Author's Note: As I mentioned in my summery, this one-shot came to me from a prompt from LJ's Bite-Size Bones community. The original prompt was: Sweets, The Mastodon in the Room, Piano Man. This ended up being one of the shortest fics I've ever written, and I was thinking about either just leaving it there or maybe including it in a longer piece at some point. But then I realized that it stands best on its own, so I decided to share it here as well.

I would also like to thank Tempertemper for the original prompt.

I do not own Bones or any of its characters.

I want to thank everyone who reads/favorites/reviews this. It is always appreciated. :)

The Change in the Tune

Music had always been Lance Sweets' companion.

When he was living with his parents, his true parents, Sweets had grown up captivated by the sound of his mother's voice. She often sang while she did her chores, and her songs could be heard throughout the house. He didn't always like for her to notice him, but sometimes he would watch and listen to her from some hidden corner of the room. A silent adoration from afar of the woman Sweets would always consider one of his "saviors."

During his teens, music became a way for Sweets to escape. He was usually desperate to get away from the taunting and jeering of his classmates. But other times, he was just trying to forget about the loneliness that was gnawing away at his soul. Sweets would drown himself within the discordant wails and screeches of his beloved death metal, all the while hoping that he would never have to re-surface.

His parents, however, were never going to let that happen. They loved him, and they were always waiting for him whenever he was able to pull himself out of the darkness. There were a few times when he was sure that he was going to suffocate on those black thoughts and emotions, but his parents had given him a life line that even their deaths could never sever, ensuring that he would survive and eventually heal from everything that life threw at him.

Time passed, and music became a more casual ally. Something to help him get through the busy days of his studies and then the grueling hours of his professional life. It was the soundtrack during his regular trips to work or home, the background noise while he dined or hung out with his friends, and the method to meditate while he went for his daily run.

But now music had become both his escape and his savior. For the second time in his life, Sweets had lost a family, people he loved. He tried to remind himself that they would be back eventually…at least some of them anyway. But he still carried the fear that nothing would be as it was ever again.

That led Sweets to where he was now: playing piano at a bar so as to entertain the diners. It wasn't the most glamorous job in the world, especially for someone with two doctorates. It was, however, a way to feel something other than empty, and that was good enough for him.

Sweets closed his eyes as his fingers danced along the smooth, cool keys. His mother had been the one who made him take piano lessons as a child, and at the time, he often resented it. Now he realized that this was yet another example of how his mother had known him better than he knew himself. She often did. How else could she have known about the solace he would eventually draw from this ability?

As a psychologist, Sweets often spent about as much time analyzing emotions as he did feeling them. Here it was only about feeling, living, immersing himself in the music.

'This is what I needed,' he would tell himself. 'I needed a chance to just let go and feel.'

Sweets looked up from the keys and gave the room a smile. He suspected that many, if not most, of the diners considered his music merely ambient noise, but that didn't matter to him. In his heart, he knew that he was mostly playing for himself anyway. He was just happy that he could share something from his soul without having to worry about what anyone else thought of it.

He was considering what song to play next when he heard his cell phone go off in his pocket. Without missing a beat, he pulled it out and propped it up against his ear. All those hours spent playing piano had helped Sweets develop some new, useful skills.

It was Caroline, a voice he hadn't heard in what felt like eons. She told him breathlessly about Booth coming home and about his possible PTSD. Sweets felt something stir inside him.

"Understood. I'll get myself re-activated immediately."

He hung up and stopped playing. As he stared at the piano, it hit him that he had just blindly agreed to give up his oasis of music so he could go back to working at the Bureau. No thought. No considerations. No agonizing decision process.

'Just feeling,' he told himself.

Sweets sighed and thought about playing one last song before leaving. Instead he took his break early so he could tell his boss that he was quitting. The man didn't seem the least bit surprised. He had always looked at Sweets as if he expected him to disappear at any moment. His boss thanked him and told him to go ahead and keep the night's tips and that his last check would be mailed to him in about a week.

The psychologist put on his hat and went out into the chilled night air while pulling his jacket tighter around his shoulders. As he walked down a mostly empty street, Sweets wondered how everyone would be: would they be happy to see him? Indifferent? Weary? Perhaps even regretful? He felt his insides quake with nervousness so he focused on his steps and his breathing as a way to calm down. When he considered how he felt in this moment, a part of him was still stunned that he was so eager to give up this new life that he had fashioned for himself. But in the end, he knew that he could always rationalize it away.

After all, the music never meant as much to him as the love he had for his family…then or now.