Disclaimer: Not mine, or I'd let them have more fun.
Rating: This part's pretty harmless. I make no promises about the second.
Note: This is a teaser for Mardi Gras Eve. The plan is to post the rest for tomorrow's holiday. But tomorrow is Mardi Gras so no plans can truly be counted upon. Enjoy.
The Theory of Relativity
"You're both coming tonight, right?" Angela asks. There's something aggressive in the sparks of her eyes as she strikes a stance, ready to pin down their acceptance under a stiletto.
"Yeah, I RSVP'd and everything," Booth's tone rests between proud and annoyed because he did it right even if he thought it was stupid. Angela was playing hostess and he saw her almost every day. But the invitation was embossed. Calligraphied. It had asked for an RSVP in script too elegant to be taught in school anymore. The silvered letters curved enticingly around time and place, held hope in their loops, and promised wonders in their corners.
It was the least he could do to respond. Let it know manners hadn't gone the way of penmanship.
"Good, because these are for you," she holds out faces to Booth and Brennan. It's something she does everyday. Only today, the faces are not for the dead, the faces are for them.
"Masks?" Booth asks, the question mark written plain on his face, curling between his eyes and shimmying down the length of his nose to perch daringly on his upper lip. It settles there. Waiting. Even though he's read the invitation.
"Thank you, Angela, this matches my dress very well," Brennan says not at all disturbed because she doesn't yet understand and she's gotten in the habit of overlooking her partner's upper lip.
Booth's closer. His tongue skims out to taste apprehension. "They're great Angela but … I mean, we're supposed to wear them?" The question mark's grown more twisted, it's wondering how many muscles it takes to frown. He's gotten trapped insides faces before.
"Yes, you have to wear them." He granted her too much space for an answer and she pivoted on his politeness and found room for a command. "It's Mardi Gras, guys. If you're not in a mask, you're just a spectator."
In her mouth, the word has sudden spice. Loneliness, isolation, impotence.
From her mouth to their ears, none of the flavor escapes. They've always been uneasy on the sidelines.
##
Angela's party is at Hodgins's house and that might mean nothing or everything.
Neither of them has been there before they assure each other on the drive over.
She spends the time on small talk. It's modern day alchemy, turning remarks about murder to comfortable minutes in the passenger's seat. Even though she's not trying to hide the fact that she's compelled to look at him. Of course she's not. She's honest. She has nothing to hide.
He always looks good in a suit but not in the way most men look good (hair finally flattened, lines ironed straight, hey, you clean up nice). Most men most wear suits like sudden bursts of gentility, form temporarily imposed on chaos. He wears a suit everyday like he once wore a uniform. He wears a suit like it's all or nothing, black jacket or bare skin, starched cotton or shivering abs, clean lines or wild abandon.
He wears a suit like he knows it would look better on her bedroom floor.
She, in turn, is stunning.
He thinks he's forgotten to breathe for a second but it's more dire than that. There's something more permanent to her beauty than interrupted inhalation. More dangerous. She's tied a knot in his windpipe.
She'd smiled a him, radiant, before folding herself into the passenger's seat, serious as a collapsed lung.
He can't take his eyes off her. But there's an invitation (in his mind, embossed with guilt) and he'd RSVP'd. So he pulls his eyes back and trains them on the road. He must keep something of himself, after all. It's it in the rules. The line. Not his. Hers. He's only allowed to give out the vital parts one at a time. Simple. Reliable. If the heart's in overdrive, the brain's in neutral. If there's a knot in his windpipe, then his eyes are on the road.
He's already regretting the mask in her lap. But at least with the mask there will be no radiant smile tying lover's knots, it's only her eyes he'll have to worry about. And his.
He's almost relived when she brings up God.
"I'm surprised you're willing to participate in Angela's party," she says. "It's quite pagan."
"Mardi Gras, Bones," he says, nodding at himself in the rear view mirror, checking that his eyes are fixed on the road. "It's a Catholic holiday. Kicks off Lent."
Brennan laughs in that way she does that's half a snort and wholly endearing. It's a laugh that's obnoxious and a laugh that makes a point without trying for either. "It's Bacchanalian! Christian holidays tend to be thinly veiled pagan rituals but Mardi Gras is particularly transparent. Music, revelry, drunkenness …. There might as well be maenads."
He catches the glance he knew she'd throw to see if he's understood. Intercepts it and runs for his own end zone. She wouldn't appreciate the sports metaphor any more than she will his refutation. "It's all about the contrast," he says recalling a priest who'd taught religion his senior year.
Fr. Trent had been radical in his conservatism. He probably would have worn a hair shirt if it wouldn't have set the bishop frowning (a twisted question mark frown). Trent had stood in front of two dozen young-trying-to-be-men and blown their minds one Tuesday afternoon. It was their duty as Catholics, he said, to rebel that night. To thrill. To revel. To howl.
And then to wear the ashes of it all when the sun came up.
"You can't understand the fast without the feast." Booth says. "Doesn't mean anything."
"The definition of the word hardly cha—"
"It's relativity, Bones," he cuts in. "That's scientific. Einstein said so."
Like always, she laughs at his scientific stabs in the dark.
"'Lent' means 'spring'," she says and runs her fingers over the contours of her mask where it sits in her lap. An identity waiting to be assumed. Like Roxanne. Like Wanda.
His mask waits in the back seat. He wonders if the new face knows how to throw knives, punches. He wonders if it drives a motorcycle. He wonders how it fits with hers.