Officer Alex Hansen had been intrigued by the relationship between Swarek and McNally ever since he had transferred to 15th six months ago.

He knew the relationship between partners was a special one. Hell, in his fifteen years on the beat, he had had three partners, each of them remarkable in their own way. They had placed their lives in each others' hands every day, and the bond that formed from that implicit trust was near unbreakable.

He knew that partners of opposite sex sometimes became more than partners, crossing the line between professional and personal. Hell, his cousin Lisa had ended up married to her partner of four years. But never in his entire career, both at 11th and 21st, had he ever encountered two partners so...tangled in each other.

At first, he thought that the locker room conversations at the end of the shift were just a part of 15th, for whenever McNally came into the men's room and sat on the bench next to Swarek's locker, none of the other officers seemed to give any attention to her, and he had more than once seen Swarek enter the women's room without any of the female officers batting an eye, but he quickly realized that no one else did that.

There were no other male-female partners that had after-shift locker room chats with each other. He had certainly never seen it happen at either 11th or 21st, and was pretty sure it didn't happen at any other precinct, so he had just chalked it up to the officers of 15th being lenient to a married couple.

But they weren't married. Hell, they weren't even dating. In fact, McNally was engaged to that blond detective, Lars - no, Luke Callaghan. It had come as a shock to see the two of them locking lips at the Penny about a month after he had joined the family of 15th, for he had always assumed she was with Swarek.

Their interactions - coffee, lunch with other officers, squad room debates, and especially the locker room talks - were ones of two people in love. It was more obvious on Swarek's side (did that man seriously not know how to mask his emotions in his longing glances?), but there had definitely been occasions where McNally had betrayed her feelings towards her partner. Callaghan's remarkable case-closure rate was well-known through the precinct, but in all honesty, he couldn't be that good of a detective if he was really that oblivious when it came to the fact that his fiancee's heart wasn't entirely his.

He had thought that the Swarek-McNally locker chit-chats would end once her engagement had been announced, but they hadn't. They had actually grown longer, more intimate, more hush-hush, if that was at all possible. It was really, really weird.

There had been a rumor circulating around the precinct recently that the McNally-Callaghan engagement had been called off. There were various theories, ranging from financial problems to secret lovers on both ends, but he had been a cop long enough to figure out that Callaghan had cheated with Rosati.

Okay, well, he hadn't exactly deducted that. He had overheard Diaz bitching to Epstein like a little girl about how he now had an overly-expensive suit collecting dust in his closet thanks to Callaghan's inability to keep it in his pants.

(Alex was a happily married man, but if he was in Callaghan's position, there would be no way in hell he'd screw up a relationship with the likes of McNally, who was an absolutely stunning woman, with the plain, slightly crazy Rosati. But hey, whatever floats Callaghan's boat was up to him.)

But the past three days had made a noticeable difference in Swarek, at least around the locker room. The locker room talks had taken place in McNally's corner, but there had been a definite little smirk on the man's face as he quickly changed and headed out to the women's.

Give it long enough, and he was almost completely positive that Diaz would be able to wear his suit to a wedding after all.