For the latest challenge in the FB group to write something from Billy's point of view that gives us some insight into him. Many thanks to my betas who never fail to improve things.

Billy knocked on the apartment door, his smile broadening when it swung open to reveal a disgruntled-looking Lee.

"Oh it's you," Lee greeted him, swinging the door open more fully to let him in. "I thought it was my other boss."

Billy chuckled. "Nope, just the original one. Thought I'd come by and keep you company for a bit."

"Well, I'd say thanks for dropping by, but I'm pretty sure you're just checking up on me, because you know Amanda had that school trip with Jamie this afternoon," said Lee, as Billy followed him through the apartment and into the kitchen. "Coffee? Amanda made some just before she left."

"Checking that you're resting or checking that you're not taking it out on Amanda?" chuckled Billy.

Lee paused and gave him a knowing grimace. "It's making me crazy," he admitted. "I don't see why I have to stay home for a week. It's not like I'm contagious."

"No, but you gave us a couple of scares this week, you know," Billy answered. "And it won't hurt you to sit back, rest and re-center yourself for a few days. You ran yourself pretty ragged tracking down Brody."

"Yeah, but-" Lee stopped as Billy held up a hand with a scowl.

"It's one week, Scarecrow. I don't want to hear one more word of complaint out of you."

Lee's expression turned sullen. "Did Amanda tell you I'd been complaining?" he asked.

"She doesn't have to – I've known you more than ten years, Lee. You think I don't know how you're behaving? You snuck out of a hospital with a head injury just a few days ago against all orders – or did you think I'd forgotten that?"

"I suppose not," grumbled Lee.

"And you should certainly know better than to think Amanda would complain about you to me," he added.

Lee had the grace to look ashamed. "You're right, I do. She's been putting up with a lot from me lately."

"You say that like I should be surprised." Billy leaned on the counter, watching Lee pull two mugs from the stack of freshly washed dishes on the drying rack on the counter, then reach for the sugar bowl, which he pushed toward Billy with a quick smile.

"I'll let you doctor your own," he said, opening the fridge and pulling out the cream.

"I know it's only been a day or so, but you're looking better," Billy gave him a critical onceover.

"I'm feeling a lot better," admitted Lee. "Amanda may be a pain in the rear when she's being bossy, but man, she's a great cook. I haven't eaten this healthy in years."

"It's almost like she knows how to deal with misbehaving little boys," teased Billy.

"Very funny," answered Lee, although his sheepish smile gave him away. He pulled a Tupperware container across the counter and opened it to reveal homemade chocolate chip cookies. "But as it happens, you're right. She threatened to take these home with her if I didn't eat breakfast." He held it out, letting Billy help himself and taking two for himself before sealing it up and gesturing for Billy to precede him into the living room, settling into the couch with a sigh. He glanced at his watch, then looked up at Billy with a grin. "11:15 – did you actually time your visit so you could have coffee here?"

Billy took a seat in the armchair, eyes twinkling. "I may have taken that into consideration." He bit into one of the cookies in his hand and smiled blissfully. "And also the possibility that Amanda would have left you something like this."

"Don't blame you at all," answered Lee, inhaling a cookie in two bites.

There was a moment of peaceful silence as the two men enjoyed their treat, and then Billy leaned back, settled himself more comfortably and sipped his coffee. He looked around the room, smiling as he noticed the vase of fresh flowers and the carefully stacked magazines and books. "Have I ever told you how I met Jeannie?" he asked.

"I don't think so," Lee answered, confused by the apparent change in subject.

"It was back when I was training for the Agency. We used to have classes up near Georgetown University and one morning, I ducked out to this little coffee shop nearby that served coloureds. So there I am, sitting alone and in walked the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. She was like a cross between Lena Horne and Diahann Carroll all wrapped in one package. I was a goner."

Lee's face lit up with laughter at the dreamy expression on Billy's face as he stared into space, momentarily lost in the memory.

"What did you say to her?" he asked. "Did you have a smooth pickup line back in the day?"

"Say to her? I didn't say a damn thing to her," chuckled Billy. "I just sat there like a big dumb rock, staring. She had a coffee and read her book for fifteen minutes and then she got up and left."

"And you followed her?" prompted Lee.

"No, I didn't do that either," admitted Billy. "But I did go back to the coffee shop the next day and the next day after that. Pretty soon my friend Allan - Allan Aghaney – you remember him?" Lee nodded and Billy went on. "Well, he was in my training classes and he asked where I was disappearing to every day, so I told him and then he insisted on coming with me to check out this woman who'd bowled me over. And then he said, "William, you can't just keep staring at this poor woman all day. You're supposed to be an intelligence agent – apply your skills, man!" So that day, we followed her when she left the coffee shop and it turned out she worked in the Dean's office right across the street."

"Wait – you still hadn't even said hello at this point?" Lee interrupted.

"Well, not really – we'd exchanged smiles that way you do when you see a regular at the coffee shop, but no, I still hadn't gotten up the nerve to talk to her."

"Really?" asked Lee, incredulity in his voice. "That doesn't sound like you."

"She was really, really beautiful," said Billy as if that explained it all. "And remember, I was a lot younger and stupider then. Anyway, Allan decided that there was safety in numbers, so he got someone else who was in the same classes as us, and he set up a study group that met every day at the coffee shop."

"Let me guess," said Lee, snapping his fingers and pointing at him. "You met at 11:15 every day."

"Well done, Scarecrow. We'll make a spy out of you yet," Billy replied, eyes crinkled with laughter.

"So how did you finally get up the nerve to talk to her?"

"I decided slow and steady would win the race, so we just went every day and I always took a seat so she could see me from her favorite table, and I'd smile and she'd smile back, but I could still never get brave enough to say anything to her. I almost didn't want to ruin it, you know? What if she had a squeaky voice? Or a boyfriend? What if I said something stupid?"

"But you persisted, obviously," said Lee.

"Well, by that time, the study group was actually turning into the real thing. Allan had a knack for numbers – that's why he went into banking later – and he also had a knack for making it clear to people like me who didn't always understand the ins and outs of stuff like that. I swear he's the only reason I can make head or tails of department budgets even now. And my skill was documentation because I was fresh out of law school and I knew how to read through the BS gobbledey-gook stuff and see what was really being said. Turned out our little coffee habit was making us all better agents – going over class notes, explaining them to each other. I'd been in study groups in law school, of course, but it hadn't occurred to me how well it would work with Agency courses too. The three of us were getting top marks across the board – and outdoing a lot of agent candidates that should have been beating us. Teamwork – it made all the difference to our success. Even our trainers called us the three musketeers."

"Okay, so Jeannie was like your muse or something, that's obvious" Lee commented. "But when did you ever finally talk to her?"

"I'm getting to that," grinned Billy. "So we'd been doing that for a couple of months, I guess, and the other two musketeers were getting pretty tired of my crush on this poor woman and they told me I needed to do something about it."

By this time, Lee had given up interrupting. He just raised a brow, sipped his coffee, and waited.

"And then a miracle happened. We were sitting there, brainstorming over something for class and she got up to leave after finishing her coffee, just like she always did, but that time, instead of walking out, she walked up to our table and said hello and introduced herself."

"Please tell me you managed to answer her," laughed Lee.

"I did. I even managed to stand up without falling over, and I introduced myself and the other two without messing that up. And then she did the most incredible thing – she asked me out."

"She asked you out?" repeated Lee. "You're kidding."

Billy bent a reprimanding look on him. "Try not to look so surprised, Lee. Yes, she asked me out. She said she had to bring a date to some event the university was having and she'd seen me and my friends around for a while and I seemed like a nice guy and she wondered if I'd like to go with her. Of course, I said yes."

"And the rest was history," Lee grinned.

"Not quite," chuckled Billy. "I went with her to the party, and we had a really nice time and she was as lovely as she was beautiful, but by the end of the evening, I'd realized something that I should have figured out long before, but I wasn't always very smart where girls were concerned. Allan told me later he'd known it from the start, and he'd just been waiting for me to catch up. He was pretty sure I'd blown it, but it came alright in the end."

"But what did you figure out?" asked Lee with a puzzled look.

"That I'd been falling in love with the other member of our study group the whole time," said Billy with a wide grin. "All those weeks sitting at a table with Jeannie and Allan, talking about training, and our lives, and what we had planned for our careers… I'd fallen for her so slowly and steadily, I didn't even know it until I suddenly realized I was on a date with the wrong girl. Linda was beautiful, but she wasn't what I really wanted"

Lee's jaw had dropped open; he'd never seen that coming. "Jeannie wasn't the beautiful girl from the coffee shop?" he spluttered.

"Oh, she was, she definitely was," Billy corrected him, taking another sip from his cup. "She just wasn't the beautiful girl I was expecting. That's how life gets you sometimes, you know. What you want, what you need, it can be right under your nose and it takes you a while to see it."

Lee stared at him in silence, contemplating that. "And that's why you still have coffee every day at 11:15?"

Billy toasted him and drained his cup. "It sure is. I'm not superstitious, but it seemed like tempting fate to stop doing it, you know what I mean? Almost thirty years together, I can't be messing with it now." He stood up and walked into the kitchen to put his cup by the sink, Lee following close behind.

"Now, make sure you wash those before Amanda comes back," Billy instructed him. "She's supposed to be supervising you, not picking up after you." He gave a pointed glance around the unnaturally tidy apartment. "That's another thing a long marriage teaches you."

"I will," promised Lee. "But hang on, tell me more about Jeannie. If Allan was the numbers guy and you were legalese, what was her specialty?"

"Oh, she had a whole different level of smarts. She's intuitive and empathetic and she can see things outside the box. She likes to puzzle her way through things from a different angle than other people. And very patient, of course. Well, she had to be, didn't she? Waiting for me to figure it out, and then putting up with me all these years. Anyway, she was an amazing analyst – one of the best."

Lee tilted his head and stared at him. "That sounds an awful lot like Amanda. Is that why you hired her?"

Billy's grin widened. "Pretty much. I knew from working with Jeannie early on what we were missing in our section. You and Francine are excellent agents, but you both needed someone who could shake you up, make you see things differently."

"Well, Amanda has certainly managed that," Lee agreed, his lips quirking up.

"She sure has." Billy gave into the belly laugh he'd been holding onto. He reached for the Tupperware container and helped himself to another couple of cookies. "The baking was a lovely bonus though," he added with a wink as he leaned back against the counter.

"So how come Jeannie didn't stay with the Agency?" Lee asked, refilling his cup.

"Oh, she did stay, and for a long time actually. We dated for a while before getting married and it wasn't until the girls came along that she decided to drop out and stay at home. By then I'd been fast tracked to management because of my law degree, so I was making enough to support a family. But even then, Harry still used to bring her in from time to time to help with things that needed her magic touch." Billy gave a shrug. "And even though she's not working there, it's been helpful sometimes, you know? To have someone who understands the crazy hours and who can help ease the stress on the bad days."

"Like Amanda did for me the past few days," Lee nodded.

"More like the last few years," snorted Billy and Lee laughed in agreement. Billy straightened up and brushed the cookie crumbs off his hands. "Well, I'll leave you to your R&R – don't even think about showing your face in the office until next week."

"Billy…" Lee said in a wheedling tone. "Come on…"

Billy turned serious and looked up at him. "Do you know why I gave Amanda the special assignment to look after you this week?"

"Because you knew she'd boss me around and I couldn't make a stink about it without looking like a jackass?"

"Partly," agreed Billy. "I watched her force you to look after yourself after you were injured, that's true. But I need my agents to be in the best possible condition, physically and mentally, and this was a rough week."

"Aw come on," said Lee again. "It's just a little bump on the head. I'm fine."

"I'm not talking about you, Scarecrow," said Billy in steely tones. "Amanda was in a car that you crashed, and still stayed with you all night at the hospital. And then she stuck to you like glue, helping you do the things that needed to get done and making you rest when you needed it, and never rested herself. Now what do you think she'd be doing if I hadn't assigned her to keep an eye on you this week?"

"She'd probably be trying to help me out by doing all the paperwork and reports for everything that happened with Brody," answered Lee, ashamed he hadn't thought about that.

"Exactly," said Billy. "Like I said, I need all my agents to be at their best, and if I have to assign them to look after each other to make sure that gets done, that's what I do."

"So I'm supposed to be looking after Amanda? How do I do that?" questioned Lee.

"Be yourself, just not so much of yourself," said Billy, starting to smile again to take the sting out of it. "She likes to be helpful, so let her be helpful. Give her a hard enough time to think she's making you do things, but give in quickly. If you're resting, she's resting, and I'm going to get back two healthy agents ready to work. Take your medicine, Scarecrow, boss's orders."

"Fine," Lee grumbled. "I suppose I can do that."

"Teamwork, Scarecrow," teased Billy. "It's the foundation of all the great relationships." He headed for the door.

"Don't you mean partnerships?" Lee asked.

"Those too," Billy twinkled at him. "Look after each other and I'll see you next week."

"Next week," Lee nodded. "And hey, give my best to Jeannie, will ya? That's quite the story you two have."

"I will," agreed Billy, waving goodbye and whisking himself out the door. He couldn't help chuckling to himself as he walked down the hallway. "Right under his nose the whole time," he said out loud and let out a hearty guffaw as he stepped into the waiting elevator.