When Andy Flynn went out that morning it was chilly, but the sun was setting already with the promise of a wave of heat coming. These days he would spend his nights at his own place rather than at Sharon's, packing his life into boxes. It had been all settled, the house was on the market and he would move in with her and the kid in her condo, while looking for better accommodation for the three of them, in an all new house that would have been their house and not his or hers only. Many times Sharon had told him to consider her condo like his house too, but he always felt he intruded into the story of her life, from the first time she had moved into it with her little kids, to cut down on the costs of a too big and too costly house since Jack had left them, to the moment Rusty took the guest room as his own. He wished for a house in which they could build memories together, as a couple and as a family, with enough space to also welcome Sharon's children when they visited, without any of them to haunt the sofa on which he planned to spend a lot of evenings with her in his arms watching movies.
It was early in the morning but the traffic already had him stuck on his way to a crime scene. His phone wouldn't stop ringing with messages from his realtor about the selling of the house, and Andy would ignore them all while driving but one caught his attention while waiting in the queue "Good morning, Andy." It was so simple and yet it made him smile. It had happened another couple of times, when he had spent the night over at his place, Sharon had sent him a good morning message. It wasn't the same as waking up next to those beautiful green eyes looking at him and then see her smile shining upon her face, just a second before to be kissed by her lips that tasted always like cherry. Just a matter of a few more days, and those would have been his days for the rest of his life.
He moved a few meters more to another red light, "Good morning to you, Sharon. Heading to the crime scene. See you soon." He typed a message in response to her. Ever since transitioning from IA to Major Crimes, Sharon had delegated the crime scene to Provenza. The old man had seen the position of command taken from his seat and it had been very difficult for Sharon to make him trust her abilities to lead the division properly. Giving him the power on crime scene territory felt like a good compromise they had made and it was good for them, but a little less good for Andy for Provenza wasn't as attractive as Sharon to him and he was also less open to hear anyone's point of view than she was. Ever since Andy had started dating Sharon at the light of the sun, he was even less inclined to listen to his point of view because he said they were intoxicated with her female arts of seduction.
"Thank you for gracing us with your presence, Flynn!" The old man was there waiting for Andy to arrive. Seeing him as the first person in the morning wasn't really his idea of a good morning.
"I was stuck in the traffic, what do we have here?" Sharon had tried to teach Andy to take it calm and after a deep breath let the old man say his things and move on.
"A dead body, Sir!" Sanchez appeared behind a door stating the obvious. Everyone was determined to make it a very hard morning for Andy. And his phone wouldn't stop ringing either.
"Are we disturbing you, Flynn?" Provenza was nastier than usual. Maybe it was the morning becoming hotter, the fact that he was taken out of bed too early or simply being Provenza and more annoying, but he wouldn't stop commenting on Andy's phone constantly ringing and about him checking it.
"I'm working with my realtor about the house, I can't miss this deal is almost sold." Andy was excited he suddenly forgot he was on a crime scene.
"Do you mind getting back to the murder for a moment? Thank you." Provenza was very bossy and everyone was actually glad he wasn't their boss full time. He was a good cop, not a word on that, but Raydor was a lot nicer giving orders.
A good time had passed on the crime scene, taking statements from possible witnesses and photos and videos of the whole crime scene, before they sent the body to Dr. Morales for the autopsy.
By the time they arrived at Major Crimes there was no time for Andy to greet Sharon in a proper manner, he had to go with the sweet smile she gave him when they entered the murder room. Provenza went straight to the white board, taking notes of what they gathered from the crime scene and giving Raydor a first picture of what they found there. Andy would have wanted to have Sharon for a whole moment just for himself, he needed to kiss her and smell her perfume to feel good vibes in his morning, but all he could do was stand next to her while exposing all the news and just quickly stroke to her left hand with his fingers.
It wasn't until late in the day that finally his nightmare was going to end, the phone would have been ringing for the last time and he would have one moment alone with her to greet her properly and talk. "Hey, I just sold my house!" He was happy. Finally he got that deal he had wanted to give him enough money from the sale, to invest into buying a new house with Sharon.
Sharon, on the contrary, had mixed feeling in that moment. With an initial shock on the absolutely bad timing of his news, she felt a sense of happiness for it and discomfort at same time; it meant now that the living together was officially happening. Just a little longer than a year ago, she didn't even realize she was dating. After her divorce and the adoption of Rusty, she found in her dinners with Andy a nice monthly habit that had quickly turned into weekly habit to end into dating. She still remembered fresh the spectrum of emotions she felt when he asked her out that night, in front of his desk, as she had just come out of her office heading to wrap up their case with Hobbs. Not to mention their very first kiss. Andy was very comfortable around her, and around women in general, while she was still a little uncomfortable around him in some situations. She had taken a lot of steps ahead since it all started, but still she would be embarrassed to expose so much of their personal relationship at work or outside the walls of their personal space. But his inadequacy to the moment was very cute to her eyes; she saw the excitement on his face and heard it in his voice. Andy was thrilled to start a new chapter on their life as couple. He valued her as a woman and this was a very comforting thought in Sharon's mind and in her heart she knew now that, contrary to what her ex-husband made her think for decades, she was worth the heart of someone.
Later that evening, after wrapping up the case and writing her final notes, it was finally time to leave for home and they would have a moment to talk. Sharon needed Andy to understand she was thrilled about the sale but that he needed to work better on his emotions when at work. A gentle knock on the door distracted her from the thoughts, "Hey." No matter how much she tried, he would always make space for himself in her heart and make her smile even with just a greeting.
Andy entered closing the door behind him, "Look, I'm sorry about before it wasn't the appropriate time to tell you I was just… so thrilled about finally getting that offer we wanted and closing a deal on it. It's our… future you know I feel…" he let out of a breath, "I should have waited until now. Sorry."
Sharon stood up from her chair, closing her laptop and signing on her report's final notes. She grabbed her purse from the drawer in the furniture behind her back and turned the lamp off. Getting closer to Andy, she approached him with a serious look, "As a matter of fact, yes! You could have waited." Her seriousness turned into a smile and soft voice talking, "But you are incredibly cute when you smile." Sharon's rules regarding their personal relationship at work had been very clear: no signs of affection in public, where everyone could have doubted her judgment as his boss and make reference to their intimate relationship. For a while they even went back calling themselves by their ranks, but it hadn't worked in the long run, agreeing that she would call everyone by their first name. But for him it was always a torture when she would call him, because of the soft and tender tone of her voice saying Andy made him crazy. He would take that as soft flirting at work under the eyes of everyone, without being open about it.
There were short moments though, in which Sharon had allowed him to be a little more intimate than he could as her subordinate, and that usually happened among the walls of her office, when the doors where securely closed and curtains covered the view from the outside. "So, in light of this news we should celebrate tonight!" Sharon's voice was deep and intense and her look wandered mischievous over his body.
"I still have some things to put in boxes, but I can totally leave it for tomorrow, want to come over?" The distance between their faces had notably shortened. "Oh and by the way," Andy leaned over Sharon and softly kissed her once on the lips "Hello, Sharon!"
When their lips parted it was always bittersweet. She would have wanted to jump on him and get deeper into that kiss, but she reminded herself she was still Captain Sharon Raydor until they crossed the exit doors. She smiled back at him, "Hello, Andy. Let me go home and get freshened up and check on Rusty and I'll come by your place." Sharon opened the door and went out her office wishing everyone a good night and congratulating them on the good job they did on solving the case, like every day that she left for home. Andy stayed in the room a little longer, watching the woman he loved walking out and wondering what he did in his life to deserve her and also how patient she was to his awkward remarks sometimes. He turned off the light going out of the office and while putting on his jacket to go home, he thought about surprising her with an intimate Italian dinner for two, all cooked by himself. From the selling of the house he still had a whole week ahead to finish packing, tonight would have been a nice break from it to spend alone with her.
It had passed more than two hours when Sharon entered Andy's house. A few months back he had given her his spare keys to use for an emergency or, as he would call it the safe place for their intercourses. Sharon didn't know that he had retrieved them from a very annoying Provenza, who wanted to keep them like it was the most valued treasure of his collection, and had complained for hours and called him an idiot for letting a woman step in at any time she wanted. Despite the fact that he had done all of this before him, with Patrice, first living together and then getting married, Andy hadn't bother to reply to the old man and let him to his rants. He was more than happy to know Sharon would keep those keys and she could use anytime she wanted.
"Oh my… what is all this?" she couldn't believe what she found. The entrance was all wrapped in the dim light of candles, he had placed them all over the room; in the middle of the living room he had set his anonymous table with a red tablecloth falling to the ground, two of his chairs were placed one in front of the other, a long white candle was lit from a glass in between the plates. A single red rose was laying on one of the two plates. "Andy?" Sharon was questioning where he was. She had a quick look in the kitchen but he wasn't there.
"You were looking for me?" Andy appeared from out of his bedroom. He was hiding in the soft lights in his grey three piece suit. He caught her eyes wandering around the room, "I thought we deserved a little time for ourselves tonight," he went closer to her so he could see more of her beauty. Sharon hadn't dressed up too much, a simple cocktail dress in blue and nude décolleté. She placed a kiss on Andy's lips, admiring all his work in the kitchen and setting the room, and especially on his care dressing up. He hummed at the taste of her lips. "Okay, we need to part or the dinner will all go to waste, but last." He kissed her again, deeper and with more intensity, their tongues dancing together, looking for each other and desiring each other. He wished he had just thought about ordering pizza later and take her instead, just right there, because he needed her, his soul did and his heart and his body.
He did a real great effort to separate from her kisses and helped her sitting, "Andy everything is beautiful, but you didn't have to buy all these candles. I like you also under the artificial light of lamps," she was smiling confident at him while accepting the plate he just offered her.
Taking his seat Andy smiled at the beauty of her words and her eyes, "I know, but the thing is… when the light company said in the arc of 48 hours I was counting on them doing at term of the two days. They surprised me!" Ever since closing a deal Andy had spent any break calling each company to cut out his contracts, he wouldn't have needed light or water anyway living at Sharon and would have been more money saved for the new house purchase. He sipped from his glass of water, "I'll finish packing the last boxes in the daylight. Pretty much everything is done and in storage already, those are the ones to go at your place and…"
"Our place Andy," Sharon corrected him immediately.
"Our place," he continued "And I would like to discuss with you where they can go then. But maybe later, we have the whole night."
"I thought about spending it differently, but if you want to talk!" she gave him one of those naughty looks for which before he had screwed up dinner and just made love to her right away. But they were only at the first course. Soon that thought of desiring her so badly would have intensified rather than vanish completely, but it was put aside in the back of his mind in favor of a nice and entertaining conversation. They laughed, they smiled at each other and laughed again. It was great for Andy to spend some last quality time for the last time in that house, which he had bought when his marriage ended and his kids denied him any kind of affection. Alcohol had taken everything he loved but his job, and he had risked losing that too many times, ironically by the hand of the woman that was sitting in front of him now. Those walls had been the container of casual sexual intercourses with women he hadn't dated further than that single time, nights with Provenza watching football on TV and others alone. In the beginning, after his divorce and before it was still clear the picture of his failure on every aspect of his life, he had fallen into the addiction once or twice. It was hard to give up something that it seemed to hide all his problems under the carpet, they would be back the day after with a hangover but for those times he kept drinking they blurred away. It took him a few weeks and the disappointment and humiliation on his children's face to make him deal with the fact that he had a problem of abuse and that it was going to haunt him for the rest of his life. He could do something about it now or be drawn into more alcohol which have probably brought him to an early death of intoxication and failure of his liver and kidneys.
Everything seemed completely different now. The woman sitting in front of him, laughing at his jokes and eating the dinner he had prepared for her, was the same woman that many years before had given him a piece of advice, "Don't lose everything to alcohol. You may not get everything back anymore, but you can try rather than falling without even fighting." She was new in the district, another of those annoying IA officers and they had to assign her to his misconduct case. Only later he had learnt that the officer's husband, a notorious district attorney he had also met and had wanted to punch since first sight, was an alcoholic and he had abandoned her with two little kids. Everything had been more clear in his mind.
After the dessert, he had waited too long to keep taking more time just kissing her and went faster on undressing to the bedroom. He didn't think she was feeling differently for how hungry her lips were on his skin. Andy hated himself for dressing in a three pieces suit, it took him more time than her to unbutton everything and take it off, but she wasn't making him feel her distance in the meantime, kissing every inch of his skin as it appeared from under his shirt. It was an intense night of love, like all those they spent together, and now Andy Flynn was sitting on the bed, watching as the naked woman was sleeping next to him. She was so perfect, at the pale light of the moon that broke through an uncovered spot of the curtains at the window. Her whole body was relaxing from the tension of their love making, and her skin shivered every time he would gently touch her back. Even sleeping she wasn't insensitive to his presence.
Andy was so absorbed thinking to his memories in that house that he didn't notice Sharon had woken up and sitting next to him. "Is Everything alright, Andy?" she was questioning while tracing a path of kisses from his shoulder to the jaw.
"Yeah I was just having some thoughts keeping me awake, you should sleep honey!" he gently slid down in the bed with her in his arms. Only a thin blanket would cover their naked bodies, but his own was warm enough for her. She always said he was her human heater.
"Hmmmm," Sharon hummed fitting herself into his hug. "And what are those thoughts? Bad ones?" her arm solidly wrapped around his waist.
"No, no absolutely not. I was going on the valley of memories and just came to my mind that we made love for the first time here," he made his grip on her more solid and placed a kiss on her forehead. He saw her smiling at his words, while her eyes were closing. She was soon to fall asleep again and he was grateful for it. Surely tomorrow was going to be another hell of a day of work, but he also wanted for a moment to be left to his thoughts without talking. Still he wouldn't have desired his whole evening to go any different, with Sharon laying in his arms after making passionate love to her. It was a perfect moment, if only it could be like that every day.
For the first time, since this whole thing of the moving in together had started, he was feeling empty, watching the walls around him all white, all emptied of any frame and sign that he had lived there. He wasn't the kind of man attached to things, and he was still thrilled to be soon living with the woman he loved, but a life together meant to make compromises and he didn't know if he was still any good at it, or if she would have accepted everything he had to offer in their future, when she was with him 24/7 at work and then home. He was starting to have some doubts that he had jumped the gun too soon with it and couldn't be sure she felt the same way or not.
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