will a double bacon cheeseburger and fries make up for...everything?"

They gave each other an all too knowing look as he put the bag on the table, Rusty knowing exactly what Andy was trying to make up for without the need to elaborate further. Sharon looked at them suspiciously, that being the second time that day she had witnessed a rather odd moment between the two of them and knew they were hiding something.

"Make up for what?" she asked.

Again Andy and Rusty just stared at each other, neither sure how to answer the question without letting the cat out of the bag. Just as the silence was becoming uncomfortable they spoke in unison and completely by accident, shouting "Nothing!"

Rusty looked in his bag of food, busying himself and avoiding Sharon's eye as Andy put a large forkful of salad in his mouth, giving himself a way to think for a few moments as he chewed before answering, should another awkward question on the subject come his way.

Again Sharon eyed them both suspiciously. "Oh yes, it's clearly nothing" she laughed, the two of them looking beyond guilty. "We've arrested people who didn't look as guilty as you two do right now."

"You're so suspicious Raydor" Andy told her much to Rusty's amusement. "I feel sorry for Emily and Ricky growing up."

"Compared to you two, Emily and Ricky didn't give me anywhere near as much trouble" she told them. Andy quickly turned to look at Rusty with a grin, both of them taking the label of 'troublemakers' as a real compliment. Andy raised his hand in celebration, holding out his fist and immediately getting a fist bump from the young man in return. Sharon just frowned at them in reply. "Don't celebrate that!"

Rusty took his burger out of the bag and went to take a bite of it, still avoiding Sharon's eye. "That may need warming up a little" Andy told him, keen to change the subject.

"It's fine" Rusty shrugged.

"And yet my tofu mince is vile."

"Because it is!"

"Don't think you're going to avoid telling me what's going on by bickering" Sharon told them as she cut in, already having heard enough.

"Have you had all of your paperwork signed?" Rusty asked him, completely ignoring Sharon.

"Two out of three so far."

"And Mom is the one holding out?"

"What? No! What would I be the one holding out?" Sharon queried.

"Because you like mothering him and keeping him at home and out of danger?" Rusty told her as if it was really quite obvious. "Just as you like to do with me."

Before Sharon could reply and once again claim that was complete nonsense, Andy lifted up his hand and got another quick fist bump from Rusty, his opinion on the situation in line with his own. "Stop fist bumping each other!" she yelled, making them laugh.

"So who's left?" Rusty asked.

"Just Chief Howard but that's only a formality" Sharon answered.

"So you hope" Andy replied, still far from certain of his return.

"So I know" she told him with a smile, her hand running through his hair and down to his shoulder. "And speaking of which, our budget meeting may have been pushed back but it probably wouldn't hurt to go and see him sooner rather than later so you don't have to wait." Andy nodded as he sighed, his apprehension clear. "But you're not going to have any issues with him other than he's a busy guy."

"I know" Andy nodded, sighing again. "I'll feel better about life when I have his signature."

She smiled back at him as she continued to stroke his shoulder. "Then hurry up and go and get it." Andy smiled back at her because she knew that despite how much he was enjoying their lunch date with the both of them, he also wanted to make it official and therefore the sooner he went and got it over and done with the better, even if that meant leaving for a short while before she had finished eating.

With the two of them distracted and Sharon once again doing all she could to reassure Andy about his future, Rusty's mind wondered for a moment until he spotted the broken heel that was still sitting on the table. "What's this?" he asked as he picked it up and examined it.

Sharon's head snapped around to look at him, dragging her attention away from Andy and snatched it from him, hiding it in her lap. "It's nothing" she told him, acting like he had just found a severed head in her closet.

"Actually it's..." Andy went to reply but paused when he caught sight of Darth Raydor giving him the stink eye. "It's nothing."

Rusty couldn't stop himself from laughing. There were men who were whipped by their partners and then there was Andy Flynn, even if most of it was done purely to make one or both of them laugh. "Sure, it's nothing. I've seen criminals in here that look less guilty than you two do right now."

Sharon gave him a glare, the sort of Darth Raydor venom that she usually saved for criminals or when be kept filming in RACR after Buzz told him to stop for example. Andy tried his best not to laugh at him, a hand coming up to cover his mouth as he pretended to cough. "A little known fact Rusty, no one likes know it all children" she told him with Andy laughing loudly this time, tempted to high five her.

"This is all your influence" Rusty replied, pointing a finger at Andy. "She would never have spoken to me like this before you started to stay over at night."

"Why do I get the blame for everything?" Andy asked, his voice going extremely high.

Sharon smiled sweetly at him. "Because it's usually your fault, my darling" she told him.

Rusty waited for some kind of response but when he realised it wasn't going to come it instead prompted him to speak. "Are you not going to challenge her over that?" he asked.

"You want me to challenge Rulebook Raydor?" Andy asked. Rusty grunted his confirmation almost immediately as he chewed on his burger. "Are you going to give me your bed when she kicks me out of my own?"

"No."

"Then I know which side my bread is buttered on, thank you very much" Andy replied, again in jest.

"You're so whipped" Rusty laughed.

"Hey, let he who does not do anything Gus wants with one look into his pretty pretty eyes cast the first stone, alright" Andy told him. Rusty looked back at him decidedly unimpressed having heard quite enough about his relationship with Gus fall from Andy's lips for one year without yet more teasing.

Sharon laughed. "I don't think you've got that quite right."

Andy shrugged. "Well I never did pay that much attention in church" he joked and making her laugh again. "Before I forget, can I have your car keys for when I leave?"

She hummed as she chewed on her salad and then quickly got up to get her keys from her purse. After swallowing she handed him the keys and then kissed him on the lips. "Thank you" she told him in advance of him trying to fix her car. She sat down again before she then noticed the way that Rusty was staring at her like she had grown an extra head. "What?"

"You're going to let Andy touch your car and try to repair it? Really?"

"What does that mean?" Andy asked and already sounding highly offended and that was before he heard a snort coming from his left, knowing that Sharon was laughing without even looking. He held up a finger at her while he glared at Rusty. "You had better not be laughing, Raydor" he told her before he turned to face her, Sharon pretending to chew so as to give herself time to stop laughing. "I happen to be really handy. I am excellent with my hands."

"I know you are, boy" Sharon laughed.

Although neither of them meant it in a sexual way and indeed neither of them had noticed immediately how it might sound to Rusty, all became clear when he grimaced audibly and they turned to look at him. He looked beyond disgusted, putting his burger back in the bag and in a blink of an eye, suddenly lacked his appetite. "You two do remember that Doctor Joe is still currently out of action right?" he asked.

As realisation hit them, both Sharon and Andy laughed with Andy wanting to take it further, torturing Rusty becoming one of his favourite hobbies of late especially as Rusty always gave as good as he got when they had a playful war of words. "Yes, indeed we do, kid. In fact, you know, it was all I could think about yesterday while I was…" he paused, his eyes sparkling with mischief, "climbing the stairs." Rusty just glared at him in reply without offering a single word because he still didn't want to explain to his Mom what that meant, on the whole it was a conversation he desperately wanted to forget all about rather than repeat.

As Andy continued to grin smugly at her son and Rusty glared back with disgust like he did when a pair of Andy's boxers accidentally made their way into his laundry, Sharon continued to stare between the two of them, absolutely baffled. "Will one of you please tell me what's going on here?" she finally asked when the silence became deafening, on the verge of begging them. It was no surprise to her when they remained stubbornly silent, something that actually made her all the happier since it was yet another clear example of how they continued to bond in the family she had singlehandedly created, that an added bonus on top of the not so small fact that she was enjoying lunch at work with the both of them, something that she felt would have been neigh on impossible before Andy fell from that moving car. "I will find out eventually."

"We don't doubt it" Andy laughed, offering her a wink. Quick to change the subject before he found himself in the dog house, Andy then turned his attention back to Rusty again as he resumed eating his burger, his appetite slowly coming back to him. "Anyway, why can't I be the one to repair her car?"

"Why?" Rusty asked with dismay as if the answer was blindingly obvious. "Just off the top of my head, how about the bathroom tile that is still upside down? Not to mention the hole in the wall of the kitchen in your old house. The one big enough to let a rat in? That was some repair job" he said sarcastically and getting a laugh out of Sharon because she knew he was right, Andy hardly handy in that respect from the evidence she had seen in his former home. "And by the way, what the hell happened to the wall by the front door yesterday? It looks like someone punched it."

"Oh, that! Your Mom did that" Andy replied quickly, nodding towards her with another grin. Sharon instantly slapped his arm playfully in retaliation, naturally not wanting her youngest son to know that she had arrived home in a lust filled frenzy a day earlier and came oh so very close to actually demolishing their home as a result. "Ow! What was that for?" he said as he rubbed his arm like Mike Tyson had just punched him. "You did!"

"But how? What were you doing?" Rusty asked. For probably the first time since Sharon had taken him home with her that day in August 2012, his adoptive Mother looked truly lost for words and the truth was, she was. Neither Sharon nor Andy offered up an answer and the silence went on just long enough for Rusty to work it out himself or at least get the general idea. He rolled his eyes and let out another disgusted groan. "Forget it! I don't want to know!"

Andy laughed as he stood up and pulled his leather jacket back on. Already having Sharon's blessing to go before their very rare dinner date was over, he just desperately wanted to get Fritz's signature on that piece of paper in his pocket so that he could truly relax once and for all and resume his life, so there was no time like the present to go and get it over and done with. He pulled his form out of his pocket and looked at it, two of the three signatures he needed already in place but his eyes didn't linger long, Sharon squeezing his hand as she smiled up at him.

Keen to not dwell on his worries, he turned his attention to Rusty. "Are you out with Gus tonight?" he asked innocently enough as he made dinner plans for that evening in his mind. "Do you want dinner?"

"I was planning to spend the night over there."

"You can always have Gus spend the night at home you know" Sharon told him kindly and not wanting him to feel like he could only see his boyfriend away from the condo. No sooner were the words out of her mouth than Andy almost choked, trying to do all he could not to laugh. Sharon looked between the two of them baffled once again by what was happening. "What now?"

"Nothing" Andy told her as he winked again before turning his attention back to Rusty. "Did you tell Provenza that you're changing your major?" he asked.

"Are you kidding? I'm not sure I need to tell him at all."

"You're going to lie to your friend?" Sharon asked him, her disapproval evident.

"Well not lie exactly, more like keeping certain things from him" Rusty clarified.

"You can't do that."

"Why not? It worked for us with him after our first date" Andy noted with a grin. Again he earned a ripple of laughter before he bent over and quickly kissed her on the lips and then moved to leave. "Only I'm sure, he'll be a lot less pissed about this. Hopefully." They both laughed again as Andy opened the door, immediately seeing the man in question walking back into the Murder Room with a fresh cup of coffee. Andy turned back to face Rusty as he remained sitting at the table. "Tell him now."

"No, I'm not telling him now!"

"Why the hell not?" Andy laughed, raising his voice a little in the hope that Provenza would hear and ask what was going on.

"Because I don't have a Taser!"

"Like that'll help when he's really pissed about something" Andy joked before he turned just in time to see that Provenza had reached his desk and was just about to sit back down once again. "Hey Provenza!" he shouted. Sharon quickly stood and moved over to Andy, all set to ask him to come back and tell her how his meeting with Chief Howard had gone as well as to say goodbye properly before he set off home rather than merely trying to get in the way of Rusty's attempts to murder him.

"What?" came Provenza's grumpy reply.

"Rusty has something he wants to tell you."

Rusty gave him daggers in reply as both Sharon and Andy laughed at the way the colour seemed to drain from his face, truly worried by what his friend thought of him. By the time their mirth had subsided they were joined by Provenza and his cup of coffee, standing on Andy's right in the doorway to her office while Sharon remained flanking him on his left.

"If it's the fact that the guy you're being forced to live with is a gigantic pain in the ass," he offered with a thumb over at Andy just in case there was any confusion as to who he was talking about, "save it, I already know. Been there, done that, as the kids like to say" he grumbled into his cup as Rusty laughed into his hand.

"I slept on your couch for like five days maximum" Andy reminded him in reference to the transition period between Sandra finally kicking him out once and for all and Provenza being on hand to help him find his first apartment.

"Five extremely long and hellish days" Provenza declared as if he was still experiencing flashbacks as a result. Once again Rusty and Sharon laughed at him as she subtlety squeezed his hand, her experience of living with Andy Flynn the complete opposite so far despite the great obstacles they had faced. "I had to replace the couch but that's what I get for trying to be a Good Samaritan. So come on Mr Beck, spit it out, what have you got to tell me?"

"You might want to sit down first" Andy told him. Provenza just stared at him for a moment with his apprehension clear while Sharon laughed. He eventually did as he was told and sat down in the seat Andy had vacated just moments earlier, a frown on his face.

"Erm...It's nothing too serious" Rusty started to tell him as his hands fidgeted in his lap. It was then that Provenza smiled to himself, having a sense of déjà vu of the moment that he first outed himself in the middle of the Murder Room, that in no way a surprise compared to what he was about to tell him. "I've just decided that I want to change my major."

"Okay" Provenza nodded.

"Ask him what to" Andy suggested with great glee, Sharon lacing her fingers with his as they remained standing by the door.

Provenza looked up at Andy before again doing as instructed. "What to?"

Rusty took a deep breath and then swallowed hard, his nerves not at all helped by how Andy was so clearly enjoying his torment and his partner's expected over-the-top reaction. "Law" he finally revealed, "I want to be a lawyer."

Provenza immediately fell forward in his seat and put his hands on his head with a dramatic sigh, doing as expecting and making it sound like he had just been told about the death of a loved one. He groaned loudly which prompted Andy to drop a hand to his back. "If you're thinking about having yourself a heart attack in here," he told him, "I warn you now, they'll cath you in the ER."

Unable to resist, Provenza looked up at him with surprise. "Oh they cathed you? Really? Why didn't you say so before?" he replied, every single word practically dripping with an excess of sarcasm. Yet again Sharon and Rusty battled not to laugh because Andy had been complaining about it almost hourly rather than daily since it happened to the point that every single one of them was fed up of hearing about it, his catheter turning into a new Badge of Justice. Provenza turned back to Rusty and gave him a look of utter disgust, very much like the looks the young man had been giving Andy over the previous twenty four hours whenever sex or stairs were mentioned. "Law? You want to be a lawyer?"

"That's what the kid said" Andy replied for him with added glee.

"I don't believe this" Provenza said with a shake of his head as if Patrice had just told him that she had been having an affair.

"And you thought it was bad when he wanted to be a journalist" Andy again commented as a way to stir the pot a little more.

"Is this your influence?" Provenza then asked him. "Have you done this?"

"Don't look at me although, I did suggest he see if Hobbs would take him on as her minion."

"Only because you want me to dig up some dirt on her for you to use" Rusty announced.

"I was joking obviously" Andy spluttered out when he noticed Sharon smiling up at him.

She hummed in reply, her disbelief evident. "Of course you were" she told him, her eyes sparkling as Provenza laughed, Andy seemingly becoming more whipped by the day but then he was no different in that department too on top of having an extremely large soft spot for their Captain.

"Well, if you'll all excuse me," Andy told them, suddenly keen to get out of there as quick as possible, "I have an appointment with Chief Howard." He squeezed her hand and winked at her before he finally set off towards the door but he didn't get too far, feeling Sharon tug on his hand to stop him. He turned to face her with a smile.

"Come back and say goodbye to me when you've got it signed?" she asked him. Her voice was low since the rest of her division were now in earshot but that wasn't enough to stop her from squeezing his hand again.

He grinned back at her and arched an eyebrow. "Checking up on me, huh?" Both Julio and Amy let out quiet chuckles at them, getting a smile from both Andy and Sharon as a result before their attentions returned to each other.

"No, not at all" she replied loud enough to ensure that everyone in earshot heard her. "I was just planning on walking you to the elevator afterwards, that's all. Plus I'll feel a whole lot better about life when you finally have his signature on the dotted line."

"Well that makes two of us" he confessed. He winked at her as he kissed the back of her hand again before he set off out of the Murder Room and onwards towards Chief Howard's temporary office.

"Good luck" Julio called after him.

Andy had barely got as far as the Murder Room door before Provenza emerged from Sharon's office, shaking his head with dismay. "Law!" he cried as he waved his finger at her. "I blame you two for this."

Sharon only laughed at him in reply as he sat back down at his desk before her attention went back to Andy as she watched him go, never taking her eyes off him or the smile from her face until he was out of sight. At the same time Rusty was watching her closely from the doorway to her office with his own little smile. Life was returning to normal again and if that wasn't enough to bring a smile to his face, seeing Sharon so happy certainly was.

He waited until he was sure Andy was gone before he spoke, keeping his voice low and yet he still made Sharon jump a little, as focused as she was on her departing partner. "This has quickly turned into one of my favourite things in the world" he told her.

She shook her head as if she was trying her best to focus on her son, turning to look in his direction as she stepped back over to him, her hand coming up to touch his shoulder. "What has?" she asked, offering him as bright a smile as he had seen in weeks.

"Seeing you so happy" Rusty told her with a shrug. Sharon only smiled back at him as she fought once again to gain complete control over her emotions. She was reaching the point that if she cried one more time before nightfall then she was literally going to dehydrate and blow away in the breeze. "Seeing you so ridiculously happy" he then amended as his smile matched her own when he nodded in the direction of where Andy had gone. "Even if I do have to put up with that moron as a result."

Sharon laughed with Rusty quickly joining her, making it abundantly clear (as if she didn't already know) that he was only joking. "Oh he's not all that bad is he?" she asked.

Rusty nodded in agreement. "I've known a lot worse" he stated. "But then again he likes to walk around communal areas in just his underwear and has the habit of hugging me from time to time so these things tend to even themselves out."

Meanwhile outside Chief Howard's temporary office, Andy stood waiting patiently for his Assistant to finish up her phone call and speak to him, his form being passed nervously back and forth in his hands. Eventually she hung up the phone as she jotted a note down and then smiled up at him, Andy speaking before she had chance to ask how she could help. "Is the Chief in?" he asked, thumbing towards his office.

"I'm sorry Lieutenant, he's just stepped out for a moment."

"Oh okay" Andy replied, the disappointment clear in his voice as he looked at the paperwork in his hand. "Erm…can I leave this here for him?"

Before his Assistant could answer a familiar voice called from behind him. "Andy!"

Andy spun on the spot to see Fritz walking towards him, his hand outstretched and ready to shake his hand. "Chief."

Fritz quickly approached him, a smile on his face and genuinely pleased to see him. "How are you?" he asked warmly. "Sharon said yesterday that you'd been given the all clear by your Doctor, right?" he added as the two of them shook hands.

"Yeah that's right" Andy replied as he turned the paper in his hands, still a little worried in case he wouldn't be allowed back to work and the Pope was going to scupper their plans after everything he'd done to get back on his feet again. "I've got the all clear to return to driving and work and well, pretty much everything."

"That's great." Fritz was quick to spot not only the paperwork in Andy's hand but also his unusually nervous demeanour. "Is that...is that your paperwork?" he asked as he pointed at it.

"Yeah" Andy nodded as he pointed in the direction of the Murder Room. "I managed to get Provenza and my 'Captain,'" he explained while using quotation marks and earning a little chuckle from Fritz in the process, "to sign it so I can come back on Monday. There's just one more signature I need so I was just..."

"Come inside" Fritz replied as he set off into Taylor's office and gestured for him to follow him. "Let's talk."

"Oh. Okay." Andy followed Fritz into his office, feeling a little worried to say the least by what was about to happen, fearing that Fritz really had been given orders from Chief Pope to push him towards a not so early retirement. He quickly scanned the mostly empty office, all traces of Russell Taylor now completely gone once and for all, the space yet to be filled. It was going to be an adjustment, an even bigger one if he could finally get Sharon to apply for the job. He finally closed the door behind him and stepped further into the room.

"Take a seat" Fritz instructed before they both sat down, Taylor's old desk between them. "Can I get you a drink? Something to eat?"

"Ern...no thanks Chief, I just had lunch with Sharon in her office."

"Okay" Fritz nodded as he shuffled in his seat, hating that office and feeling like an imposter in Taylor's chair even if it was only temporary. "So how are you? Really? You doing okay?" he asked. Andy didn't respond, only looking at him with suspicion like he was trying to trip him up and have a reason to make him retire. Fritz saw it immediately, mainly having been in that position before although only Mike knew about it. He laughed a little while he held his hands up in an act of surrender. "Okay. Look, I can see that you're worried about it so let me have that off you now." He reached across the desk and quickly took the much worried over paperwork off him before he immediately signed it, scanning it afterwards as a mere formality. "You're coming back to work on Monday right?" he asked again as he stood and took the signed paperwork in his hand before he opened the door to once again see Taylor's Assistant. "Make sure this gets actioned for Monday please. Okay?" She took it and nodded. "Thanks." Fritz came back inside, shutting the door behind him before he sat down again. "See? Done! So back on Monday right?"

Andy looked at him more than a little confused for a moment before shaking his head to get his brain in gear and then finally answered him. "Yeah, well desk duty only for the time being but I'll take anything right now."

"The blood thinners?" Fritz asked all too knowingly.

"Yeah," Andy nodded, "the blood thinners." He couldn't help but frown with Fritz knowing a little more than he would expect under the circumstances. "Plus my Captain breaks out into a cold sweat if I so much as sneeze in a way she doesn't like anymore, so I can't imagine for one second she's going to enjoy watching me put my vest on and roll out anytime soon." He gave Fritz a causal shrug in the full knowledge that he knew Sharon and Captain Raydor well enough to know she would never stand in his way where work and rules were involved even if she didn't particularly like it. He also wasn't sure if he was aware of the arrangement she had with Provenza, putting him in charge of that side of things given, in his opinion at least, Fritz probably wasn't going to be in that job too much longer, being ex FBI working against him and not to mention that he wasn't exactly Will Pope's favourite person in the world.

"Let me guess, if Sharon so much as looks at you funny right now you get a gigantic bruise, right?"

"That's right but how..."

Fritz held his hand up to stop him before leaning in closer across the desk and lowering his voice a little as if the walls had ears. "Look Andy, what I'm about to say to you, only two other people in the world know about. One of them is my Doctor and the other is Mike Tao so I'm trusting you here. Okay?" Andy nodded, having no idea as to what was coming. "I was in your position a couple of years ago. I had a heart attack."

"What? You? When?" Andy asked, clearly stunned.

"My final day working for the FBI."

Andy thought about it for a moment until realisation hit him. "Your final day working for the...but you were here working with us that day."

"I know, which thankfully meant Mike was still here and able to quickly drive me to the ER before I collapsed."

"But you were at work again like two days later. How..."

"That's because I checked myself out of the hospital almost immediately and, it must be noted, against medical advice after they'd finished messing with me." Andy couldn't believe what he was hearing since there was no way Sharon would have let him do the same thing no matter how desperate he was to go home at the time. "I'm not saying it was the wisest decision I've ever made in my life or that it was as bad as yours since I managed to pretty much stay on my feet and make it to the hospital fairly unaided but I did end up having a couple of stents fitted the same as you."

Andy pointed at his thigh. "Did they go in through..."

"My groin, just like you" Fritz nodded with an all too knowing smile as he instinctively rubbed his leg. "How's your bruise?"

"Still there."

"Does it still hurt?"

"A little bit."

"Yeah that won't be for too much longer and I'm sure at the time much of mine was purely psychological because it looked so bad. Have they given you a pacemaker?" he asked, the fact that he checked himself out of hospital and went back to work within a couple of days rather than recovering properly meaning he was given the pacemaker as a precaution.

"No, just a couple of stents and a lot of medication to take."

"Well trust me, you've got off lucky. They gave me something that felt and looked like an electric blanket to wear under my shirts that zapped me whenever it thought my heart was about to freak out" Fritz told him as his hand ran over his torso as if he could still feel it.

"And did it?"

"Twice" he said with a roll of his eyes as they both laughed about it. "Not a fun experience I can tell you" he added, rubbing his chest at just the memory of it. "I'm not joking here, the power from that thing shot me clean across the other side of the room."

"You're kidding?" Andy laughed.

"Oh no I'm not. The damn thing knocked me clean off my feet" Fritz told him, his eyes widening before they laughed about it. "But after that first time I lived in a near permanent state of fear of it happening again. The worry over it almost gave me another heart attack. It was awful, I was constantly bracing myself in case I suddenly took off through the air without warning yet again" he added, that image alone making Andy laugh. "I'm not kidding. The way I kept bracing myself and clinging on to the edge of my desk or whatever was closest, I'm sure to the outside world I looked like a toddler straining to fill a diaper."

"Suddenly I'm feeling like I got off lightly."

"Personally I think anything short of not having your chest cracked open is getting off lightly."

Andy nodded in agreement, that fact hard to dispute since he had little physical evidence that anything had happened other than a bruise that was beginning to fade. "Did they give you the angina spray too?"

"Yep." Fritz took it out of his pocket and waved it at him, the label clearly scratched off it so that no one would know what it actually contained should they catch sight of it. "Never had to use it thankfully. Touch wood." He knocked on the desk for luck as Andy did likewise, not having to use his either as yet but it was still close to hand the previous day as they 'climbed the stairs' together, just in case.

Silence fell for a brief moment and the wheels started turning in Andy's mind which meant he had to ask the question. "Wait, you said only two other people besides the two us know about it."

"That's right" Fritz nodded.

"Well what about the Chief?"

Fritz smiled and shook his head. "Nope" he replied almost smugly.

"What?" was all Andy could say in response as he looked at him baffled since he knew full well what Brenda was like when it came to these things (very much like Sharon although they approached it differently) and so figured she could work out what had happened to him without any trouble and that was just from the bruise on his leg let alone the huge pacemaker vest and all the extra trips to see the Doctor on top of his night in hospital while he had his angioplasty. How in the name of Hell did he explain all of that to Brenda of all people without her working out the truth? "But how is that possible with the bruise alone, forgetting your pacemaker?"

"Thankfully at the time Brenda was in Washington in talks over taking a new job over there so she missed the worst of it. By the time she came home I was back at work like nothing had happened."

"But even so, how?"

"I told her I'd accidentally shot myself in the thigh with a beanbag gun."

"And she bought that?" Andy laughed. "Really?"

"Hook, line and sinker."

"And what about your pacemaker?"

"Rightly or wrongly I'd stopped wearing it by then so she never saw it" he said with a shrug of his shoulders. "As I'm sure you know better than most right now, having the one person that you love the most in the world worrying themselves to death over you is something you want to avoid at all cost." Andy nodded and understood completely, it was after all why he wanted to keep his 'dust up' with the car quiet from Sharon (the shock of it not making him realise as Provenza picked him up off the ground that it was impossible and he was bleeding heavily, something he would never be able to hide from her) and not to mention when his Doctor urgently called him in and he snuck off to discover he had a blood clot without her knowledge that he was even feeling a little under the weather. "Look Andy, I'm telling you all this because I don't want you to worry about your job" he told him kindly. "As long as I have this job then you have your job, okay?"

"And then?" Andy asked, unable to not look forward.

Fritz smiled back at him with a little nod of the head and understood. He didn't expect to keep the job of Assistant Chief long term any more than anyone else did but he also knew Will Pope pretty well, as did his wife and they were both of the opinion that any permanent appointment would not be made swiftly due to the lack of an obvious successor to Taylor and therefore Andy would be back in his groove long before that happened, giving the new Assistant Chief no reason to make him retire.

"You know me Andy, I'm a realist so I know I'm not even in the top twenty of people in the running for this job permanently but I also know that the Pope is not in any great hurry to make an appointment either. I'm here for a while and the longer you're back at work and proving your worth, whoever takes over from me is not going to have reason to make you retire. Not with Sharon and Provenza in your corner too. So don't worry. Okay?"

"Okay" Andy nodded but it was clear to Fritz that he was far from convinced.

"And look on the bright side, with any luck I may get replaced by someone extremely eager to keep you on" he suggested and clearly talking about Sharon.

Andy laughed as much as he scoffed. "I wouldn't be so sure about that."

"Is she really not interested in the job?"

"Not in the slightest" Andy replied with a shake of his head and resigned to the fact although he was determined to change her mind.

"Really?" Fritz asked, his shock evident.

"I know" Andy shrugged. "Every time I've brought the subject up she's made it clear that she's just not interested. But if it came down to a choice between her and someone like Deputy Chief Winnie Davis then she'd take it obviously, just to save the department but otherwise," he continued with a smile and a shrug, "she's happy where she is."

Fritz hummed and nodded. "Never underestimate how being happier than you've ever been also makes you contented with the life you have." Andy smiled and nodded in reply, feeling the exact same way because despite everything that had happened, he was the definition of contented of late.

Twenty minutes later and with Andy still happily chatting with Fritz about work and the very strong women they were sharing their lives with, he had not noticed the time that he had been in there. Sharon on the other hand, knew exactly how long his meeting had been going on and slowly walked towards Provenza's desk, her arms folded in front of her and looking out of the door of Major Crimes to see if Andy was coming but while trying to look as casual as possible as she did it at the same time. It didn't work and Provenza knew exactly what was happening, lifting his head to look at her after he noted the time and realised that it had so far taken Andy nearly thirty minutes to get one signature on an already completed form.

When Sharon noticed Provenza looking at her she sought the reassurance that he had been offering her for the past six weeks. "He's been a long time? Don't you think?" she asked as she looked at her watch again.

Trying to act as casual as possible in an effort to ease her concern slightly, Provenza sat back in his chair with his hands behind his head, his fingers linked together. "They're probably just talking, you know, catching up a little." It was then that Mike looked up and had a very good idea precisely what Andy and Fritz might be talking about for such a long time but kept it to himself even though he knew it would help her, not wanting to break his promise to him. "Captain, you've got nothing to worry about" he told her, shrugging his shoulders as he sat forward and tried to sound as convincing as possible. "It's just a formality." Sharon still didn't look convinced, glancing towards the door again. "Go and join them" he then opted to encourage. She immediately gave him a look back that screamed 'That is never going to happen' which resulted in Provenza taking to his feet and stepping towards her, his hand coming to rest on her arm. "Think of it like this, if any one of us had been a little too long in there would you not be feeling a similar way right now?" He looked at Mike and Amy for support, his eyes burning into them to get the response he wanted. They both looked up and nodded, all of them aware of the panicky feeling she was experiencing when he was out of her sight for too long since it happened. "See." She still didn't move a muscle and instead just stared at the door. "You've done it before" he then reminded her. "When Amy came back to work and Julio." Yet again they all nodded at her in agreement with Sharon and Julio meeting with Chief Taylor on numerous occasions before and after his return to work following his suspension as she ensured he could come back to her division without issue. The only difference was, she wasn't living with him at the time like she was Andy and that was enough to stop her.

Sharon again nodded but didn't move. Eventually Provenza sat back down at his desk when he realised he would never be able to convince her and he might as well save her breath as it was something she needed to work out for herself. She remained rooted to the spot for a few more seconds before she announced "I'm going to go and grab myself a cup of coffee" to no one in particular. She then scuttled off out of the Murder Room and they knew it was just an excuse to go and stand outside but whatever she wanted to do was fine with them.

Provenza looked at Mike. "The sooner he comes back to work the better" he stated with all of them concerned about his return. Mike nodded in agreement as his phone rang and Provenza looked at his watch once again.

Ten minutes later and with all of his worries evaporating (for a short while at least) thanks to a very reassuring and illuminating conversation with Fritz, Andy walked out of his office and headed back towards the Murder Room. He smiled brightly the moment he saw Sharon pacing back and forth in the corridor with cup of coffee in hand. He knew full well that she had been waiting for him and judging by the way her shoulders were up around her ears it wasn't at all patiently or worry free. The sound of his footsteps coming towards her made her look up and her smile erupted at the sight of him while still looking a little anxious.

"Hey."

"How did it go? You've been a long time" Sharon said without realising how quickly or loudly she was talking.

When he finally approached her he put his hand on her cup and the coolness of it let him know how long she had been waiting for him. "We were just catching up a little" he told her.

"Did everything go okay?"

"Perfectly. All paperwork signed and I am back to work on Monday." With that news her smile erupted and she released the breath she didn't know she had been holding. "So you can unclench now" he joked and immediately flinched, expecting retaliation.

She went to reply, possibly pinching the back of his knees and giving him yet another new bruise (even though he was right) but the sight of her entire division including Buzz with his camera in hand moving at pace towards them had her falling silent and stepping out of their way. "Are we being rolled out?" she asked. With Provenza following slowly in the rear it was left for him to explain what few details they had already and make his own way there a little slower, while everyone else headed to the elevators.

With his coat jacket over his arm Provenza straightened his tie and rolled the sleeves of his shirt back down as he spoke. "We are indeed Captain. Homicide in Van Nuys. Well," he paused as he laughed even though it could possibly be classed as in poor taste to be doing so, "it was first reported as multiple homicides in Van Nuys but that's been corrected to one homicide and seven punctured inflatable sex dolls."

"What?" Andy laughed.

Provenza pulled on his jacket as he continued. "It seems like you and I missed out on quite the party last night. I'll give you a call Captain when I have more information." Sharon nodded as Provenza headed off until he came to a stop near the elevators and turned back towards them. "Oh and by the way, you know since our Desk Monkey has had all of his paperwork signed and he's back on Monday anyway, could he possibly…"

"No" came Darth Raydor's immediate response.

"But…"

"Lieutenant Flynn is going home where he's going to rest up for Monday."

Provenza smiled, taking the chance that he was actually talking to his friend rather than his Commanding Officer in that moment. "Well, if you'd waited a few hours to leave when the rest of us did yesterday rather than having me drive you home in the middle of the day, he might not need to rest up quite that much" he teased.

"Wait! Provenza drove you home yesterday?" Andy asked. "You said you grabbed an Uber."

"Oh she did and I'm expecting a very good review."

Sharon glared at her second in command for a moment but given how he had gone beyond the call of duty for her recently in both a personal and professional capacity, those two sides of her life blurring more often than she once thought she would ever allow them to while in that building, she let him off the hook rather quickly save for a dirty look. "Don't you have a crime scene to attend Lieutenant?"

Provenza laughed as he set off. "Indeed I do Captain." But before he vanished around the corner he turned back to them with another grin. "I'll see you on Monday...beautiful boy" he again teased, laughing as he walked away.

Sharon rolled her eyes while Andy shot daggers at her because regardless of how much he loved it when she called him that, Provenza was sure to torture him over it until one of them died. Sharon casually shrugged at him. "What? I thought you liked that name" she said as her hand ran down the front of his shirt while she spoke. Had he been wearing a neck tie for their lunch date she would have undoubtedly been teasingly running it through her fingers instead.

"Sure when it's from you! But not from him!" he whined. She laughed at him as he sighed. After a quick look around to ensure they were alone he moved in closer to her ear and also lowered his voice, what he was about to say for no one's ears but her own and knowing it would make her blush wildly. "Babe, it's hard enough trying to maintain an erection at my age while the image of Provenza in nothing but a whipped cream teddy and a smile keeps popping into my head," he started to say and making her laugh as her eyes slipped closed, his hot breath hitting her skin and the growl in his voice making the butterflies in the pit of her stomach wake up and start to do somersaults, it more intense after the events of the previous twenty-four hours with him, "without hearing those two particular words fall from his lips too."

Sharon laughed again as he pulled back and saw the blush that was quickly spreading from her cheeks and down to her chest. It instantly brought a smug smile to his face knowing that his words had caused that reaction and while they were at PAB too. It wasn't the first time that Andy had told her about his tactic of choice, trying to picture his partner in a state of undress to stop any untimely erections back when he was waiting for her to give him a clear sign that she was ready to move their relationship forward and if he was being completely honest, it had started long before they started dating officially, back when he cooked her dinner to thank her for going to Nicole's wedding with him and she smelled so good that he spent much of the evening full of terror. He'd done it since then too and not just because he'd had six long weeks of medical enforced abstinence, the smell of her perfume or an innocent hand on his back in Electronics for example more than enough to light the fire in him especially in the days and weeks that followed them crossing that final physical barrier between them. In fact he had done it so often since his crush on her started to develop that he had been worried at times if he would ever be able to have sex again as a result, or look his partner in the eye again, that image always lurking in the back of his mind and ready to pounce.

Once Sharon had stopped laughing at his smugness he grinned at her, yet more mischief in his eye. "A ride home from Provenza? Really?" He couldn't help but laugh, that revelation only adding fuel to the fire that began with her damage to the condo wall as far as her lust filled race home a day earlier was concerned, Sharon clearly stopping at nothing in order to get home to him as quickly as was humanly possible.

With her coffee cup still in hand, Sharon put her hands on her hips as much as she was able and fixed him with a death glare. If she allowed it he was going to tease her about it for weeks if not months on end or until she murdered him, whichever came first. Andy already had the way she rushed home and the damage to the wall caused by her dramatic entrance to tease her with on top of the way she had spoken to Mrs Rose during her lust filled frenzy without using her choice in last minute chauffeur against her too.

"Shouldn't you be going home and resting up for next week, Lieutenant?" she asked him, Darth Raydor once again putting in a more than welcome appearance.

Andy laughed and nodded before he spoke really quite loudly to ensure he was going to be overheard by the man he was fairly certain was still standing by the elevator. "Yes I should and I am but only after I've spent the next hour or so sitting in Provenza's chair completely naked."

"I heard that!" Provenza called back to him seconds before a high pitched ping accompanied the elevator's arrival.

"You were supposed to!" Andy called back, causing Sharon to laugh as Provenza stepped into the elevator and they heard the doors closing followed by the usual whoosh as it began to descend. Despite doing his best to appear annoyed at this new revelation just a few moments earlier, Andy couldn't keep the smile from his face for a number of reasons as he turned his attention back to his Captain. "So, tell me, did he know why you needed to get home so urgently yesterday or was he left in the dark?"

Sharon didn't answer immediately, ready to kill Provenza for dobbing her in like that but at the same time she was still so overjoyed at having her Andy Flynn back in her life again, the Andy who would constantly tease her like this, and with his smile infectious to say the least, she wore one to match. Under the circumstances she had no other choice than to be honest with him. "Yes, he most definitely knows" she told him, the blush to her skin only increasing.

Again Andy looked around them to ensure he wasn't about to be overheard before he then asked "Did you tell him or did the sex crazed look in your eye give the game away?"

"Does it matter?"

He shrugged as he smiled. "I guess not. Ignoring the whole six times in seventeen hours miracle of the ages yesterday," he said, shoulders thrown back and still extremely proud of himself, "just picturing the look on Provenza's face as he dropped you home makes it all worthwhile."

Again Sharon laughed, her free hand moving to his chest. "Which is another reason why we owe the Lieutenant and Patrice a very nice, very expensive, very fancy dinner soon."

"Anything else you've got to confess to me?"

"Not that I can think of right now" Sharon replied after a moment of thought.

"Good, well, I'll get going. Get out of your hair since you've got work to do."

"Okay." She nodded as her hand moved to his arm and then down to his hand, giving it a quick squeeze. "I'll try not to be too late tonight."

"Don't worry about it and don't worry about me either please" he all but begged her. "I'll be fine, no matter what time you come home, after all, this was the life I chose when I decided to become a…" He paused as he let out a sigh of resignation. "A full time Badge Bunny." She laughed again as he set off towards the elevator, not pushing it with a kiss to her cheek until he felt her hand on his back as she walked with him. "Walking me to the elevator?"

"I just wanted to make sure you don't get lost."

He laughed as they reached the bank of elevators and he pressed the button to call them. After a quick glance up to see which floors the elevators were on, he turned his attention back to Sharon as she still held his hand. "If this does end up running into tonight, give me a call and I'll bring by something for you to eat and a change of clothes."

"Thank you" she replied with a smile, that the kind of thoughtful gesture which never once came from Jack, even when she was working while heavily pregnant. "I could get used to this."

"Oh really? Got your eye on turning me into a full-time 'House Husband,' huh? Having me running here and there and at your beck and call at all times of the day and night?"

Once again she couldn't stop herself from smiling at him. It was the first time that he had ever used the 'H' word to describe himself in their relationship, even in jest. In fact his jokes about marriage in general, the way that he would constantly insist that she was going to be the one to propose to him one day, had ended without her even realising it. When was the last time he said that to her? After Provenza married Patrice she thought, with her mind then wondering if that meant anything before shaking it off and turning her attention back to the present.

"For now, but only until I get you back behind your desk where you belong on Monday." He grinned at her again as the elevator arrived. The car was empty so he slid his hand across the door to keep it open while they said their goodbyes. With no one around and Andy still technically on sick leave until Monday, Sharon leaned in and kissed him on the lips. It was long and slow but perfectly chaste enough with her free hand cupping his face while his remained by his side. She laughed when she realised he wasn't touching her and more to the point, why he wasn't touching her. "What are you doing?"

"I'm behaving myself at work" came the immediate reply. She laughed and kissed him on the lips once again, appreciating the way that he maintained that line between them while at work, that line that she was currently happily dancing on. When they broke apart he finally stepped into the elevator. "I'll see you at home gorgeous" he said with a wink.

She smiled back at him. "Is it silly that I still get butterflies in my stomach when you say that?" she asked, loving that he was already feeling like the condo was his home despite her fears about it.

"I'd be upset if you didn't. What?" he asked when she just smiled at him adoringly without a word being spoken.

"The idea that I'd ever willingly leave you." Andy pressed the button for the ground floor as he nodded, nothing more needing to be added on the subject. "I love you."

"I love you too" he said with a wink as the elevator door closed.