"The trip shouldn't take long" Brennan said, keeping her eyes carefully glued to the stack of materials piled in front of her.
At least those disparate, wrinkled bits of loose paper sitting on her lap were easier to deconstruct and analyze than the mess of feelings her partner routinely brought out in her, particularly of late. It had, perhaps, always been that way when it came to him; but over the last few months her latent inner-turmoil had definitely reached epidemic, near-crippling proportions.
Because depressingly, finally understanding what one wanted out of life did not necessarily equate with knowing how to get it-even with several impressive doctorate degrees staring down at one's learned self from every wall.
"It's not as if I'm going to go over Snell's cabin with a mass spectrometer" she continued, giving in to Booth's juvenile need for reassurance. "I hardly brought any equipment. My only purpose in going there is to ascertain whether there's any possibility that the murder could have been committed at his place. If our brief inspection supports that conclusion the Jeffersonian staff and the FBI technicians can perform a more thorough investigation of the premises tomorrow. Consider this a scouting trip."
"Shouldn't take long? We've been driving for four hours in practically white-out conditions and we have four more to drive back, not counting however long we stay at Snell's hut. My back is starting to hurt."
"You're overdramatizing the facts once again in another effort to garner undue sympathy. It's barely flurrying; the bulk of the storm isn't even supposed to hit this part of Pennsylvania for at least six more hours. Besides, we're almost there-and I'll drive on the way back, if the thought brings you any comfort."
After closing the thick folder in her hands and placing it back down on the floor of the car the anthropologist looked up, fixing her partner with a gaze that was both solemn and oddly intense.
"We'll make it to your game and I promise that once there I will enjoy myself. I was being disingenuous before, Booth; I want to be there. I want it as much as you do."
The statement was issued with a seriousness that made Booth squirm in his seat.
Brennan's eyes went back to the colorless landscape but before long she threw another quick, clandestine glance in Booth's direction, which she unhappily noticed he caught.
The agent felt something, an electric spark, do an end-zone victory dance up and down the muscles flanking his spine. She wanted to be there, with him. Were they still talking about sports, he wondered?
"And you want to be there, obviously, so it should all work out, right?" she asked innocently, catching herself just in the nick of time and seamlessly switching back to the self-assured Brennan of old.
So maybe it was only about the hockey, after all.
"Uh huh. But you're buying the first round of beer for making me do this. In your 'smart' car, which you're making me drive. You know I hate this thing. It wants to do everything for you. It tells you not to pass when you want to pass, it breaks when you don't want to break. I can do my own parallel parking job just fine, thank you very much-I'm not fourteen. And can I tell you it's not the safest thing on this ice pond we've been driving on? My SUV would've been way better."
"Has it crossed your mind that this car may actually be smarter than you? Perhaps you should consider following it's advice."
"Really? This car is not smarter than me."
The barb had unerringly found its mark right in the center of her partner's brittle ego, but Brennan refrained from smiling in order to keep the fighting-and her headache-to a minimum. Her raised eyebrows, however, had no problem betraying her gratuitous merriment at his expense.
"My car is better," Booth taunted back in the most childish tone he could come up with.
"The government's fuel-inefficient car," Brennan reminded him, eliciting another fierce scowl. "I already explained it to you at length, Booth; significant portions of the research materials for the book I'm writing were scattered all over my car in preparation for my upcoming trip and I needed to organize them while you drove because I won't have time later tonight. There was far too much paperwork for me to move in an expeditious manner. Had I bothered to pack everything and transfer it to your vehicle before we left we'd still be in Washington. It would've taken a great deal of time which, as you so aptly pointed out and continue to bring up with excruciating regularity, is at a premium given that we need to be at your hockey rink in a few hours. Taking my car was yet another example of my overall thoughtfulness when it comes to your wellbeing."
Booth rolled his eyes but opted to change the topic before they accidentally fell into another one of their epic pro-wrestling matches.
"Hockey arena. So you still planning on going out of town this weekend with all this crap coming down?"
"Yes; I'm leaving tomorrow morning. The worst of the snow is supposed to be over by then and I'm certain that the interstate highways will be plowed and salted anyway. Road conditions shouldn't be a problem. Since the lab is closed on Monday for the yearly fire-code inspection, I'm taking the opportunity to attend a conference in Baltimore on the preservation of neolithic drawings in the Tassili n'Ajjer region of the Saharan Desert. I know several of the speakers and I find the topic fascinating as well as compelling, so it should be a highly enjoyable break."
Brennan waited to see if Booth had some disparaging remark to say about her choice of adjective for the upcoming weekend, but he appeared not to have taken note of it. Either he missed it, or he'd uncharacteristically resolved to be a little nicer the rest of the trip. And then it came, the tongue-in-cheek expression that she knew so well and that never failed to irritate her.
"Loads of fun, there, Bones."
"What are you doing this weekend? Do you have Parker?" she asked in return, bypassing the tempting opportunity to get in yet another dig.
"No-and for once in my life I'm glad. Like I need to catch something called 'the kissing disease' at my age-I can just hear the comments at work. It's payback time for Rebecca" he said, giving free reign to the smuggest of grins.
That disarming smile, silly, uncalled for, immature as it was, far more appropriate on a ten-year-old boy's face than that of a nearly forty-year-old man, still got to Brennan with it's unrestrained mischief and she found herself smiling along with her partner, totally against her better judgment.
"Are you planning on working part of the weekend, then? If we find anything in Snell's cabin, you could hook a leg around this case."
"Get a leg up on the case, Bones; there's no hooking of any kind going on here. And no, I'm not going anywhere near the office; they scheduled this stupid FBI teamwork retreat Saturday through Monday out in some dorky boy scout campsite. Paintball, lots of talking, trust exercises-all the twelve-year old girl hooey Sweets loves. At least someone's gonna be having a good time."
"Oh-I remember. That too should be enjoyable."
"It won't be" he replied flatly, ignoring the cascade of sarcasm oozing from her voice. "And that's why I said I had an out-of-town emergency and I couldn't go; I am not singing Kumbaya on my hard-earned, personal time. I don't want to blow my cover by showing up at the Hoover this weekend. Donut guy can wait."
"Is that why you were home when I called you this morning?"
"Yup-part of my cover."
"What did you tell them?"
"I said I had a dying uncle in Idaho I had to visit and I needed to leave this afternoon before it was too late."
"Idaho? You've probably never even been there, Booth. Besides, a rudimentary search of your family records by personnel would reveal you have no living uncles and almost certainly no relatives whatsoever in that state. You're an FBI agent; you should be intimately acquainted with the tenet that the more complex a lie is the more likely it is to fall apart under review. Effective deceit always requires a solid basis in facts familiar to the deceiver."
"What's complex about Idaho? Potatoes, rodeos, lots of hay. It's not like anyone's going to be asking me what I did there; it's Idaho, not Paris."
"You've been warned."
A large, dark blob suddenly appeared to their left through the curtain of pelting snowflakes.
"Hey, there's the ranger's station. We better stop and ask someone for pointers on getting to donut guy's cabin-it looked like a bear to find on Google maps. Nothing's marked."
"Oh, that is very good" she said, her eyes growing wide as she suddenly burst into a rare peal of uninhibited laughter. "Bears-because we're in a state park, and there's bears here!"
Booth stared at his partner with the look of a long-suffering cellmate.
"Yes, that's hilarious, Bones. No booze for you tonight; I think you might be buzzed enough already."
He applied the brakes very slowly when he saw the sign for the visitor's lot in the rear but the car still skidded in a thin layer of slush before finally coming to an inelegant stop.
"See-didn't I tell you! Sucky brakes; not smart brakes."
Brennan made a sour face as they pulled into the station's empty parking lot, an expression which remained unchanged as the couple walked made its way to the modern wood structure with its overdone rustic cabin motif.
"And for the record" Booth commented out of nowhere, "I got friends."
The anthropologist's face slowly rearranged itself to reveal the teensiest of smirks.
"Apparently, hundreds."