Author's note #1:

So, I'm quite possibly the slowest updater ever. Thank you to everyone who reads and leaves feedback - know that I really appreciate it. This chapter is quite short, and probably quite vague - setting everything up for later on is taking longer than I thought, but all questions will (hopefully) be answered in time. To answer the question about whether Brennan should be in a safe house: Perhaps she should but initially, I decided that the timescale was too short for it to be arranged (there was less than a half hour between Booth getting the phone call and his arrival at her apartment).

CHAPTER TWO
Little Things

-x-

And the little moments,
Humble though they be,
Make the mighty ages,
Of eternity.

-x-

Dried earth from the hems of her clothes had spread out onto the sheets and smudged her skin like charcoal. The pipes above her rattled and the coldness of the room subdued the wave of steam that threatened to spill out from beneath the bathroom door. She could hear Booth humming softly as he showered, and the clatter of the plastic shampoo bottle as it hit the ground.

Brennan sat up, but kept herself cocooned in the quilt. The heater had apparently coughed its last overnight and she was slow to expose herself to another day. She found her hands pulling open the little drawer beside her bed and flicking through a dusty copy of the Holy Bible. There was a spinning noise as a bottle of nail polish rolled and hit the cheap chipboard just below the handle.

The water continued to run, and at a loss for something better to do she shifted the blanket so that the ends of her toes stuck out and began to paint.

A short time later the door opened and Booth pottered about the room, occasionally glancing in her direction. She was entirely absorbed in her task and stifling the urge to interrupt her he lay back over the covers on his bed, waiting for her to break the silence.

Moments later he felt her gaze, and pretended not to notice as her face yielded to a suspicious expression.

"You brought a suit!" she exclaimed accusingly.

He shrugged. "And you brought shocking pink nail polish. What gives?"

"Is that one of your old army ranger tricks?" she continued, "the packed suitcase by the door?"

"Actually," Booth replied as he slipped his gun into its holster, "the weapon within reach? That's Army ranger. The suit would be entirely my own idea."

Brennan twisted the lid back on the polish. "It's not mine. Someone left it behind." She wiggled her toes, quietly pondering her own state of undress.

Booth looked up.

"You shouldn't use other people's stuff - didn't you see that show where the girl used someone else's make up remover and ended up dead with cracky lungs?"

"Cracky." She looked at him skeptically.

"It's a term," he insisted.

"So is lung fibrosis. Which would have been slightly more appropriate given the context."

"Pot-ay-to. Pot-ah-to," he replied irritatingly. "You watch detective shows?" He poked her in the side.

Brennan ignored him.

He looked at her incredulously and watched as she coloured slightly. "I always assumed you'd balk when the media doles out its weekly dose of inaccurate scientific information," he said with deliberation. "Or is that why you watch them, so you can mope over a tub of ice-cream whilst picking out the flaws?"

She folded her arms. "I hardly mope, Booth. Actually I find them quite an interesting portrayal of reaction to law enforcement in general."

"It's acting, Bones. Scripted. Real situations are never as eloquent."

"And never as easily solved," she murmured. She shivered softly. "Is the suit for show or do you actually have an idea of what we're supposed to do now?"

A few seconds passed, expanding the air in the room. She felt the cloudy weariness that had swept across Booth's face slowly settle between her shoulder blades, cooling the base of her spine.

"Wait," he replied. "Or go. Watch tv. Wait." He seemed vaguely frustrated and she took a step back, unsure if she was the source of the problem or just another aggravation.

"Bones, I'm sorry." He exhaled heavily and grabbed her hand. "Sit," he told her and she sat down beside him.

"It's okay." She cleared her throat. "You're a chaser, not a runner, Booth. I know that."

He gave her a wry smile. "There's not much chasing to be done this time. Unless - " He stood up suddenly. "Where are we?"

Brennan's forehead creased.

Before she had a chance to reply he had reached for his keys. "There's an FBI office about twenty minutes from here. I think it's time we did a little digging."

"About the others assigned to Kosovo with you?"

He nodded. "There were two. Not much to go on, but that's all I've got."

She looked doubtful, but at the same time she was secretly relieved at the thought of leaving the motel. "In that case," Brennan replied gesturing at her clothes, "I'm going to need something a little more formal."

Booth exuded a childish impatience, which she quickly extinguished.

"If my pyjamas are unsuitable for driving your car," she said, "then I'm fairly certain they won't do for breaking and entering an FBI building either."

Booth sighed. "I'm a Special Agent, Bones. There's no breaking and entering required."

"I thought the whole purpose of being on the run was that nobody knows where you are," she argued.

"That would be the accepted definition. Just - look on it as a necessary evil, okay?"

She looked at him triumphantly. "I knew that there was wrong-doing involved."

-x--x--x- -x--x--x-

Had she ever stood beside him barefoot?

Booth couldn't recall. For every small thing he noticed about Brennan, there were even more that his mind refused to register. Like how at first he looked at her as little as possible, and then later, how he caught her eyes above every other part of her. Time allowed him to know her piece by piece and he felt no urge to rush.

There was a strangled cough in the distance and it took several moments for Booth to focus on the face in front of him, and more for him to realise exactly what he had been doing.

Brennan would probably draw comparisons with tribal war paint and Booth was inclined to agree. There was something terrifying lingering in the thick coat of orange make-up obscuring the face of the young shop assistant.

She had a smug grin in place, one entirely appropriate for a man caught trying a pair of women's pants against himself in the mirror in the ladies department.

He could see the corners of her lips twitching as she tried not to laugh.

"Not what it looks like," he muttered.

She blinked. "Those might be a bit small for you. Perhaps you'd like to browse our selection for larger ladies... Sir?"

"I'm buying for my.. friend," he countered sourly.

She didn't seem convinced.

Booth turned back to the mirror. This wasn't a situation he could win anyway. If he got it wrong then Brennan would roll her eyes and give him a disapproving stare. If he got it right she'd put it down to her expert descriptions of her style and size. He, however, remembered the day that her hip bumped the side of his leg at the spot where he now held the waistband of the pants. He knew just how slight she was because of how his arm enveloped her when he put it around her shoulders, how small she was because of hours spent side by side.

He held the outfit out to the girl. "What do you think?"

Her eyes flicked up and then down. "Cute," she drawled leaning back against a rail of cheap cotton shirts.

He paused. Brennan did cute sometimes, but that was definitely ass-kicking, genius forensic anthropologist cute and not fifteen-year-old girl with an attitude problem cute. He sighed and started leafing through another clothes rail.

"This?" He modelled a second outfit.

"Figure-hugging top," she murmured, "Should show just the right amount of cleavage." She paused. "Sexy."

Booth dropped the top as if he'd been burned, then sheepishly bent down to pick it back up. "Moving on.."

After a few seconds he displayed a third outfit. She grimaced almost immediately and his heart sank as he awaited her response. He hadn't expected it to be this hard, even though the thought that partners weren't meant to buy each other clothes had crossed his mind as Brennan had pushed him out the door with a loose set of verbal instructions. He wondered if she'd notice that he could pick out the perfect dress for her, but when it came to something sensible he failed miserably.

The girl gave a dramatic yawn and then said "Boring."

"Just how is this boring?" he asked indignantly.

"It's simple, it's plain. It's black," she shrugged, her expression verging on defiant.

"You're wearing black," he challenged.

She gave him an exasperated look. "Well, I'm at work. And unless your mysterious 'friend' lives in a museum I'd.."

Booth cut her off. "I'll take it."

-x--x--x- -x--x--x-

"You look tired." Brennan's concerned face met him as he pushed open the door. She seemed slightly more awake than when he'd left her that morning. he surmised that she'd probably had a nap while he'd been gone. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he assured her, "Just lack of sleep, I think."

Her eyes followed him as he shut the door and walked inside.

"Really, Bones. I'm fine."

She nodded. "Any news?" she asked pointing at the newspaper that he'd picked up on his way back.

"The usual," he replied, placing the bags on the floor, "murder, mayhem and a missing paint-throwing fur activist."

Brennan frowned, "I'm sure no reputable publication would make such a reference." She grabbed the paper from him and scanned the headlines. "She's a social rights campaigner, Booth. There's no paint-balling involved."

"Try these on," he said, tossing her a pair of slacks. "And it's paint throwing," he added for good measure, as the bathroom door swung closed behind her. "And..," he whistled, "it seems she ran off with a few thousand dollars of theirs. That's not even close to socially right."

Brennan laughed.

"Booth, I - "

Her voice trailed off.

"Booth?"

She peered out to where Booth stood.

There was movement outside their room - a faint, vague rustling that lazily unfolded around them.

The note slipped under the door so slowly that the flashes in her mind were of the carpet fibres bending one by one. Her fingers extended in anticipation of touch, as she suddenly felt the room sag and bend and explode in front of her eyes. Silently, she willed her feet to move but they felt heavy and uncoordinated, as though they belonged to someone else.

Shaking, she glanced at Booth. His expression had hardened, his body caught in the same vacuum as hers, only he suddenly managed to break free and grab the piece of paper. When his eyes eventually met hers she found herself unable to cry out. He ran from the room into the corridor, his hand finding his gun.

The doorknob hit the wall in his wake and the sound crashed through her a hundred times over.

Author's note #2:

Anyone catch the reference to Emily Deschanel's early acting career? Thank you for reading, comments are adored and hopefully it won't be as long before I update again;)