"The Object of My Affection" - Chapter Two
Title: Object of my Affection
Author: Shannon - shannyfish
Disclaimer: I do not own “Bones” or its characters, Fox does. This is merely for entertainment purposes only.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Booth and Brennan must struggle with not only the Grad Students trying to take Zack’s old position, but also help get through a tragic end.
Warning: Post Season Three - “Pain in the Heart”. Would take place during Season Four, probably mid to late. Warning! Do not start reading this unless you plan on reading all…like…one hundred chapters (it might be that many…might not…). This will be an epic/saga-type fic and shall include all kinds of fun plot twists. The rating of this story will most likely fluctuate, FYI.
Chapter 2 - “Fuel to the Fire”
Author’s Note: I appreciate all of the comments! It really helps me to keep motivated, especially since this is still a fairly new fandom for me to be posting in. I also appreciate people favoriting this story, putting me on author alert, and adding me as a favorite author, but also I’d love your feedback! Sometimes you help the wheels to turn ;)
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Jeffersonian
It wasn’t until mid afternoon the next day that Booth and Brennan made it back to the D.C. area. It had taken longer than they had expected to get motivated and moving that morning. Booth followed Brennan as she stopped to swipe her card at the base of the platform and then proceeded up the steps behind her as she headed directly towards the examination table with the bag of remains. He noticed immediately that both Angela and Hodgins had been alerted to their presence and moved to converge with their position. He watched as Brennan immediately started to pull on blue latex gloves and then proceeded to remove the remains from the bag.
“What took you so long?” Angela asked Brennan, but when she didn’t get any response she turned her glance to Booth.
“What?” Booth asked.
“You two didn’t come home last night,” Angela pointed out.
“There were two beds.”
Hodgins smirked, “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Help me out, Hodgins,” Booth pleaded.
“You know she’s just going to keep poking until she finds out what happened,” Hodgins explained.
“He’s right,” Angela agreed.
“Nothing happened,” Booth tried again. “It was getting late, so we stopped. We got a room with two beds, ordered in some food, and had some beers…and then we went to bed…in our respective beds. End of story.”
“Maybe you should just give them a good story, Seeley,” Cam said with a grin as she joined them on the platform.
“Don’t get them started again,” Booth complained.
“Oh, they don’t need my encouragement,” Cam told him and laughed when both Angela and Hodgins shook their heads in agreement. “They were theorizing away last night after Doctor Brennan called to let us know that you guys wouldn’t be coming back until today.”
“Bones, help me out here,” Booth pleaded. He turned his glance to her and found that she was still studying the bones they’d brought back from New York.
Brennan was hunched over the table oblivious to the conversation going on around her. She’d already arranged the bones, so that they were physiologically laid out on the table. She had counted the bones and found that the only missing pieces were various phalanges from both the hands and feet. Everything else seemed to be present. She’d left the remains of the clothing in the bag focusing solely on the bones. Hodgins could use the clothing to get trace evidence off of it later. Left radius broken in two places, left femur broken, left tibia broken, several ribs on the left side broken…
“She’s not listening,” Angela informed Booth with a smile. She nudged her friend gently, “Tune in, Sweetheart. Booth thinks we’re ganging up on him. He needs back up.”
“What?” Brennan asked as she pulled her focus away from the remains in front of her and looked over to the group that had formed behind her.
“They’ve been insinuating things about us,” Booth told her.
“They do that all the time,” Brennan informed him.
“They do?”
“We do,” Hodgins and Angela spoke up together.
“Well…stop,” Booth told them with irritation laced his voice.
“Anthropologically-” Brennan started.
Booth quickly cut in, “Don’t add fuel to the fire, Bones!”
“I’m not! I’m simply stating historical facts put into context with modern day situations,” Brennan pointed out matter of factly.
“Not everything can be explained anthropologically,” Booth argued.
“It can, Booth.”
Booth fumed in frustration and then quickly tried to wheel the conversation in a different direction. “So, what are the bones saying to you?” he asked.
“They don’t actually speak to me, Booth,” she told him looking at him oddly and then walked to the other side of the table, so that she could illustrate what she was saying for Booth mainly.
“I know that.”
“But you just said,” Brennan started to argue.
Booth noticed that everyone else seemed amused by their banter, but he urged Brennan on. “Just…talk bone talk,” he said motioning with his hand for her to continue.
Brennan glared at Booth for a minute before speaking up, “So far, I’ve noticed that mainly the injuries sustained to this male was to the left side.”
“Have you come up with an age range?” Cam asked curiously.
“Male - late teens, early twenties.”
Cam nodded and mentally noted that fact.
“There are several broken ribs along with a broken tibia, femur, and the radius is broken in two places. A good number of the phalanges are missing, so I’m not sure if the injuries were sustained in those areas,” Brennan explained.
“Can you tell how he died?” Cam pressed.
“I need more time.”
“Did you bring me goodies?” Hodgins asked as he ventured closer.
“Remains of the clothing,” Brennan told him motioning to the bag. “The victim was dumped in the subway system in New York…away from the platform.”
“Quite a ways from the platform,” Booth added.
“So, it seems like someone planted the body there.”
Booth looked around confused and then looked to Cam. “Where are the newbie squints?”
“I told them to take a long lunch,” Cam explained. “They were starting to drive us all crazy with nothing productive to do around here. I think they’re all trying to form good impressions on all of us.”
“They could be working on identifying remains from Modular Skeletal Storage,” Brennan suggested.
Angela shook her head, “They all seemed way too excited when we they heard that you’d found remains in the subway system in New York and were bringing it back here.”
“It is exciting, though sad because someone killed the man…” Brennan explained.
“Yeah…” Angela said with a sigh. “You guys all need lives…” she added before looking from Brennan to Booth. “You two would be good for each other. You complete her.”
“What?” Booth asked shocked and confused by the statement.
“I wouldn’t say that he completes me,” Brennan argued uncomfortable with the conversation.
Hodgins just grinned as he snatched up the bag of clothing remains that were found with the skeletal remains, “I’ll get to work on these,” he said and left Brennan and Booth in Angela’s hand with Cam watching the whole bit of entertainment in front of her.
“Sweetie, he’s good at all the things you need to work on,” Angela told her friend. “He completes you.”
“I don’t like where this conversation is headed,” Booth mumbled and looked to Cam, “Some help here, Camille,” he pleaded.
“You’re lucky you weren’t here last night, Seeley. This is nothing compared to that,” Cam told him.
Booth sighed and shook his head, “Angela, do you think you could just let Bones and I be?” he tried.
“No, someone’s gotta look out for Brennan,” Angela told Booth.
“I can look out for myself,” Brennan told her friend with a frown as she looked up from her remains.
“Sure you can, but sometimes you get lost in what’s really important and are oblivious to what you really should be paying attention to.”
“She should really be paying attention to the remains, you should be doing a facial reconstruction, and Cam here should be doing something else scientific and important to the case,” Booth said aloud.
“And what are you going to be doing?” Cam asked amused.
“Supervising.”
“He really means hovering and asking questions,” Brennan spoke up.
“That’s what supervising means, Bones.”
“Actually, the definition-”
Booth sighed, “If anyone needs me before I get me, I have my cell on,” Booth told them in irritation and frustration and headed off of the platform.
Brennan just looked confused to Cam. She didn’t understand the other woman’s amusement with the situation. “I don’t understand what just happened.”
“You just proved Angela’s point,” Cam informed her.
“What?”
Angela patted her friend’s shoulder with a smile. “Just don’t fight things with Booth.”
“I don’t fight with Booth,” Brennan said even more confused.
“I’d say it in another way, but you get frustrated with that line of approach. So, just think about it for right now,” Angela suggested. With that Angela left Brennan to think about what they’d all just discussed and what Brennan didn’t understand. Sometimes she worried about Brennan, who could someone so smart be so dumb when it came to things like these? Someone had to be there to look out for her. She smiled more when she noticed Cam was leaving with her leaving Brennan alone to think about things. The question really was: would she figure it out?
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TBC…