A/N: This story hopefully will satisfy your and my desire for a M/N pairing at the end of the Monk series, if the TV show itself doesn't deliver. I for one think they belong together and many episodes have supported a possibility for M/N. As you are probably aware, there are spoilers for what happens in Mr. Monk and the End Part I (but not part II, at least until after it runs this Friday--because I don't know what'll happen!) Please read and review!

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Monk nor am I making any money from this.

"What am I supposed to do?" Adrian Monk moaned, his voice breaking. "Is this what everyone has to go through when they're dying?"

Monk sat on his couch in his plaid robe, a cool washcloth on his forehead. It was six in the evening and the streetlights were just beginning to peek through Monk's Venetian blinds. His house, though impeccably clean, felt stuffy and uncomfortable. There was a different feel about his apartment tonight. The atmosphere, for once, would not first be described as orderly—it was, instead, a place of utter despair. His assistant Natalie Teeger sat next to him, watching him carefully.

"Don't say that word, Mr. Monk," she replied hastily, sniffling afterwards. Monk didn't so much as flinch, allowing his assistant's body, namely, the side of her running from her shoulder to her knee, to rest against his own without even acknowledging it. Her eyes and nose were red and swollen, hair unmade and hanging greasily along her face, wholly unnoticed.

"It's true though, Natalie. You heard the doctor. Two or three days. Forty-eight or seventy-two hours… well, even less than that now."

She watched his eyes as the lids became heavy and then snapped up in a drunken stupor kind of way, his voice weak and ragged.

"Maybe you should get some sleep," she suggested. "You've been awake now for an entire night. That's not good for anyone to do to their body."

"Didn't you just hear me?! I have three days to live! I can't spend the last hours of my life sleeping! I'll be sleeping soon enough."

"You can do whatever you want to do. There's no set course."

He turned to her, eyelids no longer heavy. She could see beads of sweat rolling down his cheeks—or at least she hoped it was sweat.

"What do dying people typically do?"

"Why are you asking me?" she replied with an undercurrent of irritation. She was at wit's end. The revelation that the poison in Monk's system would kill him within the next three days had taken a lot out of her—basically everything, really. She'd never had to comfort a dying person before—and certainly never someone so close to her.

"Is there something I'm supposed to be doing?" he cried, interrupting her thoughts. "It's just—people die all the time, and yet there's no way of knowing what—"

"I don't know," she replied honestly, interrupting his depressing observations.

"I feel like I should be doing something, being as I know I'm going to die. I have this… time, you know? Unlike Trudy and Mitch and all the murder victims over the years…."

Suddenly she flinched as if burned. Monk flinched in turn, gaping at her with shock. Her mouth in a grimace, forehead exposing lines never before revealed, she finally spoke.

"Ahh! Please don't say that word, Mr. Monk! Do you want me to start crying again?"

"No," he mumbled, voice contrite. "Because then I'll do it too and we'll both be messes. Besides, I think we just ran out of Kleenex a half-hour ago anyway…"

"Actually, we ran out two hours ago. I've been using paper towels since then," she responded.

They paused for a minute or so in complete silence. The silence was oddly comforting, as if no words needed to be exchanged between them in order for their feelings to be made clear.

"Where's Julie?" Monk suddenly blurted, wiping his nose on his sleeve. Natalie was taken aback.

"She's with my parents," she explained. "She didn't want to go, but—"

"You should be with her, Natalie. She's all alone and probably confused and upset…."

"She's got my parents and her boyfriend there with her. I'm not leaving you."

"What about your boyfriend? He's probably concerned about you—"

"He'll live," she snapped, shutting her mouth with a grimace, immediately aware of the way her choice of words sounded.

"Yeah, unlike me," Adrian replied with a groan. "You'd be much better off forgetting about me," he murmured, voice barely above a whisper. "Why stay? As you know, there'll be… vomiting…."

Natalie slapped his arm lightly, her face instantly upset. Already the tears were returning, as she gathered the courage to speak.

"Because I love you and care about you, Mr. Monk. There's no other place in the world I'd rather be right now than—"

"Wait… what?" he said, voice scratchy and barely intelligible.

She instantaneously blushed. The word hadn't been meant in a romantic sense just now, yet her response to his questioning it suggested otherwise, she realized. His interruption flustered her a bit, and she was tongue-tied.

"I said I want to be here with y—"

"No. Before that," he said with a movement of his finger.

A tear slipped down her cheek. This was too much. Did he really miss what she had said, or did he simply want to know that someone loved him and cared about him? She'd said the word before, though including others with herself, like "we," or referring nonspecifically to his "friends." Of course, Monk surely had to deduce she had meant herself in those references, for he knew very well that he had few true friends, including herself, Captain Stottlemeyer, and Randy Disher. Perhaps he just wanted to hear the word again….

"I—I said that I'm staying because…" Why oh why was it so hard to repeat? Maybe it was because this time he was listening for it, his eyes glistening in the dim light of his living room.

"—I'm staying with you because I love you. I care about—"

"You love me."

His tone was of disbelief as he looked directly at her. He was making a face of utter incredulity, his eyes narrowed, mouth drawn up at the edges, similar to his expression when the captain had presented him with that small wooden box containing his badge. She felt cornered, caught. Was it really that difficult for him to believe that he could be loved? Natalie instantly felt a surge of pity and swallowed it, yet there it was again, reappearing in the form of tears, tears that now unabashedly slid down her cheeks. She wiped at her face with her fingertips, unable to hide the rush of emotions that flooded her. She loved him, of that she was certain… but did she love him as more than just a motherly, protective, compassionate kind of love?

"Yes."

His physical response was immediate. From her position leaning against him, she felt him inhale a breath and hold it in as he adjusted his shoulders. When the time came again for her to wipe her eyes, her hand was not able to reach its target—Adrian had put his arm over her forearm. His hand moved on top of hers, the palm of his dry hand against the top of her damp, tear-soaked hand.

"Thank you," he replied dully, hopelessly, "—but I don't want you to feel that you have to mother me because you feel obligated by some kind of maternal—"

"It's not that." She looked down at his hand. It was still on top of her hand, unmoving and by no means acting antsy.

"Not what?"

Somehow he was confused. She could see it in the wrinkling of his brow, the crookedness of his mouth. How could he, a famous detective, have no idea how she felt about him? The odds of him missing every single look, every single touch, and every single compliment that hinted at her sentiments were astronomical.

"It's not a motherly love," she replied curtly.

"Really." He was staring unabashedly at her now. She diverted her eyes, unable to look him in the eye.

"Yes. Really."

"Sisterly?"

"No."

He still looked perplexed. The response of disbelief was irritating. A tense silence fell between them for almost a minute, but it felt like an hour to Natalie. She hoped that he'd stop staring at her, hoped he'd do something, anything to make the silence end. Would he mention Lieutenant Albright again? That would be incredibly awkward. As much as she felt she and Albright made a good match, for all of Albright's mental stability and continual calmness, she found herself hoping he'd have some kind of quirk, some kind of crack in his flawless armor. Not quite as quirky as Monk, of course, but she wished for him to be just more—human. Human, with passion and devotion and obsession so deep it could not be washed away. Adrian Monk had been hopelessly in love with one woman for more than 19 years and Albright had mentioned to her on his submarine that he let a past fiancée walk. Yes, for Albright to ever think about 'living with' her, he had some things to work on.

She had just admitted that she loved Monk and not in a motherly or sisterly sense. She was not at liberty to make such a confession, what with a boyfriend a phone call away. The question remained: what in the world was Adrian going to say next?

A/N: Please, pretty please, review! I should be able to post sometime this week before the final Monk episode. I haven't yet written the next chapter so a lot of feedback will help push the words on through my skull.