SEVENTEEN

The team was already assembled when Sharon and Andy walked into the Murder Room and he could feel all eyes on them. Flynn had to constantly remind himself that his relationship with Sharon was still news to them. Even though he technically didn't even know whether it actually was a relationship (and when had he started referring to it as such?), it already seemed so natural to him. The members of his team, on the other hand, still seemed collectively flabbergasted that he had hit it off with the very woman he had been complaining tirelessly about for years.

The Chief turned around from where she was studying the murder board and gestured for them to approach her. Sharon gave a very low hum of warning that only Andy could hear when he inadvertently placed his hand in the small of her back. He dropped his hand, feeling sheepish. Her scent was still lingering on him from their earlier hug and yet all he wanted to do was hold her close again. It was excruciating to know that she wouldn't even allow the most innocent of touches when they were around others.

Sharon perched on the edge of an empty desk and narrowed her eyes to be able to study the board, one hand clasped around the desk to steady herself, one resting in her lap, palm turned towards her stomach. Andy didn't think that she had any idea what she was doing as she was already focused on the case again, but he could tell that Provenza had noticed. He knew that expression on his partner's face and when the old lieutenant opened his mouth and drew a deep breath to, without a doubt, deliver another one of his scathing comments, Andy quickly elbowed him in the side. Provenza yowled, looking up at Andy with a scandalized expression, the very picture of innocence.

"What the hell, Flynn?"

"Don't even think about it, Provenza," Andy growled. "You've done enough damage."

Tao gave them a side-eye. Once that one knew something was up, they would be doomed, so Andy elbowed Provenza again as soon as he opened his mouth.

"Hey, Captain Raydor, I need to report a vicious assault on a fellow officer!" Provenza whined. Sharon ignored him, not batting an eyelash. She had grown really good at that, Andy admired. Ten years ago she would have at least turned around to shoot them a deadly glare, but now she was acting as if Provenza wasn't even there.

Chief Johnson stood in front of Sharon and smirked down at her hand. "Ate something that didn't agree with you, Captain?" she asked in a saccharine voice.

Sharon didn't miss a beat and lifted her hand in an almost rhythmic way to then place it in her hair. It was an odd gesture and it was clear that it amused the Chief to no end.

"Just a little queasy, Chief. Close proximity to your lieutenant will do that to me," Sharon replied in that challenging tone she liked to use with the Chief.

It was clear that she was referring to Provenza and his antics, but of course she had just dug her own grave.

"Which one, Captain?" the Chief deadpanned.

There was a moment of silence during which each woman tried to stare the other one down. It was rather impressive and Andy was really glad that he was nowhere in the middle of that. It was Sanchez who took pity on one of them or both and intervened by unceremoniously pointing at the board.

"We think it's one of the security guys."

Sharon folded her arms across her chest. "Do you have any idea how many security guys work here?" She didn't seem very impressed with the progress they had made and made no attempt to hide it.

"Forty-seven," the Chief beamed. "Would you happen to know why any of them would want to hurt you or Sergeant Elliott?"

"As a matter of fact, no. Those guys are not my jurisdiction," Sharon said lightly.

It was clear that everyone had hoped for a different answer, because shoulders were sinking all around. Chief Johnson blew out a long breath.

"Well, everyone!" The Chief clapped her hands like a kindergarten teacher who was trying to get the kids' attention. "Back to square one. We will need to cross-reference the cases you and Lieutenants Flynn and Provenza identified as pertaining to officers who might hold a grudge against you with connections to the security staff."

A groan came from the direction of Provenza's desk. "I suggest you get a lorry to collect those files, Chief. So many people hate her."

Chief Johnson, already halfway to her office, threw him a sweet smile over her shoulder. "Oh, that won't be necessary, Lieutenant. I trust you can get them for me."

Provenza got up, grumbling about people mistreating senior citizens and made for the door in that agonizingly slow way of his. It looked as if the team was in for a long night. Andy approached Sharon and stood next to her, clearing his throat instead of touching her to get her attention. He was nothing if not receptive to her boundaries and he was hell-bent on proving that to her.

"Hey, it's getting late. Do you want to go home?"

She looked in the direction of Chief Johnson's office, then turned back to him. "Don't you have files to go through, Lieutenant?" Encouraged by the fact that her voice had gone up with that little playful tone she used with him sometimes, he threw a grin at her.

"Not really, no. I mean, Chief Johnson made it very clear that I am nothing but a security detail these days and I do take that job very seriously."

Sharon's shoulders went up along with her chuckle and she turned her head. "Is that so? Since when?"

Andy looked around. Tao and Sanchez had followed Provenza to help him with the large amount of files and everyone else seemed to have decided to get some coffee in order to get through what seemed like an inevitable night shift. Satisfied that they were alone safe for Chief Johnson who was busy rummaging through her desk drawers presumably in search of some chocolate, he gently put his hand over Sharon's and stood next to her, their shoulders barely touching.

"Thanks for stopping Provenza earlier," she said in a low voice. "I would have had him reprimanded had he said another word."

Andy shrugged. "Nah, I did it for him really." When she snorted in response, he sobered up. "No, honestly. He can be annoying that way. I'll make sure he doesn't do that anymore."

"Wow, so you're claiming to have any control over Provenza now," Sharon said. "Impressive."

He smiled at her, their faces almost too close to still be considered decent in the workplace.

"I am full of surprises."

Sharon looked amused, then placed her hand against her middle again. "Yeah, me too, it seems."

He was about to reply when Chief Johnson appeared in his line of vision, hands on her hips and rolling her eyes.

"Can you two please stop it already? God, I don't need to watch the cheesiest workplace romance in the world when I am in for a night shift when I had plans with Fritz and I am fresh out of chocolate!" She threw her hands up, genuinely upset. "It's late, Captain, so can you please go home? I really don't need to deal with the fallout of you getting hurt on our watch again."

With that, she retreated to her office, leaving Sharon and Andy a little stunned.

"A night off, what about that!" Andy said in the way of filling the slightly uncomfortable silence his boss had left behind. "My place or yours?"

It was that moment that Provenza chose to stomp back into the room, carrying a ridiculously small stack of files. Andy was annoyed on behalf of the rest of the team, but not surprised. Provenza had a habit of becoming very feeble and elderly the moment the prospect of manual labor became apparent.

"Look what I got you, Captain," he said gleefully. "A little pick-me-up." And with that, he stuffed the one file they had placed on the "likes me" pile two weeks ago into her handbag.

"Lieutenant, you are so close to getting sent to sensitivity class yet again," Sharon said, her voice dropping to dangerously low levels.

Provenza dropped his weight into his desk chair and made himself comfortable. "Maybe that isn't such a bad idea. I could really use some instruction on how to avoid accidentally letting private information about my co-workers slip. You know, secret pregnancies and such. It is just so hard to keep track of what I am allowed to say or not."

Andy could tell that Sharon was about to rip Provenza's head off (or worse), so he gently steered her towards the door, all the while shooting daggers with his eyes at his idiot partner.

Andy congratulated himself once again on the fact that his couch was foldout one, because that way he was able to comfortably recline against its back while Sharon was snuggled into his side. They had swung by her place to pick up some more clothes, but she had insisted that they go back to his house even though it was much farther out of the way. She had never explicitly said so, but Andy knew she was still not comfortable in her own home and while he resented Elliott and his accomplice for making her feel that way, he couldn't deny that it was nice to have her come to his place as a refuge. She had fallen asleep five minutes into the movie he was only half-heartedly watching and it seemed that his eyes were on her more than on the screen. She looked beautiful in her leggings and cotton sweater, her hair falling freely over her shoulders. She had taken her glasses off which should have tipped him off that she was not really in a state to watch a movie and he could see the delicate lines around her eyes. Sleep softened her features and he felt his heart leap. She was here and she was with him.

Her breathing was deep and regular and he was glad to see her resting. He had always fallen asleep before her in the nights they had been spending together recently and had always woken to find her already awake. It seemed almost as if the whole situation that left her so exhausted still plagued her with insomnia. It wasn't fair and it sure wasn't healthy.

There was a sudden buzzing sound and he looked at his phone on the coffee table, but found the screen black. The sound was coming from Sharon's handbag that she had discarded on the armchair earlier. Careful not to wake her, he got up and walked over to retrieve it. He didn't want to intrude, but he also needed to find out whether the call was important enough to wake her or okay to go to voicemail. order to be able to dig her phone out of the depths of her bag, he placed the file Provenza had stuffed into it on the side table from where it slid to the floor unceremoniously and its contents scattered all over the pine flooring. Andy swore softly under his breath and checked the caller-ID. At first he winced when he saw the Boston area code, but found some relief when he discovered that the accompanying name read „Maggie O'Dwyer". Funny, she had mentioned that the job would take her closer to her kids and parents, but she had never spoken about her sister in that context. For a moment he debated answering the phone, but then discarded the idea. If Sharon wasn't even clear on whether he was "that kind of friend" it definitely wasn't his place to answer her phone when her sister was calling. He placed the phone on the side table and bent down to pick up the scattered contents of the file.

He read the label: Freya Simmons, he remembered her. A petite woman with white blond hair that was always in a ponytail who had fallen in with the wrong crowd. Drug problem, if he remembered correctly. He flipped through the pages of her FID file, information compiled meticulously, reports short but informative. As he reassembled the pages, he was taken through Sharon's entire investigation. At first there had been reports of irregularities on the job by Simmons' superior officer: Shifty behavior, lateness, dilated pupils. Later on, suspicious incidents had begun to pile up. She had begun to miss entire shifts giving lame excuses, had become completely unreliable, had engaged in a very public affair with a dodgy LAPD employee and, in the end, almost killed a pedestrian while driving under the influence. Even though it was drugs and not alcohol, the story was depressingly familiar to Andy. He had seen it happen so often that he had stopped trying to keep track and he was still ever so grateful that he had found his feet again before his own habit had had a chance to escalate that far.

The file was five years old and at first he was a little surprised that Sharon would have handled it herself. In the grand scheme of things, a young officer with a drug habit hardly seemed important enough to be dealt with by the department head. He and Provenza, mind you, were a different story. Their screw-ups, he thought almost proudly, were legendary. Of course, Sharon would make sure that she was the one to make them face the consequences. Or maybe she was just amused by them, he then admitted, because he had seen her try to hide that amusement more than once over the years. When he read on, going through Sharon's reports, it began to dawn on him. While she was efficient and to the point, knowing her, he was able to read between the lines: Sharon had not taken the case to punish, but to help. She had really tried to get the young woman to accept help, to go into rehab. Maybe that was her still trying to help people not become like her husband or maybe she was just a good person.

He glanced over at her on the sofa, out cold for now, and smiled. Little had he known that he would be so enrapt by the sight of the Wicked Witch of FID sleeping on his couch, her cheek nestled into the spot he had left vacant. His heart swelled a little at the notion.

He finished putting the pages back in and secured them to the best of his ability even though the ring binding didn't close properly anymore.

Officer Simmons had received a discharge, it seemed, and had been pointed towards rehab. FID files didn't follow up on people's lives after they had left the force. A discharge was usually the end of it, but hadn't Sharon mentioned back in that office with him that the young woman still sent her Christmas cards after all these years without fail?

He wondered whether he would have been as accepting in her stead. He had taken great satisfaction in calling the FID officers who had had to deal with his drunken behavior back in the day the most colorful names he could come up with in his stupor. At some point he had found his way again, but that had everything to do with losing his family and nothing to do with being disciplined by FID. Maybe it would have been a different story if he had been in the hands of Sharon Raydor back then, but he doubted it. He would have probably made a derogatory comment about her ass or something, because, truth be told, he had been that guy back in the day. He would have to do a meeting again this week, he decided. It was always good to remind himself why he was sober. And now he had another reason for keeping that up, because he would be damned if he lost another family that way. Sharon hummed in her sleep, but didn't wake up. He thought of the ultrasound picture in the pocket of his jacket. He would do right by these two this time, he swore.

Still slightly spooked by the notion that he could have ended up just like Freya Simmons, Andy placed the file back in Sharon's handbag and opened his laptop. The girl had been young five years ago. Maybe she had gone back to school or found something else she loved. Maybe Sharon had really shaped her life in a good way.

He typed the name into google and recoiled when he saw the results. Freya Simmons had died of an overdose only six months after her discharge. No newspaper had seen it fit to write an article on something as inconsequential to the 24 hour news cycle as a washed-up addicts death, but her facebook page held more information than he would have ever wanted to see. Now that he was there, though, he couldn't stop reading. That could have been him, he thought. It could have been Jack Raydor. Could still be Jack Raydor.

Some two years ago, a friend had expressed her grief about Freya's death even three years after the fact, accompanied by a bunch of sad emojis, stating how much of a shock it still was to her. In a comment on that post, another friend had answered that her boyfriend at the time was still torn up about it. Andy wondered whether anyone would have really grieved for him back in the day. Sandra, perhaps? His kids had been so young. Would they have even missed him when he was absent all the time anyway?

Poor Freya, he thought as he returned to the sofa. He bent over Sharon and placed a soft kiss to her cheek. She stirred and opened her eyes lazily.

"Hey," he said. "You fell asleep on me, Sweetheart. Maybe we should go to bed so you don't throw your back out on this couch?"

She smiled groggily. "Speak for yourself. I'm not that old."

He chuckled. "Sorry, Ma'am. Help you up?"

She allowed him to pull her to her feet and yawned.

"I'm sorry. I had you cook me dinner and then I didn't even last the first scene of the movie."

"It's okay, you're tired," he said. "Anyone would be."

"Hmm, let's get some sleep, shall we?" she asked, sliding her hand into his. He liked how she did that, her skin warm and soft against his. He stopped on the way to the door and kissed her gently, his hands on her back.

"Have I told you lately how glad I am that you are safe?" he asked her, feeling sappy but somewhat justified in it.

"Have I told you that you make the best pasta in the world?" she replied with a little smirk.

"You're unbelievable," he said. "I could teach you."

Sharon's face lit up. "We could make it for my kids when they're here for Christmas. They always complain about my lack of skills in the kitchen and very limited range of recipes- Andy?"

She looked concerned and he got why, because he knew he had to look pretty spaced-out there for two reasons: Firstly, he was almost sure she had just insinuated that he should meet her children, but secondly, and regrettably more importantly given their current circumstances, the word "Christmas" had just made him come to a vital realization.

Either Freya Simmons was sending Christmas cards from the grave or something was very off here. And then it hit him. A very public office affair with a dodgy LAPD employee. Employee. Not officer. A security guy, maybe?

"Andy? Andy, what's wrong?" Sharon called after him when he dove for his phone.