#She already thought he was incompetent for not being able to handle Logan and showing up last minute at the moisture farm

[vernahateclub]

My theory for the entire debacle that was Justice throwing a deputy ceremony for a cat is that he was GOING to deputize the Builder.

But then, standing up on city hall, he realized how disappointed Unsuur would be and chose Captain to spare his feelings.

[mksc77]

Hi! Can I ask for Shandy, fluff, either 5 or 8? :D Thank you! 💜

Thanks so much for the ask, @allons-y--spaceman!

My Sharon is retired (by choice) and says “fuck” every now and then, sorry about it :).  She and Andy bought a house a couple of months after the event that didn’t happen.

The canon of Andy being an alcoholic is suspended for purposes of this chapter, and liberties have been taken with characterization, in general.

“Can we stay like this forever?”

After spending the morning cleaning, doing laundry, and starting a couple of large pots of soup, Sharon took a shower and settled on the couch with a mug of tea and her favorite blanket. CNN had been blaring all morning, but she'd heard enough about the administration's incompetence with handling the coronavirus threat to last her a lifetime. It was rainy and gray out, and the silence that fell over the room when she switched the input on the TV was a relief. After a few clicks, the opening credits of the newest version of Little Women were appearing on the screen. She'd seen it in theaters right after Christmas with a few friends, but she wanted to watch it again now that she could do so in sweatpants, wet hair, and no makeup.

Sharon startled when the doorbell rang, but she could tell by the way Poppy lost her shit that it was a delivery. She was generally a friendly dog, but for some reason, there was one FedEx delivery guy that made her go apeshit every time.

"Stop it, Poppy," Sharon sharply reprimanded as she pulled herself off of the couch. Poppy whimpered and gave Sharon the wounded “fine, get yourself killed” look of any loyal dog just trying to protect their human.  Sharon opened the front door and waved her thanks to the delivery man before kneeling and dousing the small box with Lysol. Raising two children had cured her of any germophobic tendencies she might’ve had at one time, but she wasn't taking any chances with this coronavirus mess. She saw Andy's car pull up and stop at the mailbox, so she put the box on the kitchen counter, washed her hands, and slipped into a pair of sandals before meeting him in the garage to help him bring in the groceries she'd asked him to stop for. He'd worked a half-day before Major Crimes shut down to work from home, unless they got a case, and Sharon had placed a grocery order that he could pick up without getting out of the car on his way home. Or so she thought. The first thing she saw through the back window was an ungodly amount of toilet paper. "Andy! What the hell?!"

"I know, but we could be stuck at home for a few weeks—"

"So you thought you'd buy a fuck ton of toilet paper?!"

Andy shrugged. "I saw people leaving the store with shopping carts full of it and thought I was missing something, so I went to get more."

Sharon rolled her eyes. "We just got a month's supply from Amazon yesterday, and we still had several packs left then. There will be people who really need it but won't be able to get it because everyone else is panic-buying."

"I didn't think of it like that..." Andy got out and started unloading groceries.  Defeated, Sharon joined him.

Once the car was unloaded, groceries were sanitized, and hands were properly washed, Andy got a spoon and went to the stove, practically salivating.  He'd picked up lunch for the two of them on the way home, but the aroma of the soup was too good to pass up.  Sharon shook her head and took his spoon from him.  "Nuh-uh.  I'm freezing that in case any of us get sick."

"But..." Andy looked longingly at the large pots on the stove.  "There's so much!"

"And we could end up with three sick people here, for all we know.  Or some of our neighbors might get sick and need some.”

“I guess,” Andy muttered, sounding much like Rusty had when Sharon had informed him that he wasn’t going anywhere unless it was necessary once he got home from work that afternoon.  UCLA was switching to remote lectures soon, and today was his last day going to the office of the law firm he was clerking for before working from home when he could.  “Did the kid finally come around on the self-imposed lockdown?” Andy asked, seeming to read her mind.

Sharon nodded.  “It took a minute for him to realize that just because he would most likely be okay even if he did get sick, that we might not be so lucky if he brought it home and passed it to us.”

Andy rolled his eyes.  “He didn’t understand that it’s not all about him?  You’re kidding.”

Once the groceries were put away and the overflow of toilet paper was stashed in the garage, Sharon opened the package that had arrived earlier.  It was the Chanel moisturizer she’d been expecting, and she twisted the cap off and sniffed the familiar scent she loved before putting it back on the counter.  She was surprised when Andy did the same.  She couldn’t quite identify the expression on his face, but she didn’t ask any questions and started unpacking their take-out.

Later that evening, Sharon and Andy were cooking dinner together when Rusty came home.  “Nuh-uh, wash your hands, put your clothes in the dry-cleaning hamper, and go take a shower,” Sharon instructed when he started to open the refrigerator.

“This is going to be a long ass few weeks,” Rusty muttered.

Sharon raised an eyebrow.  “Would you rather be safe or sorry?”

“I know, I know, you’ve already threatened me multiple times.”

On Sunday Morning, Sharon hummed and snuggled more closely to Andy when she woke up.  She hated what was going on, obviously, but she wasn’t complaining about the fact that he wouldn’t have to rush to get up and out of the house in the morning for at least a couple of weeks.  She slid one of her legs between his, taking in the lazy, early morning and the soothing sound of rain falling outside.  With half-opened eyes, Andy kissed her dead in the eye, probably aiming for her forehead.  Sharon put her hands on his cheeks and guided his mouth to hers.  

“Starting this quarantine off right, huh?” Andy murmured against her lips when it was evident that she had more than a good-morning kiss on her mind.

Sharon shrugged.  “What else is there to do?”  And someone’s going to have to convince Poppy to go out in the pouring rain to pee, and it’s not gonna be me.

Later that morning, Sharon and Andy cooked breakfast together.  Sharon made bacon and eggs for herself and Rusty, while Andy stuck to healthier things for himself.  Rusty stumbled to the coffee pot soon after 10:00 and made a face at the oatmeal Andy was doctoring up.  Sharon batted his hand away when he reached for a piece of bacon. “Just a second, everything’s almost ready.  Get some plates and glasses out of the cabinet.”  

“Fine…Oh, come on, you guys, can’t you keep your paws off of each other for half of a second?!” Rusty whined when Andy grabbed Sharon’s butt as he walked behind her.  “Social distancing, please.”

“Sorry, kid…Eh, no I’m not,” Andy replied, grinning at Sharon.

“Forget the coronavirus, I’m going to die from disgust before this is over,” Rusty muttered.

Poppy ambled into the kitchen and lay down at Sharon’s feet under the table while they were eating, having smelled bacon and knowing whom the pushover was.  As soon as Sharon felt the dog’s furry weight against her bare feet, she broke off half of a piece of bacon and slipped it under the table when Andy wasn’t looking.  He had been the one to find her and bring her home, and he couldn’t figure out how Sharon had managed to become the stray dog’s favorite human, and Sharon planned to keep it that way.

Emily facetimed while they were cleaning up, and Sharon quickly dropped the sponge in her hand and picked up her phone.  It had been less than a week since she’d last seen nineteen-month-old Marie, but she was already missing her like crazy.  

“Gammy!” Marie exclaimed, reaching her arms toward the phone.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Sharon crooned through the phone.  “Gammy misses you so much!”

Andy leaned over Sharon’s shoulder, absently brushing her hair back from her neck.  “Hey, wild girl!”

“Poppy!” Marie grinned.  Rusty leaned in long enough to say hello before going back to his own phone.  Sharon and Emily chatted for a few minutes with Marie piping in with random words here and there.

“You’re in a good mood, Mom,” Emily observed.  “You guys taking advantage of the quarantine already?”

A horrified look came over Rusty’s face as their better-than-usual moods and constant looks at each other that morning started to come together.  “Ew, Em, I have to live here!”

“Speaking of which, when are you going to tell us about your new boyfriend?” Emily barreled on.

“What?”  Sharon looked at Rusty, whose expression had turned to panic.  “What boyfriend?!”  Rusty was frozen, unable to speak.  Sharon looked back at Emily through her phone.  “How did you know?”

Emily rolled her eyes.  “Speaking of good moods, he’s actually had a few recently, and he’s suddenly been guarding his phone like Fort Knox.  My guess would be his ‘friend’ Logan that he used to talk about all the time, but hasn’t mentioned at all in a few weeks, probably to keep us from getting suspicious.  It’s not rocket science.”

Sharon looked at Rusty.  “Is this true?”

“Fine, but we are not playing twenty questions.  I’ll tell you what I want to when I want to.”  

“Of course we won’t—“ Sharon started.

“Hold on, Mom, I didn’t agree to this,” Emily interrupted.  “Now that the cat’s out of the bag—“

“I’m leaving now.”  Rusty went to the living room and started flipping through the channels on the TV.

“Poppy?” Marie asked, obviously wanting to see the dog, this time.  She had unintentionally named the dog with her toddler-tongue of “Papa” the day Andy found her and begged Sharon to keep her.  Sharon tilted her phone under the table to show the dog long enough for the toddler to be satisfied.

Sharon ended the call a few minutes later, and she and Andy finished cleaning the kitchen.  With a refilled coffee mug, Sharon curled up in the recliner and logged in to Emily’s facebook account on her computer.  St. Joseph’s was live-streaming mass for the time being, and she was enjoying being able to watch it in the comfort of her pajamas and not having to go out in the pouring rain.  The familiar scene of the sanctuary and the recorded piano music playing It Is Well With My Soul filled her with comfort.  

“You know, some people would take the break from mass obligation as an actual break,” Andy commented as he squeezed in the chair beside her.

“Oh, right, I should go ahead and tithe,” Sharon murmured in response to Father Stan’s reminder of remote methods of doing so, ignoring Andy.  She opened her bank app on her phone and transferred her monthly commitment.  When the service was over, she shut down her computer and rested on Andy’s shoulder.  Rusty had found How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, one of her favorites, on TV.

“Since when do you like chick flicks?” Andy whined in Rusty’s direction.

“I don’t, but Matthew McConaughey takes his shirt off a lot in this movie,” Rusty explained.

“Indeed, he does,” Sharon agreed dreamily.  “Ooh, Rusty, have you seen A Time to Kill? Mississippi summer, no air conditioning.  Talk about taking his shirt off.”

Rusty’s eyes widened. “No, but that’s next!”

“Oh good god,” Andy grumbled.

Sharon gave him an innocent look.  “What?  That’s not a chick flick.  Compromise.  Ashley Judd doesn’t look so bad in that movie, either.”

“Oh, yeah...I’m okay with that compromise.”

The first week or so of quarantine went by fairly smoothly, but after over two weeks of captivity, tensions were rising.  Andy was working from home, but even the paperwork had slowed down a bit, and having both him and Rusty underfoot all day was definitely taking some getting used to for Sharon.  Even though she was retired, she was usually gone a good bit during the week with volunteer commitments, doing things at church, and seeing friends and Emily’s family.  Being at home around the clock, especially with a needy, whiny husband and son, was a new experience that she didn’t care much for.  

“Andy, I closed the door for a reason,” Sharon said, exasperated, when Andy followed her into the bathroom one Wednesday afternoon.  Her annoyance rose when she spotted an empty toilet paper roll beside the toilet and a fresh roll on the back of it.  Was an inability to replace the damn toilet paper roll built into the DNA of men?  It drove her insane.  “But, while we’re in here, how about a teaching moment?  When you use the last of the toilet paper, the new roll goes here,” she explained.  “Not the back of the toilet.”

“I know, I know, you tell me all the time!”

“Well, it obviously bears repeating!”

A few minutes later, Sharon got her Yeti out of the cabinet and made a margarita.  One of her friends in the neighborhood had had the idea for them to take chairs to the ends of their driveways so they could see each other and talk without being exposed to one another, and seeing another human being in person who didn’t have a penis was long overdue.  

“What—oh, yeah, I forgot you guys were having a little hen party this afternoon,” Andy commented as Sharon sprinkled margarita salt over the top of her drink.  “And what is the purpose of this again?”

“Mo-om, I need to go to the store.  We’re out of potato chips,” Rusty complained from the pantry.  He’d been trying his hardest to find any excuse to leave the house for the last few days.

“Those aren’t a necessity, Rusty, and I’ll get some next time I have groceries delivered,” Sharon answered calmly.  She gave Andy a pointed look.  “What were you asking me, again?  Come on, Poppy, we girls have to stick together.”  Poppy looked lazily at her from where she was lying down near the window, soaking in the warm sunlight, but she scrambled to her feet when she saw her leash in Sharon’s hand.  Sharon hooked the leash to her collar.  “Want to go outside for a little bit?”  Poppy barked excitedly and wagged her tail.  Sharon kissed Andy on the lips and Rusty on the cheek.  “Love you guys.”

Sharon was a few minutes ahead of the scheduled time by the time she pulled a tailgate-style chair to the end of the driveway, but she was going to lose her mind if she stayed inside for another second.  Apparently, everyone else was in the same boat, as the other five had already started to gather.  Sharon situated the handle of Poppy’s leash under her chair and greeted everyone before sitting down.  She’d used the long leash so the dog could roam around the yard.  A couple of drinks and a long conversation full of laughs later, her mood had lifted considerably.  Which was a good thing, because as she approached the garage with Poppy, she saw that the dog had engaged in a toilet paper massacre at some point while they were outside.  Bits of plastic wrapping and toilet paper were everywhere. “Poppy!” Sharon chastised.  The dog looked up at her with the saddest of innocent puppy eyes.  “Oh, no you don’t, those puppy eyes are not going to work on me…Oh, god, who am I kidding?”  Sharon patted the top of her head and let her into the house.

Hearing the commotion, Andy came to the garage door.  “What—what the hell happened?  Were you not watching her?”

Sharon rolled her eyes.  “As long as she wasn’t near the road and I could hear her and had an idea of where she was, no, I didn’t keep my eyes glued to her every second.  This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t decided we needed to equip ourselves with toilet paper for the next twelve years.”

“Don’t try to pin this on me—never mind, it doesn’t matter.  Hey, kid!” Andy called into the house.  “You were just complaining about being bored, so we thought we’d help you out a bit.”  Andy got some trash bags from a shelf in the garage and separated a couple for him and Sharon.  

Rusty appeared in the doorway to the garage.  ‘Wha—okay, this is not what I had in mind.  Whose idea was it to get a dog again?”

After dinner a few days later, Sharon went out to the porch with her computer and a glass of wine.  She’d cooked dinner, so she’d left the responsibility of cleaning the kitchen to Andy and Rusty.  One of her nieces had gotten the idea to do a family video chat on Zoom after having to use it for work a couple of times, and while Sharon had been talking to other members of her family on the phone and FaceTiming a lot more than usual lately, she was excited to “see” everyone at once.  It took a few minutes to talk some of the technologically challenged ones through getting connected and switching to video, but before long, her siblings and their spouses and children were looking back at her.  Being in isolation was particularly problematic for such a loud bunch, and it took a few minutes of talking over one another just to get the greetings out of the way.

When Sharon saw Rusty join the chat, probably from his computer in his room, she knew Andy would be out soon. Sure enough, he appeared a couple of minutes later with a fresh glass of wine in his hand.  “Thought you might need a refill.”

“You read my mind.”  Sharon finished the last sip of her glass and placed it on the table in front of the swing before taking the other glass from Andy.  “This is why I married you.”

“I knew there had to be a reason.”  Andy kissed the side of her head.

“Whoa, now, we clearly should’ve set some ground rules,” Sharon’s niece spoke up.  “Rule number one, don’t be nauseating.”

“Good luck with that,” Rusty retorted.  “They’re either at each other’s throats or being gross.  There is no in-between.”

The next afternoon, Sharon and Andy took Poppy for a walk around the neighborhood.  As they approached their driveway on the way back, they heard the garage door from the house across the street open.  They didn’t think much of it until they heard hysterical laughter.  “What just happened?” Sharon called to their neighbors.

Becky held up a Corona beer can.  “Our daughter was telling us about some video she saw somewhere—the youtube, the twitter, I don’t know—but anyway, you put a Corona beer in the hooks inside of your garage door, then hit the switch to open the door.  As the door goes up and back along the ceiling, the beer will be upside down, so you follow it and chug it.  We joked about trying it, and our daughter laughed at us, so we had to it for real.”  Becky shrugged.  “We’re bored out of our minds, and that was actually pretty fun.”

Sharon shrieked with laughter, but Andy gave her a look.  “Don’t you get any ideas.”

“Too late.”  Sharon waved to their neighbors before they headed back to the house.  Andy didn’t drink that much, but, ironically, he would drink a Corona or two every now and then at the beach or a hot afternoon by the pool.  He drank just often enough for them to keep a stash in the garage refrigerator, a habit he was starting to rethink.  

Sharon pressed the button to close the garage door before getting two beer cans out of the refrigerator.  “Sharon, really—“

“Oh, come on, Andy, it’ll be fun!  You have to admit we’re running low on entertainment around here.”

“Oh, all right.”  

Once the beer cans were in position and popped open, Sharon pressed the button again to make the door rise and got in position.  She got a little on her face, but her beer-chugging skills from college came right back to her, like riding a bike.

Andy, on the other hand, didn’t fare so well. He coughed and sputtered as more got on his face than in his mouth, and he lost his footing and hit the ground as the last bit poured onto his face.  Sharon caught the last bit of hers in her mouth before looking down at Andy.  “Are you okay?” She managed to get out through choked-back laughs.  As soon as he nodded, she stopped trying to hold it back and started laughing hysterically.  

Andy glared at her as he stood up, rubbing his now-sore ass.  Her side of the “Corona Challenge” was mostly dry, as was her face.  “Wait, how did you do that?  You didn’t spill hardly any!”

Sharon shrugged.  “You didn’t know you were married to the kegstand queen of Theta?  You have to open your throat, did you never chug beer in college?”

Andy shook his head.  “Not much.  I tried a couple of times when everyone else was doing it, but I could never get it right…” He gave Sharon a leering look.  “I would love to see you do a kegstand.  Open your throat, huh?  That actually explains a lot.”

Sharon lightly jabbed him in the side.  “Andy!”

The next morning, Andy was still sleeping when Sharon slipped out of bed.  It was a little chilly out, but she needed some fresh air.  After changing into leggings and a sweatshirt, she brushed her teeth and looked at herself in the mirror.  She wasn’t as diligent about staying ahead of her roots since she’d retired, and last week’s canceled salon appointment had been disastrous for her hair.  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d put on makeup, but she was still adhering to her morning and nightly skincare regimen.  As she applied moisturizer, she put more than usual on her chin, as her skin was irritated from Andy’s failure to shave every day.  With a mug of coffee, her book, and her favorite blanket in hand, she went to the back porch and settled in the swing with her favorite playlist playing from her phone. 

A little over an hour later, Andy came out to join her.  She smiled at him and marked her place in her book as he got comfortable in the swing beside her.  He’d been annoying the hell out of her for much of the last week or so, but she loved his disheveled and sleepy state when he had just woken up.  She extended the blanket to him and lay on his shoulder.  “Morning.”

“Morning.”  Andy lowered his forehead to hers and inhaled the scent of her moisturizer.  “I love the smell of that cream or whatever…Did I ever tell you about why I kept that stuff after…well, after all of the Stroh stuff?”  Even a couple of years later, he still couldn’t refer to her as being dead, even though it had been a ruse.  

Sharon shook her head.  “I do remember being surprised that my makeup and clothes and everything were still there.  I was dreading having to replace it all and getting a new phone and everything, but it was all still right there waiting for me.”

Andy nodded.  “Yeah…I couldn’t get rid of it.  Every night when I thought you were gone, I would smell that tube and call your phone to listen to your voicemail.  I couldn’t face life without you, and that was the closest I could get to you.  Same with your clothes.  Having enough closet space for once would’ve been unbearable, so I left everything where it was.  I would’ve done something about all of it eventually, but thank god I didn’t have to.”

“Andy…” Sharon cupped his cheek with her hand and kissed him.  “I’m sorry it had to be done that way, but if—“

“I know,” Andy assured her.  “We could’ve messed something up and tipped off Stroh if we’d known you weren’t really dead.  You were right, the fewer people involved, the better.”  They sat in silence for the next couple of minutes, listening to the music from Sharon’s phone.

Don't you worry

Sometimes you've just gotta let it ride

The world is changing

Right before your eyes

Now I've found you

There's no more emptiness inside

When we're hungry, love will keep us alive

I would die for you

Climb the highest mountain

Baby, there's nothing I wouldn't do

Andy kissed the top of her head and pulled her closer to him.  “Can we stay like this forever?”

“Hmm, fine with me.”  Sharon nuzzled into his shoulder.  “And if people don’t stop being dumbasses and going out when it’s not necessary, then we just might have to.”

This refers to a hastily-written “story” I wrote right after what didn’t happen—a lot of you probably missed it, but you just need to know that Sharon faked her death to keep Stroh from going after Emily or Ricky to distract her (we already know they thought he was after Rusty), and also so Stroh wouldn’t consider her when he was using his m.o. of spreading the LAPD too thin and she could be an extra body if backup were needed.

The part with It Is Well With My Soul came from M’s twitter, and the part about the roots didn’t--I was already planning to include that before I saw her video :)

Hope y’all liked it!