While You're Making Other Plans

by Glistening Sun and Miss Shannon

Author's Note: Who is the new author with the crazy pen name, you're wondering? Well, it's us, Glistening Sun and Miss Shannon. Back last fall when we bonded over our simultaneously posting baby fic, we started to write back and forth and ended up deciding to write a story together. As this was what brought us together, we thought it should be baby fic. But since we have mutually exhausted every dramatic storyline we could possibly think of, we settled for comedy. I hope you will enjoy what we thought up! We will take turns posting chapters, so this will be me, Miss Shannon. :-)

1

If Andy Flynn had learned anything during the past year, it was that his girlfriend took a while in the bathroom and that she didn't react gracefully when disturbed. However, it was a Saturday morning, he had gone out of his way to prepare a proper breakfast that catered to both her taste and his own vegetarian needs and she had been in there for a long time now. So Andy decided to be brave and inquire as to when she was going to join him in the kitchen. With Rusty out on an early morning chess match, there was no one to talk to and he was beginning to get bored.

He rapped his knuckles against the bathroom door and waited for an answer that came in the form of a strangled little sound. He drew his eyebrows together in a concerned frown.

"Sharon?" he asked, his voice raised to be heard through the door, yet soft enough to show his concern. "Are you alright in there?"

"Honey, I'm fine," came the tired reply - a clear indication that she was not.

"I'm coming in," he announced, turning the knob before she even had a chance to object, which he was sure she would have, given enough time. The sight that greeted him upon entering wasn't at all what he had been expecting after the long amount of time she had spent in the bathroom. There she was, wet hair tousled and face pale with no trace of the make-up he'd believed her to be applying meticulously while he was slaving away in the kitchen. She was wearing one of his t-shirts, her legs and feet bare, perched on the side of the bathtub opposite the toilet, looking miserable. Her eyes were a muddy green this morning and lacked their usual sparkle.

"Hey," he said gently, sitting down next to her and placing his hand on her knee in a loving gesture. "Are you sick?"

Sharon crossed her ankles and rubbed one foot against the other which told him that she was feeling self-conscious, so he leaned over and placed a kiss on top of her head. The fruity scent of her shampoo was intoxicating and even chased away the lingering stench of vomit in the air. He had realized that she had been throwing up when he'd entered with the window wide open and her face ashen like that. He'd seen it a lot two weeks ago, but then he'd believed that the stomach bug was gone now.

"I've certainly been sick," Sharon murmured, burying her face in his upper arm while she held on to it with both hands. While he had gotten to know a completely different side of his boss ever since they'd become an item, she wasn't usually like this. Andy raised his brows but put one arm around her waist and pulled her into him.

"Now I feel a little guilty for preparing the sort of breakfast that I did," he joked to lighten the mood.

"Bacon," she snorted into the fabric of his shirt and he felt her swallow uncomfortably. "I can smell it on you."

"Are you going to be sick again?" he asked her but she shook her head.

"No, there is nothing in my stomach... I think."

He began to rub her back and felt her relax a little under his loving touch. "Why don't you go back to bed? I'll make you some tea and there should be crackers left."

She hummed, but made no move to get up so Andy felt her forehead, glad not to find her running a fever.

"That is a pretty persistent stomach bug you have there. Don't you think you should see a doctor? Just in case?"

Sharon finally lifted her head from his shoulder, a strange look in her eyes. Andy saw alarm there, mixed with uncertainty and a little fear. He swallowed dryly. Something was up.

"I am not sure it is a stomach bug, Andy." That said, she wouldn't meet his eyes and he felt his heart sink. Now that he thought about it, she hadn't been well for weeks even before she had started throwing up everything she ate. But she was like a cat that way, always trying to hide physical discomfort until it just wasn't possible anymore. And running out of the Murder Room on a regular basis was just that, he thought grimly. It was becoming kind of hard to disguise it with sudden phone calls or similar, as she had so unsuccessfully tried to in the beginning.

"Oh god, Sharon," he said, tightening his arm around her shoulder. "Do you think it's serious? Cancer?" He inevitably lowered his voice for the last word, somehow anxious that saying it out loud would make his fears more real.

Sharon tried a shaky smile but failed miserably since her eyes were filling up with tears that she had to bite back with some force.

"No." She trailed off after that, stretching the vowel, then took her time before she finally went on.

"I just realized that I've missed two periods."

For a moment, Andy was just confused, then he exhaled noisily, relieved beyond compare. She wasn't seriously ill, he told himself, it wasn't life-threatening, it was completely normal as it was just-

"Menopause!" he exclaimed, unsuccessfully trying to hide his slight amusement at her overreaction to a perfectly normal occurrence. Instead of relaxing against him as she usually did when he had finally coaxed what was troubling out of her, she straightened up. He realized too late that she was angry. Very suddenly so, he thought, but then mood swings were common symptoms of menopause. Provenza had told him all about it with his third wife who had once thrown a lawn chair at him. Not quite without merit, actually, but still.

"You don't get it, do you?" She sounded a little tearful there. "I might be fifty-one, but I've been very regular up to this point, as you might recall."

Andy couldn't resist the urge to wrinkle his nose. Sharon could be a little peevish in a very specific, rather irrational sort of way once a month and he did not remember that happening lately, now that he thought about it. What put him off, however, was her talking to him about it. Menstruation was his second least favorite topic, beaten for the top spot only by interior decoration. There was an unspoken agreement between them that she took care of both of them.

She rolled her eyes at his apprehension. "How old are you, Andy?"

He looked at his feet, feeling a little foolish for being so squeamish. "You were saying?" he prompted, trying to get back to where they had left off before his face had developed a life of its own.

"I was going to say that you don't just stop menstruating altogether from one month to the next!" she pointed out, the anger having replaced the tears for which he was oddly grateful. An irate Sharon was a lot easier to deal with than a tearful one, because he just wanted to scoop the latter one up and hug her and call her sweetheart which she wouldn't let him do.

"Also, throwing up all the time isn't that common in that context either."

Andy felt like a fish out of water. What on earth was she getting at? She rolled her eyes again as she met his confused and utterly bewildered stare.

"You just don't get it, do you?" She reached out and caressed his cheek. "Andy, I think I might be expecting."

"Expecting wh-" Andy's eyes widened when it hit him. "Oh. You mean...? OH."

She suddenly rose from where she'd been sitting next to him and began to pace the bathroom. "It is so unbelievable that you didn't even think of it," she murmured frantically. "I must be crazy to even consider the possibility. Oh, Andy, I'm sorry. I am sure it's just stress. Forget I ever said anything."

She waved her arms and came dangerously close to accidentally hitting him in the face with one of them. Her array of hair products that she kept on a shelf near the sink wasn't so lucky and she spent the next few seconds trying to keep the bottles from performing a dominoesque little dance.

That was when the Bonanza theme began to play rather inconveniently.

Andy almost fell off the edge and into the bathtub when he reached out to silence his phone. Seeing that it was Provenza, he sighed and held it up for Sharon to see. She nodded, a self-conscious smile on her lips and her arms wrapped around her upper body. Provenza wasn't in a good mood and growled something about a crime scene, a dead body and the fact that their Saturday was now officially ruined. Andy hung up as quickly as possible, maybe in the middle of his partner's rant, and got up.

"It's a case," he told her what he was sure she already knew as she had begun to apply make-up. "Why don't you stay back and call in sick? We can handle it."

She shook her head. "I am better already. Just..." She gave that weird, unfamiliar smile again. "Just forget what I said about being... what I said earlier. It's insane, I shouldn't have mentioned it."

It probably was, Andy thought, slipping his arms around her waist, making her squeal in surprise. He pressed a kiss to her cheek and then went to go and change, so he would look presentable at work.

TBC