Close to the Sun

By Kadi

Rated K+

Disclaimer: This isn't my sandbox, but I'm not exactly inclined to give the toys back these days...

A/N: A special thank you to the twin, Kate04us, for the beta. This is also entirely her fault. She is evil, that is all you need to know. Evil!

It was early. The sun was just beginning to peek over the hills behind the house when Andy stepped outside. He hadn't planned on rising this early, but the sound of someone else shuffling around in the house had pulled him from his bed. There was still a chill in the air. It was damp with morning dew, and maybe he was a little too used to the Southern California air, but he shrugged deeper into his thick robe as he stepped further out onto the deck.

They had a good view, but he had always thought that. The view was the reason he bought the place a few years before. At the moment the day was still heaped in hues of gray and blue, but the warm glow over the hills would soon fill it with shades of gold and deep orange.

He lifted the cup of coffee that he had poured before stepping outside and inhaled deeply before taking that first, gratified sip of the rich, dark liquid. He sighed as its warmth filled him, and lowering the cup, finally looked around for the source of the noise that had pulled him from a peaceful slumber.

Ricky was seated on the steps to his left. The younger man's shoulders were hunched while his head was bowed. There was a coffee cup held loosely in his fingers, but he seemed to have forgotten it as he stared ahead, lost in his own thoughts. Andy walked over and the wooden boards of the deck creaked, almost as loudly as his bones, as he lowered himself to sit on the step beside the other man. He took another sip of his coffee before he leaned forward, arms draped across his knees while he watched morning sunlight chase away the shadows of the previous night.

Minutes ticked by before Ricky moved or even acknowledged his presence. He finally sighed as he straightened. He cast a sideways glance at his stepfather. "I didn't think I'd be this nervous," he said. "It felt like this day was never going to get here, and now that it is…" He trailed off and shook his head. "She's making the biggest mistake of her life."

The corners of his mouth twitched. How many times had he heard that? Not from Ricky, but from any number of guys he had known in this situation. Julio, Provenza, his son Charlie, hell, he'd even thought it himself once upon a time. Andy's bottom lip jutted outward as he lowered his gaze to his coffee. He thought about the response he should make. He never really thought that he would be the one offering Ricky this advice. That should have been someone else's job; someone that wasn't there.

Ricky was getting married.

They still had a little while to go until the ceremony, but they were down to hours now, rather than days. He had met his fiancé Sarah a few years before. She was bright and funny, and just as tough as she was beautiful. She was a flight medic that Charlie had introduced him to, and at first no one really thought that it was going to work out. Ricky was always adamant that there was no place he'd rather live than Palo Alto, but Sarah had insisted that her work, saving lives, was more important and there weren't a lot of places that were willing to give women pilots and medics a chance. Los Angeles was where she was based, and where she had the best chance of expanding and growing her career. She wasn't willing to leave.

After a year, Ricky had enough of the long distance commute. He had found a job in LA, an apartment in Burbank, and had moved home. Six months later, Sarah had moved in with him, and the family wondered when they'd finally make it official. Neither of them seemed to be in any hurry, though. They were perfectly happy making their life together, living by their own rules, and as it happened, Ricky's proposal had been spur of the moment. As he told it, he had just looked at Sarah one day, as she was fussing at him about leaving his socks and coffee cups laying all over their apartment, and he had known that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. So there, right in the middle of being told that he was going to have to start buying new socks because she was going to throw the next pair she found laying on the floor in the trash, he asked her to marry him.

They had taken their time planning the wedding. Ricky had always described himself as an Easter Catholic, but he had just enough of his mother in him to know that he wanted to do it right, and he wanted to do it once, and in a way that his mother would be proud of. He would have married Sarah anyway, but he had asked her if she would be willing be married at St. Joseph's, by Father Stan.

Sarah claimed she would marry him on the side of the road if that were what he wanted, and she had no specific religious affiliations. Her parents had been married in a Methodist church, but they had never been especially religious or particular about faith, although she had been baptized as a child. That was all that was needed, really, for Ricky to get his church wedding, and since that was all that he had asked for, she had easily agreed. Besides, she had been in St. Joseph's a time or two with his family, and couldn't think of a more beautiful location for a wedding.

Those discussions had taken place seven months ago, and in that time, both parties had seemed content and comfortable in their choices. Sarah had planned a wedding that would be simple, but elegant. They hadn't invited many people, both preferring to keep their guest list limited to only their closest friends and family. The reception would be happening at the house, and Andy suspected, they only had an hour before the decorating vans would start pulling up outside.

He considered Ricky's words, though, and shook his head. "Isn't that her call to make?" Andy finally looked over at him, eyes squinting as the morning sunlight got a little brighter in the sky.

"I don't deserve her," Ricky explained. Sarah was willing to trade shifts so people she worked with could make it to their kids' birthday parties, or plan dates with their spouses. She had once stayed two hours after her shift, just sitting at the hospital with the mother of a patient that she had brought in, waiting while the kid was in surgery to find out if he was going to make it. She reminded him of his mom in some ways, thinking of her work as a calling and not just a job. She was smarter than he was, and funnier. Her laugh could light up a room, and when she was mad, her eyes were the most brilliant shade of ice blue that he had ever seen. "I'm never going to be good enough for her," he added.

Andy snorted. "Who is?" He looked out over the backyard, which would be filled with people in a few hours time, and thought about how he had felt, in that same position, some time ago. "None of us are good enough. We like to think we are, and we try to be, but it's never going to happen. The most we can hope for is the ability to acknowledge that we're lucky bastards. We got a break that most guys can only dream of." He shrugged. "Doesn't really matter though, if we know it or not. Doesn't matter what we think at all. It matters that she thinks you're enough, and she's the only one whose opinion counts. She's the sun, and for a while, we get to fly a little closer to it than anyone else, and the most that makes us is lucky as hell. The rest…" he shrugged again. "That's just life."

"You know," Ricky shook his head. "You can get burned flying too close to the sun." He watched the light spreading over the hills. It was chasing away the morning chill, filling the day with warmth. "Sometimes I'm afraid she's going to wake up one day and figure out she could've done better."

"That's because you're a guy. We're pretty stupid." A half grin tugged at his mouth. Andy leaned back. Sitting like that was killing his back. He was too damned old to be sitting around like some punk kid with more life ahead of him than behind. "Sarah knows what she wants. You've got to trust that it includes you." His brow arched. "And if you didn't, you wouldn't be marrying her in a couple of hours. It's normal to feel like this right before. You're not going to really breathe again until she's standing beside you, taking those vows."

Ricky squinted at him. "I don't remember you being that nervous." He could recall his mother's hand trembling in his as he'd walked her down the aisle, her smile a mix of excitement and anxiety until she had finally locked eyes with his stepfather, and then it had simply been a matter of getting her there. She had practically floated toward him. Ricky had never seen her so happy. In that moment, although he'd never tell another soul, he had silently cursed his father for not loving her enough. He would always be grateful that she had Andy in her life, though, and as he remembered it, the other man had been steady and proud. He had looked at her as if no one else in the world existed. It was a feeling that Ricky hadn't fully understood until Sarah came into his life.

Andy snorted a laugh in response. "Years of practice. You don't get dirtbags to confess to crimes by letting them see that you're nervous or bluffing. I wasn't about to let anyone in that church know that I was terrified. Part of me was afraid she wouldn't show up, that she'd finally figured out that I was the most idiotic thing she'd ever done in her life. I didn't think you'd ever get her down that aisle, it was all I could do not to push you aside and drag her to the altar myself. Not that I would have made it very far, your mother would have shot me."

"Not in church." Ricky smirked at him. "She'd have beaten you with her bouquet instead." It was a little gratifying to know that he wasn't the only one that had ever felt this way, especially when he thought back on that wedding and how beautiful it had been, and how happy his mother and stepfather were after.

"Actually," a voice sounded behind them, "I might have thanked him. I didn't think any one person could walk as slowly as you did." Andy had left the door open, and she had followed the sound of their voices. Once they'd lapsed into their usual, ridiculous antics, Sharon had known it was safe to join them. She stopped behind the pair, and when her son looked up at her, she could still see the boy in the man that he had become. Her fingers swept through his hair. She was thankful that Emily had taken him for a haircut; her boy was completely hopeless when it came to maintaining his own hair. "I was in a bit of a hurry," she continued, voice dipping lower as the emotions of that memory filled her. "He might have realized that I was the last thing he wanted in his life and gotten out while he still could."

"Never." Andy gripped the wooden railing and pulled himself up. If he groaned quietly at the way his body protested, he decided it was worth it, for the life he had now. He stepped back up into the deck and draped his arm around her shoulders. She burrowed close. It was still cool, despite the warming sunlight that was lighting the day. "Your son is nervous," he rumbled quietly.

"I heard. I'd be more concerned if he wasn't." Sharon smiled down at her second born. "In a few hours you're going to be happier than you can imagine. I can promise you that Sarah is feeling the same way you are right now, and if the two of you weren't certain this is what you wanted, we wouldn't be here." Theirs had not been a hurried romance, and Sharon was thankful that her children had learned from some of her own mistakes. "Today is going to be a really good day," she promised him.

"I know." Ricky shrugged. That hadn't stopped his doubts, but he wasn't about to put the breaks on. He wanted this, he wanted Sarah and the life they were planning to have. He just hoped he could live up to all those expectations. There was a small part of him that worried he might turn out like his father, even if he couldn't remember a day in his life when he'd ever been like Jack. For one thing, he doubted his dad would even show up today. He hadn't heard from Jack in over a year. That was fine; he had all the family around him that he needed.

"How about some breakfast," Sharon decided. "We still have a little while before we're going to be overrun by the caterers and the decorators. I'll even make waffles."

Ricky smiled as he stood. His mother's waffles were the best he'd ever had. He wasn't going to turn that down. "Can I go wake Emily up?"

Sharon rolled her eyes at him, and the devious glint that was shining in his dark eyes; it didn't matter if her children were three or thirty, they were still children. "If you must," she sighed, unable to deny him, at least not on this particular day.

"While you're at it," Andy suggested, mischief in his gaze, and a crooked grin playing at his lips, "you might as well wake the other one too. He might actually manage to get ready in time to leave for the church," he grunted when his wife's elbow dug into his ribs, but they both knew that he was right. Rusty would hog the bathroom for as long as he could get away with it.

"Don't worry," Ricky promised, "I have something special in mind for baby brother. The best man does not get to sleep in, not today." He rolled his shoulders and wondered if he had time for another cup of coffee before he put his plans in motion. Ricky watched his mother shake her head at him, toss a look of amused annoyance at his stepfather, and turn toward the house. Andy wasn't far behind her, but then, he usually wasn't. That was something that Ricky had come to count on. His head inclined. "You know," he said, before they could get more than a step or two away from him, "for the record," he met his stepfather's gaze, and for the moment, his own turned serious. "I always thought you were." Ricky shrugged. "Good enough, I mean."

Andy felt his wife squeeze his hand. He cleared his throat and nodded. That wasn't what he'd expected when he started this day, and while he'd always gotten along pretty well with Sharon's kids – well, most of them, it was always good to hear. "Don't stay out here too long," he said after a moment, voice a little thicker than it had been before, "there's a lot to do." He left it at that and walked back inside with Sharon. Ricky was going to be okay; his wedding day jitters would subside, and he'd have the day he deserved to have. For now, Andy decided to turn his attention to the sun. Not the one that was rising higher in the sky outside, but the one that filled his life with light every moment of every day. As Ricky had said, he might get burned flying too close, but that was a risk he would always be willing to take.

~Fin