Partners

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“No.”

“Aw, c’mon, it’ll be-”

“Not happening, because I said no,” Chad said firmly, looking up from the files spread out in front of him.

“Andy won’t mind,” Justin tried once more.

Chad gazed across the desk. “Remember when I said ‘no’ just now?”

“But…but… it’s tradition! You can’t have a bachelor party without strippers!”

“This is true,” Chad mused.

Justin’s eyes widened hopefully. “So you see the necessity! I’ll book some, and-”

“No, you won’t.”

“But you said-”

“I’m not a bachelor,” Chad said triumphantly. “I am a divorcé.”

“I’ve never heard of a man being called that! You just can’t make things up,” his friend complained.

“Yes I can.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Yes, I-”

“Would you two mind acting your age for five seconds, please?” Faith yelled.

Chad immediately swiveled around and leaned back in his chair to look at her. “I take it you’re finished with those reports, if you have time to listen in on other people’s conversations. There’s still plenty here if you’d like me to share.”

His partner dropped her head with a scowl. “Sadist.”

“And I think you have a few of your own to finish,” Chad said pointedly, eyeing Justin.

“Why don’t you just bring a blackboard in here and have each of us write, “I will not tease Lieutenant Shelten” on it 200 times or something?”

“Don’t tempt me.” Chad shook his head in bemusement as Justin finally slouched off towards his pile of reports – just as he’d known they would, both teams had barely done their paperwork in the hopes that he’d pick up the slack. Now they were all sulking over the arrest reports he insisted they do themselves, and the SWAT offices were the quietest they’d ever been. Sliding a finger beneath the collar of his uniform, he scratched his neck idly as he scanned the folder in front of him. A pair of very small hands slammed down atop it, and Chad sighed in irritation. “Which one of them called you?”

“It’s good to see you too,” Andrea teased lightly, bending down for a kiss. “Can’t a girl come by to see her future husband simply because she misses him?”

She caressed the side of his face and he couldn’t keep from leaning into her touch. “No. Who was it?”

“Justin,” his fiancée admitted with a smile, hopping up on the edge of the desk. “I think he was ready to call in a bomb threat at Macy’s just so he could escape you.”

Andrea shifted slightly, and Chad wished they were somewhere with a lot more privacy as her movement revealed a fascinating lack of undergarments. “Just whose idea was that?” he asked, eyes glued to the hem of her skirt. “And more importantly, when can I take advantage of that particular situation?”

She gave him the snorting giggle that always made him laugh whenever he heard it, leaning forward to rumple his hair. “Something tells me no one here will be sad to see you leave early, Big Guy… but actually, I was already on my way over to see you when Justin texted me.” He raised his eyebrows inquiringly, and was surprised to see Andrea bite her lip nervously. “I, um, had another ultrasound.”

Chad frowned slightly. “I remember seeing it on the calendar.” Was something wrong? No, she wouldn’t have plopped herself down on his desk the way she had if something had happened to the baby. “What’s going on?”


_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


She took a deep breath and scolded herself for being so nervous – they’d talked about this, and Chad had told her that it didn’t matter if it was a boy or girl; he’d said that it would be nice to have a girl, but there was only one way to tell for sure. Andrea hadn’t even been expecting to find out this time, since their unborn child had been as stubborn as its father and wouldn’t oblige the doctor by turning during the first appointment. She pulled out the photo the nurse had given her and held it out to Chad. “Here she is.”

He took the photograph and looked at it, then back up at Andrea when her words registered. “Wait… she?” Andrea nodded silently, watching the look of awe spreading across Chad’s face as he looked down at the photo. “A little girl,” he wondered aloud. “We’re going to have a little girl.”

Andrea blinked back tears at the tenderness in his eyes as he looked back up at her – how could she ever have thought he might be disappointed? “So, leaving early?” she asked softly.

“Yeah,” he said, still sounding stunned. “Let me just…give these to someone else.”

She barely stopped herself from sliding into his lap for a kiss, because she knew that they probably wouldn’t be able to refrain from some very unprofessional behavior. Chad pushed his chair back and lightly brushed his fingers across her stomach before raising his hand to cup the side of her face. “Why don’t you give them to Williams? He looks like he could use something to keep him busy,” she suggested. “I’ll meet you at home.”

Chad must have been speeding the entire way there, since it only seemed like she had been home for five minutes when the door flew open and she was hauled into the arms of her fiancé. “Did you tell anyone else? You didn’t, right?” he asked hopefully, clearly wanting so badly to be the first to know that she had to laugh.

“You were the first to know,” she reassured him. “Well, besides the nurses.”

“You told the nurses? Why’d you go and do that for?” Chad scolded before scooping her up and carrying her into their bedroom. “And what did you do with Merry?”

“I dropped him off at the groomer,” she said breathlessly as he deposited her on the bed and climbed up next to her.

“Good, he smelled.” Chad hooked a finger in the hem of her top and lifted it to expose her softly rounded stomach. Placing a big hand atop the ‘speed bump’, as he had taken to calling it, he bent down to kiss her belly. “What will we name her?”

Andrea reached down to run her fingers through his hair. “I think we have plenty of time for that.”

He nuzzled his face against her stomach and sighed. “I guess so.”

She caught her breath when Chad began to slide a hand up her shirt. “You really don’t mind that it’s a girl?”

“Are you kidding? There’s no way that the world can handle yet another Shelten male,” Chad teased. “Now will you shut up? I’m trying to work here.”

“Sorry.”


Lying in the circle of his arms an hour later, Andrea sighed as Chad smoothed her hair back from her face and twined a few strands around his left index finger. “Hawkins wants to throw me a party at one of the strip joints downtown – I told him no.”

“Isn’t that where it’s traditionally supposed to be? You can’t have a bachelor party without strippers.”

“What are you, agreeing with him?” Chad asked, giving her hair a playful tug. “Thought you were supposed to be on my side.”

Andrea wriggled around to curl her arms around her lieutenant’s neck. “I am on your side. Not to mention beneath you, and on top of you...”

“Detective Battle! If your father could hear you!” Chad tsked at her disapprovingly even as hauled her closer. “He’d advise me to wash your mouth out with soap, but I’m afraid I don’t have any in the bedroom. I do have something else, though,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.

“That’s the most appalling thing I’ve ever heard. Tell me more.”

“Why don’t you tell me more about this sudden nonchalance regarding strippers?” Chad countered.

Andrea laughed and snuggled against her lover, slipping a hand between their bodies to caress him lightly. “I wouldn’t want to defy tradition, now would I? Besides, I’m far more curious about why you don’t seem to want any of them around you; you’re not gay or anything, are you?”

“Keep doing that and you’ll see just how heterosexual I really am, little lady,” Chad warned.


_ _ _ _ _ _

In retrospect, it probably would have been a better idea to have simply clued everyone else in about Andrea’s pregnancy soon after he had found out. Even taking out a full page ad in Variety would have been less of a headache than coming into the SWAT offices and discovering that they’d accidentally left the sonogram print-out on his desk. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Faith screamed in his face.

Chad put his finger in an ear and drilled it briefly. “Tell you what?”

His partner whipped out the picture of his unborn daughter and flourished it in front of his face. “THIS!”

“Isn’t it a little early to be shrieking like a banshee? Give me that,” he said irritably, snatching the picture away from her. “Where’d you get this, anyway?”

Faith followed him up the stairs. “It was on your desk. We were talking about why you never told me about it,” she insisted.

“It never came up. And can we stop referring to my daughter as it, please?”

Her eyes immediately started to mist up. “It’s a girl? Oh, Chad…!” He rolled his eyes when she raised her voice to a shout. “Hey, Justin! It’s a girl!”

The rest of Second Team nearly mobbed him as he walked through the door, and only the expectant look on Romero’s face stopped him from turning around and walking back down the stairs. “Shelten, get your ass over here – we’ve got work to do.”

“Thank God.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Chad reached for the pile of warrants on his friend’s desk, only to have Steve slide them out of reach. “Hey!”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Not you too,” Chad complained. “Look, I was going to tell you – the time wasn’t right, that’s all…”

“What, were you gonna wait until she gave birth? Jesus, Shelten! Don’t you realize that something like this is exactly the excuse I need to break into those cigars Shauna hates so much?” Steve lectured.

Chad lunged across the desk for the warrants. “How inconsiderate of me.” Thumbing through the pile, he separated a few. “We’ll take these – I suddenly feel like breaking down a door or two.”

“You’re supposed to be happy about becoming a father.”

“I am,” Chad protested. “I just …didn’t want anyone to know until we decided they could know it,” he admitted ruefully.

Steve shook his head wonderingly. “I have no clue why Andy puts up with your shit.”

“That makes two of us.”


tbc…
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