Crime scenes had never been Amanda's favorite part of the job. She had grown more desensitized to them throughout her years in the field, being able to take notes on dead, possibly mangled bodies and not cry for three hours when she got home. (Her first year as a cop took an unbelievable emotional toll on her.)

Still, this was the second body in under forty-eight hours, obviously sexually brutalized and murdered by the hand of the same person. The job was never exactly uplifting and full of warm, fuzzy feelings, but Amanda thought the cases with a ticking clock were always the most depressing and anxiety inducing. Whoever was going on this sick crime binge had probably committed lesser crimes in the past that the NYPD had never been able to pin him to, and something must have happened to push him over the edge into committing these devastatingly violent murders one right after the other.

While they were observing one victim who must had gone through unimaginable pain, the perpetrator could very well have been causing it to another innocent person. She hated cases like this, where the loose cannon off on a crime spree was not only homicidal, but sexually sadistic enough for the SVU squad to be called in.

But even in her first months in the police force when each death absolutely crushed her, she had never been squeamish. Blood, bullet holes, stab wounds, you name it, she had always been able to endure it without turning pale as a sheet or feeling sick to her stomach. Her ability to view and discuss the most horrifying details of a crime without batting an eyelash was always a point of pride for her.

However, now that she was pregnant, it was a whole different story. She hoped that the first crime scene that she visited with Carisi earlier in the week, where she had to fight the urge to throw up on Carisi's shoes the entire time, would have her be better prepared and less nauseated for the second crime scene that she had been sent to with Nick. Unfortunately, she did not get what she had hoped for, and was again struggling the entire time to keep her breathing even and to not get sick.

This did not go unnoticed by her coworker and the father of her child, who reached out to rub her back when the officer who had first responded to the scene was facing the opposite way. Her resulting scowl caused him to drop his hand, and instantly felt bad upon seeing hurt flash across his face, before resuming her focus on willing her stomach to settle.

"Thank you officer."

Nick's voice brought her back to the present, and she quickly echoed the sentiment to the police officer in front of them before following Nick in the direction of the car. The air was thick and tense between the two of them and as much as she didn't want to address anything while they were working, she knew that the discord would be obvious at the precinct and she was not in the mood to deal with any questions.

"Look, Nick, I'm sorry I glared at you but I really don't need any police officers being suspicious of our…" she trailed off, not really sure of how to categorize the connection between the two of them.

"Relationship? Predicament? The fact that you're carrying my child?"

"Nick," she hissed.

What was he doing? Was he trying to get them found out?

"Relax, Rollins, no one is around to hear us."

"That doesn't mean that you should be saying those things when we're out in public! Or that you should be touching me in front of random police officers!"

"Not talking about it isn't going to make this whole thing go away."

"That is not what I'm trying to do. Ok, maybe I tried to do that at first. Before I knew for sure that I was…" she paused, lowering her voice, "pregnant, I refused to take a test and tried to ignore it. But do you know how that worked for me? I was still sick and unnaturally tired all of the time and ended up in the hospital; don't you remember all of that? So if you seriously think I'm trying to ignore all of this, I'm not."

"Then why are you acting so high strung whenever I try to address the fact that you're pregnant?"

She flinched at him speaking so loudly about their situation. Sure no one seemed to be around to hear him, but didn't being a detective teach him that you could never be too careful with dangerous information?

"I already told you. Because I can't afford to get caught! And neither can you! Liv might like you more a hell of a lot more than she likes me but if she found out that you were the father of this kid, do you know how pissed and betrayed she'd feel? I wouldn't want to be around for that!"

"Amanda, she's going to have to find out eventually."

She flinched again. Maybe that was the one detail that Nick was right about her ignoring and not talking about in the hopes that it would go away. Could she hide that the kid was Nick's while she was carrying it inside of her? It probably wasn't a good idea, but it was possible. Could she hide that fact once the kid was out in the world? Definitely not. Not to mention that if the truth came out after she had her baby, Olivia's reputation would most likely be permanently ruined. How could scrutiny not come upon a sergeant whose detective was pregnant with the child of her other detective and neither of them had been fired or transferred before the baby was born? She couldn't do that to Olivia.

But it wasn't time to tell her just yet.

"I know. But now is not the right time."

"And I agree with you about that."

"Great! Now can you please act normal around me while we're at work? That officer could have easily turned around and realized that something was up. Word travels fast, Nick! I don't understand why you're being so weird now when you weren't like this when we were… sleeping together," she said, looking at the ground, finding it just as hard to talk about their relationship out loud as it was to talk about having a child together, "Fin and Carisi both have made comments about how you seem overly protective and I've only been back for three days! The excuse of you just being worried about me passing out and everything that happened with the Patton trial is only going to be good for about another week."

"Well, you're pregnant, Amanda. Of course I'm going to worry!"

"It's one thing to worry, but it's another thing to tip people off!"

"Look, the fact that no one knows it's my baby does not change the fact that it is my baby you're having."

"I never said that it did."

"Amanda, I was around Maria the whole time she was pregnant with Zara. And she wasn't even an SVU detective."

"And what's your point there?"

"My point is that me getting you pregnant is the reason that while everyone else on the squad is exhausted and sleep deprived, it's ten times worse for you. You'd be exhausted just laying around at home all day, but you're still here working the same crazy hours that we are. It's also the reason that while the rest of us live with more caffeine than blood running our veins, you are only allowed to have one cup of coffee a day. But you don't even get to drink that one cup a day because the smell of it makes you gag. My point is that you being pregnant is the reason why you can't afford to skip several meals in a row like the rest of us do because we're so god damn busy all the time, but it's also the reason why often don't feel well enough to even think about food. My point is that this job is hard, Amanda, and I know you don't like to feel pitied but you can't tell me on good conscience that this job is now not harder on you than it is on the rest of us. And I don't want Liv to find out before we decide to tell her, but I'm going to worry, and I'm going to be protective."

Amanda stared at him with wide eyes, the shock stealing the words from her tongue.

She expected him to have a way to rationalize his behavior, but not one like that. On some level she knew that Nick cared about her, but she was still surprised to hear it come pouring out of him like that. But still, how much of it was concern for their child, how much of it was concern about her own wellbeing, and how much of it was guilt?

She bit her lip in frustration, once again unsure of where she stood with him.

He cared about her to some degree, she decided, but she also knew that there was a big difference between caring about someone in a platonic sense and caring about them romantically.

Did she want him to care about her romantically?

She had no idea.

God, she felt like a middle school girl all over again. But she wasn't an awkward preteen girl with braces, listening to her mom cry over her sister through the thin walls of the apartment anymore. She was a grown woman with an unplanned pregnancy with a man who she had no idea what their relationship was.

She remembered something that Olivia had told her that night when she had sobbed so hard she thought her chest might break in her home:

"You don't have to have it all figured out right now."

"Amanda?"

"Sorry, I must have zoned out for a minute. Nick, I really appreciate that, I really do. But do you think that maybe you could try to worry about me a little bit less obviously?"

"If it would make you happy, I could try."

"It would make me happy, Nick."

"Then I'll try."

"Thank you," she sighed, feeling like the incredible weight on her shoulders had been lightened ever so slightly.

"You're welcome. And Amanda?"

"Yes?"

"If there's anything, and I mean anything, I can do to help or make this easier on you in any way, please let me know."

"I will," she assured him, not really knowing if she was lying to him or not. It wasn't that she doubted his sincerity, it was that she doubted her willingness to ask for help.

The ride back to the precinct was silent, but more of a comfortable silence than any of their recent silences had been. Still, she knew that the bridge between them was nowhere near repaired, and that there was infinitely more to talk about, and that they weren't particularly skilled at talking.

But she felt the teeniest bit closer to him than she had earlier in the morning, and she supposed that was a step in the right direction.