Author: i-must-go-first

Fandom: Major Crimes

Relationship: Sharon/Rusty

Words: 1,900

Rating: K+

Summary: Sharon helps Rusty navigate between failure and success. My first little mothership venture.

This is Not a Test

1.

Sharon is writing something on the white board when Rusty makes his usual unobtrusive entrance into the Murder Room. She seems not to notice him, her attention focused on – well, whatever. Probably a murder. Almost definitely a murder. Depending on his mood, Rusty sometimes tries to read as much of the information on the board as he can take in at one go, before someone chases him off like he's a clueless kid. He likes to know about Sharon's investigations before he sees them on the news. It helps him decipher the thoughts of the quiet, self-contained woman whose space he inhabits, and that is reassuring.

Today he has his own problems, and is content to fly under the radar. He turns, silent on his sneakers, and retraces his steps to the break room.

By rote he buys himself a Coke. As he fits quarters into the vending machine slot, he thinks, No, Sharon is buying you this Coke. It's all Sharon's money. Sharon's shoes on his feet, Sharon's school fees. He has known this all along; they talked about it months ago, when he first came to live with her. He knows she's not rich (although by his standards she is) but can afford it, and begrudges him nothing. She insists that it's part of being a parent, foster or no. He does chores around the condo and she gives him an allowance. He'd been agitating for permission to get a part-time job to pay for gas, but, well. Emma Rios has brought it all up again, the cost to Sharon of feeding, watering, and housing a teenage boy, and with it Rusty's feelings of guilt. He doesn't deserve this life, especially not today.

The soda is sweet and fizzy on his tongue, but he doesn't want to drink it. The stone in the pit of his stomach doesn't leave room for much else.

He doesn't turn around when the door opens behind him. He hasn't heard her shoes, so he knows it isn't Sharon.

"Hey, Rusty."

He twists to face Buzz from his slumped position at the table. There are no comfortable chairs in this whole building. He has checked. "Hey."

"How'd the test go?"

This room always smells like burned coffee. Maybe that's why Buzz drinks tea.

"Bombed it."

He waits for his tutor to say something. He's let Buzz down – this is some pay-off for all the unpaid hours the guy has spent trying to teach him trigonometry. Rusty sinks a little deeper into the hard chair. This sucks. He sucks. And he has sucked, literally. His mouth twists at his own black humor. Good one.

Buzz is looking at him and bobbing a tea bag up and down in his mug of liquid. "Maybe you did better than you think."

"Nope. She graded them in class. I got a 63."

Buzz considers for a couple of seconds before shrugging. "Well, next time. We'll log some extra study hours this weekend. I'll ask the captain if –"

"Shit, don't tell her!" Rusty's voice cracks in alarm, and for once Buzz ignores the profanity.

"Please don't tell Sharon," the boy repeats.

"Okay." The steam from Buzz's tea is creating a little halo over his head as he makes for the door. "But I'm pretty sure she'll figure it out. She is a detective."

2.

Rusty is lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling and listening very hard. He thinks he can hear Sharon pattering around in the kitchen, her feet bare. The first thing she does when she walks in the door is to remove her shoes. Rusty has observed her and figured it out: if she's wearing panty hose, she puts on the Uggs that he thinks belong to her daughter, but if she isn't, she goes barefoot. On the weekends or whenever she gets a whole work-free day, she rarely wears shoes.

Rusty feels a little foolish for watching her so closely and gathering up these details, like he's an anthropologist. But she's so different from his mom. He finds himself wondering if the secret of her is in those details. The observation is instinctual. The more he knows about what makes her tick, the less likely he is to piss her off and remind her that he doesn't belong here. (He has worried less and less as the months have gone by about not belonging in the nice condo with the nice lady. Maybe it was a false sense of security.)

Not that Sharon has been reticent about articulating her expectations or giving him clear rules to follow. She hasn't set any traps for him. She doesn't change her mind, or go ballistic if he doesn't perform some task that she never asked him to do in the first place. Life with her has been a model of stability and order, and Rusty is smart enough to wonder how much of that is for his benefit. Does anybody really wash their dishes as soon as they finish using them each time? And not even Sharon can have made her bed every day of her life.

Other facets of Rusty's life are not so stable. First there's Emma. (He has noticed that Sharon says her name funny, Em-ma, as if she's calling her something else in her head.) Why does she have to screw up his life a whole year and a half before Stroh's trial? Like almost getting murdered twice by the creep wasn't bad enough. He's still afraid that Sharon will find out that it's Rusty who doesn't want her at his "conversations" with the D.D.A. There are things Sharon can't know. Not while he sleeps on her clean sheets and eats dinner across the table from her. Not while she gives him affectionate little pats on the shoulder, like she wants to hug him but is afraid he'll disappear.

She'd been so pissed when Emma had called him a whorephan, but it was true. He knows the dirty parts of him don't belong in Sharon's nice clean world, and no matter how much he wants them to, they haven't just gone away. And now he's a whorephan who's failing math – again. It's like adding insult to injury.

"Rusty?" The door is ajar, so Sharon's head peeks around the frame. "The lasagna will be about an hour, so I brought you a snack." He sits up and she hands over an orange wrapped in a slightly damp paper towel, perfect for sticky fingers.

He doesn't want the orange because he's still digesting the stone. He feels like a dick for not having offered to help with dinner after Sharon worked all day.

He realizes that he is staring at the orange like it holds the secrets of the galaxy and that she is gazing at him, her head cocked. His eyes find hers.

"Do you want to tell me what's bothering you?"

"You're gonna kill me."

It's a poor choice of expressions, given his history. It's also a typical, comfortable exaggeration.

"That is highly unlikely."

His lip twitches. Unasked, she sits down beside him, close but not touching.

"Something happened at school?" she prods.

"I failed my trig test," he blurts. "I mean, I got a 63, which is technically passing, but it's a D-, so it's really failing because you have to make a C to pass a class." The look he turns on her is filled with anguished earnestness. "I'm really sorry, Sharon. I'll do better on the next test, I swear."

He is sincere, but even as he says it part of him wonders if it's silly to be this upset about a math test when he's waiting to testify in a murder trial and someone is sending him threatening letters. Yet he is still this upset.

Like Buzz, she considers for a couple of seconds. "I'm sorry, honey."

He waits for her to say something else, but she doesn't.

"That's it? Aren't you gonna yell? Ground me?"

He is pretty much already grounded for life thanks to his unwanted pen pal, but she could take away his cellphone or something. He considers suggesting it.

"Would you feel better if I yelled?"

Is she asking him? Sometimes he doesn't get the way her mind works. Is this another choice that isn't actually a choice?

When he doesn't respond, she says, "I know you studied for the test, Rusty. What do you think happened?"

"I dunno. I thought I got it this time, with Buzz helping me. But like, as soon as I had the test in front of me, I could barely remember how to turn my calculator on." He shrugs, defeated. "Like everything I thought I knew about tangents was just gone."

"Were you distracted?" She has picked the orange up and begun to peel it. Rusty watches her long, thin fingers. She is so efficient; her fingers probably don't even get sticky. "Because you must have a lot on your mind these days."

"I wasn't thinking about it. About – that stuff." He doesn't like to talk about it, especially not now. Especially not with Sharon.

"Not thinking about something can take a lot of concentration."

She says it like she's making a casual observation, but her gaze is acute.

"There's no way I'm going to get into the honors program now."

"You don't need to take honors classes to get a good education. – Did you try your best today?"

He swallows hard. "Yeah. But my best sucked."

"Sometimes that happens." She smiles a little as she pops an orange segment into her mouth. "The real test is whether or not you keep trying, challenge yourself to do better than your best."

"You're not disappointed in me?" he asks. He needs the reassurance. There is still trepidation in his eyes.

"Rusty." The hand holding the fruit gestures between them. "This is not a test, okay? A lot of things in life are. This isn't one of them."

After a couple of beats she stands, providing a distraction from the intimate moment. "You still have plenty of time to do some homework before dinner. Or do something else, clear your mind, and forget about it for a while. Either way, Buzz said you have some proofs due Monday?"

"You already knew, didn't you? That I failed the test." On the threshold, she does that humming thing in her throat. Rusty frowns. "Man, I asked Buzz not to tell you."

"He didn't. I know plenty of things." Her tone is fierce, but a playful gleam has appeared in her eyes. "Don't you forget it, mister."

He's pretty sure she is no longer talking about trig. Before he can ponder that, she flips the orange through the air like it's a softball, surprising him. His fingers close too hard around the fleshy pulp and juice oozes down his arm and onto the comforter.

"Forty-five minutes," she reminds. "And clean that mess up."

She closes the door behind her, and Rusty looks down at the sticky blob. He wonders if all parents are like this, or if it's a Sharon thing – proud when you expect her to be disappointed, playful when you expect her to be severe, and pissed if you eat on the sofa.

You just never know with Sharon, he thinks. Except that about the important things, you do.