Disclaimer: I don't own the situations or characters portrayed herein. I'm just playing with them for a while.

Vigilante Mothers

From the perspective of William Melrose

He didn't think Lee Stetson was a stupid man - far from it. Lee was one of his top agents.

But good grief. Was the man completely incapable of seeing what was going on?

How did he not realize that the way he spoke to Amanda was completely - completely - different from how he usually spoke to literally everyone?

And he only added usually because the soft tone had started cropping up in ordinary conversations when Amanda wasn't around, too.

He wasn't going to lie - this new, more genuine Lee Stetson was a much kinder and better man than Scarecrow, not to mention being a better and more thorough agent who actually turned in his reports on time - but it was a little unnerving to watch a man he'd known for eleven years change so completely with such a definite reason for doing so.

The definite reason for changing was currently pacing up and down in the bullpen, waiting for Lee, and she was clearly getting antsy.

"Leonard Fletcher, hmm. Says here he lives on Braden Avenue in Arlington."

Billy knew, he just knew, that Amanda was going to pop up in the conversation somehow. She always did, where Lee was concerned.

He decided to play dumb. "So?"

"Well, that's about a block away from where Amanda lives."

He knew it. There she was, pulled into the conversation. He thought this might be a record, though, in how soon her name was mentioned.

"Which gives me a great idea. Hold on a second."

He crossed to the office door and called to her, in that Amanda-specific, incredibly gentle tone that Billy seriously doubted he knew he used with her.

Francine didn't say anything, bless her, but he knew she heard it too.

"Amanda? Would you come here for a minute?"

"Hello, sir."

"Good morning, Amanda."

"Yes, sir."

"Amanda, is that house at the end of your street still up for rent?"

Now he really was confused. Was Lee over there so often he knew the street names and which houses were up for rent? He knew his memory was impressive, but this seemed more than that.

Amanda didn't seem to notice anything too unusual. "You mean the Cooperman house? I think so; why?"

"Well, I know someone who wants to rent it for awhile."

"Who?"

"Me. I wanna...get closer to someone who lives there."

He bit back a groan. Did Lee have any idea how much that sounded like an incredibly weak pickup line?

She glanced at him and Francine, trying to hide a self-conscious smile.

It was like watching a car accident.

"What?" asked Mr. Intelligent.

Her voice was low, and embarrassed. "We could go to dinner. You don't have to move down the street."

Did he know that there was a flash of joy that suffused his face? Did he feel the genuine smile that flickered and danced as he held it at bay? Did he know that his dimples refused to disappear, even as he let her down?

"Closer to Doctor Leonard Fletcher."

He'd bet anything that the idiot that was his top agent hadn't realized a thing.

He would have to do something about that.

Lee's Perspective

"We could go to dinner. You don't have to move down the street."

Aha! So there might be hope for him, after all.

He cleared the misunderstanding up as best he could, but he couldn't completely clear the smile that kept threatening to break through.

He was going to live down the street from Amanda - meet her neighbors, be a part of her community. He would have to drive an agency car, or the gossips would put two and two together and get four, but that was a small price to pay.

He remembered his last sojourn in the suburbs, when she was his wife and he was her husband, and they argued in their cheery little kitchen.

This time he would be in a different house, and take on the persona of a bachelor. He didn't want to have to bring a wife. It wouldn't feel right.

As much as it had scared him, he loved the reversal - her popping up in his shrubs for a change, and teaching him the small normalities of her life. Just as once upon a time he had popped up in her geraniums and taught her the small extraordinarities of his life.

True, his involved guns and secret codes, and hers involved keys under flowerpots and watering timers, but her world was just as fascinating to him as his had been to her all those months before.

Not that he would be keeping the key under the flowerpot.

He looked at her, at this incredible woman who had used a bedsheet to take down one of the most dangerous criminals he had known and tracked all over the world.

"Thanks, partner," he said, ignoring the fact that he said it in front of someone who had known her for years.

She'd have to be sworn to secrecy or something.