Here we will see a little bit more of Angela and Cam. R/R

On Tuesday, the work day was considerably lighter for the whole team. Brennan and Angela were sitting in Brennan's office on her couch drinking tea and just relaxing. Brennan kept shifting in her seat.

"Sweetie, are you okay?"

"Yeah, just a little uncomfortable." Brennan replied. There were a few moments of silence. Then, she had a brilliant idea. She reached down and raised her blouse up slightly and then moved her hands to her dress pants to unfasten the button and slide the zipper down just a little exposing the skin on her stomach. She sighed in relief.

"Bren, I think it is time to go shopping." Angela laughed after seeing her friend's slightly expanded abdomen when she lifted her blouse to relieve the pressure of her pants.

"Yes, I believe that would be a good idea."

"What would be a good idea?" Hodgins asked as he walked into the office with his nose in a file. He looked up, "Uh, whoa." He turned to face the wall quickly. "Uh, I—uh…okay! I will come back—later." He quickly made his way to exit the office. Brennan stopped him.

"No! Stay, please." She grabbed the blanket from the back of the couch, and placed it over her. "Look, you can't see anything now. I put a blanket over myself."

He timidly turned back and took a seat in one of the chairs facing the two ladies on the couch. "Sorry about that Dr. B., I should have knocked first."

"No, it's fine, I should have thought to cover myself up after I exposed my abdomen to release the constraints of the waistband on my pants."

"Well, I still shouldn't have reacted like a blubbering idiot. I just didn't think it would be appropriate for me to stand there and ogle my best friend's pregnant fiancé's exposed belly while my wife watched the event unfold in amusement." Hodgins said as he brought his hand up to stroke his brow line.

"Bren and I were just talking about the fact that it is time for her to go shopping for some better fitting clothes. Then, maybe she wouldn't have to put on anymore peepshows." She joked.

"What? It isn't like I was exposing my breasts to everyone." Brennan said not catching the joke, she was slightly frustrated because she was just trying to make herself comfortable. Surely, her friends would understand that concept.

"I know, but Bren, you are hot. Okay? Smokin' hot, and if just that little bit of flesh you had exposed put my husband under such a spell, then just think what kind of distraction it could cause one of your young interns had they walked in instead of Jack."

"She has a point, Dr. B. You know how useless your interns can be when they are distracted."

"That is very accurate." She conceded. "Ange?"

"Hmm?"

"Could we go shopping tonight? These pants are growing quite uncomfortable, and—"

"And what, Sweetie?"

Brennan shot her glance over towards Hodgins, and then back to Angela silently telling her that this was for girls' ears only.

"Scram, Jack. It's time for girl talk." Angela said, shooing her husband out of the office. She closed the door after he was out of the room. "And what, Bren?"

"Well, it isn't just pants I need. I need everything. My breasts are huge and they feel like they are being squeezed to death as if they weren't tender enough already. And this morning I couldn't find any panties that weren't tighter than the pants. Booth suggested I go commando, whatever that means." She furrowed her brow in confusion and frustration.

"Sweetie, he meant just don't wear any panties."

Her eyebrows rose slightly, and her cheeks pink a little. "Oh. Well then, I guess I am going commando."

"Dr. Brennan! This conversation does not exactly sound appropriate for the workplace." Cam shook her head.

The two ladies hadn't heard the office door open.

"Well, maybe you could have knocked on the door since it was closed for privacy, Dr. Saroyan." Brennan said as she stood, not thinking about her shirt being slightly raised up with her pants unbuttoned and unzipped, leaving her slightly swollen belly exposed. She made no move to button her pants, but she did at least pull her blouse down to try to cover herself up as she walked around her desk to her computer chair.

"I'm sorry. I should have knocked. So—uh, I take it you are experiencing some slight discomfort with your clothes today?" Cam asked with an apologetic and friendly tone as she sort of pointed in the direction of Brennan's clothes.

"Yes, it seems that I have finally moved from that stage of my normal clothing being slightly snug to very constricting. I was having trouble finding panties this morning and Booth suggested—"

Cam held up a hand to stop her. "I don't need to know this. I heard enough when I walked in to deduce what he told you to do."

"I'm taking Brennan shopping when we leave here. Would you want to join us?" Angela asked.

"I would love to. Do you mind if I join you, Dr. Brennan?" Cam asked, knowing that since Angela had just impulsively asked her to join them that Brennan might not be okay with her boss tagging along.

"I think I would enjoy it if you came with us, Cam." Brennan smiled at her boss. Brennan had not always been fond of her boss, but she had eased up on her dictator mentality. Brennan found that she actually had a great respect for Cam and had become much closer to her than she ever expected to get. Brennan wasn't sure, but she suspected it had something to do with taking in Michelle.

"Great!" She beamed. "I will just go give Michelle a call to let her know that she will be on her own for dinner." She left the office to go make the call.

"I should probably call Booth, as well, so he knows that he is going to need to cook dinner for Parker and himself." Brennan told her friend. Angela agreed that it would be a good idea, and then left the office to go find her husband.

B&B

The women all left the Jeffersonian in their separate cars after they agreed to meet at Booth and Brennan's apartment. Brennan decided that she needed to change clothes before leaving. There was no way she was going to be able to shop comfortably in the clothes she had on for work. She couldn't very well walk around in public with the way she had her pants unfastened in her office.

The others agreed that they would also like to go home and change into more comfortable clothes in which to go shopping. Brennan settled on the on a pair of her yoga pants and one of her tank tops. She was also grateful for the reprieve her feet were getting. By changing into much more casual clothing, she could wear more comfortable footwear opposed to what she wore on her feet earlier.

She had a few minutes before her friends would get to the apartment, so she sat down with Parker and they discussed how his day went at school today.

She let him know that it would be just him and his dad tonight for dinner. Even she could see that it saddened him that she wouldn't be eating with them. She reassured him that she would be home as soon as she could.

When Angela and Cam arrived, she kissed Booth and Parker bye, and told Parker to enjoy his time alone with his dad.

The ladies' first stop was to get dinner for themselves, upon Brennan's insistence. They decided that it would be easiest to grab some pizza at a parlor in the mall where they were shopping. Cam and Angela ate fairly modestly; while Brennan had put away more pizza and some cheesy breadsticks than the other two had ever seen.

"Dr. Brennan, I know there won't be any problem concerning paternity of that child. It is most definitely a Booth." Cam said thinking of how she knew the Booth boys were highly skilled at food consumption, and of course, Brennan missed the point she was trying to make.

"Well, of course Booth is the father; I haven't slept with anyone else, and even before we got together I had not been with anyone else for almost a year and a half."

"I wasn't questioning your fidelity. I was just trying to say that judging by the amount of food you just ate, Booth has to be the father. That kid eats like a Booth." She said quickly, trying to defuse the hot headed pregnant anthropologist before there was any further misunderstanding.

"That child is most definitely another Booth boy." Angela said with an air of conclusiveness.

"Ugh, you are doing the same thing that Booth is doing. He thinks it's a girl and refused to accept that it could be a boy. Now, you are saying it's a boy. Ange, it could just as easily be a girl. It does not do any good to speculate one way or the other. What does it accomplish?"

"Sweetie, it is just supposed to be fun to make guesses. It doesn't really serve a purpose. Cam, what do you think the baby is?" Angela asked.

"Oh, goodness, I don't know. I think maybe it's a girl—" She looked at Brennan's face change in disapproval of the guessing and quickly added, "or it could be a boy—" She received another look that screamed don't mock me. "Well, I'm usually wrong when I guess at these types of things, so I'm actually just going to say that it will definitely be a small human. Yep, that's my final answer."

Angela looked to Brennan incredulously. "Seriously, Bren, lighten up. Have fun. What does your gut tell you it is?"

"My gut doesn't tell me anything, my brain does. Usually, I can trust and respect what Booth's gut is telling him, but then again I can also trust Angela's. In this case, both of you are guessing differently, which means one of you is obviously wrong. How am I supposed to make a guess knowing it could be wrong?"

"Okaaaay. Well, does your brain have a preference of one over the other?" Cam asked using a different approach.

"No, I just want a happy healthy baby. It really doesn't matter either way to me."

It was like pulling teeth to get this woman to open up sometimes. "Bren, sure it does. Would you rather have a little girl to have tea parties and braid hair with or would you rather have a little boy you could share all of your grossest stories with?"

"Could you stop trying to get me to guess? Let's just get this over with so I can go home to my family. I would like to be home before Parker goes to bed."

The three ladies stood from their table, threw away their trash, and started toward one of the department stores specializing in maternity. Angela decided to ask one last question regarding the subject of gender, knowing that it could make her hormonal friend's anger rise back up.

"Are you at least going to find out when you can or are you going to keep the gender as a surprise?"

"I don't know, Ange. Booth and I have not discussed this. Personally, I would rather find out so that we can be prepared, and because I don't like surprises. Booth, on the other hand, likes surprises, but he is also impatient. So, I don't even honestly know what Booth wants. We still have several weeks before it will be possible to find out, so I have time to talk to him about it."

The three women walked around the displays in the department store looking for comfortable professional wear for Brennan.

"I don't like a lot of these clothes. Too many of them are frilly and there is too much fabric draped around and hanging down. I cannot wear clothes like these in a lab. The excess fabric is impractical and could get caught on something, and I would constantly have to hold it out of the way of my work."

"That is why we have lab coats, Sweetie; they protect our clothing from all of the wonderfully disgusting things you do the bodies." Angela said trying to point out that she wouldn't really have to worry about those issues. She knew her friend mostly just had a problem with the style of most of the clothing in the store , and she knew Brennan didn't exactly want to address the fact that she was going to be getting bigger and actually will need all of that extra fabric.

"I haven't been able to button my lab coat for a week now." Brennan muttered.

"They make bigger lab coats, Dr. Brennan; I could get you some." Cam knew that if she could talk to Brennan's logical and practical side, they would have a better chance at getting her to see the need for all of the excess fabric.

Angela talked her into a few pairs of nice dress pants, and also a belly band. There were not a lot of blouses that really appealed to Brennan, but she did get at least a few to get her started. She could actually still wear some of her blouses that she currently had, but not for much longer. Angela dragged her to another store claiming that she really didn't have enough yet, and she needed to also stock up for some of the future months so that she wouldn't have to go shopping so often. They had more success at the second store.

Angela then dragged her friends into the nail salon so they could all get their legs and feet massaged and get pedicures. Brennan had no problem with this; she very much enjoyed her last visit to this place with Angela, and her sore feet really did need the extra attention. The shoes she had on earlier in the day were rubbing the heel of her foot in a way they never had before. With as much time as she spends on her feet in the lab, it wouldn't be much of a surprise if her feet were already starting to swell slightly.

She didn't get a design this time. She just went with a simple bright red, which Angela said would always be a hot sexy color. Angela and Cam both got designs. Cam got some tiger stripes, while Angela got some abstract looking design that didn't really seem to follow much of a pattern, but was still appealing to the eyes.

When they were all done in the salon, they headed to Victoria's Secret to get some new articles of underwear for Brennan. She was still going commando, and she was not entirely comfortable with doing so for extended periods of time. She bought several pairs of panties in several sizes so she wouldn't have this problem again anytime soon. She also bought several new bras. She tried a few on, and decided that going up a cup size would be ideal. She spent several hundred dollars on underwear, but she figured that it was okay since money was not an issue.

Once the ladies were done shopping, they hurried back to Brennan's place so that she could maybe catch Parker before bedtime, but she had no such luck. The kid had already been asleep for an hour according to Booth. The other two women left to go home shortly after their arrival.

Brennan was in the kitchen making a fruit salad snack for herself when Booth's arms wrapped around her from behind. "Did you find some new clothes?" He nuzzled his nose behind her ear.

"Mmmhmm." She leaned back into his chest, and moved her head to the side to give him more access.

"Good. Hodgins was here earlier, and he told me you had yourself on display in your office today. He said he didn't want there to be any misunderstandings between us."

"I was not on display. I just needed to find a way to relieve the pressure of the clothes, and he happened to walk in my office at that time. It wasn't a big deal."

"I know. He just wanted me to know he didn't mean to look at your exposed flesh, and he even had the balls to say he didn't mean to enjoy it so much." Booth laughed. "But I gotta say, that now I'm a little jealous."

He started sucking on her neck, and she immediately moved out of his arms laughing so that he would know she wasn't really mad. "Seeley Joseph Booth, don't you dare mark me. I am not territory. You already put a ring on my finger!"

"Hey, you put a ring on mine, too." He smiled wide.

"Damn right I did. Do you have any idea how many women look at your physical structure even when I am standing right next to you?"

He thought about it for a second before speaking, "Probably just as many as the men who mentally undress you even when you are standing next to me," he returned. He loved it when he was able to get her playful personality to show.

She popped a strawberry in her mouth, grabbed her bowl of fruit, and walked to the living room.

They watched TV for a little bit before deciding to get ready for bed. They were just climbing into bed when they heard a loud wail followed by sobbing coming from down the hall. They then heard a noise that sounded like Parker's closet door sliding shut.

I'm sorry to leave it there, but I wanted to at least give you guys something. In the next chapter we should see some Booth and Parker time, as well as Brennan helping with Booth's own demons as they are resurfacing.

Review, please. Much love!

XOXO,
CrayonClown