Partners

Andrea peered around the corner as the two men eyed each other distrustfully, studying each other’s slightest movement. “You gonna make a move, or what?” Chad demanded.

“Don’t push me, you big dumb ox! And move back a little, you’re breathing all over me.”

Chad’s eyes narrowed. “I haven’t moved since this farce started… and I brought my gun, so don’t try anything funny.”

The older man leaned closer. “If I were a few years younger, you jackass, I’d-”

“You’d do what? Throw your dentures at me? Yeah, yeah. C’mon, Old Man River – make your move and quit wasting my time.”

“Listen here, you overgrown primate, I’ll beat you so badly you’ll be sent home crying for your mother.”

“So do it already, Gramps. Jesus, I’ll be your age by the time you make up your mind – you need a refill of Geritol or something?”

Chad’s opponent sputtered angrily for a moment, and Andrea could see the light of impending triumph in her lover’s eyes… right before Joseph Battle reached a hand out and moved a piece on the game board. “Checkmate, monkey boy.”

“What? No way,” Chad argued, pulling the board closer to glare at it as if it had committed a crime. “You must have cheated.”

Andrea grinned and walked into the room to stand behind Chad and put her hands on his shoulders. “I’ll take the chess board away if you can’t play nice,” she threatened, leaning around to kiss her lieutenant’s cheek. “Did you lose again, sweetie?”

“Only because your dad cheated,” Chad insisted. Her father just folded his arms and smirked across the board at him.

After spending a little more time listening to the trash talk that ensued after the chess game and helping her father replace the floor boards – because that was really why they’d come – Andrea managed to get Chad out the door and into the car so he wouldn’t keep insisting upon a rematch. As they drove back to their house, she glanced over at her lover’s handsome profile. “Chad?”

“Hmmm?” he kept his eyes on the road and flipped on the turn signal.

“You let him win, didn’t you?”

The corner of Chad’s mouth lifted slightly, and he didn’t answer as he turned off the ignition. “We’ve still got time left for another coat of paint; how about it?”

“Are you going to paint naked?”

“If that’s what it will take for you to help me…”

“Can I take pictures, too?”

“Don’t push your luck, Crackhead.”

Andrea laughed as she got out of the car and headed to the house, stooping to pick up an envelope that had been tucked in the door. “Look, someone left this,” she said, turning to hold it up so Chad could see it. “It’s addressed to ‘the happy couple.’”

“What is it?” Chad ducked back into the car to retrieve the bag of brushes and rollers they’d bought at the home improvement store.

She shrugged and slid a finger beneath the seal, pulling out a card. “It’s one of those ‘welcome to your new home’ cards, isn’t that weird?” Personally, Andrea felt it was a little late for it but she wondered who would send them such a thing; she opened it and frowned at the signature. “Sweetheart, do we know anyone named Detweiler?” The clatter of the brushes hitting the sidewalk made her look up to see Chad staring at her with an expression on his face that alarmed her. “Chad? Chad, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”


_ _ _ _ _


Chad’s eyes focused on her suddenly, and his mouth opened and closed a few times before he spoke. “No, it’s… I just don’t feel too good. Probably something I ate.”

“I always said my dad’s cooking would kill someone one day, and now here’s the proof,” she joked, unlocking the door and tossing the card on the hall table. “I think we’ve got something in the medicine cabinet…”

He came through the door behind her and took the card gingerly between thumb and forefinger, as if it might burn him. Who knows? It just might. Andrea wandered into the bathroom to look for something for his stomach, and Chad slipped the card into his bag before sitting down on the couch to think. He hadn’t been called upon to do anything for Detweiler in a long time, not since he’d still been with Rita. It was beyond stupid of him to have thought that he was out of it, but now here he was, being dragged right back in. Andrea’s voice drifted from the other room and his hands tightened into fists – there was no way he’d allow her to be drawn into this. I just have to figure out how to make sure she’s untouchable.

“Andy, I’m going to take Meredith for a walk – we’ll be back in a little while,” Chad yelled suddenly, reaching for the leash hanging up beside the door. She called something back to him, but he didn’t stick around so he could later say that he hadn’t heard what she said; he needed to be by himself so he could think without having to conceal his worry from her. Andrea always could read him like a book, but this was one time he needed her to be illiterate.

Meredith ran alongside him as he jogged down the street, thinking hard. Chad had never had trouble figuring out things – the diplomas and certificates hanging in his office proved that he was smart – but the only solution he could think of had a price he wasn’t willing to pay. There had to be another way around this, but every scenario he ran through came back to the same thing. “I’ll give it a few more days to figure out something,” he said aloud. Meredith barked up at him in apparent agreement, and Chad sat down to figure out the most important thing: how to make sure Andrea didn’t find out about this. The pitbull snuffled around on the grass before flopping down on his stomach, placing his chin on Chad’s knee in an unsubtle bid for a scratch behind the ears.

When they finally made their way back, Andrea was nearly beside herself. “Didn’t you hear me when I said I’d go with you?”

“Did you? I didn’t hear,” Chad said, forcing himself to meet her eyes. She was going to find out, and she was going to ask him, and then he’d have to tell her.

“I didn’t even know where you two were! You’ve been gone for two hours, and-” She caught herself and clapped her hands to her face. “God, listen to me! I sound just like…” Andrea shook her head. “Never mind. I guess I was just hurt that you didn’t want me to go with you which was stupid, because we’ve never been really the type of couple who’s joined at the hip.” Chad unhooked Merry’s leash and the dog went scrambling for his food dish, nearly knocking Andrea down in his rush. “Whoa!”

Chad reached out to steady her, and couldn’t keep from drawing her into his arms and holding her tightly. “If there’s a choice between having you with me or not, believe me that I’d always choose to have you near,” he promised, tucking her against his body. Chad hadn’t thought he would feel up to making love (which is what she’d been hinting in the car) after seeing the card from Detweiler, but suddenly he needed the reassurance that their lovemaking would provide. “I love you,” he murmured, urging her towards their bedroom.

Later he studied her sleeping face by the moonlight filtering through the blinds and reached out to place his hand flat against her chest so that he could feel her heartbeat beneath his palm. Andrea stirred slightly and mumbled in her sleep, just loud enough so he could tell that she was dreaming of him. He knew what he had to do, now. It hurt like hell just thinking about it so that he couldn’t even imagine how it would be when he actually put his plan into action….but it would have to be done. Something was coming; something big. He didn’t know what Detweiler was planning, but if he was contacting him after all this time, Chad needed to be on his guard and make a preemptive strike against whatever it was. Andrea stirred again, giggling in her sleep. “Chad, quit it – that tickles, don’t!”

He smiled down at her and bent to brush a kiss over her forehead. “I’m sorry.”

In the morning when he woke before the alarm rang, all the urgency of the previous night came back once more and Chad flipped the alarm off and hurled the blanket to the floor before sliding down to the end of the bed. Easing Andrea’s legs apart, he set about rousing her as gently as he could until she was ready for him. Moving up over her quickly, Chad buried himself inside her with a satisfied groan at how wet she was, and Andrea’s eyes flew open in surprise before narrowing as he flexed his hips. “Cha-mmmm…”

Chad grinned. “Good morning, Detective Battle.”


~*~

“What’s gotten into you lately?” Andrea asked as she ran around trying to find her gun belt and badge after a hurried shower.

“The question is, what’s gotten into you lately?” Chad replied with a lascivious wink. “You left it on the table.”

She shot out to the kitchen after giving him a mock-dirty look. “The things you come up with.”

“You didn’t seem to mind what I came up with earlier…”

“That’s exactly what I meant, you big lummox.” She swung her jacket over her shoulders and gave him a kiss. “Making me late for work again with your masculine wiles.”

“It won’t happen again.”

Her eyes widened. “What, never?”

“Aren’t you going to be late for work?” he asked pointedly, nodding towards the clock.

“Shit!” Andrea ran out the door and he bent to pick up her car keys, holding them out and waiting. A few seconds later the door flew open once more and she ran back in to snatch them from his hands, then ran right back out.

Steve Romero called him into his office as soon as he got to SWAT headquarters, and the weight on Chad’s chest lifted slightly when he was told about the Chief’s latest plan. LAPD SWAT regularly sent a group of officers to train with foreign armies dealing with hostage situations, and it seemed that several key members of First and Second Team would be going. “It won’t be until Lipson and Hawkins come back, but you might need that time to, um, notify certain people of your impending departure,” the other Lieutenant suggested with a slight smile.

Detweiler couldn’t do a thing to him if he was in Germany for a month, Chad figured. And hopefully I can use that time to figure out what’s going on. Hot on the heels of that thought was the realization that he’d also be without Andrea for four weeks, when they hadn’t spent a night apart in nearly a year and a half. She wasn’t going to like this…

tbc…
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