Partners

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He’d gone over his instructions several times so far, and the reasoning behind them still didn’t get any clearer – what interest did Detweiler have in one of the unsolved cases Hopper’s old man had worked on? Chad wasn’t sure why he hadn’t been asked for the murder book when he’d actually been working at Metro, or how long he was supposed to hang onto it…at least trying to puzzle this whole thing out had been enough of a distraction to keep him from rummaging through the liquor cabinet.

Chad looked through the murder book once more, frowning down at the picture of “Jane Doe” with a bullet wound in her forehead and what looked like a tiny hourglass on the car seat next to her. None of this made sense. He rubbed his eyes wearily and stood to walk into the other room – whatever it meant, he was going to make sure he had at least one extra copy of it just in case. “Yeah, but in case of what?” he asked himself aloud. If Andrea were here, I bet she’d be able to help… Shaking his head in frustration, Chad thumbed the “on” switch of the scanner and placed the first sheet on the glass.

He found Meredith flaked out on the couch when he finally finished making two copies of each page – it never hurt to be prepared – and opened his mouth to yell at the dog, but got such a woeful look that Chad figured some hair on the upholstery wouldn’t hurt it too much. “Just don’t get used to that,” he warned. Meredith’s tail thumped on the cushions feebly and the pitbull dropped his head back onto his paws. After several circuits of the house refused to reveal new areas in need of cleaning and he found himself unable to settle to reading a book or watching a movie, Chad picked up the phone and called his sister to avoid the temptation of picking up the only bottle he hadn’t opened yet.

Annie’s husband was away on business and she was still upset at him for what everyone else thought he’d done to Andrea, but she grudgingly invited him over. He needed to talk with someone and although his sister loved to give him hell over just about everything, Chad had always felt safe confiding in her ever since they’d both been children….most of the time, she wouldn’t tell anyone if he asked her to keep a secret.

She was waiting with her hands on her hips as soon as he got out of the car. “This better not be about you wanting to take someone else to dance lessons…” Annie trailed off as he glared at her and opened the door to get back in. “No, come on in - don’t be an ass. Well as far as you can manage, anyway.”

“If you’re just going to insult me…”

“Get in here,” Annie snapped. As soon as she’d hauled him inside and pointed to the couch, his sister settled into a chair facing him. “You said you wanted to tell me something?” Chad sighed, already rethinking the wisdom of telling her about Detweiler and the truth about his breakup with Andrea. She saw his hesitation and leaned forward. “Remember when you got that scar on your face? You were three years old and into everything Mom and Dad told you not to do – you just had to take your tricycle out for a ride even though you’d already been spanked twice for trying to sneak outside to play.”

Chad laughed despite himself, remembering. “Yeah, and you told Dad that you didn’t know that I wasn’t supposed to ride it. That was one cool trike.”

“Of course when you fell off and tried to make like a kebob and skewer yourself on the side of the wheel, Mom got the whole story from me about you bribing me with your slice of birthday cake from Andrew’s party.”

“Remind me of exactly how this argument is helping me decide to confide in you?”

She grinned at him. “The point is that I’ve been keeping secrets for you ever since you were born, you big stinker, but if something shows me that I’ve got to speak up about your pigheadedness to help keep you safe…then I’ll say something. As you recall, I never said a word about the time I caught you and Sandra Owens in the pool right before you left for bootcamp, and-”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Chad interrupted. He’d rather have a more secure promise from her about keeping silent, but it’d be a relief to finally tell someone. Clearing his throat, he tried to think of where to begin. “Remember…remember that time when Rita-” stopping, he frowned and began again. “Did you ever meet Rita’s brother, Billy? We’d been married for nearly a year when he called…” As he went on, Annie’s expression went from skeptical to indignant to wide-eyed with shock, only interrupting him to clarify one or two points about his explanation. “…so I just went over to Metro and got the murder book from Cold Case; I have no idea what’s so important about it,” Chad finished.

Annie stared at him. “You…you….you have to be the biggest dope in the history of the world, little brother.”

He sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I’m getting that.”

“I’m really tempted to say that it serves you right, what happened with Andrea… but I think you already know that.” Annie came over to sit next to him and reached up to place her hand on his cheek. “She won’t be any happier once she finds out what’s going on, Chad. And I hate to say it, but don’t you think there’s still a chance that Rottweiler might still try to use her against you? She could be in danger no matter what, and Andy’d have a better chance at getting out of that danger if she knew what was going on.”

“That’s Detweiler,” he corrected absently. “And of course there’s still a chance, but everyone thinks I’ve gone back to mooning over Rita – she’s the most logical connection anyway, since she’s already involved.”

Annie abruptly went into what he called Big Sister Mode and hauled him into a hug like he was still three years old, crying because everyone else was going nuts about him falling off that tricycle and getting hurt. “You look like crap,” she complained into his shoulder. “Have you been eating? It certainly doesn’t look like you’ve slept in weeks. At least that bruise you got from her brother has almost faded.” Pulling away from him, she sniffed and went into the kitchen to root around in the fridge. “Get in here and sit down,” Chad was ordered, and he obeyed slowly.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Well, you’re going to eat this anyway,” Annie declared, dumping something onto a plate and sticking it into the microwave – he wondered if he should tell her it was never a good idea to nuke an entire block of Velveeta, and that he’d never liked the stuff anyway. She started fluttering around the kitchen opening cabinet doors and glaring inside like there might be a fugitive in there somewhere, then scolded him when she realized what she’d just put in the microwave. “You should have said something!”

Chad rested his chin on his folded arms and watched her pull on a pair of oven mitts to get the half-melted mess out and into the garbage can. “I shouldn’t have said anything, I’m sorry.” All Annie’s fidgeting was trying to disguise how worried she was. “I should probably go…now that I’ve essentially dumped all of this on you,” he said ruefully. “I’m sorry.”

Annie flapped her hands in the air just like she always did when she was trying to keep from crying, but burst into tears anyway. “You’re so stupid,” she wailed.

“I know.” He stood up and walked over to envelop her in a hug to calm her down, ignoring the half-gargled insults being delivered to the buttons of his shirt – it was almost like Annie was more upset than he was about this whole mess, the way she was acting. “Look, I’d better go… Merry probably needs to be walked,” he said when she started to calm down. Chad drove from her house, intending to go straight home but decided to stop for a drink…which turned into three. When he finally arrived back, a Jeep parked by the curb drew his attention immediately – was that….?

He fumbled his keys and nearly dropped them when Andrea walked up to him. “Hey, Chad.”


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She didn't look at him, not wanting to lose her nerve now that she was actually here in front of him. "I came to talk about the house."

“Yeah, sure…you, uh, wanna come in?” Chad said, his speech sounding slightly slurred.

Andrea wondered if he’d been drinking. “Okay.”

She followed him to the door and shifted from foot to foot as he took forever to unlock it. “Were you waiting long? In your car, I mean.”

“No, it was just for a few minutes.”

He turned to look down at her, finally getting the door open. “Oh, okay. I was…I just came from visiting someone,” Chad explained, and it was like he’d punched her in the stomach. Why had she ever thought she could come over and talk to him without feeling like this? Andrea took a step back and looked over at her Jeep, and Chad cleared his throat. “I’ve got the mortgage papers in here, if that’s what you…what you wanted.”

Following him inside, she was nearly knocked over by Meredith who gamboled around her legs and began barking incessantly in a frenzy of excitement. “Hey, you,” Andrea said affectionately, bending down to pat him and laughing when Merry reared up to try to lick her face. When he calmed down enough to obey Chad’s command to sit on his bed, Andrea smiled at the pitbull who was still literally quivering with happiness and drooling all over the place.

“Would you like a drink?” Chad offered, handing her a glass of something along with a packet of papers.

“Thanks,” she said quietly, accepting the drink and sipping it slowly. Andrea looked over at him as Chad sat down across from her and reached across the coffee table to spread the papers out. She felt unwanted tears prick behind her eyes as she gazed at him – it looked as if he’d lost weight and could use some sleep, but he looked so… good to her. She’d nearly forgotten small things, like the way Chad’s hair always stuck up in the back if he didn’t keep it trimmed, and how long his eyelashes were. After going through the papers and having her glass refilled a few more times, the ache in her heart only grew worse as she looked across at him and she suddenly couldn’t keep the tears back any longer. “Oh, God, I promised myself I wouldn’t do this.”

Chad moved to sit next to her, and she allowed him to take the empty glass from her hands. “I won’t tell anyone.”

His big hands slid up her arms slowly and stroked along her shoulders before he urged her closer and she burrowed against his solid warmth. Andrea knew she should leave, but it had been so long since they’d touched…and besides, she was drunk and driving wasn’t really a good idea and what could it hurt to stay here just for a little while longer? Her hands fisted in his shirt and she closed her eyes, desperately trying to convince herself that it was okay that neither of them was sober. Chad’s fingertips gently tilted her head back and Andrea sighed as she felt him brush his lips over her closed eyelids, kissing away the last of her tears.

She hummed as his lips moved over her skin caressingly, looking up at him through her lashes. “Kiss me.”

“We shouldn’t.” But Chad’s hands cupped her face anyway and Andrea curled her arms around his neck as his mouth slanted over hers, kissing her with a gentleness that steadily grew into rough urgency. They slid against the arm of the couch, Andrea pulling Chad back so that he was halfway on top of her. “We….we shouldn’t,” Chad repeated, a look not unlike desperation in his eyes as he looked down at her.

Andrea knew that they shouldn’t, but the need for him was too strong for her to heed the warnings. She pulled him down to her for another kiss and Chad broke away from her long enough to lift her in his arms, carrying her into the bedroom they once shared. More tears threatened as Chad’s fingers slowly opened her clothing and he removed his own before he stretched out over her. She choked on a sob when Chad began to touch her, hands sliding knowingly over her skin in a sweet counterpoint to the way his lips and tongue teased and tortured. It would be so, so easy to forget that this wasn’t the way it always was, and it wasn’t the tender making up they always did whenever they used to fight…Andrea wasn’t sure what would happen after this. She closed her eyes tightly and tried not to think of things going back to the way they had been. All that matters is what’s happening right now. Don’t think of anything else.

Andrea stroked as much of his bare skin as she could reach, curling her fingers around his length as Chad shoved himself into her hand. He murmured something and kissed her again, tasting of bourbon and cigarette ashes. When Chad nudged her legs apart and settled between them, Andrea let her eyes close so she didn’t have to see the look of pleasure on his face when he pushed inside her slowly, filling her until it was nearly too much to bear. She supposed it wasn’t something you could forget, once you learned just how to touch someone else… Chad clearly hadn’t forgotten a single thing.

Arching under him as Chad steadily worked her to orgasm Andrea buried her face in his neck and screamed his name, clawing at his back as her release came a few seconds before he stiffened inside her and groaned out his own pleasure. After collapsing atop her in a boneless heap, Chad gathered himself to roll away and as the euphoria of orgasm slowly ebbed, Andrea’s senses returned. Shit. Shit. What the hell did we just do…? She sat up, raking a hand through her hair. “Oh, God. I….I need to go.” Chad made no response, and as she looked over at him she saw that he was fast asleep. “Wonderful.”

She stumbled from the bed in search of her clothes and went to clean up in the bathroom, unable to look at her reflection in the mirror. How could she have been so stupid? Not only did she give in to the feelings she still had for Chad, she’d let him see that she still had them and allowed him to take advantage. Except it wasn’t precisely taking advantage of someone who plainly wanted to be taken advantage of… Andrea stubbed her toe on the door frame and swore angrily, yanking her jeans up around her hips and buttoning them. Hopefully she could get out of there before he woke up – they’d both been drunk, him more so, so maybe she could use that as an excuse. Shit. What was it about Chad that made her feel (and act) like such an idiot? She knew better than this.

A quick glance into the bedroom showed that he was still sleeping, so Andrea tiptoed past out the door and put on her shoes as Meredith raised his head from the couch cushions to look up at her expectantly. “No, you’ve got to stay here,” she whispered, hoping he wouldn’t make a scene this time when she left. “Good boy, Merry.” Andrea rubbed her aching temples as she looked around for her car keys, and managed to slip out the door after tossing one of Chad’s boots into the kitchen so Meredith would think she was playing with him. She heard the pitbull start whining on the other side of the door as she sagged against it in relief, and ran down to her Jeep as Meredith started scratching at the wood. Andrea shoved the keys in the ignition and started the car, trying to convince herself that she didn’t see the lights come on in the house that she’d just left – she needed to get to her apartment and, maybe after she’d eaten an entire bottle of aspirin, things would start making more sense.

tbc…
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