July 2004

"Hey Pops!" Seeley Booth bellowed from the front door as he let himself in his grandfather's house.

"Squirt! What are you doing here? I didn't hear your car pull up." Hank Booth was caught off-guard. Normally he could hear his grandson coming from a block away, his prized Camaro's engine seeing better days. He had risen from his easy chair to hug the man and now peered out the storm door to see a black, shiny new Toyota Sequoia.

"I was called out this way for a case but the guy who did it turned himself in before I could even get out here." Easy cases were nice but boring, Booth preferred the chase. "Thought I should swing by since I was out this way."

The senior narrowed his eyes, reading his boy. Deciding to enjoy the impromptu visit rather than harass the younger as to his true motivation, he moved back to his seat, turning off 'The Price is Right' as he did.

"How's Parker?" Safe topic.

"Great! Rebecca's letting me keep him overnight every other week. He's getting more and more words every time I see him!" The agent's face lit up as he sat on the sofa and began to brag on about his son. He might not get to see the boy often, but Parker was his pride as evidenced by the photos kept in his wallet.

"And how is Jennifer?" Girlfriend, still a safe topic.

"Crystal" Booth corrected.

"That the nurse?" Hank's brow crinkled in confusion.

"No, that was Jennifer. Good memory though." Booth's good mood continued, smiling at his ability to never be without a date.

Pops' looked up, closing his eyes briefly, attempting to store to memory this Crystal. No doubt the man had been blessed with a pretty face and oozed charm but Hank worried about his grandson's habits: worried over the parade of women he'd dated since his breakup with Rebecca. He might not have thought Rebecca was right for him, but at least there was stability in that relationship, while it had lasted.

"How is Crystal then?"

"Fine, last I heard," Booth said, trying to remain nonchalant.

"Last you heard?" Now Hank's concern began affecting his tone.

"Yeah, haven't seen her in a while. It's just casual." Booth could read his grandfather's worry and subconsciously began playing with a fray on the arm of the sofa.

"Just casual, huh? Your decision or hers?"

"… Mutual. She's pretty, she's fun, but I don't know. I think she'd want something more but she doesn't really like my hours."

"Work or gambling?"

Booth ignored that comment and continued on, "She's just a receptionist so she doesn't get the non 9-5 thing, y'know?"

"And what's wrong with being a receptionist?" Hank's eyebrows shot up. "You know your grandmother was a receptionist when I met her"

"That's not what I meant, Pops. She just doesn't understand working outside the hours of 9 to 5."

"Well you'd have more time if you didn't spend every waking moment outside work with your cards or cue."

"It's not every waking moment. I'm here right now, aren't I?"

Seeley was beginning to get defensive. Hank didn't want to push him to hard, but he was getting tired of pretending everything was nice, tired of walking on eggshells avoiding the topic. He leaned forward, ready to push, just a little bit.

"You're avoiding someone, aren't you?"

Scoffing, "Ha! I don't avoid…"

"How much do you owe?" Hank interrupted gruffly.

"I don't owe him anything." Booth was adamant, it had been a good week.

"Ah, so he's pissed. How much did you take from him?"

"Win. How much did I win from him?" Said a little more harshly than he intended, Booth softened his voice while smirking, quite pleased with himself "Two grand. Tony just couldn't catch a break! Which is why I am here." Booth pulled sixteen one-hundred dollar bills from his wallet and counted them over to his grandfather. "So now I only owe you $200."

Finally, the true reason for his visit. "And I'm not getting the last $200 right now because…?" Pulling his own wallet out, Hank tucked the money in his billfold. "I'm on a fixed income you know." Booth had insulted his late wife, though unintentionally, Hank felt no remorse in using guilt on his grandson now.

Booth lowered his voice with a touch of shame. "I need it for the rent."

"This is the last time I am loaning you any money. Rent or no rent, you're on your own. I refuse to enable you with this gambling addiction you've got going on."

"Pops, it's not an addiction, it's… it's a hobby," he interjected. Seeley felt his defensiveness rise once more.

"No, it's an addiction, Seeley. A hobby is something you don't obsess over. You pretend you don't go often, but I know better. You spend every spare moment at the pool hall or at a game. You've lost your car…"

Sullenly, he mumbled, "Didn't need it anyway with my FBI wheels."

"You loved that car more than anything, don't you deny it. You skip seeing me for poker games - I love you, boy, so I forgive you - you don't sleep nearly enough, the sunglasses aren't fooling me!" Hank paused for a breath, Seeley looked anywhere around the room but at his grandfather. "And we both know that if you prioritized work over cards, you'd have been promoted to a Senior Special Agent already. You're too proud to exaggerate your role in solving the cases you're on." Hank squinted as if reading his grandson. "I guess no one has been important enough to outweigh that thrill, not even yourself. He sighed dejectedly. "Someday you're going to meet 'the one' but you aren't going to deserve her."

"When does a man ever deserve a woman?" quipped Booth.

"I'm not joking squirt!" Hank was really riled up now. "You're going to find her and she won't want to have anything to do with you. What then? A life without love, family, what's it worth?" Hank just continued to stare at him while the younger man gathered his thoughts the next few seconds.

"How do you know, really? I mean… I thought maybe Rebecca could be 'the one'. But we all know how that turned out." Booth was by now leaning forward, elbows on his knees, two tired hands holding his face up, eyes still not daring to look his grandfather in the face.

"But did you think you knew she was the one? Or did you just think she could be the one?" Hank challenged.

"Huh?"

"The first time you saw her… what were you thinking with? Your head? Heart? Intuition? Your balls?"

"Pops!" Booth stood quickly, embarrassed, and strode quickly to the kitchen filling a glass of water, hoping to cool his face.

Hank chuckled as he slowly followed to the doorframe of the kitchen; he knew he had discovered the truth. "Admit it Seeley. The first time you saw her, you just wanted to get her into bed and then see where things went after that, am I right?"

Booth stood silently leaning on the counter, head hanging, hands on either side of the sink. He hated when his pops could read straight through his poker face.

"I never was a fan of hers, she wasn't right for you. When you meet 'the one', you'll know." Hank turned to move back to his chair.

Quickly, Booth turned around. "How? How do you know?" Standing in the doorway, he was truly curious. It was all he'd ever wanted, a normal family with a wife and kids, but after Rebecca turned him down, he had lost faith that it could ever happen for him.

Sighing, Hank thought a moment. "You just do. Call it what you want: a feeling of fate, intuition, a gut feeling, Holy Spirit interference… You meet the woman you're supposed to spend the rest of your life with, you just know." He flipped the television back on, finished with the conversation. He had known within five minutes of meeting his wife that she was the one and knew that feeling wasn't something that could be explained, but he knew his boy could read people, he knew he followed his gut feelings, he knew he would know when he found his match.

Dr. Temperance Brennan stepped inside the storefront doubling tonight as an art exhibit. Just a small showing featuring three local artists. Her presentation on de-fleshing techniques was mostly complete even with three weeks until her speaking engagement at American University. Brennan had heard about the art show from Dr. Goodman who thought she might appreciate the stylings of one Robert Rastoff who specialized in photography of archeological sites.

The space was efficiently designed with Robert and a second photographer, Kirk Persinger, splitting the front room with a temporary screen dividing the space and a third artist set up in a smaller back room.

"Just imagine the gardens tended by the women and children behind the houses." Rastoff snuck up on Brennan, startling her out of her examination of the picture. "Imagine the smells, the fire, a delicious wild boar turning on the spit," he continued, leering at her, eyeing her up and down without embarrassment.

Brennan relaxed just as quickly as she had jumped when she realized this average looking man must be the photographer himself. He had moderately defined musculature but standing two inches shorter than herself, she assessed instantly that her martial arts skills would keep any unwanted advances from proceeding too far.

Keeping her eyes on the piece, she interrupted him. "The olfactory sense would be overwhelmed with too many other aromas to appreciate any pleasure that might be derived from the scent of a meal cooking. The scent of the fecal matter and urine alone would have been unconducive to the enjoyment we would derive in today's day and age." She had visited this exact site during her graduate studies and had better photos of her own at home to prove it. "Furthermore…"

The man to her right opened and closed his mouth a few times during this speech and excused himself quickly to avoid a further lecture which would only prove himself uneducated in his chosen subject.

Offended at the artists' lack of knowledge of his own subject, Brennan shrugged half-heartedly and continued to the other side of the exhibit. Luckily, this photographer wasn't there that evening so she was able to analyze, scrutinize and evaluate his work in peace while he remained in New Mexico, blissfully unaware of the critique he was earning on the other side of the country.

Discreetly, a smiling brunette woman sidled next to Brennan. Friendly, but gently so as to not surprise the observer, she inquired, "like what you see?"

"It's satisfactory. His spatial composition is quite impressive but I find my interest is gone quickly without more stimuli in the piece." The black and white desert-scape was nice but wasn't especially noteworthy to the anthropologist who had seen more and experienced more in person.

Brennan passed through to the back room leaving behind the brunette woman who had been tapped on the shoulder by Rastoff.

Immediately, she was arrested in place, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. Why didn't I begin in here? It would have saved me the expense of irritation at the very least. Three large oil paintings hung, each a different scene: a young boy and girl chasing each other, a closeup of a man and woman about to kiss, and a family of five laughing as they walked along a grove holding hands.

"Amazing…" she murmured to herself, allowing her eyes to scan each piece thoughtfully. "She must have altered a photograph and done a print to get this level of accuracy," Brennan continued, dismissively to herself, moving closer to look for specific brush strokes.

"Nope!" A bright voice from the same brunette woman stood behind her. Grinning broadly that this stranger was doubtful of the painting being more than a printout of a digitally modified photograph, she admitted proudly, "I could do that, make computer generated prints that look like paintings, but these ones are straight from my brain to paper."

Brennan stood up straight and turned to look at her intruder "That would be impossible." Ever the literalist, Brennan developed a crease between her brows. "Your brain may have imagined the scene but it would also involve your nervous system transmitting signals to your arms and hands and fingers to put the paint on the canvas. Not to mention the muscular system…"

The artist chuckled cutting her off. "You got me there. I'm Angela Montenegro, starving artist."

The women shook hands. "Dr. Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist."

"Ooooookay, I don't know what that is, but thanks for coming out to the show tonight." Angela paused but continued quickly when she saw her companion open her mouth, fearing what would no doubt be a lengthy soliloquy of what a… whatever she was, did. "What made you think these were just prints?" Angela veered the topic of conversation towards the art, something she knew she'd understand.

"The formations of the bodies. The symmetry of the bodies, the flex of the muscles… You have an extraordinary command of the underlying structure of the human form. I can very easily imagine the skeletons under these painted bodies and the structures of those bones are accurate to normal human formation."

"You can see the bones," Angela half stated, half questioned. She looked at the anthropologist skeptically.

"Not literally, but I can imagine what the structure of the bones would be based on the indicators you have painted. Quite often, unless an artist is copying from a picture or has a model sitting for a portrait, they often over or under accentuate particular areas of bodies depending on the scene. Your paintings are of people moving so I know it wasn't a model posing for you." Brennan stopped to allow Angela a chance to explain her process, but Angela was stuck between skepticism and confusion.

Brennan grabbed Angela's wrist gently, pulling her to the picture of the children running. "Here, come see. The height of these figures corresponds in a nearly one to one ratio to the fingertip to fingertip ratio. And here," dragging her to the family holding hands, "the hand to forearm ratio taken in combination with the thumb to hand ratio is stunning. I can imagine exactly how ulna and radius come together with the scaphoid, lunate and triquetral to bend just that way," she indicated toward the painting.

"So I know my body ratios. Hardly an accomplishment for someone trained in art."

Glancing sidelong at Angela, Brennan continued. "Where I was most impressed, was in your faces." She pulled them to stand squarely in front of the center painting. "This is incredible. The orbital sockets of the man are elongated circles while those of the woman are round. The man's nasal aperture is long and narrow with a high nasal bone, the woman's aperture is less pronounced and her nasal bone is much lower. Don't you see?" The scientist was getting excited as she listed off the "imagined" characteristics of the bone structures under the painted faces. "You've drawn a Caucasian male with an Asian woman. Each has the conventional underlying bone features correlating to the genealogical background you have given them."

Angela turned to face Brennan. "So what you're saying is that the bone structures you see match up with the skin color?" A new look of pride crossed her face and she stood a little taller, crossing her arms across her chest, taking another look at her own pieces.

"Precisely." Brennan smiled a full smile, her first since entering the art show, glad to have run into someone who could understand her, even without an educational background in medicine, biology or anthropology.

"What else do you see?"