Summary: Booth reflects about the things he's learned about his partner in just the last three months.
Note: For over ten years I have not been moved to write fanfiction, content to just read - until I saw that S6 finale. Wow. Kudos to Fox and all the Bones writers for taking a leap.
Disclaimer: I assure you, I own nothing.
There are a great many things that you can surmise from a person after seven years of working side by side with them - especially in the crazy, unpredictable, extreme circumstances that our partnership has led us through. Seconds after meeting Dr. Temperance Brennan, I already had a good grasp of her intellect, her devotion to her science, her ridiculous hotness, her social awkwardness, yada, yada, yada.
Over the years, I have become an expert in all things Bones, enough to write a book about her that would put Sweet's own book on us to shame. I know how she likes her shoes (stacked heel 2 inches tall that adequately supports her calcaneus bone, no buckles, dark brown overly expensive leather, rounded toe to allow the phalanges sufficient movement, padded insole to protect the delicate structure of her three cuneiform bones) and I know what her favorite beer is and why (Leavenworth Light, from some crazy northwestern fish company that claims they are a 'green' company which adds delicate touches of ashburne mild and munich malts to their boutique beers to delight your senses and support independent farmers-sheesh).
I know that she uses her blue-light thingy to check for any 'bio-deposits' left on the beds every time we check into a hotel for a case and I know that she became a devoted wildlife sponsor in Angela's honor. I know that she created a trust for Russ's kids and Parker with proceeds from her last book and that she always makes it a point to stay late at the lab on Tuesdays to talk to Micah, the security guard, for at least a minute or two. I know that she self-taught herself six languages and was currently working on Twi. I know what her favorite bones are (clavicles) and have even read her doctoral dissertation, or tried to at least.
Some of her likes and dislikes drive me up the wall, but all of them together make her who she is. My girl is not an easy character to understand, but I have grown to love her exactly the way she is. That's actually not even true, because I think I loved her close to instantly. I always knew she was the one, even though we couldn't get our act together until the Vincent thing. This is why these last three months have been amazing and I must admit very, very, very surprising.
You see the thing is, as I lay here with her in bed, naked and wrapped up in a tangle of sheets, just thinking how great a flat screen would be on the opposite wall, I can't help but marvel at all of the new particularities about Bones that I have just become aware of. I do this often, I guess as a way to fall asleep. You see, now that she is pregnant, she is more tired and turns in earlier, which means I turn in earlier and then I'm stuck looking at the walls in the dark sometimes as long as an hour before my brain finally lets go and I can join her in sleep.
I look down at her silky hair in my fingers as she softly snores away, tucked tightly into my right side. I smile in the dark, as that was one of those new found facts that I have come to love. Bones is a snorer. When I told her as much after our second night together, her eyes went wide and she told me in her snotty squint way that that was an impossibility as her nasal bones, sinus cavities and upper airway anatomy was perfectly structured. I saw the wrinkle in her forehead, however, so I know for a fact that it was not the first time that she was told this. I laughed, gave her a kiss to smooth out her forehead and was forgiven instantly. I'd rather hear her snoring the rest of my life than have a quiet night alone, anyway.
That was only the beginning, though. The list is quite long. If I were to be completely honest, I've actually learned A LOT from her and about her. I now know that a typical 7 minute shower with a low psi flow shower head uses 15 gallons of water. Her very matter-of-fact suggestion to shower together in the mornings to conserve resources caught me out of the blue. Needless to say, I am absolutely committed to Bone's water conservation efforts.
Speaking of water, she drinks exactly eight glasses of water daily. I know most people try to do this, it's healthy and all that, but Bones actually does the math all day long. I caught onto this a few weeks in, where at night night before turning in, she drank almost two whole glasses of water from a pitcher. When I asked her if she was feeling okay, Bones looked at me like I was asking the silliest question in the world and said that she was still missing 14 ounces for the day. I later realized that she calculated her water consumption to the ounce to make sure she drank her requisite eight glasses daily.
You would think that between the water thing, the vegetarian thing and the crappy light beer thing that Bones was a granola munching, Whole Foods quinoa eating lunatic all the time, but she is most certainly not. All these years I thought that her stealing a fry or two from my plate at the diner was her greatest food indulgence. It is not. It took about two weeks to uncover, but I came to discover that my woman is a sneaky cheetos puffs addict.
The day I came home early and caught her halfway through an enormous party size bag as she read a pregnancy book on the couch, she gave me a sheepish look and told me she was having cravings. As an FBI special agent trained to detect lying I knew for a fact she was most certainly NOT just having a craving. I don't know where she kept the snacks in the house, but I had seen the bags in the kitchen trash. I told her as much as I grabbed the bag she was working on and ran off. She yelped and ran after me until I was cornered by the dining room. She tackled me to the ground in a fit of giggles. Puffs went flying, my crisp white shirt was covered in artificial cheese stains. It was a hot mess.
When she finally stilled, straddling me on the floor, smiling with dark mischief, I told her that cheetos were nothing but empty calories and that a woman of her intelligence would know that. Emotions ran through her eyes for a long minute as she debated whether or not to argue. Instead, she let go of her ponytail slowly and reached down to pull her sweatshirt along with her camisole up over her head. You would think after weeks of being intimate I would be used to her body, but my mouth went slack anyways at the sight of her. What she said next made it dry. Apparently one serving of cheetos contains 160 calories. It takes approximately 1 whole hour of sex to burn that many calories. She had had half a bag. After that day, I shopped for cheetos at Costco. I figured as long as we were burning the calories, it was time to embrace Bone's addiction for good.
Now you might assume that in our relationship I would always be the prude. While I'll admit to being more - traditional in my approach, Bones just baffles me in this department. I'm not the type to brag about my conquests, but I've been with a lady or two. However, all the experience in the world has not prepared me for this particular one.
I've always known Bones to be brash and confident in her nature. Sex with her is no different as I found out rather quickly. She likes to keep the lights on, has no qualms about her body and tackles sex like she tackles everything else - head on. So it was kind of surprising that she never really talked about it. After a lovemaking session, she would get a very curious, clinical, squinty expression as she lay by my side and ran her hands up and down my chest. At first I didn't know what to think about it, so I said nothing. After a while though, curiosity forced me to ask if something was on her mind. Geez. I was SO not ready for her response.
She wanted to know if I preferred visual over auditory encouragement will engaging in sex, what amount of foreplay was adequate, did I experience an olfactory-phermonic response, how long before I typically could perform intercourse again, what position elicited the greatest amount of satisfaction, and on and on.
I lay there dumbstruck as the questions continued. I eventually stopped her by flipping her over, and looking deep into her face. I couldn't for the life of me comprehend just how deep the machinations in her genius brain went, but I had to let her know that we were not in the lab running an experiment and that I was not one of her research subjects.
Her deep blue eyes went all glassy and I knew that my anger was out of line. She said in a shrill, defensive voice that she wanted to know because understanding things - even our relationship - was the only way she knew how to cope with the changes. She was clinical and scientific and she didn't know how to change that about herself. If she could, she would give anything to be normal like everyone else.
My heart broke into a million pieces at that confession. Of course she was struggling to cope with the changes in our lives. Hadn't I struggled with moving my things to her place? With the reality of having the FBI separating us and patnering me to Agent Shaw? With the absolute terror of opening my heart so soon again to a woman that had already shred it to bits in the past?
I reflected back to the piles of pregnancy books on her desk, the child development studies she kept on her desktop that she read over and over, the time she spent observing Angela with little Mikey at the lab's day care during their breaks. For the last three weeks, since the pregnancy came to light, it was as if her new research obsession was motherhood. I had fully understood her need to know what would happen with our baby. It never occurred to me that figuring 'us' out was a part of her need to understand as well.
I felt like a complete jerk for not seeing this and so I held her beautiful face in my hands and kissed her deeply, gently. Breaking our kiss a while later, she panted breathlessly and asked if I was mad at her for asking so many questions. A thought occurred to me and I pulled back to lay on my back, pulling her frame to rest over mine.
In our favorite position, with my right hand in her hair and her head on my chest, I tried to strike a deal that would work for us both. I summoned my best squint vocabulary to explain that 'in uncovering more salient facts about each other, we should engage in a mutually beneficial exchange of queries to better understand the latent motivations for our thoughts processes and consequent behaviors.'
Talk about a home run. She turned to look up at me, straddled my hips, pushed herself up to her elbows on my chest and smiled. She was impressed by my squint talk and was obviously game. I let her go first with the questions and to my amazement, her questions were the same as before, word for word. I groaned in embarrassment and answered the first one. Visual. There, I said it.
She tilted her head slightly to the left, clearly processing the information, no doubt to be retrieved at a later time. Her expression was so seriously squinty that I had to prompt with an innocent sounding - what? She smiled and suggested we take a look at some internet lingerie catalogues to see what visual aids could be satisfactory. Already wrapping my head around the thought of Bones in something low-cut and lacy, I posed my question, before things digressed.
It was something that I had actually wondered for a while. You may think it the stupidest, most improbable question a man could ask, but I had to know about her make-up. It never seemed to come off. She smiled for a minute before confessing that her eye makeup was permanent. Now, I have to say that I was genuinely surprised. What I know about tattoos would assure me that tattooing thin, delicate skin like eyelids hurt like hell. She agreed but stated in her technical sounding self that by only applying lipstick every morning, she saved 560 minutes every year, plus the cost of cosmetics.
I could not stop laughing. I told her that even if it meant not having to shave every day for five minutes, I would still not tattoo my face. She was annoyed, but kept going in her argument by succinctly announcing that she had actually weighted those options years ago and decided that it was a VERY logical choice for her to undergo electrolysis rather than waxing and suggested that I look into the option for myself as well. I eventually got tired of teasing her and we moved onto her next question. Geez, my answers - unless expressed in minutes - would not be sufficient, so that one took a while. We kept going for hours until tiredness caught up with us and we called our interrogation quits.
That night I learned enough about Bones to add a complete chapter to my metaphorical book. Likewise, I know she gained perspective on me as well. Some of what we discover about each other in our little occasional games of Q&A is purely useless stuff. Did you know that Bones has 47 necklaces of varying tribal/exotic origins, all unique and many priceless? Check, I know that now, which is why I proposed with a 300 year old Parvati necklace rather than a ring. Rings hadn't exactly worked out for me anyway.
Other things are much more revealing, like when I explained how my mother took Jared and me to mass every Sunday when we were kids and then to the park to ruin our Sunday best with grass stains and ice cream right afterwards. She absorbed everything I said and after a few minutes of silence, announced that she would not be adverse to taking our child to Mass as a family, being that it would expose him or her to the religious folklore acculturated into my upbringing and offer anthropological perspective to the Judeo-Christian mythology.
I looked at her in the dark, knowing rather than seeing her left eyebrow raised in a casual way as she spoke her words. My smile came on slowly. I admit I was speechless. This was not an easy acquiescence for her and I appreciated the courage it took for her to compromise one of her strongest beliefs just to make me happy. Although I was certain we would love each other forever, I distinctly felt her love at that moment. Overwhelmed with the feeling, I squeezed Bones in my arms, willing the tears I felt in my eyes to not fall. She held me back and in quiet silence, we drifted off to sleep, content and happy in our growing understanding of each other.