Author's Note: Written for krabapple in the Yuletide 2007 challenge.
Disclaimer: The characters in the following fic are from the cast of Bones, which I don't own.
things about music
Booth paced through the lab. "You've gotta be kidding me."
Brennan was bent over a heap of bones, her gloved hands sorting delicately through the pile. As always, the case came down to the answers she could divine out of the nicks and scrapes on a few rigid scraps. And it was fine, okay, they were going to solve the case, but while it lasted Booth felt restless and prowled the lab like a large and slightly neurotic dog.
He could be doing things. At the very least, he could be chasing people down. This, however useful it was, felt like he was twiddling his thumbs while a murderer - his murderer - ate in peace, drank in peace and, for all he knew, did the hula.
"I don't see why I have to be joking," Brennan said absently, riveted on a leg or an arm bone or whatever it was. "You have a lot of very obscure tastes."
"No, Bones, The Who are not obscure, okay? They've been around since the sixties. Angela!" Startled, Angela glanced up from a sketchpad. Booth snapped his fingers at her, beckoning her closer. "Okay, Angela, tell her that the Who are not obscure."
Angela grinned, dark and deliberate. "Who?"
"The Who," Brennan corrected pedantically, still absorbed in what she was seeing in the fragments. "Apparently having a definite article is very important."
"It's not just important, it's the name of the band. It'd be like... if I went around calling you Brennan all the time."
"I would not object to that. You already call me Bones. In fact, that would be a step up."
Booth sighed. "That is not the point, B--" She turned and gave him a look, and he caught himself. "Anyway. How have you not heard of The Who? You like Foreigner."
"I own one CD. Which I do happen to like, but I do not see how the two are necessarily correlated. Now--" she squinted, "--be quiet for a moment, I need to concentrate."
He threw his hands up. Unnoticed by either, Angela retreated to her work. "Fine. You know what? That's fine."
It was a long moment before she answered. Finally, she murmured something inaudible as she emerged out of her bone-stricken stupor and glanced at him without particular awareness. Probably, Booth reflected, because he still had flesh and skin on. "What's fine?"
"It's fine that you haven't heard of one of the most famous bands of all time. I'll just lend you their CDs. Just don't-- scratch them. Or touch them with your bare hands. Or-- actually, you know what? I will give you a CD player to listen to them with. Don't open it."
"I'm a forensic anthropologist and you don't think that I can care for a few CDs."
"Some of them," he told her strictly, "are from the first release. These aren't bones; who knows what you'll do to them?"
That got her attention. Brennan rounded on him. "I am perfectly capable of treating CDs with care," she said, indignant.
Booth chuckled darkly. "Oh, don't start," he said. "I've seen your CD collection. An elephant could have--"
Angela cleared her throat. "Guys? Not that this isn't cute and all, but we've got work to do. Booth," she pointed at him, "She's got nothing to do tonight." Brennan made a stark betrayed noise, which Angela blithely ignored. "Why don't you bring the CDs over then? You can set them up yourself, listen, and take them home."
"Has it not occurred to you that I need to be asked first?" Brennan asked pointedly.
Angela smiled. "Nope," she said serenely. To Booth, she added, "Bring takeout, too," and went back to her sketch.
-
-
-
"Why did you do that?" she asked later as they closed down and prepared to go home for the evening.
"Do what?"
"Tell Booth to come over to my apartment."
Angela slung her coat over her arm. "Oh, sweetie," she said. "If it's not obvious to you now, it never will be. Tell me you don't see it."
"See what? Angela, there's nothing to see!"
But Angela had already walked out, grinning all the way. At the door, she waved cheerfully back as Hodgins came up behind her to slip an arm around her waist. Turning back to her coat, Brennan saw them kiss. For a moment, the lens fell away: they were not merely a compendium of bones and flesh marked by experiences, but laughing breathing living now.
The moment is the purpose. The thought drifted in from nowhere, and she could not guess from where it had come.
Brennan went home in silence, thoughtful.
-
-
-
Booth arrived at eight.
"It's late for dinner," he started when she opened the door, "but I... you know, figured that maybe we could grab something at Wong Foo's."
"That would be good," she said blankly, after a moment. "Thank you."
He stood awkwardly in the frame of the door, and she realised that he had changed his clothes. She could not see his socks, but she rather suspected that they were some awful and ridiculously bright color.
Shifting from foot to foot, he looked at her directly. "You haven't... already eaten have you?"
"No, no," she started at the same time. "No, I was..." she waved a hand generally, then dropped it. "Distracted."
"Okay. Good." Booth stepped inside, peeking over the corner. Brennan didn't protest. After a moment, he turned back. "You rearranged your CDs."
She stared at him. "You cannot guess that from over here."
"There's a huge pile on the floor, was I supposed to miss that? Sorry," he clicked between his teeth and gestured at himself, "FBI."
Brennan pursed her lips. "It is not a pile," she said. "It is shelved."
"The shelf is on the floor."
"It's... a low shelf!"
"Whatever, Bones." He pushed lightly at her shoulder and wiggled a CD player at her. "C'mon. Let's go to dinner."
-
-
-
Sid only shook his head at them when they arrived. He brought them two large bowls of wonton soup, hot and just sharp enough to bring out the flavor. With all the tables still taken, they stole two stools instead, and were now leaning together at the counter, having divided up the earbuds.
("It's yours," she insisted, pinching them between thumb and forefinger, after she caught him for the fifth time trying to hum along to the song when he could barely hear the melody. "You should listen to some of it."
Booth folded his arms and sat back with a distinctly mulish air. "I own it, I can listen to it any time I want. We're not doing this so that I can hear it."
"Well, I'm not going to sit here and have you mouth along with the words when half of them are wrong. It's distracting."
"You've only just started listening to the songs! How can you tell they're wrong?"
"You clearly mouthed 'fish' when it was singing 'you'."
"Bones," Booth said, very seriously, "trust me. I was not mouthing 'fish'."
"I've told you before -- don't call me Bones. And it looked like you were."
"Well, I wasn't."
Exasperated, she offered him one. "Take it. I can hear just fine with one, and that way you can at least sing the correct lyrics." When he didn't accept, she shook it at him. "I am not going to listen to them until you take one," she said.
She could see him give in before he did; his shoulders tensed and his brow furrowed. "I did not mouth fish," he muttered, but accepted the earbud.)
As the song changed and the first notes of the next rippled through, Booth chuckled and shook his head. "I remember this song... it was way back. I think we danced to it." He hummed a few bars, slightly off-key. Sid, swerving by with dishes, passed him a dark look, which Booth didn't notice.
She listened. It was very typical of eighties music: rife with lush noise, slightly on the pop side. It hardly seemed like the type of music that Booth would like.
But then, she had never really thought of what Booth might like. He simply... existed, liking what he did and wanting and thinking independently of all she knew.
He was always just that: separate, entirely so. He fit into the mold, so stereotypically American and Catholic that it should have been easy simply to guess his every move. But he overrode every impulse; even clothed in a thousand illogical beliefs, he was utterly himself - someone she knew and yet hardly knew at all.
And now he was looking at her again, eyes flicking from their bowls as the song swung back to a chorus.
"What do you think?" he demanded, and she was aware of his eyes - not only as organs which permitted him to see her, but as eyes, studying her movements and tracing them in memory as if they were things to be kept for their own unique worth.
She could have said a thousand things: they were technically good, but their music lacked the instinctual and basic appeal of the purely instrumental. Why their songs had found such a broad fan base in the world for their era; how their songs conformed to genre and shattered it.
But they were silly things to say, and there was something about the way he looked at her that constricted all speech.
So she simply nodded. "It's good," said Brennan.
And Booth smiled.
end