Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter!

This update was meant to also include more case progress - but then Rusty and Sharon had too many thinks ;) so in the interest of avoiding 8000-word chapters, the case update will follow soon, in chapter five!

Phantom Hazards (4)

It was the third time that month that he walked in to find Sharon asleep on the sofa.

Rusty cringed as the door behind him clicked shut a lot louder than it should've. But after a few seconds, when the noise didn't seem to have woken her, he let his shoulders relax and proceeded to take off his shoes.

He also let out a long mental sigh.

He'd told Sharon like ten times to stop waiting up for him on Thursday nights, but obviously she was determined to ignore him. Which was ridiculous, because this accomplished absolutely nothing – except maybe for making him feel bad! – and no matter how much Sharon disapproved of his schedule, his Econ section still ran from eight to nine-thirty on Thursdays and there was nothing he could do about that!

He managed to stop himself before getting into a full-blown fight with her voice inside his head. That wouldn't accomplish much, either...but he just didn't get how Sharon could sometimes be so totally...impossible about everything.

It came as no surprise when he started to feel worse about three seconds into his mental rant against her. With another sigh, Rusty gave up on the whole thing. They'd run through the same argument enough times already that he knew it wasn't worth rehashing. It was probably easier to just accept that for every Thursday for the rest of the semester, and possibly for the rest of time, he was going to come home to find Sharon passed out on the sofa from having stubbornly waited up for him.

Great.

It was even more depressing that this kind of thing passed for normal in his life.

Like the previous two times, Sharon again had a case file in her hands. She'd obviously dozed off while reading it; her glasses were still on. Glancing passingly at the file as he shrugged the backpack off his shoulders, Rusty was relieved not to see Philip Stroh's face staring back. Not that he thought that Sharon would bring that home with her, but... well, he was relieved anyway.

Sort of.

He tried to move quietly, so as to not wake her. She didn't look all that comfortable, half-sitting up against one of the throw pillows and with her neck at a painfully awkward angle, but she did look like she needed the nap. She'd been more tired lately, and shorter-tempered, too. Rusty didn't need to wonder why.

They didn't talk about it much. It had been his choice in the first place to do so, and it was his choice still, only... he hadn't imagined that not talking about it would still be so... heavy.

He just wanted to live his life as if Phillip Stroh didn't exist, but Sharon was making that awfully hard – and he was angry at her for it, but at the same time he couldn't really be too angry, because she hadn't said a word about it in weeks and he knew that she was trying, except...

The angry part of him wished that she'd try harder, because he still didn't feel free.

But he didn't know what else to ask her to do, either. Other than to let him be, which she tried, and to stop worrying, which she obviously had no intention of doing, and Rusty had run out of ways to get mad at her over that. So they just didn't talk about any of that stuff anymore. And he was by turns resentful and guilty over feeling resentful, and Sharon was just tired all the time.

Phillip Stroh was the nightmare that never ended, and much as Rusty gave it his best shot to put it behind him, sometimes it seemed like the entire universe just refused to let him go.

And he had no idea what to do about it.

He'd debated waking Sharon up, but in the end decided to just get her a blanket before he went to change. He must've moved too loudly, though, because she stirred when he tried to drape the blanket over her, and her eyes opened. "Oh. Rusty."

He grimaced, and whispered "Sorry," backing up slightly in case she wasn't fully awake yet and could just drift back to sleep. But Sharon blinked against the light, and then straightened, wincing a little as she sat up. The blanket slid down over her knees.

"How was school today?" she asked hoarsely.

He took that to mean, 'did anyone try to murder you today'. "Fine." The word came out a lot harsher than he'd intended, and Rusty felt bad all over again. He looked for something else to say, to soften it. "Good. Uh... we started the "family construction" unit in sociology. Today was all about the...ah, 'changing landscape of traditional family', and how these days the meaning of the word is changing to include all sorts of forms of family." He paused, and added drolly, "I think I've got some pretty good source material for my weekly response paper."

Sharon smiled, putting her hand in front of her mouth to cover a yawn, "I imagine so, yes."

Rusty gave her a onceover that he hoped didn't look too exasperated. "How was your day?" He glanced at the folder on her lap, "New case...?"

"No. Well – we did catch a case," she amended, "but this isn't it. This is more of an...ongoing situation." Sharon leaned forward to place the folder on the coffee table. When she saw his curious expression, she sighed and added: "One of our suspects filed a complaint against Julio."

"Oh." That didn't sound good. "Did he get into a fight with him or something?"

"No, actually. This complaint is completely unfounded."

"...but?"

Sharon hummed. "But, with the record of Julio's recent behavior... even if this time, there's no ground for a complaint, it can still have... consequences. Professional Standards and the City Attorney have become involved, and that's complicating matters."

"Is he going to get in trouble?"

She looked thoughtful for a moment. "It's hard to tell for sure." After another brief deliberation, she continued: "When Julio came under investigation by Internal Affairs, in January, he was given a certain period of time to work on improving the problematic behaviors. That period of time hasn't elapsed yet...so technically, there's no reason for FID to take any action against him, at this stage."

There was definitely another silent 'but' in there. "At this stage...? What about like, later on? What happens if he doesn't...'improve the problematic behaviors'?" That was such a Sharon way to phrase it.

She nodded to acknowledge that he'd picked up on the key issue. "Things could...become a little more complicated, at that point, yes." Clearing her throat, she pushed the blanket off her knees as she prepared to stand up. "But I'm hoping that Julio and I are able to address the situation, before it comes to that."

Rusty glanced again at the folder on the coffee table. It looked pretty thick. "Yeah, hopefully," he agreed. Julio was definitely one of the good guys. It didn't make much sense that Internal Affairs would try to get him fired for beating up some dude who was stealing from his mom. When Rusty had asked Sharon about that, she'd given him a lengthy explanation on rules and responsibilities and the particular importance of proper conduct for officers of the law...and he got it, except he still wasn't sure that he wouldn't have done the same, in Julio's shoes. It wasn't like he didn't know what it was to be angry about that sort of stuff. And if someone had tried to do that to Sharon, he'd want to make them sorry for it, too.

Not that he could tell Sharon that. She'd probably send him to anger management.

He only realized that he'd been scowling at the coffee table when he felt Sharon's hand brush his shoulder as she walked past him into the kitchen. He briefly met her searching gaze – and she didn't ask anything, but her head gave that little twitch that was meant to check if he was alright.

Rusty tried to compose his expression into something as nonchalant as possible, and quickly racked his brain for something to say. Luckily Sharon saved him the effort:

"Did you eat dinner?" she asked as she placed her empty teacup in the sink.

"Uh...yeah. Yeah, I grabbed some stuff with some kids from my study section before it started – I texted you, remember?" She hummed a vague affirmative, and he hurried to add, "Figured it'd be easier, you know, than driving all the way back here and then back again...and like... it would save gas, too..." He wasn't sure exactly why he'd started feeling the need to defend himself, but he had the uncomfortable feeling that Sharon totally wasn't on board with him spending so much time out on his own.

He swallowed hard and tried not to get mad at her over it, because she wasn't actually saying anything and he'd been having way too many head-fights with her lately.

Since she didn't look mad – she'd just nodded while he spoke, and sent him a quiet smile over her shoulder when he was done – he decided to press his luck:

"Uh, so I might just like...do that, on Thursdays...? Soc lecture ends at five," he scrambled on before Sharon could respond, "so, like, there's no point in just driving home for less than a couple of hours only to go back for the Econ section, right? And these two other kids from Soc are in the same section, so we're just gonna hang out at the library and then have dinner right before class..."

"Sounds like a good plan," Sharon murmured when he had to stop for a breath. She turned off the water and placed the clean teacup on the side of the sink.

Rusty sighed.

"Yeah..." He cleared his throat, then shifted his weight from one foot to the other. For a moment, he considered asking her honestly if she didn't mind – but then if he asked her, he'd have to live with her answer, and he very much doubted that that answer would be the wholehearted endorsement he was looking for.

He hated the way he was causing Sharon more worries, again – really, really hated it, so much that it made his stomach hurt.

But he didn't want to give up his freedom, either. Or whatever he had that passed for freedom, these days. However incomplete and awkward it was, it was still better than the alternative...and Rusty thought that maybe he could even forget about Stroh entirely, if only Sharon wasn't so... bad at it! It was even worse that they could go for a while with everything feeling normal, and then suddenly he'd catch her looking at him, or see an expression she didn't manage to suppress in time, and he'd just know what she was thinking, and... he hated that, too.

He scratched his neck and watched Sharon take about fifty years to arrange the dishrag on the oven door handle, and put a box of tea back into the cabinet.

She didn't say anything else on the matter when she turned around, though, and when she smiled at him, it was with no more than the usual amount of worry.

"Uh...so...I'm pretty tired, so..." He shot a look down the hall, then back at her.

"Don't stay up too late watching movies," she replied as she walked back into the living room.

Rusty rolled his eyes, his train of thought derailed. "Okay Sharon, when have I ever done that?" He paused. "Lately. When have I ever done that, lately? You know I'm like, nineteen years old, right?"

Sharon was doing a terrible job containing her amusement behind a tight-lipped smile. He pulled a face, "Fine. Whatever."

After folding the blanket he'd brought her back into a neat square, she draped if over one arm and reached to squeeze his elbow with her other hand. "Goodnight, honey."

He brushed her arm before she let go. "Goodnight. And I don't watch movies until too late...!" he reiterated to her retreating back.

He tried not to let his lighter mood evaporate when she stopped by the door to intently double-check the locks.

The night passed all too quickly, as most nights did, lately. Though it could feel otherwise, as she sometimes lay awake for ages trying to get her brain to shut down and her heart rate to slow, the nights were too short, and before Sharon knew it, sunlight was breaking through her curtains and she woke up feeling as though she'd only gotten half the sleep she needed.

It was entirely possible that she was only getting half the sleep she needed. That might've also been correlated with the fact she was certainly getting double the amount of caffeine she needed.

As she pushed off her covers, she reminded herself to take a new box of tea to the office.

The smell of brewing coffee hit her as soon as she'd opened her bedroom door, and she inhaled deeply. A glance toward the closed door to Rusty's room confirmed that he was still asleep, so she proceeded to the kitchen to have a glass of water. Another morning habit that she found oddly energizing. The coffee machine was a few minutes away from being done, but it would be waiting for her by the time she'd showered and gotten dressed. Water glass in hand, Sharon walked over to open the fridge, and peered inside a little doubtfully. She was neither too hungry, nor had any particular urge to make anything that required cooking – but there was only that many mornings in a row that she could feed Rusty sugary cereal before feeling bad about it.

Even if he was "like, nineteen years old".

In the end, she compromised by pulling out the peanut butter and a couple of flavors of jam, and chopping up some mango, watermelon, pineapple and strawberries. She set the bread next to the toaster and, surveying her work, decided that it was reasonable enough for seven-fifteen a.m. on a Friday. And Rusty usually dropped by the station for lunch after his classes were done on Fridays, so at least she didn't have to worry about him going hungry for too long.

The fact that he finished class early on Fridays was a relief that she tried not to think too much about.

She went through her morning routine, allowing the rhythm of her well-established habits to relax her as much as possible.

She was just finishing her make-up in front of the bathroom mirror, when a bleary-eyed Rusty dragged himself out of his room. College, even the early classes, still started over an hour later than St. Joseph's used to – but her son had quickly adjusted to the transition, and was now perfectly happy to complain about seven forty-five being too early every bit as much as he used to about six-thirty.

He shot her a half-lidded look from the doorway, and made a sort of guttural croak that she translated into 'are you done with the bathroom'? Smiling her good-morning, she exited and headed for the kitchen. "Breakfast's almost ready."

"Mkay." He craned his neck out the door about eight seconds later and also muttered something that might've been "thanks".

Sharon smiled to herself, and tried to ignore the pang of anxiety that shot through her stomach at the thought that he'd soon be going out of her sight again. Out into that terrible, wrong world which still stubbornly harbored someone who wanted to hurt him.

Sometimes it just didn't make sense to her, how things could be so unfair. She'd lived her life believing in a basic universal goodness, in a sense of fairness and justice which were maybe not always respected, but which could always be hoped for, worked towards, restored. But there was nothing fair, or just, or good, about this world that made Rusty overcome so many obstacles only to constantly throw worse ones in his path.

Often, when she thought about it, Sharon just couldn't bring herself to understand. If she spent too long dwelling on it, all she could come up with was a hot sort of anger, directed at the universe that seemed so intent on denying Rusty the normal life that he'd worked so hard for. That they'd both worked so hard for.

Each time that happened, she suppressed the anger and swore again to herself that that they'd keep working for it. Whatever happened. Sharon had absolutely no intention to ever stop fighting to get her son the life that he deserved.

But a small, small part of her was starting to feel terrifyingly powerless.

And she was tired. Sometimes, she was afraid of just how tired she felt.

With a determined headshake, Sharon rallied her thoughts out of that depressing spiral, as she did every time. She might not have been handling this as well as she could have, or should have... but she also had plenty of experience dealing with difficult situations, and she hadn't lived nearly sixty years without learning how to handle her frustrations and fears. Letting her emotional mind take over and panic was a great way to accomplish absolutely nothing.

She threw some bread into the toaster instead, and set out plates and cutlery. Her coffee had also cooled down to a reasonable temperature, and she once again inhaled the strong smell before taking a sip. By the time Rusty walked into the living room a little after eight, wearing mismatched socks and with his wet hair sticking out at odd angles, she'd set the fruit bowl out, had a small stack of toast ready, and the morning news playing in the background. She muted the TV as they sat down for breakfast.

"Thanks," Rusty said again, sounding considerably more articulate. He grabbed a piece of toast and put it on his plate, then began to unscrew the lid off the peanut butter jar.

They kept a comfortable silence for a couple of minutes, while Rusty entirely focused on making himself a sandwich and then eating about half of it in one bite. When he caught Sharon's look, he chewed an extra few times in a very dutiful manner.

At least he still recalled her lectures on inhaling food.

"How's your schedule for today?" she asked when she judged that he'd ingested enough nourishment to handle proper human conversation.

Rusty shrugged, his way of saying 'fine'. "Math lecture at nine," he mumbled. "And like I said, I already know most of that stuff from St. Joe's. And from Buzz, I guess," he added as an afterthought. "So that's always pretty easy. Then we've got some kids presenting in first-year Comm seminar... and Econ lecture until noon." He arched his eyebrows at her in a wry expression. "So basically, a really exciting day."

Sharon wasn't sure how she felt about the noticeable increase in his sarcasm levels, lately. But then, she also wasn't sure that she hadn't just grown more sensitive to it...and in any case, snarky teenagers were hardly something she wasn't used to handling. Current snarky teenager included.

She smiled sweetly at him. "Will you have to present in the Comm seminar, at some point?"

Rusty pulled a face that let her know that schoolwork-related reminders would not be tolerated.

But he nodded as he drank his orange juice. "Not until like, late March, though," he said as he put the glass down. "So I have almost a month to prepare. And I can't start too early," he informed her very seriously, "since we're supposed to present on a current event. So I'll have to wait to pick something that'll actually be 'current' when I'm presenting."

"Ah," Sharon nodded back, her lips pressing together to keep from laughing at her son's increasingly logical arguments for not doing schoolwork in advance. "Of course."

He looked impossibly endearing, so clearly smug about having made his point, yet also quite obviously trying to figure out if she was laughing at him or not.

He reached for the peanut butter again, but when Sharon slid the fruit bowl a few inches in his direction, he scooped out some strawberry halves instead, and compromised by arranging them on top of his open-faced sandwich. For a short while, silence reigned, broken only by the soft clink of his knife against the plate, and the quiet whir of the fridge. Sharon curled a hand around her coffee mug, enjoying its warmth as she let her thoughts wander to the day ahead.

After another few moments, she looked to Rusty again:

"Your classes are done early on Fridays, right?"

When he made a noise of agreement around a mouthful of sandwich, she went on, "Were you still planning to stop by the station for lunch?"

He gave her a sort of half-nod while speed-chewing. "You said last night that you had a case, though," he muffled out.

"We do, yes."

Rusty swallowed. "So, should I still come by, or...? Will you be at like, a crime scene or something?"

"Oh, no... I think we're well past the crime scene examination stage – unless we get very, very unlucky," she gave him an amused look, then added: "We have interviews scheduled for most of the morning, actually. So everyone should be around if you drop by, and I'm sure they'd all love the chance to say hello and catch up."

He sighed. "Sharon, it's been like, four days since I've seen everyone."

"Still."

Rusty chose not to comment further, simply giving her his 'you know you're weird, right?' look as he grabbed one of the jars of jam. Sharon wasn't exactly keeping an inventory of how much he ate, but judging by the quickly dwindling stack of toast, it at least seemed that the extra stress in their lives had not cost him his appetite.

She took another sip of her coffee, then cut a piece of mango in half on her plate.

"Do you have any plans for the afternoon?" she asked as she put the knife back down.

There was a brief silence, and Rusty fidgeted in his chair.

Though her silent alarms went off instantly, Sharon kept her expression in check, only giving him a casually curious look to go with her question.

The boy shrugged. "I don't know...I was thinking...there's this "spring activity fair" thing at the student center," he told her, "it's like, basically all these student groups advertising their stuff to the new students...? And there was a chess club on the list, and this cool comicbook-art exhibit...and I guess a bunch of kids from my classes are going, so..."

He looked so uncertain, hesitating somewhere between informing her and asking her for permission, that it made Sharon's chest hurt.

But the thought of him distractedly wandering around in a crowd of hundreds of strangers made her stomach hurt.

"...It sounds like it could be a fun event." What was she supposed to say? 'Never leave the house again'?

"Yeah... so uh... I guess I might do that." Rusty gave her another uneasy look, but he seemed to relax a little seeing her smile, so Sharon held on to the smile as convincingly as she could.

What else was she going to do?

"What time is it at?"

"Uhh..."

Oh God, he didn't even know the time. Never mind, she could find out from the school's website, she guessed.

As could anyone else in the world, if they had a reason to.

God.

She was well aware that panic was a ridiculously disproportionate reaction to her son telling her he was going to a student activity fair. But it was hard to rein it in, when her brain insisted on presenting her with images of Phillip Stroh grabbing Rusty's arm and dragging him out at knifepoint from the milling crowd of noisy, unsuspecting freshmen.

With an effort, she stopped her brain from going too far into contingency-plan mode, and tried to pay attention to what else Rusty had to say.

"It starts at like, three, I think..." he was frowning, trying to remember, "I don't know, that's when these two other kids from Econ section are going..."

At least he was meeting friends. He wouldn't be entirely alone in the crowd. But she couldn't count on that...people always got separated at this kind of event, and how well did he even know those other students, anyway? And what good would they be, if...

"...if I go there right after, I guess?"

What?

She focused back on the conversation a moment too late, and saw Rusty giving her an expectant look. Smiling, she cleared her throat and hummed neutrally, trying to reverse engineer whatever question he'd just asked.

"Hm...?" she conceded at last.

"Yeah, I mean, if you don't mind if I hang around a little after lunch. Makes more sense than driving back home and then back to campus..."

Sharon suppressed a sigh. Her son was all about optimizing driving times these days, it seemed. Maybe she should start paying for gas again.

At least she'd figured out what he was asking about. And it was ludicrous that he'd ask if she minded him sticking around the station after lunch, when all she wanted was to figure out a way to keep him there - all day, if possible.

"It does make sense," she agreed. "And of course it's alright if you stay until it's time to meet your friends."

The look he gave her let her know that he could tell exactly what she was thinking and not saying. But he didn't say anything else, either, choosing instead to focus on silently spreading peanut butter on his last piece of toast.

Sharon poked at the mango on her plate, and gave herself a stern mental lecture on managing her worry levels.

Seeing how half her brain spent that time trying to think of potential ways to discretely ensure increased security at the student activity fair, it was safe to say that her stern mental lecture didn't do a very good job.

I meant to finish this before June 8, but real life and those pesky adulting woes keep getting in the way! But I am pretty incentivized to finish it by June 15, at least ;) so we'll see how it goes. At the very least I'll try to post a few more chapters before that.

And speaking of June - did you guys see all those new promos?! It's like all our birthdays combined into one! (And with a very evil authority in charge of getting us presents, I guess...!) Please feel free to flail in my direction over any of the new information we got, because I'm not sure how to survive the suspense until June 8, honestly.