!!!! GUESS WHAT YOU GUYS.
Or by its alternate title, "Bones. Booth. Battlestar Galactica Babies." THESE TWO FILL ME WITH SUCH JOY AND I DON'T CARE WHO KNOWS ABOUT IT.
When did I start writing so much. 16,000 words in a month? what the what
TITLE: From the Greek Paradeigma, Meaning "Example"
FANDOM: Bones
PAIRING: Brennan/Booth; BABIES.
RATED: PG
SPOILERS: Through 4x21 "Mayhem on the Cross."
SUMMARY: "Once upon a time, Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan had a baby."
NOTE: In a way, this has been like my own child. EIGHT MONTHS, this took to finish. EIGHT. MONTHS. baggers, you better be happy. Once upon a time, you see, she had a birthday, and we all know that baggers loves her babyfic. I swear to everything holy that this is the sweetest, most adorable thing I have ever written. (Look at them. How could it not be?) I love. This show. Oh my goodness. No future spoilers. In twelve movements; 8000 words.
- - -
1.
Once upon a time, Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan had a baby.
I mean, of course they did.
Why are you so surprised?
-
2.
Call it a paradigm shift, she explains to him. Copernicus turning away from the heavenly spheres, Darwin's finches, Mendel and his peas; science has survived the shock of Einstein and the tremblings of the atom bomb, so why should two people be any different?
Science trumps fear, Booth. Fear of the unknown and the unknowable. I was afraid.
"It's not that, Bones."
"Then what? I don't understand."
"You. It's you. You."
"I'm not allowed to change?"
You make me this way. People are independent but dynamic. They need other people. You taught me that.
(The more things change, the more they stay the same. Isn't that what your anthropological mumbo jumbo is all about anyway? Why do you gotta go around messing with science, Bones.)
That makes no sense.
(Yes. It does.)
Later he says, "This is not a science experiment, okay. This is you. This is a baby."
"Children are the byproduct of the fertilization of one egg by a single sperm, which is a scientific process. Babies? come from science," she points out.
"No," he says, "Bones, babies do not come from science, they come from love."
She looks at him. He doesn't say anything else.
(What?)
Nothing.
(What?)
Nothing. Gimme some of your fries.
(They're pomme frites, Booth.)
Whatever. Gimme.
(But I like them.)
Just gimme your damned pomme frites, Bones.
She's making one of the recipes Dr. Wyatt left behind, and Booth is pacing in her living room.
"Why are you mad at me, Booth?" she asks finally, before the next step (add chopped carrots).
"I'm not. I'm not mad."
"Well, you're something."
He deflates.
Then he says:
"I don't wanna have some test tube baby with you, Bones. I'm sorry. I don't want that."
...
. . .
.
oh.
"Okay. Well. Okay."
(she adds the carrots)
"No. Bones. You don't understand. I don't want that. That-that, the test tube, science-y whatever part. We're more than that. We. Us."
"Babies," she repeats, "come from love?"
"Precisely."
"So you want to--."
He smiles.
She takes that particular thought in for a while.
(Oh, my God, sweetie, why are you two like this? And why am I always surprised about it?)
Like what, Ang, I don't understand the question.
(This. This story. You cannot tell your grandkids this story. You literally can't ever tell it to anyone because it will send them into years of therapy.)
Why does that matter?
(Because it does.)
I think it's sweet.
(We'll have to make something else up. Something good. Hmm. Does Booth have a musical talent of some kind that I don't know about?)
Stop.
(No. Wait. Hang on, I've got it. It all starts in a hospital--)
I'm leaving now, good bye.
"Okay," she decides.
"Really?" He seems genuinely surprised.
She smiles. "Yes."
She doesn't know what to do next.
"Booth?"
"Yeah?"
"What do we do now?"
"Bones--."
"What?"
"Never mind."
So she cooks dinner.
"Booth."
"What."
"Before we--."
He kisses her, standing there by the stove.
She kisses him back.
A lot.
They decide, they're not really that hungry after all.
"Are you absolu--."
Sheets sticking to their skin. She feels everywhere he's been on her, in her.
(Paradigm shifts, Booth. Science trumps fear.)
"Yes."
Yes.
After, she runs her fingertip over the scar on his chest, not yet so neatly healed. She thinks, articulated for the first time: I don't want anyone else. I don't know what this is, or what it means, or why, but it's what I want.
You're always talking about feelings, Booth. I feel this. It has a voice.
He orders them pizza.
She says, "I was making paella, you know."
He orders extra cheese.
What she had said before was: "So I've changed my mind."
("About the Ethiopian food? Come on, I know a good place, honest."
"No. About. I've decided to have a child."
"That's hilarious, Bones. Get in the car."
"No, Booth, I'm serious about this."
"See, right now? You think you're being funny, but all you're doing is making me wait for food, which makes me cranky. Get in the damned car.")
Call it a paradigm shift, she explains to him later.
They're not actually made in test tubes, you know. Embryos. They're made in petri--
(Shut up, Bones.)
-
3.
Booth knows, kids mean things. Different things at different times, but they're more than just new souls. They are things. Symbolic things.
Kids can heal. Corporeal Parker was still a fresh wound, a new wound, in Booth, and with every crappy hand he drew in poker, every risky double-down in blackjack, he knew it was all meant to be the universe absolving him for that failure. One sign of good, solid luck, he figured, and that would mean it was all for the better. Corporeal Parker would have died for a reason, just like he would be a millionaire for a reason. But better hands never happened; Rebecca, though, Rebecca happened. She saved him without realizing it, years after he had actually quit gambling. They sat there together in her bathroom, waiting to see if the stick turned blue, and he thought, it didn't matter about the odds; a second later, he realized, that must be it. That's love.
(When he asks her if they can maybe name him Parker, after Teddy, she puts her hand on his cheek and gets this sad yet happy look. Later, he wonders, if she did it because she knew she wasn't going to marry him.)
Kids mean we're moving on but we will never, ever forget. Last year he heard some guys talking around the water cooler about former Director Cullen and his wife adopting a baby girl from the Philippines. (Booth tracked down that intern of Bones' who had gone shopping for Andy, and made her swear to her grave never to tell Bones that the gift basket was coming from her, too.)
Kids can mean that you're trying to forget, though, but can't; trying to move on, but you keep getting stuck. Booth knows - that's what he and his brother were. They didn't have PTSD counselors for army vets in the 70s; they had booze, though. So his mom named him after the town in Montana where her grandfather had horses or something, and Jared after this guy Dad knew in the army (he was a real sonuvabitch, you know, but I loved him like my brother), and they all lived in a little house in South Philly with yellow shutters and Dad kept the barber shop running when his own pop saw his son needed something and Mom's jingle-writing just wasn't cutting it. (She hummed a lot, his mom; like this one tune, a bunch of notes that didn't mean anything, until one day when it was on the television, in a commercial for water ice. He thought she was magic.) His dad hated kids. Never knew how to be around them.
And sometimes, you know, kids are just kids. You love them. They're a part of you.
Bones, dammit, she downright blind-sides him with the revelation, casually throwing it out there while he's going on and on about food and shoving her into a car because he skipped lunch and regrets it, for crying out loud.
"I've decided to have a child."
His entire world stops, pauses for a gasp of air, and then starts turning again.
In a way, it's just another thing in a long line of other things that they don't talk about, not really, him and Bones. Sometimes they find themselves telling each other things that should have been said long ago - my dad drank, he thinks, for example, and now you know my entire life, summed up in three syllables. I've saved you from a serial killer - and you, me, - but you've never met my brother. And when you lay their lives out on an examining table - Senator's aides, skeletons in walls, old professors, ex-girlfriends, fungus, superheroes, lonely kids, bad agents, exploding refrigerators, her mom, your ex, hot sun, tiny spaces with little air, other people, her books, that boat, her dad, weddings and funerals and kissing and opening up and, and, cannibals, oh god, Zack, and people, Bones, someone for everyone, I promise - when you look at it like that, then it really is obvious, isn't it?
Bones and a kid, it's not that it doesn't make sense, sort of, minus things like every other time in the history of knowing her when she's insisted on not having any. (He's always meant to ask Sweets if that's one of those conversion thingies, but that would involve talking to Sweets.) (Later, he realizes it's the reason for everything in her life - she's just scared.) Or that Bones and a kid and - him? - isn't exactly the craziest thing he can think of.
Something just doesn't gel.
It's like the perfectly timed, perfectly plausible murder confession, where things add up just a little too neatly.
To his credit, he makes it all the way to the Jeffersonian. He gets that far. Except then he spends almost an hour loitering in the break room above the forensic platform, watching Bones and two grad students waltzing around half a skeleton on the table. It's kind of like watching a hyena hunt wildebeest on Planet Earth.
Cam, naturally, scares him half to death.
"What's going on, Seeley?" she asks immediately. "You've been hiding up here for a while now."
Shit. "You didn't--."
"No," Cam smiles. "But now you're going to tell me why."
He gives her something of a wary look. Bones is his Person for things like this, usually, even when she can't do anything except sit there and smile at him and make her science-y statements and critique his belief in God (which, barring that last bit, always cheers him up even a little). Cam's usually his Other Person - for Bones things, for Jared things, for a second opinion, but lately - okay. Cam and Bones and Angela spend time together. And it's nice. It's good that Bones has Cam, because yeah she has Angela, but sometimes Angela is crazy (how in the hell do you marry someone and then forget? he will never understand that), and Cam is definitely, definitely not crazy.
It's just that he's not sure she's here being his friend or as Brennan's. Which - crap. Because there is literally nothing he can do when she's giving him that look.
"Okay, Camille, hypothetical situation." She raises an eyebrow. He's about to make a huge gamble here. "Let's just say there's a... a someone. Who wants a thing." He can't help it that he immediately glances over the railing, and that Cam would be an idiot to have missed it.
Which she didn't: "And in this example, I'm supposed to be woefully unaware of this someone's identity, right."
He gives her a pointed look - don't push your luck there, Cam. "Yes."
"O-kay," she agrees, getting it.
He sighs. "And this someone, you know, what they want, it's - it's kind of a really big deal. A huge deal."
"So what's the problem?"
Yeah, Booth, what is the problem.
"The problem is, I'm the only person that can... do this thing for this someone, at least I think, and even though I know it would make her - I mean, the someone - happy, I mean really, ridiculously happy, I don't... know if I should? Because it's huge, Cam. Paradigm-shiftingly huge."
"Wow," Cam says. "You suck at this."
"Huh?"
She cuts to this chase: "This 'thing,' is it going to make Brennan happy?"
"Who said anything about Bones!" (He's laughing, see, on the outside, but actually dying on the inside.)
She glares at him - you've got to be fucking kidding me right. "Seeley."
He doesn't even have to think. He answers, "Yeah."
"Do you want to make her happy?"
"God, Camille. Of course."
She smiles at him like he understands. "Then seriously, what the hell else is there then?"
He does understand. She's right.
(Cam, he always forgets, is usually right.)
On the way out, she calls back, "Just don't, uh, don't tell her I said anything."
"Are you kidding me?" he says back. I mean, really. He's not a complete idiot.
So he takes her to a sort of fancy restaurant in Georgetown for lunch, but this isn't something you talk about around other people, so he just steals her food and invites himself over for dinner.
She cooks. He likes watching her cook.
But he can't watch her, because it's all there and he needs to sort through it, and she's pushing him, and suddenly it just comes out, and he thinks - yes. This is what I mean:
"I don't wanna have some test tube baby with you, Bones. I'm sorry. I don't want that."
Wait.
No.
Not what he meant. Not exactly.
He figures he'd have to woo her. (No, not woo. There is no wooing of Bones. Persuade.)
He doesn't expect:
"Yes."
Oh. "Really?"
"Yeah."
He can't--.
Her face. He can't get over her face.
He thinks it might the best thing he's ever seen in his life.
(He didn't truly get what she meant by paradigm shifts until now, by the way.)
She cooks dinner.
"Booth."
"What."
"Before we--."
Suddenly the sound of her voice is too much, and he just wants her to, wants her, wants - he kisses her. Because. He kisses her, which is this thing he's always wanted to do, just to see. Her lips taste fruity, lip gloss or something (Bones wears lipgloss? he--), and dark, like the glass of red wine she's been sipping. The wooden spoon in her hand makes a dull thud against the side of the pan she's stirring; she's kissing him back, hands in his hair, tongues, teeth, needing him, god, he needs her, too, they need each other. And he's waiting, kissing her over and over and pushing her into the counter a little and waiting for this to be the wrong idea, waiting for her to snap out of it and tell him what he's supposed to be doing, but it's not happening -
She stops. He thinks, oh God.
"I--."
But then
But then she smiles, she smiles and god dammit there is nothing in this world he wouldn't do for that smile. It quite literally makes him weak in the knees. (She should never know that.) (He wants her to know that. Then maybe she'll just smile like that all the time.)
She reaches over and switches the burner under her paella off, never once looking away from him.
Oh, my God. It's sexy as hell.
And then - oh, God, he actually starts thinking about her naked, him too, god, together - all the things he tries not to think about, because dammit, it's Bones, it's his partner, but she's here, right here, so close, lips all puffy and hair a bit of mess (he did that he did that he did that), so he thinks - you know what, fuck it all to kingdom come, she wants a baby, and she apparently wants him. What the hell else is there then.
"Booth."
"Hmm."
She traces his jawline, her other hand over where there's a scar on his chest, and starts kissing him again.
He thinks she's asleep, then she mutters, "They're not actually made in test tubes, you know." He opens his eyes and she's looking at him. "Embryos," she explains, "they're made in petri--"
"Shut up, Bones."
-
4.
"Explain this to me again," Angela is saying across the table in Founding Fathers, "in very. Simple. Words."
Booth reaches for the salt shaker. "Bones. Me. Baby. Simple enough for you?"
Angela stares at him, bewildered. "Why?!"
Brennan shrugs. "Why not?"
She looks back and forth between the two of them, then sighs. And then she starts laughing. Uncontrollably. Then crying: "It's the - it's the celibacy thing, you know, I have a lot of pent-up emotion." She looks at Brennan, and smiles proudly. "Oh, sweetie."
Then she cries some more.
"Tears of joy," she says. "Tears of joy."
In public, Cam gasps with happiness, which is a little of a shock.
In private, Cam looks like she's going to punch him in the face. Apparently three months ago they hadn't been having that particular conversation about the same thing.
"If I get lung cancer, Seeley," she says, chain-smoking her way through a third cigarette, "I'm naming my tumor after you."
"Aww, Camille, that's sweet."
Another drag. "You know the worst part?"
"What, Cam."
She hugs him.
Sweets hugs them, too, except then he won't let go.
Max looks like he's actually gonna slug Booth, which is a terrifying yet not surprising prospect, until he pulls a "ha HA surprise! fooled you!" face, and really, ex-fugitive bank robbers turned nearly convicted murderers should never, ever joke about that stuff. Ever.
Brennan gathers all her grad students together, and the announcement is punctuated by Clark shouting DAMMIT while Wendell silently fist-pumps a YES to himself.
"We, uh, made a bet," Wendell admits sheepishly, later.
No one actually tells Hodgins - Brennan figures Angela probably did, though - but there's a small box from this chi-chi baby store on her desk when she comes back from lunch, and he buys Booth a very nice scotch when they all go out to celebrate.
Her agent sends a card with a note - Congratulations! Just don't write it in. Brennan really doesn't understand what she's talking about.
Booth picks Parker up on a Friday, and sends the kid up to his room for something while he talks to Rebecca in the kitchen. She gets this little smile on her face when he tells her, and Booth thinks, it's strange - he used to think they'd never get to this place, comfortable with one another and not angry/pining/sad/regretting/something else.
"Are you happy?" she asks.
"Yes," he says. "God. Absolutely. Yes."
"Good," she smiles. "Me, too."
Jeff comes home, and Parker is running down the stairs, and for one blissful second they all co-exist.
Months later, Brennan gets a postcard from Sully. The postmark is from Florida, somewhere in the Keys. She imagines he's chartering boats for tourists to see manatees, or something, living above a place that advertises the best key lime pie - perfectly happy in his purposeless life.
"I'll be damned," Booth says, inspecting the postcard like it's not the genuine article, "I half-expected him to shipwreck somewhere around Cape Hatteras."
She shoves him in the shoulder. "Stop."
"You're right," he replies, kissing her on the temple with an arm around her shoulders. "Sorry."
"Thank you."
Russ and Amy bring the girls up for the day, and they all go to the Mall, and the girls ride on the carousel with Amy while she and Russ sit a park bench, talking.
"Do you," she says, "remember that song Mom used to sing?"
Russ hums a couple of notes, but neither of them can remember the words. Development of the pre-frontal cortex she says, and Russ puts his hand over hers and says, "I'm happy for you, Tempe. I really am."
Her nieces come shrieking with laughter off the carousel, and everyone gets ice cream, and later Booth comes with Parker (they don't go on the carousel), and no one talks about the past. Parker and the younger one seem to play well together, and everyone laughs quietly about that.
Brennan thinks, so I guess this is what we are now.
(It's taking forever.
"Look, Bones, you know, if it's not positive, that's okay, we can just try aga--"
"It's positive."
"What?"
"It's positive."
His entire world does that momentarily-pausing-thing again.
Not for the first time, all he can think to do is to kiss her.)
-
5.
It's not that they decide to lie to the F.B.I. or anything. It's more like they... decide not to tell them. There's a difference:
"Lie of omission, Bones. Totally different."
"Will you get in trouble anyway?"
"No! I mean, technically you're not even F.B.I., right? I mean, why should it matter?"
He's thought about this. He's actually managed to convince himself that this is true.
She points out, "It's just that I never had the impression that seeing Sweets was a recommendation for our continuing working together."
"So?"
"So, what if they split us up."
There. She said it. She's put it out there.
"They are not going to split us up, Bones, okay? Not over this."
"Of course they could, Booth. Strictly speaking, your objectivity has been compromised."
"There is nothing wrong with my objectivity! Got it? Nothing."
"I don't know, you know, someone at the F.B.I. might think you'll give me the benefit of the doubt about something a lot longer if I was wrong."
"Then that person would be insane, because the day you are wrong about something, I will shout it from the rooftop."
"That's not very nice, you know. To say to the mother of your child."
"Well, then, imagine I'm saying it with love."
She looks at him.
"Nothing," he says, "has changed between us."
"Technically, that's not--."
"Nothing, Bones. Okay? Nothing."
She sighs. Sometimes she doesn't understand him.
He decides, "We just... don't tell Sweets. Everything else will be just gossip, as far as the F.B.I. is concerned."
"What? How can we not tell Sweets?"
"We just don't, okay."
"And like it's never going to come up? He's never going to notice that I'm pregnant and want to know why?"
"Then you tell him it's none of his business and move on!"
"It sort of is, you know." She adds, "What if I want to tell him?"
"You are not telling Sweets, Bones."
"We're his family now, remember?"
"Then it will be the Booth-Brennan family secret."
She looks at him again. This time, he actually blushes a little. For that matter, so does she. (Hormones, she thinks; just hormones.)
She tries again: "We have to tell Sweets."
"Bones--."
She settles for a pointed look.
"Fine," he eventually relents.
Cue:
Hugging.
Lots of desperate, grasping hugging.
("Oh, Jesus, Sweets, are you crying? Keep it together, dude, people are gonna start noticing...")
And then they actually get away with it.
For about a week.
Getting called into Deputy Director Adams' office is not the way Booth likes to start any Monday, regardless of the reason. The whole Bones-is-pregnant thing just makes things 500% more terror-worthy.
(Bones is pregnant. Yeah. Still not quite wrapping his brain around that yet.)
Adams shuts the door by instructing his assistant to push back his 10AM meeting. Yup: he is in some serious shit right about now.
"Booth!"
"Sir."
"How are things?"
"Things are... good, sir. Thanks for, uh, asking."
"That's great."
They have a staring contest.
"Personal life, you know, that's going all right for you, too?"
Shitshitshitshitshitshit. "Yup."
Adams smiles a shit-eating grin, then opens the bottom drawer of his desk to retrieve two glasses and a bottle of very expensive bourbon, pours them each a glass and hands one to Booth.
Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit he is so fired. He is so, so--. "Sir, I. It's nine in the morning."
"Ah, Maureen doesn't mind," Adams replies, referring to his assistant, as he screws the cap back on the bottle. "This here is good stuff, you know. Eighteen year vintage, set me back two hundred bucks, but try it, Booth. Ah, this baby is worth it."
Booth supposes, there are probably worse things in life than getting fired with a $200 glass of bourbon to temporarily break your fall. At least he's got that.
"Now what should we toast to?" his boss says.
"I don't know, sir." SO FIRED.
"I've got it." He raises his glass. "To that scientist author of yours, Booth. Boy or girl, doesn't matter, as long as he's healthy, right?"
The other shoe dropping doesn't hurt quite as much as he expected it would.
"Sir--."
"Save it, Agent. Now drink up."
He does. He pounds back the entire glass in a single gulp, which he regrets a second later when he chokes on it a little, but he doesn't care. He just wants to be anywhere but here, right now, most likely losing his job. (He has to admit, it tastes good. Damned good.) (That's the taste of your crumbling F.B.I. career, asshole, he reminds himself.)
"Listen, sir, I can explain."
"Good. Start with the part where you fucked your partner, then got her pregnant."
Note to self, who just essentially chugged a glance of pure alcohol after skipping breakfast and therefore on an empty stomach: you're probably going to be slipping away from me in a couple of minutes, so I wanted to say - don't, uh, don't mention how that was the entire point. Ever. It's going to end up being one of those things that just sounds better in your head.
"Technically, she's not my partner?"
Note to self: seriously, what the fuck did we just talk about?
"Excuse me?"
"F.B.I. partner, she's not my... F.B.I. partner."
Note to self: you are so lucky Bones is independently wealthy. You would be about to become a deadbeat dad otherwise.
"Please, Agent, I would greatly enjoy an elaboration on his particular technicality."
"Sir--."
"Stop."
His head buzzes lightly from the bourbon. (This is happening, right?)
Adams rubs his forehead, and says, almost under his breath, "When Cullen told me about you two, he was not kidding."
What? "Sir?"
"You're on desk duty for a week, okay? No. Make that - two."
No, seriously, what?! Why is not fired?
"I--." And the bourbon + empty stomach suddenly slams into him, all at once. "I don't understand."
From another drawer, Adams pulls out a file folder and drops in between them on his desk. "I can't fire you. You're right - technically speaking, your professional relationship with Dr. Brennan and the Jeffersonian is purely that of the F.B.I. and an independent contractor, and therefore not subject to the same fraternization rules as traditional partnership. And I can't even split you two up, either, because apparently, this recent development isn't actually indicative of a change in your working dynamic, which, I don't even want to talk about how fucked up that is, just so long as you manage to return the level of results that you do."
"It's... it's not?"
Adams smiles at him. "Agent Booth, you owe your continued employment in this organization to one person, and that person is Dr. Lance Sweets. I beg you to remember that the next time you give him the shit he so otherwise deserves."
"I--." What. Is going. On. "I don't know what to say, sir."
"You should say that you're happiest agent in this building ever to be given two-weeks desk duty."
"I am... that. Sir."
"Good. Now get out: I've got a meeting with Homeland Security that I'd like to avoid for as long as possible."
He gets back to his office, and Bones is there, waiting for him.
"Are you... drunk, Booth?"
"No. Yes. Possibly. I want to be."
He explains why he won't be interrogating their prime suspect in the case they're working.
At Founding Fathers, he buys Sweets a drink, and when the kid tries to explain, Booth cuts him off: "Just finish your drink, Sweets, okay?" Then he shakes the man's hand and adds, "And don't let this for one second make you think I like you."
"Of course not, Agent Booth."
-
6.
She starts second-guessing herself after the first sonogram, a feeling that begins with her heart leaping into her throat when the doctor finds the baby's heartbeat. A person. A living, breathing person. She thinks, that's not even rational; this fetus' lungs have yet to fully develop, therefore it cannot breathe.
"I know about bones, Angela," she tells her best friend, thumbing her sonogram picture. "What the hell was I thinking."
"Sweetie." She puts a hands over hers. "Everybody freaks out about this. Okay? Everybody."
"That... doesn't make me feel any better." She slumps against her friend on the couch in her office, and eventually, she inhales, stilling
herself, and confesses: "What if I can't do it."
"You can," Angela tells her immediately. She almost believes it; she wants to believe it. "You will. I feel it in every bone in my body."
"So what if your bones are wrong?"
Angela smiles. "You tell me."
"What if you're wrong?"
"I'm not."
"Angela--."
"I'm not," she insists, putting an arm around Brennan's shoulder. "You'll have us. Your family. You have Booth."
Brennan makes a face, letting the rest fall out sheepishly: "What if I can't do that either."
"Oh, please," she says dismissively.
"You were going to marry Hodgins."
"That was different, sweetie."
"Why?"
"Because it was. Look," she pats her arm, "this is one of those times when I'm right about everything and you're just gonna have to believe me, okay?"
She takes her time. All she feels like is time.
"Okay," she relents.
Angela holds up the sonogram.
They sit like that for a while, Brennan calming herself and allowing her mind to dwell in the brief burst of euphoria that comes before the panic - my baby my baby my baby my baby mine me us Booth us ours.
Booth props the sonogram up next to his picture of Parker on his desk.
The gesture makes her cry, but she figures, that's most likely the hormonal imbalance.
-
7.
Things that take some getting used to: food cravings.
(Bones, I swear to God, if you're one of those 3am peanut butter and pickle sandwich kind of women...)
You'll - what?
(I'll do something.)
Sounds intimidating.
(Whatever.)
What kind of woman was Rebecca?
(Fried chicken. Couldn't stand the stuff for two years. Why?)
Nothing. It's just, that sounds good.
(Bones.)
Just kidding.
(That wasn't funny.)
She's doing fine until they get to the crime scene and Cam says, "Mmm, juicy," and Brennan barely makes it to the bushes in time before vomiting up breakfast. Eventually she's just sitting in the SUV with the door open, and Booth brings her some water, giving her a (vanilla) run-down of what Cam's found so far. Every time she thinks she's better, she starts thinking about the body all peutrified and, ugh, not better at all.
"You okay?" Booth asks. He's leaning protectively against the side of the truck.
She sighs. "I feel stupid. I can't control it, it's like I'm a... prisoner in my own body."
"Hey," he says, and he puts his hand under her chin, completely inappropriate behavior for a crime scene. "Cam's got everything under control here, okay?"
But I want to be in control she wants to say, and he knows it.
She kisses the top of his hand - also probably inappropriate, not that she cares - and says, "Thanks."
(That was the fourth person who knew I was pregnant.)
And?
(And - how can they tell? I'm not even that far along, relatively speaking.)
Bones. Seriously?
(Yes!)
Well, for starters, you're glowing.
(...really?)
You didn't notice? You're like the Northern Lights over there.
(But you noticed.)
Of course I noticed, Bones, I woke up like six inches from your face.
(And you like it?)
Yeah, Bones. Okay? Jeez.
(It's just excess oil secretions, you know, from the glands in my skin.)
That's wonderful.
(I'm just saying.)
In a way, not a lot has changed between them, except for the part where they're having a baby. There are still murders to be investigated; she goes out in the field until her doctor (to the relief of Booth) forbids it; they still have dinner together or with the squints, and Booth still hangs around the Jeffersonian until she shoos him away to do all that paperwork he's avoiding.
Except.
You two.
(What?)
Never mind.
(Ang.)
Have you at least talked? You know, about--. Everything.
(Booth and I talk all the time.)
That's not what I mean.
(Oh. That.)
Yes, sweetie.
(I've actually been... avoiding that particular topic of conversation.)
Huh.
(What?)
That is the first normal thing you've said about this entire arrangement.
(That doesn't make sense.)
Yeah, actually, it does.
Because, as it turns out, everything encompasses a lot.
Everything is Booth's beer in her fridge, and her clothes in his closet, and the way she rearranged his fridge so the milk wouldn't go bad so quickly. Everything is not being in her apartment for a week, and two sets of handwriting on the grocery list that migrates between them. Everything is her shampoo in his shower.
Everything is sleeping together; not sex, sleep.
Everything is complaining the TV is too loud when she's trying to read applications for the new summer intensive program. Everything is Booth telling her she's hovering as he stirs the spices into his tomato sauce ("Gravy, Bones; it's called gravy"). Everything is picking fights, and Booth's bad back, and stupid little toys that mean I'm sorry, and being mad just for the sake of being mad.
Everything is all of these things, and none of them.
Which actually makes sense to her, even though it shouldn't.
(She's a smart person, you know.
She knows more about things than you would think.)
And then one day.
One--.
Oh.
Oh.
Booth is making pizza (why? she wasn't paying attention to that part), and says, "Booth?"
"Yellow peppers or red?"
"I love you."
It's such a stupidly obvious thing to realize.
They're having a baby, and they practically live together, and oh, right, she loves this person. It all just slots into place.
She's not very good at this.
"Bones."
"Yeah?"
"I know."
"You do?"
"Yeah."
Oh, she thinks. She should have realized that.
"Bones."
"Yeah?"
"Love you, too, by the way."
I don't want anyone else, she remembers.
See? She should have known.
(She wants to feel like this forever.)
"Now," he says, with a smile, "Yellow peppers or red?"
A mother and her boyfriend kill her little girl, stuff her body in a garbage bag, bury it in the garden like it's nothing - all because the child had the audacity to want some attention from her mother when he was around. She's not even that sorry about it. She's more upset that her boyfriend is about to be extradited to California.
Brennan finally understands what Booth's white knuckles and his barely-restrained rage feel like.
"Lemme tell you something, Bones," he says, drinking a beer at the bar while she pushes pasta around, uninterested. "This baby? Sometimes the prospect terrifies the living hell out of me."
"But you already have a child. You're a good father, Booth."
"Yeah, but still." He looks at her. "Kids should be scary."
"I don't understand."
"They need us, Bones. They need us for a long time, to feed them and take care of them and make sure they turn out all right. People shouldn't take that kind of responsibility so lightly."
She knows he's not trying to scare her - that he's just being honest.
"Then," she says, also honest, "I need you." She inhales. "I haven't a clue what I'm doing, so I need you there to teach me."
His face softens. She realizes, this means something. He smiles. "I'll teach you, Bones."
"For a long time?"
"For as long as it takes."
She smiles, too.
She's a smart person, you know.
-
8.
"Come on, Bones, you're a girl. Didn't you make a list?"
"What?"
"A list! Of names."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
(Angela pipes in: "I totally have one.")
(Cam adds: "Sad to admit, but... me, too. And if you ever repeat that fact, I will kill you.")
"Baby names, Bones, you know. If it's a girl, you'd name her this; a boy, that."
"You're... joking, right?"
"No! Come on."
"Why would I have a list?"
(Cam: "Fair point.")
"Okay, fine, so maybe it wasn't baby names, but you had to have a list. You know, like favorite names for dolls and toys or whatever."
"When I was six, I had an imaginary friend that I named Jacques Cousteau? He lived with us for the entire summer."
"Okay, you're right. Why are we even discussing this?"
So she buys every baby name book she can find.
She makes lists.
She conducts research. She asks everyone in the lab. She considers her ethnic background (Irish and English) and Booth's (English/Italian mixed with Ukrainian and Polish). She asks Booth about the names of his grandfather's mother's sister's brothers.
Booth lets her do all this for a while, and then says, "Bones, you know, maybe you should just stop obsessing about the whole name thing."
"What! I am not obsessing, and you're the one who brought it up in the first place, so--."
"I'm just saying, it's not some equation for you to solve. The right name'll just-- it'll come to you. I promise."
"A rose by any other name?"
"Yeah. That. Whatever."
She gives him a wary look.
Angela: Isabel. I've decided you're having a girl.
Cam: Eloise. So have I.
Hodgins: William.
Wendell: Ella.
Mr. Nigel Murray: Did you know that the most popular American names in 1943 were James and Mary?
Clark: Why are you asking me?
Fischer: (Yeah, Bones, don't ask him.) Figures.
Max: Elizabeth. She was your grandmother; sometimes, you-- well, kid, you really remind me of her sometimes.
Russ: Either Daniel or Elizabeth. Jacques Cousteau's parents, remember? (Russ.) What? It was adorable.
Jared: Jared. You should definitely name your kid after me, big brother. Jared Booth, Jr.
Sweets: As your therapist, I can't answer that question. (Really?) Lucas.
Caroline: Don't you want my opinion, cherie? (Uh. Sure.) Laura. And now why are you staring at me like that? (It's just that you didn't really think about that too much there, Caroline.) Watch your tongue, Booth. You still that warrant? (Yes, ma'am.) That's what I thought.
"Well, what do you think?" she asks him.
He shrugs. "Me, I don't care. We could call him Baby his entire life, for all I care. It'll build character."
"That's not rational," she says. "And you don't know it's a boy."
"Precisely. Works both ways."
She rolls her eyes. "I'm serious, Booth. It matters to me what you think. This baby isn't just mine, you know."
They look at each other.
"Whatever you want, Bones," he tells her. "As long as it makes you happy."
She studies him - decides to poke his argument in the metaphorical eye a few times.
"Fine, then. Wilhelmina."
He shrugs. "She'll just be Billie to me."
"Salvatore."
"I'll explain that Mommy had a thing for very expensive shoes."
"Xanthippe Grace."
"Who?"
"The wife of Socrates."
"Ah, then maybe she'll grow up to be a lawyer someday. That'll make Caroline proud for sure."
She looks at Booth, who only smiles back at her, unwilling to be moved. "You really don't care, do you?"
He leans into her. "It's not that I don't care, Bones. Not at all."
"Then what?"
Instead of answering her, he kisses her lightly on the lips.
(Because the kid gets Booth's name, sweetie.)
What?
(On the birth certificate.)
No, but we're not married. I am - not marrying Booth.
(It has nothing to do with marriage, sweetie.)
That custom is ridiculous and antiquated.
(He doesn't seem to think so.)
I don't think that's it, Ang. He would have said something.
(Maybe you should ask him then.)
It stews in her head for awhile, and then she just blurts it out one day:
"Is it because you think he'll be a Booth?"
Booth stops. "It's a boy?"
"Lack of a gender-neutral pronoun," she handwaves. "Is that why?"
"No, Bones."
"Then what? I want to--. I don't get it. I want to get it."
He comes to her, putting both hands on either side of her stomach and smiling at her. He says, "I just want this baby, Bones. You, me, and this baby. I don't care what its name is, or which of our names it gets. I don't care if it's a boy, or a girl, or an alien - I just want to meet him, and love him, and have that be the rest of my life. That's all. Is that okay?"
She licks her lips, unsure and yet unable not to smile. "Booth."
"Scared?"
"No," she answers honestly. "But that scares me."
"Good."
"Why good?"
So he kisses her.
She doesn't understand why that's his answer to everything, but it feels right in a million different ways. Maybe that's why. Who cares.
-
9.
They buy two of everything.
Two cribs, two nightlights, two changing tables. Bones keeps talking about identical living spaces and cognitive development - something, whatever, half the time he's barely paying attention - and when she starts talking about soothing colors of paint for his bedroom, he finally says it:
"So maybe you should just move here."
She's nine months pregnant. It's not that hard to make her stop moving completely, and this manages to.
"I--. What?"
"Move in with me," he offers, calmer this time, smiling.
Of course, Bones completely misses the point.
"My place is bigger," she says. "And closer to the Jeffersonian."
"Then maybe I should move in with you."
He wants to say, you're supposed to be a genius, Bones. Maybe you didn't realize what it was, but we've been doing this already for months now.
"You mean, live together."
"Yes."
"As a--." Couple? Family? What, Bones. Her confusion/fear only makes him smile more. "Together."
"Yes."
He takes her hand, wraps his fingers around hers, until she's smiling, too, shaking her head. "Booth."
"Come on, Bones," he pokes. He kisses her knuckles.
"But this is your space," she says. "I don't--. I'd be in the way."
Jesus, he thinks, Bones, you're never in the way. He could look around right now, and find traces of her everywhere. This stopped being someplace where he just lived a long time ago.
So he says to her, "And what if I want you in the way?" and twists his hand around to intertwine his fingers with hers.
"Do you?"
"Yes."
She realizes later what just happened.
"Okay," she says.
His breath catches a little. "Really?"
And then she smiles.
"Yeah."
Every tired cliche comes to mind.
They're all true.
"What are you thinking about right now?" she smiles.
He kisses her.
You.
(What's so funny, Ang?)
Nothing. Except--. In a way, you went about it completely backwards, and now you're the only one of us who's managed to get it right.
(To get what right?)
Life. Love.
(Maybe you should start taking advice from me then.)
Maybe. Probably not. But maybe.
(Angela?)
Yeah?
(I think - my water just broke.)
-
10.
Her daughter arrives at three in the morning on a Wednesday in February. It's snowing outside.
The doctor puts her in her arms, and she thinks - it's the most remarkable thing in the world. This baby, it can't speak. It can't laugh. She doesn't understand why she could be sad, or what that even means. She doesn't understand music, or science, or art. They've never met. They have no memories together.
All of these things are true, and yet, she feels love for this baby - her daughter - this human being - with every fiber of her being. In every molecule that makes up who she is. She feels it. It's--.
She knows it. She knows this is true.
It's undefinable. It's something that she can't quantify with words. And yet - it's there. It's this baby.
She wasn't prepared for this feeling. It's overwhelming.
"How can something be knowable and yet not, Booth," she asks, mystified, at the sight of her daughter in her arms, there. Right there.
He runs his finger down their daughter's chest. She actually smiles, which Brennan knows it's just a reflex, but it's no less amazing. Everything about her is amazing. Her daughter is so smart that she's already mastered smiling.
"No idea in the world, Bones," he says, then presses a kiss to her forehead.
-
11.
When her daughter is five years old, she discovers the benefits of lying to children.
"Elizabeth, you have to take a nap."
Elizabeth runs around the living room in an elf hat from Aunt Angela, trying to sing Deck the Halls.
"Elizabeth, Mommy may be on vacation, but she still has several writing samples to read from prospective grad students. You have to take a nap."
Elizabeth goes to bed for about ten minutes, gets back up, and is now running up and down the hall.
"Elizabeth, please, you have to take a nap."
That's when her daughter stops, turns, and says, "But mommy, I can't! Santa is coming tonight!"
Brennan bites her lips at the dilemma, then says, suddenly inspired by something Angela had said earlier, "That's right! And that's why he's sending out his elven friends today to check and see if all the good little boys and girls are taking naps when their parents tell them to, because that way, Santa knows what houses to still come to."
She almost feels bad about it, the way her little face slowly twists into a look of sheer terror and fear. "But Mommy, what if they came already?!"
Uh oh. She hadn't thought about that.
"You mean," she says, suddenly thinking of what's stashed in the closet in the spare room that they were going to give her tonight anyway, "there's not a new pair of pajamas in your bedroom?"
Elizabeth races down the hall to check. There are no pajamas.
"Well," Brennan says seriously, "I guess you'll have to take a nap, then, and hope for the best."
She is dead asleep in twenty minutes.
Booth comes home at 4:30 because it's Christmas, and hey, you know, why don't you go spend some quality time with your kid and that sexy scientist lady of yours there, Booth, Merry Christmas. (Please, Goodwin, that's really nice of you and all, but do not ever refer to the mother of my child as sexy again or I will punch you in the eye.) (But she is se--.) (Not coming from you, she's not.)
Elizabeth is in the kitchen with Bones and they're making cookies. He's fairly certain the sight of that will never cease to fill him with many, many indescribable emotions. "Why are you in your PJs already?" he asks Elizabeth, kissing her on the forehead.
His daughter erupts with happiness: "Because the elves came!"
He mouths the elves? to Bones.
"The elves, Daddy," Elizabeth explains, in a tone that is so disturbingly like her mother's at times, "The ones who come check the houses to make sure kids are taking their naps so they'll get presents later."
Booth raises his eyebrows considerably at Bones, who only shrugs innocently.
"Is this," he says to her, on the sly, "some kind a Christmas miracle?"
"It was not a lie," she counters quickly. "More like... a bribe."
"It is," he pronounces, and kisses her.
-
12.
Once upon a time, Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan had a baby.
Why are you so surprised?
[fin.]
:D
When did I start writing so much. 16,000 words in a month? what the what
TITLE: From the Greek Paradeigma, Meaning "Example"
FANDOM: Bones
PAIRING: Brennan/Booth; BABIES.
RATED: PG
SPOILERS: Through 4x21 "Mayhem on the Cross."
SUMMARY: "Once upon a time, Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan had a baby."
NOTE: In a way, this has been like my own child. EIGHT MONTHS, this took to finish. EIGHT. MONTHS. baggers, you better be happy. Once upon a time, you see, she had a birthday, and we all know that baggers loves her babyfic. I swear to everything holy that this is the sweetest, most adorable thing I have ever written. (Look at them. How could it not be?) I love. This show. Oh my goodness. No future spoilers. In twelve movements; 8000 words.
- - -
1.
Once upon a time, Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan had a baby.
I mean, of course they did.
Why are you so surprised?
-
2.
Call it a paradigm shift, she explains to him. Copernicus turning away from the heavenly spheres, Darwin's finches, Mendel and his peas; science has survived the shock of Einstein and the tremblings of the atom bomb, so why should two people be any different?
Science trumps fear, Booth. Fear of the unknown and the unknowable. I was afraid.
"It's not that, Bones."
"Then what? I don't understand."
"You. It's you. You."
"I'm not allowed to change?"
You make me this way. People are independent but dynamic. They need other people. You taught me that.
(The more things change, the more they stay the same. Isn't that what your anthropological mumbo jumbo is all about anyway? Why do you gotta go around messing with science, Bones.)
That makes no sense.
(Yes. It does.)
Later he says, "This is not a science experiment, okay. This is you. This is a baby."
"Children are the byproduct of the fertilization of one egg by a single sperm, which is a scientific process. Babies? come from science," she points out.
"No," he says, "Bones, babies do not come from science, they come from love."
She looks at him. He doesn't say anything else.
(What?)
Nothing.
(What?)
Nothing. Gimme some of your fries.
(They're pomme frites, Booth.)
Whatever. Gimme.
(But I like them.)
Just gimme your damned pomme frites, Bones.
She's making one of the recipes Dr. Wyatt left behind, and Booth is pacing in her living room.
"Why are you mad at me, Booth?" she asks finally, before the next step (add chopped carrots).
"I'm not. I'm not mad."
"Well, you're something."
He deflates.
Then he says:
"I don't wanna have some test tube baby with you, Bones. I'm sorry. I don't want that."
...
. . .
.
oh.
"Okay. Well. Okay."
(she adds the carrots)
"No. Bones. You don't understand. I don't want that. That-that, the test tube, science-y whatever part. We're more than that. We. Us."
"Babies," she repeats, "come from love?"
"Precisely."
"So you want to--."
He smiles.
She takes that particular thought in for a while.
(Oh, my God, sweetie, why are you two like this? And why am I always surprised about it?)
Like what, Ang, I don't understand the question.
(This. This story. You cannot tell your grandkids this story. You literally can't ever tell it to anyone because it will send them into years of therapy.)
Why does that matter?
(Because it does.)
I think it's sweet.
(We'll have to make something else up. Something good. Hmm. Does Booth have a musical talent of some kind that I don't know about?)
Stop.
(No. Wait. Hang on, I've got it. It all starts in a hospital--)
I'm leaving now, good bye.
"Okay," she decides.
"Really?" He seems genuinely surprised.
She smiles. "Yes."
She doesn't know what to do next.
"Booth?"
"Yeah?"
"What do we do now?"
"Bones--."
"What?"
"Never mind."
So she cooks dinner.
"Booth."
"What."
"Before we--."
He kisses her, standing there by the stove.
She kisses him back.
A lot.
They decide, they're not really that hungry after all.
"Are you absolu--."
Sheets sticking to their skin. She feels everywhere he's been on her, in her.
(Paradigm shifts, Booth. Science trumps fear.)
"Yes."
Yes.
After, she runs her fingertip over the scar on his chest, not yet so neatly healed. She thinks, articulated for the first time: I don't want anyone else. I don't know what this is, or what it means, or why, but it's what I want.
You're always talking about feelings, Booth. I feel this. It has a voice.
He orders them pizza.
She says, "I was making paella, you know."
He orders extra cheese.
What she had said before was: "So I've changed my mind."
("About the Ethiopian food? Come on, I know a good place, honest."
"No. About. I've decided to have a child."
"That's hilarious, Bones. Get in the car."
"No, Booth, I'm serious about this."
"See, right now? You think you're being funny, but all you're doing is making me wait for food, which makes me cranky. Get in the damned car.")
Call it a paradigm shift, she explains to him later.
They're not actually made in test tubes, you know. Embryos. They're made in petri--
(Shut up, Bones.)
-
3.
Booth knows, kids mean things. Different things at different times, but they're more than just new souls. They are things. Symbolic things.
Kids can heal. Corporeal Parker was still a fresh wound, a new wound, in Booth, and with every crappy hand he drew in poker, every risky double-down in blackjack, he knew it was all meant to be the universe absolving him for that failure. One sign of good, solid luck, he figured, and that would mean it was all for the better. Corporeal Parker would have died for a reason, just like he would be a millionaire for a reason. But better hands never happened; Rebecca, though, Rebecca happened. She saved him without realizing it, years after he had actually quit gambling. They sat there together in her bathroom, waiting to see if the stick turned blue, and he thought, it didn't matter about the odds; a second later, he realized, that must be it. That's love.
(When he asks her if they can maybe name him Parker, after Teddy, she puts her hand on his cheek and gets this sad yet happy look. Later, he wonders, if she did it because she knew she wasn't going to marry him.)
Kids mean we're moving on but we will never, ever forget. Last year he heard some guys talking around the water cooler about former Director Cullen and his wife adopting a baby girl from the Philippines. (Booth tracked down that intern of Bones' who had gone shopping for Andy, and made her swear to her grave never to tell Bones that the gift basket was coming from her, too.)
Kids can mean that you're trying to forget, though, but can't; trying to move on, but you keep getting stuck. Booth knows - that's what he and his brother were. They didn't have PTSD counselors for army vets in the 70s; they had booze, though. So his mom named him after the town in Montana where her grandfather had horses or something, and Jared after this guy Dad knew in the army (he was a real sonuvabitch, you know, but I loved him like my brother), and they all lived in a little house in South Philly with yellow shutters and Dad kept the barber shop running when his own pop saw his son needed something and Mom's jingle-writing just wasn't cutting it. (She hummed a lot, his mom; like this one tune, a bunch of notes that didn't mean anything, until one day when it was on the television, in a commercial for water ice. He thought she was magic.) His dad hated kids. Never knew how to be around them.
And sometimes, you know, kids are just kids. You love them. They're a part of you.
Bones, dammit, she downright blind-sides him with the revelation, casually throwing it out there while he's going on and on about food and shoving her into a car because he skipped lunch and regrets it, for crying out loud.
"I've decided to have a child."
His entire world stops, pauses for a gasp of air, and then starts turning again.
In a way, it's just another thing in a long line of other things that they don't talk about, not really, him and Bones. Sometimes they find themselves telling each other things that should have been said long ago - my dad drank, he thinks, for example, and now you know my entire life, summed up in three syllables. I've saved you from a serial killer - and you, me, - but you've never met my brother. And when you lay their lives out on an examining table - Senator's aides, skeletons in walls, old professors, ex-girlfriends, fungus, superheroes, lonely kids, bad agents, exploding refrigerators, her mom, your ex, hot sun, tiny spaces with little air, other people, her books, that boat, her dad, weddings and funerals and kissing and opening up and, and, cannibals, oh god, Zack, and people, Bones, someone for everyone, I promise - when you look at it like that, then it really is obvious, isn't it?
Bones and a kid, it's not that it doesn't make sense, sort of, minus things like every other time in the history of knowing her when she's insisted on not having any. (He's always meant to ask Sweets if that's one of those conversion thingies, but that would involve talking to Sweets.) (Later, he realizes it's the reason for everything in her life - she's just scared.) Or that Bones and a kid and - him? - isn't exactly the craziest thing he can think of.
Something just doesn't gel.
It's like the perfectly timed, perfectly plausible murder confession, where things add up just a little too neatly.
To his credit, he makes it all the way to the Jeffersonian. He gets that far. Except then he spends almost an hour loitering in the break room above the forensic platform, watching Bones and two grad students waltzing around half a skeleton on the table. It's kind of like watching a hyena hunt wildebeest on Planet Earth.
Cam, naturally, scares him half to death.
"What's going on, Seeley?" she asks immediately. "You've been hiding up here for a while now."
Shit. "You didn't--."
"No," Cam smiles. "But now you're going to tell me why."
He gives her something of a wary look. Bones is his Person for things like this, usually, even when she can't do anything except sit there and smile at him and make her science-y statements and critique his belief in God (which, barring that last bit, always cheers him up even a little). Cam's usually his Other Person - for Bones things, for Jared things, for a second opinion, but lately - okay. Cam and Bones and Angela spend time together. And it's nice. It's good that Bones has Cam, because yeah she has Angela, but sometimes Angela is crazy (how in the hell do you marry someone and then forget? he will never understand that), and Cam is definitely, definitely not crazy.
It's just that he's not sure she's here being his friend or as Brennan's. Which - crap. Because there is literally nothing he can do when she's giving him that look.
"Okay, Camille, hypothetical situation." She raises an eyebrow. He's about to make a huge gamble here. "Let's just say there's a... a someone. Who wants a thing." He can't help it that he immediately glances over the railing, and that Cam would be an idiot to have missed it.
Which she didn't: "And in this example, I'm supposed to be woefully unaware of this someone's identity, right."
He gives her a pointed look - don't push your luck there, Cam. "Yes."
"O-kay," she agrees, getting it.
He sighs. "And this someone, you know, what they want, it's - it's kind of a really big deal. A huge deal."
"So what's the problem?"
Yeah, Booth, what is the problem.
"The problem is, I'm the only person that can... do this thing for this someone, at least I think, and even though I know it would make her - I mean, the someone - happy, I mean really, ridiculously happy, I don't... know if I should? Because it's huge, Cam. Paradigm-shiftingly huge."
"Wow," Cam says. "You suck at this."
"Huh?"
She cuts to this chase: "This 'thing,' is it going to make Brennan happy?"
"Who said anything about Bones!" (He's laughing, see, on the outside, but actually dying on the inside.)
She glares at him - you've got to be fucking kidding me right. "Seeley."
He doesn't even have to think. He answers, "Yeah."
"Do you want to make her happy?"
"God, Camille. Of course."
She smiles at him like he understands. "Then seriously, what the hell else is there then?"
He does understand. She's right.
(Cam, he always forgets, is usually right.)
On the way out, she calls back, "Just don't, uh, don't tell her I said anything."
"Are you kidding me?" he says back. I mean, really. He's not a complete idiot.
So he takes her to a sort of fancy restaurant in Georgetown for lunch, but this isn't something you talk about around other people, so he just steals her food and invites himself over for dinner.
She cooks. He likes watching her cook.
But he can't watch her, because it's all there and he needs to sort through it, and she's pushing him, and suddenly it just comes out, and he thinks - yes. This is what I mean:
"I don't wanna have some test tube baby with you, Bones. I'm sorry. I don't want that."
Wait.
No.
Not what he meant. Not exactly.
He figures he'd have to woo her. (No, not woo. There is no wooing of Bones. Persuade.)
He doesn't expect:
"Yes."
Oh. "Really?"
"Yeah."
He can't--.
Her face. He can't get over her face.
He thinks it might the best thing he's ever seen in his life.
(He didn't truly get what she meant by paradigm shifts until now, by the way.)
She cooks dinner.
"Booth."
"What."
"Before we--."
Suddenly the sound of her voice is too much, and he just wants her to, wants her, wants - he kisses her. Because. He kisses her, which is this thing he's always wanted to do, just to see. Her lips taste fruity, lip gloss or something (Bones wears lipgloss? he--), and dark, like the glass of red wine she's been sipping. The wooden spoon in her hand makes a dull thud against the side of the pan she's stirring; she's kissing him back, hands in his hair, tongues, teeth, needing him, god, he needs her, too, they need each other. And he's waiting, kissing her over and over and pushing her into the counter a little and waiting for this to be the wrong idea, waiting for her to snap out of it and tell him what he's supposed to be doing, but it's not happening -
She stops. He thinks, oh God.
"I--."
But then
But then she smiles, she smiles and god dammit there is nothing in this world he wouldn't do for that smile. It quite literally makes him weak in the knees. (She should never know that.) (He wants her to know that. Then maybe she'll just smile like that all the time.)
She reaches over and switches the burner under her paella off, never once looking away from him.
Oh, my God. It's sexy as hell.
And then - oh, God, he actually starts thinking about her naked, him too, god, together - all the things he tries not to think about, because dammit, it's Bones, it's his partner, but she's here, right here, so close, lips all puffy and hair a bit of mess (he did that he did that he did that), so he thinks - you know what, fuck it all to kingdom come, she wants a baby, and she apparently wants him. What the hell else is there then.
"Booth."
"Hmm."
She traces his jawline, her other hand over where there's a scar on his chest, and starts kissing him again.
He thinks she's asleep, then she mutters, "They're not actually made in test tubes, you know." He opens his eyes and she's looking at him. "Embryos," she explains, "they're made in petri--"
"Shut up, Bones."
-
4.
"Explain this to me again," Angela is saying across the table in Founding Fathers, "in very. Simple. Words."
Booth reaches for the salt shaker. "Bones. Me. Baby. Simple enough for you?"
Angela stares at him, bewildered. "Why?!"
Brennan shrugs. "Why not?"
She looks back and forth between the two of them, then sighs. And then she starts laughing. Uncontrollably. Then crying: "It's the - it's the celibacy thing, you know, I have a lot of pent-up emotion." She looks at Brennan, and smiles proudly. "Oh, sweetie."
Then she cries some more.
"Tears of joy," she says. "Tears of joy."
In public, Cam gasps with happiness, which is a little of a shock.
In private, Cam looks like she's going to punch him in the face. Apparently three months ago they hadn't been having that particular conversation about the same thing.
"If I get lung cancer, Seeley," she says, chain-smoking her way through a third cigarette, "I'm naming my tumor after you."
"Aww, Camille, that's sweet."
Another drag. "You know the worst part?"
"What, Cam."
She hugs him.
Sweets hugs them, too, except then he won't let go.
Max looks like he's actually gonna slug Booth, which is a terrifying yet not surprising prospect, until he pulls a "ha HA surprise! fooled you!" face, and really, ex-fugitive bank robbers turned nearly convicted murderers should never, ever joke about that stuff. Ever.
Brennan gathers all her grad students together, and the announcement is punctuated by Clark shouting DAMMIT while Wendell silently fist-pumps a YES to himself.
"We, uh, made a bet," Wendell admits sheepishly, later.
No one actually tells Hodgins - Brennan figures Angela probably did, though - but there's a small box from this chi-chi baby store on her desk when she comes back from lunch, and he buys Booth a very nice scotch when they all go out to celebrate.
Her agent sends a card with a note - Congratulations! Just don't write it in. Brennan really doesn't understand what she's talking about.
Booth picks Parker up on a Friday, and sends the kid up to his room for something while he talks to Rebecca in the kitchen. She gets this little smile on her face when he tells her, and Booth thinks, it's strange - he used to think they'd never get to this place, comfortable with one another and not angry/pining/sad/regretting/something else.
"Are you happy?" she asks.
"Yes," he says. "God. Absolutely. Yes."
"Good," she smiles. "Me, too."
Jeff comes home, and Parker is running down the stairs, and for one blissful second they all co-exist.
Months later, Brennan gets a postcard from Sully. The postmark is from Florida, somewhere in the Keys. She imagines he's chartering boats for tourists to see manatees, or something, living above a place that advertises the best key lime pie - perfectly happy in his purposeless life.
"I'll be damned," Booth says, inspecting the postcard like it's not the genuine article, "I half-expected him to shipwreck somewhere around Cape Hatteras."
She shoves him in the shoulder. "Stop."
"You're right," he replies, kissing her on the temple with an arm around her shoulders. "Sorry."
"Thank you."
Russ and Amy bring the girls up for the day, and they all go to the Mall, and the girls ride on the carousel with Amy while she and Russ sit a park bench, talking.
"Do you," she says, "remember that song Mom used to sing?"
Russ hums a couple of notes, but neither of them can remember the words. Development of the pre-frontal cortex she says, and Russ puts his hand over hers and says, "I'm happy for you, Tempe. I really am."
Her nieces come shrieking with laughter off the carousel, and everyone gets ice cream, and later Booth comes with Parker (they don't go on the carousel), and no one talks about the past. Parker and the younger one seem to play well together, and everyone laughs quietly about that.
Brennan thinks, so I guess this is what we are now.
(It's taking forever.
"Look, Bones, you know, if it's not positive, that's okay, we can just try aga--"
"It's positive."
"What?"
"It's positive."
His entire world does that momentarily-pausing-thing again.
Not for the first time, all he can think to do is to kiss her.)
-
5.
It's not that they decide to lie to the F.B.I. or anything. It's more like they... decide not to tell them. There's a difference:
"Lie of omission, Bones. Totally different."
"Will you get in trouble anyway?"
"No! I mean, technically you're not even F.B.I., right? I mean, why should it matter?"
He's thought about this. He's actually managed to convince himself that this is true.
She points out, "It's just that I never had the impression that seeing Sweets was a recommendation for our continuing working together."
"So?"
"So, what if they split us up."
There. She said it. She's put it out there.
"They are not going to split us up, Bones, okay? Not over this."
"Of course they could, Booth. Strictly speaking, your objectivity has been compromised."
"There is nothing wrong with my objectivity! Got it? Nothing."
"I don't know, you know, someone at the F.B.I. might think you'll give me the benefit of the doubt about something a lot longer if I was wrong."
"Then that person would be insane, because the day you are wrong about something, I will shout it from the rooftop."
"That's not very nice, you know. To say to the mother of your child."
"Well, then, imagine I'm saying it with love."
She looks at him.
"Nothing," he says, "has changed between us."
"Technically, that's not--."
"Nothing, Bones. Okay? Nothing."
She sighs. Sometimes she doesn't understand him.
He decides, "We just... don't tell Sweets. Everything else will be just gossip, as far as the F.B.I. is concerned."
"What? How can we not tell Sweets?"
"We just don't, okay."
"And like it's never going to come up? He's never going to notice that I'm pregnant and want to know why?"
"Then you tell him it's none of his business and move on!"
"It sort of is, you know." She adds, "What if I want to tell him?"
"You are not telling Sweets, Bones."
"We're his family now, remember?"
"Then it will be the Booth-Brennan family secret."
She looks at him again. This time, he actually blushes a little. For that matter, so does she. (Hormones, she thinks; just hormones.)
She tries again: "We have to tell Sweets."
"Bones--."
She settles for a pointed look.
"Fine," he eventually relents.
Cue:
Hugging.
Lots of desperate, grasping hugging.
("Oh, Jesus, Sweets, are you crying? Keep it together, dude, people are gonna start noticing...")
And then they actually get away with it.
For about a week.
Getting called into Deputy Director Adams' office is not the way Booth likes to start any Monday, regardless of the reason. The whole Bones-is-pregnant thing just makes things 500% more terror-worthy.
(Bones is pregnant. Yeah. Still not quite wrapping his brain around that yet.)
Adams shuts the door by instructing his assistant to push back his 10AM meeting. Yup: he is in some serious shit right about now.
"Booth!"
"Sir."
"How are things?"
"Things are... good, sir. Thanks for, uh, asking."
"That's great."
They have a staring contest.
"Personal life, you know, that's going all right for you, too?"
Shitshitshitshitshitshit. "Yup."
Adams smiles a shit-eating grin, then opens the bottom drawer of his desk to retrieve two glasses and a bottle of very expensive bourbon, pours them each a glass and hands one to Booth.
Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit he is so fired. He is so, so--. "Sir, I. It's nine in the morning."
"Ah, Maureen doesn't mind," Adams replies, referring to his assistant, as he screws the cap back on the bottle. "This here is good stuff, you know. Eighteen year vintage, set me back two hundred bucks, but try it, Booth. Ah, this baby is worth it."
Booth supposes, there are probably worse things in life than getting fired with a $200 glass of bourbon to temporarily break your fall. At least he's got that.
"Now what should we toast to?" his boss says.
"I don't know, sir." SO FIRED.
"I've got it." He raises his glass. "To that scientist author of yours, Booth. Boy or girl, doesn't matter, as long as he's healthy, right?"
The other shoe dropping doesn't hurt quite as much as he expected it would.
"Sir--."
"Save it, Agent. Now drink up."
He does. He pounds back the entire glass in a single gulp, which he regrets a second later when he chokes on it a little, but he doesn't care. He just wants to be anywhere but here, right now, most likely losing his job. (He has to admit, it tastes good. Damned good.) (That's the taste of your crumbling F.B.I. career, asshole, he reminds himself.)
"Listen, sir, I can explain."
"Good. Start with the part where you fucked your partner, then got her pregnant."
Note to self, who just essentially chugged a glance of pure alcohol after skipping breakfast and therefore on an empty stomach: you're probably going to be slipping away from me in a couple of minutes, so I wanted to say - don't, uh, don't mention how that was the entire point. Ever. It's going to end up being one of those things that just sounds better in your head.
"Technically, she's not my partner?"
Note to self: seriously, what the fuck did we just talk about?
"Excuse me?"
"F.B.I. partner, she's not my... F.B.I. partner."
Note to self: you are so lucky Bones is independently wealthy. You would be about to become a deadbeat dad otherwise.
"Please, Agent, I would greatly enjoy an elaboration on his particular technicality."
"Sir--."
"Stop."
His head buzzes lightly from the bourbon. (This is happening, right?)
Adams rubs his forehead, and says, almost under his breath, "When Cullen told me about you two, he was not kidding."
What? "Sir?"
"You're on desk duty for a week, okay? No. Make that - two."
No, seriously, what?! Why is not fired?
"I--." And the bourbon + empty stomach suddenly slams into him, all at once. "I don't understand."
From another drawer, Adams pulls out a file folder and drops in between them on his desk. "I can't fire you. You're right - technically speaking, your professional relationship with Dr. Brennan and the Jeffersonian is purely that of the F.B.I. and an independent contractor, and therefore not subject to the same fraternization rules as traditional partnership. And I can't even split you two up, either, because apparently, this recent development isn't actually indicative of a change in your working dynamic, which, I don't even want to talk about how fucked up that is, just so long as you manage to return the level of results that you do."
"It's... it's not?"
Adams smiles at him. "Agent Booth, you owe your continued employment in this organization to one person, and that person is Dr. Lance Sweets. I beg you to remember that the next time you give him the shit he so otherwise deserves."
"I--." What. Is going. On. "I don't know what to say, sir."
"You should say that you're happiest agent in this building ever to be given two-weeks desk duty."
"I am... that. Sir."
"Good. Now get out: I've got a meeting with Homeland Security that I'd like to avoid for as long as possible."
He gets back to his office, and Bones is there, waiting for him.
"Are you... drunk, Booth?"
"No. Yes. Possibly. I want to be."
He explains why he won't be interrogating their prime suspect in the case they're working.
At Founding Fathers, he buys Sweets a drink, and when the kid tries to explain, Booth cuts him off: "Just finish your drink, Sweets, okay?" Then he shakes the man's hand and adds, "And don't let this for one second make you think I like you."
"Of course not, Agent Booth."
-
6.
She starts second-guessing herself after the first sonogram, a feeling that begins with her heart leaping into her throat when the doctor finds the baby's heartbeat. A person. A living, breathing person. She thinks, that's not even rational; this fetus' lungs have yet to fully develop, therefore it cannot breathe.
"I know about bones, Angela," she tells her best friend, thumbing her sonogram picture. "What the hell was I thinking."
"Sweetie." She puts a hands over hers. "Everybody freaks out about this. Okay? Everybody."
"That... doesn't make me feel any better." She slumps against her friend on the couch in her office, and eventually, she inhales, stilling
herself, and confesses: "What if I can't do it."
"You can," Angela tells her immediately. She almost believes it; she wants to believe it. "You will. I feel it in every bone in my body."
"So what if your bones are wrong?"
Angela smiles. "You tell me."
"What if you're wrong?"
"I'm not."
"Angela--."
"I'm not," she insists, putting an arm around Brennan's shoulder. "You'll have us. Your family. You have Booth."
Brennan makes a face, letting the rest fall out sheepishly: "What if I can't do that either."
"Oh, please," she says dismissively.
"You were going to marry Hodgins."
"That was different, sweetie."
"Why?"
"Because it was. Look," she pats her arm, "this is one of those times when I'm right about everything and you're just gonna have to believe me, okay?"
She takes her time. All she feels like is time.
"Okay," she relents.
Angela holds up the sonogram.
They sit like that for a while, Brennan calming herself and allowing her mind to dwell in the brief burst of euphoria that comes before the panic - my baby my baby my baby my baby mine me us Booth us ours.
Booth props the sonogram up next to his picture of Parker on his desk.
The gesture makes her cry, but she figures, that's most likely the hormonal imbalance.
-
7.
Things that take some getting used to: food cravings.
(Bones, I swear to God, if you're one of those 3am peanut butter and pickle sandwich kind of women...)
You'll - what?
(I'll do something.)
Sounds intimidating.
(Whatever.)
What kind of woman was Rebecca?
(Fried chicken. Couldn't stand the stuff for two years. Why?)
Nothing. It's just, that sounds good.
(Bones.)
Just kidding.
(That wasn't funny.)
She's doing fine until they get to the crime scene and Cam says, "Mmm, juicy," and Brennan barely makes it to the bushes in time before vomiting up breakfast. Eventually she's just sitting in the SUV with the door open, and Booth brings her some water, giving her a (vanilla) run-down of what Cam's found so far. Every time she thinks she's better, she starts thinking about the body all peutrified and, ugh, not better at all.
"You okay?" Booth asks. He's leaning protectively against the side of the truck.
She sighs. "I feel stupid. I can't control it, it's like I'm a... prisoner in my own body."
"Hey," he says, and he puts his hand under her chin, completely inappropriate behavior for a crime scene. "Cam's got everything under control here, okay?"
But I want to be in control she wants to say, and he knows it.
She kisses the top of his hand - also probably inappropriate, not that she cares - and says, "Thanks."
(That was the fourth person who knew I was pregnant.)
And?
(And - how can they tell? I'm not even that far along, relatively speaking.)
Bones. Seriously?
(Yes!)
Well, for starters, you're glowing.
(...really?)
You didn't notice? You're like the Northern Lights over there.
(But you noticed.)
Of course I noticed, Bones, I woke up like six inches from your face.
(And you like it?)
Yeah, Bones. Okay? Jeez.
(It's just excess oil secretions, you know, from the glands in my skin.)
That's wonderful.
(I'm just saying.)
In a way, not a lot has changed between them, except for the part where they're having a baby. There are still murders to be investigated; she goes out in the field until her doctor (to the relief of Booth) forbids it; they still have dinner together or with the squints, and Booth still hangs around the Jeffersonian until she shoos him away to do all that paperwork he's avoiding.
Except.
You two.
(What?)
Never mind.
(Ang.)
Have you at least talked? You know, about--. Everything.
(Booth and I talk all the time.)
That's not what I mean.
(Oh. That.)
Yes, sweetie.
(I've actually been... avoiding that particular topic of conversation.)
Huh.
(What?)
That is the first normal thing you've said about this entire arrangement.
(That doesn't make sense.)
Yeah, actually, it does.
Because, as it turns out, everything encompasses a lot.
Everything is Booth's beer in her fridge, and her clothes in his closet, and the way she rearranged his fridge so the milk wouldn't go bad so quickly. Everything is not being in her apartment for a week, and two sets of handwriting on the grocery list that migrates between them. Everything is her shampoo in his shower.
Everything is sleeping together; not sex, sleep.
Everything is complaining the TV is too loud when she's trying to read applications for the new summer intensive program. Everything is Booth telling her she's hovering as he stirs the spices into his tomato sauce ("Gravy, Bones; it's called gravy"). Everything is picking fights, and Booth's bad back, and stupid little toys that mean I'm sorry, and being mad just for the sake of being mad.
Everything is all of these things, and none of them.
Which actually makes sense to her, even though it shouldn't.
(She's a smart person, you know.
She knows more about things than you would think.)
And then one day.
One--.
Oh.
Oh.
Booth is making pizza (why? she wasn't paying attention to that part), and says, "Booth?"
"Yellow peppers or red?"
"I love you."
It's such a stupidly obvious thing to realize.
They're having a baby, and they practically live together, and oh, right, she loves this person. It all just slots into place.
She's not very good at this.
"Bones."
"Yeah?"
"I know."
"You do?"
"Yeah."
Oh, she thinks. She should have realized that.
"Bones."
"Yeah?"
"Love you, too, by the way."
I don't want anyone else, she remembers.
See? She should have known.
(She wants to feel like this forever.)
"Now," he says, with a smile, "Yellow peppers or red?"
A mother and her boyfriend kill her little girl, stuff her body in a garbage bag, bury it in the garden like it's nothing - all because the child had the audacity to want some attention from her mother when he was around. She's not even that sorry about it. She's more upset that her boyfriend is about to be extradited to California.
Brennan finally understands what Booth's white knuckles and his barely-restrained rage feel like.
"Lemme tell you something, Bones," he says, drinking a beer at the bar while she pushes pasta around, uninterested. "This baby? Sometimes the prospect terrifies the living hell out of me."
"But you already have a child. You're a good father, Booth."
"Yeah, but still." He looks at her. "Kids should be scary."
"I don't understand."
"They need us, Bones. They need us for a long time, to feed them and take care of them and make sure they turn out all right. People shouldn't take that kind of responsibility so lightly."
She knows he's not trying to scare her - that he's just being honest.
"Then," she says, also honest, "I need you." She inhales. "I haven't a clue what I'm doing, so I need you there to teach me."
His face softens. She realizes, this means something. He smiles. "I'll teach you, Bones."
"For a long time?"
"For as long as it takes."
She smiles, too.
She's a smart person, you know.
-
8.
"Come on, Bones, you're a girl. Didn't you make a list?"
"What?"
"A list! Of names."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
(Angela pipes in: "I totally have one.")
(Cam adds: "Sad to admit, but... me, too. And if you ever repeat that fact, I will kill you.")
"Baby names, Bones, you know. If it's a girl, you'd name her this; a boy, that."
"You're... joking, right?"
"No! Come on."
"Why would I have a list?"
(Cam: "Fair point.")
"Okay, fine, so maybe it wasn't baby names, but you had to have a list. You know, like favorite names for dolls and toys or whatever."
"When I was six, I had an imaginary friend that I named Jacques Cousteau? He lived with us for the entire summer."
"Okay, you're right. Why are we even discussing this?"
So she buys every baby name book she can find.
She makes lists.
She conducts research. She asks everyone in the lab. She considers her ethnic background (Irish and English) and Booth's (English/Italian mixed with Ukrainian and Polish). She asks Booth about the names of his grandfather's mother's sister's brothers.
Booth lets her do all this for a while, and then says, "Bones, you know, maybe you should just stop obsessing about the whole name thing."
"What! I am not obsessing, and you're the one who brought it up in the first place, so--."
"I'm just saying, it's not some equation for you to solve. The right name'll just-- it'll come to you. I promise."
"A rose by any other name?"
"Yeah. That. Whatever."
She gives him a wary look.
Angela: Isabel. I've decided you're having a girl.
Cam: Eloise. So have I.
Hodgins: William.
Wendell: Ella.
Mr. Nigel Murray: Did you know that the most popular American names in 1943 were James and Mary?
Clark: Why are you asking me?
Fischer: (Yeah, Bones, don't ask him.) Figures.
Max: Elizabeth. She was your grandmother; sometimes, you-- well, kid, you really remind me of her sometimes.
Russ: Either Daniel or Elizabeth. Jacques Cousteau's parents, remember? (Russ.) What? It was adorable.
Jared: Jared. You should definitely name your kid after me, big brother. Jared Booth, Jr.
Sweets: As your therapist, I can't answer that question. (Really?) Lucas.
Caroline: Don't you want my opinion, cherie? (Uh. Sure.) Laura. And now why are you staring at me like that? (It's just that you didn't really think about that too much there, Caroline.) Watch your tongue, Booth. You still that warrant? (Yes, ma'am.) That's what I thought.
"Well, what do you think?" she asks him.
He shrugs. "Me, I don't care. We could call him Baby his entire life, for all I care. It'll build character."
"That's not rational," she says. "And you don't know it's a boy."
"Precisely. Works both ways."
She rolls her eyes. "I'm serious, Booth. It matters to me what you think. This baby isn't just mine, you know."
They look at each other.
"Whatever you want, Bones," he tells her. "As long as it makes you happy."
She studies him - decides to poke his argument in the metaphorical eye a few times.
"Fine, then. Wilhelmina."
He shrugs. "She'll just be Billie to me."
"Salvatore."
"I'll explain that Mommy had a thing for very expensive shoes."
"Xanthippe Grace."
"Who?"
"The wife of Socrates."
"Ah, then maybe she'll grow up to be a lawyer someday. That'll make Caroline proud for sure."
She looks at Booth, who only smiles back at her, unwilling to be moved. "You really don't care, do you?"
He leans into her. "It's not that I don't care, Bones. Not at all."
"Then what?"
Instead of answering her, he kisses her lightly on the lips.
(Because the kid gets Booth's name, sweetie.)
What?
(On the birth certificate.)
No, but we're not married. I am - not marrying Booth.
(It has nothing to do with marriage, sweetie.)
That custom is ridiculous and antiquated.
(He doesn't seem to think so.)
I don't think that's it, Ang. He would have said something.
(Maybe you should ask him then.)
It stews in her head for awhile, and then she just blurts it out one day:
"Is it because you think he'll be a Booth?"
Booth stops. "It's a boy?"
"Lack of a gender-neutral pronoun," she handwaves. "Is that why?"
"No, Bones."
"Then what? I want to--. I don't get it. I want to get it."
He comes to her, putting both hands on either side of her stomach and smiling at her. He says, "I just want this baby, Bones. You, me, and this baby. I don't care what its name is, or which of our names it gets. I don't care if it's a boy, or a girl, or an alien - I just want to meet him, and love him, and have that be the rest of my life. That's all. Is that okay?"
She licks her lips, unsure and yet unable not to smile. "Booth."
"Scared?"
"No," she answers honestly. "But that scares me."
"Good."
"Why good?"
So he kisses her.
She doesn't understand why that's his answer to everything, but it feels right in a million different ways. Maybe that's why. Who cares.
-
9.
They buy two of everything.
Two cribs, two nightlights, two changing tables. Bones keeps talking about identical living spaces and cognitive development - something, whatever, half the time he's barely paying attention - and when she starts talking about soothing colors of paint for his bedroom, he finally says it:
"So maybe you should just move here."
She's nine months pregnant. It's not that hard to make her stop moving completely, and this manages to.
"I--. What?"
"Move in with me," he offers, calmer this time, smiling.
Of course, Bones completely misses the point.
"My place is bigger," she says. "And closer to the Jeffersonian."
"Then maybe I should move in with you."
He wants to say, you're supposed to be a genius, Bones. Maybe you didn't realize what it was, but we've been doing this already for months now.
"You mean, live together."
"Yes."
"As a--." Couple? Family? What, Bones. Her confusion/fear only makes him smile more. "Together."
"Yes."
He takes her hand, wraps his fingers around hers, until she's smiling, too, shaking her head. "Booth."
"Come on, Bones," he pokes. He kisses her knuckles.
"But this is your space," she says. "I don't--. I'd be in the way."
Jesus, he thinks, Bones, you're never in the way. He could look around right now, and find traces of her everywhere. This stopped being someplace where he just lived a long time ago.
So he says to her, "And what if I want you in the way?" and twists his hand around to intertwine his fingers with hers.
"Do you?"
"Yes."
She realizes later what just happened.
"Okay," she says.
His breath catches a little. "Really?"
And then she smiles.
"Yeah."
Every tired cliche comes to mind.
They're all true.
"What are you thinking about right now?" she smiles.
He kisses her.
You.
(What's so funny, Ang?)
Nothing. Except--. In a way, you went about it completely backwards, and now you're the only one of us who's managed to get it right.
(To get what right?)
Life. Love.
(Maybe you should start taking advice from me then.)
Maybe. Probably not. But maybe.
(Angela?)
Yeah?
(I think - my water just broke.)
-
10.
Her daughter arrives at three in the morning on a Wednesday in February. It's snowing outside.
The doctor puts her in her arms, and she thinks - it's the most remarkable thing in the world. This baby, it can't speak. It can't laugh. She doesn't understand why she could be sad, or what that even means. She doesn't understand music, or science, or art. They've never met. They have no memories together.
All of these things are true, and yet, she feels love for this baby - her daughter - this human being - with every fiber of her being. In every molecule that makes up who she is. She feels it. It's--.
She knows it. She knows this is true.
It's undefinable. It's something that she can't quantify with words. And yet - it's there. It's this baby.
She wasn't prepared for this feeling. It's overwhelming.
"How can something be knowable and yet not, Booth," she asks, mystified, at the sight of her daughter in her arms, there. Right there.
He runs his finger down their daughter's chest. She actually smiles, which Brennan knows it's just a reflex, but it's no less amazing. Everything about her is amazing. Her daughter is so smart that she's already mastered smiling.
"No idea in the world, Bones," he says, then presses a kiss to her forehead.
-
11.
When her daughter is five years old, she discovers the benefits of lying to children.
"Elizabeth, you have to take a nap."
Elizabeth runs around the living room in an elf hat from Aunt Angela, trying to sing Deck the Halls.
"Elizabeth, Mommy may be on vacation, but she still has several writing samples to read from prospective grad students. You have to take a nap."
Elizabeth goes to bed for about ten minutes, gets back up, and is now running up and down the hall.
"Elizabeth, please, you have to take a nap."
That's when her daughter stops, turns, and says, "But mommy, I can't! Santa is coming tonight!"
Brennan bites her lips at the dilemma, then says, suddenly inspired by something Angela had said earlier, "That's right! And that's why he's sending out his elven friends today to check and see if all the good little boys and girls are taking naps when their parents tell them to, because that way, Santa knows what houses to still come to."
She almost feels bad about it, the way her little face slowly twists into a look of sheer terror and fear. "But Mommy, what if they came already?!"
Uh oh. She hadn't thought about that.
"You mean," she says, suddenly thinking of what's stashed in the closet in the spare room that they were going to give her tonight anyway, "there's not a new pair of pajamas in your bedroom?"
Elizabeth races down the hall to check. There are no pajamas.
"Well," Brennan says seriously, "I guess you'll have to take a nap, then, and hope for the best."
She is dead asleep in twenty minutes.
Booth comes home at 4:30 because it's Christmas, and hey, you know, why don't you go spend some quality time with your kid and that sexy scientist lady of yours there, Booth, Merry Christmas. (Please, Goodwin, that's really nice of you and all, but do not ever refer to the mother of my child as sexy again or I will punch you in the eye.) (But she is se--.) (Not coming from you, she's not.)
Elizabeth is in the kitchen with Bones and they're making cookies. He's fairly certain the sight of that will never cease to fill him with many, many indescribable emotions. "Why are you in your PJs already?" he asks Elizabeth, kissing her on the forehead.
His daughter erupts with happiness: "Because the elves came!"
He mouths the elves? to Bones.
"The elves, Daddy," Elizabeth explains, in a tone that is so disturbingly like her mother's at times, "The ones who come check the houses to make sure kids are taking their naps so they'll get presents later."
Booth raises his eyebrows considerably at Bones, who only shrugs innocently.
"Is this," he says to her, on the sly, "some kind a Christmas miracle?"
"It was not a lie," she counters quickly. "More like... a bribe."
"It is," he pronounces, and kisses her.
-
12.
Once upon a time, Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan had a baby.
Why are you so surprised?
[fin.]
:D