Disclaimer: I own neither Angel or anything associated with him, and "Bones" is equally out of my reach control-wise

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Angel of the Bones

If there was one thing Booth hated about relying on official paperwork to get anywhere in his current job, it was the need to be evaluated by a psychiatrist after 'difficult experiences'; he'd endured so much crap over his years as Angel- Liam had a pretty easy life and Angelus couldn't go mad as he had never experienced anything that he'd find that psychologically disturbing-, even without his time in Hell taken into account, that he was pretty sure he would have gone crazy already if he was going to. All that could be accomplished by a meeting with a psychologist was putting himself in a position where he might let the truth about himself slip because he had to be 'honest', which was why he tried to avoid getting in this kind of position before now…

Still, he was here now- the fact that the appointment was at the guy's home rather than an office was a surprise, but he supposed the guy was trying to be 'informal'-, so all he could do was try and get through it without letting too much slip before he was declared mentally competent to get back in the field.

Walking up to the house, he was surprised to find a man in a grey sleeveless pullover and a dark blue checked shirt, long hair hanging down over his forehead and ears and a prominent nose, working on what looked like a barbeque in the front garden.

"Doctor Wyatt?" he said.

"Ah, Agent Booth, is it?" the man said, standing up and smiling at Booth as he held out his hand. "Yes. Gordon, Gordon Wyatt."

"Right… You're the shrink?" Booth said, surprised at how relaxed the man was about his appearance; he'd yet to encounter a psychiatrist who didn't think dressing up in a suit would improve his appearance, but this guy actually appeared rather nonchalant about his appearance.

"Uh, shrink, yes, meaning psychiatrist," Wyatt said, a slightly bemused tone the only sign of surprise.

"That's great, Doc," Booth said, pulling the form out of his pocket and holding it out to the other man; he might as well just be direct about this issue and hope for the best. "How's about you just sign my piece of paper here and I'll get back to work?"

"Uh, certainly," Wyatt said, dismissing Booth's subsequent attempt to pass him a pen. "No, no, I have a pen."

"OK," Booth said, relieved at how straightforward this seemed to be; he'd be back in action in no time…

"Do you mind if I ask what exactly it was that you did?" Wyatt asked, pausing just as he was about to sign the paper.

"Yeah," Booth said, making his tone abrupt. "I shot a truck."

"Ah, full of terrorists, no doubt?" Wyatt said, smiling in understanding. "Or plutonium, or fleeing felons, was it?"

"No," Booth said; he was sure that Wyatt knew what the truck had actually been- that guy's expression was too eager for him to be ignorant-, but he couldn't exactly argue about the guy's methods without getting himself in more trouble, and now he was stuck admitting to what he'd done all over again. "It was an ice cream truck."

"Do you have a good reason for firing on it?" Wyatt asked, looking quizzically at him.

"Yeah," Booth said, fully aware of the inadequacy of his explanation as he gave it. "The music… it was bothering me."

"Ahhh," Wyatt said.

"Yeah, there was a speaker in the clown's mouth," Booth continued, stuck for anything else to do as Wyatt just 'oh'ed in response to that statement as well. "Yeah, I just pulled out my gun, you know, and… it was gone."

"So the FBI sent you to me, because you shot a clown?" Wyatt asked, putting the lid on his pen and folding the form up.

"Not a real clown!" Booth protested; he had enough problems without this guy saying things that could imply that he'd killed someone.

"I suggest you cogitate on the underlying reasons you shot that clown while I make us some tea," Wyatt said, handing the form back to Booth

Booth had no idea how he was supposed to react to that; he couldn't even remember the last time he'd been in the presence of tea- he wasn't sure if Wesley had ever drunk any, he'd never socialised enough with Giles for that to be a factor, and nobody else he'd known had any particularly strong feelings towards the drink-, and who the hell used words like 'cogitate' any more?

"Oh, splendid!" Wyatt said, examining Booth's progress on the barbeque pit as the agent examined the boundaries he'd set up around the pit area; the guy might have some odd ideas about how to 'assimilate', but at least he was putting some effort into it. "So it was your father who taught you to read plans, was it?"

"Wrong tree doc; Dad and I were tight," Booth said (It was a lie in either set of memories, but that was an issue he wasn't willing to talk about to someone he'd only just met, especially when he was sure that issue had nothing to do with his recent actions).

"No, it's just that earlier you said that you weren't used to drinking tea with men," Wyatt said. "Which suggests to me that you're usually pretty rigid with your assignment of gender roles."

"What?" Booth said, looking at Wyatt in surprise; the implications of that statement might be varied, but he could definitely put an end to speculation that the obvious explanation was an accurate assessment of his mental state. "No, no! My partner is a woman, 'kay? A woman who needs my help."

"But are you currently involved with anyone?" Wyatt asked.

"Just broke up with someone, OK?" Booth said; the Cam thing might have been awkward and somewhat confusing at the time, but at least the ending was definitive. "ME! And I ended it."

"And… how long had you been involved with her?" Wyatt asked. "Or… him?"

"Her," Booth said firmly (Angelus had indulged once or twice, but that was Angelus and it had more been about some freaky dominance vampire-psychology thing that he just didn't get when he was human). "Let's get that straight, OK? Her! Couple months this time."

"This time?" Wyatt asked with a probing expression, Booth cursing his slip of the tongue even as he knew he had to commit himself to explaining that particular detail now.

"We got off… we'd gone out before," he explained, stuck for anything else he could say now that he'd brought that issue up; he wasn't even sure why he'd started seeing Cam again himself, and had serious doubts about his ability to explain that issue to someone else, even if he had to do it now. "A few years ago, and… y'know, we… I broke it up, and my ex wanted to give it another go."

"Complicated," Wyatt said, in a manner that suggested he understood even as Booth knew that things were far more complicated than that; what with the way things had fallen apart with Buffy, and his possible relationship with Cordelia being cut so abruptly short before either of them could explore it further…

"Ahhh, that's it!" Booth said, seizing on the possible explanation that had just occurred to him; it was a bit weak, but maybe it would make more sense to Wyatt. "I shot the clown because I can't let go of the women in my life! Ah, thanks doc! Now I can go back to work, and you can sign the paper!"

"Excellent theory, but quite wrong and you're out of time," Wyatt said, dismissing Booth's attempt to hand the form to him once more. "Tomorrow all right for you?"

Booth really hated his life right now; no matter what he did, he was stuck talking to a guy who just wouldn't give up trying to get inside his head because he had no idea what was really in there, bringing up irrelevant issues and questions that risked exposing his biggest secret when he was nowhere near ready for it…

Waiting outside Wyatt's house, Booth knew that what he was attempting was a long shot, but he was increasingly finding himself stuck for further ideas; since therapy probably wasn't going to get anywhere, given his inability to be totally honest with this guy, his best chance was to be direct and hope for the best.

"Oh," Wyatt said as he opened the door.

"Hi," Booth said; as always, the direct approach was the best one.

"Do we have a schedule?" Wyatt asked, in that tone that showed he knew they didn't but was going along with this turn of events to find out more (The guy was surprisingly hard and easy to read; it was rather confusing).

"Uh, listen," Booth said- God, things like this always seemed fine until you actually had to do them- as he pulled out the form, "I really need to get back to work, so why don't you just give me one of those clown restraining orders and sign my paper?"

"Have you had an insight as to why you shot at that clown?" Wyatt asked, just as Booth's phone started to ring.

"Yeah, you know what, I have some insight; it's right here," Booth said, pointing to his cellphone as he pulled it out of his pocket. "It's my Bones calling, my partner, right?"

Not giving Wyatt a chance to question his choice of terms, he quickly answered the phone, leaving Wyatt to close the door of his house as he turned around to talk to her in private. "Yeah, Bones?"

"So when are you coming back again?" Bones asked, sounding slightly bored.

"What, aren't you playing nice with Sully?" Booth said; he knew from experience that Bones could be tricky to work with, but he'd thought that Sully's manner would make it easier for her to get along with him.

"I'm just not sure how serious he is about his job," Bones clarified.

"Well, look, he's one of the best, all right?" Booth said, feeling the need to defend his colleague even if he got her point; he could never understand why Sully would join the FBI and continue studying for so many other varying jobs. "He just likes to keep his options open."

"I've noticed," Bones said (Booth thought it sounded like she was eating, but he wasn't going to criticise her for that; knowing her, she'd been so busy she'd missed a meal or two).

"Listen Bones," Booth said- he wouldn't normally share this kind of thing, but with his own partner's safety involved here, he thought it right to let her know-, "Sully… he lost his partner about… a year ago, all right? Something like that happens, you hear that clock on the inside ticking just a little bit louder. So you know what, you're in good hands."

He just wished that he didn't have to speak from personal experience on that topic; he might not have actually been reminded of his mortality by Doyle's death, considering that he'd been immortal at the time, but it had reinforced the risks he ran by working so closely with mortals, and then there'd been Cordelia's coma and Fred being taken by Illyria…

The sight of Wyatt approaching once more drew Booth's thoughts back to the present; he wasn't going to discuss those losses with anyone unless he had to.

"Here he comes," he said to his partner, "so gotta go, gotta go, gotta go."

As Wyatt walked up to Booth after he closed his cellphone, Booth sighed; after what had just happened, he felt that Wyatt deserved something more than what he'd been getting so far. "All right, so maybe I am a little bit irritable."

"Why do you think that might be?" Wyatt asked.

"Don't they give you papers, and files, and reports?" Booth asked, only to be met with a stare from Wyatt; clearly, this guy believed in the patients discussing what made them come here in the first place. "All right; me and my partner caught up to this serial killer named Howard Epps, and he died."

"And whose fault was that?" Wyatt asked, sitting on the edge of the garden table as Booth sat down in a nearby seat. "Yours or your partner's?"

"No, no, he jumped over that balcony…" Booth began, laughing slightly sarcastically. "Maybe 'cause of her. Sometimes I think he had the right idea."

"And where were you when Mr. Epps fell?" Wyatt asked.

"Holding his arm," Booth replied.

"No, that was before he fell, surely," Wyatt said.

"What?" Booth said, looking at the psychiatrist in confusion.

"Well," Wyatt clarified, "Mr. Epps was dangling from your arm before he fell, at which point he was no longer dangling but falling. Attached to you, he was alive, no longer attached, dead."

"I don't feel guilty about that," Booth said; he might have wanted the guy to go to prison, but he wasn't going to regret that a monster like that was burning in Hell. "I mean Epps is a serial killer, tried to kill my partner and threatened my son; I was glad when he hit that pavement."

"Do you think about suicide often?" Wyatt asked.

"Suicide?" Booth said with a scoff; he had no idea where that question had come from, but he wasn't going to take it seriously. "Me? No, no, never."

"And yet you sometimes feel that Howard Epps had the right idea about jumping off that balcony," Wyatt said.

"It was a joke, OK?" Booth said; even at his worst after his soul had been restored, he'd never give serious thought to suicide no matter how bad he'd felt, even if that had partly been because it would have seemed like the easy way out after everything he'd done. "It was a joke."

"Yes… you do that a lot, don't you?" Wyatt said, looking speculatively at him. "Makes me feel such a bully for prying…"

With that said, Wyatt stood up to go back inside, smiling at Booth as he handed the unsigned form back to him. "Well, we'll pick up on this next time."

Booth had no idea what was just meant to have happened, but he had a feeling he'd missed something important in their recent conversation and he didn't like it.

"You know what," Wyatt said, walking out into the yard as Booth worked on the barbeque pit, coffee cups in the psychiatrist's hands as Booth continued to set up the bricks for the pit, "I'm in America, we're men, let's drink coffee, not tea, eh?"

He paused to examine the pit, which now came up to between knee and waist-height. "Oh, I say, marvelous job."

"Thank you," Booth said, taking a sip of the coffee before wincing at the taste. "That's not coffee."

"What is it?" Wyatt asked.

"I don't know what the hell it is, but it sure as hell isn't coffee, Doc," Booth said firmly as he turned his attention back to making sure that the recently-laid brick was properly balanced; he'd tasted bad coffee when working with Cordelia in the early days of Angel Investigations, and while this might not be as bad as that coffee had been, it came pretty close according to his tastebuds (Which were more sensitive to the issue now that his physiology was adapted for something other than blood).

"You tend to do things well, don't you?" Wyatt said. "Make coffee, build barbecue machines."

"It's not really a machine," Booth corrected; it was probably another psychiatric 'test', but considering that he'd known about barbeques as a concept since he was human- they had cooked outside sometimes, after all-, he felt comfortable making that distinction.

"Solve crimes, raise a son, love women, leave women," Wyatt said. "Whatever you aim at, you hit."

"That bad?" Booth asked; he'd always been rather proud of his ability to come through in a crunch, which was why he'd taken it so personally when Groo had shown up and been so much better at everything than him…

"By no means, no of course not, except-" Wyatt said.

"Oh, it's OK, here we go," Booth said, as the two of them moved to sit at the patio table. "Let me have it, Doc."

"Except it is indicative of a need to control your environment," Wyatt said, looking reflectively at him.

"Again, I ask, is that bad?" Booth said, not looking at Wyatt as he asked the question.

"No, of course not, no!" Wyatt said. "Except-"

"Except?!" Booth asked, wishing the other man would get to the point.

"Except when you shoot a clown," Wyatt pointed out.

"You know," Booth said, resenting the phrasing of that last statement, "you make it sound like it was walking and making balloon animals."

"For the most part," Wyatt said, ignoring Booth's protest, "your rebellions are small."

"Rebellions?" Booth repeated sceptically; he couldn't think of any occasion he'd rebelled against his current role as Seeley Booth.

"The colourful socks, the funky belt buckle, they're a mechanism, quiet rebellions, a way of asserting your personal control over a homogenizing organization like the FBI," Wyatt clarified. "But shooting a clown is not a quiet rebellion. Shooting a clown is quite literally deafening."

"Booth," Booth said, answering his phone as it began to ring, grateful for the opportunity to get away from this new analysis; talking about control might bring up why he felt the need to have control…

"Hey, it's me," Bones replied.

"Yeah, hold on for a second," Booth said, looking at Wyatt as he began to walk back into the house. "Wait, why is it, Doc, that every time I answer the phone, you walk away?"

"Why do you answer the phone knowing it'll make me walk away?" Wyatt replied.

There was nothing he could say to that statement without sounding petty, which prompted Booth to make a decision.

"Yeah," he said, his attention turning back to the phone in his hands, "you know what, Bones, I'm gonna have to call you back."

He wouldn't have done that normally, but his partner didn't sound like she was in any actual danger, so a lack of response wasn't going to hurt anything…

"Oh my good lord," Wyatt said, walking out to look at the completed barbeque pit as Booth stood up after connecting the gas line.

"That's right," Booth said, as he lit the barbeque, grinning at his accomplishment; in a small way, it was nice when he was able to create something rather than defining his life by his ability to kill things.

"How many bricks did you use in the end?" Wyatt asked.

"Yep, you know, one hundred and eighty," Booth said, before he produced the piece of paper once more. "Right, so you can sign away."

"What are those?" Wyatt asked, indicating the meat sitting next to the barbeque.

"Oh, those are two beautiful prime rib-eye steaks," Booth said with a smile. "Being the barbeque master that I am, I thought I'd show you how to barbeque, Doc."

"Oh, but I don't want to be shown," Wyatt said. "I want to learn trial and error."

"No, no, no," Booth said. "Doc, listen, it's better to learn off hamburgers, or sausages. You know those puppies cost fifty bucks a pop?"

"You know," Wyatt said, opening a folder that Booth hadn't realised he was holding, "according to the FBI reports there was no way you could save Epps' life. Your partner's report says the same thing. An FBI sniper from the opposite roof saw everything through his scope. According to all witnesses you have nothing to feel guilty about."

"Yeah, so?" Booth said, suddenly uncomfortable once more; he had a feeling that he knew what Wyatt was about to say, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to hear it…

"So why, in a fit of pique, did you endanger innocent people in a public thoroughfare by discharging your firearm?" Wyatt asked.

"I'm a good shot," Booth said as he closed the barbeque cover to look at the other man. "I didn't put anyone in danger."

"Your file shows you're a military sniper," Wyatt continued. "How many people have you killed?"

"Lost count," Booth said automatically; when people phrased a question like that, even with the knowledge that his Shanshu reflected how he had been forgiven, he just automatically found himself recalling the numerous faces dead because Angelus had been hungry…

"Oh, you can remember a hundred and eighty bricks, but not how many lives you've taken?" Wyatt said, looking probingly at Booth.

"Epps makes fifty," Booth said after a brief pause, making sure he had the numbers right; all he had to do was focus on the memories of the deaths that hadn't been the result of close-quarter contact, and it wasn't that hard to 'distinguish' between who he'd killed as Angelus and who he'd killed as Booth…

"Fifty what?" Wyatt asked.

"Fifty kills," Booth said.

"But, Agent Booth, you didn't kill Epps," Wyatt said automatically. "You tried to save him, remember? Or perhaps I'd better put it as a question; did Howard Epps slip from your grasp, or did you release him?"

That simple statement prompted Booth to reflect back to the moment when he had been holding on to Epps's hand over the balcony, struggling to hold on to it, the weight of the other man making it harder and harder for him to keep hold before he lost his grip, leaving Epps to hurtle towards the ground…

"Oh, come now man, it's a simple enough question," Wyatt said. "Was he indeed your fiftieth kill, or did you just happen to be there when he died?"

"I don't know," Booth said after a few moments of thought, flustered at the question; he'd done everything he could to hold on to Epps, but without his old vampiric strength, there was only so much he could do to keep hold of the guy in that kind of position, particularly when Epps hadn't been that committed to staying alive…

"A man like you in control of every situation and you don't know?" Wyatt asked.

"I don't know," Booth repeated, shaking his head. "I had him, and then I lost him, and then something happened in between… I don't know."

"I believe you," Wyatt said, nodding solemnly at him after a moment's silence. "Because for a man like you to admit that you don't know, to relinquish control, that could indeed argue a… disruption in your self-view that was large enough to motivate you to shoot a clown."

As much as psychology made Booth uncomfortable, he had to admit that Wyatt had a point; after so long operating outside of his own control, with Angelus in the driver's seat and then plagued by his own vampiric instincts, loss of control would be hard for him to deal with, even if he wasn't consciously acknowledging it…

"You know, I think we've made marvelous progress," Wyatt said, as he sat down to sign the form at last. "This is a close where we can certainly begin."

For a moment, Wyatt's pen hovered over the form, before he looked at Booth with a smile. "You know what, I've changed my mind; I would love for you to cook those steaks."

"I can do that," Booth said, lost for anything else to say as he took the signed form from the psychiatrist.

"Medium-rare, please, Mr G-Man," Wyatt said.

"I can do that," Booth said again

Somehow, even this attempt to give him back some sense of control just wasn't as satisfying as it would have been earlier; it just felt slightly too much like Wyatt was humouring him after everything else that had gone down, rather than actually feeling like he'd been 'cured' of his earlier issues.

In the end, even if he hadn't killed Epps, he'd still failed to save the guy, and he couldn't even before sure if he'd done it on purpose or just because there was nothing for him to do…