How'd You Get Together?

by TinoSquint

Christine wants to know the story of how her parents got together. Brennan gives her a slightly condensed version. One-shot.

A/N: So I wrote the bulk of this during a class when I was supposed to be taking notes. Set about 7 or 8 years after S12, when Christine is in 8th grade. This is yet another example of me really loving Christine and Brennan's dynamic and perpetually wanting to see more of it. Hapy Fourth of July to my fellow Americans! Thank you to everyone for the positive responses to my ongoing stories, I really appreciate it! Please review!

Christine is sitting at the counter working on her homework while her mom moves through the kitchen pulling out ingredients for dinner. Frustrated with the fact that eighth grade apparently means having homework over the weekend, she puts down her pencil and looks up at Brennan. "Mom," she says, "how did you and Dad get together?"

"Well, what exactly mean by that?" Brennan replies

"You know, fall in love, have me and Hank, get married."

"Well, your Auntie Cam actually started it all."

"Really? What'd she do?"

"She knew that your dad had a case he wasn't making any progress on, so she told him to call me."

"You knew Auntie Cam before you knew dad?"

"Not really. She knew me, but I didn't remember meeting her. I don't know how much Auntie Ange and your dad have told you, but I wasn't very nice back then. Your dad walked in while I was giving a lecture. He asked for my help on a case he was working. He gave me a test before he actually let me work the case with him. He gave me the remains and had me identify them, even though he already knew whose they were. When I properly identified them, then I got to help more with the case. But then he had to fire me, so we went to the bar and got drunk before he could do it."

"He fired you?! What do you mean he fired you? You guys still work together now?"

"Well, I punched a federal judge in the nose...twice, so Caroline made him fire me. I thought he was getting me drunk so it was easier, but he said he needed to be drunk because he didn't want to fire me."

"What happened after he fired you?"

"We kissed. We couldn't before because it was against FBI policy, but since I was no longer consulting on the case at that point, there weren't rules against it anymore. We were outside the bar, kissing in the rain, and then he did something that I was not prepared for. He told me about his gambling addiction. When I asked why he told me that, he said it was because he thought we were 'going somewhere,' and that scared me. Before your dad, I didn't let anyone in because I was afraid of getting hurt. That's why it took so long for me and your dad to end up together. So when the cab got there, I told him I wasn't going home with him anymore."

"You were going to go home with him even though you'd just met?!"

"Well, yes."

"And you were going home to...do it?"

"Yes, we were going to have sexual intercourse."

"Mom!"

"What? We were sexually attracted to each other and we were both adults. There's nothing wrong with us having sex."

"But you barely knew each other!"

"That doesn't always matter, Christine. Sometimes sex is simply about satisfying biological urges and when that happens between two consenting adults, then that is okay, even if they do not know each other very well. Though I do have to say that sex with a partner whom you truly know and love and trust is very different. It becomes about much more than satisfying biological urges. I always scoffed at the term 'making love' before, but I understand it now. And I believe that making love is far better than other sex can be. Your dad was definitely right about that one."

"I'm pretty sure that falls into the category of TMI, Mom. I do not need that much detail about you and Dad's…" she trails off, clearly uncomfortable.

"I see you've inherited your father's puritanical sensibilities when it comes to discussing sex. You can say the phrase 'sex life' without the world imploding, even when discussing your parents. Your father and I maintain quite the vigorous–"

"Stop that sentence right now, Mom!" Christine interrupts. "I do not want to hear about you and dad having sex. Just stop, please." Brennan holds her hands up in a sign of surrender, so Christine continues, "You are so not a normal mom."

"I have never been ordinary, Christine. Ask your dad. At one point I'm pretty sure he thought I was an alien," she laughs.

"I'll ask when he and Hank get back from the park," Christine laughs. "Keep going with the story, though."

"The day after your dad fired me, the FBI decided that I was good enough that they'd let me consult even though I had assaulted a federal judge."

"Twice!"

"Yes, twice. Eventually, we solved the case—and I'm the one who found motive here, not your dad—and your dad and I couldn't stop bickering. I slapped him and called him a bully and a stupid man."

"Why'd you do that?"

"Because...honestly, I'm not really sure, Christine."

"I bet it was because you were in love with him, Mom."

"You might be right. But that was how the first case ended. Then, I went to Guatemala for a year to get away from him."

"You ran away to a different country just to get away from working with Dad?"

"Not just the work, everything. That night when we kissed he said he felt like we were going somewhere, so I ran. It scared me because deep down, I felt it too. And I didn't trust myself not to act on that feeling. Since I was too scared of being hurt and of hurting him because I didn't know how to love, I ran. I went and identified ancient remains in Guatemala. And then when I got back, your dad had me fake arrested at the airport. He had called the lab and Zack wouldn't let him get in contact with me, so he had me fake arrested. I fought it at first, but eventually we ended up working another case together. And during that case, your father and I started to truly become friends. I told him about my family and he told me about being a sniper. Eventually, our partnership turned into a friendship and we were happy with it."

"But did you still wanna kiss him?"

"Yes, I did," Brennan laughs. "And he still wanted to kiss me too. But we pretended that we didn't because we enjoyed being friends."

"Weird. Did anyone else know?" Christine asks.

"They could tell we had feelings for each other. Auntie Ange worked really hard to try to get us together, but it didn't work. Caroline once made us kiss under the mistletoe before she'd do a favor for me. But no one knew what happened during the first case. Uncle Sweets wrote a book about us."

"Really? What was it about?"

"It was a psychology book. He wrote that he believed we were in love with each other but couldn't acknowledge it because it would destroy our partnership."

"But you had known since the first case."

"Exactly. So then we had to tell Sweets about the first case and he couldn't publish his book."

"Was he mad?"

"I think so. After we told him, he told your dad to make a move."

"Like to try to get you to be his girlfriend," Christine says, rather than asks.

"Yes. He said that since your dad was a gambler, he should take the risk and we should try being together."

"What happened next?"

"Well, your dad and I left Sweets's office. And then when we got to the front steps of the Hoover, your dad tried it."

"He tried to get you to be his girlfriend?"

"Yes. He kissed me and gave me a speech about he was the one, the one I could be with for thirty or forty or fifty years and that he'd known from the moment we met."

"What'd you do, Mom?"

"I told him we couldn't be together because I didn't know how to love and I couldn't change."

"But Mom! You were in love with him!"

"I know, Christine, but I was scared. I was scared I was going to mess it up and hurt him, and I couldn't do that. But when I told him I couldn't change, he looked so hurt. And it hurt me a lot, too. But then I was afraid we couldn't be partners anymore. He told me that we could work together, but that he had to move on, to find someone who could love him for thirty or forty or fifty years."

"How did you go from that to married with kids?"

"Well, a kid came first, then the wedding, then the other kid," Brennan jokes.

"That's not the point, Mom, just tell me the rest of the story!" Christine whines.

"We worked a few more cases and then I went to Maluku with Daisy to work on a dig and your dad went back to the Army."

"WHAT?!" Christine yells. "That is not how this story is supposed to go!"

"Well it isn't supposed to go any specific way, dear, it just is. You wanted to know how we got together, and this is how it happened."

"How much longer until you start dating?"

"Not too much longer. We were supposed to be away for a year, but we came back after seven months because we had to help Auntie Cam keep her job. Caroline called us and we came back."

"Then did you start dating?"

"Not quite. We met at the reflecting pool when we got back like we agreed to do. When we were there, your dad asked if I had met anyone while I was working on the dig. I hadn't. But he had."

"What?!"

"He came back from Afghanistan with a girlfriend."

"Why?"

"Because he was trying to move on. She was a journalist."

"Was she pretty?"

"Yes, she was quite beautiful."

"How long did they date for?"

"Long enough that he proposed to her."

"WHAT?"

"He asked her to marry him."

"But did he still love you?"

"Yes, I think he did."

"So why did he ask her to marry him when he still loved you?"

"Because he was trying to move on. He was trying to be happy and I wasn't ready to be with him. Your dad wanted a wife and kids and for all he could see, I wasn't going to give that to him."

"When did it change?"

"Well, we had a case that really got to me. Everything about the victim reminded me of me. She was entirely alone. And then I realized that I couldn't live how I was living anymore."

"What happened next?"

"I went out to see where and how she died. It was pouring rain and I was in the middle of the street and I almost got hit by a car. But your dad saved me. When he was driving me back to the Jeffersonian, I told him that I loved him. But he told me that he was with Hannah—that was the reporter's name—and that he was happy. And I sat there and I cried while he drove me back."

"Why did he do that? He was still in love with you!"

"I don't know, Christine. But he did. And then later he ended up proposing to Hannah, but she said no."

"Did she know that he didn't love her the way he loved you? Is that why she said no?"

"I think she knew that, but I don't think that's why she said no. She said no because she wasn't ready to be married."

"Oh. What happened after that?"

"Hannah called me and told me about the breakup because she wanted me to check on your father. So I went to the bar, but he was really angry."

"With you?" Christine asks, confused.

"With Parker's mom, with Hannah, and yes, with me. He was angry that he kept getting rejected. Each time he tried to commit to a woman he loved, or thought he loved, we all turned him down, and he was angry. He told me that we could be partners or nothing. I wanted more, but I chose partners. I couldn't handle not having him in my life, it's part of why I said no that night in front of the Hoover. I was too afraid of what would happen if it didn't work out between us."

"So does that mean you guys weren't friends anymore?"

"We weren't friends like before. There was a strain, a tension, on our relationship for a while. It eased with time as we reacclimated to our reality, but no, I suppose we weren't truly friends for a while. Your dad seemed to stop believing in love for a while. That really bothered me. I'm sure even you can see how much love means to your father."

"Yeah," Christine gushes, "he's the biggest most sappy romantic I've ever met. How could he stop believing in love?"

"He was very angry, Christine. Anger can change a person very deeply. Our next case after he and Hannah broke up was on Valentine's Day. I kept getting calls from men asking me out on a date with them. Your dad grew more visibly upset with each call."

"Did you say yes?" Christine shouts.

"Of course not," Brennan murmurs. "By this point I had accepted that I was in love with your father. I did not know whether we still had a chance to be together, but I did know that I couldn't risk losing a chance for some one-night stand to satisfy biological urges. Anyway, he told me that the only thing to ever happen on Valentine's Day was the Valentine's Massacre. At that point, I knew I needed to do something to attempt to restore his faith in love. He told me he was going to spend his night at the shooting range, so I decided to surprise him there."

"Of course you two spent Valentine's Day shooting guns, you're so weird."

"When I arrived, he was shooting at the word 'love' instead of the regular target. At first, he seemed upset that I was there, but once he saw what I brought with me, he moved past his initial reaction. I brought tommy guns that I got from the Jeffersonian because I knew he had always wanted to shoot them. So we spent that night together. After that, we started to find our rhythm in our friendship again. It wasn't perfect, but it was certainly better than it was right after his breakup."

"My parents, brought together by some old guns. Such a romantic tale!" Christine says, voice dripping with sarcasm. "When did you guys get all the way back to normal again?"

"There was one case during a blizzard. Before we went back to the lab, we were trying to bring Dad's stadium seats up to his apartment. Someone had left them on the curb with their garbage across from the diner. While we were in the elevator with the seats, it got stuck because the power went out. We were in there for a while, so we started talking. After we solved the case, we were sitting in his apartment eating takeout by candlelight. We talked and we decided that we weren't ready yet, that your dad was still too angry and I was still too impervious, for us to be together."

"What does impervious mean?" Christine asks.

"It meant that I was so afraid of being hurt that I wouldn't let anything affect me, whether it was bad or good," Brennan replies

"Okay. Finish the story then," Christine says, pausing for a moment. Then she continues, "Mom, can we go sit on the couch?"

"Sure," Brennan says walking toward the couch as Christine follows behind her. She sits down with a pillow on her lap and Christine sits next to her. "Can I finish now?"

"Yes!" Christine replies. She can't believe it's taken this long for her parents to get together. Comparing them to all her friends' parents, they seem to love each other so much more. When they're so in love, she doesn't understand how they could be apart for so long.

"So we knew that we couldn't be together yet, but we also knew that we still loved each other. We agreed that we still had a chance together, someday. So we did something your dad used to do when he was a little boy. We each wrote down a date on a piece of paper and burned it in the candle flames. The idea was that the date we wrote was the day we believed we would be ready to be together, and that by burning it he believed that would come true."

"What date did you write down?"

"My date was later than we actually got together. I didn't have enough faith in myself to guess correctly. But, in my defense, I never could have imagined the circumstances that brought us together."

"Are we finally at that point of the story?"

"Yes, we are. We were working on a case where a sniper was killing people. He used to be a Ranger with your dad. One day, he called your dad while we were all at the lab on the platform and your dad handed the phone to one of my squinterns to answer so he could try to trace the call. But then the sniper shot my squintern because he thought it was your dad. And Vincent, that was the squintern's name, he died. Your dad and I tried to save him, but we couldn't."

Christine reaches her hand forward and wipes a tear from her mom's eyes. She moves the pillow from Brennan's lap and leans in closer. Brennan pulls Christine into a hug and kisses the top of her head. "Vincent? Like Michael Vincent?" Christine asks, shocked to hear the odd name in the story of her parents' relationship.

"Yes, Angela and Hodgins decided to name their baby after Vincent because Michael was born shortly after Vincent died. His name is a tribute to Vincent."

"Oh. That was nice of them. But back to the story, is this when you get together finally?" Christine asks quietly.

"Yes, it is," Brennan murmurs. "That night, your father wouldn't let me go home to my apartment. He wanted to be with me to protect me, so he brought me back to his apartment. I went to sleep on the couch, but I was having a lot of trouble sleeping. Eventually, I realized I was too scared to fall back to sleep on my own. So I walked into your dad's room. I scared him a lot when I did that. He pulled his gun out because he didn't know it was me. He thought it was the he saw it was me, he put his gun down. I started crying, and he hugged me. We laid down and I was , I calmed down and I realized that this was our moment. I was so afraid of losing him that I was ready to open myself up and risk being hurt. And I kissed him."

"And then…"

"And then...we had sex."

"Finally," Christine says. "I can't believe it took that long!"

"It took a little longer than that."

"Still?"

"Yes, still," Brennan laughs. "After that night, we were together, but we didn't tell everyone yet. Auntie Ange knew, I told her the next morning because she had been waiting for as long as she knew us for it to happen. But our next case is when we really got together. We had to go undercover to see who murdered a bowler. We were at the diner with my dad and Booth said I had to be his girlfriend for the case. Usually, I pushed away that idea, but this time I didn't. Your grandfather knew something was wrong. He just kept looking at us and eventually he said that we were being weird. He asked if we had a fight because we were being polite to each other."

"Were you guys mean to each other usually or something?" Christine asks, dismayed.

"No, we were never mean. We just teased each other a lot, like we do now. It was weird for us to agree how we did that day."

"Oh, okay."

"Anyway, during the case I was very worried that I was going to miss Angela having Michael Vincent. Your grandpa was on the bowling team that we were undercover on, so he spent the whole case with us. I think he knew we had finally slept together. He told us that we needed to be more affectionate with each other if we wanted anyone to believe we were dating. He had always wanted us to get together, right from the minute he came back into my life. Eventually, we solved the case and we made it to the hospital in time for Angela to have her baby. When Hodgins brought Michael Vincent out to meet us, I snuck in to see Angela."

"Why'd you go see Angela instead of meeting the baby."

"Well, I had something I had to tell her before I left."

"What was that?"

"I had to tell her about you."

"Me? You mean you were pregnant already?"

"Yes."

"Did Dad know yet?"

"No, I told Angela first."

"Why? I'm Dad's baby!"

"Because Angela is my best friend! She told me about Michael Vincent before she told Hodgins. And I was nervous to tell your father."

"Why were you nervous to tell Dad? He loves you and he loves kids!"

"I'm honestly not sure. I was also worried about how much everything was going to change. But Angela helped me calm down."

"Did I change everything like you thought I was going to?" Christine asks, her voice small.

"Of course you changed everything, but my life is so much better because of you, Christine," Brennan says, hugging her daughter. "You, your dad, and your brother make me so happy. I wouldn't want anything any other way."

"Okay, now tell me how you told Dad!"

"When we were walking after we left the hospital, I told him. Once I told him, a huge smile spread across his face and I was so relieved. I guess rationally I knew he was going to be happy, but I was still scared."

"And then you had me and got married and had Hank?"

"Well, yes, but there was some stuff in the middle," Brennan laughs as the front door opens. Hank runs over when he sees his two favorite ladies cuddling on the couch. He jumps up and claims his spot on his mom's other side.

"Hi, Mom," he says as he leans in for a hug. "Aren't you supposed to be doing homework?" he asks Christine.

"Yes, but it's Friday. I have all weekend to do it; I have time to take a break. Calm down, Mr. Fourth Grader. You'll have weekend homework soon enough. Besides, Mom is telling me the story of how she and Dad fell in love."

"You're telling that story, eh, Bones? But Christine does need to do her homework at some point this weekend."

Brennan laughs at her husband's comment as he leans down to give her a kiss hello. "That's humorous because it took us such a long time to get together that the story is also quite lengthy. But I was just about finished. I just got to the part where I told you that I was pregnant with Christine."

"I think that's the best part of the story, Bones," Booth smiles at her. "Hank, go wash your hands and put your glove in your room. Then you can tell mom what a great job you did hitting today at the park."

As Hank gets up and walks down the hall to his room, Christine looks at her father. "You're pretty stupid, ya know. I can't believe you came back from Afghanistan with a girlfriend. Mom should have killed you." With that, she turns and walks down the hall to her room as well. Booth stares down the hall after her, astonished that his sweet little girl could say something like that to him.

"I guess Christine and Angela have pretty similar opinions on that one, huh, Bones?" he asks with a laugh. Brennan pulls him into a hug and inhales her favorite scent.

"Yes, I suppose they do. She and Angela also agree that it took us far too long to finally 'get together' as Christine puts it." She pauses for a moment and simply looks at her husband. "I love you, Booth," she says simply.

"I love you too, Bones, and I always have." He presses a kiss to the top of her head. She looks up at him and presses a kiss to his lips, which quickly deepens.

"Why'd you have to tell Hank to tell me about your baseball practice at the park? I find that I would like to go to our bedroom and make up for some of that lost time," Brennan says with a smirk, slightly breathless from their kiss.

Booth looks back at her and groans. "I'm right there with you, Bones. Listen to him talk about practice, then right to the bedroom I think." He breaks off to kiss her again, this time moving down to her neck, eliciting a moan from Brennan.

"Gross!" This exclamation stops Booth's trip down Brennan's body and the two pull away from each other like caught teenagers. Booth angles Brennan's body in front of his own so his daughter doesn't see his growing bulge. "Just because I know you have sex—are you happy, Mom? I said the word that time!—doesn't mean I need to see it happening on the couch!"

Brennan laughs at her daughter. "Yes, Christine, I am happy you're overcoming your illogical aversion to words relating to sex. But you're correct; this is not an appropriate place for this behavior. Although, this is your fault."

"How is this my fault?" Christine groans. "I am not one of the parties feeling each other up and making out on the couch."

"Because," Booth replies, "you're the one that asked about how we got together and got your mom thinking about how much she loves me."

With this comment, a smile slides across Brennan's face. "Entertain your brother until we're ready for dinner," she says, "and your father and I will relocate our activities to our bedroom." She stands from the couch and pulls Booth after her.

Christine turns and stares at her parents' backs as they make their way towards their room. "I did not need to know what they're about to go do," she mutters as she walks towards her brother's room to entertain him. And to make sure he never asks their parents the same question she did. Christine prides herself on being a good big sister, and as such, she is determined to try to prevent her brother from witnessing the mating display that she just saw. "Please, God, just make them be quiet," she whispers as she knocks on Hank's door.