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


A Matter of Choice Part 1

She came back from the hospital in California a week into his investigation of Brody's organization. He drove over to the house as soon as he had a moment, pulling her into a hug the second she opened the front door and let him in. She had been resting on the couch, but her eyes looked tired and her clothes seemed too big for her.

He knew he didn't look much better. He hadn't been sleeping; he woke up every night from nightmares of losing Amanda to Brody, more exhausted than if he hadn't slept at all. He had barely been eating. His face was covered in a week's worth of stubble.

She pulled back from him and studied him, new worry lines creasing her forehead before she let him sink back into her arms.


The whole week after Amanda got back, he left the agency each night only once his brain had stopped working properly and everything he tried to look at swam before his eyes. He stopped by his apartment just long enough to shower, then headed home to Amanda's house. He let himself in, with the key she had given him, and tiptoed up the stairs right to her bedroom. Once there, he slipped out of his next day's clothes and into the soft pajamas they had bought on the Stemwinder case. Then he crawled into Amanda's bed and just held her, her presence keeping the nightmares at bay.

He always took special care to leave before Dotty got up.

She might approve of him as a suitor for her daughter in theory, but he couldn't imagine her being too pleased if she found him sleeping soundly in Amanda's bed.


He stopped by the house to see Amanda, in the afternoon this time. He knew she had a doctor's appointment, and she would probably want to run some errands now that she was cleared for light physical duty, but he went over anyway. He missed her.

He hadn't been sneaking over at night for the past four days, now that Brody's organization had started working in earnest. He had been catching a few precious hours of restless sleep on his couch, but he wanted nothing more than to sleep. In a bed. Beside his wife.

Until Brody was put away again, though, that would have to wait.

Dotty was the only one there, doing her laundry as she always did on Thursday afternoons. She teased him gently about a sock of his that had showed up in Amanda's washing, but she didn't pry or ask any questions. Somehow she knew that he didn't need that right now.

He struggled to keep himself together when Amanda came back, her arms full of groceries. She was so warm, and her sweater was so soft. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, breathing in the scent of home.

She was worried about him, and he hated to do that to her. She should be focusing on getting better, getting back to normal. But he couldn't rest until Brody was put away, and she understood, even if she didn't accept it.

He had two stops to make before he went back to the agency for yet another all-nighter. One was his apartment, for a rest on the couch. The other was a French restaurant to do a little light surveillance of Francine Desmond and one Jonathan Stone.

He hadn't met him before. But since Jonathan had taken off the week before he was supposed to marry Francine, he had hated him. He saw what it did to Francine, how it made her more cynical, more biting. And even though he still considered her his friend all those years, he missed the warmer woman she had been then.

He knew he was being overprotective, but he didn't want Francine to get even more hurt. A healthy relationship shouldn't cause damage, but he wasn't sure if she knew that.