However it reflected on his skill as an FBI agent, Booth only realized that he had been deposited in an alternate dimension roundabouts 3:26 PM.

He was driving at the time of this realization, and so he took no small amount of pride in the fact that, rather than slam on the brakes and send both of them through the windshield, he simply murmured politely, "Sorry, could you say that again?"

Bones fiddled with her necklace and looked out the passenger-side window. The real Brennan did not fiddle. She also did not avoid eye contact. More importantly, the real Brennan did not ask him out on dates. "I asked if you wanted to meet up for coffee sometime," she told the window.

She couldn't possibly mean what he thought she meant. She never meant what he thought she meant. Either that or he was in an alternate dimension, which was infinitely more likely.

He tried to study her out of the corner of his eye without getting them splattered across the highway. "We go for coffee all the time, Bones."

"Outside the work setting," she clarified.

He grunted. Definitely an alternate dimension. For one thing, even if his dimension's Bones were interested in him, she would never want to do anything outside the work setting. She loved the work setting. The only thing his Bones would consider marrying is the work setting. And no, he was not getting jealous of Brennan's career, nope. Definitely not.

Fake Bones seemed to think that his lack of response was Booth considering her offer. She turned to give him a very uncomfortable-looking smile of encouragement.

"Stop that," said Booth.

The smile fell off, replaced by confusion and probably hurt. That expression was far worse. "Stop what?"

"Stop making those…vulnerable faces! The real Bones wouldn't put her heart on display like that! It's," he struggled for the word, "obscene!" And it made it very, very hard to do what he planned to do, the right thing to do, which was to say no. Because going on a date with this strange, alternate Brennan would be like sleeping with a drunk Brennan, or taking advantage of an underage Brennan… Wait, when did all his theoretical scenarios turn into Bones? That couldn't possibly be healthy.

She frowned. "The real Bones?"

"You wouldn't know," he sighed. "This is all wrong, I'm from an alternate dimension. Even if I think I like this one better. Although…" Suddenly all the implications of this coffee date hit him at once. Was what Bones was suggesting really just coffee? Or was it, you know…coffee coffee? Coffee of the coffee kind? "Do you and this dimension's Booth go for 'coffee' very often?"

"I don't know. What's 'coffee'?" She imitated his air-quotes.

He smiled, brief and mirthless. If Fake Booth had been taking advantage of Fake Bones, heads were gonna roll. Even if that head was technically his own. More unthinkable was the possibility that this dimension's Booth had, with no manipulation at all, made Bones want to go out with him. Or at least Fake Bones, who must be more willing than the real version, because the closest thing Real Booth had gotten to a date was Brennan allowing him to pay for the pizza during a stakeout.

"I really don't understand you sometimes," Bones muttered, focusing her attention back out the window.

"Yeah, because I'm not me! Not the me you're used to. So, how many times a week do you do 'coffee' with the fake me, Bones? Huh?"

Brennan leveled him a long, scrutinizing look. He swallowed, knowing suddenly how the skeletons must feel. "You're laboring under the assumption that you've jumped dimensions?"

"Yup," he replied, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. And on his sanity.

"You realize how metaphysically improbable that is, right?"

He pulled up to the crime scene and put the car into park. "You know what, fake Bones?" Booth unsnapped his seatbelt and opened his door, then turned to send her a stern look. "I don't have time for your craziness. Or your metaphysics. I have a murder to solve."

He slammed the door and marched purposefully toward the yellow police tape, aware of her bemused gaze on the back of his neck.

He had two murders to solve, actually.

"The victim is male," Bones muttered into her recorder, circling the body with a critical eye. "Early to mid twenties. There are injuries to the temporal and parietal bones, suggesting assault with a blunt object, and probable cause of death, going by the cranial damage. The body is face-down and bound…bloodstains indicate he was dead or unconscious when he fell…."

"When he was pushed," Booth corrected.

"That remains to be seen," said Bones. "Decomposition rates suggest a time of death at approximately ten to fifteen months ago—"

"C'mon, Bones, this one's cut and dried. He was whacked on the head and shoved down here. If he was trying to commit suicide he wouldn't have been tied up."

"He could have fallen. Or he could have been trying to escape…"

"Down an empty elevator shaft?"

"We can't draw conclusions until we have conclusive laboratory data," she replied in that prim forensic anthropologist voice of hers.

Booth grumbled "your mom is conclusive laboratory data" under his breath, stuffed his hands in his pockets and stood back to watch Bones at work. That is, to watch fake Bones at work. She was pretty good. For a fake.

"The other victim is" – she glanced at it – "also male, younger… between nine and fourteen…"

Booth swallowed. He hated cases with kid victims.

"Fell after the older body, unbound," Bones was saying, "Based on the position of the body, the second victim was most likely not dead when he fell. Cause of death unknown."

She clicked off her recorder. "Cause of death was getting pushed down an elevator shaft," said Booth.

"Not necessarily," said Bones.

Booth tucked his thumbs into his belt, put one foot up on the bottom rung of the ladder they climbed down on, and gave her his best 'why would you doubt me, I'm a professional' voice. "The killer knew that a fully-grown adult wouldn't necessarily die from the fall, so they bashed 'im around a bit, whereas with the kid they knew the drop would, yanno," he gave a quick whistle, "finish the job."

"You're right," Bones replied, shocking Booth and proving again that this alternate dimension was, in fact, extremely alternate. "That is one hypothesis. Of several."

Booth sighed. Bones continued her rounds of the shaft, shining her flashlight on the rats and maggots eating away at the boys' flesh. Booth looked away. "Hmm. The first victim is wearing a glass eye," she observed. "And an earpiece."

"Ahh, Bones?"

"Yes?"

"Do you still want an answer on that coffee thing?"

She glanced at him. "I'm willing to wait until the effects of your momentary mental breakdown have passed."

"Oh," said Booth. "Thanks?"

"You're welcome."

"You said he was Caucasian, right?" Angela asked, tapping in a few last details. The face being projected in front of them was maybe eleven or twelve years old, blond, brown-eyed, and a little bit scrawny.

Parker will look a lot like that in a few years, Booth realized, then tightened his jaw and stomped the thought into oblivion.

"That's right," said fake Bones. She had her hands in her lab coat pockets and was studying the boy's face in that Bones-ian way, her expression inscrutable. Was she onto a possible lead? Somber about the boy's far-too-short life? Proud of Angela's work? Thirsty?

"Poor kid," Angela murmured.

"Sam McGuinn," said Bones. "Twelve years old. Irish descent. He went missing just under a year ago, along with his older brother."

"You think the brother is our other victim over there?" asked Hodgins, leaning in on his hands.

"Possibly," said Bones, at the same time as Booth stated, "Definitely."

She crossed her arms. "I will concede there are many features that the victim and Sam McGuinn's brother share, most notably the missing eye. But until we have the DNA test results back or the facial reconstruction finished, we can't know for sure."

"Yeah, we can. Kid was wearing this." Booth held up the earpiece he'd snagged from the examination table.

Brennan's eyes widened. "Did you take that from the body?"

"It's police-issue," he continued, keeping the earpiece out of Bones's reach. "Sam's big brother was a cop. I bet you anything if we track the identification code on this thing it'll lead us right back to McGuinn."

"Officer Michael McGuinn," Angela mused. She pulled up a picture of a man in his early twenties with a remarkable resemblance to Sam. "It does fit."

"Okay, stick with me on this one. Newly minted cop stumbles upon something he shouldn't have seen, bad guy's gotta shut him up, right? So they get McGuinn, give 'im a good smack to the head, toss 'im somewhere no one's likely to look…" Booth mimed a home run, complete with sound effects. "Wham, slam, thank you ma'am."

"Makes sense," said Hodgins.

"This is all conjecture," said Bones tightly.

"So where does Sam come in?" Angela asked.

"That's what we're going to find out now," Bones stated. "Using the available evidence."

"Exactly what I was going to say," said Booth, nodding. He got a disbelieving look for his trouble.

"Angela, you work on the other body. See if we have a match for Michael McGuinn."

"All right, sweetie."

"Hodgins, you take a look at the particulates and give us a more exact time of death."

"Sure thing, Dr. Brennan."

"Booth, you track the identification code on the earpiece, and" –she turned to him with something so sincere in her expression, in her eyes, that it almost hurt to look at her- "good work."

His Bones, the real Bones, had never looked at him like that. Would never look at him like that. Suddenly instead of the warmth that had bloomed in his stomach distorted into something bitter and searing. This dimension's Booth had a Bones who cared about him, wanted to spend time with him, loved him even.

It wasn't fair.

"What isn't fair?" Angela asked.

"All of this!" He gestured in no particular direction. "This whole alternate dimension isn't fair!"

Bones was still staring at him, but now the whole Squint Squad had joined in. What's up with this dimension and staring?

"Since I'm not even in the right dimension, I'd be doing some other Booth's work for him, and since he's obviously got way farther with you than I ever managed, I'm not really in the mood of helping him out. But I'm going to get the name of the owner of this bad boy anyway. Not for him. For you. Got that?" Booth tossed the earpiece in the air and caught it on the downswing, nodding decisively. "Let me know when you have a lead for me."

As he strode off manfully, he could've sworn he heard Hodgins remark in a sad, sage voice, "I always knew that guy was going to crack someday."

"The facial reconstruction confirmed that the bodies were Michael and Samuel McGuinn," said Bones, about an hour later in her office.

"The identification code said the same thing," Booth said, flipping open the first file in his hands. "These are their files. Fresh in from Cullen."

Pictures, documents, observations on Michael's police work… Apparently McGuinn did good work, got along with everybody, eager on the job. A little too eager, if anything – he lost his eye trying to subdue an attacker without hurting them. The police notes described a good kid, if headstrong and naïve.

"Their parents live in Albuquerque," he noticed. "But Sam lived here with his older brother?"

"There were charges of abuse, although it never got to court," said Bones.

He nodded distractedly. "Might not've had the resources. Or maybe they just wanted to cut their losses and leave well enough alone."

"Or any number of other possible motivations."

His gaze fell upon one particular name. "Seems like Mike had a girlfriend. Yvonne Fuerst." He snapped the file shut and got to his feet. "Let's start there."

"I didn't do it," said Yvonne.

Booth raised his eyebrows. "Well, it's good you aren't defensive or anything."

"Well, duh. You come in here a year after Mike disappeared asking if I know anything…you think I did it."

"We don't think anything yet. We're just trying to get some information."

"Me and Mike were going out for nine months before he disappeared. He was always so fired up about being a police officer, about serving the people. He was always the first into trouble. I told him, 'if you don't calm down, someday we're gonna find you in a ditch somewhere.' The minute I heard he'd disappeared I knew he was dead."

"Optimistic, aren't you," Booth muttered, flipping through Ms. Fuerst's file for the eleventh time.

"Did Mr. McGuinn have any enemies?" Bones asked.

Yvonne frowned. "Not that I know of. He was the kind of guy who couldn't stay angry for long. Nobody could stay angry at him for long, either." Booth noticed her gaze flicker to something behind him. She frowned, a look of confusion crossing her face before she schooled her expression to focus back on him and Bones. "The people he was trying to arrest probably wouldn't look on him so kindly, though."

Bones hmmed thoughtfully. "Was he working on a case at the time of his disappearance?"

Yvonne scoffed. "He was always working on a case," she said, while Booth gave a wide, luxurious stretch, taking the opportunity to look nonchalantly over his shoulder where Yvonne's eyes had been a moment before. The shelf held a vase, a stack of books, and a dark, wooden box. That had to be it.

"He kept that pager on all the time, every day, no matter what," Yvonne was saying. "He was always wearing that earpiece too, hoping for a new call to come in. He wanted to be the first to help."

"Couldn't have been a very attentive boyfriend," Booth commented. "If he was wired to all his police tech all the time."

"Well, you'd have some personal experience in that department." Yvonne looked up at him through her eyelashes. "How do you balance the police work and the girlfriend?"

"Oh," he said, suddenly flustered. "I don't have a –"

"You didn't answer the question," said Bones.

"You don't have a girlfriend?" Yvonne repeated. "You're kidding. A guy like you?"

He laughed a little nervously and tried not to think about fake Bones and her fake coffee date. "Well—"

"You didn't answer the—"

"Can I get you anything?" she asked suddenly. She was probably addressing both of them, but she was only looking at Booth. "Coffee? Tea?"

"No, thank you," said Booth.

"I'd like some water, please," said Bones.

Yvonne smiled pleasantly. "Of course. I'll be right back." She disappeared into the kitchen, and he could say a word, Bones was on her feet in front of the box Ms. Fuerst had been distracted by.

Booth shot out of his chair and whispered frantically, "Bones, whaddaya think you're doin'? Bones. Bones!"

She didn't pay him any attention, of course, so he frowned and contented himself with peering over her shoulder. Inside the box was a single black velvet jewelry bag with something large and spherical inside.

"What's that?" he asked. "Big ol' necklace charm or something?"

"No," said Bones slowly, pulling the object out. "It's an eyeball."

Booth may have just vomited a little in his mouth. "Like…another glass eye, or…?"

"No," she murmured, holding it through the jewelry bag and turning it slowly, "it's definitely a human eye. And it's…remarkably well preserved. It couldn't have been in this box for very long."

"You know," he told Bones conversationally, as his stomach heaved, "we've seen a lot of horrible things together, but this is a whole new level of gross."

"Put it back," said a voice behind them. Booth turned. Yvonne Fuerst was standing beside the fireplace, a fire poker in her hand and a furious scowl on her face.

"Hey." Booth drew his gun. "Put that thing down and nobody has to get hurt."

"The only people getting hurt will be you two," she growled. "Who gave you permission to nose around in my stuff? Do you have a warrant?"

"Maybe not," he admitted, his aim never wavering from her. "But considering what we found, I think the folks at the Bureau will understand."

"It smells like alcohol," Bones remarked, completely engrossed in her study of the eyeball she was holding up to the light. Booth wondered briefly where those rubber gloves came from. "But she must have put it into the alcoholic solvent recently. The only way it could have preserved this well is through cryogenic freezing."

"That's not mine," Yvonne said stiffly, brandishing the fire poker. "Put it back. Put it away!"

"Well yeah, since it looks like you've still got both of yours. What can you tell us about our friend Mad-Eye over here? It didn't happen to have a special…attachment to Michael McGuinn, did it?"

She bared her teeth, lifted the poker, and ran at Bones, who still had her back to both of them as she placed the eye into its box carefully.

Booth tensed. "I wouldn't–"

In one fluid movement, Bones ducked away from the fire poker, knocked Yvonne's feet out from under her, flipped her onto the carpet, and kicked the poker away. Between one blink and the next, Brennan was sitting on top of the young woman, keeping Yvonne pinned with a knee between her shoulders blades and a hand twisting her arm behind her back.

"—do that if I were you," Booth finished lamely.

"It isn't mine!" Yvonne insisted into the carpet. "Why would I keep his eyeball? That's freakin' creepy!"

"Yeah, all right, you're under arrest," he sighed, as he hauled her to her feet and cuffed her hands in front of her. "Don't try any funny business. This pretty face" – he pointed to himself – "belies a hard-bitten interior."

"You know," Yvonne leered at him. "I've always liked a man in uniform."

Booth snorted. "So we've been told. If that's what you do to a guy you like, I'd hate to see what you do to the ones you dislike."

"I told you I didn't do it!"

"Right," he muttered. "And that's about as convincing as the annual Elvis sighting."

"The annual Elvis sighting is fantastical and evidentially flimsy, correct?" Bones asked him quietly.

Booth could feel a headache building behind his temples. "Yes."

She nodded. "I knew it."

Booth sighed. "Spot on, Bones. Let's take 'er in."

"Tell us about how you came to be in possession of Michael McGuinn's right eye, Ms. Fuerst."

"I plead the fifth," said Yvonne airily.

Booth pushed off the desk and stalked the other side of the room, raking through his hair in agitation.

"Can she do that?" Bones asked.

He rubbed a hand over his face. "Yes, Bones, she can do that. It's a constitutional right." He turned back to Yvonne, hands on his hips. "Forget the creepy eyeball, then. Tell us a bit about your boyfriend. What was your relationship like before his disappearance?"

She crossed her arms and looked at Booth stonily. "I plead the fifth."

Booth leaned in, too frustrated to care that he was probably too close for protocol. "Is that how you're gonna play it? Take the coward's way out?"

She just smiled back at him, silent and infuriating.

"All right," he said at last. "Then why don't I tell you what your relationship was like. Hm?"

He could see Bones shoot him a glance and purposefully ignored it. She was gonna hate what he was about to do.

"He cheated on you," said Booth, studying Yvonne's expression. Surprise, doubt, something else… "No, that's not it," he mused. "You cheated on him."

Aaand there it was. Booth fought down a triumphant grin, satisfying himself instead with a little, private fist pump.

"How did you know that?" Bones demanded.

He sat up on the table facing Bones and made himself comfortable. "Seventy-five percent of the time somebody's cheatin' on somebody. Got more to gain by suggesting it than we got to lose."

She looked horrified. "That's—"

"Pure conjecture, I know. But it's pure conjecture that works. So who was it, Bonnie? Who was your…" – he made a vague hand gesture, a whistle – "Mr. Clyde on the side?"

"I," she faltered. "I didn't..."

"McGuinn found out that you were cheating on him, got jealous. Got angry. There was a fight. Maybe you were even defending yourself. But somehow between everything, you and your Boyfriend #2 found yourselves standing over his body. The kid saw what you did and was going to give you away. You panicked, pushed them both into that elevator shaft, and prayed no one would ever find out." He leaned in close, pinning her with his toughest case-cracking stare. "Now, does that sound at all familiar to you?"

She stared right back. "I plead the fifth."

"The story you were suggesting—" Bones started when they left the interrogation room.

"I know, I know, it was unscientific."

"Well, yes. But it also didn't explain why Michael was tied up. Or why Ms. Fuerst had his eye in her living room."

"It was the best I could do at the time," he said, leaning back against the wall. "I was hoping she would react to something, even if it wasn't entirely correct."

Bones nodded. Then she said, "She may not have felt the need to react because you were flirting with her."

"I was—what? Look, no, nooo no no. Haha. No. I think you're getting confused between flirting and threatening. Totally different procedures."

"I don't get confused, Booth," she replied, affronted. "You were flirting with her! Your body language and forceful but non-hostile approach were classic examples of alpha male attempts to impress, to win over, weaker members of the pack, in other words flirting. We both know your behavior with Yvonne would have been…out of character in your interactions with male suspects. And with…me."

Booth closed his eyes, blew his breath out hard and said, "I was not flirting with her. That was not me flirting."

"You feel the need to create this wild fantasy of an alternate dimension in order to so much as acknowledge the concept of a romantic relationship with me, but you seem to instinctively come to terms with similar interactions with plenty of other people. Why do you see her, a complete stranger, a murder suspect, as a safer object of attraction than I am?" She took a breath and glanced away, her lips compressing. "Or maybe a more desirable one."

He couldn't take it anymore. Temperance Brennan worrying that he wasn't attracted to her was strange, and weird, and just wrong, in more ways than he cared to count. "Look, maybe you should leave me to the, you know, the people stuff, the motive stuff, the whys… and you do your bones thing. The science stuff. The hows. 'Kay?"

For a moment she didn't respond. Then Bones nodded once, briskly. "You're right. We do better work with a clear delegation of responsibility. It won't happen again."

"Bones…"

"If you'll excuse me, Booth, I have a body to examine. I'll let you know if I find anything of significance to the McGuinn brothers' murderer." She strode away without looking back.

Booth turned around and let his forehead fall against the wall with a groan. She was right, at least partially. Anyone was a safer object of attraction than Bones.

"I don't get it," said Angela.

Booth paused in his (exceptionally skillful, if he could say so himself) throwing and catching of the stress ball he'd gotten from Gordon Gordon to give Angela a very convincing innocent look.

She rolled her eyes. "Seriously! You've been pining for Brennan since day one and now that she's finally asked you out—"

"Hey." He pointed an authoritative finger at her. "I have not been pining."

"Uh-huh," said Angela, leaning back and crossing her arms. "Trying to sabotage every romantic relationship she's been in—"

"Not my fault she's a terrible judge of character," said Booth loftily.

"Getting flustered whenever she wears anything other than her lab coat—"

He went back to tossing the stress ball, mainly to stall for time. "It's just weird being reminded that she's a human, with a human wardrobe, that's all."

"Touching her way too often—"

"When do I ever touch her?" he demanded.

Angela snorted. "Oh please. You're always brushing her hair away, touching the small of her back, putting your arm around her shoulders…"

"There is nothing wrong with a guy putting his arm in a friendly, completely platonic manner around his partner, who just so happens to be a woman," Booth asserted.

"And your long dinners alone with her after cases, which you spend" – here Angela swooned dramatically – "staring into each other's eyes and divulging your innermost feelings?"

Booth opened his mouth, found nothing to say, and closed it again. "Okay, I don't have a good excuse for that one," he admitted.

"But what's really crazy is that she lets you do all that. She lets you into her private life. She trusts you."

His throat was very dry all of the sudden. "We're partners," he managed.

"She wants more than that. And so do you. So what's the problem?"

"It doesn't feel right," he ground out.

"You don't actually believe the whole alternate reality thing you were yammering about, do you?"

He dragged his hands over his face. "I don't have any other explanation! My Bones, the Bones I know, she studies people, exchanges goods and services with people, appreciates people the way normal folks appreciate a useful kitchen appliance... But she doesn't want people. Let alone me."

"So the only logical conclusion left is that you're in an alternate dimension?"

Booth didn't reply.

"Have you gone crazy?" Angela asked him earnestly, more curious than concerned.

"You know what?" He slammed the stress ball down on the desk and gave Angela a 'are-you-happy-now?' look. "I don't need to explain anything to you."

"Listen, Bones, let me explain…"

"You don't need to explain anything to me," said Bones crisply.

"Yeah, I do," Booth replied, although he wasn't quite sure himself what he was trying to do here. He picked up an enormous steel syringe on the table next to Bones and pretended he was giving someone a shot with it.

"Put that down," she muttered without looking up.

He put it down. "It's not that I don't want to go out with you, Bones. It's," he laughed nervously, "definitely not that, it's just, I can't go out with the wrong Bones, it would be… you know. Wrong. It wouldn't be right."

Fake Bones adjusted the knob on her microscope with one hand and jotted something down with the other.

"You don't have any idea what I'm talking about," Booth continued. Somewhere in the back of his mind it registered that he was babbling. "Heck, I'm not sure I even know what I'm talking about. But I feel like – no, I know – that my dimension's Bones would never have asked me out, at least not in her right mind. I can't accept an offer I never should have gotten. Does that make sense?"

Brennan had been studying the fourth slide so long that Booth was pretty sure she was waiting for him to give up and go away.

He sighed and leaned his elbows on the table so his face was level with hers. "Bones. What're you thinkin' right now?" She looked up from the microscope. Booth gave her his best puppy dog eyes.

"I'm thinking…" Bones said slowly, "that Hodgins found traces propofol in Michael McGuinn's body. The killer must have access to a hospital or surgery center… They had to have spent a considerable amount of time procuring and preparing the propofol in order to subdue the victim."

Booth narrowed his eyes. "This was no crime of passion."

"No," Brennan murmured.

For a moment they fell into silence, each lost in their own thoughts.

"You'd better find something good in those bones," he said roughly. "Because we're going to need all the information we can get."