Disclaimer: I own nothing; for fun, not profit; etc.
Setting/Spoilers: Mostly for The Witch in the Wardrobe, but assumes knowledge of the goings-on in The Parts in the Sum of the Whole.
Notes: What better way to break hiatus here than with a Bones fic. I've been catching up on the last four months of TV I've missed whilst abroad, and have been surprised by how much I've enjoyed the last ten or so episodes of this show.
"Traditionally, comedies end with a dance," Brennan tells him.
They've been sitting in the shadows and low lights of the Founding Fathers for almost an hour. He'd burned one tiny effigy after another in front of her, laughing to himself and over her protests as he did so, as if all the happiness he was wishing for her was affecting him first, and she hadn't been able to stop herself from joining in, ridiculous as they must look. She loves these moments between them; loves knowing that even after everything, they can still feel such unadulterated happiness in each other's company.
Booth looks at her, and doesn't pretend he doesn't know what she's talking about. "Yeah?" he prompts, expression open, eyes crinkling in a happy way.
"Well, Shakespearean comedy, I should qualify," Brennan quickly rectifies. "The elements of discord are either transformed into harmonious elements or banished from the realm of the drama, there are one or more marriages between two people who represent opposing themes, and finally there is a dance of celebration."
He looks at her for a minute, as if in appraisal. "Doesn't sound very funny to me. What's so silly about a happy ending?"
"While generic characters such as clowns and fools were commonly employed to provoke amusement, comedy itself merely implies a change in fortune for the good for the protagonists."
He nods, holding her gaze. "And it ends in a dance."
"Yes," she affirms.
He smiles at her with almost more affection than she can bear. "Any reason you're bringing this up now?"
Brennan huffs. "You brought up dancing. It wasn't a non sequitur."
She feels she is utterly transparent, and of course she is where Booth is concerned. It doesn't help that she hadn't actually meant to say anything at all beyond her original statement, but he'd wished her happiness and a dance, and this casts everything in a different light. Maybe she should have claimed it as a non sequitur after all; and blushing, she casts her gaze downward.
He doesn't lean over to her and say, You'll get your happy ending, Bones, because he's already done so several times in the past, likely because, as she finds it extremely reasonable at this point to believe, he'd figured himself prominently into her happy ending. Then again, so had she, on the occasions she lets herself believe a happy ending is within her reach. She always has.
(I want a happy ending, Brennan doesn't confess, because she aches for a happy ending for him still more than she yearns for her own.)
She watches as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his lighter one more time. He burns his last effigy slowly in front of her: a wish, not a promise.
She's starting to realize the difference.