AN: Hi guys! Sorry I haven't posted, I've been pretty busy with it being the last few weeks of summer. I went camping with my family and our lovely friends from England, did service work in L.A for Native Americans, and ran around yesterday chasing my godmother's three year old son around and making sure he didn't get into trouble. I've also been reading Kathy Reich's Temperance Brennan books and started studying about anthropology and making plans on my future and college education to become a Forensic Anthropologist! So you can see why I haven't had much time to write, but be rest assured I haven't forgotten about it! Hope you enjoy and please review!
Not long after Angela and Brennan had left the Diner two familiar faces that hadn't been to the diner in some time entered through the glass doors.
Parker ran past his dad and went straight for the stools at the counter, his mess of curly blonde hair covering his head just barely rose above the counter top by an inch or two. He had really grown in the seven month's his father had been away. Now that he was ten years old he was really starting to get growths bursts. It still amazed Booth just how fast the little guy was growing. It didn't feel that it was that long ago he had been a little baby or a toddler just discovering how to walk and talk. Now he was reading chapter books, riding a bike, doing science experiments, learning to play hockey and football and becoming aware that girls don't have coodies. Booth hoped that Parker would stay just as sweet and caring in the years to come as he is now.
Booth sat down on the stool next to the one Parker had climbed up onto. He flagged a waitress down and turned to Parker. "Pancakes?"
A huge grin spread across Parker's face. "Yeah!"
The waitress smiled "Two plates?"
Booth nodded. "And a cup of fresh coffee, please."
"I'll have a cup of Orange Juice!" Parker exclaimed.
"Park's! What do we say?" Booth scolded.
"Please?"
"Please what?"
"Please may I have a glass of orange juice?"
Booth and the waitress Debbie laughed at his earnest face. "Thank you Parker, I'll get you one right away." Debbie laughed again as she wrote the order down on her pad.
"Thanks Debbie, how are the kids?" Booth asked as he unrolled his napkin and utensils.
"They're doing fine Booth, thanks for asking. You always remember to ask. Your partner doesn't even bother to remember my name. I've taken your guy's order how many times over the years and ten minutes ago when she was in here she hardly acknowledged me when I took her and Angela's orders."
"Bones was here?'"
"Yeah, they were planning a girl's weekend of some kind, sounded like they were redecorating something. Probably Angela's home now that she and her husband are having a baby."
"Angela's having a baby?"
Debbie smirked at the look of surprise on his face, "Really Booth, were have you been all this time? Under a rock?"
Booth chuckled, "Kind of."
"Well I'm glad your back."
"Thanks, it's good to be back."
"I'll bring your order in five minutes."
"Thanks Debbie."
"Any time."
Not even five minutes later Debbie was placing two heaping piles of pancakes in front of the Booth boys.
"Ah… Look at that, huh?"
As they started to dig in Parker turned towards his father, a questioning look on his face. "Dad?"
"Yeah." Booth asked between sips of coffee.
"Did you kill anybody?"
Booth nearly choked and spat out his coffee. "Why are you asking me that?"
Parker shrugged his shoulder, "My friends always want to know. What should I tell them?" He looked up at his father, brown eyes wide and so full of youthful innocence.
Booth sighed; this was not a conversation he was ready to have with his son yet. One of his biggest fears about Parker growing up is what he'll think of him when he finds out about all the people he'd killed as a sniper and an FBI agent. "You tell your friends that your dad does his duty the best that he knows how. Alright? Someday, me and you are going to talk all about it, alright?"
"When?"
"You know, when you're older; when you're a man."
"Are you going away again?"
Booth's heart crushed at the sound of vulnerability and worry in his son's voice. "No. Never."
"Because of me?"
"Because of you. It's the best reason ever. Huh? Drink your orange juice; here we go; let's eat up. Mm?" Booth reached over and poured some syrup on Parker's pancakes and they dug in. He couldn't help but notice the small smile on his son's face.
Three car doors slammed shut as Angela, Brennan and Cam exited Angela's Matrix.
"I can't believe we fit everything in your car. I thought for sure we'd have to make two trips or get a second car with all the paint, décor and furniture we bought." Cam said, giving the Matrix an appraising look.
"Yeah, it's a great car. It will have plenty of room for the baby and all his or her stuff. We could fit triplets comfortably in this thing." Angela said proudly, patting the roof of her car with her hand.
"Knowing you and Hodgins I wouldn't be surprised if you had three or more kids." Cam chuckled.
"You say that because they are both loving people who love kids and have enough money to support several children." Brennan concluded.
"Wow. Doctor Brennan, you really have changed a lot after Maluku." Cam commented, pleasantly surprised at Brennan's improvement of understanding.
"Yes, yes I have." She answered matter-of-factly.
Angela and Cam both grinned, no matter how much she'd changed, the straightforward and honest anthropologist was still inside her.
"Shall we haul this lot inside and get started? Its noon already and we still need to move everything away from or off of the walls, lay down ground cloths and put up painting tape." Angela said; glancing at the sun as it steadily rose higher into the sky.
"Let's get to work." Cam and Brennan agreed.
Angela opened the hatch back on her Matrix and started unloading; she started with the numerous cans of paint, handing them off to Brennan and Cam in turns as they carried them up to Brennan's apartment on the third floor. They put them on the living room floor just inside the door. Next they unloaded the picture frames and décor followed by the new furniture covers, soon Brennan's living room had accumulated a rather large pile on the floor in the middle of the room. Finally they went back out for the last trip, they retrieved the ground cloths, masking tape and paint brushes, closed the hatch back, locked and armed the car and returned to the apartment.
"Now while we're painting Jack will be storing the furniture and everything else at the manor. He, Wendell and Sweets should be here any minuet to help load it all into the truck and transport it there so how about we start packing things into boxes and taking things down off the walls?" Angela said after checking her phone to read the text message from her husband.
"I'll start with the book cases," Cam called over her shoulder as she left the living room to get the boxes from the kitchen.
"I'll start wrapping the various artifacts I've collected over the years and separate them into two piles; one for the artifacts I want to keep which will probably go to my office and the other to donate to the Jeffersonian." Brennan stated as she too headed for the kitchen.
"Then that leaves me lights, pillows, rugs and smaller furniture." Angela said aloud to the empty room.
The three women got to work on their respective jobs. The only sound in the apartment was the sound of things being taken off shelves, wrapped in bubble wrap or tissue paper, placed in a box, tape being pulled from their dispensers and placed on top of the lid and sharpies scribbling labels on the sides.
After a few more minutes of silence Angela put down the box she had just finished labeling and crossed the room to the stereo. She retrieved her iPhone from her pocket and plugged it in. A pre-made girl's weekend playlist streamed from the speakers, filling the room with notes, chords and Florence and the Machine. The lyrics wafted around the room and filled their heads.
Happiness hit her like a train on a track
Coming towards her stuck still no turning back
She hid around corners and she hid under beds
She killed it with kisses and from it she fled
With every bubble she sank with her drink
And washed it away down the kitchen sink
As they returned to their work Brennan couldn't help but compare the song to her life. She had had a rough childhood. Her life had started out happy and normal. She had had parents who were deep in love and loved their children with their whole hearts. She had had an older brother who'd looked out for her. She still would hear his voice calling "Marco!" to her and she'd whisper back to herself. "Polo." But that all had changed one Christmas when her parents disappeared in the middle of the night to never return. Her brother, then eighteen had tried to make the most of it and tried to provide a normal Christmas morning for her but she had yelled at him and shut him out and he too had left her. She had then spent the rest of her adolescence in the system. At several homes she had been abused, in more ways than one. She still remembered being locked in the trunk of a car for three days.
Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your longing behind
You can't carry it with you if you want to survive
Life had gotten somewhat better after she'd turned eighteen and had left the system. College had been okay. She hadn't made any friends but had had her first romantic and sexual relationship with her professor. After college she'd enjoyed going on all the digs. She hadn't had a home in so long or people who cared about her so the constant moving and traveling hadn't bothered her. It got even better when she'd started at the Jeffersonian and began working with Hodgins and Zach. Especially when she met and became friends with Angela. Before Ange Brennan had never had a close friend, let alone a girlfriend; someone she could tell her secrets too, express her concerns and worries too, seek out for advice and comfort and have a great time with. It had been something she'd really missed out on in her adolescent years.
The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run
Then she'd met Booth. In the beginning on that first case they had been mutually attracted to each other. He'd even called her hot and they'd kissed outside the Founding Fathers and almost gone home together to have sex. But she'd changed her mind at the last minute and the next day they'd gotten in a horrible fight. She yelled at him that she'd hated him and would never work with him again and he hadn't stopped her when she'd left. Then she had gone away for a year to Guatemala and he had ended his gambling problems and tampered down his anger. She smiled as she remembered how mad she'd been at him when he got Social Security to hold her at the airport so he could be the white knight and rescue her just to get her to work with him again. They had argued and fought a lot in the first year of their partnership, he picking on her lack of social skills and pop culture knowledge, her making fun of and trashing his religion and love life.
The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
'Cause here they come
But everything had changed between them when she had been the target of an unknown shooter. He had gone out of his way to protect her and keep her safe. He had stayed at her place, got blown up by the bomb in her fridge, broke out of the hospital when he'd heard she'd been taken, had shot the traitor FBI agent who'd taken her and rescued her from her bounds, holding her in his arms as she cried into his shoulder and he winced in pain from his injuries. She remembered how jealous he had been with David, the guy she had been trying to go out with from a dating site and how genuinely hurt he'd looked when he found out she'd let David read her new book's rough draft. So after he'd saved her she postponed her date and had stayed in the hospital with him watching old movies and eating pudding cups.
And I never wanted anything from you
Except everything you had and what was left after that too, oh
Happiness hit her like a bullet in the back
Struck from a great height by someone who should know better than that
After that they had become close friends. They had come to be each other's best friend and in turn had fallen in love with the other. Before Booth had come into her life Brennan had not believed in love. She thought that because of her past she was not capable of love, let alone a love as strong as the one she had for him. But over the six years of their partnership he had broken down her walls of defense, showed her love, and friendship and trust. She had always been afraid to let people close, afraid they would leave her like everyone else had. But Booth had proven time and time again that he wasn't going anywhere. That he would never leave or hurt her. And she had believed him with her whole metaphorical heart and soul. But now he had moved on. She was too late.
The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
'Cause here they come
Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your longing behind
You can't carry it with you if you want to survive
The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
'Cause here they come
The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run
The knock on the front door pulled Brennan back to the surface from her thoughts. She took a deep breath and finished packing the box she had been working on.
"Come in!" Angela called, knowing it was the guys arriving to load everything up and take it away.
The door opened and Hodgins's face was the first to appear through the doorway. "Hello ladies," he greeted taking his wife in his arms for a quick kiss before giving hugs to Cam and Brennan.
Brennan returned the hug tightly, "Thanks Hodgins for agreeing to do this." She whispered.
"Anytime Dr. B" he whispered back, giving her body a quick squeeze before he let her go. Angela had told him her suspicions about the real reason for the girl's weekend and home makeover. He liked Booth, they had even become good friends, but he hated seeing Brennan upset. After their joint kidnapping he and Brennan had formed a strong bond of friendship and trust.
Sweets were the next face to appear. She and Booth had both despised the young psychologist in the beginning when they had been forced to take partner counseling, but after all these years and all their experiences together she had come to respect him and his professional opinion. She had even come to call him a friend. After finding out about their similar childhood experiences; both being in the foster care system and victims of abuse she had found a connection with him.
"Hi guys," Sweets said, looking slightly out of place in jeans and a t-shirt. After also giving the three women hugs he looked around the apartment. "Wow Dr. Brennan, you have a really nice place. I'm glad I got to see it like this before you redecorate it.'
Brennan felt a pang of guilt, regretting that she had never welcomed Sweets over to her home other than Christmas dinner that one time. 'But no more,' She thought to herself. 'After this weekend I'm going to have them all over a lot more often. Dinner, board games, drinks, sports games, movies, holidays, the works.' She smiled at the thought.
The last face to come through the door was Wendell, her favorite intern. He still amazed her after these past few years. After what had happened to Zach she had shut out all of her interns, afraid to let them in to close. But Wendell had somehow wormed his way into the group and her heart. She was thankful and glad at how well he fit in. They needed it after losing Zach, especially Hodgins. But Hodgins wasn't the only one. She had needed someone who was in the same field, could understand and think like her but was still social and understood things she didn't like pop culture, sports and social manners. He was always happy to 'translate' for her or answer her honest but sometimes awkward questions. He too was someone she was sorry for not letting in to her social life and group activities outside of work and drinks at the Founding Fathers.
"Hi Wendell," She said as she approached him to give him a hug.
His eyes widened in surprise at hearing her call him by his first name and her giving him a hug but he hugged her back, realizing that she really had changed in Maluku and that she must need her friends now more than ever. Booth had shown him the picture of Hannah and Wendell had known from the beginning how Dr. Brennan felt about Booth so he realized how much it must hurt her to have him distant and constantly thinking and talking about another woman. He sincerely hoped that If Hannah ever did come to DC that Booth wouldn't leave Brennan as a friend by accident by spending all his time with the women.
"Hi Dr. Brennan," he said when she released him.
"Call me Temperance when we're not at work,"
Wendell and Temperance smiled.
"Alright, now that we've all said hello, let's get this show on the road! You girl's aren't the only ones who have plans this weekend!" Hodgins laughed as they all finished hugging one another.
"You heard the man, let's get to work people so the boys can go have fun and we can get some painting done before we go out tonight." Cam commanded in her boss voice, her smile lightening the tone.
The others laughed and they all got to work, carting the boxes and furniture from the apartment out to the moving van Hodgins had rented. When they finished loading everything in the group of friends exchanged hugs again and waved goodbye as the guys drove away.
"Let's get painting; I don't want it to get to late before we leave for the Founding Fathers." Cam said as they turned to walk back to the apartment.
Angela and Brennan laughed. The three of them quickly got to work setting everything up. They sang while they painted and got a lot done. By the time it was dark and time to go to the bar they had almost finished painting the living room and front hall.
Brennan smiled as she looked back at her place before closing her front door behind them as they left for the Founding Father to start off their first night of the weekend. They had done a great job. She couldn't wait to see how it looked when they were all done. As they walked to Angela's car she was already planning a home welcoming party for Sunday night with the group. Booth never even crossed her mind.
