Between Want and Need

By: Kadi

Rated: K+

Disclaimer: It's not my sandbox, but I do love playing in it!

A/N: Wow! I think I like this one-shot business! My most faithful beta deenikn8 asked for a glimpse at what freaking out might actually look like if Sharon really let herself go there. This was the result. Enjoy!

Movement in the hall drew his attention. Rusty tugged at the bud in his ear and paused the show that he was watching on his laptop. His eyes flickered to the clock on his bedside table before his gaze drifted to his door. It was late, or early depending on how someone thought about it. Well after three in the morning, and he had been planning to go to bed soon, but that had been three hours ago when he told himself that he would watch just one more episode and that was it. He hated binge watching anything, but it never stopped him. He would feel great while he was doing it, but then just as soon as he was finished, he would feel let down that it was over. He should really go to sleep soon, he thought.

Rusty sat up on his bed, however, but moved just as quietly as he could. His light was off, and the only illumination in the room was supplied by his laptop. He knew that from the outside it would seem as if all was quiet and that he was actually asleep. He still held his breath when the light in the bathroom came on and lit up the hall. He heard the quiet shuffle of footsteps and watched as a shadow stopped in front of his door. Rusty chewed on the corner of his lip and counted out a few beats of his heart. Just like always, the shadow moved away again and the light went out. Rusty tilted his head as he listened. He could hear the retreat of steps down the hall, and he knew what came next. Her door didn't close again. That meant that she was going to be up for a while. She was always up for a while.

His eyes closed. Rusty sighed heavily and placed the computer on the mattress beside him. He swung his legs around and sat on the edge of the bed, and then he let his head hang. He didn't know what was going on with Sharon lately. He thought that they were okay. When she didn't freak out about the guy who was following him around campus, he really thought that it meant things were beginning to get better; that she wouldn't be so worried all of the time. Instead it just seemed to have gotten worse. He was out of school for the summer now, and that meant that his days were less structured. Rusty wondered if that was the problem. She couldn't know exactly where he was if she didn't have a class schedule to go by.

Rusty didn't know. It was getting worse, though. This wasn't the first time that he heard Sharon up and moving around the condo in the months since Phillip Stroh escaped from police custody. He knew that she would get up, check the locks, and then check on him. She would go back to bed and either manage to stay there, or end up checking on all of it again before morning. It had just never been this bad. Something had changed, and Rusty couldn't put a name to what that was. If he left his room he knew that he would find her on the balcony. Rusty also knew that she would stay there until morning. He had crept out a few times during the past week and spied her seated on the chaise with a cup of tea. She wasn't even trying to go back to sleep now.

That was what bothered him the most.

She wasn't sleeping well before, but she was sleeping. In the almost week since he told her about the stalker, Rusty couldn't name a single night that Sharon had stayed in her bed. When he thought about the fact that she would come in from the balcony only to get ready for work and make breakfast that she wouldn't even touch, it terrified him. What if something happened to her? What if she got hurt, or sick, or fell asleep driving to work, or any number of terrible things that his mind could conjure at any given moment.

Rusty left his room, just as quietly as he always did, and walked silently down the hall. As he thought, Sharon's bedroom door stood open. The lamp beside her bed lit the room in soft light. Rusty made his way down the hall, and as he expected, the kitchen and living room were empty. He inched toward the balcony door and looked toward the chaise. He felt his stomach clench painfully. Sharon was there. She sat with her knees drawn to her chest and her arms wrapped tightly around them. He couldn't see her face; her hair, the shadows, and the fact that she had it pressed into her knees obscured it. From the way that her shoulders were shaking he could tell that she was crying. That wasn't something that he saw very often. Sharon usually did a much better job at hiding it. Crying on the balcony in the middle of the night was a half-hearted attempt at best. She usually did it in the shower; he knew because she would emerge red-eyed and with a voice still thick and rasping with emotion. She wasn't even really trying to hide now, and strangely, that terrified him even more.

What had happened that she was freaking out like this?

That was exactly what was happening. It didn't matter what she said on the subject, and Sharon could have her little denials, but he had seen both the total girl freak-out and the absolute mom freak-out. He knew what they looked like. This was the mom freak-out, but it seemed to be so much more than that. Maybe, Rusty thought, what frightened him most was that Sharon didn't hide things from him. Not when it was really important, not when it was about his life. She wouldn't do that. So what the hell?

He was tempted to go out there. For just a moment Rusty thought about stepping out onto the balcony and asking, no demanding, that she tell him what was wrong. She wouldn't. As soon as he thought about it Rusty dismissed that thought. With the state that she was in now she wasn't going to talk to him. She would send him to bed, lock herself up in her room, and they would probably end up repeating all of this again the following night. This couldn't keep happening. It had to stop.

Rusty withdrew and moved just as quietly back down the hall. He closed himself up in his bedroom. He paced the room while he considered his options. He could call Ricky, but what could his brother do about it? He was a few hundred miles away. Emily was even farther away, and so she wouldn't be much help either. At least not in the immediate sense, and that was what Rusty was looking for. He chewed on his lip as he eyed his phone. There was someone else that he could call, but he hesitated to do it. It wasn't that he thought it would be a problem, but Rusty wondered if it was the right thing to do.

Who else would help him? Rusty couldn't think of a single other person that was close enough to Sharon, or knew her well enough, to be able to help in this situation; definitely not anyone who was near enough to them to come over now. That was what he wanted. He wanted someone to come over and make her stop crying, make her talk about what was so wrong, and to somehow make her go to sleep.

Rusty reached for his phone before he could stop himself. He had the numbers for every single member of the Major Crimes division listed in his contacts. It didn't take him but a second to find the one that he was looking for. Rusty called it. It went to voicemail twice and he was ready to begin crying himself before the Lieutenant finally answered.

"Rusty. Is everything okay?" His voice was thick. It slurred as he spoke, but Rusty expelled a relieved breath anyway. He had been asleep, and the boy felt bad about that, but this was sort of an emergency.

"No," he answered. "No it's really not. I…" He trailed off because this situation was so many different levels of awkward. "There's nothing wrong with us, but there is something wrong with her." He didn't even know how to explain it, and he knew that it was all coming out wrong. "She doesn't sleep anymore," Rusty blurted out. "She's up every night now. She sits out on the balcony until it's time for her alarm to go off, and she's doing it again. She's done it every night this week, and this time she's crying. I don't know how to fix it!" He took a breath when he realized that he sounded just a little bit desperate himself. "Can you come over?"

"Yeah." Andy sighed. He felt his heart rate slow again. Rusty calling him in the middle of the night was unusual enough, but the kid's rambling explanation had terrified the hell out of him. He thought that something had happened, and he supposed that it had, but not in the necessarily dark way that his mind automatically assumed that it had. "I can do that. I'll be over there in a little while. Go back to bed, I'll handle it." He had a key, but this wasn't exactly what she had given it to him for. Provenza had one too, and so did Mike. She had wanted to make sure that if something happened all of her bases were covered. The specter of Phillip Stroh had cast a very long shadow over her life, and he supposed that it still was.

Rusty wasn't sure if he felt relieved or not, but he thought that he could breathe again. "Thank you, Lieutenant. I'm sorry; I didn't know whom else to call. She doesn't talk to a lot of people."

Truer words were never spoken, Andy thought. He snorted quietly as he got out of bed. "Believe me, I know. It's fine, Rusty. I've got it covered." If the kid only knew how many times she had called him in the dead of night, and especially this week, because she couldn't breathe and the weight of Rusty's safety was bearing down on her. What Andy hadn't known, what she wasn't telling him, was that she hadn't gone back to bed after they had talked. He had attributed her tired demeanor to the late nights. But dammit! She told him it was better. She hadn't even called him the previous night, nor had she called him tonight. If she was hiding it, it was anything but better.

He ended the call with Rusty after assuring the kid, again, that he was on his way. He found a t-shirt and a pair of jeans and pulled them on before grabbing his gun, badge, and wallet on the way out the door. He was bleary eyed and his body ached with fatigue, but he never considered waiting and talking to Sharon in the morning. Andy thought briefly about stopping for coffee on the way, but anything that would still be open at three in the morning didn't have anything that he wanted to actually drink. He would make coffee when he got to the condo, he thought, and drove over without detouring.

Andy was worried when he arrived that he would find the door unlocked, but was pleased that Rusty hadn't considered it. He used his key to get inside. There was a single lamp on in the corner of the room, and as he moved through the condo, he found the hall illuminated by the light from Sharon's room. Andy stopped in the kitchen and deposited his keys and other things on the bar. Now that he was there, he decided that the coffee could wait. There was another, more pressing desire tugging at him.

He moved to the balcony door and stood there. His hand rested against the door handle as his gaze moved along the narrow space. The balcony wrapped around the unit. The chaise was in the corner and turned toward Griffith Park rather than the city. The view of the city was her favorite, but if she was troubled, it was the peace and quiet of the park that she craved. He could only just barely make out her silhouette in the shadows that the outer walls of the apartment cast. Andy sighed quietly. She had curled in on herself and didn't seem to really be looking at anything. She was staring into the darkness, still and silent, and to him that was more worrisome than the tears Rusty had seen earlier.

The balcony door slid open quietly. Andy parted it only enough to slip out into the night air, and then he closed it behind him again. He watched her head tilt and knew that she had heard him. His brows drew together in a frown as her back straightened. Her body grew stiff. Beyond the curtain of her hair, which still obscured her face from his view, he watched her wipe away the evidence of her tears. His chest ached a little more as she prepared to hide away again.

She didn't look behind her. Sharon sighed softly. "Rusty, it's fine. Go back to bed."

"Yeah, but I'm not the kid." Andy reached her as she jumped. She looked up at him, wide-eyed and too astonished to try and hide the misery that had driven her outside and was keeping her awake. He laid a hand on her shoulder and realized immediately that she wasn't wearing one of her sweaters. Beneath his palm her skin felt like ice, and he wondered how long she had been sitting in the cool night air before Rusty called him. The thin tank top and pajama bottoms that she had gone to bed in were not much protection against the lower temperatures that settled in after the sun went down. Andy hissed a soft curse. "Dammit, Sharon."

She shook her head. "Andy, what..." He didn't let her finish the question. She gasped as she was lifted. Sharon hadn't realized just how cold she really was until she felt the warmth that his body was putting off. She stared at him, and despite the darkness around them, there was enough of a glow from the city lights and moon to create a deep amber halo in the sky. She could see that he was glowering at her, and she could see that his jaw was clenched tightly. It was on the tip of her tongue to demand that he put her down again and explain why he was there, but she was too busy noticing that he was holding her as gently as he might a child, and that there was a concern in his eyes that brought a new wave of moisture to hers. Her mouth closed and rather than push away from him, her arms moved around his shoulders instead. Sharon sighed as she settled her head into the crook of his neck. Her eyes closed and she felt him turn with her.

He carried her back inside. Andy was tempted to take her down the hall and tuck her into the warmth of her bed, but she needed to talk, and that was just too close to Rusty. She would feel badly enough that he knew she wasn't sleeping; she wouldn't want him to hear the reason for it. Andy settled with her on the couch instead. All thoughts of the coffee that he intended to make were gone as he sat down and swung them around sideways so that she was cradled against his chest but resting against the back of the sofa. One of her sweaters was draped over the back; Andy pulled it down and wrapped it around her. He could still feel the coolness of her skin through the material and rubbed his hands along her back and arms. He made sure that she was comfortable before he toed off his shoes and settled back. "You tryin' to get sick?" He didn't mean to sound angry with her, but she was smarter than this, and it still bugged the hell out of him that she was lying about being able to sleep at night.

"No." She bristled at his tone, but turned her face into his neck. He was warm and he smelled good, and she just didn't have the energy to fight the temptation to burrow into him anymore. "I don't sleep well when I'm cold. I didn't want to sleep tonight." When she closed her eyes, the dreams came; nightmarish images of the worst possible scenarios that could occur now that she had called an end to Rusty's protection detail. She had reached that point when her body was insisting that she sleep, but she was just so tired of waking up terrified in the dead of night.

Unless they were called out on a case, her division had the next day off. There was nowhere that she needed to be, and so Sharon had intended to have a night off. One night of peace, and perhaps it wasn't the most rational thought that she had lately, but she had hoped that one night without the dreams would break the cycle. Her mind could reset itself and she would be able to focus on the purpose behind cancelling the detail, the hope of a new day and a new beginning, and a life without the threat of Phillip Stroh looming over them. She wanted Rusty to live his life, and to follow his dreams, but she had lived in fear for that life for so long that it was hard to push it all aside completely. She was his mother. It was her job to protect him, even when no one else could, or would; even when he didn't seem all that keen on protecting himself.

The haunting sadness in her tone made him ache all over. "You said that it was better," he accused gently. He would not have left her alone if he thought otherwise, but then he realized that might have been the point. She didn't want him hovering, but she was used to being alone. Why should she let someone carry the burden with her, when she was well equipped for carrying it alone? "Goddamn but you're stubborn," he muttered.

Sharon hummed quietly. "You knew that," she reminded him. He was forewarned that she wasn't easy to get along with. Their own history was evidence enough of that. He had pressed forward anyway and continued to pursue whatever this was between them. He was every bit as stubborn as she was. "I hoped that it would be better by now," she admitted, "and I really thought that it would be." The fingers of one hand curled into his t-shirt, she didn't want him to think that she was pushing him away by having kept this to herself. "It may be the right thing to do, but I wasn't ready to live in a world where he isn't always protected."

"Even with Stroh dead," he told her, and not for the first time, "you can't protect him all the time. The kid's life is gonna happen, all we can do is watch it play out and hope for the best. It's all that any of us can do. You know that." He slipped a hand beneath her hair and let his fingers massage away the tension in her neck. "Sharon, he's not coming back. Stroh is out of the country. Rusty is as safe right now as he is ever going to be."

"I know," she whispered. "It's just the letting go that is so hard." She lifted her head and looked up at him. "I'm just afraid that the moment I look away we will be wrong. It isn't rational, and I know that we're not, but the thought is there."

"Of course it's there." He reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear. "You're his mother. It's always going to be there. Doesn't even really matter that it's Stroh. He's just been the most important concern. It could be walking across the street, getting in his car, or hell, moving out. You're going to worry about letting him do any of those things, but I get it. You've been keeping him safe for so long that you don't know how to not do that. You had a few months when it was okay to let down your guard, and then Stroh took off. You don't want to think about what will happen if you let down your guard this time too. The problem is you're holding on too tight, sweetheart." He shrugged at her. "You gotta let go or it's going to eat you both alive."

"Yes." Her eyes closed again. She was so very tired. Exhausted really, emotionally as well as physically. Sharon lowered her head to his shoulder again and expelled a deep sigh. "I'm trying, but looking forward is so hard when I've gotten used to looking back."

"Especially when you keep trying to do it all by yourself," he grumbled quietly. "You're not alone, Sharon. Let me help."

"You already are." She turned her face into his neck again. "You have helped. More than you know." She could have gotten this far without him, but that she hadn't needed to was more uplifting than he could imagine. "I am more grateful for you than I can say, but the idea of having a partner is completely foreign, and I didn't want you to feel like I was using you." She didn't want to take when there was so little that she could give back. "I don't need you, Andy, but I do want you in my life."

"That's all you've got to say." They weren't those people. He wasn't looking for a love everlasting. That wasn't what life was about. It was give and take, good and bad. It was hard and sometimes it was easy. It was hell, with moments of heaven tossed in. It was dark, with glimmers of light. He rested his cheek atop her head. "I'm not going anywhere," he said quietly.

He would wait. However long that she needed him to, he would wait for her to reach a place where she was okay with taking that step forward and moving their relationship on to the next level. He knew that she wasn't ready yet, but she was close. It was hovering just out of reach. Or maybe it had happened when she wasn't looking. Here she lay, more at ease in his embrace than she could recall being in a very long time.

Sharon drew her bottom lip between her teeth. He could hold her, and not expect anything in return. He could fight with her, and at the end of the day he would still sit down and laugh with her. She could push him away, and he would stand his ground and still support her. He wouldn't leave her; not unless she asked him to, and even then she knew that she wouldn't lose him completely. He was too loyal for that. He could step away without turning his back completely. It was why she knew that she could trust him. It was how she knew that she could love him, and she knew that she already did. He was already such a big part of her life. It was simply a matter of embracing it, and acknowledging it, and doing it when she wasn't already emotionally raw.

Theirs was a complicated situation. Love wasn't easy. Not if it was meant to last. They had many layers and obstacles to traverse. They had their jobs, and their families, friends and responsibilities all of which lay outside of who they were together. There was also the fact that neither of them had ever imagined starting a new relationship at this point in their lives. It was a little intimidating. If it were anyone else, she didn't know that she would be able to fathom it. For that alone she was glad that they had been friends first, and were friends still, and would remain friends whatever the outcome.

A smile curved her lips. Her thoughts weren't making a lot of sense anymore. It was a clear indication of just how tired she was. She also wanted to laugh, because she had just acknowledged, to herself at least, that she was in love with her best friend. It was a terrifying concept, but also a thrilling one. As her eyes drifted closed, and her mind began to wander, it posed a question she had never considered before.

What was the big deal anyway?

She already knew what it was to laugh with him. They had danced, and played, and joked together. Sharon knew the feel of his lips against her cheek, and the strength of his arms as they held her while they hugged. She knew the warmth of his hand wrapped around hers, and the timber of his voice as he spoke softly against her ear. She didn't know the taste of his kisses, or the feel of his body against hers, but in a room full of men she could pick out the scent of his aftershave. She could tell with a single look if he was upset or feeling playful. She knew, also, that she could close her eyes now, and while she might wake in her bed later, he wouldn't be far away.

Her body felt heavy, but for the first time in many months, her head and heart felt light. She sighed wearily as a blanket of fatigue settled over her. Sharon let her legs curl around his, until they were tangled together and she was surrounded by the feel, and scent, and warmth of him. She didn't think that her eyes could open now even if she wanted them to.

"Don't let go," she mumbled, but knew already that he wouldn't.

"Never gonna happen," he promised. His fingers combed her hair aside and settled against her neck. His thumb stroked the spot just behind her ear. When she hummed, he smiled. "Go to sleep." Andy thought that she was already more than halfway there. His lips brushed the top of her head, while his other hand continued to draw slow, lazy circles against her back. He felt the change in her breathing a moment before her body went slack against him. His hand settled near her hip and he relaxed more fully into the cushions beneath them.

How long she would sleep, he didn't know. He wouldn't move again until she did. He wouldn't risk waking her. His own eyes closed while he lay there. Andy thought that he heard Rusty come down the hall again, but he couldn't be sure. He would worry about the kid in the morning. Right now it was the mother that, while she didn't need looking after, deserved to be taken care of for a little while. He was more than happy to do that.

He would hold her while she slept, and maybe tomorrow she would finally get her brand new day.

~FIN