Every writer reveals more about themselves in their writing than they realize.
HI GUYS. IT'S THE BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONES FIC!
TITLE: The Forgotten Dialects of the Heart
FANDOM: Bones
PAIRINGS: Booth/Brennan; Cam/Booth, Hodgins/Angela, Sweets/Daisy (EVERYONE)
SPOILERS: thru 4x25 "Critic in the Cabernet"
SUMMARY: Ten untold stories about love that also have the benefit of being true.
NOTE: Oh, boy; this. This literally fell out of my head in like two weeks. Call it one of those personal canon memes that thoroughly and utterly got away from me? But good. Hahah. Hahahaha. I've been literally just rewatching this show over and over all summer, ngl. (#8 - uh, yeah, IDK) Props x1000 to delgaserasca on the title. 10,475 words (!)
- - -
[1]
#1 - Angela knows exactly why Booth showed up in New Mexico, and it had little to nothing to do with her, although that was obviously a welcome side effect.
If you actually mapped out all the morsels of advice that Angela has doled out to Brennan over the years, analyzed them the way you would an author's canon of work, a few recurring themes might emerge: namely, in this order, [1] you (Brennan) want to have sex with Booth; [2] Booth wants to have sex with you; [3] you two are ridiculously perfect for each other in so many ways, whether you realize it or not; [4] you're not actually as failed of a human being as you think you are.
While the first three are rather obvious to anyone who knows Brennan or Angela, the fourth is more of an intuitive leap. Brennan's problem, Angela realizes after knowing her for exactly six months and three days, isn't that she's bad at relationships, or bad at being a social creature, or even that she's scared of failing at being a person in a relationship. It's just that, unlike the majority of people, Brennan never learned how to fake it. Because honestly that's what people do for most of their lives - they fake at being good at this, and sometimes they find people with whom they don't have to. You meet a guy at a bar - you meet a girl in a bar - and this person is attractive, and they might even make you laugh within the first five minutes, so something inside you says, okay I have no idea if this is going to be something but let's see where this goes. So you run with it. Sure, you two might click initially, and sure, in retrospect when everything falls apart you'll be able to look back on your life and know first, exactly where it all went wrong, and second, that you knew it the moment it happened and chose not to acknowledge it. This is called dating. This is called life. Every single person since the dawn of time has, at some point, been afraid of failing at a relationship. It's not a revelation by any stretch of the word. Angela hasn't really talked to another anthropologist who wasn't Brennan about this kind of thing, but if she's willing to guess, she'd say this fear is actually an integral part of the human condition. It makes us be better people. Whole societies can be traced back to two people standing on a beach, and one person says, "I'm scared of the water, but if we don't catch a fish, we'll both die," so the other person offers to kill a boar and cook it or something. Whatever. Angela dated a philosopher once and he used to say stuff like that all the time, which to her moony-eyed, art school self sounded brilliant.
Brennan's problem isn't that she's scared. Everyone gets scared. D'uh, that's life. Her problem is that she felt abandoned in the most important time of her social development, abandoned in a very literal way that turns some people into drugs addicts or worse, so what Brennan did was she turned to something that by its very nature could never fail her - logic. Unfortunately, since people more often than not don't act according to logic - since most everything that happens in the universe happens in some way against all logical principles - her own founding premise is flawed. Not wrong; flawed. It's flawed, because logic meets a guy (or a girl) at a bar, projects its potential downsides and shortcomings, and ultimately decides that the best course of action is avoidance rather than experience (since avoiding something prevents the pain, and loss, and suffering, and repeated abandonment, and none of these side effects are in any way "good").
(Years and years from this point in time, when Angela finally hears the story about the foster parents who locked Brennan in a trunk for breaking a dish, she wonders if that was the moment it happened. If that was the thing that made sixteen-year-old Temperance Brennan say to herself, "I knew this would happen. It was the logical outcome given a set of pre-conceived conditions, and I did it anyway. I shouldn't have done that. This feeling could have been avoided.")
Whether she realizes it or not, this is the point that Angela is actually she's trying to make to Brennan in the desert, after Kirk dies, about missing her moment. That she (Angela) is just as afraid of failing at all of this as her best friend is; that this recognition of weakness and hatred thereto is what makes them friends, or partners in crime, or whatever you want to call it. So when Brennan makes her a promise from her brain about infinite possibilities, Angela believes that she believes this is a true statement, but also spends the entire plane ride home and part of the trip to baggage claim wondering if the concept of infinity isn't the most irrational thing of all. Because to say infinite is to imply unpredictable, and logic is anything if not predictable. That maybe this is living, breathing proof that there is a person inside Brennan - an actual person, who won't fail, who won't be bad at these things; who, honestly, knows what that means. (Sometimes, Angela finds herself on the other end of a really bad date, and the guy says something and she thinks, intuitively, okay I have no idea what that actually means but of course she doesn't say that out loud because it would be rude and who knows maybe he's fantastic in bed or something, and then she thinks - holy shit. No one ever told Brennan you don't say actually that part out loud, even if it's true. That's the answer!)
Then, of course, the world clicks back into place - she has her thoughts rudely interrupted by Brennan and Booth's impromptu argument over whether they need to spend the quarters on a luggage cart (when, as Brennan correctly points out, they all have luggage with wheels and a handle; a cart seems impractical and unnecessary) (to which Angela does not [also correctly] bother to point out that this debate has nothing to do with being practical, and everything to do with Booth being a guy and thus demonstrating such by being the one pushing the cart).
For the record: ever since that guy tried to feed Brennan to some dogs and Booth saved her life after Hodgins helped bust him out of the hospital, something is different about the two of them. Which - okay, sometimes Angela thinks about sentences like that, and remembers that she has a job at a place where that kind of thing is only partially out of the ordinary. Like, she spent Christmas in a science lab thanks to fungus, so whatever, sometimes you go with the flow? But something is definitely different, some so obviously different that she also (rather disturbingly) can't put her finger on. Zack is oblivious to it (because it's Zack, who still cuts his own hair), and Hodgins just pretends to be oblivious because he knows it drives her insane, so it's just Angela left standing around, shouting at the rain, I'm not crazy, right? I saw that. I did. I did.
So Angela shows up at Wong Foo's a few days later when she knows Brennan is working late, and she buys Booth a beer, and because they are normal people, this is totally the same thing as saying thank you for showing up when you did and also, in ways they won't acknowledge (not publicly, at least), this is why people believe in fate and destiny.
(Also for the record: yes, okay, so maybe she just confused an ex-boyfriend with an episode of Lost in that whole two-guys-on-a-beach metaphor - uh, whatever. Like Brennan even watches television.)
//
[2]
#2 - There are definitely times when Brennan knows exactly what that means. (Horse.)
"I just think it's weird, you know?"
Brennan's in the passenger seat, and she looks up from the file she's reading.
"I... have no idea what you're referring to."
Booth looks at her over the top of his sunglasses, just to make sure she's not messing with him (she's not), then says it again, "It's weird to me."
"Repeating that statement doesn't actually help elucidate your meaning."
"Bones, how long have we been partners?"
"Four years," she replies without missing a beat.
"And how long have we actually known each other?"
"Six."
"In total, how many times have we saved each other's lives?"
Brennan glances out the windshield as Booth blows through a yellow light that is technically now red, implicitly knowing the answer. Should I also be including you bringing this car ride to an end? "My number or yours?"
"What, we have different numbers?"
She winces, knowing what's coming. "The Simmons case-"
"That was not you saving my life. Okay? I repeat, not saving my life. That was you interfering with a federal agent, namely me."
"My point exactly, Booth! We have different numbers."
Booth gives her his standard you are a crazy woman look, then launches back into his original thought: "All I'm saying is that it's weird."
"You haven't actually said what it is that you think is weird."
He groans, all you're actually going to make me say it aren't you? and Brennan considers for a moment that it's strange that half the time she has no idea what Booth is going to say, because Booth is different than she is and she doesn't understand him, and yet half the time she can predict exactly how he'll react and there wasn't actually a point in her life when one physically became the other; in all reality, it's almost like these two modes always co-existed together, always-
"Bones, why don't I have a key to your apartment?"
She blinks. Um. Uh? Wait... really? "What?"
"A key! A small, grooved, metal object used for the purpose of opening a lock, usually to one's home or office building."
"I know what a key is, Booth."
"I gave you mine," he points out.
Brennan looks at him, unsure and suddenly extremely uncomfortable with this discussion. She's not an idiot; she's perfectly aware of the typical social conventions that usually surround the exchanging of keys between two people. She just - it's not that she and Booth haven't known each other for a while, and been through many things together, it's just - she wasn't aware that was a thing she was supposed to do with him?
"That was... a practical course of action at the time." (She is of course referring to the week after Booth's hockey injury, when he was too drugged from the pain medication he was given to perform certain tasks like driving - mostly, though, she's sure he was just exaggerating their effect on him in order to keep on saying oh Bones one other thing.) (She doesn't mention how, when she tried to give it back to him, he said it was "easier" if she just kept it and he got a new one. That part didn't make a lot of sense; on the other hand, it did expedite their second encounter with the Gravedigger significantly, so maybe he had been on to something initially.)
"And if you'll remember correctly, I didn't ask for it back. I'm just saying, maybe the polite thing to do would be to reciprocate the gesture, is all."
She considers this, trying not to think about all of things they've discussed recently - has she not been listening? She tries to listen; she listens and she tries, to the best of her ability, to always think what would Angela do? - but she honestly doesn't know what could have possibly prompted this request, so she replies, logically, "But you don't live there."
He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. "Not the point, Bones."
(Shit. Shit, shit, shit. She's really bad this. This is what she can't make Angela understand - she's just, it has nothing to do with not understanding - it's just that she really hates being bad at this. Everyone else knows what to do, right?)
"Then what is the-"
"Trust! Bones. It's a gesture of trust, you know, between partners."
(Oh! Oh.)
"I trust you, Booth," she says, without an ounce of hesitation, because it's true. "You know that's true. Of course I trust you."
(Right? That's the right answer, right?)
He looks at her for a long time, longer than he should considering he's operating a large, moving vehicle currently hurtling them well above the speed limit through a crowded urban area. She might be strapped into her seat, but she feels well and truly pinned down by that look. It's not necessarily a bad thing to be feeling.
Then his phone rings.
(Oh, my God. Thank you, universe.)
She tells Angela about the conversation later, and after she smiles in that knowing way of hers that most of the time Brennan knows exactly what it means because it's her best friend so it only means one thing, Angela's mostly just surprised that Booth doesn't have a key to her apartment at this point, too. "I keep a spare under the mat," Brennan explains logically, and then it's her turn to be surprised that Angela didn't know that.
Their case wraps up with Booth busting down the door at exactly the right time, just before their suspect pulls the trigger on the gun aimed perfectly at her head. He then makes a smart ass remark like you know what would have been faster? having a key, and normally she'd roll her eyes at him, or glare at him, or punch him in the arm for it, but right now she's just so utterly grateful that he exists that she doesn't even care - she just launches herself at him and hugs him until it physically hurts them both. She says quietly, so the back-up can't hear, "We're even now," and she feels Booth's entire body sighing. It feels good.
But-
But it doesn't feel like enough.
So that night she goes to the hardware store and has them cut a second copy of her apartment key, because it feels like that's what Angela would tell her to do about this situation. While she waits, she idly turns the display of novelty key chains until she finds, of all things, one of a skeleton - suddenly, by surprise, this feels like enough. She gives it to him the next morning at the diner, over her egg white omelet and his Belgian waffles with strawberries, explaining that the key chain will simply help him remember who the key belongs to (since obviously, that's why it felt right). He smiles, saying thank you and meaning it, and she just knows that it means she's done something right, so she says again for emphasis: "I trust you, Booth."
And that is the story of how, a week before she decided she wanted to have a baby, Brennan gave Booth a key to her place. (Not that the two are in any way related. For one thing, one is about children, and the other is about the exchange of property with a work colleague whom she trusts.)
//
[3]
#3 - How did Brennan and Angela meet? Actually, it's a really, really, really good story. Wanna hear it? (Angela-) (Shut up, Brennan. Okay? I am telling this story.)
Angela met Brennan while she was still finishing her dissertation - "before she was a doctor of anything," is how Angela likes to put it. They were both attached to the same excavation in central Mexico - Brennan was doing the digging, Angela was in the middle of a thing for Aztec art (and also, one particular expert in it).
They were friendly enough - mostly Brennan kept to herself, that is when she wasn't making the actual archaeologists extremely unsure of themselves - but their lasting friendship wasn't solidified until the end of the trip. See, the entire team had gathered at this tiny, hot, dusty hole-in-the-wall bar in the only town in sight for miles, and it was dreadful, and it was hot, and Todd had told her earlier that day that he had decided to get back with his wife when they got back to the States, so all Angela wanted to do was get drunk. There was a very cheap, very large bottle of tequila and it had her name on it, Pearly Gates and everything.
Toward the end of the night, when most of the excavation team had gone home, it was just Brennan and Angela at the bar. Angela can't remember who started talking to whom first, and neither can Brennan (one word: tequila), but it felt like they talked for forever. In reality, it was only about fifteen minutes. She knows this, because that's when an otherwise incredibly attractive man slid over next to Angela and started hitting on her - in Spanish.
In case you were wondering, this is the good part of the story.
Now, Angela knows a passable amount of Spanish, and had picked up considerably more during this particular trip, but at that point in the night it took a great amount of mental effort to remember any of it, so all she caught from this dark and mysterious stranger was quince minutos and then the rest was pure askfafjaslfklaskfjagibberish to her ears. Unfortunately for her, her inability to understand the words coming out of his mouth didn't seem to faze this dude at all - in fact, it only seemed to encourage him. He got very close to her, and Angela could smell that he was really, really, really drunk, so not knowing that Brennan was, well, Brennan, Angela flashed her the international girl code for help help I am extremely uncomfortable with this situation right now please do something, which - honestly, to this day, how Brennan can possibly know that signal yet fail to recognize how fast and how hard she needs to jump Booth right now, but - but that is beside the point, and not the moral of this story, so. ANYWAY.
So Angela gives her the eyes and Brennan, helpful future best friend, very quickly and very politely says something to the guy (in perfect Spanish!) that in any other normal situation would probably cause him to leave them alone. Except... it doesn't. Not only does it not deter him, it actually pisses him off but good, and he starts yelling at Brennan in even more Spanish that comes so quickly Angela doesn't think she'd understand it even if she was sober. And of course Brennan starts arguing back at him (in Spanish) because it's Brennan, for God's sake, and Angela's not entirely sure the logistics of it all, but somehow they end up nose to nose, wildly arguing in Spanish and this is the point when she wonders if maybe that tequila had roofies in it because there was no way this was actually happening right now.
But then the greatest thing in the entire world happens. The guy finally decides to bust out the only three words in English he had ever bothered to learn - "you dumb bitch" - and reaches for Brennan's arm to push her out of his face, at which point Brennan grabs his wrist and - Angela is not making this up; it really happened - she slams his wrist into the side of the bar. Then, as if this act of physical violence wasn't enough, she leans over him and into his ear she proceeds to name each bone in his wrist that she's just shattered.
He sort of fell down after that, and everyone who was left in the place was staring at them, and Angela was torn between utter pride in this woman she hardly knew and total fear that this guy had about ten friends outside with large guns that were going to kill them.
What did Brennan do? Knocks back the shot of tequila still waiting for her on the bar like nothing's happened.
Seriously. Best friends forever.
(Sweets' eyes are wide with delight and amazement. So are Booth's. Naturally, Brennan is the only person at the table unfazed by the story, and actually seems more occupied with suppressing her urge to point out that human beings don't actually live forever than anything else.
"Wow," Sweets manages.
"Wow," Hodgins repeats, except differently. "A: How have I never heard this story before? And B: How are you two even still alive right now?"
Angela just shrugs, delighted that through her powers of story-telling this thing is once again the best thing in the entire world. It's like a wonderful, magical gift of Brennan-shaped awesome. [Although, she has to point out, she knew Booth would be excited by it, but the man looks positively ecstatic over there. Giddy, even. Seriously, those two- just. Yes.]
"Ang," Cam points out, "is it possible that perhaps, over the years of telling this story, you've enhanced just a few of the details?"
"Nope! All 100% true. If anything, I've just made the guy significantly hotter in my mind so the image of Brennan totally owning his drunk ass is that much more satisfying."
"It's just that it sounds - slightly well-told."
Angela exclaims, "Yeah, but only because it's my favorite Brennan story ever."
Brennan makes a face at this. "I'm sitting right here, you know."
Booth raises his hand and signals the waitress. When Brennan asks what he's doing, he explains quickly, "Ordering us shots of tequila, Bones - what else?" to which Brennan shoves him and says Booth in that way that she does, and they bicker about it while remaining completely oblivious of the rest of the table, and eventually Booth really does order them all tequila over Brennan's objection. Which is probably a terrible idea at this hour, but who cares.
"To the wrist bone," Booth toasts. "The greatest bone in the human body."
Immediately Brennan corrects him: "It's actually eight bones and four articulations."
"Thank you," Booth replies, and gives her that smile that says her correction was totally his intention from the start. They all salt-tequila-lime, and as the alcohol burns down his throat, Booth manages, "Out of curiosity, did you hit him because he was a creep to Angela, or because he called you stupid?"
Brennan doesn't answer him, merely smiles proudly, which means it was a little of both.)
//
[4]
#4 - Cam can look back at her life and tell you, first, exactly what went wrong in her relationship with Booth, and second, exactly the moment she chose to ignore it in favor of really fantastic sex.
Cam sleeps with Booth because she likes him, and she sleeps with him again because he likes her, and they keep doing it over and over because they honestly fit well together, and whatever it is she thought was going on between him and Temperance Brennan is, apparently, not. She's not quite sure what she and Booth are - old friends, colleagues, boyfriend and girlfriend, plain ordinary fuck buddies - so at the end of the day, it's easier just to say: they are. They're together. On good days they're comfortable - on even better days, they're familiar.
On bad days, it feels a little like treading water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. For hours. For hours and with no lifeguard in sight.
The day she finds out that Booth bought Brennan a dress in Vegas is a really bad day. (It's so bad her brain completely tunes out Brennan's reply to Angela, "It's Versace, Ang, so technically I bought me a dress. He just picked it out.") In spite of her best efforts, she can't suppress the terrible, immediate stab of jealousy the thought inspires. She is a smart woman, Cam reminds herself. She is a confident, smart, articulate woman. She is not a petty, shallow, or even poorly-defined soap opera cliché.
She can't stop thinking about the fact that her boyfriend is head over heels in love with another woman, and even though they're together, he bought that woman a dress that he thought would make her look good.
There. She said it.
Or thought it. Whatever.
So Cam reacts by over-compensating for herself: she makes dinner reservations. Then, of course, she cancels them, because she reminds herself that she doesn't have to prove she's won. She doesn't have to prove anything to anyone. She's not competing with Temperance Brennan, because Temperance Brennan has no conception of any competition between the two of them above an academic or scientific level. Instead, Cam goes shopping. She buys her own dress (fuck you, Seeley Booth). She decides to return it, because again, she has nothing to prove. But she doesn't actually return it, because it's a fabulous fucking dress and it makes her ass look incredible. She knows it makes her ass look incredible because the first time she wears it Booth spends the entire time he's at the Jeffersonian staring at her, even on the forensic platform, when he's usually distracted by either whatever dead thing is up there or just waiting to mock Brennan for - whatever. Not today. Today, he's staring at her ass, and Cam smiles knowingly at their dirty little secret, that later they'll go back to her place and he'll get her out of that fabulous dress so damned fast she'll think his fingers are magic and there will be nothing romantic about what happens next because they will be plain ordinary fucking, and she'll straddle his hips and come so hard it feels like her entire world just exploded, and his fingers will leave bruises on her thighs that say you are mine. She'll only pretend to be pissed he did that. He'll order take-out, and they'll eat it naked in bed.
Besides, after that, the next week is a string of better and better days. No more swimming pools. See? Everything back to normal.
That is, until it isn't again - they're both running late because they had sex again this morning, and Brennan calls to ask if Booth is picking her up or not, and Booth, completely distracted by attempting to accomplish the difficult task of putting on two articles of clothing at the same time (with Cam openly laughing at him in bed, not really caring if Brennan can hear her), says to her on the phone, "I know, Bones, okay? I have one partner, and that partner is you. I am on my way," before immediately hanging up.
The words slap her across the face. She knows what he meant, but to Cam it sounds like Brennan is my partner in everything and you are not. Booth kisses her once as a goodbye, completely oblivious to the fact that he's just said the cruelest thing he could ever say to her without realizing it.
Shoes. She goes to lunch and buys very expensive, very Italian shoes.
(A tiny, tiny, minuscule [that's a lie, it's sort of big] part of her is relieved - and even, dare she say it, thrilled - to discover that the idea of Sully in Brennan's life drives Booth literally ape shit with jealousy. The guy visibly steps up his game to the point where she's fairly certain Temperance Brennan must be wearing the hugest set of blinders because that satellite-whatever that just landed on Mars could probably tell that Sully drives Booth insane. She's fairly certain that it's Dr. Wyatt alone that keeps Booth mostly in check during this time, primarily by distracting him with other problems [namely, his own].
Cam, however, would never actually speak this thought aloud, because even now, as Brennan's genuine friend, she is still very much the ex-girlfriend where these things are concerned.)
//
[5]
#5 - Max only came back and got himself arrested because he thought his daughter was marrying Booth. I mean - that's worth going to jail, right? Just to see your baby girl happy?
Tempe is gone two minutes before there's a knock on the door. Russ figures his sister probably forgot her keys or something, so he opens it without checking the peephole (note to self: people are trying to kill you; check the damned peephole) and is immediately confronted with two very undeniable facts: there's a priest in Tempe's hallway (okay?), and that priest is also his father - the father he hasn't seen in over fifteen years and whom he only recently found out was once a fugitive bank robber.
"Dad," Russ says eventually, for lack of anything else better.
Max quirks a smile like they see each other all the time, and Russ' third thought it that he father looks old; not just different or unfamiliar, but old. "Pretty sure the proper form of address is Father, kid."
-
"How is she?"
They're both sitting on Tempe's couch. It's awkward for a lot of reasons, reasons like this is not Russ' home, and also he hasn't seen this man in fifteen years and now he's there, right there, sitting in a priest's robe on the other end of the couch, and Russ is torn between punching him in the face and hugging him, but ends up just staring dumbly. Seriously, what the FUCK is going on lately?
So Russ avoids the question (or maybe just answers it in his own way) by saying, "You can't tell her who you are. She's not - who are you, now, by the way?"
"Toby Coulter."
The name immediately pings for Russ. "Train trestle guy?"
"Train trestle guy," Max agrees, pleased that his only son remembers a story he once told him. It's one of the greatest things about being a father, that feeling. "That's right."
They laugh about that for a minute or two, then Russ says again. "But seriously. You can't tell her. If you do, doesn't matter how you're dressed, I don't know who's going to punch you first, her or Booth. And Booth's Catholic."
Max raises his eyebrow. "You know, not for nothing, but I have taken my fair share of punches in my life."
"Trust me, Dad. I wouldn't say this to many people, but - that man scares the living shit out of me. Especially where Tempe's concerned."
His dad's face changes when he says that. Again, Russ thinks it's weird that this man is his dad and that fifteen years later he still instinctively knows when his face has changed, or even that he knows exactly why and exactly what's about to come out of his mouth next (because this is his father, and he is Russ Brennan, and Tempe is his little sister).
"Booth," Max begins, trying to say it like he hasn't said the name thousand times before and considered what it meant, "He a good guy?"
Russ gives him a look. "He works for the FBI, Dad."
"Not what I meant," Max grins.
Of course it isn't. "Yeah. He's - yeah. He's a good guy."
"Good," Max decides.
Part of Russ wants to believe that in that moment, this is all supposed to be a pact that says so now we promise to never ever let this person down ever again, even though Russ is pretty sure he can't actually promise that about his sister because time has already proven him wrong on one occasion and he has practically no clue about this guy in front of him who, yeah, this is his father sitting there, dressed like a priest, but what the hell? Very vaguely, he wonders about all the people who have ever given him confession.
But in the end, Russ lives up to his end of the unspoken bargain: he introduces Tempe to their own father as Father Toby Coulter, an old friend of their father's, and almost can't believe when she buys it, hook, line, and sinker.
(Then again, she believed the lie about her turtle running away when she was four, so.)
-
They're somewhere in Tennessee at this point via the most roundabout route he can think of, him and Dad - honestly, Russ is just driving at this point, and kind of hoping that at some point his father will eventually offer to point out where it is they're supposed to be going - when Max suddenly says after several hours of total quiet, "You read her books?"
"Tempe's?"
Max gives him a look. "'Course."
"Yeah." It feels weird. It's his sister. "I didn't - I read them, yeah."
There is an extremely long pause. Russ starts thinking that he might not be as good at this being-a-fugitive thing as his father is, but he's fairly certain they're going to have to ditch this truck at a gas station pretty soon.
"Booth is a good guy," Max pronounces, sort of proudly but also a little sad.
"Yeah," Russ agrees. "Yeah, he is."
"And Tempe's strong."
Russ shoots him a sideways glance. "I think the word you're looking for is actually stubborn."
Max laughs at this, because that is what he meant. "Exactly like her mother, too."
(The argument they're both consciously not making, of course, is that clearly Booth is better than the two of them. Booth and Tempe. And they're right.)
//
[6]
#6 - Caroline's suggestion at Christmas was puckish, yes, but also pure and utter payback.
In retrospect, Caroline has no clue why she took the meeting in the first place. It was probably because he kept pacing from one end of the room to the other, making everyone all kinds of uncomfortable, and all the while being extremely attractive in that way that most women can recognize even if they haven't considered sundry forms of things they want to do with that - yes. She doesn't quite know why she takes the meeting, honestly.
"A lawyer," she repeats, for the nth time.
"Yes."
"You need a lawyer."
"Yes! Caroline," and he gets real close, in that way that men know absolutely works on a woman, not sexual in any way but just close, "You did me well on that gun running case two years ago. Come on, right?"
She looks at him, totally sure this is a terrible mistake. "I'm a federal prosecutor, cherie. Do you know what that means? I can cite you half a dozen reasons what that means, and why this is a really bad idea, not the least of which are three pending cases involving Detective Harding herself. Look, it's got nothing to do with you or - who is this about again?"
"Temperance Brennan," he says, tightly, like he shouldn't have to. "She's my partner, Caroline."
The thing is: normal FBI folk, this sort of thing isn't that strange. Partners protect partners; they lie for each other on the witness stand all the time, and skirt perjury charges, and have each other's back, and sometimes give beaucoup contradictory testimony if it means getting a guy off a murky officer-involved shooting. They shoot bad guys for each other, and get drunk with each other, and have massively fucked up codependent relationships. They're partners. It's the FBI; this is the unfortunately annoying side of loyalty, if you're a federal prosecutor. As one of these aforementioned individuals, Caroline is used to it. It killed her marriage, for crying out loud.
Caroline Julian looks at Seeley Booth, and can immediately tell that this has nothing to do with his affiliation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She also can't help what that does to her heart, if just for a moment.
So she says, "Well, then what do I get?"
Booth blinks. "What?"
"Me, cherie - the lawyer in question? What do I get?"
"What do you mean, what you get?"
"I mean, what - a favor? A perk? Some sort of written agreement that I'm allowed to turn you down for a warrant when I'm not in a good mood?"
"You honestly want me to trade Bones' legal representation for a favor?"
He's making that really charming all the other pretty girls say I'm just great smile at her again, and Caroline wants smile back and say, You aren't fooling a single person right now, but instead she just makes a face at his use of the nickname. "That is no way of addressing a lady, Seeley Booth."
"Well, then, I'm... sorry."
She eyes him. He's not. She knows it. "You just remember this," she warns.
"What?"
"This, cherie! Are you supposed be some sort of competent detective?"
"Oh, I will, Caroline. I definitely will."
He's smiling that charming smile again, and Caroline wonders that however the reason this crazy woman managed to get messed up with this fool, this is all going to end up either very well or just horribly, horribly bad. Besides, all she knows about this woman, dust jacket aside, is Booth's incredibly helpful description - she's smart - which, honestly, is she? She's been arrested by the New Orleans Police Department for skinning some doctor or whatever. That isn't smart. So she wrote some books. One. One book.
Except then Caroline says yes, and if you could quantify the word grateful then Booth would be that times a thousand, and when she puts in a call to her boss asking for a little leeway on the motion hearings she has scheduled, the man just laughs and offers her his best of luck. Honestly, have people in Louisiana gotten nicer since she moved back?
(Of course, then she finds them at that restaurant making moony eyes at each other. Oh, my sweet Jesus Lord. No one's gotten nicer; they've just gotten bored.)
-
As far as mileage goes, Caroline has always known that the power of hey Booth remember that time I got your bone lady partner off murder charges? was a threat that could carry some serious water. She can count on at least two hands the amount of times that staring him down and psychically thinking NEW ORLEANS NEW ORLEANS has prevented that man from doing some really stupid shit with the supposed protection of the Federal Bureau of Investigation behind him.
The shenanigans that go down surrounding Gus Harper are almost enough to nearly erase the debt entirely - that is, until he goes and gets her car smashed to bits. That's when Caroline decides to lays in wait, poised to strike and extract her righteous revenge for New Orleans at just the right time. After all, there was an entire murder prosecution that got dismissed because of it. (Fine, if you want to get technical, a conviction was a pipe dream at best in the first place, but the judge had been very direct when he pointed his gavel at her and asked her to decide what side of the law she wanted to practice. Thank the Lord for that transfer back to D.C.)
In all honesty, Christmas is a stab in the dark. If she actually thought about it, she probably would have sent Dr. Brennan's request to the judge anyway (because it's Christmas, and even fugitive bank robber fathers of brilliant anthropologist authors deserve families, too), but it just - she can't help herself, really:
"I want you to kiss Seeley Booth on the lips."
The fact that Temperance Brennan doesn't stop in her tracks, dead from surprise, speaks volumes to the reason why those two are in de facto FBI couples therapy in the first place.
-
There are not a lot of times when Caroline Julian is willing to admit she's wrong.
There are not a lot of times when Caroline Julian is surprised by the actions of people. Disappointed, maybe; in terms of juries, sometimes bitter. But rarely surprised. As a lawyer, you start to assume that most of the time you can predict the four or five different ways a person will react to a situation - the only surprise, then, is when they don't choose the one you might expect.
Temperance Brennan kissing Seeley Booth, and Booth kissing her back, turns out to be the most surprising thing Caroline has ever seen. Because for all the ways you would expect it to go - for all the ways when you consider, okay, will they tip their hand? will it be A Moment? will it end up being the most sexless thing in the entire world, thereby shattering all notions of time and space? - the only thing is ends up being is true.
Which is not a sufficient definition for a court of law.
Which makes no sense.
Which is-
Oh.
There aren't enough steamboats on the ocean to quantify that.
-
She keeps waiting for the annoyed call from Agent Booth, but it never comes.
Verdict: guilty.
//
[7]
#7 - Hodgins has never given Angela his note either.
The morning After (and that's how he thinks about his life now, Before and After the Gravedigger), Hodgins wakes up and Angela is still asleep, peaceful, on top of the sheets next to him. He sighs with relief, not entirely sure what he was expecting but certainly sure that this is the greatest thing in the world to wake up to. It's a feeling he can't quantify, can't break down into its molecular parts; if you broke off a piece of it and examined it under the microscope, you couldn't tell from it time, place, or rate of decomposition. He is happy, and he is content, and he feels safe, and when you wrap all those things into one overarching theme it becomes something else, something indescribable.
Love.
So he folds up that imperfect but nonetheless true account of the depths to which his entire being loves Angela Montenegro and slips it into his wallet, just waiting for the right time. Because that's the opportunity he's been given - the right time, rather than "well, while we're at it--"
-
A week later, he hates that that note ever existed, and should probably burn it.
He hates that note because it represents everything about the Gravedigger that makes his blood boil, all submission and confession under duress and punishment of death. Just like he forces his victims to cave under the enormous pressure of which do you value more: money or the life of this human being, the Gravedigger smothered Hodgins and forced out of him this secret that he was nearly ready to die protecting. I love Angela Montenegro. When she smiles at him, all he thinks is that her best friend knew before she did because he was a coward who thought thousand-dollar perfume was better than the truth.
But he doesn't burn it, though. Instead he sticks it in a drawer in his private study, and locks it. At first, he doesn't even carry the key with him.
-
Rather absurdly, he wonders what would have happened to his family's money if Booth hadn't showed up. The lines of Hodgins family inheritance are murky at best after him (thanks, Dad), and his second cousins have been trying for ages to carve out nest eggs for themselves. Sure, he has a will leaving it all to the board of the Cantilever Group - his eighteenth birthday present (again: thanks, Dad) - but if Aunt Margaret was anything to go by, wills are suggestions, rather than commandments.
He hates that note for not being an amendment to that will, signing 95% over to Angela and the Jeffersonian.
He still doesn't burn it.
-
"You should buy Booth a boat."
He pulls back from the spot on her neck that he was kissing just then, wide-eyed. "Angie?"
"Or not a boat. Just - you know, something. A token of our gratitude."
"Angie," he says again, his arm pulling her just a little closer to him.
"Yeah?"
"I'm naked."
She smiles, rolling her hips just enough to drive him insane. "You most definitely are."
Hodgins thinks that she's the craziest person he has ever met, and he loves her. "It's just that - I'm naked, and you're naked, and in about five seconds I'm about to devour you so entirely in what I can only hope is the first of many opportunities tonight, so what I would appreciate is you not thinking about other guys while that's happening."
Angela licks her lips, straddling his hips now and completely aroused. "Jack, are you jealous?"
"Absolutely," he tells her, then kisses her.
"You should do something for him," she points out, horrifically prolonging this conversation. "He saved your life."
"Yeah, not for nothing, but I'm fairly sure I was collateral damage on that particular choice, by the way."
He goes back to her neck with a smile, but she stops him, cupping his face with both her hands and says, completely serious and completely true, "Hey. You are no one's collateral damage. Ever."
His name is Jack Hodgins, and he loves this woman, Angela Montenegro, and for the first time in his life he realizes something else: one day he's going to marry this woman. Yes. Yes.
"I love you," he replies, also true.
She kisses his lips with a smile and I love you too, then says, quickly, "Also, totally right - totally collateral."
"Oh, my God, yes, so can we now get back to-" and he doesn't finish that sentence, because he instead chooses to illustrate his point by flipping her onto her back and smothering the giggle she makes with a very long, very artful kiss.
He keeps the note because, like it or not, it's part of them.
-
Hodgins reads the dedication in Brennan's second book.
He keeps the note solely for the irony that his own love confession is written on the pages from her first one.
-
He puts the note back in his wallet on his wedding day.
The last couple days have been a blur of activity and planning and somehow, nobody knows, him still managing to do his day job, but this is the only other thing besides I love Angela Montenegro that seems real and seems true. He works out a plan: it'll be during the limo ride from the church to the reception; they've written their own vows, so he comes up with a funny line about first drafts and brainstorming. For about a day, he panics that the whole remember when I was kidnapped by a serial killer? angle might not be the sort of thing one brings up on their wedding day. Then he remembers that this note is a million reasons why I love you means so much more than those three syllables imply, and decides that it doesn't matter the how. Just the what.
Instead, it turns out Angela's already married, and the two of them flee their own ceremony before it even starts, and they just end up having sex in the back of the limo instead.
The note stays safely tucked away.
-
When he and Angela break up, he gets as far as cracking the lighter a couple dozen times.
This spring/summer has been awful - Booth, Zack, ZackZackZackZackZackZack - so when this happens, it's almost like it was expected. Shit happens in threes, right?
He can't do it, though. He tries to burn it, but can't. He's a coward like that sometimes.
-
He honestly doesn't give the note a second thought until he's forced to - until the Gravedigger steals Booth (yes, steals him; he belongs to them now, their group, their - whatever), and forces them to make the same choice he had to make two years ago. Brennan runs around the entire time in high heels and a party dress, trying to fix things - trying to be Booth - and Hodgins spends the first hour remembering that this night was supposed to be all about Angela teasing Brennan about her not-date. It was supposed to be what they were all hoping for the next morning: awesome stories about drunk Booth and drunk Brennan being really bad at being a not-couple. Instead, they're somewhere in Maryland, very probably committing a felony in his name.
It's the tiniest of moments, when he and Brennan are standing in front of the rock with the suitcase full of evidence, both of them knowing full well the damnation they're condemning themselves to in the justice system and just not caring because it's Booth, for God's sake. Booth. Brennan and Booth. They all took a glance last year at what that could have been like when you removed one from the equation, and it was awful.
Hodgins doesn't even mean to, but he says it anyway:
"Did you give it him?"
Brennan looks sharply at him. He's curious if she's going to ask him what he's referring to, whether feigned or not, but sees immediate that she knows exactly. He recognizes something in her face, something true, that he knows not a lot of people have ever seen. He wonders how many times over the last two years she's thought about her note, if at all.
"Did you?"
Ah. There it is.
They both look away, not needing to answer their own questions.
-
(Over time, Hodgins has been able to work out what Brennan's note said.
It wasn't I love you. He knows this almost immediately. She's too rational for that, too scared, too closed off - too unbelieving that another person can complete you, because that completeness implies that the original was somehow incomplete, imperfect. It wasn't even I trust you, because Hodgins guesses that while there's a lot of crazy unspoken shit that goes on between those two, that? Is not something that needs saying. No. Brennan's note wasn't about love at all.
It was simply This isn't your fault, Booth.)
//
[8]
#8 - Dr. Gordon Gordon Wyatt's diagnosis that Brennan was simply incapable at the present time to lead a purposeless life was absolutely about Booth, just not for any of the reasons Ms. Montenegro suspected.
Dr. Sweets-
Please find enclosed a draft of an introduction for your manuscript, as requested. I fear it may have turned out more preface than anything else. Forgive me - my heart belongs only to a fine dessert wine now, and she cannot escape even a little poetic spice.
- GGW
In Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, the good doctor defined a human bone simply as "the most solid part of the body." He called the brain "a collection of vessels and organs from which sense and motion arise," while the heart was by poetic contrast "the seat of life." He said that science was composed of but seven disciplines - namely: grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy - and to be called scientific, one had to have the properties of "promoting knowledge."
To Johnson, a temple was not simply a house of worship, but also the side of his own head.
When I was initially approached to write an introduction for the following case study on oppositional personalities operating in interpersonal relationships within the field of law enforcement, the request came at a time of great personal transition away from forensic psychology (I had been recently accepted in the Culinary School of the Arts, and had ended my tenure with the Federal Bureau of Investigation). In addition, I was reminded of my own familiarity (on both a professional and personal level) with the primary subjects of this case study, and I feared that any framing insights I might have on the subject of partnership could be viewed by certain academic minds as mere bias, or too fueled by some deeper, ulterior motive of friendship. While I take issue with the notion that our field of psychological analysis can ever be truly devoid of that bias, I was willing to acquiesce to it in favor of a reputation that was not my own. In short, I very graciously declined.
However, shortly thereafter consuming a meal rather exquisitely prepared (by this particular writer), I found myself caught up in a small Socratic dialogue that reminded me that personal insight is not always necessarily bias. To whit, I would like to share this framing anecdote with you, as I feel it introduces the underlying theories of this study better than any regurgitated collection of psychological disciplines.
The exchange began entirely innocently, and rather off-hand. While washing a dish, I asked Dr. Temperance Brennan why it was that she had become a forensic anthropologist in the first place. Immediately, she replied with a standard answer, one that would have made Dr. Johnson proud - science was a field of logic and rationality, and these were qualities she saw in herself; her career was a foregone conclusion. Being rather presumptuous, I pointed out that she had not actually answered my question, that I was curious about the specific properties of forensic anthropology that had drawn her attentions. Why had she not become a chemist, or a biologist, or even a geneticist? Why had she, with singular pursuit, chosen anthropology, a science mired by sometimes extremely irrational operators - human beings? At this, she confessed she had no explanation, except to say that human osteology - the study of a person's skeleton - was something very fundamental yet tangible to her. She simply liked bones. They explained people. Then she turned the question on me - why had I chosen to forgo psychology for the culinary arts? Ruefully, I replied that in many ways, I too had only the answer that it was something that felt very fundamental yet tangible to me. Food feeds people. This was logic, she deduced; purpose. To this, I had to respectfully disagree. It was not purpose that motivated us in our careers; it was what Johnson called "the seat of life" - our hearts.
Of course, as was her way, Dr. Brennan rejected this as mere poetic flourish, reiterating her abhorrence of the discipline of psychology, and at this time Agent Booth admonished me for turning dinner into "free therapy." (I must confess that he was partially correct, a triumph that no doubt pleases him to learn, should he ever read this. In another age, perhaps Socrates would have been a psychologist.)
It is my hope that this small personal anecdote can help to illuminate many of the theories, observations, and analyses contained in this case study by the brilliant Dr. Lance Sweets. To me, its truth is as fundamental yet tangible as, well, food and bones.
-- Chef Gordon Wyatt (nee Ph.D)
[Former FBI forensic psychologist & profiler]
//
[9]
#9 - "What Would Dr. Brennan Do?" actually has a lot of real-world applications outside dissertation conundrums.
"Please?"
"Daisy-"
"Not even just for a little bit?"
Lance looks at her, hating every ounce of temptation she was throwing at him right now.
"I really do have a lot of paperwork to get through tonight, you know."
"But Lancelot," she pouts, half sad and half sexy, and fuck, that face works on him every time, "I finished an entire chapter today! Don't you want to celebrate?"
He does. Oh, my God, he wants to celebrate so fast and so hard, it almost hurts. They haven't sex in a week. Hear that? A week! For them, that is - well, that's an eternity. And now here she is, pouting her lips at him, sprawled out in front of him on the couch, ready and willing and literally throwing herself at him with everything she has... and he has work to do? Really? He has so much work to do, in fact, he probably shouldn't have even paused for that Hot Pocket ten minutes ago. That's how much work he has.
Plus, he feels a little bad. This week's been rough on her, too, you know, between her dissertation and the non-sex they've been having.
So Lance is about to propose they make some sort of compromise when suddenly Daisy's face changes. She goes from her sexy face (effect: powerful) to this adorable face that he recognizes as the one she makes when it's 2am and she has writer's block. It's a little confused, and a little smug, and a little amused, all wrapped up into one little package. He's about to laugh that he hadn't realized she knew how easy that could work on him when - something else pings in his brain.
Oh, no. Oh no, oh no, oh no.
Unfortunately, he can't stop himself from shrieking in reply, "OH MY GOD. DAISY WICK, DON'T YOU DARE."
Daisy blinks, still making The Face. "What?"
"You're doing it right now, aren't you?"
"I don't know what you're-"
"You are! You're using WWDBW on me!"
She rolls her eyes at him. "Oh, please, no I am not."
"Yes! Yes, you are! Don't deny it."
She glares at him, then concedes, "Okay, fine, but only a little. Did it work?"
"NO," Lance shrieks, again. "Daisy, you can't ever do that to me, especially not - not for that."
Daisy curls her legs up, and Lance begins to suspect he's suddenly going to have loads and loads of free time to finish his paperwork. "She's really a brilliant woman, you know."
"Of course she is, but Dr. Brennan is also my patient whom I have to continue to look in the eye, so just - don't do that again, okay? WWDBW everyone else in the entire world if you want to. Just not me, your boyfriend."
He thinks she's going to get pissed at him for yelling (ENTIRELY VALID REASON NOT WITHSTANDING), and she does pout for a few long seconds before it gives way to a smile. "Do I at least get style points?"
Lance can't help but smile back. He loves her smile. "Yes. You get style points."
-
A week later, an atypically conversational but nonetheless roundabout session leads an allusion by Dr. Brennan to an incident involving an expensive automobile. His brain spends a good minute or two righting itself, as he is once again reminded how these two people ever managed to function without the help of a professional trained in the art of psychology. It's actually a horrible thing to experience as a psychologist, that sort of tune-out, but he's learned over these months that sometimes sitting back and letting them banter accomplishes far more than attempting to analyze each individual remark. For one thing, the session doesn't shut down in 3.5 seconds.
He drifts back into consciousness on this remark:
"You know what, okay, sometimes driving a fine Italian sportscar is just driving a fine Italian sportscar. End of story."
Sweets makes a face at the rather crude and obvious analogy. Brennan laughs, though, totally obliviously: "That's not what you told me."
Sweets chuckles to himself, but when he looks at Booth - the man's entire suave demeanor is gone in an instant, replaced instead by total and utter speechlessness. Sweets can't tell if he doesn't know what to say to that, is upset that she just completely undercut his argument, or both. (Actually, that's a lie: he totally doesn't have an answer for that. Oh, man, there is some hardcore sublimation going on right now.)
Brennan looks at Sweets, then Booth. "What?"
Booth is still staring. No one answers Brennan's question.
"Agent Booth," Sweets prompts, "would you like to move on?"
"Let's do that," Booth snaps.
Brennan shoots Booth a look that's more than a little confused, a little smug that something she's said has caused him total embarrassment in that indescribably amusing way of his, for whatever reason, and, well, general all-around amusement. Booth, despite the tension, can't help but smile at her.
Damn.
Sweets has got to hand it to her: mega style points.
//
[10]
#10 - Booth knows exactly the moment it happened, whether either of them realized what it meant at the time.
It takes an hour to get to the scene of crime.
Here is what the last hour has consisted of: silence; Booth attempting to make small talk like a normal human being, and Dr. Temperance Brennan glaring him down like a crazy fucking person, refusing to bite; more awkward, uncomfortable silence. There's also an interlude where he attempts to crash his car, thereby triggering some hereto unknown Groundhog Day scenario, in which this day never happens.
Admittedly, yes, okay, so maybe they've gotten off on something of a bad note. He may have accidentally alluded to the fact that she was actually a lot hotter in person than she sounded on the phone. She may have responded by shaking his hand and declaring that it was fine because he was "just as much of a jackass as he sounded on the phone." There may have been disagreements about x-rays. And about her (not) riding with the Jeffersonian equipment van. (Honestly, on that last point - it's August. Who wants to ride in a van full of equipment with zero air conditioning in August, when instead you could be in an incredibly comfortable SUV which, by the well, fully ventilated? Honestly. Booth is practically doing this woman a favor on this particular bone of contention.)
Mostly, Booth just hates that every story he's ever heard about this woman is turning about to be right. For him, and for her. She's arrogant. She corrects you. She's not even remotely a people-person. You know, Booth likes people, and people like Booth. The fact that even he can't... yeah.
Instead, he's focused on the traffic in front of him, which is horrendous, and just because the universe is amazing thing to behold, right as he's about to accelerate through a newly green light, a car comes barreling through the intersection through the red. It's a miracle he doesn’t run sideways into the guy. Naturally, Booth swears, and mumbles something about this being worse than Guatemalan traffic, and-
Brennan laughs.
She doesn't actually laugh, mind you. She sort of snorts involuntarily, almost like a natural normal-person reflex to something one might find humorous. Booth shoots her a look of total shock, and for about ten microseconds she's some mixture of horrified, surprised, delighted, and terrified that he has actually made her laugh, and just when he thinks that maybe, just maybe he's finally got a leg in the door- boom! It's gone. She goes back to that oh too familiar face that Booth knows means um I mean I still really hate you.
The car behind him honks incessantly. Booth shouts, "I KNOW" to no one who actually cares to hear it, then slams on the gas.
-
Five years later, they argue about the concept of love at first sight.
[end.]
NO REALLY, THE POEM IS AWESOME.
TITLE: The Forgotten Dialects of the Heart
FANDOM: Bones
PAIRINGS: Booth/Brennan; Cam/Booth, Hodgins/Angela, Sweets/Daisy (EVERYONE)
SPOILERS: thru 4x25 "Critic in the Cabernet"
SUMMARY: Ten untold stories about love that also have the benefit of being true.
NOTE: Oh, boy; this. This literally fell out of my head in like two weeks. Call it one of those personal canon memes that thoroughly and utterly got away from me? But good. Hahah. Hahahaha. I've been literally just rewatching this show over and over all summer, ngl. (#8 - uh, yeah, IDK) Props x1000 to delgaserasca on the title. 10,475 words (!)
- - -
[1]
#1 - Angela knows exactly why Booth showed up in New Mexico, and it had little to nothing to do with her, although that was obviously a welcome side effect.
If you actually mapped out all the morsels of advice that Angela has doled out to Brennan over the years, analyzed them the way you would an author's canon of work, a few recurring themes might emerge: namely, in this order, [1] you (Brennan) want to have sex with Booth; [2] Booth wants to have sex with you; [3] you two are ridiculously perfect for each other in so many ways, whether you realize it or not; [4] you're not actually as failed of a human being as you think you are.
While the first three are rather obvious to anyone who knows Brennan or Angela, the fourth is more of an intuitive leap. Brennan's problem, Angela realizes after knowing her for exactly six months and three days, isn't that she's bad at relationships, or bad at being a social creature, or even that she's scared of failing at being a person in a relationship. It's just that, unlike the majority of people, Brennan never learned how to fake it. Because honestly that's what people do for most of their lives - they fake at being good at this, and sometimes they find people with whom they don't have to. You meet a guy at a bar - you meet a girl in a bar - and this person is attractive, and they might even make you laugh within the first five minutes, so something inside you says, okay I have no idea if this is going to be something but let's see where this goes. So you run with it. Sure, you two might click initially, and sure, in retrospect when everything falls apart you'll be able to look back on your life and know first, exactly where it all went wrong, and second, that you knew it the moment it happened and chose not to acknowledge it. This is called dating. This is called life. Every single person since the dawn of time has, at some point, been afraid of failing at a relationship. It's not a revelation by any stretch of the word. Angela hasn't really talked to another anthropologist who wasn't Brennan about this kind of thing, but if she's willing to guess, she'd say this fear is actually an integral part of the human condition. It makes us be better people. Whole societies can be traced back to two people standing on a beach, and one person says, "I'm scared of the water, but if we don't catch a fish, we'll both die," so the other person offers to kill a boar and cook it or something. Whatever. Angela dated a philosopher once and he used to say stuff like that all the time, which to her moony-eyed, art school self sounded brilliant.
Brennan's problem isn't that she's scared. Everyone gets scared. D'uh, that's life. Her problem is that she felt abandoned in the most important time of her social development, abandoned in a very literal way that turns some people into drugs addicts or worse, so what Brennan did was she turned to something that by its very nature could never fail her - logic. Unfortunately, since people more often than not don't act according to logic - since most everything that happens in the universe happens in some way against all logical principles - her own founding premise is flawed. Not wrong; flawed. It's flawed, because logic meets a guy (or a girl) at a bar, projects its potential downsides and shortcomings, and ultimately decides that the best course of action is avoidance rather than experience (since avoiding something prevents the pain, and loss, and suffering, and repeated abandonment, and none of these side effects are in any way "good").
(Years and years from this point in time, when Angela finally hears the story about the foster parents who locked Brennan in a trunk for breaking a dish, she wonders if that was the moment it happened. If that was the thing that made sixteen-year-old Temperance Brennan say to herself, "I knew this would happen. It was the logical outcome given a set of pre-conceived conditions, and I did it anyway. I shouldn't have done that. This feeling could have been avoided.")
Whether she realizes it or not, this is the point that Angela is actually she's trying to make to Brennan in the desert, after Kirk dies, about missing her moment. That she (Angela) is just as afraid of failing at all of this as her best friend is; that this recognition of weakness and hatred thereto is what makes them friends, or partners in crime, or whatever you want to call it. So when Brennan makes her a promise from her brain about infinite possibilities, Angela believes that she believes this is a true statement, but also spends the entire plane ride home and part of the trip to baggage claim wondering if the concept of infinity isn't the most irrational thing of all. Because to say infinite is to imply unpredictable, and logic is anything if not predictable. That maybe this is living, breathing proof that there is a person inside Brennan - an actual person, who won't fail, who won't be bad at these things; who, honestly, knows what that means. (Sometimes, Angela finds herself on the other end of a really bad date, and the guy says something and she thinks, intuitively, okay I have no idea what that actually means but of course she doesn't say that out loud because it would be rude and who knows maybe he's fantastic in bed or something, and then she thinks - holy shit. No one ever told Brennan you don't say actually that part out loud, even if it's true. That's the answer!)
Then, of course, the world clicks back into place - she has her thoughts rudely interrupted by Brennan and Booth's impromptu argument over whether they need to spend the quarters on a luggage cart (when, as Brennan correctly points out, they all have luggage with wheels and a handle; a cart seems impractical and unnecessary) (to which Angela does not [also correctly] bother to point out that this debate has nothing to do with being practical, and everything to do with Booth being a guy and thus demonstrating such by being the one pushing the cart).
For the record: ever since that guy tried to feed Brennan to some dogs and Booth saved her life after Hodgins helped bust him out of the hospital, something is different about the two of them. Which - okay, sometimes Angela thinks about sentences like that, and remembers that she has a job at a place where that kind of thing is only partially out of the ordinary. Like, she spent Christmas in a science lab thanks to fungus, so whatever, sometimes you go with the flow? But something is definitely different, some so obviously different that she also (rather disturbingly) can't put her finger on. Zack is oblivious to it (because it's Zack, who still cuts his own hair), and Hodgins just pretends to be oblivious because he knows it drives her insane, so it's just Angela left standing around, shouting at the rain, I'm not crazy, right? I saw that. I did. I did.
So Angela shows up at Wong Foo's a few days later when she knows Brennan is working late, and she buys Booth a beer, and because they are normal people, this is totally the same thing as saying thank you for showing up when you did and also, in ways they won't acknowledge (not publicly, at least), this is why people believe in fate and destiny.
(Also for the record: yes, okay, so maybe she just confused an ex-boyfriend with an episode of Lost in that whole two-guys-on-a-beach metaphor - uh, whatever. Like Brennan even watches television.)
//
[2]
#2 - There are definitely times when Brennan knows exactly what that means. (Horse.)
"I just think it's weird, you know?"
Brennan's in the passenger seat, and she looks up from the file she's reading.
"I... have no idea what you're referring to."
Booth looks at her over the top of his sunglasses, just to make sure she's not messing with him (she's not), then says it again, "It's weird to me."
"Repeating that statement doesn't actually help elucidate your meaning."
"Bones, how long have we been partners?"
"Four years," she replies without missing a beat.
"And how long have we actually known each other?"
"Six."
"In total, how many times have we saved each other's lives?"
Brennan glances out the windshield as Booth blows through a yellow light that is technically now red, implicitly knowing the answer. Should I also be including you bringing this car ride to an end? "My number or yours?"
"What, we have different numbers?"
She winces, knowing what's coming. "The Simmons case-"
"That was not you saving my life. Okay? I repeat, not saving my life. That was you interfering with a federal agent, namely me."
"My point exactly, Booth! We have different numbers."
Booth gives her his standard you are a crazy woman look, then launches back into his original thought: "All I'm saying is that it's weird."
"You haven't actually said what it is that you think is weird."
He groans, all you're actually going to make me say it aren't you? and Brennan considers for a moment that it's strange that half the time she has no idea what Booth is going to say, because Booth is different than she is and she doesn't understand him, and yet half the time she can predict exactly how he'll react and there wasn't actually a point in her life when one physically became the other; in all reality, it's almost like these two modes always co-existed together, always-
"Bones, why don't I have a key to your apartment?"
She blinks. Um. Uh? Wait... really? "What?"
"A key! A small, grooved, metal object used for the purpose of opening a lock, usually to one's home or office building."
"I know what a key is, Booth."
"I gave you mine," he points out.
Brennan looks at him, unsure and suddenly extremely uncomfortable with this discussion. She's not an idiot; she's perfectly aware of the typical social conventions that usually surround the exchanging of keys between two people. She just - it's not that she and Booth haven't known each other for a while, and been through many things together, it's just - she wasn't aware that was a thing she was supposed to do with him?
"That was... a practical course of action at the time." (She is of course referring to the week after Booth's hockey injury, when he was too drugged from the pain medication he was given to perform certain tasks like driving - mostly, though, she's sure he was just exaggerating their effect on him in order to keep on saying oh Bones one other thing.) (She doesn't mention how, when she tried to give it back to him, he said it was "easier" if she just kept it and he got a new one. That part didn't make a lot of sense; on the other hand, it did expedite their second encounter with the Gravedigger significantly, so maybe he had been on to something initially.)
"And if you'll remember correctly, I didn't ask for it back. I'm just saying, maybe the polite thing to do would be to reciprocate the gesture, is all."
She considers this, trying not to think about all of things they've discussed recently - has she not been listening? She tries to listen; she listens and she tries, to the best of her ability, to always think what would Angela do? - but she honestly doesn't know what could have possibly prompted this request, so she replies, logically, "But you don't live there."
He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. "Not the point, Bones."
(Shit. Shit, shit, shit. She's really bad this. This is what she can't make Angela understand - she's just, it has nothing to do with not understanding - it's just that she really hates being bad at this. Everyone else knows what to do, right?)
"Then what is the-"
"Trust! Bones. It's a gesture of trust, you know, between partners."
(Oh! Oh.)
"I trust you, Booth," she says, without an ounce of hesitation, because it's true. "You know that's true. Of course I trust you."
(Right? That's the right answer, right?)
He looks at her for a long time, longer than he should considering he's operating a large, moving vehicle currently hurtling them well above the speed limit through a crowded urban area. She might be strapped into her seat, but she feels well and truly pinned down by that look. It's not necessarily a bad thing to be feeling.
Then his phone rings.
(Oh, my God. Thank you, universe.)
She tells Angela about the conversation later, and after she smiles in that knowing way of hers that most of the time Brennan knows exactly what it means because it's her best friend so it only means one thing, Angela's mostly just surprised that Booth doesn't have a key to her apartment at this point, too. "I keep a spare under the mat," Brennan explains logically, and then it's her turn to be surprised that Angela didn't know that.
Their case wraps up with Booth busting down the door at exactly the right time, just before their suspect pulls the trigger on the gun aimed perfectly at her head. He then makes a smart ass remark like you know what would have been faster? having a key, and normally she'd roll her eyes at him, or glare at him, or punch him in the arm for it, but right now she's just so utterly grateful that he exists that she doesn't even care - she just launches herself at him and hugs him until it physically hurts them both. She says quietly, so the back-up can't hear, "We're even now," and she feels Booth's entire body sighing. It feels good.
But-
But it doesn't feel like enough.
So that night she goes to the hardware store and has them cut a second copy of her apartment key, because it feels like that's what Angela would tell her to do about this situation. While she waits, she idly turns the display of novelty key chains until she finds, of all things, one of a skeleton - suddenly, by surprise, this feels like enough. She gives it to him the next morning at the diner, over her egg white omelet and his Belgian waffles with strawberries, explaining that the key chain will simply help him remember who the key belongs to (since obviously, that's why it felt right). He smiles, saying thank you and meaning it, and she just knows that it means she's done something right, so she says again for emphasis: "I trust you, Booth."
And that is the story of how, a week before she decided she wanted to have a baby, Brennan gave Booth a key to her place. (Not that the two are in any way related. For one thing, one is about children, and the other is about the exchange of property with a work colleague whom she trusts.)
//
[3]
#3 - How did Brennan and Angela meet? Actually, it's a really, really, really good story. Wanna hear it? (Angela-) (Shut up, Brennan. Okay? I am telling this story.)
Angela met Brennan while she was still finishing her dissertation - "before she was a doctor of anything," is how Angela likes to put it. They were both attached to the same excavation in central Mexico - Brennan was doing the digging, Angela was in the middle of a thing for Aztec art (and also, one particular expert in it).
They were friendly enough - mostly Brennan kept to herself, that is when she wasn't making the actual archaeologists extremely unsure of themselves - but their lasting friendship wasn't solidified until the end of the trip. See, the entire team had gathered at this tiny, hot, dusty hole-in-the-wall bar in the only town in sight for miles, and it was dreadful, and it was hot, and Todd had told her earlier that day that he had decided to get back with his wife when they got back to the States, so all Angela wanted to do was get drunk. There was a very cheap, very large bottle of tequila and it had her name on it, Pearly Gates and everything.
Toward the end of the night, when most of the excavation team had gone home, it was just Brennan and Angela at the bar. Angela can't remember who started talking to whom first, and neither can Brennan (one word: tequila), but it felt like they talked for forever. In reality, it was only about fifteen minutes. She knows this, because that's when an otherwise incredibly attractive man slid over next to Angela and started hitting on her - in Spanish.
In case you were wondering, this is the good part of the story.
Now, Angela knows a passable amount of Spanish, and had picked up considerably more during this particular trip, but at that point in the night it took a great amount of mental effort to remember any of it, so all she caught from this dark and mysterious stranger was quince minutos and then the rest was pure askfafjaslfklaskfjagibberish to her ears. Unfortunately for her, her inability to understand the words coming out of his mouth didn't seem to faze this dude at all - in fact, it only seemed to encourage him. He got very close to her, and Angela could smell that he was really, really, really drunk, so not knowing that Brennan was, well, Brennan, Angela flashed her the international girl code for help help I am extremely uncomfortable with this situation right now please do something, which - honestly, to this day, how Brennan can possibly know that signal yet fail to recognize how fast and how hard she needs to jump Booth right now, but - but that is beside the point, and not the moral of this story, so. ANYWAY.
So Angela gives her the eyes and Brennan, helpful future best friend, very quickly and very politely says something to the guy (in perfect Spanish!) that in any other normal situation would probably cause him to leave them alone. Except... it doesn't. Not only does it not deter him, it actually pisses him off but good, and he starts yelling at Brennan in even more Spanish that comes so quickly Angela doesn't think she'd understand it even if she was sober. And of course Brennan starts arguing back at him (in Spanish) because it's Brennan, for God's sake, and Angela's not entirely sure the logistics of it all, but somehow they end up nose to nose, wildly arguing in Spanish and this is the point when she wonders if maybe that tequila had roofies in it because there was no way this was actually happening right now.
But then the greatest thing in the entire world happens. The guy finally decides to bust out the only three words in English he had ever bothered to learn - "you dumb bitch" - and reaches for Brennan's arm to push her out of his face, at which point Brennan grabs his wrist and - Angela is not making this up; it really happened - she slams his wrist into the side of the bar. Then, as if this act of physical violence wasn't enough, she leans over him and into his ear she proceeds to name each bone in his wrist that she's just shattered.
He sort of fell down after that, and everyone who was left in the place was staring at them, and Angela was torn between utter pride in this woman she hardly knew and total fear that this guy had about ten friends outside with large guns that were going to kill them.
What did Brennan do? Knocks back the shot of tequila still waiting for her on the bar like nothing's happened.
Seriously. Best friends forever.
(Sweets' eyes are wide with delight and amazement. So are Booth's. Naturally, Brennan is the only person at the table unfazed by the story, and actually seems more occupied with suppressing her urge to point out that human beings don't actually live forever than anything else.
"Wow," Sweets manages.
"Wow," Hodgins repeats, except differently. "A: How have I never heard this story before? And B: How are you two even still alive right now?"
Angela just shrugs, delighted that through her powers of story-telling this thing is once again the best thing in the entire world. It's like a wonderful, magical gift of Brennan-shaped awesome. [Although, she has to point out, she knew Booth would be excited by it, but the man looks positively ecstatic over there. Giddy, even. Seriously, those two- just. Yes.]
"Ang," Cam points out, "is it possible that perhaps, over the years of telling this story, you've enhanced just a few of the details?"
"Nope! All 100% true. If anything, I've just made the guy significantly hotter in my mind so the image of Brennan totally owning his drunk ass is that much more satisfying."
"It's just that it sounds - slightly well-told."
Angela exclaims, "Yeah, but only because it's my favorite Brennan story ever."
Brennan makes a face at this. "I'm sitting right here, you know."
Booth raises his hand and signals the waitress. When Brennan asks what he's doing, he explains quickly, "Ordering us shots of tequila, Bones - what else?" to which Brennan shoves him and says Booth in that way that she does, and they bicker about it while remaining completely oblivious of the rest of the table, and eventually Booth really does order them all tequila over Brennan's objection. Which is probably a terrible idea at this hour, but who cares.
"To the wrist bone," Booth toasts. "The greatest bone in the human body."
Immediately Brennan corrects him: "It's actually eight bones and four articulations."
"Thank you," Booth replies, and gives her that smile that says her correction was totally his intention from the start. They all salt-tequila-lime, and as the alcohol burns down his throat, Booth manages, "Out of curiosity, did you hit him because he was a creep to Angela, or because he called you stupid?"
Brennan doesn't answer him, merely smiles proudly, which means it was a little of both.)
//
[4]
#4 - Cam can look back at her life and tell you, first, exactly what went wrong in her relationship with Booth, and second, exactly the moment she chose to ignore it in favor of really fantastic sex.
Cam sleeps with Booth because she likes him, and she sleeps with him again because he likes her, and they keep doing it over and over because they honestly fit well together, and whatever it is she thought was going on between him and Temperance Brennan is, apparently, not. She's not quite sure what she and Booth are - old friends, colleagues, boyfriend and girlfriend, plain ordinary fuck buddies - so at the end of the day, it's easier just to say: they are. They're together. On good days they're comfortable - on even better days, they're familiar.
On bad days, it feels a little like treading water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. For hours. For hours and with no lifeguard in sight.
The day she finds out that Booth bought Brennan a dress in Vegas is a really bad day. (It's so bad her brain completely tunes out Brennan's reply to Angela, "It's Versace, Ang, so technically I bought me a dress. He just picked it out.") In spite of her best efforts, she can't suppress the terrible, immediate stab of jealousy the thought inspires. She is a smart woman, Cam reminds herself. She is a confident, smart, articulate woman. She is not a petty, shallow, or even poorly-defined soap opera cliché.
She can't stop thinking about the fact that her boyfriend is head over heels in love with another woman, and even though they're together, he bought that woman a dress that he thought would make her look good.
There. She said it.
Or thought it. Whatever.
So Cam reacts by over-compensating for herself: she makes dinner reservations. Then, of course, she cancels them, because she reminds herself that she doesn't have to prove she's won. She doesn't have to prove anything to anyone. She's not competing with Temperance Brennan, because Temperance Brennan has no conception of any competition between the two of them above an academic or scientific level. Instead, Cam goes shopping. She buys her own dress (fuck you, Seeley Booth). She decides to return it, because again, she has nothing to prove. But she doesn't actually return it, because it's a fabulous fucking dress and it makes her ass look incredible. She knows it makes her ass look incredible because the first time she wears it Booth spends the entire time he's at the Jeffersonian staring at her, even on the forensic platform, when he's usually distracted by either whatever dead thing is up there or just waiting to mock Brennan for - whatever. Not today. Today, he's staring at her ass, and Cam smiles knowingly at their dirty little secret, that later they'll go back to her place and he'll get her out of that fabulous dress so damned fast she'll think his fingers are magic and there will be nothing romantic about what happens next because they will be plain ordinary fucking, and she'll straddle his hips and come so hard it feels like her entire world just exploded, and his fingers will leave bruises on her thighs that say you are mine. She'll only pretend to be pissed he did that. He'll order take-out, and they'll eat it naked in bed.
Besides, after that, the next week is a string of better and better days. No more swimming pools. See? Everything back to normal.
That is, until it isn't again - they're both running late because they had sex again this morning, and Brennan calls to ask if Booth is picking her up or not, and Booth, completely distracted by attempting to accomplish the difficult task of putting on two articles of clothing at the same time (with Cam openly laughing at him in bed, not really caring if Brennan can hear her), says to her on the phone, "I know, Bones, okay? I have one partner, and that partner is you. I am on my way," before immediately hanging up.
The words slap her across the face. She knows what he meant, but to Cam it sounds like Brennan is my partner in everything and you are not. Booth kisses her once as a goodbye, completely oblivious to the fact that he's just said the cruelest thing he could ever say to her without realizing it.
Shoes. She goes to lunch and buys very expensive, very Italian shoes.
(A tiny, tiny, minuscule [that's a lie, it's sort of big] part of her is relieved - and even, dare she say it, thrilled - to discover that the idea of Sully in Brennan's life drives Booth literally ape shit with jealousy. The guy visibly steps up his game to the point where she's fairly certain Temperance Brennan must be wearing the hugest set of blinders because that satellite-whatever that just landed on Mars could probably tell that Sully drives Booth insane. She's fairly certain that it's Dr. Wyatt alone that keeps Booth mostly in check during this time, primarily by distracting him with other problems [namely, his own].
Cam, however, would never actually speak this thought aloud, because even now, as Brennan's genuine friend, she is still very much the ex-girlfriend where these things are concerned.)
//
[5]
#5 - Max only came back and got himself arrested because he thought his daughter was marrying Booth. I mean - that's worth going to jail, right? Just to see your baby girl happy?
Tempe is gone two minutes before there's a knock on the door. Russ figures his sister probably forgot her keys or something, so he opens it without checking the peephole (note to self: people are trying to kill you; check the damned peephole) and is immediately confronted with two very undeniable facts: there's a priest in Tempe's hallway (okay?), and that priest is also his father - the father he hasn't seen in over fifteen years and whom he only recently found out was once a fugitive bank robber.
"Dad," Russ says eventually, for lack of anything else better.
Max quirks a smile like they see each other all the time, and Russ' third thought it that he father looks old; not just different or unfamiliar, but old. "Pretty sure the proper form of address is Father, kid."
-
"How is she?"
They're both sitting on Tempe's couch. It's awkward for a lot of reasons, reasons like this is not Russ' home, and also he hasn't seen this man in fifteen years and now he's there, right there, sitting in a priest's robe on the other end of the couch, and Russ is torn between punching him in the face and hugging him, but ends up just staring dumbly. Seriously, what the FUCK is going on lately?
So Russ avoids the question (or maybe just answers it in his own way) by saying, "You can't tell her who you are. She's not - who are you, now, by the way?"
"Toby Coulter."
The name immediately pings for Russ. "Train trestle guy?"
"Train trestle guy," Max agrees, pleased that his only son remembers a story he once told him. It's one of the greatest things about being a father, that feeling. "That's right."
They laugh about that for a minute or two, then Russ says again. "But seriously. You can't tell her. If you do, doesn't matter how you're dressed, I don't know who's going to punch you first, her or Booth. And Booth's Catholic."
Max raises his eyebrow. "You know, not for nothing, but I have taken my fair share of punches in my life."
"Trust me, Dad. I wouldn't say this to many people, but - that man scares the living shit out of me. Especially where Tempe's concerned."
His dad's face changes when he says that. Again, Russ thinks it's weird that this man is his dad and that fifteen years later he still instinctively knows when his face has changed, or even that he knows exactly why and exactly what's about to come out of his mouth next (because this is his father, and he is Russ Brennan, and Tempe is his little sister).
"Booth," Max begins, trying to say it like he hasn't said the name thousand times before and considered what it meant, "He a good guy?"
Russ gives him a look. "He works for the FBI, Dad."
"Not what I meant," Max grins.
Of course it isn't. "Yeah. He's - yeah. He's a good guy."
"Good," Max decides.
Part of Russ wants to believe that in that moment, this is all supposed to be a pact that says so now we promise to never ever let this person down ever again, even though Russ is pretty sure he can't actually promise that about his sister because time has already proven him wrong on one occasion and he has practically no clue about this guy in front of him who, yeah, this is his father sitting there, dressed like a priest, but what the hell? Very vaguely, he wonders about all the people who have ever given him confession.
But in the end, Russ lives up to his end of the unspoken bargain: he introduces Tempe to their own father as Father Toby Coulter, an old friend of their father's, and almost can't believe when she buys it, hook, line, and sinker.
(Then again, she believed the lie about her turtle running away when she was four, so.)
-
They're somewhere in Tennessee at this point via the most roundabout route he can think of, him and Dad - honestly, Russ is just driving at this point, and kind of hoping that at some point his father will eventually offer to point out where it is they're supposed to be going - when Max suddenly says after several hours of total quiet, "You read her books?"
"Tempe's?"
Max gives him a look. "'Course."
"Yeah." It feels weird. It's his sister. "I didn't - I read them, yeah."
There is an extremely long pause. Russ starts thinking that he might not be as good at this being-a-fugitive thing as his father is, but he's fairly certain they're going to have to ditch this truck at a gas station pretty soon.
"Booth is a good guy," Max pronounces, sort of proudly but also a little sad.
"Yeah," Russ agrees. "Yeah, he is."
"And Tempe's strong."
Russ shoots him a sideways glance. "I think the word you're looking for is actually stubborn."
Max laughs at this, because that is what he meant. "Exactly like her mother, too."
(The argument they're both consciously not making, of course, is that clearly Booth is better than the two of them. Booth and Tempe. And they're right.)
//
[6]
#6 - Caroline's suggestion at Christmas was puckish, yes, but also pure and utter payback.
In retrospect, Caroline has no clue why she took the meeting in the first place. It was probably because he kept pacing from one end of the room to the other, making everyone all kinds of uncomfortable, and all the while being extremely attractive in that way that most women can recognize even if they haven't considered sundry forms of things they want to do with that - yes. She doesn't quite know why she takes the meeting, honestly.
"A lawyer," she repeats, for the nth time.
"Yes."
"You need a lawyer."
"Yes! Caroline," and he gets real close, in that way that men know absolutely works on a woman, not sexual in any way but just close, "You did me well on that gun running case two years ago. Come on, right?"
She looks at him, totally sure this is a terrible mistake. "I'm a federal prosecutor, cherie. Do you know what that means? I can cite you half a dozen reasons what that means, and why this is a really bad idea, not the least of which are three pending cases involving Detective Harding herself. Look, it's got nothing to do with you or - who is this about again?"
"Temperance Brennan," he says, tightly, like he shouldn't have to. "She's my partner, Caroline."
The thing is: normal FBI folk, this sort of thing isn't that strange. Partners protect partners; they lie for each other on the witness stand all the time, and skirt perjury charges, and have each other's back, and sometimes give beaucoup contradictory testimony if it means getting a guy off a murky officer-involved shooting. They shoot bad guys for each other, and get drunk with each other, and have massively fucked up codependent relationships. They're partners. It's the FBI; this is the unfortunately annoying side of loyalty, if you're a federal prosecutor. As one of these aforementioned individuals, Caroline is used to it. It killed her marriage, for crying out loud.
Caroline Julian looks at Seeley Booth, and can immediately tell that this has nothing to do with his affiliation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She also can't help what that does to her heart, if just for a moment.
So she says, "Well, then what do I get?"
Booth blinks. "What?"
"Me, cherie - the lawyer in question? What do I get?"
"What do you mean, what you get?"
"I mean, what - a favor? A perk? Some sort of written agreement that I'm allowed to turn you down for a warrant when I'm not in a good mood?"
"You honestly want me to trade Bones' legal representation for a favor?"
He's making that really charming all the other pretty girls say I'm just great smile at her again, and Caroline wants smile back and say, You aren't fooling a single person right now, but instead she just makes a face at his use of the nickname. "That is no way of addressing a lady, Seeley Booth."
"Well, then, I'm... sorry."
She eyes him. He's not. She knows it. "You just remember this," she warns.
"What?"
"This, cherie! Are you supposed be some sort of competent detective?"
"Oh, I will, Caroline. I definitely will."
He's smiling that charming smile again, and Caroline wonders that however the reason this crazy woman managed to get messed up with this fool, this is all going to end up either very well or just horribly, horribly bad. Besides, all she knows about this woman, dust jacket aside, is Booth's incredibly helpful description - she's smart - which, honestly, is she? She's been arrested by the New Orleans Police Department for skinning some doctor or whatever. That isn't smart. So she wrote some books. One. One book.
Except then Caroline says yes, and if you could quantify the word grateful then Booth would be that times a thousand, and when she puts in a call to her boss asking for a little leeway on the motion hearings she has scheduled, the man just laughs and offers her his best of luck. Honestly, have people in Louisiana gotten nicer since she moved back?
(Of course, then she finds them at that restaurant making moony eyes at each other. Oh, my sweet Jesus Lord. No one's gotten nicer; they've just gotten bored.)
-
As far as mileage goes, Caroline has always known that the power of hey Booth remember that time I got your bone lady partner off murder charges? was a threat that could carry some serious water. She can count on at least two hands the amount of times that staring him down and psychically thinking NEW ORLEANS NEW ORLEANS has prevented that man from doing some really stupid shit with the supposed protection of the Federal Bureau of Investigation behind him.
The shenanigans that go down surrounding Gus Harper are almost enough to nearly erase the debt entirely - that is, until he goes and gets her car smashed to bits. That's when Caroline decides to lays in wait, poised to strike and extract her righteous revenge for New Orleans at just the right time. After all, there was an entire murder prosecution that got dismissed because of it. (Fine, if you want to get technical, a conviction was a pipe dream at best in the first place, but the judge had been very direct when he pointed his gavel at her and asked her to decide what side of the law she wanted to practice. Thank the Lord for that transfer back to D.C.)
In all honesty, Christmas is a stab in the dark. If she actually thought about it, she probably would have sent Dr. Brennan's request to the judge anyway (because it's Christmas, and even fugitive bank robber fathers of brilliant anthropologist authors deserve families, too), but it just - she can't help herself, really:
"I want you to kiss Seeley Booth on the lips."
The fact that Temperance Brennan doesn't stop in her tracks, dead from surprise, speaks volumes to the reason why those two are in de facto FBI couples therapy in the first place.
-
There are not a lot of times when Caroline Julian is willing to admit she's wrong.
There are not a lot of times when Caroline Julian is surprised by the actions of people. Disappointed, maybe; in terms of juries, sometimes bitter. But rarely surprised. As a lawyer, you start to assume that most of the time you can predict the four or five different ways a person will react to a situation - the only surprise, then, is when they don't choose the one you might expect.
Temperance Brennan kissing Seeley Booth, and Booth kissing her back, turns out to be the most surprising thing Caroline has ever seen. Because for all the ways you would expect it to go - for all the ways when you consider, okay, will they tip their hand? will it be A Moment? will it end up being the most sexless thing in the entire world, thereby shattering all notions of time and space? - the only thing is ends up being is true.
Which is not a sufficient definition for a court of law.
Which makes no sense.
Which is-
Oh.
There aren't enough steamboats on the ocean to quantify that.
-
She keeps waiting for the annoyed call from Agent Booth, but it never comes.
Verdict: guilty.
//
[7]
#7 - Hodgins has never given Angela his note either.
The morning After (and that's how he thinks about his life now, Before and After the Gravedigger), Hodgins wakes up and Angela is still asleep, peaceful, on top of the sheets next to him. He sighs with relief, not entirely sure what he was expecting but certainly sure that this is the greatest thing in the world to wake up to. It's a feeling he can't quantify, can't break down into its molecular parts; if you broke off a piece of it and examined it under the microscope, you couldn't tell from it time, place, or rate of decomposition. He is happy, and he is content, and he feels safe, and when you wrap all those things into one overarching theme it becomes something else, something indescribable.
Love.
So he folds up that imperfect but nonetheless true account of the depths to which his entire being loves Angela Montenegro and slips it into his wallet, just waiting for the right time. Because that's the opportunity he's been given - the right time, rather than "well, while we're at it--"
-
A week later, he hates that that note ever existed, and should probably burn it.
He hates that note because it represents everything about the Gravedigger that makes his blood boil, all submission and confession under duress and punishment of death. Just like he forces his victims to cave under the enormous pressure of which do you value more: money or the life of this human being, the Gravedigger smothered Hodgins and forced out of him this secret that he was nearly ready to die protecting. I love Angela Montenegro. When she smiles at him, all he thinks is that her best friend knew before she did because he was a coward who thought thousand-dollar perfume was better than the truth.
But he doesn't burn it, though. Instead he sticks it in a drawer in his private study, and locks it. At first, he doesn't even carry the key with him.
-
Rather absurdly, he wonders what would have happened to his family's money if Booth hadn't showed up. The lines of Hodgins family inheritance are murky at best after him (thanks, Dad), and his second cousins have been trying for ages to carve out nest eggs for themselves. Sure, he has a will leaving it all to the board of the Cantilever Group - his eighteenth birthday present (again: thanks, Dad) - but if Aunt Margaret was anything to go by, wills are suggestions, rather than commandments.
He hates that note for not being an amendment to that will, signing 95% over to Angela and the Jeffersonian.
He still doesn't burn it.
-
"You should buy Booth a boat."
He pulls back from the spot on her neck that he was kissing just then, wide-eyed. "Angie?"
"Or not a boat. Just - you know, something. A token of our gratitude."
"Angie," he says again, his arm pulling her just a little closer to him.
"Yeah?"
"I'm naked."
She smiles, rolling her hips just enough to drive him insane. "You most definitely are."
Hodgins thinks that she's the craziest person he has ever met, and he loves her. "It's just that - I'm naked, and you're naked, and in about five seconds I'm about to devour you so entirely in what I can only hope is the first of many opportunities tonight, so what I would appreciate is you not thinking about other guys while that's happening."
Angela licks her lips, straddling his hips now and completely aroused. "Jack, are you jealous?"
"Absolutely," he tells her, then kisses her.
"You should do something for him," she points out, horrifically prolonging this conversation. "He saved your life."
"Yeah, not for nothing, but I'm fairly sure I was collateral damage on that particular choice, by the way."
He goes back to her neck with a smile, but she stops him, cupping his face with both her hands and says, completely serious and completely true, "Hey. You are no one's collateral damage. Ever."
His name is Jack Hodgins, and he loves this woman, Angela Montenegro, and for the first time in his life he realizes something else: one day he's going to marry this woman. Yes. Yes.
"I love you," he replies, also true.
She kisses his lips with a smile and I love you too, then says, quickly, "Also, totally right - totally collateral."
"Oh, my God, yes, so can we now get back to-" and he doesn't finish that sentence, because he instead chooses to illustrate his point by flipping her onto her back and smothering the giggle she makes with a very long, very artful kiss.
He keeps the note because, like it or not, it's part of them.
-
Hodgins reads the dedication in Brennan's second book.
He keeps the note solely for the irony that his own love confession is written on the pages from her first one.
-
He puts the note back in his wallet on his wedding day.
The last couple days have been a blur of activity and planning and somehow, nobody knows, him still managing to do his day job, but this is the only other thing besides I love Angela Montenegro that seems real and seems true. He works out a plan: it'll be during the limo ride from the church to the reception; they've written their own vows, so he comes up with a funny line about first drafts and brainstorming. For about a day, he panics that the whole remember when I was kidnapped by a serial killer? angle might not be the sort of thing one brings up on their wedding day. Then he remembers that this note is a million reasons why I love you means so much more than those three syllables imply, and decides that it doesn't matter the how. Just the what.
Instead, it turns out Angela's already married, and the two of them flee their own ceremony before it even starts, and they just end up having sex in the back of the limo instead.
The note stays safely tucked away.
-
When he and Angela break up, he gets as far as cracking the lighter a couple dozen times.
This spring/summer has been awful - Booth, Zack, ZackZackZackZackZackZack - so when this happens, it's almost like it was expected. Shit happens in threes, right?
He can't do it, though. He tries to burn it, but can't. He's a coward like that sometimes.
-
He honestly doesn't give the note a second thought until he's forced to - until the Gravedigger steals Booth (yes, steals him; he belongs to them now, their group, their - whatever), and forces them to make the same choice he had to make two years ago. Brennan runs around the entire time in high heels and a party dress, trying to fix things - trying to be Booth - and Hodgins spends the first hour remembering that this night was supposed to be all about Angela teasing Brennan about her not-date. It was supposed to be what they were all hoping for the next morning: awesome stories about drunk Booth and drunk Brennan being really bad at being a not-couple. Instead, they're somewhere in Maryland, very probably committing a felony in his name.
It's the tiniest of moments, when he and Brennan are standing in front of the rock with the suitcase full of evidence, both of them knowing full well the damnation they're condemning themselves to in the justice system and just not caring because it's Booth, for God's sake. Booth. Brennan and Booth. They all took a glance last year at what that could have been like when you removed one from the equation, and it was awful.
Hodgins doesn't even mean to, but he says it anyway:
"Did you give it him?"
Brennan looks sharply at him. He's curious if she's going to ask him what he's referring to, whether feigned or not, but sees immediate that she knows exactly. He recognizes something in her face, something true, that he knows not a lot of people have ever seen. He wonders how many times over the last two years she's thought about her note, if at all.
"Did you?"
Ah. There it is.
They both look away, not needing to answer their own questions.
-
(Over time, Hodgins has been able to work out what Brennan's note said.
It wasn't I love you. He knows this almost immediately. She's too rational for that, too scared, too closed off - too unbelieving that another person can complete you, because that completeness implies that the original was somehow incomplete, imperfect. It wasn't even I trust you, because Hodgins guesses that while there's a lot of crazy unspoken shit that goes on between those two, that? Is not something that needs saying. No. Brennan's note wasn't about love at all.
It was simply This isn't your fault, Booth.)
//
[8]
#8 - Dr. Gordon Gordon Wyatt's diagnosis that Brennan was simply incapable at the present time to lead a purposeless life was absolutely about Booth, just not for any of the reasons Ms. Montenegro suspected.
Dr. Sweets-
Please find enclosed a draft of an introduction for your manuscript, as requested. I fear it may have turned out more preface than anything else. Forgive me - my heart belongs only to a fine dessert wine now, and she cannot escape even a little poetic spice.
- GGW
In Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, the good doctor defined a human bone simply as "the most solid part of the body." He called the brain "a collection of vessels and organs from which sense and motion arise," while the heart was by poetic contrast "the seat of life." He said that science was composed of but seven disciplines - namely: grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy - and to be called scientific, one had to have the properties of "promoting knowledge."
To Johnson, a temple was not simply a house of worship, but also the side of his own head.
When I was initially approached to write an introduction for the following case study on oppositional personalities operating in interpersonal relationships within the field of law enforcement, the request came at a time of great personal transition away from forensic psychology (I had been recently accepted in the Culinary School of the Arts, and had ended my tenure with the Federal Bureau of Investigation). In addition, I was reminded of my own familiarity (on both a professional and personal level) with the primary subjects of this case study, and I feared that any framing insights I might have on the subject of partnership could be viewed by certain academic minds as mere bias, or too fueled by some deeper, ulterior motive of friendship. While I take issue with the notion that our field of psychological analysis can ever be truly devoid of that bias, I was willing to acquiesce to it in favor of a reputation that was not my own. In short, I very graciously declined.
However, shortly thereafter consuming a meal rather exquisitely prepared (by this particular writer), I found myself caught up in a small Socratic dialogue that reminded me that personal insight is not always necessarily bias. To whit, I would like to share this framing anecdote with you, as I feel it introduces the underlying theories of this study better than any regurgitated collection of psychological disciplines.
The exchange began entirely innocently, and rather off-hand. While washing a dish, I asked Dr. Temperance Brennan why it was that she had become a forensic anthropologist in the first place. Immediately, she replied with a standard answer, one that would have made Dr. Johnson proud - science was a field of logic and rationality, and these were qualities she saw in herself; her career was a foregone conclusion. Being rather presumptuous, I pointed out that she had not actually answered my question, that I was curious about the specific properties of forensic anthropology that had drawn her attentions. Why had she not become a chemist, or a biologist, or even a geneticist? Why had she, with singular pursuit, chosen anthropology, a science mired by sometimes extremely irrational operators - human beings? At this, she confessed she had no explanation, except to say that human osteology - the study of a person's skeleton - was something very fundamental yet tangible to her. She simply liked bones. They explained people. Then she turned the question on me - why had I chosen to forgo psychology for the culinary arts? Ruefully, I replied that in many ways, I too had only the answer that it was something that felt very fundamental yet tangible to me. Food feeds people. This was logic, she deduced; purpose. To this, I had to respectfully disagree. It was not purpose that motivated us in our careers; it was what Johnson called "the seat of life" - our hearts.
Of course, as was her way, Dr. Brennan rejected this as mere poetic flourish, reiterating her abhorrence of the discipline of psychology, and at this time Agent Booth admonished me for turning dinner into "free therapy." (I must confess that he was partially correct, a triumph that no doubt pleases him to learn, should he ever read this. In another age, perhaps Socrates would have been a psychologist.)
It is my hope that this small personal anecdote can help to illuminate many of the theories, observations, and analyses contained in this case study by the brilliant Dr. Lance Sweets. To me, its truth is as fundamental yet tangible as, well, food and bones.
-- Chef Gordon Wyatt (nee Ph.D)
[Former FBI forensic psychologist & profiler]
//
[9]
#9 - "What Would Dr. Brennan Do?" actually has a lot of real-world applications outside dissertation conundrums.
"Please?"
"Daisy-"
"Not even just for a little bit?"
Lance looks at her, hating every ounce of temptation she was throwing at him right now.
"I really do have a lot of paperwork to get through tonight, you know."
"But Lancelot," she pouts, half sad and half sexy, and fuck, that face works on him every time, "I finished an entire chapter today! Don't you want to celebrate?"
He does. Oh, my God, he wants to celebrate so fast and so hard, it almost hurts. They haven't sex in a week. Hear that? A week! For them, that is - well, that's an eternity. And now here she is, pouting her lips at him, sprawled out in front of him on the couch, ready and willing and literally throwing herself at him with everything she has... and he has work to do? Really? He has so much work to do, in fact, he probably shouldn't have even paused for that Hot Pocket ten minutes ago. That's how much work he has.
Plus, he feels a little bad. This week's been rough on her, too, you know, between her dissertation and the non-sex they've been having.
So Lance is about to propose they make some sort of compromise when suddenly Daisy's face changes. She goes from her sexy face (effect: powerful) to this adorable face that he recognizes as the one she makes when it's 2am and she has writer's block. It's a little confused, and a little smug, and a little amused, all wrapped up into one little package. He's about to laugh that he hadn't realized she knew how easy that could work on him when - something else pings in his brain.
Oh, no. Oh no, oh no, oh no.
Unfortunately, he can't stop himself from shrieking in reply, "OH MY GOD. DAISY WICK, DON'T YOU DARE."
Daisy blinks, still making The Face. "What?"
"You're doing it right now, aren't you?"
"I don't know what you're-"
"You are! You're using WWDBW on me!"
She rolls her eyes at him. "Oh, please, no I am not."
"Yes! Yes, you are! Don't deny it."
She glares at him, then concedes, "Okay, fine, but only a little. Did it work?"
"NO," Lance shrieks, again. "Daisy, you can't ever do that to me, especially not - not for that."
Daisy curls her legs up, and Lance begins to suspect he's suddenly going to have loads and loads of free time to finish his paperwork. "She's really a brilliant woman, you know."
"Of course she is, but Dr. Brennan is also my patient whom I have to continue to look in the eye, so just - don't do that again, okay? WWDBW everyone else in the entire world if you want to. Just not me, your boyfriend."
He thinks she's going to get pissed at him for yelling (ENTIRELY VALID REASON NOT WITHSTANDING), and she does pout for a few long seconds before it gives way to a smile. "Do I at least get style points?"
Lance can't help but smile back. He loves her smile. "Yes. You get style points."
-
A week later, an atypically conversational but nonetheless roundabout session leads an allusion by Dr. Brennan to an incident involving an expensive automobile. His brain spends a good minute or two righting itself, as he is once again reminded how these two people ever managed to function without the help of a professional trained in the art of psychology. It's actually a horrible thing to experience as a psychologist, that sort of tune-out, but he's learned over these months that sometimes sitting back and letting them banter accomplishes far more than attempting to analyze each individual remark. For one thing, the session doesn't shut down in 3.5 seconds.
He drifts back into consciousness on this remark:
"You know what, okay, sometimes driving a fine Italian sportscar is just driving a fine Italian sportscar. End of story."
Sweets makes a face at the rather crude and obvious analogy. Brennan laughs, though, totally obliviously: "That's not what you told me."
Sweets chuckles to himself, but when he looks at Booth - the man's entire suave demeanor is gone in an instant, replaced instead by total and utter speechlessness. Sweets can't tell if he doesn't know what to say to that, is upset that she just completely undercut his argument, or both. (Actually, that's a lie: he totally doesn't have an answer for that. Oh, man, there is some hardcore sublimation going on right now.)
Brennan looks at Sweets, then Booth. "What?"
Booth is still staring. No one answers Brennan's question.
"Agent Booth," Sweets prompts, "would you like to move on?"
"Let's do that," Booth snaps.
Brennan shoots Booth a look that's more than a little confused, a little smug that something she's said has caused him total embarrassment in that indescribably amusing way of his, for whatever reason, and, well, general all-around amusement. Booth, despite the tension, can't help but smile at her.
Damn.
Sweets has got to hand it to her: mega style points.
//
[10]
#10 - Booth knows exactly the moment it happened, whether either of them realized what it meant at the time.
It takes an hour to get to the scene of crime.
Here is what the last hour has consisted of: silence; Booth attempting to make small talk like a normal human being, and Dr. Temperance Brennan glaring him down like a crazy fucking person, refusing to bite; more awkward, uncomfortable silence. There's also an interlude where he attempts to crash his car, thereby triggering some hereto unknown Groundhog Day scenario, in which this day never happens.
Admittedly, yes, okay, so maybe they've gotten off on something of a bad note. He may have accidentally alluded to the fact that she was actually a lot hotter in person than she sounded on the phone. She may have responded by shaking his hand and declaring that it was fine because he was "just as much of a jackass as he sounded on the phone." There may have been disagreements about x-rays. And about her (not) riding with the Jeffersonian equipment van. (Honestly, on that last point - it's August. Who wants to ride in a van full of equipment with zero air conditioning in August, when instead you could be in an incredibly comfortable SUV which, by the well, fully ventilated? Honestly. Booth is practically doing this woman a favor on this particular bone of contention.)
Mostly, Booth just hates that every story he's ever heard about this woman is turning about to be right. For him, and for her. She's arrogant. She corrects you. She's not even remotely a people-person. You know, Booth likes people, and people like Booth. The fact that even he can't... yeah.
Instead, he's focused on the traffic in front of him, which is horrendous, and just because the universe is amazing thing to behold, right as he's about to accelerate through a newly green light, a car comes barreling through the intersection through the red. It's a miracle he doesn’t run sideways into the guy. Naturally, Booth swears, and mumbles something about this being worse than Guatemalan traffic, and-
Brennan laughs.
She doesn't actually laugh, mind you. She sort of snorts involuntarily, almost like a natural normal-person reflex to something one might find humorous. Booth shoots her a look of total shock, and for about ten microseconds she's some mixture of horrified, surprised, delighted, and terrified that he has actually made her laugh, and just when he thinks that maybe, just maybe he's finally got a leg in the door- boom! It's gone. She goes back to that oh too familiar face that Booth knows means um I mean I still really hate you.
The car behind him honks incessantly. Booth shouts, "I KNOW" to no one who actually cares to hear it, then slams on the gas.
-
Five years later, they argue about the concept of love at first sight.
[end.]
NO REALLY, THE POEM IS AWESOME.