It was moving time again! But here is an extra, extra long chapter in recompense with just a little tingly bit at the end to make you all warm inside and squirmy. Review!
Brennan knew her face looked like it was about to cry by the way Arastoo was looking at her. She sucked in a deep breath somewhere from behind her diaphragm and pulled back her calm. His face lessened its fear and she knew she had regained some of her composure, although the pressure against the backs of her eyes, tongue and lungs did not lessen.
"Are you all right, Dr. Brennan?" he asked it anyway, though they both knew the answer before it left her lips was:
"Yes, I'm fine." She pursed her lips to steady them, hiding their trembling. "Where are we on the defleshing of the corpses we've recovered?"
"The beetles are working as fast as they can Dr. Brennan, but there was a lot of tissue left over. All three corpses were only a few days, if not hours, old." Brennan felt sick to her stomach. Their murders were very infrequently so new.
"Have Cam take a bone saw to it."
"Dr. Brennan?" She snapped her head up but tried to keep her voice calm.
"We need those bones as fast as we can Mr. Vaziri. Ask Dr. Hodgins and Dr. Saroyan if they can't help speed the process along by sawing off larger pieces of the flesh, such as the muscles around the thigh, removing the organs, etc. to make it easier for the beetles to clean the bones."
"They've already done most of that Dr. Brennan."
"I know," Brennan snapped. She almost ran her hand through her hair but stopped when she held her gloved hand up to her face. Instead she stripped both latex gloves off her hands with more force than necessary, venting her frustration. "See if they can't find smaller scalpels to do the work."
"They might scratch the bone."
"Then find more beetles!"
"I promise Dr. Brennan, I've found all we have."
"Can't we get more?" she felt like screaming but stopped when she heard Cam's familiar Jimmy Choo's clicking in the hallway.
"Dr. Brennan-" Here Arastoo hesitated again, and Brennan knew he was balancing precariously on the knife between boss and friend. She steadied her resolve.
"Could you run some more tests on what could have possibly been the cause of death? Are they different or the same?" His face fell, pushing him over onto the side of boss, just as she had hoped for. He sighed and his wavering hand which had been inching from his side, clenched his own arm as if he were scratching it, instead of reaching for hers in sympathy and he brushed past her.
"Booth has no news." Cam's voice preceded her before she stepped out of the shadows into the bone room. Brennan hardly glanced at her, affixing her gaze on the clear box over her shoulder present on the raised platform of the lab table where the body was undergoing cleaning by the beetles. She was in the bone room, her table noticeably empty of any bones to examine. She was anxious to begin, though she knew the chances of the bones giving any clues were slim. Their leads on this case were absolutely minimal. Booth was just as frustrated as she was.
"Thank you Cam," Brennan said it dismissively, turning her back defensively and hunching over a lab report and perusing it carefully, as if it might give her the answer she so desperately sought. In reality it was just a remnant of their Kentucky case. She waited for Cam to leave and heard her sigh.
"Brennan." Brennan felt cramped again, her insides twisted with anxiety. Brennan felt the line, strung between them, taut with the tension that always danced there, never so easy as it was with Angela. She avoided the pity.
"Where are we on identification?" she asked instead. Cam came to lean on the other side of the lit examining table and pressed both hands to the top of it, splaying her fingers. They looked like black shadows against the light. Brennan flicked it off, irritated with the contrast. Cam slouched back with surprise, a flicker of hurt on her face.
"We don't have a match on any of the victims from the criminal records database. Angela is running it through the DMV but so far none have pinged from the surrounding area. It'll take hours for the entire country. Possibly days. We're also running their prints."
"What about their autopsy reports? Cat scans?"
"They all seemed to be healthy, functioning adults."
"Seemed to be?" Brennan honed in on the semantics. Cam glanced up at her from under her eyebrows.
"They were healthy adults," Cam corrected tiredly. Brennan dropped the tidbit of a lead they had with disappointed disgust and turned away.
"Brennan," Cam said her name again quietly.
"Why don't you help –"
"I'm not an intern," Cam said just as quietly, but with a touch of steel in her voice. Brennan bobbed up from her lab report in surprise, her breath crushed out of her lungs quicker than she expected.
"I'm sorry?"
"I said I'm not an intern. You don't have to suggest I work because you don't want me to be concerned for you."
Brennan swallowed, not sure what to say.
"I'm your friend too," Cam gave a tiny, lopsided smile. "And Booth is just as crazy as you are right now. When he has something, he'll call. It wasn't you." Brennan let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding. Booth's four days of silence had been killing her.
"You know how he gets," Cam went on blithely, picking at a cuticle. "It's just that…since you two aren't as…solid…as you used to be, it might be a little more awkward than you're used to."
"Yes," Brennan admitted tightly.
"And that would be hard to admit to Angela, because she so desperately wants you to be happy again."
"Yes," Brennan whispered to the table.
"But it's okay," Cam said with a very small smile. "You don't have to be happy around me. You can save up your energy for her and Hodgins. To make them happy." Brennan swallowed very hard and knew her face looked like it was going to cry again, but this time couldn't push it under the surface.
"Thank you."
"With Booth," Cam offered unexpectedly, and Brennan leaned forward on the lab table too, conspiratorially interested.
"Yes?"
"Just...take your time. You two have had a rough...couple of weeks. It'll take some time to find your footing again." Brennan blinked at her as she processed. She opened her mouth to say she didn't quite know what that meant when another, louder voice roared.
"Bones!" the cry startled her so much she yipped a tiny clipped squeal of surprise that made Cam laugh. Booth found them both laughing together, two tight strained laughs to be sure, but laughs nonetheless. Brennan watched as some of the furrows of his brows melted away at the sight. She instantly was able to breathe a little easier.
"Thanks Cam," she said and almost skipped the two steps it took to cross the room to his side.
Nothing like a good old fashioned serial killer to get those two back together, Cam observed wryly to herself.
"What?" Booth frowned, unused to hearing Brennan thank anyone for anything.
"Oh," Cam saved Brennan from an awkward explanation and was rewarded by the look of intense gratitude on her friend and coworker's face. "For the autopsy reports." She snatched up the folder Brennan had been reading on the Kentucky case and almost winced. Pictures of her snapped after the cave-in taken as evidence were paper clipped to the inside. In one she was slapping away the wrist of a shy, contrite looking skinny man in glasses trying to cover her in a shock blanket. She tucked those carefully behind some statistics and saw Brennan hide a tiny smile.
"Why are you here?" Brennan asked Booth and saw both Booth and Cam stiffen at her question. She realized belatedly that this must be what Sweets meant as "the way you phrase questions is rude" when she had asked him for social cues.
"I mean," she fumbled. "Do we have a lead?" Booth's face brightened and cleared simultaneously with the understanding. She noticed he wasn't wearing his cocky belt buckle. She looked away, lest she be caught staring.
"Sort of! Come on. I want to take you for a drive." Brennan gave him a lopsided grin.
"Alright."
"Cam, we'll catch you later?"
"We'll call you with any results," she promised wearily. Brennan was already halfway out of the room but had to search for Booth, who had paused to grip Cam's arm in thanks. To her surprise, Cam too, looked near tears.
"We'll fix this," he rumbled.
"You better," she grinned, but it was a watery one. Brennan had to look away, even though what Cam had told her she took to heart. Everything took its own time. Her and Booth's new working relationship would take some adjustment. Adaptation was a biological product, but it had taken evolution billions of years. Hopefully it would take them less time, but it would take just that: time.
Booth was unusually quiet as he walked her to the car, and didn't open the door for her as usual. She tried to not let it rumple her fur. Or was it feathers? He put the air conditioning on too cold, even though he knew she hated that. Instead of fixing it as she normally would and starting a fight, she kept her hands twisted in her lap, biting her lip and thinking about what Cam said. Everything in its own time.
"You got new car mats," she observed with some surprise as they pulled onto route 1.
"What?" Booth pulled himself out of his reverie, seemingly lost in deep thought, though Brennan knew him too well to fall for that. He was studying something else, or thinking hard. Whichever it was, he was thoroughly ignoring her. "Oh. That. Yeah. Yeah I did. The old ones were just…you know. Gross. I threw them out."
They had picked those car mats out together. The ones in the back seat had the Justice League symbols on them, just to be quirky to spice up the staid black SUV, sort of like the equivalent of Booth's socks. The new mats were all black. Brennan supposed they were better at catching the crumbs Booth dropped when eating in the car, even though she hated when he did that because it made the leather smell of grease. It did so now. She bit the inside of her cheek.
"They're nice," she lied. Booth grunted and stared out the window. They were travelling farther into Maryland.
"So where are we going?"
"Oh, got a tip off. Going to check it out. Not sure really. I'll get a call here in a bit." It was unlike Booth to be so vague. Brennan swallowed but folded her arms up under her breasts.
"Are you cold?" Booth seemed honestly surprised.
"Just a bit," she was relieved and reached for the fan.
"Jesus I'm boiling," Booth continued, loosening his tie. Her hand dropped. He wriggled out of his jacket and she reached for it hopefully as he steered with his knees, but he didn't even glance at her as he threw it in the back seat. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes as she redirected the fan vent and stared out the window.
There was a long, tense silence before Booth switched on the radio, a strange, unaccustomed gesture they never before had needed when they drove. Horrible music filtered through the car, something along the lines of unending chain saws. Booth bobbed his head along to the song. Brennan couldn't stand it and switched it to another station.
"Hey, I was listening to that!" he seemed genuinely angry. Brennan was a bit scared of how upset he seemed and obligingly changed it back, although the cymbals crashing gave her a headache. Booth rolled his tight jaw and she tipped hers against the window.
"So I changed Parker's room," he had to yell over the music but didn't turn it down. Brennan followed suit, though her throat seemed overfull as it was.
"What?"
"I changed Parker's room!"
"What?"
"Parker's room!"
"What about it?"
Booth finally gave up on the music and turned it off. The silence was deafening. He wrestled his car off the exit as he glared at her out of the corner of her eye as if this was somehow her fault. Brennan was bewildered at his attitude. Cam had said he wasn't mad at her. That they were fine. Clearly Cam was wrong. Which also meant her advice…was crap.
Brennan felt a flush of irritation begin to creep up her neck.
"Parker's room," Booth said in a tight voice. "Me and Parks switched it. We went shopping for new comforter and stuff. We spent Saturday moving it all around. Looks good. You should come by and see it."
Although Booth's words were friendly, they cut like ice. She, Parker and Booth had been planning to redecorate Parker's room together for months. She had promised to buy Parker a new piece of furniture, her treat. He had been begging for a bean bag. His father had wanted to get him a desk. For Booth to disregard her, to have cut her so completely out of his life…their life…it hurt. She felt the cut inside her collarbones, like a coroner was already beginning her autopsy, slicing her life apart while she was still in it.
"You went without me?" she answered numbly, not sure what else to say.
"Well yeah," Booth scoffed, wrenching the car around the road like the assholes he so often yelled at. She clenched her door handle tightly as he circled a city, looking for something she couldn't see. "We didn't know when you'd be free, or what you were up to, or…you know…"
She knew.
"I…" she gasped as he narrowly missed rear ending a Buick and screeched, "Booth! Watch the road!"
"I'm watching the road!" he argued back. She felt very, very tired. She could feel the scalpel peeling back her skin, one excruciating inch at a time.
"Why are you telling me this?" she asked quietly.
"I thought you'd want to come visit Parker," he answered with a falsely confused tone, spreading his hands on the wheel, his brown eyes wide and innocent.
"Why are you telling me this now, when we're on a case?"
"We're not on the case yet, and we always talk about stuff in the car."
"Stuff. This is stuff to you?" she asked flatly.
"Yeah!"
"Just stuff?"
"What else would it be?"
"Me, being like a second mother to your son. Your son, whom you had, out of wedlock with a woman you can't stand, that's what you want to talk about in the car?" she knew she was being intentionally cruel, but she was piqued. The air was freezing and she slapped it off finally as Booth found what he was looking for and turned into the underground parking garage, taking a ticket from the meter and driving to the very last floor, his jaw clenching and unclenching before answering.
"Don't ever talk about my son that way," he spat.
"Or what?"
"Just don't Bones." His voice was a warning. A threat.
"You think you can hurt me?" He laughed a short, horrible ashy laugh.
"Oh, I know I can hurt you."
"Try me," she dared, and she knew it to. Knew by the look in his eyes that what came next was going to crush her, was going to destroy her, and didn't care. This was going to be worse than the mailing of her letters. This was going to rip out her soul, finish the autopsy and create a pulp of her organs.
Booth opened the car door and slammed it behind him, walking out into the parking garage. She followed him out, her fury mounting.
"What, we're going to fight? Baron it out?"
"It's duke it out, you squint," he taunted. His barb stung, even though it was the littlest one he could have dredged up. Her face must have shown it because his flickered into genuine surprise and hurt before he pulled down his mask of rage and advanced a step.
"Where to start," he grimaced. "With Daddy?" She held her head up, not quite meeting his eyes and shrugged bravely. "Or Mommy?" She dropped her gaze to his chin. "Or brother?" Her gaze went to his chest, her throat thick and wet and he hadn't even started yet.
"Please, go ahead. You're just a scared little boy whose afraid I'm going to hit you." She was purposefully goading him, she knew. She wanted him to hurt her. Wanted him to finish it. She didn't know why he was being so cruel today, but she would rather it be over now than have a slow sickness creep over their relationship like cancer and destroy it piece by piece.
"Why don't you just admit it?" Booth shouted.
"Admit what?" she snapped, and she realized her face was bright red, her tears up under her skin, threatening to explode out of it.
"That you hate me!" She staggered back a step, away from the car into the shadows of a concrete pillar.
"I don't hate you," she whispered, and she felt the first tear fall. Booth advanced on her cruelly, viciously, step by careful step and Brennan knew there was nowhere to run.
"You hate something."
"I don't!" More tears joined the first, tributaries forming a flood.
"You hate me!"
"I don't!"
"Hate!"
"I hate this," she sobbed raggedly at last, giving way to his onslaught. He stopped advancing, breathing hard.
"Hate what?"
"That everything is different. I feel like I came home and you changed everything."
"No I didn't," he contradicted her automatically. His mask was slipping, his rage draining from his face until just the traces of what it took as toll from him were left. She gestured wildly, flamboyantly, knowing she was out of control but unable to rein it in.
"The belt buckle. The car mats. Parker's room! You completely rearranged the furniture. When I walked in I felt like it wasn't even my-" she stopped and swallowed her words but not before he dove down her throat after them with a snarl flitting about his lips.
"Not what? Not your house? Not your car? Because it isn't your house Bones! It isn't your life!"
"It was our life!" she screamed back just as passionately. "It was our life and by whosever hand, by whatever means it got ripped away-" He clenched his jaw and looked away, content as she was not to contest the point of blame in the middle of a more crucial argument to open up an old wound.
"-and I am trying," she gagged on the word, "to piece it back together, but I come home…" she fumbled for a moment with her choice of diction and saw him unwillingly pick up her thread of thought for her, honestly curious, wanting to understand.
"You come home…?" he probed.
"And I feel…cut out. Like I'm not…here anymore. That life left without me. You were…"
"I was what?" Booth suddenly spun on the forehand of his shoes, growing menacingly taller on the tip toes of his shoes as he towered over her while she cowered beneath him. He gritted his teeth and hissed as he leaned in. "Supposed to wait?"
Her face broke in half though she had meant to keep her teeth clenched hard together as a horrible, terrifying, gut-wrenching yes ripped through her core and slammed into him hard enough to drive him back a step. Of their own accord, his fingers curled into her arms, so even though she reeled back from the force of her cry, he pulled her forward out of both force of habit, and force of love.
"You're right," he muttered to the top of her head as he tucked it beneath his chin and together they slumped up against the side of the car, the still warm doors reflecting the sun belying the damp underground garage. "I should have left a space for you."
She couldn't answer him, only grab his jacket lapels harder in an answer, telling him where the space was: here. Right here. His arms curled protectively closer, holding her tightly. She bit the tip of her tongue until the ridges in her teeth made her wince and stared hard at the double Winsor knot in his tie. It was crooked, just like his tiny smile. She didn't return it.
"Why did you do this?" she asked hoarsely, trying to stagger back a step, but his iron grip prevented it. She realized she had wanted him to make a space for her, and he had taken it so literally she wasn't going to get her own anytime soon. She mentally cursed her stupidity.
"Do what?" he played dumb, which she didn't appreciate. He tried to duck down to meet her gaze, which was red, instead of blue, from being so blood shot. She instead stared hard at the tiny nick on the underside of his chin where he had cut himself shaving a few days ago, if the scabbing was any indication of the coagulated blood.
"Make me cry," she said it quietly, icily. "Make me angry." She twitched her gaze up to him, forcing him to let her go, but although he too twitched beneath her, he didn't release her. He dipped his face towards hers. She froze and jerked her head back like a frightened horse.
"What are you doing?" she whispered it this time, as if someone could hear them, and turned her cheek just in case. Booth's lips met her ear and he too whispered.
"Explaining."
The friction between them blossomed as Brennan became infinitesimally aware of his every movement.
"Did you ever wonder," Booth breathed, but Brennan wasn't concentrating on his words as his hands began to slowly graze up the back of her thigh, paying particular attention to each rustle and fold of her pants; she didn't have the breath to stop him. "Why we are in an underground parking garage, ten miles into Maryland?"
"Booth," Brennan said warningly, but her voice shook embarrassingly as his hand travelled slowly up the other leg. He shook his head slowly, his eyes begging her to trust him. His voice was barely a murmur.
"I…" Brennan couldn't think, could barely breathe as Booth's hands both found the top of her pants at the same time. He could have squeezed, just for the fun of it, and his eyes twinkled at the prospect while she flushed crimson, but he didn't as he moved to her waist. She knew what he was doing now. He was searching her for something. A cop feeling a suspect.
Only she wasn't a suspect.
Having caught onto his game she willingly put her arms over her head and up around his neck, making it easier for him to finger gently under each rib, run a fingernail under her bra straps, trace the tiny trail over her abdomen. He was looking for something much smaller than a weapon, she knew. He was looking for bugs. She thumped her head onto his shoulder with a tiny gasped cry she couldn't bite back when he tickled the inside of her right hip and clamped a warning hand over his when he touched the front of her belt. With her eyes she told him she would have noticed anything unusual. He quirked his lips and she bit hers.
"The body movers," she stood on tiptoe to breathe it into his ear so he could reach the back of her scapulae and then trace down her arms. She too, began running her hands down his arms, though taking him by surprise so much that he froze for a moment.
"What's wrong Booth?" she simpered in a breathy whisper. He almost growled, such a guttural response answered her. Brennan couldn't help but catch a hitch in the back of her throat though she tried not to let it show on her face as she signaled for him to turn around, sliding his gun straps off of him silently, before minutely examining the buckles. He took his time wending his fingers to part the collar of her shirt, splaying quick dusted fingers over her collarbones and leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake. A devilish little smile lit his face and she had to wonder how much of this he was taking notes on…just in case. As if in answer he touched her lips as if to hush her, but the way he let it linger there, dragging it purposefully down was cruel. She let the tip of her tongue touch the crease of his knuckle for a moment, and was rewarded by the look of surprise on his face, as if he was surprised she knew what he was doing.
She took to examining his tie next, his buttons, before she stretched up on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear, liking the way his two day shadow scratched on the sensitive part right under her chin. He hadn't found it yet.
"It has to be something we wear every day Booth; it has to be something we never take off."
The killer knew where they would be always. He, or she, or even they – most probably they – had always been two steps ahead of them. The killer had known how to find their car, how to find and scare Cam, when Brennan would be working in the lab. It was only logical they had been spying.
Booth's face went blank with the same sort of terrifying quality as she felt on hers. She gently unbuttoned the first few buttons on his shirt and pulled out his St. Christopher's medal on its chain. She examined it under the fluorescents. It seemed perfectly normal. She shrugged and let it fall back to its usual dangle on Booth's rippling chest. He snatched it up to look for himself but went rigid as her fingers dug into his pants pocket. She pulled out a poker chip, despite Booth's long time recovery, that he kept on him at all times. He left it by his keys, and it became a habit to empty his pockets at the end of each night and put them back in every morning. His face contorted with barely concealed rage and she knew it was more at himself than anything while she fiddled with the inner ring. It slipped easily, revealing a green wire and a tiny microchip with a recording device. It was a microtransmitter.
Booth touched her pockets with a frown. She shook her head. She didn't keep anything in them. He raised his eyebrows in warning but she still wasn't prepared when he traced under her jawline and dipped a finger between her breasts, fishing for a necklace that wasn't there. She batted his hand away harder than was strictly necessary making him suck in his breath. Brennan hoped whoever was on the other end of the recorder was enjoying their sick little show. Their panted breaths and rustling clothes would be unmistakable, if the transmitter was still working even underground. Booth was being extra cautious, it seemed, until he found them both.
Brennan held her breath as Booth motioned for her to spread her legs like at airport security. She felt her face burning with humiliation as he began to go over her inch by inch, the inherent friction, the sexual tension evaporating in an instant now that it was no longer mutual. She put a hand to her face to cool her heated skin and a glint caught her eye.
Her mother's ring.
But it was too small. Too delicate. There couldn't be a device in something as small as that….could there? Brennan stared at it. But there was nothing else she wore on a daily basis. The killers would have known that. They would have studied her beforehand. They would have known her habits. As creepy as that was, it was also incredibly smart. She pulled Booth's hair up from her belt loops to show him the ring clutched between her fingertips with a questioning frown on her face. He plunked it eagerly on the hood of the SUV before digging in the console for something. He returned with a swiss army knife before carefully prying one of the tiny black jewels out. Brennan's jaw dropped. Attached to the back of the 'gem' was a tiny thread wending into the band. It was a camera. A microscopic camera.
Just as carefully Booth replaced it and handed the ring back to her. She tried to refuse.
"Take it. It's fine." His words seemed shatteringly loud after such a long silence.
"Booth?" she said his name with a rising inflection, explaining as best she could her confusion.
"It's not on. We're out of range. They don't work underground, which is what I was counting on. Neither of them are on. We're safe here."
"Well let's destroy them!" she exclaimed. He gave her a half grin.
"Oh really, Ms. Logical? We're finally one step ahead! We don't want to let on that we know we're being watched. We can use this."
"Use it how?"
"To our advantage. We can start feeding them false information. They are feeding off our fracture patterns." Brennan frowned.
"For once, I don't follow you. You are using incorrect bone diction."
"Look, the lab is fracturing," Booth said impatiently, his hands expanding in a ring. "Starting with us. The killers are feeding off of that to make us more afraid. Instead of drawing us together like that usually would, they're doing it in a way that's forcing us apart, making us less cohesive as a team, and less of great workers. It's smart. But you're smarter."
Brennan flushed a little. She liked it when Booth told her how smart she was. Unnecessary, but still pleasant.
"Booth…you still…made me cry," she said uncomfortably.
"Fracturing at the center makes them think we're weak," he reminded her. Brennan couldn't look at him so instead stared at a crack in the concrete.
"And what if you're not wrong?" Booth swallowed hard, gripping her shoulder so tightly it bruised, but she didn't mind. It was better than nothing at all.
"We all have our buttons, Bones," he sighed. "I was just pushing yours." Brennan peered up at him from under lashes still wet from a splash of sobbing. She touched his St. Christopher's medal, knowing full well underneath it was scar tissue in his lungs from trying to save his friend in war from a plastics blast. He flinched.
"I guess we do."