Trick or Treat
Today, being Halloween, meant that scores of children would be in and out of the building, and everyone was required to be in the museum to hand out a handful of knowledge and candy. Mostly for the candy, but the knowledge came with it.
Everyone that was, except Dr. Brennan. And a certain agent was giving her grief for it.
"Come on Bones, do it for the kids. It's just a couple of hours," Booth reasoned.
"I have work to do, bones don't just identify themselves," she laughed and got up from her computer.
"They've been dead for hundreds of years, a few more days won't hurt them."
"But that's my job Booth, to identify bones, excuse me," she said, sliding past him and out of her office. He could be a real pain sometimes.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her back for a minute, "Are you still coming over tonight to go trick-or-treating with Parker and me?" The agent asked the question in a more sincere tone than the rest of the conversation. He had already promised the boy that she would be there, and couldn't imagine telling him that 'Dr. Bones' wouldn't be making it that evening.
"If I finish up here, I'll be over," she looked into his eyes for a minute before walking away.
They had taken their relationship from partners to really good friends recently, seeing each other more outside of work and in relaxed situations. It was working out okay, except for Dr. Brennan taking on extra hours to get more "work" done. Booth sighed and went to meet the rest of the squints in the museum to give out candy to kids, only hoping that Brennan would crawl out of her hole and join them. It was doubtful, but there was never anything against hope.
Dr. Brennan looked over the skeleton on her lab table, not being able to take her mind off of Booth. He could be a pain sometimes, she had to admit, and this was one of them. How could she possibly get any work done with him making her feel so bad for doing so.
"Is she coming?" Angela asked, seeing Booth approach.
"No, she has work to do," Booth replied, sounding a little down.
"She does not. She's making up excuses," Angela complained, "She doesn't have to do anything, it all could easily be done tomorrow. In fact, I am going to make her leave the lab," Angela said and turned around, thinking up an excuse to reenter the lab and grill her best friend.
She looked up as she heard footsteps grow louder, approaching the lab. "Sweetie, you have a perfectly decent guy asking, begging you to spend a little time with him, and you want to spend time with the dead. Drop the bone and step away from the lab table, you are leaving even if I have to drag you out of here myself," Angela said, approaching the platform.
"These cases, I need to get them done," Brennan argued, but did as she was told.
"Sweetie, they were dead yesterday, they were dead fifty years ago, they will still be dead tomorrow, but tomorrow you might not have a piece of man meat drooling over you. I get the whole my parents left me thing, but you have the opportunity here to make one little kid very happy. Leave, go get a Halloween costume, put it on, be at Booth's by six and cheer up a little boy who adores you very much. You can cheer up the big boy later," Angela smirked.
"Booth and I are just friends. I don't want to intrude on his time with his son. It's important to him," she defended, not wanting to admit that maybe she was wrong.
"He asked you to join him. He's down about you staying up here. There's clearly something there, and I think it's worth investigating. You're important to him too. Since you're going around children, you can't be anything too dirty, but the perfect costume for you would be a skeleton. Go, find a costume and surprise him," Angela said, before turning around and leaving Dr. Brennan to her own thoughts.
Admitting defeat, Dr. Brennan grabbed her jacket, keys and purse and headed out of the lab in search of a costume shop to take Angela's advice. Go as a skeleton. Seemed simple enough, but what Dr. Brennan did not know is how many last minute shoppers there were at Halloween.
Mothers with whiny children gathered around the store, and Brennan only heard pieces of conversation, "I CANNOT be Princess Jasmine, Erica is Princess Jasmine, what's wrong with you mother?" one blonde little girl screamed to her left as she went past children's costumes.
"I want to be a fairy princess, not a princess fairy," another girl complained at the costume selection, "I was a princess fairy last year." Brennan smiled to herself, not exactly understanding the difference between a 'princess fairy' and a 'fairy princess' but it was cute that the girl thought it was that important.
Finally making it past the whiney, annoying and the occasional good child, Dr. Brennan found the adult costumes, many of them with sexual innuendo completely missed by the doctor.
Having no luck finding the suggested costume, she approached an employee with her question, and sadly, the store had no adult skeleton costumes. Neither did the next five. She contemplated calling Angela and asking for a different costume choice, but amazingly the seventh store did have one, literally one, skeleton costume, and by some power greater than herself, it was her size. Checking her watch, she quickly grabbed the accessories to match and some face paint and headed to the checkout.
"Hey Ange, I need a favor," Dr. Brennan called her best friend as she was leaving the costume store.
"If you're not in the hospital dying, well, I don't think I can help you there either, but what is it?" the artist asked, thinking the anthropologist was still in the lab.
"I need you to draw a skull on my face, to go with my costume. I went to seven different Halloween stores and found that costume-"
"Ah, sweetie, why didn't you say so, I'll be right over," she squealed, hanging up as Dr. Brennan got in her car and started weaving her way through D.C. traffic to get to her apartment before Angela.
"There, perfect," the artist announced after about an hour of working on the doctor's face, "and you have to promise not to say anything is atomically incorrect before I show you," the artist warned.
"Fine, I promise," the doctor obeyed and the artist handed her a hand mirror.
"Don't touch anything, it'll smudge. I need to do your hair, just because you're a skeleton, doesn't mean you can't be a hot skeleton," Angela mused, running her fingers through her friend's hair thinking of something to do with it.
"Skeletons don't have hair, Ange, and your skull doesn't look half bad. I'm impressed," Dr. Brennan complimented.
"Well, at least let me pull it back so that stupid hat doesn't look as bad," Angela complained, looking at the headpiece that came with the costume, it looked more like a hood than a hat, and it attached to the one-piece costume.
"Fine, just hurry up, I need to be at Booth's soon," Brennan smiled.
"What's the change of attitude?" Angela asked, a little curious with a brush in hand.
"I've realized that I want Booth in my life, he's a good friend, and Parker isn't such a bad kid."
"All done," Angela smiled at her fully skeletonized friend and smiled, "Have fun tonight. Don't analyze until after you get home, then I want all the juicy details." Angela was practically pushing her friend out of the door, leaving the whole 'getting ready' mess behind, not that Angela would clean it up, but knew it would give Brennan an excuse to stay.
Dr. Brennan arrived at Booth's house a little earlier than he would have expected her, had he not seen her attitude towards Halloween this morning.
"I'll get it," she could hear Parker from inside the house when she knocked. She could also hear larger footfalls following the boy, obviously Booth not wanting his son to open the door to strangers. "Dr. Bones!" he smiled, seeing the doctor on the other side of the door. "Look daddy, Dr. Bones is… bones for Halloween!" The boy started laughing, "Guess who I am, Dr. Bones, guess!" Parker was really excited for Halloween, especially since he was spending it with his dad this year. He stood back, and put his fists to his hips and stuck his chest out a little.
"Hmm," Dr. Brennan pretended to think, "You're superman!" she guessed, receiving another shocked look from Booth.
"Come in, we're going to head out soon," Booth said, opening the door and allowing his friend in. "I thought you weren't coming."
"Changed my mind," she said simply, and took a seat on the couch at Parker's insistence so he could tell her about Superman and why he had chosen that particular superhero.
"Hey Parker, why don't you go use the bathroom, I don't want you complaining halfway through," Booth suggested to get the boy out of the room. He grumbled for a minute, but did anyway. "Nice costume," Booth commented.
"Angela's idea. She did a good job, sorry about earlier, in the lab. Halloween reminds me of the things I couldn't have as a kid, I never went trick-or-treating, dressed up, all that fun stuff. Now I understand why, my parents were felons and it would pretty much be open house for something to happen-"
"I get it, it's okay, I'm just glad you came. I wasn't sure how I was going to explain to Parker that you weren't coming, he's been going on all night about how he wanted to show you his costume. Now I don't have to," he smiled.
At that moment Parker rejoined the pair, "Daddy, can you tie my cape on, please? Please!" The kid was clearly excited.
Booth stood and grabbed the cape from the back of the couch and attached it to the child, "All right, Bones, let's go!" Booth herded the pair out the door and made sure to lock it.
A couple hours later the trio was back, with about two pounds of candy.
"Thanks for coming Dr. Bones. It was fun," Parker said when they returned home. He went over to the table and started dumping out his loot.
"Parker, I think it's bedtime," Booth said, knowing what was coming.
"Please dad, just a few pieces," the boy put on a smile identical to his father's.
"Brush your teeth, pajamas, say goodnight to Bones," Booth said, shockingly immune to that look.
"Good night, Dr. Bones," the boy said, getting up from the table.
"Good night, Parker. Thank you for inviting me. I guess I should go," Brennan smiled, pointing at the door.
"Stay, I'm sure there's a horror movie starting soon."
"All right, let me go wash this off of my face," Dr. Brennan said, referring to the skull paint. In reality, she wanted to get out of the whole costume, but it's not like she looked that far ahead and brought a change of clothes. She got off the ouch and headed to the bathroom to scrub the paint off.
She fell asleep there, on the couch, wearing a FBI t-shirt and sweatpants, in Booth's arms, watching a horror flick. She awoke to a hyper five-year-old trying to shove as much candy into his mouth before his father awoke. That was how her Halloween went. And as she lay there, in his arms, for the first time she felt comfortable, and no thought of flight went through her head, but thoughts of happiness. Maybe Angela was right. Gosh she hated it when Angela was right. With a smile on her face, she slid out of Booth's arms to join the five-year-old in a bowl of candy cereal.