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


Stemwinder 2

"Hoosen," she said quickly, with the weary smile of a woman who had been correcting the same mispronunciation of her married name as long as she had had it. He thought, for a fleeting second, that it was ridiculous to focus on such an insignificant thing, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that it was really a stroke of genius. It was a natural reaction that didn't usually happen with a pseudonym. It cemented their cover like nothing else had.


He knelt down in front of her, taking her hands in his. She was worried about her family, sick at the thought of leaving them with no explanation of where she had gone or why.

"I know how you feel," he said softly, looking up at her. Wasn't that why he had gone to her home in the first place, risking capture to see her one last time? She was his family, or at least he considered her so. He had put his life and his liberty on the line to get a message to her.

"It'll be a big risk, but we'll think of something," he whispered, trying his best to calm her fears even as he kept a firm lid on his own. "Okay?"

She smiled, for real this time, and nodded. "Yeah."

She leaned forward and kissed him, and he closed his eyes briefly, savoring the sheer normalcy of Amanda kissing him, even as the sorrow and distress of their situation threatened to overwhelm him.


She insisted on him taking his shower first, while she got the room ready for the night. He let the hot water pound on his aching shoulders, smiling a little as he imagined her setting up two beds: one on the couch, one on the floor. He'd have to fight her for the less comfortable one.

He finished drying himself and slipped into the secondhand pajamas they had bought that afternoon. At the time he had wondered why Amanda was wasting money on clothes that couldn't be used as disguises; the sheer comfort of the soft material banished any lingering doubts. If he was going to be shot as a traitor, he might as well go into it on a good night's sleep.

He left the bathroom, still toweling his hair, and stopped short at the sight that met him in the main room. She had made up a bed on the sofa, like he'd predicted, but she had most definitely used all their meager supply of blankets to make just the one bed.

He couldn't believe it. She looked up and saw his expression, and she smiled a little.

"We're on the run, Lee," she said, her voice a little hoarse with fear. "And it's cold."

It wasn't an invitation to anything more than simply holding her as they slept, but that alone was so much more than he had hoped for.

He turned off all the lights before it got dark, a precaution he'd learned the hard way on many a stakeout, and he fell asleep waiting for her to finish her shower.

Sometime in the wee hours of the morning he became aware that she had tucked herself up against him on the sofa, probably hours before. In spite of the dark, the danger, and the cold, he had been sleeping soundly, in their warm cocoon, without any nightmares. He pulled her even closer, wrapping his arm more protectively around her and cradling her gently, and she hummed a little in her sleep.

She was better than a nightlight, he thought, as he drifted off again.

Morning came earlier than he wanted it to.


He started thinking of their little studio hideout as "home": time to head "home" after a stint in the hot dog truck; glad to be "home" after alternately threatening and cajoling Rostov into placing his newspaper advertisement; leaving "home" to meet Billy for the final appeal.

It was "home" because Amanda was there; he knew that. If he had to live in the hot dog truck with her, that would be "home", too.

They spent their days on the run, and spent their nights snuggled up together on the sofa, wrapped in all the blankets they had. He would have enjoyed the day-in, day-out experience of living with Amanda in a home of their own, if most of their precious time together were not spent in councils of war.

The night before it all went down, they sat together in their cozy little kitchen. He was nervous and antsy, and he couldn't seem to keep his mouth shut.

"Well, here we are: a nice quiet dinner in our cozy hideout, cleaning our guns," he said, sarcasm and bitterness flowing freely instead of tears. "Another typical evening for the spy family."

She took him at face value; she wasn't a sarcastic person by nature, and she hadn't really heard him use that particular piece of mental armor before.

"I don't know how you can be in such a good mood," she said.

"Well, I'm not. It's just the way I handle my nerves before a big operation. Believe me, tomorrow's as big as they come."


Against all odds, their plan had succeeded. It had taken him all the ammunition he had, and he knew he wouldn't have been able to pull it off without Billy, Francine, and Amanda. Alexi Makarov had banked on him being the same lone wolf he had been ten years before, and that had been his downfall.

They were cleared. Alexi, Sonja, and Rostov were all in federal custody.

Amanda was back home with her mother and the boys. Joe was there, too, but he couldn't expect everything to be perfect.

He was back where he belonged, in the sense that he was sitting in his car across the street, watching the house.

He watched her as she said goodbye to Joe at the front door. It seemed to be taking an awfully long time. He felt an entirely inexcusable flash of jealousy when she kissed him — hadn't he spent a full week kissing Sonja?

As soon as Joe left, he ran up the drive and slipped over to the dining room window. He knocked on it, softly, and she turned to him, her eyes shining.

"Go around the back," she mouthed, and he sent her a kiss through the window.

She rushed to him as soon as she opened the door, fitting herself easily into his arms for a simple embrace before he kissed her as thoroughly as if he hadn't seen her for a week instead of less than a day.

"I missed you," he whispered. It didn't make sense; he'd seen her this morning.

"I missed you too," she whispered back.

He told her the good news of her promotion to a full time position, but what he really wanted to know was —

"So…how is everybody?"

"Oh, everybody's fine." That didn't answer the question.

"Your mom? The kids?"

"Fine, fine."

"Your ex?"

She didn't bother hiding her amusement. "He's fine. You're jealous."

He didn't bother denying it.

"Don't be jealous," she said, warmly. "I love him. I'm always gonna love him. But I'm in love with you."

It was enough.

It was so much more than enough.

And yet, at the same time, it wasn't nearly enough, because he had to go back to his own apartment and his cold bed, and he'd been telling the truth when he said that he'd missed her.