Author's note: I am so sorry, y'all. This was supposed to be, like, one chapter, and now it's a monster. I promise I'm working on an ending! And I'll try to keep updating quickly!
Sharon stared at her ceiling fan for what felt like a very long time. She considered crying. She considered screaming. She considered driving over to Andy's and giving him a punch in the face similar to the one that started this whole saga. But instead she just laid there, sweat slowly evaporating from her skin, the leftover mess of sex sticking to her thighs, going through every detail of the last two months.
Things had been going so well with Andy until the FID audit. And even that shouldn't have been the ordeal that it turned into. She always knew Andy was a hot-head, but even Sharon wasn't going to believe that he had assaulted an unarmed man without absolute justification. She asked Provenza about it soon after Delp had begun reviewing their cases. After he pointed out that three of the prostitutes were Nicole's age, Sharon began to put together the rest of the pieces. Early in the investigation, Andy had also commented that one of the women had grown up a few blocks from his house. Knowing Andy, he probably saw Nicole's face in each of the three victims. He probably imagined unknowingly running into their mothers in his grocery store. He pictured buying their Girl Scout cookies, and watching Nicole play soccer with them in high school.
Sharon knew the tremendous guilt Andy carried with him regarding his drinking and his family. Knowing that the murdered prostitutes had come from unstable homes, he probably equated the stress he put on his own family to the abuse they faced in theirs. While Sharon knew this was irrational, she also knew Andy. His threshold for empathy was unlike any she'd seen before, and in it lived her answer for why he had punched Rickman. If Andy felt a connection, a distant responsibility for these girls, then Rickman's calling them "trash" was no different than if someone had called his own daughter worthless. Andy hit him because he thought it could have just as easily been Nicole on the table in the morgue. So while he was obviously wrong in punching the asshole in the first place, Sharon had at least come to realize that it wasn't the result of an out-of-control lieutenant, it was the result of the man she loved, seeing all his own mistakes in the lives of the people he protects. Andy may have let his temper get the best of him, but now she at least understood why it had gone as far as it did.
Then there was the fight in her office. The whole scenario still didn't quite make sense in Sharon's foggy exhaustion. She remembered how the conversation disintegrated into a fight, and she remembered the soft panic she felt when she realized she couldn't be both his boss and his lover. She later thought the decision had been rash and dramatic, but at the time, a million scenarios of impropriety ran through her head, followed by a million reasons they would be better off as friends. She should have realized then that she and Andy could never be friends again, not after working so closely, not after meeting each other's families, and not after fifty sweaty and sleepless nights with their bodies tied in knots.
She hated that Andy had been quiet and awkward around her for almost two months since. She hated that she'd tainted the perfect trust they had in each other. She had pretended like it didn't effect her work or her team, but if Provenza had noticed she could be sure the others had as well. There was a new layer of tension that coated Major Crimes and followed Sharon home every night; a tension she was responsible for.
And now there was this.
As if maneuvering through the toxic waste of her relationship hadn't been hard enough, the one thing that kept her sane was imagining Andy was angry enough to let her go. Turns out, not even that was true. Or maybe it was. She was still dazed at the events of the evening as she replayed them through her mind.
The way he kissed her tonight was overwhelming and unfamiliar. They'd always had a passionate relationship, but this was different. This was urgent. She felt like if she didn't offer him her own breath, he might not be able to breathe. If he didn't take her body, his might collapse into nothing. He touched her like it hurt, but he had no choice; like he was suffocating and she was the wind.
That's maybe what scared her the most. She knew Andy had loved her, but now she knew he needed her. She wished he hadn't heard Marcken's flirting, but she honestly thought it would be nothing more than another recent, uncomfortable interaction to add to a list of many. She didn't think Andy was still so upset.
God she missed him. She missed his body on top of hers, she missed the way he somehow always smelled like he'd freshly showered. She missed the way his stubble scratched her chin. Most of all she missed talking to him, and it seemed like that was still far from being resolved. A lot was still far from being resolved.
Sharon was getting nowhere thinking about Andy tonight, especially not in the state he'd left her in. She got up and went to the bathroom to rinse herself off. When she returned to look down at the rumpled, half-made bed, she thought nothing had ever looked less inviting. So instead, she scooped up her pillow and the top blanket and headed for her couch to try and get at least a few hours of sleep before she had to face him again in the morning.