Title: Fragmentation
Disclaimer: Nothing whatsoever belongs to me.
Warning: Major spoilers for the 100th episode and a couple of little hints about where the series might be going. If you're desperately trying to stay spoiler free for upcoming episodes, you should probably avoid this.

–

If we don't work together anymore, we can have sex.
...I'll call a cab.

They've always been the biggest source of FBI gossip.

Oh, don't hate me for it. The Bureau really isn't as interesting as they make it look on TV, you know. I've been here three years and I'm still glued to the copy machine. Sometimes I get to make drinks for mysterious men in sunglasses, but that's about as good as it gets. I've never been out in the field. Maybe next year, my immediate supervisor says. Yeah, maybe next year when the copy machine finally explodes from overuse.

So you can't really blame me, can you? Here I am, practically chained to my desk, day in, day out. What else is a girl to do? (I'm not allowed to paint my nails anymore after that time I got acetone all over the keyboard and melted it to several important documents.)

They were the first interesting thing that ever happened to this office.

(Don't tell my boyfriend that. He thinks my job is so James Bond.)

So there I am, minding my own business at the copy machine, betting with myself about whether or not I could get away with spitting into my boss' coffee on my way back from Starbucks this afternoon, when he walks out. Don't tell my boyfriend this either, but I've always thought that Seeley Booth was pretty damn hot. I guess his girlfriend got him to do something better with his hair though, because after he got rid of all that gel, he got rid of the pretty, too.

But that is totally not the point. He walked out of his office, and then she followed him right after – practically attached at the hip they'd been for the last few days, not even bothering to hide it when the tour guide caught them about to make out up against the vending machine in the lunch room ("And this is where Mulder and Scully bought their pre-packaged sandwiches..."), and then George from forensics said he heard them fighting about the drunken sex they may or may not have had down in the bay where we scan abandoned cars and trucks for evidence. I mean, come on. We're not CIA. We like a bit of scandal round here and we know when to keep our noses out. No-one's gonna report Agent Booth for sexing up a consultant on the side, but when they're fighting around our water cooler? Those fights suddenly become bored Bureau employee property.

We're pretty good at pretending we're not watching, too, but even Blind Molly over at Communications couldn't have missed the sound of the smack Dr Brennan laid on the poor guy. I didn't hear what he said before she started yelling, but Charlie can lip read and he said for Booth's sake it's best left to the imagination.

I wish she'd come back. Speculating about the sex life of those two definitely made Photocopy Thursdays more interesting.

–

Listen, Bones. I would do anything for you. I would die for you. I would kill for you. But I'm not getting in between two best friends.

When Sweets recounts Booth's words to Daisy a few hours later, she doesn't find them nearly as psychologically interesting as he had hoped.

In fact, she sits up straighter on the sofa and smacks his arm, pouting.

He rubs his arm, disconcerted. "Woah, Daisy! What was that for?"

"Why can't you ever say things like that to me?"

Sweets doesn't understand. He might be a professionally trained therapist with way more qualifications than anyone ever gives him credit for – and seriously, what is all that about, anyway? Does he really look that young? – but who said that was ever a free ticket to understanding his girlfriend? "What, that I don't want to get between you and your best friend?"

She wiggles her head around in that cute little way she has when she understands something and no-one else can see it yet. "No, that you'd die for me, dummy."

"Well, die, that's an awful big commitment. I mean, that is wicked huge, that's – "

Her eyes are all round and enormous and she is definitely not remembering her breathing techniques.

"I would totally die for you, Daisy."

–

I've gotta move on. I've gotta find someone who's gonna love me in thirty years, or forty, or fifty.
I know.

They get in my cab every Wednesday evening around seven, her first, him holding the door like a proper gentleman. Not so many of those around these days. Good to see. She always tips, he always looks awkward about it.

They talk about couples' therapy on the back seat but I don't know why. I mean, sure, they have the occasional disagreement (usually about the big guy. You know. God.) but they seem to be doing just fine. They talk about love and soulmates and smile at each other in the silence, leaning towards each other in the back of a taxi cab that will always, despite years of cleaning, smell slightly of stale tobacco. It's a comforting smell, she says one night. Something about a childhood I don't catch because I'm retuning the stereo. His hand finds hers through the darkness of the back seat. They're probably just as in love as the day they met.

Must be a pretty good shrink. I always thought about turning around one night while we were stopped at traffic lights and asking for his number. For me and the wife, you know. Not that we have problems or anything. It's just that sometimes I leave the toilet seat up and sometimes she spends the grocery money on shoes and we kind of irritate each other. You know, the way couples do. The way he irritates her about God and faith and instincts (three times I've heard her tell him that his gut cannot think. I can almost repeat the speech verbatim. Maybe that's why they need therapy).

But then something bad happened.

He didn't get in the cab with her tonight. She whispered an apology he probably didn't hear as he shut the door after her and waited for me to drive off. Ever the gentleman. He stood there all statue-like until we were right round the corner. He's probably still standing there now.

I can see the tear-tracks on her cheeks when she leans forward to pay her fare (she tips, of course. She always tips).

Guess I won't be asking for that shrink's number after all.

–

She doesn't love me. I would know if she loved me.
May I counsel patience on this front? Hope and patience.

They used to get coffee together every day.

Sometimes they sat for hours with nothing to say without ever giving off the impression that they needed the words. Sometimes they argued and took their drinks away, bickering about love and religion and fact and logic as the double doors swung closed behind them.

I always assumed they were together.

If I'm honest, I always sort of wished my husband would still look at me the way he looked at her. It gave me a funny feeling in my stomach, the way they smiled at each other, like there was no-one else in the room. Like movie stars, like Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart with the world's greatest love story ahead of them before it all went so wrong.

But now another woman comes in with him and it's her hand he takes when he's not fishing for change in his pocket or snappily answering his phone. It's her who takes the coffee and follows him out the door and doesn't argue with him about anything.

I'm not a stalker or anything, don't get me wrong. We're a little coffee shop on a quiet street and I've been working this job for fifteen years. I've learnt a little about people watching over the years and I'll be damned if there's anything better to do after you've already straightened the sugar sachets for the fifteenth time.

The first couple times, the scientist lady kept coming in with them. She laughed at his jokes and kept talking to him the way she always did, excluding everyone else as though they were the only ones in the world despite the fact that all of a sudden there was someone else in his. She's got balls, I thought, and I cheered her on silently as I handed over their coffee cups. She's not gonna let this go.

Then it was like a switch flicked.

For about a week, she came in after them. Stood behind them. Ordered after them and watched them leave so intensely she held up the queue waiting to pay.

She hasn't had a morning coffee for a month now. I'd know. She tips well. You remember customers like that.

She still comes in alone sometimes, just as we're closing up. She orders two coffees out of habit and leaves one behind on the table by the door.

–

When the time's right, you'll tell him. And if he needs it, you'll hold him, okay?
Okay.

There have been plenty of times when Brennan has needed comforting and one or other of her friends have stepped back, knowing it was best left to Booth.

This is the first time Angela has seen the roles reversed.

It's late. Or is it early? She's been out far too long to know.

The lights are mostly off. Guided by the dull beam of inactive computer screens, Angela tiptoes back through the Jeffersonian towards her forgotten cell phone, high heels dangling from her fingers. If anyone asks, she doesn't like the noise they make on the metal walkway. In reality, she figures stilettos are as good an impromptu weapon as any. What? Museums are creepy at night, okay?

Holed up in her office, Brennan and Booth have no idea that the sleepy 6am world has begun to come to life around them once again.

They speak in low voices that Angela is grateful she cannot hear. He sits slumped in her high-backed computer chair, one elbow resting on her desk, head in his hand. She kneels at his feet, one hand on his knee, the other on his arm, and the other woman does not have to hear her words to know her tone will be pleading.

Brennan has been talking of Indonesia for the last week.

Journeys end in lovers meeting, she thinks, and walks on in silence.

–

You believe that love is transcendent and eternal. I want to believe that too.
You will. I promise, someday, you will.

Something has changed in this department.

Laughing, the other guys warn me not to come up here. They say it's catching. They say it's something in the water.

And seriously, I am starting to think they're right. The shrink and the intern got married last year and no sooner had they tied the knot than that hot artist chick and the guy with the beard who was always snapping his elastic band in the lunch queue followed hot on their heels. And now word is that a bunch of squints have cashed in on a bet against all Dr Brennan's grad students about the impending direction of her own love life.

I'm only an FBI paper pusher. What do I know? I'm never here long enough to notice anything. If you ask me they're all going so crazy cooped up in here staring at dead stuff that they go after the only things in the whole lab that move and aren't attached to end of a microscope – each other.

That doesn't stop Cassie pumping me for information every Thursday at the copy machine.

Mostly I tell her to do her own spying. Dr Brennan spends practically all of her time out of her lab coat in the Hoover building anyway.

Today is different. Today Charlie wants to know whether or not his annual bet of ten dollars on "this year'll be the year" has paid off. He wants to know if the squints really got lucky and if the grad students are right to be pissed at losing so much money.

Let's just get one thing clear here: I don't care what George tells you, betting is not gossiping. This does not mean I am indulging my feminine side, OK?

I've got a whole box of uncompleted paperwork to dump on Dr Brennan's desk and she is not going to be pleased about it. Nor is Agent Booth, I bet. They're obviously not planning on sticking around late tonight; he's helping her into her jacket as I walk up. She's smoking hot in that dress and she looks like she knows it.

So does Booth. It's looking pretty good for Charlie.

They're discussing something as I approach the door and she's getting all animated, waving her hands around in wild gestures in between attempts to help Booth with his bow tie.

"Marriage," she insists as I hover in the doorway, "is an – "

"An antiquated ritual. Yeah, I know, Bones, okay?" He bats her hands away and finishes the tie for himself.

Either they're choosing not to notice me or they're both just dumb blind. Clearly pissed, she purses her lips and tugs her hair out from underneath her jacket collar. He stops her hand, grabbing for her fingers before she can pick up her keys from the desk.

" Hey," he says quietly, and I let out an awkward, presence-announcing cough. I mean, come on, do they actually not know I'm here or are they both just really rude?

I am ignored.

"You gotta admit, as ancient rituals go, it's not the worst. It's better than... I don't know, burning and eating people or whatever it was you said that weird Greek tribe used to do."

Her smile is softer than her words when she retaliates. I'm kind of uncomfortable with how close together they're standing. I don't wanna have to pry them apart with a scalpel. "In ancient Singhalese communities, brides expressed their love for their future grooms by having water poured on their heads and binding their distal phalanges. Do you want me to do that too?"

I sign the delivery sheet and slip the box onto the desk beside them, suppressing a snigger as I back my way out of the office. This is what, the eighth year in a row he's made that bet? Sucks to be you, Charlie. Maybe nothing ever changes around here after all.