Author's note:

Hi, everyone! This is my first story. I thought it was time to contribute to the fandom instead of simply observing all the marvelous work already here. I hope you enjoy!

It wasn't their first fight, but it was definitely their most explosive.

Rusty, thankfully, spent his evening with Gus, though perhaps his presence would have mediated the couple's rage. Only a couple of weeks removed from Andy's heart attack, Sharon and Andy knew their contradictory orders drove Rusty mad. Rusty, will you help Andy with that and the opposing I can do this myself, Rusty. Their divided front may have made Rusty uncomfortable, but he didn't know that they hadn't discussed their life together post-cardiac arrest.

The event itself was terrifying for all parties. One too many fatalities occurred in that murder room, and while Sharon squeezed Andy's limp hand, she couldn't suppress the cries to God that burst forth when he became unresponsive. Provenza tried to talk her out of riding in the ambulance with him, but she brushed his insistences aside after another glance at Andy's pleading eyes. Pick up Rusty, and meet us at Cedars, she'd insisted, her voice tremoring just like the first time she saw her boyfriend collapse.

Sharon's non-familial status forced the ER staff to banish her to the waiting room, where she wore a groove in the floor until Amy, Mike, and Julio arrived with her purse and her overnight bag from her car. Julio assured her that Provenza and Rusty were on their way, and Amy suggested walking down to the cafeteria in search of half-digestible coffee or tea. Sharon declined his offer but stopped pacing. Eventually, she allowed Mike to guide her into the nearest chair. She was not above accepting help from those close to her.

That's how the argument started. Sharon insisted, for the tenth consecutive night, that Andy should sit at the table or the couch while she cleaned up their doctor-approved dinner of salmon and vegetables. "I don't mind, Andy," she sighed, chucking the meager leftovers into the trashcan. "It's just dishes."

"Yeah, just dishes," Andy huffed, tossing his napkin on the empty placemat in front of him. "It's not just dishes when I try to help out."

Sharon heard the contempt in his voice without seeing his scowl. He'd been short with her all day, but she attributed his foul mood to fatigue. Now, however, after a hot meal and a Dodger victory, his mood should have improved, and her tolerance of his childish tantrums grew thin. "I suppose you're feeling grumpy this evening," she patronized, her voice even and no longer light. "Perhaps you're ready to turn in."

Andy's chair legs scraped the hardwood floor. "Despite what you think, I'm not a child," he growled.

Instead of looking up to acknowledge his accusation, Sharon focused on scrubbing the pan she grilled the salmon in. "Oh, I don't know," she sing-songed. She supposed there was no use in trying to diffuse the situation since she'd apparently pushed him too far, but she had an admittedly petty desire to keep the moral high ground for as long as she could. "You've been throwing tantrums that would put Ricky to shame."

"It's hard not to feel like a toddler when I can't even go to the bathroom without somebody listening on the other side of the door," Andy groused, heading for the hallway.

Sharon dropped the pan and pink scrub brush into the sink and spun around with her soapy hands on her hips. "Oh no, you don't," she snapped. "You don't get to start an argument with me, and walk away when it doesn't go your way."

Andy whirled around and threw his arms up. "I'm trying to avoid an argument, here!"

Sharon swallowed advice against raising his voice, and instead placed both hands on her hips and leaned back against the counter. "No, we've been avoiding this argument for over two weeks now," she hissed. "You say something snarky, and I drop it. I say something that irritates you, and you just let it go with a smirk and a click of the remote." She narrowed her eyes at him when Andy shook his head. "We need to start being honest with each other, or we're going to be in trouble."

Andy raised his eyebrows. "You want to talk about honesty?" he scoffed. "You, who's been acting like everything's fine and dandy while you're hovering, waiting for me to drop dead? You're being honest?"

"I said we for a reason, Andy." Sharon ran her sudsy fingers through her hair without a second thought. "You're trying to go right back into a normal life, and you just had a heart attack. You resent the fact that I'm trying to help you because I love you."

Andy immediately turned his back to her, as if he feared her declaration would pacify his anger.

"That's what people who love you are supposed to do—take care of you when you're sick," Sharon continued. When Andy didn't turn around to respond, her jaw dropped. "Look at me!" she demanded. "Look at me, and tell me that you care about what happens to you, that you have thought about how I would live with myself if something happened to you."

That caught Andy's attention. He gripped the back of Sharon's couch and took a couple of deep breaths. Sharon pushed away the very thoughts he was accusing her of thinking, the ones telling her that this argument was too much for him.

"Of course, I have thought about that," Andy murmured, staring at the red fibers beneath his fingers. He turned around and winced when he saw that Sharon's eyes were glistening with unshed tears. "Have you thought about how I'm feeling?"

Blurry images of Nicole's wedding, Alice's first memorial, and hospital visits smeared behind teary orbs. "How can you ask me that?" she whispered.

Andy jabbed a finger at his chest. "I know you asked about my health all the time, about how I'm feeling, if I'm having any pain." He stopped when he realized what an ass he sounded like. "And I appreciate your care, Sharon. Please, please don't think that I don't appreciate you." He took a couple of cautious steps in her direction. Even when they fought, Andy wanted to be close to her.

Sharon scoffed and crossed her arms over her chest. She didn't want him anywhere near her.

"All I do is let other people take care of me," Andy explained. "That's all our relationship has been—do you realize that? I was healthy for, what? A few months? Then I had the blood clot, the fucking surgery, now this?"

Sharon shook her head slowly, eyes trained first on her bare feet and then on Andy, in a shirt from Nicole's alma mater and a pair of Dodger pajama pants she'd bought him for Christmas. "What is wrong with that?" The question came out as a jeer. "Andy, there is nothing I want more than for you to be well and cared for." Again, she resisted the thoughts of everything else she wanted for them, as a couple. She finally took a few steps towards him, so that now the width of the fridge was the only distance they had to brave. "Why does this bother you so much? Is this some kind of macho need to take care of me? Because I thought we had discussed that long ago."

Andy immediately held up a hand and shook his head. "No, no, of course not," he insisted.

"You shut me out." When her voice broke, Sharon balled her hands into fists as a reminder of her own strength. "Before, you were so focused on the case and—and Taylor." Her voice broke again, but when Andy's gaze shifted to the floor, she knew he felt the pain too. "We haven't talked about Dwight or Taylor since the heart attack."

"I've been too busy trying to prove to you that I'm fine," Andy said. "Babe." His voice cracked from all the yelling. "I had a heart attack."

Sharon knew he wanted to touch her, so she turned away. Why had such an inherent truth crushed her?

"It scared me, and I know it scared you, and I'm sorry."

Sharon's knuckles were white against the counter. Now he was apologizing for his body's failures, and she wasn't sure why they were arguing anymore.

"I was doing everything I knew to do before the heart attack, okay? I was eating right, I was going to the gym but not overdoing it, I was on desk duty—it was all by the book, just like you wanted it."

Sharon whirled around, her eyes burning with furious tears. Suddenly, all of the fear, anger, stress, and confusion erupted. "Like I wanted it?" Before Andy could dig himself any deeper, she waved her hands. "No. You know what? We're talking about this tomorrow," she said. "I'm going for a swim. Do whatever you want." She wrenched her hand away when Andy tried to grasp it. The words bubbled to the surface from her pit of boiling emotions, and she was powerless to stop them. "Do the dishes. Go for a run. Have a drink for all I care. Escape from my nagging." Sharon ignored the physical pain in her gut that manifested the second those hateful words oozed past her lips. She powered through until she slammed her bedroom door.

Sharon yanked her drawers open in a desperate search for her damn swim suit. With no luck after destroying the order of each drawer, she scavenged her bathroom and found it draped over the towel rack. She made sure the bathroom door was locked before yanking her clothes off, leaving her un-sexiest underwear, yoga pants, and favorite blue sweater in a heap on the floor she had just retiled. Her eyes bounced off every surface, every fixture, every conscious choice she'd put into this room. She painted these olive green walls. She chose to buy a home with two sinks, and she used them both. She bought and assembled her shelving. It was all still hers. She could get out of this if she wanted. She had complete control.

When Sharon snuck out of the bathroom dressed in her swimsuit and a mesh cover-up, she did not feel in control. The water was still running in the kitchen, and she could hear the clank of the silverware falling from the plates into the sink. Andy was always such a clumsy dishwasher. Her ire prevented reconciliation, and she slammed the front door on her way out like a goddamn teenager.

The thought of standing still stoked Sharon's irritation further, so she bounded down thirteen flights of stairs to the lobby, where she nodded curtly to the security officer on her way to the indoor pool. She punched in her code and impatiently waited for the green light that permitted her entrance. The smell of chlorine and the stifling artificial humidity comforted her, and she was grateful to be alone. She yanked her cover-up over her head and tossed it, her towel, and her keys into a lounge chair closest to the diving board. While she usually stretched before a swim, her flushed skin craved the coolness of the water.

Sharon's limbs relentlessly beat the water's surface, and she spared no thought for form. It came naturally to her when she was this irate. While swimming usually provided her best reflection time, her mind remained blank as her pulse pounded in her neck and fingertips. Sharon's tears mingled with the chlorine, though she didn't notice them until she paused for breath ten laps later. She cursed when she sniffed a nose full of pool water and choked on it, gripping the diving board with a shaking hand.

Have a drink for all I care.

That was cruel and low, and Sharon knew it, felt it in her hammering chest. She would stand by everything else she spewed at him during their argument, but those words haunted her. She knew he never would. He had his children to maintain his sobriety for, if not for her. That truth did not erase the insult to his years of recovery and the loss that preceded it.

Sharon shook her head and descended once more. This anger should be directed at him, not at herself. He refused to acknowledge the frailty of his life. He cast her worries aside like they're nothing. He denied compromise.

The combination of swimming after a meal and without adequate preparation created a monstrous cramp in her stomach and leg, and for a second Sharon thought she may drown. She kicked through the pain and scraped the skin under her arm as she grasped the rough edge of the pool. Thankfully, she could rely on her upper body strength to hoist herself out of the water, legs hanging limply over the edge. The concrete scraped her thighs and frayed the bottom of her suit, but Sharon decided if she was stupid enough, after sixty years in the water, to swim without stretching or letting her food settle, she deserved the discomfort.

Her mind drifted to her former thoughts, hypocritical as they were. Clearly, she and Andy needed to strike a balance, so they didn't spend the rest of their lives debating his independence and the necessity of her care. Yes, Andy had acted like a child, but her attack on his sobriety was uncalled for. It had only been two weeks since the resolution of the Dwight Darnell massacre. Her residual anger fueled the tension.

By the time Sharon decided her battered dignity could withstand a return to her own home, only the dim light of the desk lamps guided Sharon down the hallway. Light leaked from underneath their bathroom door, and she groaned when she realized what immediate proximity she and Andy would have if she wanted to shower and change. She tip toed down the hallway, hoping to slip into their bedroom undetected, but the anxieties of the last two weeks crept up her spine, and she couldn't resist the urge to check on Andy. She peered into their dimly lit bathroom, only to find it empty. She groaned when she smelled the steam from the shower. Immediate proximity indeed.

Sharon ran her fingers over a dent in the wall that corresponded with the chipped bathroom doorknob. As hard as she resisted the thought, she drew a couple of steadying breaths, hoping she wouldn't find him unconscious in the shower from a blood pressure spike. As she slipped inside and closed the door behind her, Andy cut the shower off. Sharon swallowed a curse and sat on the edge of the tub. She wanted to be in control of this confrontation. Or reconciliation. Or whatever it turned out to be.

Andy's towel disappeared over the foggy shower door, and Sharon peeled her sopping swim suit off her skin. If they were going to compromise, they should both be somewhat vulnerable.

"Are you going to shower?" Despite the exhausted timbre, Andy's voice was deafening in the quiet, humid bathroom.

Sharon considered her answer for a moment, but immediately realized how trivial it seemed to carefully construct an answer about hygiene. "I'd planned on it. Chlorine's not so fun to smell at night."

The glass door shuddered when Andy pushed it open. He refused to look at her on his way to their bedroom. "So I'm sleeping next to you tonight?"

Pondering a night Andy wouldn't be next to her, his legs warm around her toes and his breath humid against the back of her neck, prompted this argument in the first place, and Sharon gulped the lump pressing at the roof of her mouth. "If you still want to." In this instance, perhaps relinquishing her control could help them. An empty condo did not provide the comfort it once had.

If Andy responded, she couldn't hear him over the spray. Sharon scrubbed the chlorine out of her hair until she was sure her scalp reddened, and as she squeezed her eyes shut to rinse, she felt Andy's hands on her hips. She gasped a mouthful of watered-down shampoo and brushed her hair out of her eyes. "Andy—"

"I love you."

Though reassuring, the words didn't make her melt like she thought they might. Since they'd finally admitted their love for each other, subsequent expression didn't come as a shock or a novelty. But, God it was nice to hear it.

"I know that. That's never been the issue." Sharon struggled to balance the warmth and gravity in her tone. As much as she wanted to make up, skirting the underlying issue would not prevent this argument from exploding again. Reluctantly, she turned around and slid her hands off her hips. "Can we please talk when I'm done?" she asked. She fought the urge to roll her eyes when she saw a flash of anger in Andy's eyes, and instead pulled Andy's face toward her. "I love you. Just let me shower, okay?"

The ire extinguished as quickly as it flared, and he squeezed her hands before leaving to prepare for their inevitable confrontation.

Sharon drew a couple of steadying breaths, and let the steam of the shower drown her sudden desire to simply crawl into bed with Andy and forget the whole thing. She did love him, and that was why she couldn't just sweep this under the rug. Or tell him she loved him and that she was sorry, then pull him to bed for the limited intimacy they could share.

Typical of the hour, the bedroom was dimly lit by the bedside lamps, but Andy's stiff posture on the very edge of the bed added a tension that rarely existed in their bedroom. Sharon leaned against the bathroom door frame and tugged the robe tighter around her. "So," she said. Her voice sliced the silence like a blade. "I take too good care of you, huh?

"And I'm too fragile," Andy said.

Sharon wanted to smack the cocky smile right off his face, but she stayed rooted in the doorway. "I am glad that you're feeling better, but I think we've done this enough times to realize that there is a difference between feeling better and being better."

Andy scoffed. "Yeah. Done it enough times," he said, irritation already overtaking his resolve. "Have you ever thought that the fact that we've done this before gives me a sense of my own limitations?"

"I concede that," Sharon said. She took a couple more steadying breaths. "That's what I'm talking about—honesty."

"So what does that mean, exactly, other than fighting and being completely vulnerable?"

That revelation drove Sharon closer. "What?" she gasped. She stopped in front of Andy, who stared at the hands in his lap. She knew he regretted admitting it, but not thinking it, and that truth tore at her. "Andy, is that not what spending the rest of our lives together is about? Haven't I—I mean when I shot Dwight, was I not… vulnerable?" She gulped down the lump in her throat, shoved at the memories of that despicable day and the nightmares that plagued her since. "When I needed you to button my blouse because my hands were shaking, was I not vulnerable enough for you?"

Andy reached for Sharon's hands, but she yanked them away and tucked them into her robe pockets.

"You can live in my condo, sleep in my bed, see me naked, hold my secrets, but I can't support you?" Sharon was yelling now, despite being closer to Andy than before. "How dare you? You think you can hide from me? You think you could hide your fears from me when we both thought you were going to die? How could trusting me in your recovery be any different? Be any worse?"

"Sharon, please stop!" Andy gripped her forearms, fully aware that he'd be lucky if she allowed him that much control. "I get it – that was stupid of me to say. I just—" He sighed when Sharon scoffed at him, with no room for relief that she didn't wrench out of his grasp. "What I said before—before you left," he said, "I was doing everything I was supposed to do to stay healthy. How am I supposed to live my life, restricted by everything—diet, exercise, work, for Christ's sake—and still confront the possibility that all this might be for nothing, that I'll just die anyway?"

A sharp inhale preceded her retreat to the other side of the bed. "The same way I confront it," she said. She cursed her wavering tone.

"Tell me how. Please, tell me how you do it." He turned around on the bed to watch her pace. Her silence was as telling as her tears, and he knew the answer even before she choked it out.

"I'm still learning."

Andy remained on his side of the bed, the duvet balled in his fists for the effort. "You want me to be honest. Fine. I just need you to know that I—I don't want my life with you to be all about restriction," he said. "I will do anything to stay here with you, I promise, but I want us to live, I want us to be happy."

Sharon stopped pacing and looked at him like he'd stabbed her. "Aren't you happy?"

"You're not," Andy said. "You're scared and stressed, constantly, and I know I'm not the only reason. I know you're still working through Taylor, and I wish I could take that pain from you. I can't. All I know is, the only thing I can control is what I do to you, so what is it going to take? Whatever it is, I'll do it."

Sharon combed her fingers through her sopping hair. "Do you see me as a restriction?" Her voice steadied, much stronger than before. More than once, Jack accused her of holding him back, and she refused to be dragged into that role again. Not again.

Andy crawled across the bed and rose to his knees so he could cup her face in his hands. He waited until Sharon stopped shaking her head at her lap and met the depth of his gaze. "You're everything I want. For myself, for my life, forever. That's what you are to me."

Earlier in their relationship, maybe even before the heart attack, that revelation would have ended it all. Sharon bore the burden of her husband's laps in sobriety for years. I do this for you, Jack once spat at her, in the earliest drunken years. I do this for you, and all you do is tell me what I can't do. Since she was Jack's "everything," it was her inadequacies that drove him to drink. It was always her responsibility to sacrifice in their relationship.

Andy, however, had proven to his coworkers, to his kids, and to her that he was willing to change, given the right catalyst. At different points in his life, the catalysts varied. When intoxication on the clock threatened his career, he changed to keep his passion and his paycheck. When Sandra won sole custody of the kids in their nasty divorce, he changed, perhaps too late, so that his kids would speak to him. When he asked Sharon to Serve, he changed to become the man he thought she deserved, even though she knew that he still felt unworthy. For all his requirements, his needs that he was learning to share, being wanted made Sharon feel far more precious to Andy than Jack's endless declarations of love ever had.

Sharon peeled one of Andy's hands away to kiss it. "I stand by everything I said about our relationship tonight, but thinking about what I said to you—" Once again, she appreciated his silence. For so long, she was accustomed to having her thoughts and emotions explained to her by someone who grew apart from her until he didn't know her anymore. "I never want to make light of your sobriety, and God I never want you to drink. Please, please forgive me for that."

Andy wiped at Sharon's tears with his thumb. "If you'll forgive me for accusing you of caring too much?"

Sharon nuzzled Andy's hand before pulling away. "Of course," she said. She sniffled and stared at her folded hands. "That's the easy part," she whispered, meeting Andy's gaze. "Now we have to figure out how to come out of this argument having actually learned something."

Andy fell back against the pile of Sharon's new decorative pillows, which he helped select but hated. "Come here. Let's talk," he said.

Since their tempers had mellowed, Sharon's exhaustion set in. She hadn't been sleeping well anyway, but today had been long and emotionally exhausting. Surely lying with Andy would not make her any less resolute, only more comfortable; comfort did not indicate surrender. She crawled towards Andy, choosing to ignore the way his eyes traced her cleavage during what was supposed to be a serious conversation about their future.

For the first time all day, Andy grinned when Sharon snuggled into his side, one leg wrapped around his own, breath moist against the scar on his neck. "Who wants to concede first, huh?" He hoped for a laugh, but only received a weary sigh from his girlfriend.

"Andy, I can't help that I worry about you," Sharon said. "You said it—you were doing everything right when this happened."

"That's why it's so frustrating for me," Andy said. He ran his fingers up and down her spine, hoping to soothe both Sharon and himself.

"It is frustrating, but that doesn't mean that you should disregard the doctor's orders altogether."

Sharon successfully kept contempt from her tone, but Andy couldn't keep the volume or pitch down. "I don't disregard anything altogether!"

Sharon shushed him and rubbed his chest. "You oppose a few. Admit it."

Andy huffed. "You think Dr. Liu would keel over if she knew I was loading the dishwasher?"

Sharon fought the urge to hit him. "That's part of this compromise, Andy," she explained. "You do not get to dismiss my attention and rule-following as "hovering," and I do not get to…" How could she trivialize the crippling fear of waking up next to Andy's chilled body?

Andy rolled onto his side and gave Sharon an Eskimo kiss. "You don't get to worry all the time anymore. That's your end of the deal. Got it?" When Sharon furrowed her brow and opened her mouth in protest, he pressed a finger against her lips. "I'm going to do what I have to do to make you happy. That includes, adhering strictly to the doctor's restrictions. I'm gonna hate it at first, but your happiness is a condition of my own."

Sharon kissed his fingertip to soften the blow of its removal. "And you'll talk to me?" she asked, peering up at him through heavy lashes. "You'll let me know what you're feeling?"

Andy tucked her hair behind her ear. "You always ask how I'm feeling," he teased.

Sharon shook her head. "No, not how you're feeling. What you're feeling. If I promise to do the same, if you're scared or upset or depressed, you'll talk to me instead of throwing a tantrum?" She made sure to smile at him as she delivered her quip so that he would know she was teasing him.

Andy returned a toothless smile that didn't brighten his eyes. "Be vulnerable, you mean?"

Fiddling with the top button of his pajama top instead of meeting his eyes, Sharon nodded.

Andy slid his hand down to Sharon's hip and squeezed. "I promise." If she hadn't already seen the tears shining in the dim light of their bedside lamps, she would have heard the tremor in his voice. "I'm sorry."

Sharon raked her nails through Andy's hair and squeezed out a few more tears trapped in the corners of her eyes. "I know. I'm sorry too," she whispered. She sealed their reconciliation with a kiss, and sighed in Andy's open mouth when his hand bypassed her robe and skimmed her thigh.

Slowly, Andy pulled away with a shit-eating grin. "Careful, Captain." His rumbling voice gave Sharon goosebumps. "I can't get all worked up until my eight week check-up." He laughed when she smacked his chest and rolled out of his embrace. "Hey, come on babe," he called after her, watching her disappear into the bathroom. "That was funny."

Sharon snatched Andy's pill box from the bathroom sink and chucked them at him from the bathroom doorway. "Take your pills, Lieutenant," she giggled, circling around the bed to her chest of drawers. She rifled through for another pair of granny panties to keep Andy's mind out of the gutter and smiled when she found one of Andy's old work out shirts misplaced in her panty drawer. She glanced over her shoulder, and, after making sure Andy's back was to her, slipped off her robe and into Andy's ratty LAPD t-shirt and a pair of boy shorts. It was only 9:00, but she knew they were both emotionally spent. Nothing would make her happier than to hide under the covers with Andy, tucking her freezing feet between his calves.

"Babe?" When Sharon turned around, Andy had already turned the cover down, the pillows he detested in a pile on the chair next to their bed. "This honest vulnerable stuff—it's a two-way street, okay? When you're ready to talk about Taylor, I'm here."

When the lump reasserted itself in her airway, grotesque images flashing behind her closed eyelids, she knew she wasn't ready. Instead, she tucked herself under her fluffy duvet and flicked her lamp's switch. She impatiently waited for Andy to go through his nightly routine. Bathroom pit stop, lock check, breathing exercises. The breathing exercises were a new irritant for Andy, but Sharon appreciated his diligence, especially after their squabble this evening. When he finally fell into bed with her, she rested her head on his shoulder and hummed contentedly.

"Andy?" she whispered.

Andy only buried his face in her hair in response.

"You make me so happy." She tightened her hold around his softening stomach and blinked away more tears.

"You give me every reason to be."