Billy looked through the peephole of his front door and sucked in a deep breath before slowly swinging it open to stare in confusion at the agents on his doorstep. Lee and Amanda had shown up without calling ahead and they looked apprehensive. A coil of dread began winding its way through his chest and he wished desperately he was anywhere but here. There was silence for a moment as Amanda stared at her feet and Lee shifted uneasily.
"Well, if you've come to scooch me, can we at least go get a drink and sit down first?" he said finally.
An identical look of horror went across both faces opposite him.
"Oh no, Sir!"
"Billy! That's not why we're here!"
He heaved a sigh of relief and stepped back to let them in. "Well, I'm glad to hear it. I thought maybe there was some housekeeping going on after Harry's little revelation. Getting scooched now would have played hell with my pension," he joked.
He led them into the kitchen, glancing back over his shoulder. They still didn't look entirely comfortable but some of the doorstep tension had lifted. "Coffee?"
"Yeah please, Billy. Just milk please," answered Lee, while Amanda shook her head.
"Yeah, I remember," Billy chuckled. "You don't like sugar."
"That's not what I remember!" said a new voice from the doorway. Jeanie walked in, grinning easily at Lee and Amanda. "I seem to recall the days when you liked nothing better than getting a bit of sugar, Lee." She stopped and shook a finger at him. "In fact, I seem to remember a Halloween party last year where that craving brought you almost to your knees."
Lee blushed but immediately leaned in to drop a kiss on her cheek, then stepped back, eyes twinkling down at her. "This is the problem with old friends," he sighed. "They never forget the most embarrassing stories about you."
"No, we don't," agreed Jeanie, beaming. "How are you, Amanda?" she asked turning to his companion to give her a hug. She studied her for a moment before nodding. "You look a lot better than you did when you got home last spring."
Amanda nodded back, smiling. "I am. I don't think I ever really thanked you for all the casseroles and things you made for us back then."
"You'd have done the same," scolded Jeanie, giving her another quick hug. She walked to stand beside Billy and gave the pair the once over. "Okay, spill it, you two."
Billy shushed her instantly. "Jeanie! We don't even know why they're here yet!"
Jeanie looked at the couple standing opposite and grinned. "Oh, I think we do."
Billy looked at the blushing duo and started to chuckle. "Yeah, maybe we do." He gestured to the kitchen table. "Come and sit down and tell me why you're here."
Lee and Amanda settled in chairs opposite the older couple, then looked at each other silently, obviously trying to decide where to start.
"I see what you mean," said Jeanie a stage whisper to her husband. "It is cute when they do that."
Both agents looked up with a grin at Billy's barking laugh.
"Okay, what do you want first? Good news or bad news?" asked Lee.
"So you do have bad news?" asked Billy, eyebrow raised.
"Well, it's possible we have nothing but bad news," answered Amanda apologetically. "Depending on your perspective."
"Well then, start me with the bad news."
Amanda took a deep breath, Billy noting with some amusement that she had obviously taken Lee's hand under the table. "My mother knows what I do for a living."
Billy grimaced but with a smile. "That must have been an interesting conversation."
"I'll say," Lee grimaced. "It was even more interesting trying to keep her from coming over here with us to give you a piece of her mind."
Billy whistles soundlessly at the near miss. "So did you tell her or did she figure it out all on her own? Because the apple didn't fall far from the tree there, did it?" Billy smiled at his favourite agent. "How did it all come out?"
Lee and Amanda exchanged another look. This time, it was Lee that took the lead. "Well, that sort of leads to the other part of the story." He gulped, suddenly looking nervous. "Ahhhh, Billy, this will come as a surprise to you…"
Under the table, Billy felt Jeanie knock his foot with hers and stifled a snort. "Or it might not," he chuckled. "But try and surprise me anyway."
"So remember back in February when Amanda and I were in such a hurry to get away after that Nick Grant case?"
Billy couldn't keep in the belly laugh as he remembered the way they'd scrambled into that limo and disappeared leaving a trail of dust in their wake. "I sure do – I've never seen two people so desperate to go on vacation." He paused suddenly, remembering how that particular trip had ended.
"Yeah, well, that wasn't just a vacation," said Lee. "That was also our honeymoon."
There was a long silence while Billy looked back and forth between the two of them, then at Jeanie, only to see the same expression of shock on her face that he knew was on his.
"Surprise!" murmured Amanda under her breath hoping to break the tension.
"Your honeymoon," repeated Billy. "You got married six months ago and you're only telling me now?"
Lee and Amana nodded in unison. At any other time, he would have laughed at the way they looked like guilty teenagers but he was still trying to wrap his head around their news.
"So why are you telling me now?" He paused with a stricken look. "You're not resigning, are you?"
"Well we're hoping not to," said Lee gruffly. "But we're not exactly sure of the rules about married agents – married to each other, I mean. If we can't stay partners…"
Billy visibly flinched at the idea of breaking up his strongest team.
"William!" scolded Jeanie. "You've been waiting for them to tell you this for over a year and you didn't make any kind of plan for it?"
"Well, I never thought they'd come to me after the fact!" he defended himself. Because he was looking at Jeanie, he missed the smiles Lee and Amanda exchanged at that.
"A year, Billy? Really?" laughed Lee, disbelievingly.
"Mais oui, mes enfants," their boss chuckled evilly, while his wife fell against him laughing at the shocked expression on their faces.
"You knew that?" squeaked Amanda.
"Not right away," Billy consoled her with a grin. "Not until-". He just caught himself from finishing that with Birol. "Much later" he finished, before going on. "So? Why did you wait so long?"
"It's complicated," Lee began at the same time as Amanda said "It's simple really."
Jeanie lost control of her giggles at this point, trying unsuccessfully to stifle them in the face of Billy's glare, until he finally broke as well and started to laugh. "Well, you definitely sound married," he remarked as the other two grinned.
"Ok, seriously," said Lee. "Keeping it secret wasn't anything to do with you, and everything to do with us. We knew we wanted to get married, and we thought we'd approach it more slowly, let the boys get to know me, that sort of thing, and then, well, a lot of things happened that made us think the family would be safer if it wasn't obvious we were more than partners."
He paused as Billy rolled his eyes at them, saying. "You do realize there are protocols in place to keep agents' families safe, right?"
"Well, yes," said Amanda apologetically. "But those families are usually aware there's a danger and mine – well, mine wasn't." Billy nodded thoughtfully as she went on. "But it's become clearer that if I'm ready to go back in the field more, we're going to be targeted anyway and if that's so, we'd rather be fighting it together at home as well as at work."
"I should think so," muttered Jeanie under her breath.
"How long did you think you could keep this up?" asked Billy incredulously. "You must have known it was going to show up in a security check – there's always a paper trail."
"We'd hoped that by the time that came around, we'd already have been settled enough that it wouldn't matter. I mean, you know that I'd already named Amanda as next-of-kin after that poisoning attempt last winter, so it was really only the IRS that cared that we weren't official."
"I care that you weren't official!" protested Billy.
"Fair enough," said Lee in a placating tone. "But we want to be official now." He and Amanda exchanged another look. "And here's the other bit of good news that will probably make everything a bit easier. We're, uh, well, we're not married."
Billy put both hands on the table and leaned towards them. "Did you seriously come over here to just yank my chain, Scarecrow? You just told me you were on your honeymoon six months ago!"
"Well, we thought we were. I mean, we were – we'd gotten married. It's just that it turns out that it wasn't quite legal."
"What do you mean 'not legal'? You're both consenting adults with no ties. Aren't you?" He turned to look at Amanda, suddenly wondering if perhaps the divorce hadn't been properly finalized. "Because Dr. Smyth is going to have a conniption fit if one of you is a bigamist!"
The rapidly shaking heads across the table was infinitely reassuring.
"Okay – so… not legal how?"
"Well, it's really thanks to you that we even found out." By now Amanda was getting well practiced at telling the story of the race to Marion for their appointment, and the subsequent events at the courthouse after they'd left, before finishing with a vivid description of her dismay at finding out the truth when she went looking for those files for Billy. Her efforts brought out Billy's deepest belly laughs, which set off Jeanie laughing as well.
"Lordy, only you two could end up having it happen like this," she finally managed to gasp when Amanda reached the end of the story.
"We certainly never seem to do things the way regular people do," Lee agreed, resting his hand on Amanda's on the table and smiling fondly at her.
"So what now?" asked Billy, wiping the tears of merriment from his face. "Finally going to do it properly?"
"Yes and no," answered Lee, easily. "We have a plan, but that's going to depend on you as well."
"If you need his blessing, I'll make sure you get it." Jeanie's eyes were alight with laughter.
"Good to know," smiled Amanda. "But here's what we're thinking." Once again, she took the lead sketching out her idea to get married in Nevada under cover of the conference. "I mean, we'll take the time as vacation of course, and we can pay our own way, but we do need your approval to register for it so it can be our cover."
Billy shook his head in amazement. It was hard to believe this was the same woman Lee had brought in to meet him almost four years ago; that Amanda would never have been a woman who could sketch out a well-thought out plan to get married under cover.
"It sounds perfect," Jeanie was saying now. "Can we come?"
"Of course you can come!" Lee said with surprise. "We'd love to have our friends there, but we know we're making it tricky for people."
"Francine's going to kill you if she finds out you got married without her seeing it with her own two eyes," commented Billy.
Lee and Amanda exchanged a speaking look, then turned back to him with a sigh.
"Oh for God's sake!" he expostulated. "Francine knew? And didn't tell me?"
"We didn't mean to tell her!" protested Lee. "Julie kind of let the cat out of the bag when they were locked in that cellar and she figured it out from there."
"Lee's a bad liar," said Amanda demurely. "She never figured it out from anything I did."
Billy started to grin again at the doleful expression on Lee's face that said he had indeed been the one who'd let it slip.
"Well, I guess I'll need to send her on that conference as well then." He had to smile at the way the two faces opposite him lit up – they were an unlikely trio of friends, but it was obviously a strong relationship. That was Amanda's doing too, he thought. Those other two had been well on their way to hardened cynicism when the Arlington whirlwind had blown into all their lives.
"So when is all this happening?" asked Jeanie.
"The conference starts on September 30 and runs from Wednesday to Friday and then we can just stay behind and get married on the Saturday," answered Amanda.
Jeanie did the math quickly. "So, the 3rd then?"
"Oh!" For some reason, that had startled Amanda and they all turned to look at her. "October 3rd," she repeated looking at Lee. "I hadn't made the connection."
He looked at her blankly for a moment before his expression cleared and he started to laugh. He picked up her hand and kissed it before turning back to the other couple. "October 3rd it is."