To Cherish

Temperance Booth rolled over in bed and slowly opened her eyes. She smiled at the sight of her husband's wide open mouth, from which soft snores were emerging. For years, Booth had vehemently denied that he snored- until she presented him with the audio evidence one morning at breakfast after a particularly loud night. But while she might tease him mercilessly about his snoring, she grown used to the deep cadence over the years and found that she had more trouble falling asleep on nights that he was silent.

Shifting her gaze from his mouth to his bare chest, she let out a small sigh. The scars, old and new, that dotted his chest gave testament to the number of times he had been placed in harm's way; both voluntarily and involuntarily. The scar where Pam's bullet had passed through him always sent shivers down her spine no matter how much time had passed. It reminded her of two of the darkest weeks in her life, when she had believed that the light that was Booth had been extinguished from her life forever. She could never listen to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" the same way again either.

"Ogling my FBI hotness?" a sleepy voice came from the object of her perusal.

"You wish!" she shot back with a quick smile.

"Hey Bones, feel free," he grinned wide, "I'm all yours, Baby!"

She rolled her eyes, "I should hope so, though given our ages, I'm not so sure that the term 'Baby' could apply to either one of us."

"Speak for yourself," Booth leaped out of bed, but his retort was cut short by a loud cracking in his back. He winced in pain.

"Are you alright, Booth?"

"I'll live," he gritted his teeth to stifle the pain.

She shook her head, "I'll go get the coffee. Should I get you an Ibuprofen as well?"

He grunted and headed into the bathroom. Finishing, he pulled on a shirt and went downstairs, lured by the scent of the French Roast that he knew awaited him. He settled himself into the breakfast nook as Bones poked around the kitchen.

"Sleep well, Bones?"

"Not particularly."

"Why not," he sounded concerned, "Were you worrying about something?"

She shook her head, handed him his cup of coffee, and took her place by his side.

"No, it wasn't worry, it was more like me trying to block out your nocturnal emissions."

Booth choked on the coffee, spewing it across the table. Beside him his wife's eyes gleamed with mischief.

"You," he said when he had caught his breath, "Did that on purpose."

"You can't prove that," she batted her eyelashes innocently, "I frequently misuse well-known words and phrases, you know."

"Yes, but I know you too, Temperance," he waggled a finger playfully at her, "And that was a deliberate attempt to choke me."

She shrugged, and decided to distract him with a kiss. The kiss deepened and the coffee was forgotten.

"You know," Parker strode into the room, "You guys are really getting to old to do that where people might walk in on you."

"If you knock first, then you won't have to worry about that," Booth grinned at his son.

"Well somebody had to come get you guys."

"Parker, we're really not certain-"

"About what, Dr. Bones?" he invoked his childhood name for her, "This is a huge day. We all want to celebrate with you."

"Maybe we want to celebrate alone," the elder Booth pointed out, "It is our anniversary."

"Your fiftieth anniversary," Parker emphasized, "Nobody makes it to fifty years anymore, Dad. It's a big thing! Look, just come for a little bit alright? Visit with your old friends, kiss the grandkids and great-grandbabies, make little speech about how moved you are by the whole thing and then you two can come home."

"Fine," Booth groused, still not keen on the idea of being the center of the attention, "But I am not getting dressed up in some monkey suit for this thing."

"I'll make sure he's presentable," Brennan assured her step-son, "Where do we need to go and when should we be there?"

"Actually," Parker winced, "They're coming here. Should be here in a couple of hours. Well, the main bulk will be. The girls and Jake should be here any minute now." He put his hand up in a very Booth-like manner to stave off their protests. "We figured this way you didn't have to go anywhere. And we kids all wanted to come home anyway. You guys get yourselves ready; we'll handle the rest."

Closing the door to their bedroom Booth let out a long sigh and sank down on the bed.

"We're old," he said to no one in particular.

"We've aged," Bones corrected him, "It is an anthropologic inevitability."

"Can you believe it's been fifty years already, Bones?" he pulled her onto the bed beside him just wanting her to be close.

"Yes and no," she molded her body against his, relishing in the familiarity of it, "My mind can accept that passage of time has occurred, that we have changed, and that our children have grown up to have children of their own. It is the logical procession of things."

She looked up at him, noticed the wrinkles around his eyes from years of invoking his charm smile on her, and others. His hair was thinning and gray and liver spots had crept up around his neck. He'd taken good care of himself over the years and had remained lean, but his skin sagged a bit, and his muscle definition had definitely decreased.

She took his hand and placed in to her chest, "But here, Booth, in my heart, the years have flown by faster than I ever dreamed that they could. Some days I think that we should still be Booth and Bones, out in the field or in my lab at the Jeffersonian, fighting crime and putting away the bad guys. We should still be bickering with each other over pie and French fries at the diner and terrorizing Sweets. Parker should be a tow-headed little boy running around the bases with you coaching his t-ball team, not a nearly sixty year-old man with grandchildren of his own. And Julie and Jenny and Jake and Hope- they're all grown up now with families of their own and I miss them. I miss the sound of their childish laughter ringing through the air. I miss being a part of their everyday lives."

She fell silent and leaned into him again, letting him stroke her hair and soothe away her sadness.

"I love you, Bones," he said, just above a whisper.

"And I cherish you," she returned.

"Cherish?"

"Yes, Booth. To cherish means to care for something or someone deeply and with tenderness and love. It can also mean to nurture."

His eyebrows waggled knowingly, "Does that mean you'll help me take a shower? You know, to care for me," a grin broke out on his face, "I'll let you do it with tenderness and love too."

"Booth!" she rolled her eyes and got up from the bed, "You do not need me to shower you. And you are still incorrigible where your libido is concerned."

"You better believe it," he said, getting up and herding her toward the bathroom, "No little blue pills for this guy!"

She slapped him playfully on the arm and followed him into the bathroom.

An hour later they re-entered the bedroom washed and refreshed. They could hear that their children had arrived and were beginning preparations for the afternoon festivities. Still wrapped in her towel, Bones tried to decide what to wear for the occasion.

"Too bad the Roxy dress died in the fire," Booth commented when she asked for his opinion.

"I doubt it would still fit me," she countered, "And besides it would hardly be appropriate."

"I wouldn't mind," he grinned, then scowled, "'Least you don't have to wear a suit."

"You look good in a suit," she insisted, "Besides, if you agree I'll let you wear the 'Cocky' codpiece."

"It's a belt buckle Bones, geez, you sound like Gordon Gordon! Now how is that an appropriate thing to wear to our fiftieth wedding anniversary party?" he joked, picking out a white dress shirt and trying to decide which of his flashy ties he wanted to wear with it.

She shrugged, "It's not, but I like you in it." She selected a small, fashionable black dress, "What about this?"

"Nah," Booth shook his head, "Never good to wear black to an anniversary event. Makes people think about death."

"I assume you are going to wear some hideously colored pair of socks with your attire as well?" she returned to the closet for another outfit.

"Hey, if I'm going in a suit, I'm doing it my way! Parker can just cope and deal with it."

She laughed, "I think he was expecting a little more resistance this morning."

"Yeah well, I still don't like the idea of people fawning all over us and reminding us how old we really are, but he seemed determined."

"So what had you planned on doing?"

"Well, I thought I'd take my beautiful wife out to whatever restaurant her heart desired, then go out on the town and dance the night away."

"Until you fell asleep on me around nine o'clock, you mean," she teased.

"I do not go to bed that early!" he protested.

"Seeley Booth, you have gone to sleep around nine every night this week. Last night you were asleep at eight-thirty."

"Well Temperance, a guy's gotta get his beauty sleep sometime."

She laughed and asked him to help her fasten the dress she had chosen. It was a pale lavender sleeveless dress that hugged her body and fell all of the way to the floor.

"You look beautiful, Bones," he said on inspection, "Sure you don't want a big bow for the front, though?"

She gave him a puzzled look.

"You know," he reminded her, "At Angela and Hodgin's non-wedding, when you put the bow at the front instead of the back."

She shrugged her shoulders, "I didn't know, but then again, you didn't tell me that I had it on wrong either! Cam did that."

He chuckled at the memory, "I couldn't break it to you. You were so earnest looking." He reached down and tucked a piece of her graying hair behind her ears. "Those were good times, Bones, weren't they?"

"You mean when we were orbiting around each other for so long you could cut the sexual tension with a knife?" she smiled.

"Well," he grinned back, "Yeah there was that too. But I was talking about you and me out there on the front lines solving crimes and bringing down bad guys."

"We did do a lot of that," she acknowledged.

They were almost ready to go, but still not ready to face the crowd, so they sat face to face on the window seat that overlooked the backyard. They could see the preparations that were being made- a garden tent was being set up, as were rows upon rows of chairs, and beautiful flower arrangements were being placed around a large cake.

"Do you miss it?" Booth said finally, turning to look at her.

"Miss what? The past?"

"No-well yes- but more specifically the Jeffersonian. I couldn't believe the day that you told me you were going to step down and stay at home to pursue your writing career."

"It wasn't just to do that," she laid her hand on his thigh, "There were so many other reasons; a big one being that we wanted to be foster parents, which we could not have done well if I had stayed at the Jeffersonian."

"So that's why you left?" she had never really given him an answer that rang true in his gut.

She dipped her head and blushed slightly, "No, it was you."

"Me?"

"Booth, you'd just been made Deputy Director, that meant that we wouldn't be partners-work partners at least- anymore. The lab had not been the same without Zack when he left, and I knew that I just couldn't work there if you weren't there beside me. It just wouldn't have been the same to be assigned another FBI partner. I had one, and I'd married him. I- I just couldn't face not working with you every day."

Booth nodded in understanding and enveloped her in his arms. Of course she wouldn't feel right working with somebody else. He wasn't sure he would have been all that happy about it himself.

"Hey Bones," he whispered in her ear, "Wanna open your present now? Or do we have to wait for the masses to do that?"

"Now's fine," she gave him one last squeeze and stood up to get his gift for him as well.

They came back to the windowsill, gifts in hand, and sat down once more.

"You first," Booth proffered his gift.

"Together," Bones replied, exchanging her gift for his.

"3-2-1," Booth counted down.

Bones opened the long rectangular box and smiled at the contents. A simple gold chain had been strung with five little skeletons, each bearing a birthstone. A slightly larger skeleton had been hung in the middle of the chain.

"It's our family, Bones," he pointed out, "Each of the stones matches their birthdays. The big one's you."

"I figured it had to be one of us," she smiled, "But where are you in this little bones family?"

He pointed to her neck, where the skeleton he had given her for their first Christmas had hung for nearly five decades, "Right there, Bones, where I've been all along. Close to your heart."

A single tear slipped down her cheek and he caught it with his thumb. Together they removed the older necklace, and re-strung the other one so that it hung in it's rightful place beside the other large skeleton in the middle. He helped her put it back on and kissed the back of her neck.

"Hey," she pointed at his unopened gift sitting on the seat between them, "You didn't open your gift along with me."

He offered a shrug and a charm smile and tore into the larger-sized box.

"Socks?" he held up the various pairs of socks with multi-colored patterns.

"Look under the socks, Booth," she explained, "They are just the padding."

He removed the socks and gently pulled out what he found underneath. It was a montage of hand-drawn portraits. He and Bones were in the center, not as they looked now, but as they had looked back when they had been Special Agent Seeley Booth and Dr. Temperance Brennan. In a circle around them were their children, adopted and foster, each captured at different ages. Toward the edge of the canvas at the top were their friends from the Jeffersonian; the Hodgins-Jack and Angela, Cam, Zack, and even Dr. Goodman. At the bottom were smaller portraits of his and Bones' families- Booth's parents and brother, and Max, Christine, and Russ Brennan. A beautiful script at the top read: Family.

"Angela did it," Bones broke into his thoughts.

"We're the center," Booth breathed.

"And the center has held," Bones finished.

"It's beautiful," he said.

"I guess we both had family on our minds," she said, placing the montage between them and moving closer.

"I guess we did."

They shared a kiss. Not one of youthful, lust-filled passion, but one of wisdom and age, of familiarity and comfort; each knowing that they were not only loved, but cherished.

"You know," a voice broke in, "You keep doing that and one of you is going to die of a heart attack."

"You keep walking in on us, Son," Booth addressed Parker, "And I just might have to dig out my gun and scare you away."

"Once again," Parker wasn't impressed at all with Booth's threats, "Someone had to come up and pull you two off of each other long enough to come to your own party."

Booth stood up and offered his wife his elbow, "Ready to go face the music?"

"Only if you'll promise to dance with me," she accepted it, slipping her arm into his as she'd done for so many years now.

And so they partied, and danced, and laughed. It was a good night- and Booth even managed to stay up until almost midnight.

"Happy Anniversary, Bones," he said as they drifted off to sleep.

"Happy Anniversary, Booth."