Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

The next thing either one of them was aware of was the alarm clock blaring and they muttered at each other as to whose turn it was to shut it off until finally Booth threw his pillow at it and muffled the sound. Oversleeping wasn't a concern, however, as the rest of the household began to stir. Soon enough the hallway rang with complaints about the bathroom being hogged and not long after that there was a frantic pounding on their door.

"Go away," Booth called as Temperance called, "Come in."

Sadie dashed through the door and straight into the bathroom like her clothes were on fire, slamming the bathroom door behind her.

"Sadie!" both of her parents scolded in unison.

An apology was shouted in reply.

"Why do we even bother?" Booth rolled his eyes as he stood up, stretched, and disappeared into their walk-in closet.

"You realize the situation will be compounded next week when the number of children will exceed the number of bathrooms?" she pointed out.

"One of the boys can use the bushes out back," he smirked as she joined him.

He was in his dress pants and an undershirt and was nosing around his dresser for socks when Sadie popped out of the bathroom.

"Hi, Daddy!" she chirped. "I did a ponytail like Mom all by myself, see?"

She'd managed to get her curls under control and contained in the ponytail, even if it was slightly off-centered. Here and there a few ringlets escaped to frame her face.

"You look beautiful," he told her, sitting beside her on the bed to put his socks on.

The eight year old tilted her head, a mannerism of her mother's she'd picked up years ago, "You always say that."

"Maybe because it's always true?" he suggested.

"Nah, you're just patronizing me," Sadie decided, jumping up from the bed and announcing that she was going to get dressed.

"'Patronizing?'" questioned Booth as he buttoned up his shirt.

Temperance smirked and nodded, looping his favorite tie around his neck and adjusting it for him, "Proof that her vocabulary doesn't just come from watching sports with you."

Maddie, Joey, and Sadie were already downstairs eating breakfast by the time the adults joined them and there was a brief discussion about how the bathrooms would be shared once Parker moved in. When they finished, dishes were cleared, lunches hurriedly made, and backpacks rounded up and loaded into the car along with their owners.

Because the girls would be leaving right from the Jeffersonian, Temperance made sure she brought along a change of clothes for both girls as well as Sadie's soccer equipment bag, and she drove her SUV to work while Booth drove the kids to school. She was already over at the lab with the Squint Squad when he arrived, so he dumped a few things in their office and jogged off to finder her.

"Everything alright?" she asked out of the corner of her mouth when he walked up and stood beside her.

"Yup," he nodded. "Kids are safe and sound at school and I brought you this."

She gratefully took the travel mug from him, inhaling the rich aroma of her favorite blend that made the lab's thick brew pale in comparison.

"Why are you breathing so heavily?" she squinted at him.

"It's like a mile from the office to here and I had to run the whole way," he claimed, reaching for a doughnut.

She slapped his hand away from the unhealthy food and was about to tell him the buildings weren't even a quarter of a mile apart when Cam called the meeting to order. The fake case that they'd come up with was an amalgamation of several of the cases they'd worked on in the past and was designed to show how agents and squints worked together to effectively get to the bottom of things. Booth and Brennan took on their old roles as lead investigator and scientist respectively, though it was the students who were then tasked with putting all of the evidence together to determine who the "murderer" was.

In the spring semester the students would work on another fake case- this time paired off- and would compete to see which team worked the best together. The winning pair then won the right to shadow the Squint Squad and Agent Perotta on a real case before the training program ended in May.

"Right," Cam nodded as they finished going over every aspect of the case, "so we're all clear on how this is going to work?"

Heads around the table bobbed up and down.

"We do this the same as any other case, people, and show them how it's done right," the pathologist said firmly.

"Aye," Hodgins said in an Irish brogue, "'Tis nothing amusing in murder most foul."

"I'll make sure he behaves," Angela shook her head with a glare in her husband's direction.

"Not bad on the accent," Booth complimented the bug man. "Have you heard my English one?"

"It's more Australian than English," Temperance put in.

"Says you-"

They bickered back and forth with the squints chiming in here and there until Cam called a halt to it and refocused them.

"We start Monday afternoon and wrap up on Thursday," Cam reminded them. "And if Perotta brings us a real case in the meantime we'll reschedule as necessary. Any questions?"

There weren't and she dismissed them with on final admonition to be on their best behavior. Booth and Hodgins began discussing the best way to spring the case on the unsuspecting students, each idea slightly more grandiose than the last, while the anthropologist conferred with Cam on a few minor details. The entire group then headed to the diner for lunch, and most likely would've lingered longer had Temperance and Cam not insisted there was plenty of work still to be done.

Booth and Brennan spent the rest of the afternoon in their office finalizing their plans for Orientation, handling the pre-registration emails they'd received thus far, and making sure that enough copies of the program's fall syllabus had been prepared so that it could be included with the information packet each student would be getting.

"Is there anything we're forgetting?" Booth asked as he leaned back into the couch, wanting to make sure since he'd be in meetings at the Hoover for the next two days.

Temperance surveyed the work spread out on the coffee table that they'd accomplished and shook her head, "Not as far as I can tell. Our tentative schedule for the next two weeks is set and I'll continue handling the pre-registrations as they come. You'll still be free to help me compile the information packets on Friday, correct?"

"That's the plan," he said drily.

"I thought you were looking forward to going back to the Hoover for a few days?" she questioned him.

"Sort of," he blew a long breath out. "Seeing the guys will be great; it's the meetings themselves that bore me half to death."

"They're important, though," she shifted around so that their knees were touching and laid a hand on his forearm. "The FBI needs tangible proof that what we're doing here is viable and worthy of their funding. I had to do the same thing with the board at the Jeffersonian last month."

"I know," he slumped back further into the couch, propping his feet up on the coffee table. "It just always feels like it's more of an uphill battle on the FBI side. Squints don't need to be sold on the fact that pairing professional scientists with FBI agents is a help, not a hindrance; especially when we're talking full participation in the cases."

"True," she acknowledged, "though some are now saying the FBI should train its own scientists and leave the Jeffersonian out of it."

"Ah, but as one insightful scientist once told me, the best and brightest don't flock to Quantico," he winked.

"I was right," she smiled slyly. "But you were right that my people skills were somewhat lacking."

"Somewhat," he chuckled and had his shoulder shoved for his trouble.

He retaliated by leaning over and kissing her shoulder and then attempting to kiss her lips as she dodged him, launching into a practiced lecture on professionalism in the workplace. He gave his standard counter-argument that when they were in their office it didn't apply because they were the only ones in the building.

After a few volleys back and forth she allowed him a short kiss and he stole a second one, trapping her in place with his hand on her hip and inviting her to deepen it. She responded to the challenge and their tongues dueled playfully, separating only when voices sounded in the hallway.

B&B&B&B&B&B&B&B

By the time Maddie, Sadie, Gemma, and Angela came through the door, Booth was cleaning up the mess of papers on the coffee table while Temperance checked her email one last time. The two little girls went right for the toy box, but were called back to the big table to get their homework out of the way.

"Hey, kiddo," Booth said to Maddie as Angela went over to chat with Bones. "School okay today?"

"I guess," the teen shrugged. "It wasn't bad."

"Except for?" he prodded gently.

"Algebra," Maddie came around the furniture and dropped onto the couch beside him. "I'm not a fan."

"How come?"

"We have a ton of homework already, but some of it I'm not sure how to do," she explained. "I mean, I know it's the advanced class, but some of the stuff is really confusing and I didn't really have time to ask questions."

At his prompting they got her book out and she showed him what she had to do. He hadn't been the best at math in school, but looking it over he remembered how to do most of it. She showed him the parts that were tricky for her and they worked through the problems together.

Meanwhile, Temperance and Angela were supervising the smaller portions of homework that had been assigned to the younger girls and they finished in a relatively short amount of time. Much as she hated to interrupt, as soon as Sadie and Gemma finished their work, Temperance went over to the pair on the couch and explained that the girls needed to leave in order to get dinner before Sadie's soccer practice, and Seeley needed to go pick Joey and Parker up from football. She smiled as her husband made sure Maddie understood the remaining problems, then helped her repack her bag and gave her a quick hug. He whispered something in the girl's ear and the two grinned conspiratorially.

"What was that all about?" Temperance asked Seeley as Maddie went over to join her sister and Gemma.

"Nothing," he said, amused, giving her a hug.

"Liar," she murmured into his ear. "Is it about Saturday?"

"Nope," he pecked her cheek and released her. "Have a fun night, I gotta go grab the boys!"

She huffed in protest as he gave Sadie a hug and left. Realizing the girls were still in their school uniforms, the two women hurriedly rectified that, then piled into Temperance's SUV. Fifteen minutes later they were seated at The Rabbit Hole, an upscale restaurant that specialized in salads of all varieties.

Sadie and Gemma giggled at the fancy place settings and declared that they were having a tea party, while Maddie and Angela talked about high school.

"Any cute guys in your class?" the artist teased.

Maddie ducked her head, cheeks pinking, but didn't say no. Angela teased a little more, sharing a few of her own high school exploits before moving on to a new topic. All five of them enjoyed their meals, though they all agreed that "the boys" would not have approved of the menu selections at all. Sadie declared that boys were weird and she was never going to get married, but Gemma said they were okay and asked if she could marry her daddy, and if not him, then Caden.

Angela smiled, explaining that those two were off-limits, so Gemma decided she'd marry Joey instead. Sadie said that was fine with her but she still wasn't going to get married, just live at home and probably be a special agent like her dad. Or a field goal kicker in the NFL. Or a doctor. She was keeping her options open.

In the time-honored tradition of "Girl's Night Out" they finished dinner off by sharing a 12-scoop sundae from the ice cream parlor just down the street from The Rabbit Hole. They had just enough time to clean up and rush Sadie to soccer practice.

B&B&B&B&B&B&B&B

He'd been in enough hospital rooms in his lifetime to recognize where he was once the room swam into view. Around him specialists and nurses milled in and out, poking and prodding at him while monitors beeped their results.

"Bones," he barely recognized the raspy voice that came out through his dry lips.

"Agent Booth, can you hear me?" one of the nurses asked, stepping into his line of vision and effectively blocking his view.

"Bones?" he couldn't tell if she was in the room but he needed her more than anything else right now.

"No, you didn't break anything," the nurse assured him.

Booth was beginning to grow frustrated and anxious, causing the heart monitor to speed up.

"You need to calm down, sir," the nurse admonished gently.

He wanted to - he really did - but right now there was only one doctor he wanted to see and she was nowhere to be found. The fog he'd been engulfed in kept him from ripping the wires off of his chest and going to find her. Craning his neck as far as he could, he stayed silent and looked for any sign of her through the small windows and into the hallway. Finally he caught sight of her familiar profile, standing just outside the door and holding a very animated conversation with someone he couldn't see. When she finally turned, their eyes met and the fear he saw carefully contained below a veneer of calm rocked him to the core and made the monitor sound off loudly once again.