I'm thinking this is set around s3-ish since we didn't get an undercover episode that season, so here's an undercover episode I've always wanted: B&B as lifeguards. This is just a quick little sneak peak into what I thought it would have been like from a Booth and Brennan standpoint since the case isn't really developed, haha.
Also, 100+ reviews is really, really cool, so thank you!
Booth impatiently taps his foot on the floor while Brennan sits motionless. It's a comparison that Sweets would make if he was here: agitation versus calm rationale. Another difference, another opposite, another reason why they balance each other out and have such a strong bond.
"Doesn't Sweets realize we're busy working on a case here?" Booth scoffs, fingers gripping onto his phone as he awaits an update from Cam about the newest victim. "I don't have time for this."
"Booth, give it a minute." Brennan looks down at her watch. "We've only been sitting here for two minutes."
"I know, but what does that kid have to do that's more important than our so-called needed therapy sessions?" He says, words sharp with annoyance.
As if on cue, Sweets walks in, wearing his usual childlike smile. He slides into his chair opposing the duo and claps his hands across his lap, his eyes gleaming with an unspoken excitement.
"Agent Booth," he nods towards them, "Doctor Brennan."
"Sweets." Booth says bluntly. "Just cut to the chase already. You never schedule one of our sessions at the last minute nor do you ever arrive late."
"I was just talking to Deputy Director Stark," Sweets explains through upturned lips, "and he informed me that you two have done undercover work before."
"Yes, we did. For a case out in Las Vegas." Brennan says. "Which now looking back was not a good idea considering Booth's gambling past."
"Bones," Booth hisses. "Now is not time for that."
"What, Booth, is it wrong that I'm concerned about you relapsing?" Brennan asks, looking at him.
"No, Bones, I like that you mind. But I don't want Sweets to start nitpicking a part of my past I try to forget about." Booth throws daggers in Sweet's direction.
Sweets holds his hands up. "Hey, whoa, I was just about to suggest the idea of you two going undercover again."
"Undercover?" Brennan's eyebrow hitches upwards.
Booth's expression mirrors his confused partner. "What? Why?"
Their most recent case has landed them at a private beach on the Virginia shore. The victim is a lifeguard at the beach, a young man in his 20s whose bones had been found crashing into a pile of rocks near the shoreline. With the only a select group of families and other fellow lifeguards having access to the beach, the suspect pool is already fairly small. It seems fairly routine, but the young psychologist has a different idea.
"In a type of private community like this, people are going to be covering for each other. You guys need to get yourself in there and gain everyone's trust. It'll get open them up and hopefully lead you to the killer." Sweets explains.
"So, what are we going undercover as?" Booth asks. "New members of this beach?"
"Actually, I was thinking something more along the line of being lifeguards."
"Lifeguards?" Brennan questions incredulously as Booth looks at Sweets with bewilderment and says, "You do realize most lifeguards are in their twenties and me and Bones are, well, not."
Sweets clears his throat. "More like lifeguard instructors. I was talking to the woman who owns the beach, and she told me there's a new batch of lifeguards who need to be overseen, and well, that's where you two come into play."
Booth turns to look at Brennan. "What do you think, Bones?"
"I usually don't put much merit into Sweets' thinking," Brennan says as Sweets lets out a defeated sigh, "but I think he might be right in this instance. Anthropologically speaking, small communities like this will do anything to look out for each other. Going undercover appears to be our best option."
"So… Tony and Roxie?" Booth asks, leaning closer and already falling into their flirtatious cover story.
"Tony and Roxie." She grins back, eyes dancing with memories of Vegas on the mind.
Sweets gives them a sort of We need to talk about this look, then says, "I guess it's settled then."
Booth jumps from his seat on the couch. "We'll call you with updates. Come on, Bones. We gotta get our bathing suits on."
The summer sun beats down on Booth's back as he watches Brennan slather sunscreen over her arms. He subconsciously licks his lips, taking in the sight of Brennan in nothing but a red, tight bathing suit. He had already caught her looking him over when he stripped off his t-shirt earlier. She, of course, had been able to play it off by making some comment about how this was her staying in character, how they had to play infatuated with each other.
Which is easy for Booth especially as he tries to swallow down his jealousy when he notices a few beachgoers looking over in Brennan's direction.
The beach owner that Sweets had spoken too, a short woman named Lindsay Jacobs, sets the two of them in the main lifeguard station smack dab in the middle of the beach. After meeting with a couple of all other lifeguards, all young and lanky college kids, they try to focus on the task at hand of finding the murderer.
Try is the key word.
He pulls himself up the wooden ladder and sits on the bench of the lifeguard's station. She isn't far behind, cramming herself next to him as she wipes at the sunscreen on her neck.
"Here," he says, "you missed a spot."
His fingers sweep across the sensitive skin of her throat, too slow and too intricate for the simple movement of erasing away a final bit of white cream.
Her cheeks are red when he looks at her.
He knows it's not because of a sunburn.
She clears her throat. "We need to figure out a way to ask people what they were doing on Friday night. I know you've said that subtly isn't really my thing."
"Bones, I don't think you're going to have any problem with getting people to speak you," Booth's eyes flit over her bathing suit before shaking away any lingering thoughts. "…But I think we should start by putting together a pool of suspects. My gut is telling me it's one of the fathers out here who probably got all upset seeing their daughter flirting with the new lifeguard."
Brennan peers at him. "Your gut?"
"Of course my gut. I'm a father. I know what it's like."
"You have a son, not a daughter."
"But that doesn't mean I don't know what it's like to be overprotective." He explains. "Come on, Bones, you said that the college kid had symmetrical features or whatever. This is probably a case of guy meets girl, girl falls for guy, father finds out sort of deal."
She questioning look turns into some of small pride. "For a hunch supposedly based on your gut, there actually is some logic to your thought."
"What can I say, Bones?" He smiles. "You've rubbed off on me."
When she smiles back at him, it's even brighter than the sun. He watches her start to lean forward, her eyes landing on a man standing near them who settles into into beach chair next to a teenage girl, presumably his daughter. It's a good lead, Booth thinks, but his hand has other thoughts. His fingers reach towards her thigh, pulling her back down next to him. She darts her eyes at him.
"What?"
His hand is still resting on her thigh. "Did you like to go to the beach when you were a kid?"
She doesn't notice his hand. Or maybe she's still in the character of Roxie. Or maybe, just maybe, she likes the feeling of it. "I always did find it fun to explore the ocean ecosystem when I was a child."
He pokes his tongue out between his teeth. "That's not fun, Bones. I meant like trying to jump over crashing waves and boogie boarding and building sandcastles."
"One time, when I was five, I made this huge sandcastle, complete with its own surrounding kingdoms, and Russ stomped over the entire thing." She remembers, souring. "I think it look me a year to forgive him."
Booth lets out a laugh. "You could have rebuilt it."
"I was proud of that sandcastle!" She jabs him with her elbow, but he still laughs. "I mean, I probably swam around when I was little, but I preferred having my own explorations when I became old enough to go off on my own. Unlike you, I've always thought that science is fun."
"I guess everyone has their own ideas of excitement then." He concedes. "See, me and Jared, we would have competitions. Who could jump over the highest wave, who could stay on their boogie board the longest, who could swim the furthest away from shore." He breaks out into a wide grin. "I always won."
"I probably could have beaten you," she edges on, wearing a zealous look in her eyes.
"Please," he scoffs.
"Why," she says, "is it because I'm a girl?"
"Of course not. But," he flexes his arms, "I'm bigger. Always have been."
"Winning is a mental game, not a physical one." She challenges.
Booth moves closer with each word. The sun is hot, but the proximity to her is even hotter. Words are spiked with competitiveness and gazes blaze on, dark ones meeting ocean blues. He watches the way sentences slide over her bowed lips, pink like childhood cherry popsicles. It's hard not to look at her lips when at one time, he knew what they felt like, what they tasted like. Soft against his, drunkenly kissing bruises onto supple skin.
It's a feeling that has started to slip away with the years, a muddled memory of a past buried in poker chips and lost money.
But if he keeps leaning forward now, he'll relearn, lips meeting lips with the bite of salted air on the tongue.
Except his phone rings. It's Cam with an update with the case they're supposed to be working.
He begrudgingly answers. "Hello?"
Cam says to look for someone favoring right arm over the other, that the murderer left far more significant bruising with their right hand than their left, suggesting that they had recently hurt their left hand.
Booth quickly thanks her before hanging up.
Brennan asks: "What did Cam say?"
"To look for someone who recently hurt their left hand." He replies. "The murderer used a lot more force with their right hand than their left when they tried to strangle the victim. Cam thinks that the victim fought back during the attack and hurt the murderer's left hand before he died."
Her eyes scan the beach before landing fifteen feet away. She points to a man walking down the beach, his right hand cradling a splinted left.
"Just follow my lead." He says, standing from his seat.
"What if the man tries to avoid our questions?" She follows him. "I mean, we're still strangers to these people. Or what if he realizes we're working with the FBI?"
He smirks. "Bones, it's like Baywatch. Men can't focus on anything beyond the woman in the red bathing suit."
Their first suspect had been a bust. Their second one too. But Sweets' idea of going undercover had turned out to be the right call in the end as Booth and Brennan's game of gaining everyone's trust eventually them led to the killer: a college girl who happened to be a fellow lifeguard.
Maybe not a father like Booth had originally believed, but a murderer whose actions were based upon relationships and anger and jealousy no less.
The beach is empty as Booth flops down on the sand, feeling the cool grit against his back. Brennan reclines beside him, staring up at the starry night sky. The owner had told them, as a gift from her to them for their efforts in solving the case, that they could stay there for as long as they wanted.
Booth had tried not to notice the wink the owner gave him when she said that they could stay out all night if they desired.
At least their undercover work as a couple had been believable.
Because that's all it is.
Undercover.
Right?
"This was fun." She says it like it's only a secret for him to hear.
He's smiling again. It's hard not to smile around her. "Fun?"
Her pink lips are caught in her teeth, trying to fight the joy that's trapped in her partner's cheeks. "Yes."
Waves tumble up the shoreline, a rhythmic roar of life juxtaposed by the silent, still air. The tail ends of waves brush against Booth's heel, salty and cool to the touch. He looks over to Brennan.
"We never got to go into the water." He says.
"So?"
"We're wearing our suits, plus we have the entire beach to ourselves. It would be a waste if we didn't." He's already on his feet, reaching for her hand.
She latches onto his grip and pulls herself up. "Isn't it pretty cold?"
He laughs. "Who cares? Now," he crouches, "get onto my back."
She raises one eyebrow. "What?"
"I'm giving you a piggyback ride." He stares at her. "You do know what a piggyback ride is, right?"
"Yes, I do. It's something that children do."
"Come on, Bones, children can't have all the fun. Just hop on."
She shakes her head before letting out a sigh of defeat. She hooks her arms around his neck as he scoops her legs into his arms. Once secured into his arms, he runs into the waves. Brennan lets out a surprised shriek that quickly dissolves into a fit of laughter. The water is cold, but her skin is hot against his, and he keeps charging further into the ocean. She giggles into his ear, and he finds his heart falling in tandem with the crashing waves.
He tries not to think about how if they really were Tony and Roxie, how if they really were a couple, she would be pressed into his body, waves riding over their shoulders as they melted into each other's warm touch. Her fingers would slide down his back, and his hands would settle onto her hips, thumbs passing over the outer edge of her bathing suit that meets the sensitive skin of her thigh. It's an intoxicating thought, especially as the night rolls by with dark skies and bright stars as its backdrop.
But her laugh brings him back because, in the end, she's his best friend. Even as he wants, craves, desires, he still has a bond with her that most people would never get to experience.
"Booth!" She squeals as another surge of water rushes past them.
"So," he says, "is this the best beach experience you've ever had?"
"Well, it's certainly better than Russ destroying my sandcastle, but…" her voice takes on a teasing tone, "I don't know if it's the best per se…"
"Bones, you know I can throw you into the water, right?" He begins to lean back, threatening to dunk her.
"Okay, okay!" She wheezes with laughter. "This is the best experience I've ever had. You're a good person to spend a day at the beach with."
He grins. "That's what I thought."
It's quiet for a minute, then: "When do you want to go home?"
He opens his mouth, closes it, and then opens it again. "Is it bad if I say I don't want to? Or at least, not now."
She rests her chin onto his shoulder. "I don't want to either. It's… it's nice to get away from the world for a moment."
"Then, let's keep disappearing." He smiles. "The world doesn't need us tonight."
He keeps the last part to himself.
I only need you.
I finish school in a couple weeks, so yay, I'll have more time to write soon.