Disclaimer: Not mine. Taken from the events and transcript of episode 'Two Bodies in the Lab' season 1 ep 15.
Author Notes: I have recently fallen in love with this show. I'm currently only up to the second episode of season 2 so I have a long way to go (not complaining!) My guess is that this kind of story has been done before, but thank you for taking the time to try mine!
Rating: T - Mainly for description of crime scenes and the occasional mild bad word. Romance and a touch of angst the rest of the way, I promise!
Connected To You.
By Rianne
Chapter One
"You're dating online?"
Booth had hastily swiped his ID and climbed the steps to the platform as the others had been distracting her.
He looked the same as usual, long coat, suit, styled hair; he was followed by a man she recognised as another Agent.
But the forced incredulity of his expression and his tone were distinctly unimpressed and he made no attempt to hide it.
She did not need this.
Not Booth too.
A body lay before them, and this was what they all wanted to talk about?
Well she wanted to talk about the victim.
Her attention darted from discerning feature, to interesting anomaly.
These bones told many secrets.
Pelvis said male.
Evidence of bullet wounds, 38 calibre. But no bullets.
Adding to that the obvious: his cement shoes; that screamed murder.
The algae and breaks in the tibia spoke, as Hodgins had said, of this man having been fish food for quite a while.
Consistent with his being found in Chesapeake Bay.
Dr. Goodman had allowed that the FBI thought it was a mob boss.
One James Cugini, who had disappeared after a daughter's dance recital six years ago.
Also consistent.
A fascinating case.
The killer or killers were really quite good at committing a classic murder.
But she had no doubt she would find them.
And yet all of them, Angela, Hodgins, Zack, and this near stranger of an FBI agent, were now staring.
Their eyes darting from her to Booth.
Waiting to see how the latest in their ever growing line of disagreements was going to go down.
How many times had they all talked to her about spending time away from the Jeffersonian and having a life!
Countless.
So what were they so surprised about?
It was just a meal.
She had Googled him.
She was allowed to go out.
A fact she shouldn't have had to clarify.
She also should not have to clarify that it was with a man.
Coming around the table she tried to explain her actions with what she considered to be a well composed argument for online dating, although she did not know why she was bothering. These were smart people who knew their own minds, held fast to their beliefs and opinions.
"Well it's a practical way of objectively examining a potential partner without all the game play."
She heard the edge of the defensive enter her tone, despite the perfectly rational explanation and did not like it. Or the way she made herself taller, tilting her chin as she came around to face Booth, removing her gloves like she was preparing for battle, forcing them into the pocket of her lab coat, her preliminary examination of the bones complete.
She attempted to stare him down.
So still and focused that she could feel the draft from the residual sway of her ponytail.
"That comes later if it works out." Angela's voice appeared beside her and had that silky kick she could never seem to imitate. Her friend teased with ease, and the men responded. Like Pavlov's canines. Their eyes gleaming with primal imaginings.
Angela introduced herself to Booth's companion, smiling as she shook his hand. Before wondering aloud that Brennan had met Agent Kenton before, her tone spelling out that she, Brennan, had somehow been lax in forgetting to tell her all about the smart, attractive friend of Booth's who could be a distinct possibility for a very good date for her very good friend Angela. Angela liked to spell things out for her.
She broke the challenging eye contact with Booth to acknowledge his companion. Kenton, that was the name she had forgotten, or perhaps not really listened to in the first place and had dismissed as irrelevant. Booth was always nudging her about this, but she met far too many people in her line of work to waste time remembering names.
"Well, I was at the Bureau when Booth took his coffee cup." She announced dismissively, reasserting the eye-contact with Booth. She would win this.
"Apparently they're both the world's greatest FBI Agents." She tossed out. Understanding that there was humour in her statement, and feeling a little bit proud of that fact.
Booth broke the staring contest to laugh away the challenge to his professional standing, hell, to his manhood.
Victory made her gleam.
She turned back to the body, moving away from the new arrivals, biting back a retort as Booth introduced her highly educated, highly skilled, elite team as 'Brennan's Brain Trust.' It was too early to forfeit her recent victory.
"Your victim is over here."
"So what if your computer date's a psycho?" Booth's question followed after her.
Oh, he was not just going to let this go was he!
You know, he wasn't her father, or her brother, and he certainly wasn't her boyfriend.
She could look after herself thank you very much.
But he was still waiting for an answer.
Typical Booth, some days he reminded her of an insistent puppy. Always on her heels; trying to get her attention, getting all riled up.
"Only about a billion people date online." Angela stated drolly; attempting to diffuse the situation, which was good seen as how this whole idea and even the site she had used to meet David, had all been a part of Angela's grand design to find her a boyfriend. She would have to thank her later.
Honestly she had been enjoying the simplicity of it, this online dating, and the anonymity of just talking, as she had told Dr Goodman, the idea of cultivating intimacy and interests online was intriguing to her.
Yet, now she was going on a real life date with this stranger, talked into a situation she was more uncertain about.
She could view it as an experiment.
"Yeah, I have." Hodgins online dating surprised no one, nor did his attempt to support Angela. They were trying to help, but they were failing. They were just managing to confirm the stigma and enhance the stereotypes that the idea of dating online already had attached to it.
The thought that David could easily be someone like Hodgins crossed her mind and was quashed. No Hodgins was unique.
But as if Booth saw her distraction, he was quickly questioning her once more, in that odd kind of ritual sparring way they seemed to engage each other in lately.
Like a dog with a bone he pursued his point.
"You know, whatever happened to seeing someone across a crowded room, eyes meeting, that old black magic gets you in its spell…" Charm filled his words, curved out from his glinting smile.
And he was leaning on one of the microscopes, as if he had no care for how much that particular piece of equipment was worth.
Everything about his posture encouraged her to be provoked.
To challenge the schmaltzy well-oiled romance of his words.
Although she knew enough about him to catch the glimmer of true desire in his voice.
Booth believed in love at first sight.
Her heart rate did not just pick up.
It was merely a physiological response to frustration.
"There's no such thing as magic." Her voice was clear, rational even.
He was not going to suck her in right now.
Even if his eyes danced with flirtatious intent.
"Oh there's magic," he slowly intoned with a sultry smile. Eyebrows dancing.
She wanted to slug him.
To shove him hard.
Just to see him fall on that cocky ass of his.
That would provide her with the dual triumph of working out her frustration at his taunts and seeing that knowing sweetness vanish from his face.
He knew that he affected her.
Bastard.
But somehow she held back, she would not be flustered, the restraint completely against her nature and actually quite difficult to maintain as she found the impulse terribly tempting.
Maybe she needed a shake up too, one that would take away the sensations her own stomach fluttered with in response to Booth's well aimed sugar-coated barb.
Did she believe in love at first sight?
No.
But attraction, lust at first sight?
That was a different story.
Yeah, she needed to clear her thoughts; either that or she needed something physical that she really shouldn't be thinking about in the presence of a dead, unidentified human being.
Damn it was hard to be professional these days.
What was Booth doing to her Lab?
Obsessions with dates and personal lives.
They were here to solve very serious crimes.
And then she looked across the table and saw Kenton touching the victim without wearing a pair of gloves.
"Are you here for a reason?" she angrily asked Booth, unable to stop her voice rising with her annoyance, "because Kenton is handling this." She gestured towards the agent.
The book she had read on good working relationships said that sarcasm was an issue for concern in communication, but she had no other outlet for her growing frustration available to her at the moment.
Kenton was now snapping pictures of the victim's cement shoes on his cell phone.
Just perfect.
Professionalism at its finest.
"We have some remains to look at." Booth told her, as if he was talking about what he'd ordered for lunch.
If he was stating the obvious, then she could do that too.
"I'm already looking at them." She responded, speaking slowly just in case.
"Nope, no, not the Cugini case. Kenton will babysit him. These are fresh." He was mimicking her tone.
"Well I was told that our friend in the cement shoes took precedence."
Hiding behind rules when you don't know what the hell is going on was always a reliable safe house.
"That was before we found someone tortured and ripped apart by dogs." He told her.
Her stomach twisted, but she did not let on.
She needed to prepare to distance herself for this one.
000000
The echoing howl of the dogs was ear splitting.
The air filled with the pungent smells of blood and fear and dust.
As they entered the crime scene Booth's skin grew green and her own stomach responded in kind.
She counted slowly as she approached.
Willing herself to drown out all the surrounding aural and visual triggers, to just focus on the bones.
Not the blood.
Not the haze of fear.
Or the taste of repulsion.
Or the question of how someone could do this to another human being.
Those were not questions for her.
Hers were age, sex, defining characteristics.
Ways to give this unfortunate soul back their name and identity.
The body was hung from a pipe and spread out on pallets.
Nothing left but scraps of tissue, clothing and bone, all violent red.
Her Dictaphone was a good distancing tool.
Her voice a calming guide beneath the roar around her.
Speaking aloud; only the facts.
"Ninety percent of the flesh is missing because of mutilation and post mortem anthropophagi caused by canine scavenging."
Booth could not look at the victim, he paced around the edges of the sacrificial rubbish heap the body was lain upon, and his eyes occasionally followed the howls of the dogs, then her motions instead.
She could see from the way his chest rose and fell that his breathing was sharp and forcibly controlled. Keeping down the horrors that she knew deeply affected him.
This was the most atrocious case she had assessed in a long time.
The atmosphere would undoubtedly haunt her dreams.
Zack stood behind her, photographing the scene in detail, his gaze flicking from the victim to watching the caged dogs with beady eyes. "They have to stay here?" He shouted over the din.
Booth cleared his voice before he spoke, his body's visceral reaction to the slaughter, tightening his throat. "We're waiting to see if you need them for anything."
"No, not now. Ask him to save the excrement for Hodgins." She told him.
"Let's get these dogs out of here," one of the officers shouted.
"Lucky Hodgins," Booth tried to joke, trying to break through the horror the only way he knew how.
The sounds of barking faded as the dog cages were wheeled away.
"What about the eyes?! He asked her, keeping his head low and his own eyes mostly averted.
An odd query.
It twigged in her mind that he was following a lead.
"Gone." She said, simply.
"Gouged out?" Came his next question.
A definite lead.
She moved behind the skull, shining her flashlight into the eye sockets.
"Yes," She sounded too surprised, but that was a definite clue, "you can see the scrapings in the orbital cavities much rougher then the knife scaring. It was done with a different weapon."
"Son-of-a-bitch!" Booth's response was one of near hatred.
Her eyes shot to him.
To the clear pain in his strained expression.
Anger at the killer? At himself? She didn't know, but his forehead furrowed, and his nostrils flared. His arms had come up around himself in an act of subconscious protection. He was staring at nothing, as if some other vision, some other scene was replaying itself across his mind's eye.
"You've seen this before." Her voice softened in realisation, she didn't need to say it, but she felt the need to say something, to show that she understood and to fill the tense silence now that the dogs had been removed and she could hear nothing beyond their ragged breathing.
"Yeah, two years ago we found a seventeen year old girl in a tool shed; bound, slashed, eyes gouged out, nothing for her parents to identify."
He worried her when he got like this. When his words tumbled out, fast, all together, when he lost control of his emotions. A freedom she found fearful in herself and even more fearful to be in the presence of another in this type of very human reaction.
She did not know how to respond, how to handle, how to calm and comfort. It unnerved her.
So she let him continue.
"Suspect was Kevin Hollings, everything pointed to him but couldn't get the hard evidence so the DA refused to prosecute. He's twisted, Bones," He twitched his fingers, agitated, touching his face, rubbing his nose. "It's like a game to him."
"He used dogs before?" She asked, almost dreading the answer as she continued to circle the body, taking in all the information she could about the way it was bound, laid out, posed.
"No, he's making the killings more elaborate. It's like he's testing us."
"Until he goes too far and he gets caught. Isn't that the expected pathology?" She asked him, turning to face him, surprising herself with her willingness to theorise things beyond what the bones told her.
It seemed the only way to reach out to Booth. To keep him talking. To keep him from disappearing further into himself.
"Yeah." He sounded far away, deep in thought.
"Well I can determine the kinds of weapons, time of death. Hodgins might find something useful in the dogs…"
There was a ringing.
Oh, that was her cell phone!
Her meal with David!
She sighed, annoyed at the distraction, as she crossed the room, tearing off one of her gloves, and scrambled for the offending item in her bag.
"Brennan?" She answered, always using her surname, a habit she had acquired from her work with Law Enforcement. "Just working." She told him shortly, after a pause.
What else would she be doing?
She daren't look at Booth, kept her back to him.
Behind her a faint thud caught her attention and she caught Booth's jerk in her peripheral vision.
She doubted he would have touched anything, he wasn't that stupid, or liable to be touching something that so repulsed him at the moment, and when she turned she saw she was correct.
A piece of the arm had collapsed, the bone falling unceremoniously to the cement floor of the warehouse.
"Bag that," she pointed, as she instructed Zack, who quickly obliged.
Booth had placed his hand over his mouth to restrain his gag-reflex.
"Yeah of course. I'm starving." She continued to David, even if it was a fairly obvious lie to those around her. She saw Booth balk at the thought of eating after this sight, from out of the corner of her eye and heard him physically clear his throat again. "Seven thirty, okay, yes. I'll meet you there. Okay. Bye." She hurried him off the phone.
"My reservation just got pushed by a few extra minutes." She told Booth, and ignored his suddenly sour face, putting on a fresh glove.
"Oh, a few extra minutes." He retorted, "Great."
He was practically tutting at her, "What?" She questioned, a little more harshly than she had intended to. Her frown was becoming so intense she was getting a headache.
What did he think?
That she didn't care as much about finding the abomination that did this as he did? Because how dare he, he could not be more wrong.
"Nothing."
So now he's being passive aggressive. Perfect. Whether she believed in psychology or not she certainly got a lesson in it each time she worked with Booth.
She could not understand how he could have formed such a dislike of someone he had never met. She hadn't observed this behaviour in him before.
"You disapprove?" She knew she should leave it alone, but she just couldn't help herself. He knew just how to press every button she had.
"I said great." He shot back.
"With attitude." She gave just as good as she got.
They were equals in that sense, if in nothing else.
"Don't go overboard with psychology. It's not your thing." He practically spat, snark in every syllable and she felt the rising anger tighten her spine.
Why did she have to explain herself to him!
But before she could stop herself.
Take a minute to calm down.
She was speaking again.
Something about the way he irritated her, always making her defend herself, always spurring her for a fight.
Her hands went to her hips without her permission.
"Look, I am an adult Booth. I see men. I go out with them; on occasion I sleep with them."
Oh, what did she say that for!
She sounded like an idiot!
Although the look on his face when she mentioned sex with other men was priceless.
"Hey, you know what? That's cool but you don't even know who this guy is that you're meeting."
He was so angry now. Acting like he hadn't been the one to bring it up, like he was no longer interested in hearing about it, like he was blaming her for getting a life.
What did he want from her! For her not to go?
It was only a date, with a smart, educated man who had a good job, how dare he act like she should have to ask his permission!
This was ridiculous.
She was a grown woman.
Trained to the highest levels in self defence.
She had worked in some of the most dangerous countries in the world!
He was making her mad now.
"I have trekked through Tibet avoiding the Chinese army. I think I can handle meeting someone for dinner."
"Fine, you know what? You have fun with Dick431 or whatever his handle is." He was actually taunting her. Leaning towards her in aggression. Eyes flaring. Like he was hurting.
Wait, was Booth jealous?
No. He couldn't be, but there was a gleam of something she could not name which burned in his eyes as he once again faced off with her.
"Yeah I will." She pared back. Biting down on her anger with all the strength she could muster.
"Good." He always had to have the last word.
Not this time.
"Thanks," the ha! was silent.
"Fine." And still he tried. Like a petulant child. Before stalking away from her. His hands in his pockets, head lowered like he was sulking.
But she would win.
"Good," she finished, with one last glance back to him, which he met broodingly from the corner he had retreated to, before picking up her Dictaphone once more and essentially ending their discussion for now with some more of the gruesome facts. "Victim is female, late teens to mid twenties, knife marks on the bone, evidence of deep cuts probably to open up the flesh, make it," she had to swallow before she could continue, "more appetizing for the dogs."
000000
She still wasn't really up for eating when she pulled her car into a space a few metres from Nolita's, but she was willing to let the temptation of good conversation distract her. The restaurant looked nice, ambient lighting, discreet tables, Italian cuisine; an excellent first date choice. Had good reviews online.
She had gone home, showered off the horrors of the day, added make-up, and a touch of perfume, redressed in a costume that Angela had deemed comfortable, but elegant and understated, and perfect for a first date.
She couldn't see David, but it was approaching time for their reservation and she could always wait inside for him.
As she reached the pavement her phone rang, "David, hi." She had to place her free hand over her ear to hear him better. "Yeah I'm here; well I guess I'm two doors down." There was no need for the babbling, but it happened. She didn't think she felt nervous.
He was running late and didn't want her to think she was stood up. Full of apologies.
Thoughtful, she liked that.
"No, I know the traffic on the beltway can be brutal."
He told her to wait inside for him.
"Okay. Bye." She flicked the phone closed, surprised when she felt it slip from her grasp.
There was a split second as she bent to catch it when she thought she heard a quiet rushing sound, before the window of the shop front beside her shattered into a million fragments and she hit the pavement, panting and stunned.
She was being shot at?
Another round of bullets raced by as she tumbled into self-defence mode, seeking shelter behind a parked car, as other windows shattered and the reverberating sound of bullets hitting concrete and steel filled the air.
Then she heard the screech of car tyres speeding away.
She remained hidden behind the car, knees pulled up to her chest, panting.
What the hell was happening?
To Be Continued...