Author's Note
Whilst I've appreciated reading lots of the amazing fan fic that's on here (yes, I'm one of those horrible readers that went for months without actually signing up and reviewing stuff), thisis the first time I've ever dipped my toe into actually trying to write one. Actually, it's the first time I've written something other than an academic essay in quite a number of years. So, basically, please go easy on me! This is probably going to end up quite angsty, but I got a little distracted with the set-up chapter and ended up talking about socks and philandering congressmen. Ah well.
Disclaimer: They're not mine, duh. If you want to sue me, you're very welcome to my student loans and overdraft. Honestly. Oh yes, and R2D2 belongs to Star Wars. Which I have somehow managed to go through 25 years of life without seeing.
It was a pleasant enough day, thought Special Agent Seeley Booth as he struggled to wrest open his over-filled sock drawer, to merit wearing a particularly nice pair of socks.
It was a Friday, the light of the sun was streaming through the gap in the centre of his curtains, and, to top it all, the night before he'd managed to get a confession out of a suspect, thus finishing yet another case. Which meant that this particular Friday evening would involve doing paperwork with Bones over beer and a movie.
And therefore, today definitely deserved a special pair of socks.
It had been an interesting case, and one that was sure to get a lot of publicity, given that it involved a married Maryland congressman who'd killed his male ex-lover after he threatened to go public about their affair. Cam had even received a phone call yesterday from some National Enquirer hack fishing for details, which, of course, she'd flatly refused to give.
Bones, unsurprisingly, not only hadn't known what the National Enquirer was, but had expressed complete mystification concerning what she had termed – or so he remembered – 'the prurient and insatiable demand of the American public for salacious stories about the lives of public figures.'
He smiled as he remembered their conversation, and how he'd teased her that the cases in her novels contained just the sort of 'salacious stories' that she claimed to be so uninterested in.
She'd – of course – denied it vehemently, maintaining that her novels were focused on the processes of forensics investigations, but he'd found himself unable to resist telling her that he knew most people read them for the sex scenes (he hadn't added, however, that he counted himself among their number).
In response to this, she'd raised her eyebrow in a way that from anyone else but Bones would definitely count as flirtatious.
'Hope and patience, Booth, hope and patience,' he muttered, repeating – as he'd often come to do - Gordon-Gordon's words to himself like a mantra. In recent months he'd come closer and closer to believing them.
He'd go over to the Jeffersonian this morning, he thought, and bring her coffee, and then tonight they would do the paperwork for the case, at his apartment, or at hers, and bicker over Thai food and beer. And he wouldn't tell her he loved her, but there, sitting next to her – a little too close – on the sofa, it would be damn easy to pretend that he was allowed to.
He settled eventually on a red pair of socks with pictures of R2-D2 on – one day he would make Bones watch Star Wars – and ten minutes later strolled out the door.
As he walked towards his government-issued gas-guzzler – the one she didn't like – his phone rang.