If you're wondering why this story is just now showing up in your fanfic listings, it's because I didn't realize people filtered characters for Sharon and Andy (thanks so much for the heads up, xbleeple!). The website didn't require me to include character names, so I didn't do it at all. I know a lot of you have been reading fanfic a lot longer than I have, and filtering may have done some good at one time. But, as someone who is ecstatic when a non-Shandy story pops up (I like them fine on the show and in fanfic, but I also love to read about Sharon pre-Andy), I can tell you that you might be filtering out about five non-Shandy stories a year, if that. You're probably also filtering out some Shandy stories with writers like me who didn't include characters because they didn't have to. My favorite story on this site is actually non-Shandy. Not because of the fact that it's non-Shandy, but because of the other relationships explored and the author's detailed writing style. There's some great non-Shandy fanfic out there, and you might surprise yourself if you'd give it a try. I'm not saying anyone is right or wrong, it's a simple difference of opinion, and this is just a PSA. Listen if you want to, don't listen if you don't want to, it doesn't matter to me. I really don't want this to turn into a "Shandy vs. non-Shandy" thing. I don't need to know whether you agree or disagree, I'm just giving you something to think about. :)

Also, to clear up some confusion there seemed to be about Sharon's age, she's not any younger than on the show. Like I said before, based upon Duff interviews, I guessed her age to be 58-60 when this story was set. That would put her parents being 20-22 when she was born, which was actually a pretty average age for people to start families in the 1950s. None of us know anything about Sharon's parents, and I thought their age was a good guess. Her mom could've gotten pregnant in high school for all we know. :)

Thanks so much for reading and reviewing!

Still Tuesday Evening

Sharon was finished eating by the time Rusty got out of the shower. She moved over to the colder side of the bed when the bathroom door opened and he shuffled back to bed. He'd been complaining about being cold before he got in the shower, so she held his blanket up and tucked it around him when he got back in bed. "Better?"

Rusty nodded. He'd stayed in the shower longer than normal, as he hated getting out when he had a fever, because it was so damn cold, but a warm bed that smelled like Sharon was the best thing ever when he was sick. "But, Mom, please go home. I know you're tired of being here."

"No, honey, I'm not leaving you here by yourself."

"I thought you wanted me to rest!" Rusty protested. "How much sleep do you think I'm getting with you snoring all night? It's bad enough at home, but at least there's more room and two closed doors between us there."

"I do not snore!" Sharon said indignantly. She looked at Andy for confirmation.

"Of course you don't," Andy said patronizingly. "Although, oddly enough, that freight train that likes to circle the condo at night has finally stopped..." He gave Rusty a conspiratorial look. "Just get up and turn her on her side if she gets too bad. It's kind of scary at first-it seems like she's going to inhale you, but she won't, I promise."

"Nice," Rusty scoffed. "Now you tell me."

Sharon looked from one to the other over her glasses. "You two can stop ganging up on me at any time. You have my permission...I don't snore, do I?!"

Rusty shrugged. "How you've never woken yourself up is a mystery to me. You're right, though, it's time for a new victim...So, while we're airing household grievances, let's talk about Andy's little skid mark problem. Come on, Andy, a courtesy flush every now and then would be nice."

Sharon looked confused. Now that she was outnumbered, and even more so when Ricky was visiting and Emily wasn't, she was increasingly aware of the fact that males never grow out of "bathroom humor." This was a new one, though. "What's a skid mark-oh, my god!" She shrieked with laughter as realization dawned on her. "You're right, Rusty, I could do without those, too. Especially since I'm usually the one that cleans the bathroom." A good thing about living with someone who had been a bachelor for so long was that Andy was used to having to keep things reasonably clean himself and usually pitched in with chores, but their ideas about how often certain things should be done differed greatly. Except bedroom 'chores,' of course. They were in perfect agreement on that.

"Okay, okay," Andy grumbled. "I lived alone for a long time and didn't have to worry about anyone going to the bathroom right after me! I think it's the kid's turn."

Rusty rolled his eyes. "I have to see you two being disgusting all the time. Every day is the kid's turn."

Andy raised his eyebrows. "Huh. Well, if that's your theory, then you haven't had your turn yet today..." Andy made exaggerated movements toward Sharon.

"Andyyyyy, I'm already nauseous!" Rusty whined. "And, while we're on that, you leave the toilet seat up a lot, too."

"I only do that as payback when your mom forgets to get her hair out of the drain after she takes a shower," Andy countered. "Talk about disgusting. How there's any hair left on her head is beyond me."

Rusty wrinkled his nose. "Yeah, that is pretty gross."

"Wait a minute, how did this circle back to me?!" Sharon tried to muster a proper glare, but she failed miserably. "All right, fine. Keep it up. I'll get you back."

Rusty gave Andy a knowing look. "She's bluffing."

Andy grinned. "You think I don't know that?"

Sharon glared at both of them, having found the ability to do so. "I wouldn't be too sure about that if I were you."

Andy gathered his things and went to kiss Sharon before he left. "I'm shaking in my boots."

Sharon swatted at him before she let him kiss her. "Yeah, you should be."

Andy kissed her as deeply as he could without Rusty starting to whine. He'd had enough practice to know how far he could go before the kid started bitching about it. "Call me if you need anything." He patted Rusty's shoulder and left the room.

Sharon smoothed her hand over Rusty's forehead and lingered on his cheek for a few moments. "I think your temperature's going back down. I hope you can still go home this week."

"God, me too. This place sucks."

"You're telling me."

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By the following Monday, Rusty had been discharged and was resting comfortably at home. He still wasn't feeling too well, so Sharon wasn't going back to work for another week, meetings or a rollout aside. He had a follow-up appointment with Dr. Blakely, his primary care doctor, on Tuesday afternoon, which Gus had volunteered to take him to, so Sharon and Andy had decided to wait until then for their own little reunion. They'd done stuff since Sharon came home, but they'd decided to wait for an empty condo before rocking her bed halfway across the room.

Late Monday afternoon, Sharon sat on the balcony, playing music from her phone and sipping a glass of wine, while Rusty napped on the couch. She'd spent most of the day on the couch with him. It had been a long time since they'd had so much one-on-one time, and she'd missed it. Rusty hadn't said as much, but she could tell he'd missed it, too. When it was time to start dinner, she dragged herself inside and turned the TV down on the way to the kitchen, since Rusty was unconscious and obviously wouldn't notice. His appetite hadn't improved much, so she'd been bribing him with his favorite foods to try to get him to eat since they'd gotten home. She sang along to her music and occasionally sipped her wine as she pulled things from the cabinets and got dinner started. "Well I tried to make it Sunday, but I got so damn depressed, that I set my sights on Monday, and I got myself undressed..."

"Ahh, getting you undressed...Will that ever happen again?" Andy had slipped in and already managed to change clothes without Sharon realizing it.

Sharon rested her arms on top of Andy's as he wrapped them around her waist. "I'm just as ready for it as you are, I can assure you." She broke away from Andy so she could stir her spaghetti sauce, and Andy started unpacking the groceries he'd bought on the way home. "Will you meet me in the middle, will you meet me in the air. Will you love me just a little-"

"Tell me about it," Andy mumbled, interrupting Sharon's singing.

"Andy, stop it!" Sharon giggled.

"Okay, fine, I'm done. Wow, this song takes me back to the patio of the Sigma Xi house. I was a junior in college when it was popular."

"I was a junior, too..." Sharon grinned. "In high school."

"Damn, woman, do you have to shove your youth in my face every chance you get?!"

Sharon tilted her head. "Well...Yes. Actually."

Andy rolled his eyes. "You're lucky you're hot, you know that? Need any help?"

Sharon shook her head. "I'm almost finished. What are you doing for dinner? I thought you were picking something up on the way home." It wasn't uncommon for them to eat two different meals at dinner time. Even before his heart attack, Andy had preferred healthy food. Sharon tried to eat more healthily, but she wasn't as committed to it as Andy was. She allowed herself to indulge a good bit, which she liked to blame on Rusty. As he'd put it when she informed him that Andy was moving in, 'Please, just keep the sucking face in front of me to a minimum, and I'm not eating bird food every day.' She didn't have the time or desire to cook very often, but when she did, it wasn't 'bird food' that she wanted to cook. Andy cooked for them a good bit, but she didn't feel guilty about sometimes cooking separately for her and Rusty, since she knew Andy wouldn't want it, anyway.

"I knew you were cooking spaghetti, and I have some marinara sauce in the freezer. You're using whole wheat noodles, aren't you?"

Sharon nodded. "See, I can be healthy." Hell, once she'd smothered her noodles in spaghetti sauce, she could hardly tell the difference, so she might as well.

Andy gave her a knowing look. "Yeah, all the good that does, once you've eaten a salad that's floating in dressing and a bowl of 'spaghetti' that's mostly fattening meat sauce." He stood behind the couch and turned the TV to the news. "How's he been today?" He asked, nodding down at Rusty's sleeping form. He reached down and lightly rubbed his back for a moment. He'd lost a few pounds from not having much of an appetite in the last couple of weeks, not to mention being sick to his stomach, and he was pale and moved around like a zombie the few times he moved from the couch or his bed. Andy could see why Sharon didn't want to leave him alone yet.

Sharon brushed her hair out of her face with her forearm, trying to keep her messy hands from touching her hair. "He's been a little sluggish today, and he's slept more today than he has any other day in the last week." She washed her hands and dried them with a dish towel before fishing the thermometer out of the medicine cabinet. "I've been meaning to check his temperature...What?" She demanded when she saw the look on Andy's face. "I know the doctor said not to worry if he started running a fever again, but he also said that his immunity is down, so he might've caught something else. He's been horizontal all day."

Rusty woke up while this conversation was taking place, but he wasn't ready to open his eyes. He smiled to himself when he heard Sharon talking about him. He still loved it when she got so concerned about him. He could smell dinner cooking and hear Sharon's music playing from her phone in the kitchen. He'd woken up to similar surroundings several times in the last few years when he'd been sick or tired enough to nap during the day. The familiar sounds and smells were comforting, but it made him a little sad. He didn't want to think about being sick once he wasn't living with Sharon anymore and not having her there to take care of him. This thought was reinforced when he felt her sit beside him on the couch with her soft hand on his forehead. "Hmm, hey, Mom," he murmured. He felt her hair brushing against his face and could tell she was kissing his forehead before he felt it. Now that her hair was shorter, the ends hit his face awkwardly and tickled him. "I miss your longer hair," he groaned.

"My hair? Honey. My haircut didn't make me look like a prison guard." Sharon's hand went back to his forehead. She missed there being shaggy bangs to brush back and smooth back down when she did that.

"Mo-om, seriously?!"

"Sorry." Sharon studied him for a few moments. "You don't feel like you have a fever, but I need to check your temperature. You seem a little worse today than you were yesterday."

"I'm trying to remember what it's like not to have a headache."

"I'll give you some medicine after I take your temperature. Open up." Sharon held up the thermometer.

"Mom, do you have to?! You know the second my temperature hits, like, 98.65. Without a thermometer."

"I need peace of mind. Stop whining and just do it." Sharon slipped the thermometer into Rusty's mouth when he started to protest again. He glared at her as the thermometer started its incessant beeping. She pulled it out when it emitted its final beep. "No fever..."

"Told you," Rusty grumbled. "You could be a temperature guesser at a carnival."

Sharon placed the thermometer on the table beside the couch. "As much of a demand as there is for that, I think I'll pass. How are you feeling?"

"The same as the last eighteen times you asked me that."

"All right, I'll stop torturing you. For now." Sharon gave Rusty his medicine before sitting beside him and looking around for the remote. "Who turned this to the news when the Rams are playing?!"

"That would be your boyfriend. I value my life a little more than that," Rusty mumbled as he put his pillow in her lap and lay down. He didn't care how old he was, this was the fastest way he knew of to feel less miserable.

Sharon rubbed small circles into his forehead with her fingers as she watched the game, trying to soothe his headache. She could still hear the music playing from her phone in the kitchen, and she sang along for a couple of lines at intermittent intervals. "Here comes the sun, doo doo doo doo, here comes the sun, and I say, it's all right-are you kidding me?! That was not a hold!"

"Mind the headache, Mom," Rusty complained when her soft singing was interrupted by her screams at the TV.

"Sorry, honey...But that was a terrible call!"

Rusty nodded with false sympathy. "Sounds tragic."

"It was."

"Sharon? I'm going to go ahead and start the pasta," Andy said a little while later.

Sharon nodded. "Break the noodles into three pieces instead of two, please, so they'll be easier for him to eat. And would you mind tossing a salad? I'm getting hungry."

"Sure. I could eat now, too." Andy got the pasta started and returned with salads for both of them and the bottle of Italian Dressing for Sharon. "You're going to have to clog your arteries on your own time. I'm not doing it."

"Ha, ha. Thanks, honey." Sharon put what she considered to be a perfectly normal amount of dressing on her salad and began eating.

Rusty turned his attention from the TV to Sharon's salad. "Damn, Mom, I think there's some lettuce in the fridge if you want some to go with your dressing."

Sharon rolled her eyes. "Last time I checked, I was a grown-up and could put whatever the hell I wanted on my salad."

Rusty nodded. "You're right, Mom...I just think you're using the term 'salad' a little loosely, here."

"Fine, keep it up," Sharon said loftily. "Payback will be that much sweeter."

Rusty rolled his eyes. "You are so full of crap."

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On Tuesday afternoon, Andy got home soon after Rusty and Gus left for his appointment. He'd brushed up on his research from 'The Google' the week before, and he had a game plan. Sharon would forget that damn vibrator ever existed. When they started heating up in the bedroom, Andy slipped a pillow under Sharon for an angle that would help her climax. "Andy, what the hell are you doing?" Sharon demanded. He'd been different since the first kiss when he got home. They didn't always do everything exactly the same, of course, but nothing so far this time had been Andy's style. She hadn't commented on it yet, but she drew the line at getting a pillow involved.

"It's a better angle to help you...Well, you know."

Sharon rolled her eyes and tossed the pillow off of the bed. "Is this about the vibrator? I told you, that has nothing to do with you!"

"I just don't get it!" Andy looked frustrated. "I should be enough for you."

"It's not about you being enough. I told you this before. There are just times when I prefer to do this alone. Like watching baseball. Sometimes you like to do that with Louie, and sometimes you'd rather watch a game by yourself. Same thing."

"Oh, god, did you seriously just bring Provenza into this?!" Andy groaned. "That's a boner-killer if I've ever heard one. I don't think I'll be able to do it for another week!"

"Challenge accepted." Sharon slipped out from underneath Andy and repositioned herself on top of him. "I don't want anything you've gotten from the internet or the Kama Sutra lately. Just you." They picked up where they'd left off, and they were more in sync this time. It wasn't long before she felt a familiar and more-than-welcome pressure against her. "Told you so," Sharon said smugly.

"Shh, you might scare it away," Andy murmured.

"Well, we can't have that." They picked up the pace with renewed fervor, and by the time they were finished and lying together, exhausted, Andy was quite pleased with himself. There was no way in hell that stupid vibrator could possibly elicit the screams from Sharon with which he'd just been rewarded. Even when they were alone, Sharon tried to show her pleasure without being too loud about it, because she didn't like to appear to not be in control of herself. She'd failed miserably this time, though. "I hope the neighbors don't call 911," Sharon murmured. "I sounded like someone was killing me!"

Andy grinned. "You're going to have to get on top more often."

"I may not be able to walk tomorrow, but it will be worth it."

Andy's face clouded over in concern. "Did I hurt you?"

"Don't worry. It's the good kind of pain, and it was self-inflicted." Sharon got out of bed and went to the bathroom. As much as she wanted to stay in bed, Rusty would be home soon, and she didn't like to wait too long after sex to pee and get herself cleaned up. When she was dressed again, she got back in bed beside Andy and let him hold her. She hadn't felt this relaxed in a long time. Gavin had been right a couple of days before when she'd supposedly lashed out at him via text-she needed to get laid.

When Rusty got home, Sharon and Andy were on the balcony, stretched out in lounge chairs and listening to music. Sharon put her glass of wine on the table beside her and slid over in her chair when Rusty came outside. He sat beside her and lay back, worn out from being upright for so long. She wrapped her arm around him and kissed the side of his head. "What did the doctor say?"

"She said I'm doing fine so far, but since I didn't have any obvious risk factors for Meningitis, she did some blood tests to see if they show anything that would affect my immunity. Or something. If they don't show anything, then she'll probably order more tests...Andy? You're home early."

"Yeah, uh, it was a, um, slow day." Andy turned away from Rusty and choked back a laugh.

Sharon didn't like not being the one to go with Rusty to his appointment, but she trusted Gus to pay attention and fill in the blanks for her. "Gus didn't want to stay for dinner?"

Rusty shook his head. "He has to work tonight. His Uber was, like, two seconds away, so he didn't have time to come back up and say hello again...What are we doing for dinner, anyway?"

"We'll just order in," Sharon said vaguely. In her newly-relaxed state, a brilliant, yet slightly diabolical, plan had come to her to get back at Rusty and Andy for double-teaming her. They'd think twice about mocking her threats of payback again. Or being polite and Febrezing the bathroom when she left it in a less-than-desirable state. They'd be begging for the Febreze the next morning. And there was no way that she could surpass some of the odors she'd walked into after Rusty had been in there with his phone or Andy with the newspaper, so she wasn't going to let herself be embarrassed about it.

A couple of hours later, the late October evening was growing cool, and Andy was getting hungry. "What do you want to do for dinner? I'll go ahead and order it, I'm ready to eat."

"I've already ordered it," Sharon said, holding up her phone. The beauty of online ordering was being able to do it silently. "It should be here soon, so we should probably go on inside." Rusty had passed out against her shoulder not long after he got home, so she gently shook him to wake him up. "Dinner will be here soon, so we need to go inside."

"'Kay..." Rusty yawned and peered up at Sharon through sleepy eyes. "What are we having?"

Sharon grinned evilly. "Indian food. If you don't feel like eating it, I'll warm up some leftover spaghetti for you." (A/N: this was explained in chapter 9, in case you missed that chapter and are confused.)

Rusty jumped away from her like the effects of the Indian food had already hit her and nearly fell over the arm rest in his haste to stand up. Sharon certainly hadn't seen him move nearly that quickly in the last three weeks. "Mooooom! I just got out of the hospital! Why are you trying to send me back?!"

"I would do no such thing," Sharon said indignantly. "And don't worry, Andy, their heart-healthy options were specified on the menu."

"I don't think that's why he looks horrified," Rusty muttered.

"I tried to warn you about payback," Sharon reminded him.

"Ughhhh, Mom, when I said you were full of crap last night, I didn't mean for you to take me literally!"

Sharon grinned. "Too late."