Jealousy, Thy Name is Booth

"Hey, Booth, you hear that Sully's coming back?" Agent Charlie Madison had one of those oblivious expressions on his face as he poked his head into Booth's office to give him the latest inside scoop.

"No, I hadn't heard that." He wasn't sure why he was so surprised, it wasn't like Sully wasn't a fully capable FBI agent; albeit a supposedly retired one who was supposed to be sailing around the Caribbean with his broken heart for company in the sailboat he'd named after Bones.

"Yeah, day after tomorrow – looks like his Caribbean adventure was a bust," Charlie let out a laugh that was more envy filled than mirthful; clearly the pudgy agent with four kids who were nearly college-bound wasn't going to have the Caribbean as part of his reality anytime soon.

"Is that so?" Booth had actually hoped that Sully would find that the Caribbean was his dream come true; that he would just keep on sailing away into the sunset and not complicate his life. Not that he regarded Sully as a bad guy – the guy was about as good as they came, except for one thing – Bones. If Sully was back, that meant one thing as far as Booth was concerned and he didn't like it one little bit.

"Yeah, I guess he's coming back to see if Cullen will give him his job back," Charlie laughed again, not really picking up on the mood that had begun to settle in on Booth. "Me and a couple of the guys are gonna take him out for drinks and get the skinny on what went wrong in the tropics – you in?" He looked at Booth expectantly.

The last thing that Booth wanted to do was go out with the guys and listen to Sully cry in his beer about how the Caribbean was worthless because Bones hadn't gone with him. Booth furrowed his brow and cleared his throat, not bothering to answer Charlie's question, "Hey, I've got a meeting I've got to get to." He didn't bother to wait for Charlie to pin him down on whether he was going to go out with the guys, Booth had places to be and people to see; well one person actually.

"So I'll put you down as a 'yes' then," Charlie just shook his head as Booth breezed out of his office with a stack of files in hand and headed towards the elevator.

Booth didn't really have a reason to head over the Jeffersonian other than needing Bones to sign a half a dozen forms that weren't really pressing. He had wanted to get away from Charlie and he most certainly didn't want to hear any more about Sully. Now he just had to find a way to get Bones to sign these forms and find out if she knew that Sully was coming back without actually having to bring it up. Not that he was sure how he was going to do that, but he was after all an FBI Special Agent and he hadn't gotten that rank without being good about pulling information out of people without them knowing about it. Of course this was Bones he was talking about; she was going to be a little more challenging. He strode into the Medico-Legal Lab with a big of a swagger.

Angela Montenegro immediately honed in on his demeanor and couldn't help but comment under her breath as Booth headed towards where Bren was standing up on the platform, "Someone looks a little too happy." In her experience it meant one of two things – either Booth had just landed a new girlfriend, which given the slightly nervous twitch at the corner of his mouth she highly doubted, or he had just found out that Sully was coming back to DC. Given what her instincts told her, she decided she was going to need a front row seat for this one and so she casually followed.

Booth swiped his card and took the steps to the platform two at a time, "Hey, Bones, I've got some paperwork for you to sign." He could tell that she was working on another one of those cases from Limbo given the way that she didn't even bother glancing up at him as she hunched over a bone shard, that with a tilt of his head and a bit of a squint he determined that she was trying to figure out which other piece of bone fragment it was supposed to belong to.

"You can put it on my desk," Brennan wondered if the paperwork was the only reason that Booth had stopped by; at the moment she was rather enjoying the examination of a set of remains that she was trying to determine if they were from the Revolutionary era as the team that found them claimed or if they were possibly from the War of 1812 or the Civil War. She was sure she was going to have to examine them more closely underneath a high powered microscope to tell. And not for the first time and with a pang she realized probably not for the last time, she missed that Zach wasn't here to help her.

"No can do," A cocky grin adorned Booth's face. He needed Bones' one hundred-percent undivided attention if he was going to be able to determine if she knew if Sully was on his way back to DC and whether or not she thought that was a good thing.

Brennan glanced up and turned her head just slightly so she could see Booth, "You said you just needed me to sign something. Do we have a case or are you just bored?"

"This is important FBI business, Bones," It was important, but he was bluffing, the signatures could have waited until later and he most certainly could have left them on her desk as she had asked.

Brennan snuffed out a little breath through her nose and straightened up to face the alpha-male that Booth was exuding and as she noticed the nervous expression on his face it occurred to her that a recent tidbit of information must have made its way through the halls at the J. Edgar Hoover building. She crossed her arms and tilted her head slightly, her ponytail bobbing back and forth at the movement, "Sully's coming back."

"I heard," At the mention of Tim Sullivan's nickname and all that it represented to him and how it made him feel, something rose up in Booth that he was incapable of squelching just then. He stepped forward and let out a bit of a growl as he reached out and effectively grabbed Bones and pulled her towards him and in the next instant, he was kissing her for all he was worth as the files scattered all over the floor. It took him nearly a full minute to realize that she was kissing him back just as eagerly.

When Booth finally let her go, Brennan just stood there staring at him trying to catch her breath. It occurred to her as they just looked at each other blinking that she had just started sharing a little bit of information with him. She started talking again, "Sully's getting married."

Booth tried to process those last three words, "He's what?" By her saying that Sully was getting married, surely that didn't mean that she was going to marry Sully – Bones didn't believe in marriage and she hadn't seen Sully since he'd left, that only left the option that perhaps Sully had met someone else off in the sunset who wasn't Bones.

"He's getting married, he met some British woman named Clara in the British Virgin Islands and they're getting married," Brennan had finally caught her breath now and she was doing her best to try and read Booth's expression.

Booth was clearly wearing his heart on his sleeve at this point, "So he's not coming here to win you back." He knew he shouldn't have said it like that; Bones wasn't a woman that you won – she was a woman that you'd be lucky enough to have her choose you.

There was a flash in Brennan's eyes as she realized that what Booth's expression was had jealousy and fear and something towards her that she hadn't really been sure of before. Now though, it was unmistakably clear, "You're jealous."

Booth was going to deny it and then out of the corner of his eye he could see Angela who had witnessed the entire display. Swallowing hard, he looked back at Bones, "I'm not jealous I just wanted to clear up a few things, that's all."

"You are jealous," Brennan had a delighted smirk on her face and a hint of mischief dancing in her eyes as she took a step towards Booth, "Let's just get that clear right now."

Booth seemed to melt under the strong confident unwavering gaze she locked onto him with, "I was just worried that he was going to come back and mess everything up again." There he'd said it – it wasn't a declaration of love or anything else too terribly impulsive, well no more impulsive than grabbing his partner and kissing her in front of all of her coworkers because her ex was coming back into town and he was afraid she'd fall for him again.

"I'm happy that I didn't go with Sully, is that clear?" Brennan felt her smirk turning into more of a smile.

"Yes, that's clear," Booth didn't dare move; she could still give him a good roundhouse kick for kissing her. In fact he wasn't sure why she hadn't at least slapped him by now for being the alpha-male that she always claimed that he was. This time there was no denying it.

"I'm glad," And in a very un-Brennan-like move, she grabbed Booth's tie and pulled him towards her to properly settle the matter with a kiss of her own; just so they were perfectly clear.

And as Booth and Brennan continued to stand there on the platform between the stainless steel exam tables kissing, Angela just stood there with her mouth hanging open, a silent squeal rendering her speechless.

Well I plan to wrap this up before the new season starts in a little over a week, so I hope to have one maybe two more up before then...until the next location then.