The content of this is not based upon the actual episode where Andy asks Sharon out to Serve. I know the time of year is different and that the content of the interview doesn't really fit in with that episode. Again, liberties have been taken with characterization :)
Prompt request for a witness flirting with Sharon
After hitting a dead end in the middle of a case, Tao managed to uncover a possible witness. This witness seemed to be a bit of a womanizer, so Sharon and Amy were the obvious choices to interview him. "I mean, she was the kind of woman that turned every head when she walked into a room..." He gave Sharon a leering look. "You'd know all about that, wouldn't you, babe?" If the man hadn't been freaking hot as all hell with a sultry voice to match, Sharon could've brushed his words off with no problem, but she struggled to maintain a schooled expression. She still appeared stoic from the table up, but he was creating stirrings in her below the table that she hadn't felt in a while. She was practically twitching, and she hoped her years of experience in maintaining a poker face despite what might be going on inside of her were paying off. The man oozed testosterone, and in another setting, she'd let him have his way with her in a heartbeat. Amy shot her an amused side-eye as they questioned the man, but her expression otherwise revealed nothing.
As they wrapped up the basic facts part of the interview and started to get into details that might lead to some helpful information, Sharon gradually became friendlier and a little flirty, hoping to get his guard down. She'd doubted from the beginning that he was guilty, but she had a feeling that he had more information than he was letting on, and she was only doing this to draw information out of him, of course. She was well aware that Andy was watching from the electronics room and probably had clenched fists and a red face by now, but hell, it's not like they were dating. He had put the ball in her court several months ago, but after having that time to think about where she wanted their relationship to go, she'd realized she wanted to move forward, so she'd subtly toed the metaphorical ball back into his court. Yes, it was 2015 and there was nothing wrong with asking him out herself, but she was a little old-fashioned on that front and preferred to leave the asking out to him. If he'd just stop dragging his damn feet. She wanted a real date, not a "let's grab something to eat" as they were leaving work. She didn't know if he was nervous or having second thoughts or what, but her patience was growing thin.
Sharon and Amy finally wrapped up the interview when they were satisfied with the information they'd gotten out of him. The rest of the team had left the electronics room and were all carrying on in the murder room like they'd been working at their desks the whole time, but Sharon noticed Andy watching them over the file he was pretending to read. Mr. Tall, Dark, and Brutally Handsome was walking in close proximity to her, and Andy looked ready to explode. The witness quickly squeezed Sharon's hand and looked at her like he could see straight through her clothes. "I'll give you a call about what we discussed." Sharon was confused until she remembered that he'd promised to find something out from someone else, so she'd given him her card with her office phone number on it.
It was after 7:00, so Sharon decided it was best for everyone to call it a day and start fresh the next morning. She was too tired to deal with Andy, so she took her time packing her things in her office, hoping he would be gone by the time she had her office locked up. If she knew him like she thought she did, he'd probably left as soon as he could to give himself a chance to cool down before he saw her again. Which was fine with her. She was too tired and in too ill of a mood to deal with his sad puppy eyes.
Sure enough, the murder room was empty, but Sharon was surprised to see Andrea leaving the electronics room as she walked toward the elevators. When she wasn't in the murder room when she'd gotten out of the interview, she'd assumed she left as soon as it was over. "Oh, good, you're still here. You free for dinner?"
Andrea nodded. "Please, I'm starving. And I could kill a couple of glasses of wine."
"Me, too. It's been a minute since I've really talked to anyone that doesn't have a penis. I need some girl time."
"You should've seen Andy," Andrea commented as they sipped their glasses of wine. "He did not like you flirting with that lech."
"It was just to get him talking more," Sharon defended herself, "and at least someone's flirting with me, for once. I might as well be Andy's sister."
Andrea nodded. "It wasn't a judgment—Andy needs to pull his head out of his ass. Even if you were genuinely flirting with that creep, who could blame you? He was freaking hot."
"Wasn't he?! I think my tubes came untied just from sitting across the table from him. I'm pretty sure he could've unhooked my bra with his eyes if he wanted to."
Andrea shrugged. "I certainly would let him try, should the situation present itself. Damn."
Sharon sipped her wine. "I've been just as uncertain about Andy as I guess he is about me, if not more, but I let him know not long ago that I was ready to date when he was. I know he got the message, because he looked a little panicked. It would be so much easier if we didn't work together and weren't already good friends. We care a lot about each other, but if our relationship didn't work out for some reason, there's a lot at stake. I wouldn't want things to be awkward at work or to lose a good friend, and I'm sure he feels the same way."
"You guys still need to give it a shot. How will you know if you don't try? You'll spend your life wondering what could have been."
"You're preaching to the choir. You think I don't know that?"
Sharon was pleasantly surprised a couple of evenings later when Andy asked her on what finally appeared to be a real date. If she had to guess, it probably had to do with him having a similar conversation with Provenza as she'd had with Andrea. After her conversation with Andrea earlier that week, the first thing she did was find her so she could tell her about it.
On Friday evening, Sharon and Andy both hung back as everyone else was leaving. They had plenty of time before their reservation, and she had some errands she could run in the meantime. "So, I'll meet you at—"
Andy shook his head. "No. Go home, and I'll come pick you up. This is a date, not an after-work dinner with coworkers."
Sharon shook her head. "That doesn't make any sense. That's so far out of the way for you—"
"Small price to pay." Andy tentatively reached for Sharon's hand as they walked toward the elevators and leaned in to kiss her cheek. It was meant to be a quick gesture, but he couldn't help but pause and breathe in the scent of her hair. After a few moments, he awkwardly jumped back from her when he realized how long his lips had been pressed to her skin. Sharon tightened her grip on his hand when she felt him pulling away, but didn't otherwise acknowledge his jerky movements. The hell was he so nervous about?
By the time Sharon got home, she knew exactly what the hell he was so nervous about. She'd been excited when he'd finally grown a pair and asked her out on a real date, but now that they had taken a step toward officially dating, she was apprehensive about the idea again. Now she had to worry about things being awkward between them at work if it didn't work out and the inevitable task of sexual boundaries. She was no prude, but dating someone from work was different. She didn't want anything to advance on that front until she was certain that their relationship was likely long-term, but she didn't know what Andy would think about that. She worked herself into a pretty good snit as she freshened up and looked through her closet for something to wear. Why was she just now thinking about this?! While Andy had made it clear that this was a date, she hadn't thought about other "date" specifics, like what the hell she was going to wear, simply because she'd assumed she wouldn't come home first. Had she even shaved her legs? Yes, that morning. No crisis there. And her hair? Should she put it up, or would that look like she was trying too hard? God, life was so much simpler when she was just his "friend, Sharon." She got a glass of wine from the kitchen and took large sips from it as she sorted through her closet, hoping it would calm her nerves.
Sharon's eyes fell on a black dress she'd worn to a friend's son's wedding a few months ago. She'd taken Andy, mostly just to have someone to dance with and to quell her friends' never-ending quests to set her up with someone. She'd caught him staring at her more than once that night, and she had a deep purple dress that was more casual and fit her similarly, so that seemed like a sensible choice. After draping the dress over her bed along with the shoes she usually wore with it, she went back to the bathroom to finish getting ready.
By the time Andy knocked on the door, her hair had been touched up with the curling iron, and she was applying fresh lipstick. After hastily zipping herself into her dress, sliding her shoes on, and spritzing herself with perfume, she tried to collect herself as she made her way to the living room and quickly looked around to make sure nothing that didn't belong to Rusty was out of place. She'd cleaned up a bit the night before, so that hadn't been much of a concern with Andy picking her up, and he had heard her complain about Rusty too much not to expect to see his shit all over the place, so she didn't worry about his things lying around. After kicking a stray pair of panties under the couch that she was just now noticing had fallen on the floor while she was folding laundry the night before, she opened the door. "Hey. Come in, I just need a minute."
Andy chuckled as she turned her back to him. "You don't say."
"Hmm?" Sharon looked down, half expecting to find her dress tucked into her underwear or something, but she felt Andy's hands on her back. "I'm not complaining, but you'd probably rather not leave home when you're only half-zipped."
Sharon's face flushed hotly as Andy zipped her up the rest of the way. "Thank you." After transferring her license, a credit card, a little cash, and a small pack of gum to her clutch, she turned back to Andy. "Ready?"
Andy opened the door for her. The elevator ride was awkwardly silent, and the car ride was even worse. They'd never been so quiet in each other's company before, even when they weren't particularly fond of each other. Say something, Sharon, say something, she silently urged herself. She'd never clammed up around Andy like this before, and her mind seemed blank. She couldn't think of a single thing to say. Seriously, Sharon, anything! Just say something. "So, um, the days are getting shorter," She lamely observed. Ugh, Raydor, anything but that!
Andy nodded. "Yeah. It's, uh, getting to be fall." Okay, he was just as lame.
They mercifully arrived at the restaurant, finally, after a ride of mostly painful silence. Sharon's fingers felt raw after nervously playing at the hem of her dress for most of the ride. She looked around the restaurant as Andy informed the hostess of their reservation, furiously trying to come up with some topics of conversation for when they were seated. She had zoned out, but she snapped to attention at Andy's raised voice. "What do you mean, there's no reservation for Flynn?! I made it yesterday!"
The hostess tapped at the screen in front of her for a few moments. "Oh, I see the problem. Whoever took your reservation must've entered it in our system for tomorrow. I'm really sorry, but there was an event across the street earlier, and many of those people came here afterward. We're even more packed than normal on a Friday. It'll be over a two-hour wait."
"But I made a reservation—"
Sharon lightly placed her hand on Andy's arm, and she could feel him relax under her touch. "It's fine, Andy, we can just come back tomorrow."
The hostess gave them an apologetic look. "I'll make a note here for your server tomorrow night to take a little off of your bill."
"Thank you." Sharon gently led Andy to the door.
Andy wracked his brain, trying to decide what to do next. The obvious choice seemed to be to go somewhere they knew was good but wouldn't have much of a wait, but that seemed too much like their previous "friendly" after-work dinners. The lady that cleaned his house a couple of days a month had luckily come the day before, and he knew he had a frozen lasagna they could put in the oven. He was confident enough in his culinary skills to offer that, and it would definitely be a different kind of night than anything they'd ever done before. "I've got a lasagna in the freezer at home, we can heat that up," Andy offered. "If you don't mind vegetarian."
Sharon nodded. "No, that sounds good. But why don't you take me home first to get my car? You'll be late getting home if you take me back later."
Andy shook his head. "No, this is a date. I'm picking you up and taking you home."
The mixup at Serve had given them a little to talk about, but they fell back into an awkward silence halfway to Andy's house. Sharon was wracking her brain again, trying to come up with something to fill the silence. "So, I talked to Hobbs about—"
"Nuh-uh, no work talk," Andy interrupted. "This isn't a post-work dinner, it's a date."
Sharon smiled. "For someone who complains about my rules, you sure do have a lot of them tonight." That lightened the mood a little, and the conversation gradually picked up as they drove to Andy's house. Still, Sharon was relieved when they pulled off into a residential area, as they had to be nearing his house. They walked inside through the garage a few minutes later, and Andy opened the wide door between the kitchen and the patio to let in some of the pleasantly cooler air. The sound of crickets chirping and the scent of tea olive made Sharon realize how much she missed having a house sometimes.
Sharon gave Andy a confused look when he started opening a bottle of wine. She'd learned early on in her Major Crimes tenure from the occasional team dinner after they'd closed a case or for someone's birthday that it didn't bother him for people to drink in front of him, but she didn't expect him to have alcohol in his home. "It's Provenza's," he explained, seeing the perplexed look on her face. "He's over here a lot, and I never really liked wine, so I don't mind keeping it here."
Sharon blushed, realizing her facial expression had given her away. "I'm sorry. I know you're not drinking—"
"It's fine. I would've been confused, too." Andy gave her a playful look. "As long as you don't vomit on my shoes this time."
Now, Sharon was really confused. "What?"
Andy laughed. "You don't remember? After Nicole's wedding, I was helping you into the car, and next thing I knew, you were leaning back out and vomiting on my feet."
Sharon covered her face with her hands. "Oh, no! Andy! I'm so sorry. I've got nothing on that. I barely remember leaving the reception, and anything after that is a black hole until I woke up the next morning and felt like death warmed up." The original plan had been for her to ride from the church to the reception with Andy and for him to take her back to her car after the reception, but he ended up driving her home after she'd unexpectedly been overserved. Rusty had taken her to get her car the next afternoon after she'd recovered. After weeks of fear and worry over Rusty's anonymous letter-writer and night after night of being stuck in the condo, both for Rusty's protection and for trying to prevent putting her friends in a dangerous situation, the rare night out had caused Sharon to drink a bit more than usual.
Andy shrugged. "I didn't mind. Believe it or not, I'm no stranger to vomit. Seeing you drunk was actually pretty entertaining. You found one of my Motown CDs and put it in, and I got a free concert while I drove you home."
"Oh, my god! Drunken singing and vomit, I'm sure that was hot."
Andy grinned. "Oh, it was. Really, though, I'm not kidding." He got music playing from his phone before getting the lasagna out of the freezer, a fresh head of lettuce from the refrigerator, and a large bowl from a cabinet.
Sharon started tearing bits of lettuce into the bowl for salad as Andy put the lasagna in the oven. With a glass of wine and Domino by Van Morrison playing in the background, she was more relaxed than she'd been all evening. "How are things going with Nicole and Drew?" She asked. Why hadn't she thought to fill the silence with this in the car?! That was a rule of small talk—when all else fails, ask about kids. She'd been too nervous to even think about that simple solution at the time.
"Things are great with Nicole. She invites me over a good bit, and we go out to dinner every now and then. Sometimes just the two of us, sometimes with Dean and the boys. Once or twice a month, I have the boys here to spend the night on a Friday or Saturday night, and I know Nicole and Dean appreciate the break. But Drew...Well, he's a different story." Sharon gave him a sad smile and squeezed his arm. "I don't blame him," Andy continued. "Nicole still had her mom, and she got along with their stepdad better than Drew did. It's tough to be a teenager and not have a parent of the same sex to talk to about stuff. I had partial custody and had the kids every other weekend, but they only came because they had to. Drew wasn't exactly sharing anything with me or coming to me for advice."
"At least you gave him the chance," Sharon pointed out. "You made an effort to be in his life. You've done everything you could to repair the relationship. He has to meet you halfway."
"I guess you know about the other side of that," Andy commented. He knew Jack's presence at home had been sporadic at best.
Sharon nodded. "Several of my neighbors and I were close friends, and we kind of became each other's extended family. No one had much real family nearby, so we would step in for each other when someone needed help with kids, and we often functioned as second parents for each other's children. I love my friends' children like they're my own. One of the families in our neighborhood was a widowed dad and his daughter, and he'd tag in with Ricky when I needed him. I did the same for his daughter." She added some toppings Andy had pulled out of the refrigerator to the salad. "Ricky was barely two the first time Jack left and wasn't even out of diapers yet. When he was three, I'd noticed for months that there were usually small drops of pee in his underwear at night before I gave him a bath, and I just attributed it to him sometimes waiting a little too long to go to the toilet. I thought it would get better as he got more used to it, but it went on for months. After a while, I started getting onto him almost every night about not waiting too long to go to the bathroom. I thought he was still waiting until the last second and leaking a little before he got to the toilet. He insisted that he wasn't, and I didn't believe him."
Andy chuckled. "I know exactly where this is going. You didn't know to tell him to shake off, did you?"
"I had no idea! I finally thought to call my brother and ask exactly how that was handled! He still makes fun of me to this day."
Andy cackled. "That's a conversation I'd love to hear. I can actually do better than that. Nicole was with me when she got her first period, and I think I was more of a wreck than she was. She locked herself in the bathroom and was screaming about wanting to go home, and I had no idea what was wrong with her. I called Sandra and had to leave the phone outside of the bathroom door and walk away just so Nicole would open the door to get the phone. When I got the phone back and Sandra explained what the problem was, I went out to buy some pads for her. I came back with incontinence pads."
Sharon shrieked with laughter and nearly spit out her wine. "That is hilarious!" She winced and held her hand to her face. "I think a little wine went up my nose, but that was so worth it."
"I was standing in that aisle, surrounded by women and sticking out like a sore thumb, so I just grabbed the first pack I saw and got the hell out of there. Pads are pads, right? Yeah, the ass-chewing I got from Sandra suggested otherwise."
The image of a befuddled Andy standing in the middle of the feminine products aisle was too much for Sharon. Tears were streaming down her cheeks as she laughed helplessly.
Andy grinned. "It's pretty funny now, but then, not so much."
Sharon wiped her eyes. "I can't imagine." This wasn't exactly traditional first date conversation material, but they'd gotten through that when they were oblivious to the fact that they were dating. They were comfortable enough with one another to have more personal conversations now. The reservations Sharon'd had about "officially" dating were starting to fade. She spaced out for a minute, so she jumped when Andy pulled her into his arms.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you, but when Lionel's singing, you have to dance."
Sharon looked up at Andy. "Another rule?"
Andy shrugged. "Hey, at least my rules are fun, unlike someone's I can think of."
"I'll give you that." This was where she wanted to be. Making dinner with Andy and swapping stories about their pasts and dancing in the kitchen and Andy having rules like you have to dance when Lionel Richie is playing.
I spent a night in L.A.
Just another chance to see you
Just you and I
Wanted you to know
That my playing days are over
'Cause all I do is think of you
The writing's on the wall
Deep river woman
Lord I'm coming home to you
Deep river woman
Lord I know she's waiting
Just anticipating all my love
I've been out in the world
Yes, the fast life had me going
Now all that's changed
I finally made up my mind
About the one thing
I've been knowing
You're the only girl
I've ever cared for in this world
"Andy...About that witness..."
Andy tightened his arms around her. "No need to explain. You weren't doing it to hurt me, you were playing at his weakness to get more information out of him. And you did a damn good job, we wouldn't have finished the case as quickly if you hadn't gotten him talking." Yes, his blood had been boiling as he watched the interview, and he'd left quickly to avoid Sharon so he wouldn't lose his temper with her. He hadn't wanted to face her until he was thinking logically again. It had also made him realize that if he really wanted a future with her, then he needed to make a move. How she was still available had been a mystery to him for a while now, but that wouldn't necessarily always be the case. There'd be no reason for her to turn down a date with someone else just because they were "sort-of, unofficially, dating but not dating."
"I know this isn't what you had in mind, but I'm kind of glad it worked out like this," Sharon admitted.
Andy looked down at her. "Really?"
"Yeah. It's more...I don't know, personal, I guess? We'd probably still be staring at each other and trying to come up with something to say if we were at Serve right now." A faster song was playing now, but they were still in each other's arms and slowly swaying.
Andy chuckled. "I think you're right. What the hell was that about?"
"I don't know. Making the move to officially 'dating,' maybe? I know we've both had our reservations, but..." Sharon tightened her arms around Andy's waist. "I like this. This feels right."
Andy kissed the top of her head. "I think so, too."
Sharon looked up, and after a brief look of consensus, she leaned into him as his lips covered hers. The kiss was tender and slow, with enough tempered passion to reveal how he felt about her. Yes, this was just right.
