Hey, I know I haven't updated (bad me) but I've been working on a new story (no it's not published yet). It got out of hand, and all my time for writing has been devoted to it. It's turning into a one shot but it's already a gazillion pages. So we'll see. Happy trails little angstophiles. The next chapter is what you've been craving. (Not this one, lol, sorry).

"Do we have to?" Booth knew he was using his best Parker whine. Brennan didn't answer him and he glanced over, peeved at the lack of attention. Her elbow was resting on the window sill of his black SUV and her beautiful (though he could never compliment her aloud as he did so often in his head) blue eyes were roving the dark landscape.

"Where does Cam live again?" she asked instead, ignoring his pathetic attempt at humor to wriggle out of poker night.

"Just up here," he answered back, just as softly, the tension between them palpable. The last thing either felt like doing was playing.

Booth parked in the driveway of a modest but charming one story house behind Hodgins' 'toy car' and grabbed his partner's arm a little too hard to be considered polite as she tried to get out.

"Wait," he said in a low voice in a response to her clipped whimper of pain. Her inadvertent response was to insist she could care for herself, he knew from experience, but he glared enough at her that she sat stiffly, glowering furiously out the windshield as he cautiously exited the car. He didn't draw his gun, but he did trace the possible lines of gunfire from sniper vantage points. He carefully scoped the street for suspicious activity and even checked beneath the car (which was, in all honesty, a little over the top) for an explosive. Finding nothing, and not being tailed, he graciously opened the door for Bones who flounced down, purposefully trodding on his foot making him grimace in pain. The entire operation hadn't taken more than 30 seconds, and she was already broiling mad.

He rang the doorbell in a perfunct kind of way, to be answered with a round of cheers from Hodgins and Angela, who ushered them both inside. To Booth, it seemed Angela was forcing almost an over exertion of merriment in her interactions with Brennan, as a way to somehow impart some of her good will onto her best friend. Booth winced. Angela didn't understand that it would simply alienate her. Bones didn't get things like that.

"Who is it?" Cam's voice came from the kitchen and Booth heard the shaking of a drink mixer. Angela was looking fabulous as always in bohemian sort of skinny jeans and an extravagant strappy top. Booth was almost positive he would have remembered that much cleavage in the workplace, and picked up from Hodgins that this night was Angela's way of putting out. He coughed to hide a smile. The ways people deal with stress, he reminded himself.

Expecting to see Cam in a dress that may as well have been painted onto her body, Booth turned to answer the timid doorbell ring. Sweets' face was refracted into three or four overlapping images in the glass around the front door. Angela beat him to the punch, welcoming Sweets, and waving to an unseen guest whom Booth could only hear through the slamming of a car door.

"Dr. Saroyan," stuttered Sweets.

"Cam, please, tonight," dimpled Cam in her usual dark sort of humor. Booth turned and laughed outright right in time with Jared as he pulled Padme by the hand through the door. Instead of Cam's usual spandex, she was looking…comfortable in grey sweat pants and a simple white v neck shirt, holding several delicious looking mixed drinks. Booth took one automatically, and just as automatically scanned for Bones to hand the twin of it to.

He was surprised to see her sitting in a chair in the corner but unsurprised to register her awkwardness. She wasn't usually at all shy, and these were her friends. Booth, usually so good at flicking through her thoughts that ran like a newsfeed (to him at least) across her face, found he had no earthly idea what she was considering. Affixing a faux smile on her face and gracefully standing – the smile looking all the more painful because of her poor social skills to properly maintain the correct gestures and posture – she came towards him and he handed his own drink to her, deftly snagging another one out of someone's hand, thinking it was Jared, and grunting in surprise to hear Sweets' whine of protest.

Booth ignored him as he murmured something inane to his partner, neither knowing what to say. Instead, he greeted his soon to be sister-in-law.

"Padme, you're looking beautiful."

"I look like a slob," she laughed. "Jared said really casual from his past experiences with shot poker, and I show up in this-" she stopped to gesture to dark jeans and a sweatshirt from a university Booth had never heard of – "and then to see people looking like that." She jerked a thumb at Angela and even waved casually at Brennan, who was wearing what she wore to work: jeans and an oxford shirt. Brennan was dressed devastatingly casual, with just enough of her pristine white skin showing through the gap in the front to drive him wild.

"Don't feel bad," he consoled Padme. "Look at me!" He too, was dressed in jeans and a boring black t-shirt. Jared matched him in blue. "Look at Cam!" Cam dimpled at him as she unearthed a huge battered case of poker chips that made his eyes swim. Her eyes swam too, in a different way, for just the briefest of moments, at what he supposed was the look on his face. She turned away.

"Since everyone is here," she laughed, her 'administrative' voice easily carrying over the murmurs of people sipping their drinks (though Booth was pleased to note Padme had murmured her abstention as moral support for Jared), "we can begin. I say four to a round? Or five?"

"Four," chorused both Hodgins and Sweets, who then looked at each other in surprised, unsure if their motives were the same. Booth felt a tightening in his gut that he always got, right where his windshield would be if it was all smashed up, when he suspected pity.

"Us first!" chirruped Padme. "It's only fair to try to beat you when you're all relatively sober. It'll just be cheating after the first couple of shots."

"A couple," scoffed Hodgins indignantly. "Who do you think I am? Little Bear here?" He tossed his chin at Sweets who, looking younger than ever in a polo and cargos, blushed crimson while muttering he could keep up in a sort of unconvincing way. Booth almost felt sorry for him, until a snider side of his brain regaled his attention with how impressively funny it would be to see the kid drunk.

"Before we start! Ground rules!" Everyone groaned in unison.

"Can't we just play?" asked Angela petulantly. Booth heard what she really meant: Can't we just drink already? She took a large swallow to compensate from the glass in her hand. As if that were her cue, Brennan also drank, looking lost and simply exhausted.

"Just hear me out people," smiled Cam tightly, as if she too, couldn't wait for the high strung crowd to loosen with alcohol. "First off. Booth isn't gambling. We'll take turns being his team." Someone sniggered and Booth shot a death glare, flexing his now impressive biceps. It stopped immediately.

"Also, Jared and Padme are abstaining from drinking, but that does not make them your babysitters." Jared huffed out a surprised laugh, as if the thought had never occurred to him.

"Damn right."

Cam continued as if he hadn't spoken. "If you find a room with a bed, it's yours. Share however you like. My room is off limits people." Her eyes narrowed. "No, seriously, I put up caution tape." Everyone in the room laughed, and out of the corner of his eye, Booth was relieved to see Brennan drown out a ghost of a smile with a sip out of her toxic mixture.

"Jared," she said in a modulated tone, as Angela and Hodgins dragged Sweets into the kitchen to help line up the cards, chips and shot glasses, "If you and Padme are leaving later on…"

"We are," he assured her hurriedly.

"I just wanted to make sure no one blocked you in."

"Nah, we're parked on the curb." Booth blinked suddenly as he realized Cam had just spoken to him. He had been as silent as Brennan for the entire start of the evening. She repeated herself, obviously both annoyed and concerned.

"Are you going to be okay doing this?"

"I'm okay," he responded automatically.

"Is she?" Cam asked quietly, under her breath. Booth decided to tell the truth.

"I don't know."

"Let's get started!" came a bright chirrup, interrupting the both of them and dragging everyone's – even the unwilling Brennan's – attention to the speaker. Sweets blushed deeply again and gestured to the other room.

"Okay well…I mean I know the rules and all but I may have er- forgotten…"

"I'll explain it to you," laughed Cam, leading him away, leaving only Brennan and Booth alone in the den together. They studiously ignored each other.

"I suppose we should," Brennan made a flailing gesture at the archway into the kitchen and Booth nodded.

"Showtime," he muttered, and they both slid into their roles as they ghosted through the door. Booth laughed and smiled as he poured the first round of shots for Angela, who had (he suspected) lost her hand on purpose. Jared and Padme kindly flocked to silent Brennan. Booth forced himself to look happy. The world's a stage, he thought grimly. He turned to find Brennan's blue eyes boring holes into his head.

I see you, she seemed to accuse. Instead, all she murmured as she went to refill her glass of tequila was: "Let's play."

At what? He wanted to ask. Instead he downed half his beer and managed a grunt. This night had hardly begun, and all he wanted to do was leave.

Play indeed.