Disclaimer: I really wish that I could claim Bones for my own. Sadly, it isn't so!
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Setting: Almost Two Months After "Baby in the Bough."
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"Bones! We've got a case!" Booth announced, striding into the forensic anthropologist's office, only to screech to a halt when he couldn't readily locate her. "Bones?"
After looking under her desk and everywhere else in the office, Booth made his way to the lab. He spotted Angela talking to Hodgins, her back to him.
"Angela!"
The artist whirled around, surprised to see him in the lab. "What are you doing here?" she called back.
"Where's Bones?"
"She went to look for you! Why aren't you in your office?"
"Because I'm looking for...Just nevermind," he grumbled, stomping back towards the elevators.
When he finally made it back to his office, Bones was sitting in his chair snooping through his desk drawers.
"Whatcha lookin' for?" he asked casually, leaning against the door frame, arms folded across his chest. Her head whipped up with a surprised squeak, slamming the door shut and almost catching her fingers as she did.
"Nothing," she replied evenly when she had regained her composure.
"Looked like somebody was snooping," he teased her, entering the room fully and closing the door behind him.
"It is culturally--" she started, stopping when he waved a folder in front of her nose. She snatched it from his hand, flipping it open. "A case?" she asked rhetorically.
"Yep. You know, I went all the way to the Jeffersonian looking for you."
"I wasn't there, Booth."
"I noticed."
...An hour later, at the scene...
"Oh, I almost forgot! Booth, wait up!" Bones scowled as her partner strode ahead of her, hating him for getting to wear boots when she was stuck in heels.
"What, Bones?"
"Here," she told him when she finally caught up to him, thrusting an official looking paper into his hand before striding past him to crouch by the victim's remains.
"What is this?"
"Read it." She was so involved in studying the remains nailed to the tree trunk that she didn't see him turn disbelieving eyes on her.
"Your firearm request? Again?"
"I need one."
"No, Bones, ya don't."
"Female, age twenty to twenty-five, cause of death was strangulation." Brennan turned just far enough to see the sheriff who had been briefing Booth while she studied the bones. "We'll need this section of the tree transported back to the Jeffersonian along with the body," she told the older man.
"Why? Can't ya just unstick the body from it?"
"No! The remains may leave residual evidence on the tree, therefore, we need the tree that it was attached to."
"We'll take care of it," the sheriff, Jones his nametag said, informed her before wandering back to his car to phone in the request.
Angela was busy trying to suck Hodgin's tongue out of his mouth when the duo returned, making Booth grimace. Brennan barely even blinked, simply walking around the couple and continuing into her office.
"Not in the office!" Booth yelled in Hodgin's ear as he hurried past. "Doesn't it bother you when they do that?" he asked as he flopped onto the couch and made himself at home.
"Not really," Bones replied absently, sifting through papers on her desk. "It's a universally accepted expression of affection."
"Does everything have an anthropological excuse?" he asked sarcastically.
Bones, still not able to recognize saracasm, merely blinked owlishly at him before saying proudly, "Of course."
