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


Suitable for Framing Part 1

He dropped his keys on the hall table without even thinking, wishing he didn't have to break yet another date with his wife just because some lousy Soviet decided to mess up international relations. He called her name, hoping against hope that she would be there, even if her car wasn't, but she was nowhere to be found. All he saw was a table carefully set for two, with candles ready to light. And a note, explaining where she was.

Sometimes he wondered if it was worth it, being a senior agent. Was it worth the sneaking and the subterfuge that came with a mystery marriage? Would Billy have ordered him onto the 10:45 flight to New York, if he had known that he had a wife and two boys waiting for him at home? He was getting tired of it.

He picked up the phone wearily and called her.

"Hello?" she answered, and a flood of unexpected emotion settled into his throat, making him hoarse.

"Amanda, it's me."

"Hi, you home?" He loved her little habit of saying hello, then finding out that it was him, and then saying hello again to greet him properly. It seemed to have started in Adi Birol's cell, but it always made him feel extra special.

"Yeah, I just got in."

"Good," she said. "I'll feed the boys and I'll be right over."

"Uh, Amanda, listen," he tried to say, sorry to put a stop to their plans, but she kept on going.

"Everything's on low in the oven. Beef Wellington —"

"Amanda, stop," he interrupted, and she immediately stopped talking at his tone. He paused, hating this whole situation, hating having to cancel plans yet again. "I have to fly to New York with Billy tonight, for thirty-six hours of Q and A with the FBI and a gaggle of Soviet shadows."

She didn't sound disappointed, and somehow that calmed him down just a little.

"Sounds pretty important."

The line wasn't guaranteed to be a clean one, but he had to tell her something about the whole mess. "Yeah, it could be. Sascha Chernev's got something cooking on the stove, something code-named 'Trojan Horse.'"

The weight of missing out on yet another weekend with her, for Sascha Chernev, suddenly crashed down on him again, and he closed his eyes against it. "Oh, and I love Beef Wellington, too."

This time her disappointment mirrored his own. "Don't worry. It's good cold too."

Something broke in him. Maybe his heart. Maybe the last vestiges of the dam that he had used so often to keep his emotions hidden.

It wasn't about the Beef Wellington. It was about time together, and being able to make plans together and keep them together, on a weekend when the boys had plans with Joe.

"I don't want it cold, I want it hot. Tonight. With my wife." It was the first time since they got married that he called her his wife on the phone, and if anyone had tapped his phone they would be getting an earful. "Damn it, Amanda, we have not had an uninterrupted weekend since we've been married! We are lucky to get a night now and then!"

He was so tired of this.

Her voice took on that soothing quality that should really enrage him but never did. "Well, we knew it would be hard for a while, and we do spend a lot of time together — at work."

He was glad she was back at the office again, but —

"Yeah, but work is torture." He paused, then went on, not caring if anyone else was listening. "You know what it's like, watching you across the room, when all I really want to do is —" He couldn't go on.

"When do you leave?" she asked, determination blossoming in her voice.

"An hour," he said, regretfully.

"I'll be over there in ten minutes; the evening won't be a complete loss."

How did she know just what he needed?


He wished he could yell at Francine, but she was upset enough already, and he was so happy to be back in Washington that he couldn't bring himself to do it.

She finished detailing how low of a security risk the kid was, and finished up with an infamous question.

"What more could we ask for?"

"A better story," he answered promptly. "In case someone asks what we're doing passing classified documents to civilians!"

Her tone became defensive. "Well, I don't know. It seemed to work out pretty well for you and Amanda."

"Well, she's one in a million!" he responded, a little heatedly, and he couldn't help but remember the last time he had said that.

He had been in Billy's office trying to find a connection between Harriet Rosemont and a gunrunner in South America when Billy had said, "Scarecrow, you have a visitor upstairs."

That had never happened. No one came to visit him.

But Amanda had. She had been wearing blue, that wonderful blue that brought out her pink cheeks and the sparkle of her eyes. She had come less to see him and more to bring in the personal profile the agency asked her to fill out "the last time we were on a case together".

And he had said it. "Amanda, we were not on a 'case'. We were thrown together completely by accident. A one-in-a-million kind of thing. A fluke."

Francine's fluke did not seem to be of the same variety, unfortunately.