This is for RositaLG. Because a few weeks ago, I had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, and she was rational and nice as I had a very ugly, very snot-y, mid-chat cry and threatened to walk away from my job. Like many chapters of this fic, this is light and silly and not to be taken seriously.

Oh, she doesn't know it, but this is also for UK_MJ/Razztaztic. Because I have never felt anything but furious following a bad Bones ep and because of her, the night of the honeymoon episode, I laughed so hard my poor, derby abused body just wanted to die. 'With the other guy' for the fucking win.


conviction, n.: I find you guilty of believing in your side of the story a little too much.

"Best unsung character?"

"Alfred." Booth responded immediately.

Hodgins nodded his approval. "Most useless?"

"Aquaman."

"Hey, seventy percent of the earth is covered in water."

"You're the dirt guy, how can you defend him?"

"How many times do I have to tell you how annoying it is when you guys call it dirt?"

Booth laughed and absently twirled his empty beer bottle. His partner (wife. She was his wife) had managed to talk Angela down from most, if not all, of her elaborate bachelor/bachelorette party schemes, and while he hadn't seen Brennan for the better part of the afternoon, they were all here, now, at the Founding Fathers. Laughing, drinking and teasing one another in a way that made him feel exactly how things had and had not changed over the course of the years.

"You ready for another?" Hodgins nodded toward the empty bottle still in Booth's hands.

Booth looked down and took in its emptiness for the first time. "Yeah." He scanned the bar, easily finding Cam and Sweets and eventually, Angela and Brennan. Then he paused. "Maybe we should give it a minute. I don't even want to know what they're doing over there."

Hodgins followed his gaze to the bar just in time to see Angela and Brennan exchanging gleeful high fives. Their matching rosy cheeks were evident all the way back from the booth the group had claimed in the corner, and Hodgins winced when Angela slipped off the barstool and just managed to catch herself before falling to the floor.

"Oh boy."


"Okay; now this one."

Angela thrust a full shot glass into Brennan's hand, and Brennan eyed its bright blue colour skeptically.

"I don't want this."

"Bren, it's delicious, I promise. See?" Angela raised her own shot glass and downed it fluidly. "Delicious."

Brennan sighed and reluctantly brought the glass to her lips, then she immediately grimaced as the liquid filled her mouth.

"It's too sweet," she coughed. "Can we please just stick to whiskey and tequila if you're going to insist on doing this?"

It was the beginning of the end. Hodgins and Booth eventually swooped in to collect them, but not before several more drinks were procured for the table. The hours flew by, and for the first time in years (the first time since pregnancies, and babies, and months of colic), their team, in its entirety, closed the bar. When they filed out toward the cabs, Booth's hand drifted below the small of Brennan's back to the curve of her ass, and it was then that he truly knew that, between the two of them, Brennan was not the only one a little drunk. Because he didn't do things like this in public but right now he was having a hard time remembering why.

One (rather handsy) cab ride later, Booth and Brennan arrived in front of the mighty hut. Brains a little fuzzy and content as they stepped up their front lawn, arms linked, with Brennan's shoes dangling limply from the fingers of her free hand.

"I had a very good time, Booth."

"Me too," Booth admitted.

"You sound surprised."

"I'm not surprised, Bones, just... you can't blame me for being a little wary of these kinds of things when Angela's in charge."

Brennan released a throaty laugh and let her head drop against his shoulder. "Our wedding was beautiful," she reminded him.

"She has a mean streak, Bones."

"Only because the reaction she gains from you in response to her teasing is so comical."

"Hey!"

"That's not to say that I find it comical, Booth." It was an attempt at reassurance, but another laugh escaped and Booth bumped her hip with his in retaliation. "Just sometimes," she confessed.

He pulled her tightly into his side. "Go home, Bones. You're drunk."

"What? We are home, Booth. How drunk are you?"

"It's a thing people say, Bones. Like-

"It has been almost two and a half years since I have had this much to drink in one sitting. I believe I overestimated my level of tolerance."

"Just do me a favour and try to hold yourself together around your dad, alright?"

Her hand slipped beyond the waistband of his jeans in defiant response, and Booth clasped it tightly as he swung open the front door.

"Behave," he muttered under his breath.

Brennan twisted out of his grip and sauntered into the living room.

"Hi, dad," she said brightly.

"Hey, honey." Max turned down the volume on the television and rose to meet them. "You kids have fun tonight?"

"I believe the night was a success, yes. Sorry we're late-

"An extra five minutes, Tempe," Max waved her off. "You're a little past the age where you need to worry about breaking curfew. Besides, Christine's been out since nine."

"Good," she smiled softly.

"Thanks, Max."

Booth's gentle smile matched hers. Because it took only the sound of their daughter's name to bring everything good they associated with their life shared to the forefront. Happiness. Peace. Marriage. Children. A long list of things they had resigned themselves to life without. And sometimes, now, it really did feel like they had it all.

Though they had entered the room separately, Max's sharp eye noted the way they moved closer together, unthinking, until Booth's hand was moving slow circles over Brennan's lower back while they made idle conversation. And he watched them. And it was easy to do, because they were always too busy watching each other to notice.

His daughter's eyes, bright and slightly out of focus. Her speech rapid and just the faintest bit clumsy. Her husband, so enraptured by her.

The weight of a lifetime of bad choices pressed down on him, but both his children had managed to grab hold of their happy endings. An old ex-con couldn't ask for more than that. Nonetheless, he began to take his leave. In these times, more strongly than ever, he felt the life which he had thrown away.

"Well, now that the two of you are home I'm going to get going. This old body isn't what it used to be."

"Booth and I plan on sleeping also. After we have sexual intercourse."

"Bones!" Booth hissed. "That was on purpose. C'mon! You promised!"

"What, Booth? We have a child; I'm quite certain that my father knows we have sex."

"He doesn't need details, alright? Knock it off."

"And with that," Max smiled dryly, "I'm out of here."

Max shut the door firmly behind him, and they barely had time to grin at each other before Christine's cry carried down from the second floor.

"He did that on purpose," Booth groaned, heading toward the stairs.

Brennan rolled her eyes. "You're being paranoid."

"All I know is, he's left here a thousand times before without waking her up and then you come in mouthing off about intercourse and, surprise surprise, she's up when he leaves."

"Coincidence."

"I just got cock-blocked by your dad, Bones."

They were in relative good spirits when they entered Christine's bedroom, but as minutes gave way to half an hour, and then an hour, and then an hour and a half without reprieve, all traces of amusement disappeared.

"Is she sick?"

"Her temperature is normal. Nothing appears to be wrong with her."

"Then what's-

"I don't know, Booth. I don't know."

Nothing was as immediately sobering as their child in distress.

Booth had just taken the baby when she reached toward Brennan. And as soon as Brennan had her settled against her chest, she squirmed in her grip and reached once more for Booth. After another hour of this, anxiousness gave way to stubborn resolve.

"Put her down."

"But-

"Put her down. Being in here isn't helping. Let's just... go to bed and let her cry it out."

And they tried. They really did. Except an hour later, Christine was still crying and they both felt awful and when Brennan began to look as though she were close to crying as well, Booth gave in first.

Brennan listened to him through the monitor and felt a wave of relief wash over her when, finally, for the first time in three hours, there was silence.

Only, it didn't last.

Twenty minutes later (though it felt like seconds. It really did) Booth tried to put the baby back in her crib, and the cries of outrage restarted with a vengeance.

Brennan joined him in the nursery. And another hour passed.

By the end of that next hour, Christine had been moved into their bed in a last ditched attempt to settle her. She crawled from one parent to the other and back again, and Booth and Brennan began to turn on each other as they felt the last of their stamina disintegrate like thin smoke.

"I'm so angry with you right now."

"Me? Why? I haven't done anything."

"Your voice carries. It's likely that she heard you before Max even left... you're always the one who wakes her up."

"It was the door, Bones, I had nothing to do with it. And I didn't want to go out in the first place! We'd have been here in bed hours ago if your friend-

"She's our friend, Booth. It's convenient that you're suddenly forgetting that you enjoyed yourself just as much as-

"Maybe if we feed her-

"We've tried. If you want to try again, then you take her downstairs."

"It was just a suggestion."

"It wasn't a helpful one."

Christine laid her head down on Booth's chest, but her parents had been burned by this action too many times in the past four hours to fall for it again. Sure enough, fifteen seconds later, her head popped back up and she began to pat Booth's face insistently with both small hands.

"Go to sleep, little girl," Booth pleaded, gently removing Christine's fingers from his mouth.

"Why didn't I think of that," Brennan deadpanned, eyes closed.

"Now who's not being helpful?"

"I should review my notes for Monday's lecture."

"It's almost six in the morning."

"It would be a far more productive use of my time than lying here, not sleeping."

Distracted by her mother's voice, Christine finally left Booth's face alone and clambered across the sheets, nestling against the soft body of her mother and pressing her face into her neck. And Brennan sighed softly as she rubbed the baby's back. "It's obvious that you're tired, and because I am tired as well, I'm finding this situation frustrating. It isn't a reflection of my feelings for you."

Christine's head jerked upward once again, and Brennan released a hiss of pain as her daughter's frontal bone collided solidly with her mandible. Another sigh – exasperated, and much longer – escaped when the impact triggered the start of a new meltdown.

"Good job, Bones," Booth sniped, raising his voice slightly in order to be heard over Christine's cries.

"That was not my fault."

"Her waking up in the first place wasn't my fault either. Admit it."

Brennan opted to make a peace offering of a different kind. "Let's try the bottle again."

Booth reluctantly flipped back the comforter and held his arms out to their most unhappy progeny. "Here goes nothing."


It took longer than usual for the sound to wake her, but once the repetitive noise seeped into her conscious, Brennan sleepily slapped at the alarm clock and promised herself that she would get out of bed in five minutes. She wasn't generally one to abuse the snooze function, but she also wasn't generally one to drink excessively on a work night. Sometimes these things just happened.

But that wasn't right.

She frowned and gave her head a small shake (an action which was immediately regrettable); last night hadn't been a work night. Today was Sunday. And the noise wasn't coming from the alarm clock, but rather the baby monitor.

The thought of getting out of the bed made her head spin. She hadn't been asleep for very long, but evidently just enough time had passed to leave her with a headache that was surpassed only by the horrible taste in her mouth.

Christine continued to babble through the monitor, and when a shrill shriek of delight shot through the speaker, Brennan felt Booth stiffen beside her.

So he was awake.

Damn him.

"She sounds happy," Brennan mumbled conversationally.

Any other day, this would be the time Booth could be expected to kiss her and then volunteer to grab Christine before running off to the kitchen to make breakfast and coffee.

"Uh huh."

From the raspy, raw calibre of Booth's voice, Brennan was forced to come to the sinking realisation that he had no more desire to get out of bed than she did.

Damn him.

"Mommy. Mommy mommy. Uh oh! Mommy. Mommmeee."

Booth buried his face in his pillow and folded it tightly over his ears.

"Bones, she's calling you. Would you just..."

Brennan petulantly pulled the blanket over her head and squeezed her eyes ever so tightly together. "Booth, I can't. I can't right now."

"Mommy!"

Christine's voice carried loudly through the monitor and Booth clenched his jaw and tried not to throw up while Brennan scrambled to turn down the volume before blanching and falling limply back onto the mattress.

"She's not even in here and she's like a jack hammer in my head. Go get her."

"She's your daughter too! Give me one valid reason why I should get up when I feel just as terrible as you do."

"Because she's asking for you, Bones. She wants her mom."

If moving didn't hurt so much, she might have hit him. With things as they stood, Brennan settled on a hard glare.

Conveniently, she couldn't seem to force her eyes entirely open anyway.

"That wasn't even subtle."

"Look, if she wanted me, she'd ask for me, right? So go get her. For the love of God, stop her before my head explodes."

In a fitting twist of karma, Christine's cheerful, relentless chatter took a turn.

"Daddy. Daddy. Daddy hi."

Brennan chuckled and closed her eyes again. "Give her a yoghurt cup when you take her downstairs. If you let her hold the spoon, it will keep her occupied and quiet for twice as long."

"Yeah. I'm not going."

"But she's asking for you, Booth. She wants her dad," Brennan retorted sarcastically.

"How is this even possible? She's been sleeping for two hours. Not even. And she cried five hours straight."

"I don't know." Brennan was beyond feeling any sort of drive to explain what had happened. All she knew was that she was exhausted and dehydrated and hungover and she was not getting out of this bed.

"She hasn't done that since she was maybe six months old. What the hell?"

"I don't know."

"Five hours," Booth repeated incredulously.

"I was there, Booth," she snapped.

"It's punishment, you know. For getting drunk in the first place when we have a baby. What are we, an MTV series?"

She disagreed with so many parts of this statement. Every part, really. They were responsible adults and responsible parents, and any expectation for them to permanently abstain from the rare night spent away from their child was not only unreasonable, but probably unhealthy. However, in her current state, keeping her sentences as short as possible took priority over being right.

"No one is punishing us. That's ridiculous."

"Are you not hearing that noise? I'm pretty sure Christine's punishing us. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what punishment sounds like."

Brennan pulled the blanket over her head again and quickly rolled it tightly around her body, guarding against any attempt Booth may have considered making to dislodge her. But it wasn't necessary. Booth didn't have it in him to fight back.

"How about we both get her? That way neither of us is happy."

"That doesn't make any sense," her muffled voice floated through the heavy comforter.

"Rock, Paper, Scissors," Booth suggested.

"Absolutely not."

"We're kind of at a standstill here, Bones."

Brennan didn't respond this time.

"Bones?"

"Booth, I have a very, very large headache right now. Leave. Me. Alone."

"But-

"I always get up with her."

"You do not always!"

"Statistically-

"No."

"...I have a proposal."

"If it involves sex, I don't wanna hear it."

"Given that sex brought us Christine, no. As bad as that sounds, I, too, am currently finding the thought of sex unappealing."

"Then let's have it, Bones."

"You tend to Christine, and I will forgive you for waking her up."

"For the last time, Max slammed the door!"

"And you were loud!"

"So were you. You're always loud."

"Your memory is not correct."

"I think you have a bit of a bias."

As a natural pause finally occurred in their argument, they each took note, for the first time, of the silence coming from Christine's bedroom. Booth eyed the monitor warily and again felt the creeping suspicion that the baby monitor was in fact a two way device.

"Maybe she fell asleep," he whispered.

"That would be a first," Brennan returned cynically.

"Shh!"

The reprimand was barely out of his mouth before Christine's babbling began anew. He glared, and Brennan rolled her eyes.

"She can't hear you. She has never been able to hear you."

"Then explain why that always happens."

Instead, Brennan shifted gears completely. "Angela."

Booth couldn't be bothered to try and follow. "Huh?"

"I have found that handling Christine is more effective when we are unified. I'm proposing that we assign blame to Angela and form an armistice. Angela insisted we hold a celebration. Angela insisted we ask my father to babysit. Angela insisted we 'party like it's 1999', whatever the hell that means. Angela."

Understanding donned. "Works for me," he agreed easily.

Brennan's phone chirped on the nightstand, and Booth raised his eyebrows at the triumphant smirk that graced her face after reading the text.

"What is it?"

"Michael is having a tantrum, and Angela is expressing her desire to kill herself."

"And that makes you happy?"

Brennan shrugged. "It's not logical, but I find that it does make me feel marginally better."

Booth chuckled. "We really should get Christine before she goes the Michael Vincent route."

Brennan nodded, agreeing with him for the first time since they had come home. "It does seem unwise to risk it."

"Alright. It's go time."

Her phone chirped again, and she paraphrased the new message after a quick glance at the screen. "Angela is blaming Hodgins for her headache. And also for the birth of Michael Vincent."

Booth carefully shook his head as he got out of the bed and handed Brennan her housecoat. "You and Angela are sometimes not nearly as opposite as you appear to be."


Inspiration for this came from listening to my best friend and her boyfriend turn on each other after we came in from a concert (that she had been reluctant to go to in the first place), relieved her sister the babysitter, and then had the 20 month old wake up and riot like I've never heard her riot before. Not funny for them. A little funny for me.

I've been the worst with the review replies lately. I know I have. Please do not think I'm not appreciative of every single one of them; I just haven't had the time and now I'm so far behind, I don't know where to begin. But thank you so much for reading and letting me know your thoughts; your kind words are often reread when I have horrible, no good, very bad days :)