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


Bad Timing Part 4

He slumped against the wall, waiting for the last of the needles he hated so much to pierce his skin.

Ten.

Nine.

There was a scrambling sound that he couldn't quite place.

Seven.

And then Amanda was there, somehow, miraculously, clutching both of those precious life-saving keys.

Four.

Three.

Two.

The watch clattered to the floor, and the needle hummed and rose, sending up its cyanide into the dusty air of the Soviet embassy's basement.

He couldn't stop to think or he would burst out weeping right there. He just rose to his feet, briefly clasped Amanda's hand in his so hard he thought he felt bones shift a little, and then picked Billy up in his arms and carried him down the ladder.

He got Amanda into the van first, then Billy, and then he climbed in himself. There was a screech of brakes and McJohn hurried up with the antidote just as he rolled up his sleeve, eager, for the first time, for an injection. She held his hand, heedless of Francine's eyes, as the doctor injected the cold liquid into his arm.

A warmth that had nothing to do with the antidote and everything to do with suddenly renewed hope spread through him. She flung herself into his arms as he pulled her to him, and then he was safe again.

He could not process the floods of emotions, but he didn't need to. For now, he had her and she had him, and everything wrong was suddenly made right.


They sat on Amanda's couch, her legs over his lap, wrapped up in each other so thoroughly that he didn't know where he ended and Amanda began. He hadn't kissed her properly since before Billy told him about the PD-2 in his blood work, and now that his second round of blood work in as many days had come back clean, he was making up for lost time.

The sound of a car pulling up made them both pull away. Why did Dotty and the boys always have to have such rotten timing?

"They're home early," she gasped.

"And I'm gone," he replied, trying to stand up. Her hand kept him back.

"No, no, no, no!" She smiled a little at his confusion. "No, we need practice in this, too. Come on."

"I guess so," he said, knowing that this was it. Dotty would never believe they were just work friends after coming home unexpectedly on a Monday afternoon to find him and Amanda sitting on her couch with their coats thrown haphazardly on the floor.

She cleared her throat. "Ready?" she asked, as her mother came in calling her name.

"Ready," he replied, nervousness and excitement welling up in his throat.

"We're home, darling!" called Dotty the irrepressible, not daunted at all by the silence that had greeted her.

They turned toward her with smiles pasted onto their faces, and she stopped short in the doorway.

"Oh, hello Lee," she said, dropping her bags. "I didn't realize you'd be here. I mean, after all, three o'clock on a Monday. Not that I'm sorry to see you of course."

He chuckled. "Hello Mrs. West," he replied. "Amanda and I finished up our work early today, so we thought we'd spend the afternoon here."

Had he thought there were a thousand questions in her eyes earlier? There were at least two thousand now. She looked meaningfully at Amanda, who sighed.

He jumped up, his courage at its lowest ebb in the face of the impending interrogation. "Do you have any more bags to bring in, Mrs. West?"

Clearly he had said precisely the right thing to win her over completely.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Oh, yes. The boys are bringing in their bags but knowing them they're arguing again. Zorba the geek, you know. That's all I heard all weekend long."

Cryptography would have a field day with Dotty, he thought as he headed out of one interrogation into another.