Here's chapter 2 folks! I hope you enjoy it. Thanks to all of those who reviewed the last chapter. Keep them coming with this one-- I do so enjoy reviews :)
--As always, no matter how much I wish, Bones or anything associated with the show will never belong to me.--
Chapter 2 - Surprisingly Not Spontaneous
Tray of coffee balanced carefully in one hand and files tucked securely under his arm, Special Agent Seeley Booth carefully pulled open the door to the Jeffersonian Medico-Legal lab. To the untrained eye, he probably looked less than professional with his rumpled chestnut hair, jeans, white tee-shirt under an open blue and white striped button-down and keys dangling from between tightly clenched teeth.
"Hey, the caffeine fairy's here," Hodgins quipped, taking only a moment to glance up from a particularly gruesome pile of dirt.
Booth shot him one of his famous FBI Agent looks of death. "Helpf, pleath?" he mumbled around his leather keychain.
"Good morning, my lovelies. Oh, coffee! You are my hero." Booth turned toward the chipper sound of Angela's voice, gratefully accepting her help as she grabbed the keys out of his mouth and set the coffee tray on a nearby table.
"Thank you, Angela. Never occurred to you to, I don't know, come down and help the man that brought you coffee?" Zack and Hodgins just glanced up at him briefly and then continued on with their work.
Booth just shook his head at them and turned back to Angela. "The report come back yet from Bones?"
Angela nodded at him, taking a thorough swig of her coffee. "I put it on her desk."
Grabbing his double black coffee from the holder, he smiled at Angela and headed in the direction of Brennan's office. Dust bunnies aside, her office still remained in much the same way as she had left it. Booth made himself comfortable in her desk chair, taking a moment to savor the sweet vanilla orange scent around him. Three months she'd been in Egypt, and the whole room still smelled like her. He shook that thought away and reached for the file. As he slid the paper clip from the outside, a small slip of yellow paper fell next to his right foot.
This was the best I could do. There really isn't much to work with here. Keep me informed. Oh, and Tut sends his best.
Brennan
"Smart ass." He stuck the note into his shirt pocket and prepared to delve into the life of one Janet Harris-- white, female, aged twenty two, location of death unknown, body found under the concrete floor of a frat house after a drunk attempt to create a mud pit in the basement.
An hour later, he was so deep in the world of Janet Harris that he nearly fell out of his chair when Angela came to check on him.
"Sorry! Didn't think you FBI guys were supposed to scare so easily." Angela sat herself down across from him on the other side of Brennan's desk. Booth rolled his eyes at her. She ignored it. "Anything yet?"
He shook his head, defeated. "How goes the simulation of the attack?" Booth tossed the file onto the desk, leaning back in the chair, hands behind his head.
She returned his defeated nod. "Unless our attacker is a contortionist with rubber arms, I've got nothing." They looked at each other for a few moments in silence until Angela broke it with a sigh. "I miss Brennan. No one else's brain works like hers." He snorted , opening his mouth to reply. His first syllable was swallowed by the tinny ring of his cell phone.
"Booth." A smile crept across his face as he recognized the frustrated, impatient voice on the other end. "Hey, Bones. How goes the excavating?"
A pause. "Booth, I--" Another pause. He immediately sat up right, his face heavy with concern.
"What's wrong?"
Brennan answered with an exasperated sigh. "I made a lame attempt at spontaneity and now I'm stuck here!" A riot of voices cluttered the line as she spoke and his brow furrowed in confusion.
"And where exactly is here, Bones?"
Another sigh, this one more tempered. "I'm in a holding cell at Ronald Reagan Washington National. I packed some tools and artifacts in my carry-on and apparently the permit I got in Egypt only allowed me to leave the country with them, not bring them into the States. They won't let me leave without clearance from the FBI and an agent coming to claim me." Frustration seeped through the phone and he could almost see the holes burned into the custom agents' heads from the death rays shooting out of her steely blue eyes. Despite his burning desire to do so, he made no smart aleck remark in response, and instead promised to be there in twenty minutes and hung up.
Angela looked at him quizzically.
"Bones is back," he replied with a toothy grin.
Mid-day traffic was not as heavy as usual through downtown and, as promised, he made it to the airport in little more that twenty minutes. Ten minutes after that, Booth was standing in front of her, biting his lip so hard to keep from laughing, he was sure he could taste blood.
"Not a word," Brennan said, picking up her satchel and back-pack. "Just get me out of here."
He offered her a friendly half-smile and raised his hands at her in compliance. Grabbing her luggage, Booth led the way out of the crowded customs area toward the parking garage where the FBI vehicle sat waiting for them.
Though it took all of his self-control not to talk to her, he knew he had to let Brennan make the first move. Thus, for the first five minutes of the ride back to the Jeffersonian, he was content with nothing more than the sound of the tires humming on the road below them.
"So much for your 'surprising woman' theory," she muttered, leaning her head against the tinted window.
Booth chuckled quietly. "Oh, Bones. You are a surprising woman. I guess part of that surprise is that you're not so good with spontaneity." He smiled reassuringly at her and she finally looked over at him, offering an exhausted lop-sided smile in return.
A few more moments of comfortable silence passed between them until Booth finally got up the nerve to ask her.
"So, not to look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth or anything, but aren't you three months ahead of schedule?" He kept his eyes on the road in front of him, listening to her shift as she crossed her arms.
"Yeah, I've completed my part of the dig." Brennan stared away from him out at the steady stream of shops sliding by the window. Booth knew better.
"And the real answer?"
He glanced over at her. She was staring down with particular interest at her hands, now placed firmly in her lap. "I found that I missed having my head in the present. And it's all your fault." Her tone held only the tiniest glimmer of accusation. "I used to be perfectly content with spending all of my time buried in the past. Then you come along with these cases and this modern, compassionate optimism and now all I want to see is now." She took a deep breath, exhaling loudly.
Booth went back to keeping his eyes firmly planted on the road in front of him. "Is that really such a bad thing?"
He heard her sigh again. "No, just different. New, I guess."
As they approached the final stop light before their destination, he took the opportunity to really look her over. She met his gaze and he gave her the special smile/smirk hybrid he reserved only for moments like this, and only for moments with her. "How about something else that's new?"
The light turned green as she cocked a curious eyebrow at him. "What?"
He concentrated on turning into the parking lot before he answered. "How about dinner, you know, with me." Though he intended it as more of a statement, the end raised itself up into more of a hopeful question.
Brennan folded her arms casually across her chest. "Dinner with you is not new," she answered, defiantly.
Booth smirked to himself. "It is when it's a date and doesn't involve skeletons, Sid or Wong Foo's."
He slid the black SUV into a vacant spot and put it into park. He found himself almost holding his breath as he took the keys from the ignition. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw the corners of her mouth curl up and his heart nearly flew out of his chest.
"Okay" was all she said.
He beamed back at her. "Okay."