Happy belated Christmas everyone!

This is just a tiny christmassy fic. It's set at the end of season 1 of Major Crimes.

A huge THANK YOU to usagi636 for beta reading! :D


He was craving a drink. Whiskey or vodka, or scotch. Just anything that had lots of alcohol in it. The liquid would leave a burning in his throat and a warm feeling in his stomach. It would gradually make him forget. Forget about his ex-wife, who had asked him not to come and join their celebration, and forget about how disappointed his daughter had been when he had told her that he wouldn't be able to make it.

He had lied to Nicole, in order to protect her. He wasn't like his ex-wife Lydia, who deliberately tried to make their daughter hate him. So Andy had lied and told her that he had to work on Christmas eve, just so Nicole wouldn't be mad at her mother for un-inviting him. Instead she was mad at him and he was about to throw sixteen years of soberness out the window.

He sat in his car, in front of his apartment complex thinking about booze and Nicole's sad voice on the phone.

It would be so easy to just drive to some bar and drink himself into a coma. For a few hours his thoughts and his pain would be gone.

If Andy only knew that three years from now, he would be sitting on Sharon Raydor's couch, with his arms around her, while Nicole would help her step children unpack their Christmas gifts.

Ricky and Emily would be there too, playfully arguing with Rusty about some movie they had watched the night before.

There would be a big smile on Sharon's face and she would put her head on his shoulder and sigh contently. He would then press a soft kiss to her forehead while they'd both watch their kids, with a look that was filled with love and pride.

But right now, in the present – all on his own on Christmas eve – he was convinced that all his Christmases would look like this from now on: There would be no one around and he would spent the entire day thinking about Jack Daniels and the other fellas that graced the bottles.

He turned the key in the ignition. Determined to go and get drunk, he pulled out of the parking space.

Then his phone buzzed. Still at the parking area, he stopped the car and looked at the screen. A text from the captain:

Hope you are having a wonderful Christmas with your family, Andy.

Enjoy your days off.

See you on Monday.

Sharon

A smile crept on his face. Sharon. He had started occasionally calling her by her first name a few weeks ago and it had somehow changed the dynamics between them.

Andy had had a hard time accepting her as his new boss, but he had soon noticed that she, being in charge of Major Crimes, was a blessing in disguise. Sharon knew how to motivate the team and how to get them to be at their best. She was an enrichment for the entire division. Even Provenza liked her, but he would rather die than admit it.

Andy pulled his car back into the parking lot and shut down the engine. He answered the text and went upstairs, into his apartment.

He switched on his TV and dropped down on the couch. His fingers wrapped around a bottle of Coca Cola.

He thought about Sharon. About the way she had smiled at him two days ago, about how her eyes sparkled when she talked about Rusty, and how she'd often brush a couple strands of hair out of her face and put them behind her ear.

She would never know it, but she had saved him.

Her text, the fact that she had been thinking about him at that very moment in that he had felt at his lowest, saved him.

He wanted to kiss her for that.

And very soon he would.

- The end -


Thanks for reading! :D