While You're Making Other Plans

by Glistening Sun and Miss Shannon

5

They had decided not to tell anyone. Not too soon, anyway. This way there were hoping to be able to spend a little more time without constantly being made fun of. Also, as Andy had dutifully read up on, all kinds of things could go wrong with pregnancies in women Sharon's age. He had not told her what he had found out, but he suspected that she knew anyway. Luckily, right now they were far too flustered to worry a lot about what might or might not happen down the road. So far, everything looked good, or so the attending doctor had told them when they had finally managed to crawl out from under Sharon's blankets to have the pregnancy confirmed by a medical professional rather than three pregnancy tests. According to the young attending physician who had been completely unable to hide his bewilderment at two people their age coming in because of a pregnancy scare, much less an actual pregnancy, Sharon was already eleven weeks in. This week they were due to see Sharon's gynecologist and Andy was nervous as hell. Especially because Sharon kept saying that the man was "rather special", but could never be convinced to elaborate on whether that was a good or a bad thing.

While Sharon had the excuse of raging hormones for her odd behavior, Andy wasn't so lucky. The members of their squad were confused enough by the sudden changes in their Captain that brought a lot of touches and even hugs (Tao had never looked that taken-aback before and that was saying something), hurried retreats whenever she got too close to foods with distinctive smells and definite faraway looks accompanied by a hand rubbing her stomach. Only Andy and Amy Sykes - usually grinning like the Cheshire Cat - knew the significance of those touches. To the others, it was just weird.

But Andy Flynn going nuts from one day to the next was even harder for them to understand. While the changes in their Captain were mostly pleasant, even though a bit weird, Andy knew that they thought that he had finally lost it. Even before they had become romantically involved, he had felt himself becoming rather uneasy whenever Sharon decided to interview an unruly suspect. Aware that she was the boss, though, he had never really acted upon that feeling. It had become harder with their growing closeness, but now that he knew that she was carrying a baby, all bets were off.

She kept telling him that she had never encountered any problems at work during her other pregnancies and he couldn't very well argue how old she was now compared to being in her early twenties back then, but he couldn't help viewing her as fragile and in need of his protection. It was ridiculous, he knew, but he couldn't shake it off. Sharon was becoming more and more annoyed, he could tell, but he just couldn't help himself. She wasn't used to being pampered and she sure as hell didn't appreciate it. Every morning while shaving, Andy resolved to be reasonable for at least a day.

He usually lasted for two hours at most.

Today was going well so far. Pretending not to, Andy watched Sharon in her office, bent over the basket of peaches she had brought in with her that morning, hand hovering over one for a moment just to then go for another. Who was she kidding? She would eat all of them anyway. Sharon turned around and looked at him, raising her eyebrows playfully as she took a bite out of her peach, her eyes lighting up with pleasure as usual.

Andy absent-mindedly sorted through the stack of mail on his desk and frowned when he found an otherwise unmarked envelope with his name in bold printed letters. A practical joke, maybe? He looked around to see whether anyone was watching and giving themselves away, but no one was looking while engrossed in the reports they were writing. It was one of the rare slow days in the department and he was looking forward to taking Sharon to dinner later. After a moment's hesitance, he sliced the envelope open and retrieved what was inside.

His breath caught.

There was a photo of himself and Sharon, walking hand in hand by the beach while Rusty was slouching after them, looking mildly annoyed and playing with his phone. Sharon was smiling up at Andy while she was eating ice cream, hair blown away by the wind, eyes sparkling with endearment for him. For a moment he marveled at their obvious happiness, then reality sank in. He flipped the picture around and found what he had been dreading.

Stroh had scrawled the words on the back, not bothering to disguise the familiar handwriting.

"Enjoy while it lasts. I never leave a witness.- PS"

Andy dropped the picture, his eyes darting towards Sharon who was still eating her peach, looking slightly reminiscent of Chief Johnson eating candy. If he hadn't been as worried as he was, he would have thought about whether she was also groaning with pleasure. If not for those little sounds she made when she was enjoying herself, they probably wouldn't be preparing to be parents again right now...

Oh God, Stroh was on the loose and they were becoming parents again! He looked back up at Sharon who had gone back to work, focused on the report she was reading. Andy got to his feet, grabbed the picture and stormed into her office without bothering to knock, banging the door behind him. Sharon jumped, her eyes wide and her hand pressed against her chest in shock.

"Andy! What on earth is wrong with you?" She glanced out at the Murder Room where the rest of the squad was looking on with interest while Provenza was rolling his eyes and fanning himself with a newspaper.

"What is wrong with me?" he shouted, conveniently forgetting for a moment that she had no way of knowing what he was currently so upset about. "This is wrong!" He slammed the picture down on the desk in front of her, making her jump again. She carefully picked it up by its corner, paying a lot more attention to keeping her own fingerprints off it than he had. Seeing the smudges his fingers had left on it, she frowned up at him.

"Now who's the seasoned homicide detective and who is the rookie who was stuck in FID all this time?" she asked him sarcastically, studying Stroh's message on the back of the picture. When he didn't reply but just crossed his arms, wondering silently how on earth she could be joking right now, she placed the photo down on the desk and walked around it. He couldn't see her face, but he was pretty sure she was throwing a smirk at the rest of the squad before she snapped the blinds shut.

When she turned back around, her expression was soft.

"He's all about the threatening letters, that Stroh," she said lightly. "He should stop signing them 'PS', though. Confuses me every time because it sounds as if he was going to add an afterthought."

Andy looked at her incredulously when the pieces began to fall into place.

"You got one of these as well?" he asked her, his voice rising inevitably, but then Sharon was used to his outbursts from way back when he had been in and out of her office with disciplinary violations every other week.

She stepped close to him and placed her hand on his chest. "Andy, Stroh has been sending these ever since his escape. I am sure he is not actually the one who is taking these pictures. He is a psychopath who wants to scare us, that's all."

Andy couldn't believe it. His face began to grow hot and if he had had to guess, he would have said that his blood pressure was skyrocketing right now.

"That's all? A psychopath taunting you? Sharon, how can you be so calm about this?" he demanded. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"This is precisely why," Sharon said reasonably. "I didn't want you to worry. Provenza knows. Taylor knows. There are security details watching us. Not very good ones, I guess, since they missed someone taking pictures of us in broad daylight."

Andy shook his head, completely taken aback by the recent development. "You are pregnant, Sharon," he said helplessly. "Has it ever occurred to you how vulnerable that makes you? Oh God."

Sharon closed the distance between them with two long steps, looking worried as she grabbed his arm and led him towards her desk chair where she forced him to sit.

"Honey, I think it's your blood pressure," she said gently. "Have some water."

What kind of expectant father was he? Andy wondered. Blood-pressure sky-high and freaking out about Stroh, he reminded himself of his old Uncle Jerry who had kept expecting the Germans to invade the country way into the late nineties.

Sharon leaned back against the desk and placed her hands on either of his thighs, looking into his eyes. Andy reached out for her waist, his thumb tracing the flesh of her stomach.

"I didn't tell you because I knew you would lose it, Andy," Sharon said softly. "Provenza and I agreed that you would be better left in the dark."

Andy let out a puff of air. "You're in cahoots with Provenza?!" he snapped at her. "What's next?"

Sharon huffed, straightening up. "More so than you think. Don't be too surprised if this baby girl ends up being a grumpy crosswords-lover."

Andy's eyes widened. "That is not funny!" Then something struck him and he stumbled to his feet. "Wait, what did you say? Baby girl? How would you even know? The doctor at the ER said he couldn't tell from the ultrasound!"

Sharon placed her hand over her abdomen. "A mother knows," she said stubbornly.

There was a beat of silence during which Andy was contemplating whether he could get away with pointing out the obvious. In the end he decided to risk it.

"Then why is Ricky wearing pink in all of his early baby pictures?" Andy cocked an eyebrow at her, Stroh and the threat he posed to their family momentarily forgotten.

"That was an unfortunate inaccuracy on my part," Sharon said, not meeting Andy's eyes.

"Inaccuracy!" Andy was chuckling now besides himself. "You either get it right or you get it wrong, Sharon. There is no such thing as an in-between." He slid his arms around her waist and marveled at how good it felt just to touch her. "I'm sure it is a boy," he informed her. "We shall call him Andrew Junior."

She squinted up at him, obviously not sure whether he was being serious or not. "We shall do no such thing," she said with emphasis. Stroking his chest, she leaned into him to place a soft kiss to his lips.

"We're well-protected, honey. There is no reason to worry."

"Other than a madman being on the loose and wanting to kill you," Andy pointed out dryly.

"Oh, well," Sharon said playfully. "That."

Upon his frown, she became serious again. "I've been over this with Provenza, Andy. Stroh is not stupid. He knows that he will get caught if he comes near Rusty or me. He knows that we have police details and he knows that we have you now. He wants to torture us from afar because he knows he can't kill us."

Andy considered what she had just said for a minute, then pulled her close and rested his cheek against the top of her head. Sharon's arms came up around him and her hands disappeared under his suit jacket, coming to rest against his back reassuringly.

"If something does happen, you need to stay close," she said against his neck where she had buried her face. She had told him more than once that his scent helped the nausea and for some reason being the antidote to her morning sickness filled him with pride. "I'm not sure exactly just how good I will be at wielding fire extinguishers in a few months time."

He drew back a little to be able to look into her eyes. "You will attempt no such thing, do you hear me?" he told her sternly.

She rolled her eyes. "How would I when you don't even let me carry a bottle of water these days?"

"It was a very big bottle!" he protested.

"You need to be more relaxed about this," Sharon said gently, tracing his side with her fingers. "And I'm not talking about Stroh, here. I am talking about my pregnancy as a whole. Either it will go alright or it won't, but you hovering over me like a mother hen won't change it either way." She smiled up at him. "I'm fine, Andy. Old and tired and feeling sick all the time while consuming peaches at an alarming rate, but I'm fine."

Andy ran his hand through her hair and the mere fact that she let him mess it up in the office told him that she was indulging him.

"If Stroh as much as comes near you, I'll make sure that he regrets it," he said earnestly, breathing in the light flowery scent of her perfume. When she didn't answer, he drew back and let out a snort of laughter at the guilty expression she was wearing, having tried to reach the peaches while still enclosed in his arms.

He reached over and got one for her, placing it in her palm.

"You be good, Sharon Raydor," he warned.

"And you, Andy Flynn!" she called after him on his way to the door.