The Butterfly in the Bar (a Bones fanfic)
Summary: Booth and Bones share breakfast during the difficult murder investigation of a woman in her late twenties. Set during season 6.
Rated: T
Omniscient POV:
Bones and Booth are seated at their usual table in the Founding Fathers diner. Despite the chilly, early spring sunlight streaming through the windows, a charged cloud of silence and tension looms above their heads like a thunderhead. The beautiful, sinewy brunette anthropologist and the ruggedly handsome federal agent sip their scalding cups of coffee while absently shrinking into their perfectly cut and proper suits as though the costumes of their professions were armor.
Bones' startlingly clear and clever turquoise eyes roamed up and down, back and forth, incessant in their constant observation. However, like Booth's deep brown eyes, which remained fixed upon the chipped coffee cup in his hand, Bones' eyes ignored her partner as if he occupied negative space.
Rift after rift had separated them throughout the course of their partnership, but this was by far the worst trial. Although they loved each other, a case had split their psyches apart – essentially blasting their lives into their most basic parts and core beliefs. It was a wonder that, after such a realization, the two could sit together at breakfast, let alone continue to work amicably.
The meal is stoic and silent. Booth and Bones chew on not only their eggs and toast, but also the words they long to scream at one another.
Booth sops a piece of slightly scorched sourdough bread into the busted yolk of a soft boiled egg when his arm freezes in midair. Seeley's suddenly bright eyes look directly into Temperance's unnerving blue gaze. He sets down the toast and his fork.
"Take off your jacket."
Startled at his determined tone of voice, Bones is confused but begins to quickly undo the buttons of her overcoat. A question is clear in her expression.
"Now, Bones."
Despite his calm tone, something instinctual told Bones to toss the coat away as quickly as possible. With a frantic flick of her wrist, she sent her designer coat sliding across the dirty diner floor without pause. Whatever irreversible damage was inflicted was compounded when Booth's large black boots smashed the garment repeatedly against the cheap linoleum floor.
Dr. Hodgins was in hog heaven. Booth and Brenan had shown up hours earlier and the FBI agent had shoved a rather squished couture coat at him and said: "What is that." It wasn't a question, more a command, as Booth ushered a shaken Brenan from Jack's office.
A free day without a corpse requiring immediate identification was rare in the forensic lab of the Jeffersonian Institution, and Doctor Hodgins relished the break in stress. His very pregnant wife Angela took up the majority of his time and effort, but when he spotted arachnid particulates on the suede of the coat, Hodgins fell back in love with his insect brethren.
"These are beautiful! Observe the mucastraitional footprints that traverse the suede in a bilateral gait! I'll need digestive tests and particulates to verify, but I believe these remains belong to the Arachnid Necrasolyisis!" Hodgins' glee at the discovery evaporates into anger.
"Why did you kill it, Booth? This guy is the rarest of the rare in DC! A real find! I would've loved to study him in his natural environment."
"His natural environment at the time was Bones' coat, Hodgins."
"Oh, I see. Doctor Brenan was scared of him. I say 'him' because of the elongated mandibles and the striations on the –" Booth shot Hodgins a look of annoyance. "Right. I suppose your White-Knight complex saved Doctor Brenan from a severe case of necrosis-"
"English, squint."
"As cavemen would put it, this guy could have made her lose a limb. Most poisonous arachnid on the eastern seaboard, poor fella."
"Poor fella my ass. Thanks Hodgins."
Booth found Bones hunched in her usual posture over a set of newly cleaned remains. She appeared as calm as always, but Seeley could see the faintest twitch in the hand holding a pair of steel tweezers that belied the unshakeable doc's frazzled nerves. Only a practiced eye would notice, and when it came to Temperance Brenan, Seeley Booth had a very practiced eye.
Seemingly startled by Booth's approaching footsteps, Bones looked up quickly but managed to mask her anxiousness in an instant. Her voice was calm and steady.
"From the remodeled fractures sustained to the left ulna and the fracture to the right occipital, Angela was able to make a very clear facial reconstruction of the victim. A slight widening of the pelvic bones suggest a woman between the ages of twenty five to twenty eight who was in her second trimester of her first pregnancy at time of death. Stress and peri-mortem inward curvature of the wrist suggest that the victim spent much of her time typing on a laptop computer."
Booth was used to pretending that he understood what Bones said and had learned to cut to the chase. "So she was a student?"
Bones shook her head. "No. Her age suggests that the victim had most likely already graduated college, but had not obtained a doctorate. Look at her feet." Bones moved down the table to point at… some bones… as though Booth should understand. Apparently, Brenan knew Booth as well as he knew her, and began to explain.
"The fourth and fifth metatarsal bones in most post-graduate students are strained. Often times, slightly warped. Also", she went back to the top of the table, "this woman's teeth do not suggest grinding or abrasion, and the nasal bridge suggests no uncommon wear."
Booth rubbed the bridge of his nose while pondering the evidence. His foot tapped absently on the marble floor of the lab and his teeth ground back a forth, just slightly. Brenan smiled and laughed as if Booth had made a joke.
"See! Concentration and stress! This woman, although uncommonly intelligent, was not under constant stress, hence not a student. It's far more likely that she was a writer. The spinal column suggests-"
Her point proven, Booth waved off the newest diatribe he wouldn't understand. "Ok, so the vic was a twenty-six to twenty-eight year old pregnant writer? That'll narrow it down nicely."
Bones' eyes were back on the, er, bones as she extracted a metal tray full of pink goo from the skull. "Have Angela run a scenario with these dental imprints to see if the left incisor matches the grooves inflicted in a wood floor. Possibly parquet. Hodgins could possibly identify this patch of polish on the remaining enamel."
Booth was thankful to turn away and leave the lab without any mention of the gigantic poisonous arachnid-whatever-it-was. He intended to purchase Bones a new, identical coat right after tasking the married squints with dental duty.
Just a short few steps later, however, Bones' voice called: "Did Hodgins identify the remains on my coat?"
SHIT. He didn't turn around, but called over his shoulder. "Butterfly, Bones. I overreacted."
Bones let out an audible sigh of relief before her sense kicked back in. "What was a butterfly doing in a restaurant? They normally shy away from human activity."
Booth kept right on walking. "You can't expect me to know, can you?" He walked into Hodgins' office as quickly as normally possible and shut the door behind him.
"A BUTTERFLY, Booth? Are you expecting me to make up a miracle here?" Hodgins had apparently been listening all along.
Booth shook out his jacket. "Listen. If she wanted the truth she wouldn't have believed me at all. Just make up some random, beautiful, harmless butterfly if she asks, ok?"
"But he was a highly aggressive and venomous arac-"
"Shut it! No, it was a damn butterfly. You feel me?"
Hodgins took the tray in Booth's outstretched hand and shot the doc a knowing look.
"Yeah, a butterfly. Couldn't believe I missed it on the first go-round."
Seeley's lips lifted infinitesimally in appreciation before walking out of the office… but the agent's careful assessment of Brenan's doorframe didn't escape Hodgin's notice… nor did the thick black insect barriers that were installed around her office windows the next morning.
Yo: I made up the spider – obviously. I'm arachnophobic to the core, and research is…. EWWW!
A friend's enthusiastic comments had me looking up Bones on Netflix, and I was hooked on the first episode. Two weeks and six seasons later (I prefer not to do the math) I'm nearly caught up, and love each episode for the quirkiness, emotional rollercoasters, and (of course) the creative gore. I've never written for Bones, but I hope you all like my first try, and my tentative return to FF :).
*Hugs*