Notes: You know, for the episode with the most hugs yet, there was a distinct lack of the hugs I wanted to see. (Spoiler: this story contains hugs.)
Letting It Go
It had not been an easy day.
There was a sense of satisfaction that went hand-in-hand with solving a case. It was missing almost entirely from this one. Instead, Sharon was aware only of being tired and drained, and it was the sort of evening where the idea of foregoing dinner entirely in favor of an overlarge glass of wine sounded far too appealing. She thought wistfully of curling up on the couch and sipping her drink while watching one of her favorite movies, one of the ones Rusty liked to make fun of her for owning.
It wasn't meant to be.
When Sharon let herself in, Rusty was occupying the couch. He looked up, a sort of deer in the headlights expression on his face, and even as she remembered that he had gone to see his mother and by the looks of things, it had not gone well, Sharon couldn't help the way her face relaxed into a smile at the sight of him.
"Hey."
"Uh... hey." He shifted nervously on the couch. "How was your murder?"
Honestly? "I feel sorrier for the woman we've just sent to prison than I do for the man she murdered."
"Oh."
She studied his face. He'd been crying. The tears were gone but his eyes were still red, and there was a sort of puffiness around them, the sort that followed exactly the sort of breakdown she'd been hoping he wouldn't need to have.
She could wait until after dinner to ask him.
"Sharon?" She paused with her jacket halfway down her arms and turned back to look at him. He rocked back and forth on the couch, his arms clasped to his chest and his chin lowered. "Can I ask you something?"
It was an unmistakably defensive posture that he'd adopted.
Sharon left her jacket draped over the back of the armchair, and sat facing him, resting her hands on her lap. "You can."
"Is it hard for you to... I—I mean... is there anything that, like..." She watched him swallow and tighten up, his shoulders locking and the muscles in his throat straining as he fought for his composure. "My mom said that she could forgive me for being gay."
He lost. His face crumpled as he said it, and it was all that she could do not to immediately go to him and take him in her arms, like that would somehow keep him safe. "Rusty..."
"And, um, for what I... did." He lowered his head, avoiding her eyes this time. "She said—she thinks I couldn't help myself."
Sadness abruptly became anger, the sort of cold, righteous fury that she had used against Daniel, and Sharon beat it down, because that wouldn't help him right now. "I'm sorry."
"And I—I know she's wrong, okay? I know that now. But..." When his head came up, the look he gave her was almost desperate. "Am I—is that something that you have to overlook?"
"No," she said. "It's not."
When his lip quivered, she was already reaching for him.
"Come here," she said quietly.
She hardly had time to stand before his arms were already around her. He didn't cling to her the way he had that day in her office. He had been begging her for something then, like he'd thought that if he could hold onto her tight enough she couldn't push him away. He just needed comfort now, and reassurance, and she could give him that.
Someday, she would like to hug him just for the sake of hugging him.
"I love you," she whispered into his ear, and felt his cheek rub against hers when he nodded."I will always love you. Nothing you are, and nothing you've done, will change that."
She tried not to sigh when she heard him sniffle, and hugged him closer as she swayed back and forth. "And I'm very sorry that your mother is too sick to appreciate that she has one of the best children she could ever hope to have."
His arms tightened around her ribs.
"You know what the worst part is?" He trembled, but there were no sobs.
She waited.
"I can't stop loving her." Rusty made a strangled sound deep in his throat. "How dumb am I, right? You'd think after everything she's done..."
"It's not dumb at all," she said. "Neither are you."
Slowly, he loosened his arms from around her and stepped back. She could see tears he hadn't shed still gathered in his eyes. He looked away, wiping his eyes with the heels of his palms.
"Will you be all right?"
He nodded. "It's not like I didn't really see this coming."
She frowned at him, and stepped around him to sit on the couch this time, leaving room for him beside her.
"And... thank you," he said. "For saying that. But it's... I don't think it's just because she's sick."
"I'm sorry," she said again.
"When I was, like... five or... something." Rusty twisted his thumb in the hem of his shirt. "Real little. There was this kid, this other boy. He lived in the apartment downstairs. And—and I liked him. I really liked him."
He looked at her, his mouth slowly closing. Sharon wasn't sure whether he was seeking permission or reassurance, but nodded anyway.
"I think his name was Josh," he said finally. "We'd play sometimes, and I—I think I hugged him a couple of times. That was it. I—I never did anything else. But it freaked his mom out and then it freaked my mom out, and..."
She could guess the rest.
"I thought I'd done something wrong."
"You didn't."
"I know." He sounded less sure this time, but he must've seen her expression because he added, "I do know. It's just that I—I never knew anyone like me. Not until I... and I thought that's what it was. Being gay."
There was still a little waver of hesitation in his voice just before he said it, and she watched him flinch. She wasn't sure that he'd ever really said it before today. Not out loud.
"Come here," she said again, and stretched her arms out to him. He lay his head on her shoulder and she wrapped her arm around him, passing her fingers through his hair.
It hadn't hurt this much with Daniel, because Rusty had never wanted his father. He hadn't even wanted to meet the man, much less go and stay with him. And he'd been right. That had been awful, but they had been able to remove him from Rusty's life once and for all. Sharon had hardly thought about the man since.
But if there was one thing that she knew about Rusty, it was that he loved his mother. He always had, he always would, and there was a part of him that was always going to wish that she was with him, whether she was good for him or not. Sharon had hoped...
Whatever she had hoped for, it wasn't this. Not for him to have been told again that there was something wrong with him, and for him to be hurting so badly that he'd let her hug him twice, because he was still skittish about being touched, most times.
Even as she thought it, she felt him wriggle gently against her arm, and she released him.
He scrubbed his eyes dry again, the gesture making him look more like a child than ever.
She drew a throw pillow into her lap and cradled it against her chest to keep herself from brushing his bangs away from his eyes. Rusty offered her a tiny smile, like he was trying to reassure her, and...
Sharon couldn't explain what changed in that moment. It wasn't that she loved him any more or any differently, because she'd been calling him her son for months now and she'd meant it every time. Maybe it was just knowing that he'd given his mother another chance and she had left him again, and thinking that he deserved something better. She would work out what it was later.
She supposed it was nice to know that she was still capable of surprising herself, though... she wasn't entirely surprised. Because if there was one thing that Sharon knew about herself, it was that she liked to do things properly. She liked to finish what she started.
And—that was what she wanted to do with Rusty, provided that he would let her. He might not. She would have to broach the subject very, very carefully, because he might love her but that didn't make the situation any less thorny, and there were equally complicated issues on her end of the matter as well, but... if they could resolve all of that, and if she and Rusty wanted the same thing, then she wanted to finish what she'd started the moment she'd brought him into her home. She wanted to be his mother.