Disclaimer: Everything related to SMK belongs to Warner Brothers and Shoot the Moon Enterprises, Ltd.

Author's Note: Ayiana2 requested some late-Season 3 fic; I doubt that this is what was in mind, but here it is. Not set around any specific episode, just Somewhere In Season 3. Feedback, comments and concrit welcome.

Restless

By Laurie

She took a moment away from the files, away from the lines of too-small print, and stretched out her arms, trying not to be noticed. There were blue veins along her arms; she studied them. Had they always been so blue? They were not raised, not standing out, just ... vivid. Was that normal? Were they supposed to look like that? Cerulean streaks that she could trace all the way up until they vanished beneath the tight rolled cuff of her blouse. Maybe it was all the exercise, more oxygen in the blood or something. She had always tried to take care of herself, stay in shape, but working here... It wouldn't be the bullets, she thought, not the bombs or the Russians or even Lee's mercurial tendencies: it was the exercise that would kill her.

There was a cramp starting in her leg. Amanda stretched it out, tried to ease the spasm in the muscle and caught herself sharply against the edge of the desk, tried to stifle the cry and failed. Lee's head raised.

'What? What is it?'

He could go from near-somnolence to looking as though he were preparing for a siege in the time it took most people to draw breath. If terrorists had chosen that moment to break through the windows of Q Bureau he would have been ready for them.

'Nothing,' she said. 'I've just got a bit of cramp. In my leg. I think I've been sitting still for too long.' She wouldn't tell him that she had just nearly succeeded in knee-capping herself.

Lee frowned, threw down his file, stood up and started to advance across the room. She didn't move, simply watched his progress, wondering vaguely what he'd do, imagining his hands on her easing out the tension, thinking what she would say, what she would do when he touched her. He veered off at the last minute and picked up both their coats.

'Come on, we'll go for a walk.'

She stared at him wordlessly and then slowly pushed herself up; he was waiting, holding out her coat. Go for a walk, like he'd put a collar and leash on her and take her out. Sometimes she wondered if that's how he saw her, like a spaniel trotting along beside him. In the early days she couldn't quite have blamed him: her enthusiasm had far outweighed her experience and now sometimes even she was surprised thinking about her own naiveté. But that had been then.

Lee slipped her coat up her arms, draped her scarf around her neck. 'It's cold out,' he said.

'Thanks.'

He looked tired, she thought suddenly, terribly tired and he had that caged look that he always got when he'd been inside for too long. He'd been running his hands through his hair, had his tie loosened and the top button undone. And she felt guilty.

They walked the short distance, a couple of blocks, to the patch of green that wasn't really a park, more of a square. The local residents used it to walk their dogs, go running, and it came with the mandatory old lady feeding the pigeons. She always wondered where they came from. Amanda imagined them having a central depot, being assigned their spots and their very own flock and being sent out armed with a supply of stale bread. Lee ignored all of them. It was a chilly day but very clear and in the sun it felt warm. He turned his face up to it, closed his eyes, soaked the meagre heat into his skin and imagined himself somewhere else, somewhere very far away.

He opened his eyes and Amanda was rubbing her hands together. He pulled his gloves out of his pocket and passed them to her. 'Here.'

'Thanks.' They were too big for her, the ends of the fingers flat and empty; she looked at them with amusement. Leather lined with cashmere, not the brightly-coloured wool with the hole in one finger that she had left somewhere.

They completed one half-circuit of the square when a dog ploughed into them. Medium sized, tawny, and an indescribable mix, it carried a stick almost as big as itself; it dropped it at Lee's feet, looked up at him and wagged its tail. Lee threw the stick; the dog chased it, brought it back. They did that about twenty times and on its last trip back the dog made it halfway, abandoned the stick and took off in the other direction. They could hear it barking, high over the noise of traffic.

'That's gratitude for you.' Lee smiled slightly, shook his head. 'You don't have a dog.' He said to her suddenly and he sounded surprised.

'What?' Amanda blinked at him.

He shrugged, shoulders lifting a fraction and dropping again. 'It just seems to go together somehow: you, the family home, your kids - it's like there should be a dog but there isn't it.'

All the barely-contained chaos of her home, and then a dog. Amanda closed her eyes for a moment and fended off the images. 'I think that would be a bit too much. When the boys are older, perhaps...' She tilted her head at him. 'Maybe you should get one.'

He smiled wryly. He'd turned the collar of his coat up against the bite of the wind, it hugged the line of his jaw. 'I'm never home. Can you imagine what it would like, some poor creature hoed up in there all day? It would be like one of those places that get busted by the SPCA.'

'There are dog-walkers, dog-sitters even,' she said, always practical.

'Poor thing would see more of them than of me. If I went home it would probably think I was trying to break in and go for the kill. I had a dog when I was a kid.' He paused, reconsidered this. 'Well, there was a dog on the base, God knows where it came from. We adopted each other, I guess. We went everywhere together, I called him Lucky, then he got hit by a car - not so lucky.' He was silent again, remembering. 'I loved that dog.' He saw the look on her face and raised his eyebrows. 'What? Is it so hard to think of me loving something?'

She was quiet for a moment. 'No, that isn't hard; it's just I'm not used to hearing you say it out loud.'

They walked on, feet crunching over the piles of bright fallen leaves. He thought about Leslie; he'd thought about her a lot and hoped that when she thought about him - if she did - it wasn't too badly. Maybe he ought to call her again, try to make it up to her. He dismissed that thought as soon as it came. Leslie was beautiful, she was intelligent, kind, grounded, she was all the things Amanda was except for the one insurmountable flaw: she was not Amanda. Then there had been that black dress - had he really done that? And what had been the point? apart from getting Leslie to play Kim Novak to his James Stewart. They'd just needed the bell tower and they'd have been all set for the big finish.

'Amanda.'

'Yes?' She brushed hair out of her eyes, the low sun making her squint at him; it had turned their colour to gold.

He paused. 'Nothing.'

'Oh. I thought you wanted to tell me something.'

'I do, I just- I don't what it is.'

'Right. Maybe when you've worked out what it is you can tell me then.'

A ball of something had been growing in his chest for a long time. Months, maybe even years. And if he didn't do something soon he was sure the damn thing would kill him. All he had to do was figure out what that something was. Face up to it, Scarecrow, you already know that. But being with Amanda didn't just mean being with Amanda: it meant her life and her children and what he would owe them, and the thought of letting her down, and them down, terrified him.

Lee looked at his watch. 'We should be getting back.'

She sighed. 'Yes. It's nice out - we should do this more often.'

He smiled. 'Make it part of our routine?'

'Yes.'

'It's a date.'

They looked at each other and then her eyes dropped; she picked a bit of leaf off the cuff of her sleeve.

'Are you okay now?'

She looked up again. Had he been standing that close to her before? 'Oh... Oh, yes, it was just some cramp in my leg. You know how it gets, when you've been sitting still for a long time, especially when you've been moving around a lot usually and then you're just sitting-'

'Yeah,' he nodded, 'when you're used to running around it can be hard just to stay in one spot.'

'Yes.' She moistened her lips. 'But you can make up for it, I mean just because you're staying still doesn't mean you can't- I mean, there's running on the spot or those exercises they always tell you should do on aeroplanes, especially long-haul flights.'

'Maybe we can try that too.'

'I guess that it would look pretty funny, both of us in the middle of Q Bureau touching our toes twenty times.'

He kept his eyes on her face and saw the colour rise on her cheeks. 'Come on.'

They started back, walking close together but not quite touching, moving slowly but inexorably forward.

Fin