Okay, so my birthday was Wednesday (as you guys probably know, given the kickass birthday fics my awesome imaginary friends gave to me) and Thursday was biba79's birthday, and I was supposed to be on her fic giving wagon. Unfortunately, I was still out celebrating my bday at midnight and when I went to post after I finished work Thurs, I discovered I had locked myself out of my apartment. Whoops. Biba rejoins the fanfic world today, therefore today, I post the belated gift. Since Biba's a not-so-closet-sociopath, she requested angst galore and probs would support me killing puppies, but, alas, my angst well has been tapped out by RositaLG's b-day fic. Which, as you guys know, is still ruining my life and has yet to be completed. SO, I am a giant failure in the angst department, and I'm sorry, B, I tried. I swear, I really did. But Jenn's fic for you is angsty to the extreme, sooo embrace hers as the Oh-My-God-I-Love-It! kind of present and mine as the Do-You-Even-Know-Me-At-All? kind of present, and don't swear at me too much for failing. I'm glad you had a great birthday. You deserve it!

There Goes the Fear Again

Memories fade, like looking through a fog mirror;
decision to decisions are made and not bought
but I thought, this wouldn't hurt a lot
I guess not.

Kids, MGMT

Parker's heart is as big as his father's, and Booth could not have been less surprised – or more proud – of how eagerly Parker accepts Brennan as a permanent part of their family. Of how he is equally eager to embrace the coming baby.

Parker has known Brennan most of his life. He adapts easily to her pregnancy; he asks questions she doesn't hesitate to answer (although Booth really, really wishes she would), he puts his little hands all over her belly as she grows, and when the baby arrives he's curious about the little girl who fits into impossibly tiny clothes and cries so often. He doesn't even get upset when she spits up all over him as he's holding her. Booth is happy, Brennan is happy, Parker is happy, and their different kind of family evolves into another kind of family that still differs from the norm but is tied together closer than before. They adjust to the changes and they thrive.

It's a couple months before the baby's second birthday when things change again. And the series of little things, when added together, don't appear quite so little anymore. One weekend everything is fine, and the very next weekend, Parker's angry at the world and his love for his sister settles into indifference. On Friday he's annoyed when she cries, Saturday morning he corrects her every time she speaks, and Saturday evening he closes his door to deter her (and everyone else) from coming into his room. He's getting older and even Brennan isn't as exciting to him as she used to be, so Booth chalks this up to pre-pubescence and he tries not to let it bother him. But it does. Because he's a good father and he knows when something isn't right with his child.

On Sunday he's sitting in the kitchen and his daughter is bouncing in his lap while his son animatedly relays a story from school, and he gets concrete proof that something is very wrong.

"...and then, when recess was over, Troy was like-

Parker is cut off as Jocelyn gets excited and emits a high pitched yell. She's been babbling the whole time they've been talking, experimenting with her limited vocabulary as they speak in sentences around her, but for a few seconds she's impossible to ignore. Parker frowns as he waits, and he's far more subdued as he begins to speak again.

"...he said-

He's cut off for the second time and Booth understands how it feels to be young with an even younger sibling. So he gives Parker an apologetic smile and he leans back in his chair so that he can yell into the hall.

"Bones?"

It takes her a minute to answer, but not too long passes before the muffled "what?" reaches his ears.

"Can you call for Jocelyn please?"

He puts his daughter on the floor and steers her in the direction of the door. "Find mommy." He whispers in her ear and gives her a messy kiss on the cheek that causes her to laugh.

"Jocelyn."

The voice reaches them with more clarity than the first time and Booth knows Brennan has moved into the hall around the corner. Jocelyn's head tilts as she recognises the voice and she turns to Booth, who nods encouragingly.

Brennan calls her name again and she eagerly toddles forward. By the time she disappears around the corner, her mother is waiting just outside her sight. Once he hears the soft voice of his partner receding down the hall he turns back to his son and leans forward. Body language is important and he needs Parker to know he's listening.

"Sorry, bub. Keep going."

But Parker doesn't feel like talking anymore. "Never mind."

He starts to get up from the table and Booth reaches a hand out to stop him. "Whoa, come on, Park. Finish your story."

"I've got homework," he mutters.

Parker leaves the kitchen and closes the door to his room and for a moment he listens, but his dad doesn't follow him. There's as part of him that genuinely wants to be alone, but this part is somewhat overshadowed by the part of him that wishes his dad had come anyway. Because he gets that it's stupid to feel the way that he does, and a year ago, none of this would have mattered, but this weekend, he looks at his sister and he gets angry. It really isn't fair.

When Booth wanders into Brennan's office, she has Jocelyn expertly balanced on her hip as she jots down a memo with her free hand. Once she finishes this task she begins opening and closing drawers – muttering to herself the entire time – and she absently pulls off her necklace and hands it over to her daughter when the child begins to tug harder on it than is comfortable while the jewellery is around her neck.

Booth hides his smile and steps casually into the room. He's learned that regardless of how adorable he finds her behaviour, there are times when it simply does not bode well for him to comment on it. This is one of those times.

Brennan looks up and hikes the baby higher on her hip. "I need to go to the lab."

She goes back to opening and closing her desk drawers and smiles triumphantly when she locates the folder she has evidently been searching for. She shifts with impatience and she looks so excited, Booth has to laugh.

"What's going on?"

"There are bones from a recent dig in Peru that need to be authenticated. I told Cam to contact me as soon as they arrived."

"And they're here."

"Yes," she grins.

"Alright, well, have fun."

"I will. I have been waiting approximately six months for this."

He takes their daughter and though she squirms briefly, Jocelyn soon accepts the change in caregiver and begins to stick her tiny fingers in Booth's mouth, leaving Booth to remove them intermittently with a gentle hand.

"Hey, you and Parker went out to pick up dinner together last night, right."

She tilts her head and frowns. "You know we did, Booth."

"Did he seem weird to you?" She stares at him blankly and Booth tries to clarify. "He's not himself, you know? He's... upset about something."

Brennan frowns again and gives him her full attention. "I didn't notice anything different yesterday. He behaved as he usually does."

Her keys jingle as she crosses her arms, and the noise causes Jocelyn to turn toward her and reach expectantly. Booth absently passes her back and runs a hand through his hair. "He's quiet. He's never quiet. When was the last time you ever saw Parker quiet?"

"While I have noticed that he seems to be more subdued than is his norm when we are home, he was quite chatty on our way to the restaurant. We discussed his progress on his novel study, the science project Max has scheduled for this week... we even talked about baseball. Although to be honest I understood little of what he had to say on the subject."

Booth tries to look neither incredulous nor disappointed, but the truth is this supersedes any conversation he has had with Parker since his last visit. He can't say he's ever felt in any way jealous of their relationship before, but there it is.

In the time that has passed since Brennan had the baby, Parker has been just as excited to see his sister as he usually is to see his dad; the life of an only child can be boring. And while he has always known that Jocelyn would reside here full time while he would not, he believes he would now much rather pretend that she doesn't exist. At least for the time being.

It's not jealousy; he thinks about this very carefully. Or maybe it is jealousy, but it's a different sort and there's no way to explain it without it sounding ordinary.

He loves Brennan, but he knows enough about sex to understand that without her, there would be no Jocelyn, and while he loves Jocelyn as well, he wishes things were different.

He doesn't actually have any homework and there's no television in his room, so he picks up a book and he tries to pretend it's interesting. Outside his room his sister is shouting again, and he's annoyed by these constant reminders of her presence.

She quiets and with her welcome silence, Parker can hear the muffled sounds of the adult voices. Bones and his dad are not quiet. Their voices project and they argue about things even he finds silly, and this is (and always has been) normal to him. When they are quiet it's because they're exceptionally serious, and he's mostly sure that right now, they're being serious about him. He doesn't especially want to think about it – not when he's doing such a spectacular job of telling himself that he doesn't care – so he turns on his PSP and leaves the volume turned up, and he so successfully immerses himself in the virtual racing world he jumps at the soft knock on the door.

"Come in," he sighs.

He assumes that it's Bones. She always waits for an answer before she opens the door while his dad usually doesn't bother. But his dad fills the doorway and he reluctantly puts aside his game. Because he (mostly) knows to be respectful even when he's upset.

"Bones needs to go to work for an hour or two... do you feel like going to the park?"

Parker wants to say yes, but he hesitates. Because if she's going to work, then it means that they're stuck with the baby.

"Can I go with Bones instead?"

"Can I go with Bones instead?"

Booth is surprised first and hurt second. While he's so, so thankful his partner and his son get along so well, he misses the days when Parker would have done just about anything to spend an extra few minutes with him.

"I dunno, buddy; she's got a lot of work to do. She can't have you running around. Just come with me and Joss."

"Bones won't mind, dad," Parker says quickly. "I won't get in her way; I'll bring a book. And Angela showed me how to hook my Xbox up to that big TV in her office."

The knife twists a little further as Parker's voice begins to take on that begging tone he's accustomed to hearing when his son pleads with Rebecca for more time. Booth absently wonders if this is how Rebecca feels, and then he remembers that he has spent nearly twelve years leaving his son at the door and driving away, so it doesn't really compare. But it still smarts.

"What's going on with you?"

He tries to keep his voice light and curious more than accusatory, because while he would have never described Parker as repressive before Friday, he feels very far away from him right now and he has no way of knowing how Parker will react.

"Nothing," Parker says sharply. But when Booth simply stares and waits, he loses some of that attitude and mutters his next words into the floor. "I just like the lab. That's all."

"You'll have to ask Bones," Booth informs him. He's hoping that this will dissuade Parker slightly, but the minute the words pop out the boy's face lights up and Booth remembers that Parker has never hesitated to ask Brennan for anything. She had been integrated into his life at an early age and he's nearly as comfortable around her as he is his parents.

"Okay."

"And if she says no, I don't want you trying to change her mind," Booth tries one more time.

Parker rolls his eyes. "I won't, dad."

Brennan steps into the doorway with her shoes on and her bag slung over her shoulder. Booth enjoys the way her personal life blends in with her work life in these snapshots, and he bites back his pleasure as he watches Jocelyn try her best to take possession of the keys still clenched in her mother's hand.

"I will be gone at least three hours. Should you require my assistance at any time, call me."

She has changed too (he thinks maybe they're all changing, all evolving, and mostly, it's a good thing). Once upon a time there had lived a woman named Brennan who kept her own schedule and ignored her phone when it interrupted her and jumped on planes at a minute's notice. And now she has a child (sometimes two. Often three) and she does things like ensure they know she is just a phone call away, and she does it without even thinking about it.

Booth is thinking about these things as Brennan passes him the baby, pats Jocelyn's downy soft hair, touches his arm, and waves to Parker, and then Parker rushes toward her.

"Can I come with you?"

Her nose scrunches up. "Why?"

"I just want to, Bones. I promise I won't get in the way."

She still looks confused. "I can't say this with absolute certainty, but I believe you will almost inevitably become very bored. You should stay with Booth."

His face falls and she looks hopelessly to Booth for answers, but he doesn't have any for her this time around. Parker's crestfallen expression is as hard for her to bear as it is for Booth, and she quickly backtracks. She gets that this is important to Parker and it suddenly doesn't so much matter whether or not she understands why.

"... however, if you would like to accompany me regardless, I see no reason not to allow it."

"ThanksBonesyou'rethebest," he says in a rush as he bolts out of the room to pull on his shoes.

Booth watches him disappear and when he turns to face Brennan it's clear that he's upset, but she can't immediately discern whether this is because of her, or because of something that has obviously – even to her – gone wrong between him and Parker.

Jocelyn is trying to insert her fingers into his mouth again, and Brennan's heart clenches in the best way.

"You don't have to take him with you," Booth says eventually.

"I know," Brennan replies with just the slightest hint of caution. "I don't mind. He's very well behaved."

She bites her tongue and stops herself just before she tells him that having Parker around while she's working is actually less of a distraction than having him around while she's working. She senses that this is not the time.

Instead, she says one more goodbye to her baby and she meets Parker by the door. Booth turns the locks behind them and smiles down at his daughter, who stands beside him on not-quite-stable legs clutching his pants like a lifeline.

"Mommy?" she questions.

It's one of about forty words she knows, although her vocabulary is growing fast, and Booth's smile is all of a sudden not quite so forced.

"No, kiddo. It's just you and me for a while."

"Up please."

The words get sort of jumbled together in the way the words of under-two-year-olds do, but Booth, as her father, interprets the mess easily and he scoops her up and cuddles her against his chest.

"Who's your favourite?" he whispers.

"Mommy," Jocelyn answers definitively.

Booth sighs. "No, Joss. Daddy. Daddy's having a rough day; daddy."

"Daddy," she repeats his emphasised word with equal assuredness.

He shakes his head. "Now you're just humouring me. You know, this isn't going to work if we're not honest with each other."

Jocelyn stares at him curiously and then rests her head back against his chest, fisting one small hand in his shirt and fumbling blindly for his mouth yet again with the other. "Daddy."

Booth removes her fingers for the umpteenth time and kisses the top of her head. "You need to promise me that you'll always, always tell me what's bothering you, okay? This thing with your brother, none of that. I ask what's wrong, and you lay it down for me, got it?"

"Juice please."

He decides that this is good enough. For now.

Parker starts off on the platform with Brennan, and as time passes he drifts away and back again. Cam leaves shortly after she arrives – because she has a life and she's not wasting her weekend on something that can most certainly wait until Monday – and Brennan is a hum of high energy as she moves about the platform and buries herself elbow deep in work that is clinical and fascinating and probably won't land any crushing blows on her heart.

She loves Booth and she loves the work that they do together, but every once in a while, it's nice to act in her more traditional capacity.

Parker ambles down the hall intermittently in his travels between Angela's office and her own, but she barely registers these things until she hears him clear his throat softly and looks up to find him standing patiently at the bottom of the stairs. She smiles and snaps off her gloves to swipe him in, and she's mostly convinced that he's simply craving a little human interaction and will drift off again after he checks in with her. But he stays. He asks questions about her work – expansions on his earlier questions; and Brennan is not linked to him by blood but she feels a rush of pride for him and his ability to retain and process information far beyond his years – and he pulls on a pair of latex gloves and asks which bones he's allowed to touch. She's always appreciated Parker's curiosity, but right now she appreciates that he's polite and treats people with respect providing they treat him accordingly. Not for the first time, as she carefully creates a row of five strong bones for Parker, she thinks about what a good father Booth is to his children. She is grateful every time she goes into the world and observes the 'Ambers' inhabiting it, that somehow, in the mess of everything that they get wrong (often repeatedly), their children continue to be okay.

"Bones?"

"Yes?"

He doesn't continue right away and Brennan places her tools on the table and tilts her head. It makes all the difference when Booth waits for her to get her thoughts in order. The least she can do is bestow the same kindness on Parker.

"You love my dad, right? Like, a lot?"

She wonders what she could have done to cause him to question this. Since only one response comes to her, she hopes that it's enough.

"Yes."

"And dad had other girlfriends before you, but that doesn't matter because he's been with you longer than anybody."

Brennan's brow furrows. "That is not sound logic."

"Okay, but say dad had this other girl and they were together for like, a million years before he met you."

"That's... not possible."

"But if it was-

"It's not."

"Bones."

He stresses her name in an exasperated manner so much like Booth's, she heaves a defeated sigh and settles for internally mourning the metaphoric death of plausibility in a hyperbole prone society.

"Okay," she says. And it pains her. It really does.

"So they're together for a million years, and even after you and dad get together, you know that no matter how much time you spend with him, the rest of your life even, you'll never get to spend as much time with him as the girl before you. Would you be mad?"

This scenario does offend Brennan. But as usual, her indignation is somewhat off target. "Why aren't I entitled to a million years?"

"It just doesn't work that way, Bones. Maybe dad loses his immortality or something when he meets you. Whatever. You get a normal lifetime."

"That's nonsensical as well as grossly unfair."

"Would you be upset?"

"I believe I would be very upset," she huffs. She's already halfway to feeling this way; hypothetical, entirely implausible situation be damned.

"Jocelyn's gonna have spent more time with my dad than I have in my whole life by the time she turns two," Parker states, and suddenly he doesn't feel like looking her in the eye anymore. "I figured it out a couple days ago. After that, I'll never catch up with her."

The last of his words are muttered into the tabletop, and Brennan feels this little pain in her chest that she has come to accept as a very unfortunate side effect of parenthood. When your child hurts, you hurt. Even when, from a technical perspective, the child in question is not your child.

But she's outwardly calm. Parenting has also taught her the futility of panic.

"What brought you to that conclusion?"

"I spend every other weekend with dad, right? That's twenty six weekends a year. Which is fifty two days." He swings his foot back and forth and meets her eye, challenging her to refute this. But Brennan stays quiet and he continues. "Fifty two days times twelve years is six hundred and twenty four days. Three hundred and sixty five days times two years is seven hundred and thirty days. She's a baby; next year I'll be a teenager and she still beats me."

Brennan calculates the numbers quickly in her head and determines that this works on an extremely base level. However there are literally dozens of variables that would change everything. And since his platform is so founded in logic, she encases her argument accordingly.

"That doesn't account for your vacations. Or holidays. Or the business trips Rebecca takes. The custody schedule is oftentimes subject to change."

"I'm not mad at her, not really. I know it's not her fault," Parker clarifies, as if it's only just occurred to him that Jocelyn is Brennan's biological child and he is not. "I just... I don't..."

She's not quite sure what she will say when she begins but she knows she cannot leave Parker to struggle. So she looks him in the eye and speaks from the heart. "You're the first child. The first son. This holds great significance, Parker."

"Yeah," he agrees without conviction. A beat passes and Parker meets her eye again. "Don't tell dad, okay?"

Brennan shifts uncomfortably. She doesn't enjoy secrets. "I have found Booth to be very adept at making me feel... better. Perhaps you would feel better as well if you discussed this with him."

Parker shrugs. And then he asks a question about a marking on one of the bones in front of him, and the change in topic causes emotional whiplash for Brennan. But she answers the question and allows the conversation to close, because she doesn't know what else to do.

It's close to four hours later when his partner and son return to the apartment. Only this time things are off kilter with Brennan as well. She's more attentive to Parker – she's always attentive, but there's this thing he can't put his finger on making it unnatural now – and it feels like she's compensating for something but he is blind to both the why and the what. She's watching Parker, watching him, and over the course of the evening he gets a glimpse of guilt every now and again.

The three of them are in the kitchen and Jocelyn is settled in her high chair, and Brennan is studying him so intently as he washes dishes with Parker, he can all but see smoke. When Parker runs off to get a new dishcloth (he's dropped the current one and while it's tempting to simply pick it up and continue, Brennan would freak) Booth claps his hands and startles her violently out of her thoughts.

"What's the matter?" he asks, ignoring her glare.

"Nothing."

Her tells are as obvious to him as they've ever been and he folds his arms. "Bones-

"What, Booth?"

She's so unnecessarily defensive he's taken aback. And then it all makes sense.

"You know what it is, don't you?" he states with certainty. "He talked to you."

Brennan chews the inside of her lip as she deliberates. "He asked me not to tell you," she says softly.

Booth pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to remind himself that he loves her because she always acts with the best of intentions. He tries not to think of all the ways this can – and often does – go wrong.

"Bones, he's my son."

"I know that."

"And he's upset."

"I know."

"And you don't see why you should have said something."

He feels his voice rise a decibel, maybe two, senses the faintest hint of anger beginning to mingle with two days of frustration, and he knows this isn't her fault but damn it, it's infuriating hearing her temperate, hyper-rational tone when he's feeling neither of those things.

Brennan's voice is still calm, but it rises a decibel, maybe two, of its own accord to match his. "He trusted me, Booth. It wouldn't have been fair."

"Bones, this here isn't fair. We're supposed to be a team."

"What was I supposed to do?"

"Be the adult, Bones. You're the parent, not his friend."

She hates it when he's condescending. He knows this. He knows this and it's part of the reason the words fall so easily out of his mouth. They're much better at communicating than they had been eight years ago. Four years ago. Even just under two years ago. But everyone has bad days.

Parker hovers just outside the kitchen with the dishcloth until he's sure that Brennan will keep her word, and then he turns around and heads to his room. It's a repeat of this morning. Their voices are low but they're tense and it's the not being able to hear them that causes him distress.

This continues for a while until he hears the front door close. A minute later there's a soft knock on his door, and when he gives the okay, Brennan pokes her head in.

"Hi, Bones."

She steps fully into the room and his sister trails in after her, dragging along this stuffed cow he's pretty sure Bones would throw away in a heartbeat if his dad and Joss wouldn't pitch a fit. The thought makes him smile and he doesn't shift away when Brennan sits beside him on the bed.

"Where's dad?"

"He is putting gas in my car," Brennan smiles ruefully. "I believe this is one of those instances in which we both require a little time and space."

Parker shakes his head. "You guys are so weird."

Jocelyn looks up at her brother, takes the cow's tail out of her mouth, and generously offers him her soggy plush animal. Parker grimaces, but he quickly pastes on a smile and thanks her. When she raises her arms, he obligingly pulls her up to join them on the mattress.

"She's been trying very hard to properly enunciate your name," Brennan informs him. "The 'r' is difficult for her, but she's very close."

"Will you call me if she says it before the next time I come over?" he asks hopefully.

"Of course."

"Cool."

His sister reasserts possession of the cow, and sits contently in his lap for about three seconds before she opts to stand on the bed and bounce instead. Brennan keeps a careful eye on the movement without taking her focus off him, and he squirms somewhat uncomfortably.

"Booth has always believed time to be relative; which is a notion that I – as a scientist – have always objected to strenuously. However, over the last few years I have come to understand your father's position. Though I maintain that this is in a strictly metaphoric sense, of course," she clarifies quickly.

Parker doesn't understand where the conversation is going, but years of Bones-speak means that he naturally approaches this in the same way as his father. He simply stares at her and trusts that she'll continue to talk, and eventually the words will make sense.

"It isn't at all fair, but the value of the quantitative figure pales in comparison to the quality of the time you do get, Parker," Brennan tells him firmly. "And I feel confident your dad would tell you something very similar if you gave him the chance."

"It's stupid," Parker sighs. "There's nothing he can do to fix it, anyway. Dad hates it when he can't fix stuff."

"I believe that he hates it more when the people he loves make no attempt to effectively communicate with him."

He absorbs this, and Brennan understands the importance of having time alone to process better than most, so she gets off the bed and reaches to pick up her daughter.

And the toddler promptly begins to cry.

Brennan rolls her eyes and tries to remember a time when she had been so proud to hear her progeny speaking, the loud declarations of 'no' hadn't been quite this much of a nuisance.

"It's okay, Bones. You can leave her in here."

Brennan's eyebrows lift, but Parker is sincere albeit distracted. So she straightens and runs her hand gently through his ever-tangled mop of hair. "I'll be in the kitchen if you need me."

Everything is quiet when Booth returns, and it's in the silence that he's most aware of how accustomed he has become to constant noise. Especially on the days there are two children instead of one. He follows the trail of lights to Brennan's office; for someone so environmentally conscious, she has a terrible habit of leaving every light in the apartment turned on long after she's left the room. He hovers in her open doorway and waits for her to look up from her computer screen.

It doesn't take long.

"Hey," he smiles sheepishly.

"Hi," she answers. "Are you going to start yelling again?"

Her eyes are smiling though, so Booth laughs and breaches the threshold, and he's pretty sure they're done fighting.

"That depends. Are you going to start calling me names again?"

Brennan's smile reaches her mouth. "I think I'm finished."

"Yeah, me too." He leans over her and kisses her soft lips, and she kisses him back, and it's been almost three years but he's still just so grateful that all of this is part of what they are. "Where are the kiddies?"

"I put Jocelyn to bed half an hour ago. Parker is in his room packing his things."

Booth nods. "I'll take him back when he's done. What are you doing?"

"Organising my notes from the lab today."

"Fascinating," he smirks.

"Quite."

When he tires of provoking her, Booth checks on Parker and then turns on the television in the living room once it becomes clear that his son would still much rather be alone. In the past three days he's been given a glimpse of the teenage ball of joy that will likely be Parker, and he's not sure he's ready for it. They've always been close, and this distance placed on top of the physical distance that's been there between them for the entirety of Parker's life, it seems like a bit much to ask of a person.

The hockey game plays out in front of him but he'll have to go back and watch the recording anyway; his mind is far from the TV. And just when he's working himself up to getting off the couch and hurrying Parker along, the child in question walks into the living room and throws himself onto the end cushion with flourish. The action is typical of the Parker he has always known, and Booth hides a smile.

"Something wrong, bud?"

Parker releases a theatrical sigh. "Yes."

It's an honest answer, finally, and Booth sits up straight. It would have been nice if they could have gotten this out of the way prior to ten minutes before parting ways for another two weeks, but he would take later over never.

So Parker starts at the beginning, and he relays his thought process and his calculations and his conversation with Brennan back at the lab, and by the time he's finishing his story he looks like he's about to cry and the heavy weight on Booth's chest lifts, because this is something he can handle. He puts an arm around Parker's shoulder, and Parker allows the contact even though he's not really big on hugs anymore.

"That's nothing but math, Parks. Math is stupid."

Booth sounds so sure of this, Parker's reflexive response is blind acceptance. Because while he's getting older, he's still young enough for his dad to be his hero. He's still young enough to want to believe everything his father says. He relaxes. There's something in his chest that still aches, but the lump in his throat that has been constant since earlier that week slowly dissolves and he can breathe.

"It's not fair," he mutters.

"Life's not fair, Parker," Booth says as gently as he can. "All we can do is make the best of what we've got. And you know, even if you lived here all the time, odds are you would still feel this way every once in a while. It's part of the burden of having a brother or sister, bub. Believe me, I know."

"I don't hate her, dad," Parker feels compelled to make clear.

"I know you don't. Some days are just easier to like your siblings than others, and that's okay. You've just gotta speak up, alright? Don't waste an entire weekend stewing about things like this again."

Parker ducks his head in embarrassment and Booth selfishly holds him a little tighter, knowing the window for affection is small and closing quickly. They can't resolve this in a night; especially given that he should have brought Parker home twenty minutes ago, but they've gone a step in the right direction and maybe next time, Parker won't wait three days before he says what's on his mind.

"Don't tell Bones I said math was stupid," Booth instructs sternly.

Parker beams, and when his eyes light up, Booth's do too. He smiles and he looks like a little boy again, and Booth banishes the vision of a sullen teenager to the dark recesses of his mind. The imminent transition of his son from child to young adult is another issue he doesn't need to come to terms with tonight.

"Come on," Booth pushes Parker up from the couch and slings the boy's backpack over his shoulder. "Your mom'll have my head if I don't get you home soon."

Parker nods and blinks sleepily. Emotional outpourings are exhausting regardless of age. So he's asleep before Booth can even get out of the parking garage, and Booth commits the image of his son pillowed against the passenger window to memory anew at every red light between his place and Rebecca's.

If he can cram his head full of enough of these memories, maybe he has a shot at surviving Parker's teen years.