A little post-Stemwinder filler to wrap up some incomplete thoughts while I try to pull together the next story.

"You gotta minute?"

Francine looked up at Lee who had just tapped her shoulder gently as she finished sealing her report into its classified envelope.

"Of course," she answered. "What do you need?"

Her heart sank as Lee gestured with his head for her to follow him.

"Not here," he muttered.

Here we go, she thought.

She'd told Amanda that she'd already apologized to Lee about not being entirely supportive – well, let's be honest, practically hostile – during this whole fiasco, but in fact they'd really only exchanged a few words at the stadium.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, don't worry."

"I'm so sorry"

"Hey, come on - it was your job. You know no one understands that better than me."

"But-"

"Look, I need to check on Amanda – we'll talk later, okay?"

And apparently now it was later. She stood and followed him silently out of the bullpen and down the corridor, Lee poking his head in various doors until he found an unoccupied meeting room. He stepped in, and after she'd followed him, shut the door. Francine turned to face him, bracing herself for the harsh words she knew were coming. There was no way Amanda hadn't told him about her attitude when he'd been on the run in this whole thing and if there was anything she knew about Lee Stetson, it was that she was about to get thoroughly yelled at. At least he'd opted for some privacy to do it.

"Look, I know what you're going to say," she began, then stopped because she really didn't know and there was no sense giving him ideas of fresh things to be angry at her about.

Lee cocked his head and surveyed her for a moment before stepping forward and crouching a little so that he was more eye-to-eye with her. Francine braced herself, knowing she was about to get it full blast, but instead Lee's lips twitched.

"Aw, c'mere" he said, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and pulling her in close. "I should have known you always think the worst."

"All the evidence," she replied. "Everything Makarov set up… I had to think the worst."

Lee stepped back and rested his hands on her shoulders giving her a little shake. "Not about that," he said softly. "You thought I was going to yell at you just now."

"Weren't you?" she asked disbelievingly. "Past history says you were."

Lee slid his hands down her arms, until he held her hands in his, as he leaned back to half-sit on the meeting table. "Yep, old Lee would have," he agreed. "If I'd been here and you'd been pulling that attitude, I would have been going toe to toe with you. But new Lee has had a week of hiding out to figure out what was going on and how beautifully I was set up. You were doing everything by the book, just like we're supposed to. I get it, honest."

"But Amanda must have told you some of the things I said," she answered. "Those weren't from the book, they were just… mean."

Lee squeezed her hands. "I've said a lot worse things to her in my time, believe me."

"So she did tell you what I said," she responded tartly. "She was angry enough to repeat them."

Lee cocked his head again and gave a slight smile. "Her feelings were hurt, yeah. But that's Amanda, you know that – she always thinks the best of everyone."

"And I do exactly the opposite," Francine said bitterly.

"You're a little more cynical, yeah," he nodded. "But if our positions had been switched? I would have said the same things to her about you."

"Well, thank you so much," she deadpanned.

Lee chuckled at her spot-on impression of Amanda. "Makarov was good – almost good enough to win this. If he hadn't been out of the loop just long enough to not know about Amanda, he probably would have." Off her inquiring look, he explained, "He knew she existed, he even knew we were seeing each other but he never realized that we would trust each other with our lives. Sonja told us he'd dismissed Amanda as just another woman who would drop me the instant this blew up, so I had backup he didn't know about. He counted on me being isolated and panicking while he pulled the strings tight on the net and I was neither."

"You think that's what made the difference?" she couldn't help asking.

Lee gave a half shrug. "You saw her today – if she hadn't been there… if all of you hadn't been there… there's no way I could have pulled any of it off. And I'm sure Billy told you about our meet the other day when she was watching my rear flank. Smyth would have had me locked up faster than he could have recited one of his stupid nursery rhymes if she hadn't been helping me."

"You know Billy didn't know anything about that," she felt compelled to interrupt. "He was ready to deck Smyth."

"I know," he nodded. "It's why I knew I could trust contacting him again."

Francine shook her head. "I still can't believe it came down to Amanda."

"How can you say that? You've seen her in action."

"Oh no!" she exclaimed. "I didn't mean it like that – I meant you were lucky to have her. She's smart - she believed in you when everyone else had turned on you." The twist in her lip as she finished told Lee what she was thinking. "It should never have come down to her being the only one who believed in you – and I even tried to undermine that."

"Hey now," he chided her. "From what I can tell, you were trying to protect her more than anything, trying to convince her to stay on the right side." He gave her fingers another squeeze. "I tried to leave her behind – told her I'd look after myself and she should do the same. She wouldn't do it."

"Her faith in you is -"

Crazy?" he grinned.

"I was going to say amazing, but yeah, crazy should be in there too." She was finally smiling back at him a little bit.

"Well, you must be in that club too then. Billy said you were the one who figured it all out? That we couldn't have killed Dart? If you'd really lost faith in me, you wouldn't have dug deeper, right?"

"Well, that was mostly down to Dieter and that stupid transcript," she admitted.

Lee's eyebrows went up. "Transcript of what?" he asked.

"Your call with him. Didn't Billy tell you?" Even as the words left her mouth she realized that Billy had never seen the transcript, only heard her description of it. "Wait here," she ordered, and darted from the room.

A few minutes later, she was back, holding the folder out to a confused-looking Lee. "The guys in Translation were passing this around. It's why I thought you... Well it's why I thought you were cheating on Amanda for one thing."

Lee flipped it open and let his eyes drift down the page, looking up finally with a concerned expression. "I don't understand – you thought Dieter and I…?"

"No, you idiot – it never said who you were speaking to! I thought it was some woman in East Germany. Why on earth would I think you were having an affair if I thought this was Dieter?"

Lee's mouth opened, then closed and he gave a little head shake before smiling at her. "True – he prefers his blondes to be smaller."

Francine rolled her eyes. "So look at this part," she said, pointing to the page and watched him read it. She'd gone over it so many times last week, she knew without looking what he was seeing, could almost recite it word for word.

Stetson: Finished the last details yesterday. I've got the tickets stashed away – wouldn't want anyone to know about it.

Unknown: You mean not even your Mrs. King knows about it?

Stetson: Are you kidding? I'm not sharing this with her. She'd rat me out in a minute.

Unknown: She wouldn't want to be in on it?

Stetson: No way. One tough question and she'd crack like a nut. No, it's just you and me, waiting for the perfect 24 carat payoff of a perfect escape – as simple as falling out of bed."

"My God," he said, looking up. "No wonder you thought I was running. This was a slam dunk and Makarov wasn't even involved."

"If it had been the other way around, would you have thought the same as I did, though?"

"I did, once," he answered unexpectedly. "Back with Mrs. Welch. I never told you – I saw you through the kitchen window when I was being brought in. I thought you were in on it – that you'd helped her kill those agents. I was pretty scared that day that you weren't what I thought."

She nodded with a grimace. "Well, I was pretty scared about this – you had just been through that whole thing with your parents and clearing their names and then this – it didn't make any sense, but everything said you were guilty."

Lee gave a chuckle. "Things aren't always what they look like, are they? But you're right," he said, chuckling again as he looked over the page in front of him. "It absolutely reads like I'm about to take off across the Iron Curtain." He looked up, with sudden concern. "Has Dr. Smyth seen this?"

"Not that I know of," she admitted. "The boys in Translation just put it down to you having a girl on the side, I think, and I wasn't about to give him any more ammunition. I mean, I may have thought you were guilty, but I didn't want you dead."

"Amanda said you told her you'd seen something… was it this?"

She nodded.

"And you tried to warn her?"

She nodded again. "All those 'darlings' – I didn't put it together until it was almost too late."

"But you did." His eyes went over the page again. "Although I can't imagine how."

"Mein kleiner Igel," she said, pointing to the word 'eagle'. "I was telling Pfaff about how Dieter teases you and it all came together. Then I called Dieter and he said he'd been talking to you at the same time you were supposed to have murdered Phillip Dart." She gave a small shrug. "We got lucky."

"And that's why you came with Billy today," said Lee.

"I would have come anyway," she answered, surprising him. "I mean… Amanda believed in you, Billy believed in you and Smyth wanted your head on a pike. If those were my choice of sides to pick, it was a pretty easy one."

Lee stood up and pulled her in for another hug. "Thank you," he said. Even as he held her, he suddenly stiffened. "Oh God," he muttered.

"What?" she asked, stepping back to look at him.

"Today's Saturday, isn't it? It's your birthday?"

She nodded. "Yes. But a gentleman doesn't remark on such things."

"No, it's just… damn it." He gestured to the file folder. "The tickets we were talking about – they were for tonight." He looked at his watch and groaned. "And the curtain went up thirty minutes ago."

"What?"

"We had a whole thing planned to surprise you with ballet tickets and dinner at the Blue Fox and Dieter was going to get you some of those chocolates you like..." Lee trailed off, running his hand over his face. "I don't even know where those would have ended up without me home to sign for them."

"Oh no, not the truffles," she sighed theatrically. "I can't believe you chose clearing your name of treason charges over my birthday present. Where are your priorities, Stetson?"

Lee chuckled, the twinkle leaping back into his eyes as she laughed along with him. "I'll make it up to you, I promise. Tell you what – how about I take you out to dinner tomorrow night? A kind of thank you and birthday dinner combined?"

"What about Amanda?"

"What about Amanda?" he questioned her back, with a confused expression. When her eyes narrowed, he suddenly realized what she meant. "Oh! No, it will probably just be us – she's going to want to spend time with her family. She won't mind if we go without her."

"Well, it would be nice," she conceded. "I guess I could do worse than dinner out with a cute guy for a belated birthday."

"At least you still think I'm cute," he laughed, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and walking with her back toward the corridor. "I'll talk to you tomorrow after I get everything set up, okay?"

The nice thing about Lee is that he was always on time, she thought. The bad thing was that he was probably going to be on time, and she was still getting dressed.

Despite it being Sunday, it had been another long day at the Agency, tidying up all the details of the case against Makarov and making sure that all the charges against Lee and Amanda were wiped off the books. It had been a miracle that they were both even free tonight after all, but Billy had finally put his foot down with Smyth and insisted they be allowed to go home.

Lee had disappeared into one final meeting with Smyth as she'd been packing up, but she wasn't too concerned that he'd be delayed there. He'd given her a thumbs up as he'd passed and the note on her desk had said "Got Blue Fox all sorted out for tonight. Be ready by 7" so he must have gotten a reservation. She'd spoken more with Amanda today than Lee, Amanda confirming that she wouldn't be joining them since her ex-husband was coming to dinner and she was going to be busy smoothing over everything at home. That comment had been accompanied by a beaming smile though, and Francine had seen how happy Amanda was to be back with her family.

"Wonder how long it would take for someone to notice I was missing?" she asked her reflection in her makeup mirror. "I didn't even rate a birthday call from anyone!"

She chided herself instantly. Her parents had called the week before, knowing they'd be out of contact on her birthday, out at sea on their cruise to Hawaii and she certainly couldn't have expected anything from Lee or Amanda, even if Lee had had something planned before this whole mess.

And yet, when she'd come home last night and found her answering machine light shining solidly and not a single message waiting, she had to admit to feeling a pang of loneliness. Had it come to this, that she had no real friends outside work who cared enough for even a simple call on her birthday?

"You're not 12 years old," she scolded herself. "Birthdays are just another day of the year, not a big celebration." She glanced down at the candid photo stuck in the corner of the mirror of Dieter taken in front of the Friedensengel when she'd returned to Europe a few months before. "Although you have no excuse!" she accused him. Dieter's hound dog eyes stared back at her. "Well, yes, you did, I suppose, since you knew I was up to my neck in something, but you could have still left a message or something!"

She remembered the concern in his voice in that last call, when she'd been piecing together the timeline that proved Lee's innocence and then had barely said goodbye before slamming down the phone and running to Billy. "Although maybe I should call you? Let you know that it all turned out okay?" she asked the picture. This time the expression on his face seemed happier. "Okay, well, it's a bit late for that now and I'm getting ready to go out, but tomorrow – I promise I'll call tomorrow. You really did give me a great present, helping me get them out of that mess."

There was a knock on the door and she glanced at her clock: 6:58. Of course Lee would be early to boot.

She stuck her head out her bedroom door. "It's open!" she called, then went back to dressing. She heard the door open and close and called out again. "Typical that you'd show up early! I'll just be one more minute!" She heard Lee give a low laugh of disbelief. "It's all your fault I'm not ready anyway – I was so tired when I got home, I sat down just to close my eyes for a few minutes and the next thing I knew, I was waking up an hour and a half later!"

A muffled "No problem, take your time" came through the door.

Taking him at his word, she finished applying the last of her makeup, and checked her hair one last time. That was one downside of going out anywhere with Lee – you were with the most handsome guy in the room, but you always felt like you needed to look your best to compete.

She stood up and pulled on the blue wraparound dress she'd picked out for the evening. Smoothing it into place, she gave herself one last look, twirling in front of the mirror before nodding with satisfaction. "You still got it," she smirked at her reflection. "Even if you are on the wrong side of 30!"

Pulling open her bedroom door, she stepped out, remarking, "But the good news is that nap did me a world of good so I'm all rested up for whatever you have planned!"

She expected to find Lee waiting in the living room, but instead her eye was caught a beautiful bouquet of flowers set in a vase on her dining table, just to the side.

"Oh, Lee, they're beautiful," she exclaimed, walking forward to run her fingers along the petals. That's when she noticed the table had been set for two, taper candles burning in her nicest crystal holders. She turned toward the galley kitchen, noticing for the first time the paper bags piled on the counter and heard the sounds of plates being pulled from the cupboard.

"Oh." She couldn't help feeling a bit disappointed that she'd gone to all this trouble to dress up and he'd brought takeout. "I thought we were going out," she said.

"We could, liebling" came the response. "But I thought it might be nicer to be just us?"

Francine stilled, unable to believe he could be here, until an instant later, he stepped out of the kitchen, grinning from ear to ear.

"Mein Gott, you are even more beautiful than I remembered."

"Dieter?" she said, still in disbelief. "What are you doing here?" She didn't wait for an answer, just walked into his open arms and kissed him.

"Well, I came to take you to the ballet since Lee couldn't, but you were otherwise engaged," he smiled down at her when they eventually pulled apart.

"What are you talking about?"

Dieter drew her back in close. "You sounded so upset on the phone, I decided to come and see if I could help. But then I heard that it all worked out, so I improvised." He gestured at the kitchen. "I was told the Blue Fox restaurant is one of your favorites, and only in America would there be the possibility of getting it to take out."

"You heard?" she asked. "How did you hear?"

"I left Lee a message that I was here and he called me last night."

"But what if he hadn't called? What if all this was still going on?"

Dieter gave another little shrug. "I had a friend at work keeping an eye on the gossip about this. It is all very top secret, but I told you there were rumors, ja? He said there was news to stand down on watching for certain American agents, so I thought it would be safe to call Lee."

"But not me?" she pouted a little bit.

"Ach, I would have called you this morning if there had been no news, but once I knew it was working out, I wanted to surprise you."

"Oh." She teared up a little, thinking of how she had just been scolding his picture for ignoring her.

"Of course, now that I see how beautiful you look, I am thinking maybe I should take you out after all, show you off…"

"Don't you dare," she exclaimed. "And waste all that time going anywhere else when we have everything we need right here?" She pulled him in for another kiss, the time a more languorous one. After a moment, though, she pulled back and breathed out against his cheek "At least I assume…?" she went on seductively

"Yes, liebling, I brought chocolate mousse," he murmured, his lips twitching when he felt her shake slightly with laughter.

She leaned back in his arms, pushing back the hair that always threatened to fall into his eyes, and studied him carefully. "You grew the mustache back, I see."

"Ja," he said with mock regret. "No one in the department would take me seriously looking like a teenage boy." He sighed theatrically. "I'm going to have to shave it again, aren't I?"

This time it was Francine whose lips twitched. She reached up and smoothed his mustache with a fingertip. "No," she conceded. "It's been a long week and I think I would like very much to be… tickled… just so."

Dieter grinned. "Well if you're sure." He kissed her again.

"Oh, I'm very sure," she replied, tugging his hands as she walked backwards toward her bedroom. "You, me, the mustache – it's practically a threesome." As he chuckled, she stopped suddenly in the doorway and placed a hand on his chest to keep him from walking further. "On second thought…" she ran her tongue along her upper lip and stared at him speculatively.

Dieter raised an eyebrow and waited. He did not need to wait long, as a beat later, Francine leaned in and breathed out against his lips.

"Bring the chocolate mousse too."