For this one, as I am still working on the conclusions to the three most recent stories, I decided to do a one shot where Booth finally figures out what he has been missing in the whole confession of impure thoughts that has been having him receive astronomical numbers of Hail Mary's and Our Father's to do, all the while being called a perverted sex freak by Mitch. This takes place a number of years in the future and can be considered a small piece of my long neglected story Pope Mitch, which I have every intention of returning to at some point. I hope you all enjoy this one. Gregg
Disclaimer: I don't own, or profit from, these characters or franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Booth couldn't believe it. All those years of faithfully attending Mass, lighting candles in honor of the Saints and loved ones, devotedly going to confession almost every damn day, and living through being labeled a perverted sex freak for all eternity in the process! Now it's all for naught as he can most assuredly count on spending eternity in the flames. No angels. No playing of harps among the clouds. Nope! It's the inferno all the way for Seeley J. Booth! How had he let this happen? He just couldn't figure it out. One teensy little task and he blows it. All he had to do was be absolutely miserable and suffer with some blue balls while he and Bones stayed as guests in the Papal Apartments. Two weeks of no nookie and he was home free! But how long did he last? One measly hour after entering the Papal Apartments and Bones had him working at it like sex was going out of style! They hadn't even been in Rome more than three hours before being shown to the Papal apartments! Now he had to get up and begin preparing for his time in the confessional with the new Pope! When he confessed this one he was sure that Mitch, or rather His Holiness as Mitch now was, would be letting him know that Satan would be eagerly waiting to assign him a special spot in the inferno when he passed into the land of the deceased.
"All that work and effort over the years and it all goes right down the toilet in one morning," he said bitterly. "Years of being called a perverted sex freak almost daily and going through unheard of amounts of Hail Mary's and Our Fathers, right down the drain! I may as well move to Death Valley and learn to love living in a blazing inferno and getting burnt to a crisp!"
"I don't see what the problem is," Bones said from beside him, relaxing in the afterglow of an absolutely monumental series of orgasms courtesy of Booth.
"Bones, we were just going at it like crazed minks!" Booth said in as quiet a shout as he could manage. "It's not even night! It's 11:30 in the morning!"
"And that is somehow bad?" Bones questioned, though she was enjoying his utterly flustered demeanor.
"We're in the Papal Apartments!" he bellowed, then shut his mouth fearing that he would be overheard somehow.
"And that is a problem how?" Bones asked. She couldn't resist. This was a very good opportunity to get Booth in a frame of mind where he has to finally realize that his fears over excommunication are baseless.
"Sex in the Pope's apartment?" Booth asked incredulously. "How could it not be a major sin?"
Bones sighed. For a number of years, she had been amused at Booth's insistence on the idea that impure thoughts regarding her, his wife, were somehow covetous and needing some form of absolution through confession. It most certainly was not covetous to desire and think of making love to one's spouse, and therefore there was no need for contrition and to confess to such thoughts. Booth, though, had gotten it all twisted in his mind due to his inordinate fear of excommunication, and had spent all of their married life, and all of the years of their close friendship before their marriage, confessing to all of the lurid thoughts he had regarding her and the delicious fun that they engaged in as a result of those thoughts. His mistake, of course, was that he did not understand the definition of the word covet as a verb in the intransitive form: to feel inordinate desire for what belongs to another. Since she belonged to him, just as he belonged to her, within the context of their marriage, his thoughts, and desires regarding her were in no way covetous.
"I have a task for you, Booth," she told him finally. She gave him the look that she always gave him when she was not kidding, and it was a look he knew well after all these years. Once she had his attention, she continued. "Before you go to confession, I would like you to look up the definition of covet as an intransitive verb. I think you will find it illuminating."
Three Hours Later
Booth was sitting at a desk staring at the screen on his laptop. If it were possible, steam would have been pouring out of his ears. One word. One measly word had caused him to suffer astronomical amounts of penance, and the upshot is that for the entirety of his marriage the penance had not been deserved! Add to that he had been called a perverted sex freak for years by Mitch! Mitch had to have known, too! The only question was why he hadn't said anything? Imagine being in the confessional and instead of an understanding and loving priest you get a demented nut who is calling you a pervert every few seconds!
Booth cringed as he noticed the turn his thoughts had taken and that he had just mentally referred to the Pope as a demented nut. Talk about out of one frying pan and into another! He finally gets a clue and figures out where he'd been hoist on his own petard and then he insults His Holiness! He'd deal with that one later, though. For now, he had to figure out how he had so utterly missed the boat on what coveting means. He went to Catholic School, after all. The nuns were damn thorough, though he had to admit that he nodded off a significant number of times when the topic dealt with the weightier subjects revolving around the Commandments and the soul. Talk about dull! That had to be it. He'd been asleep at the switch and missed out on the important stuff!
And then there was Bones! Miss Atheist herself letting him in on the good news that he wasn't some sort of lecherous pervert doing all sorts of coveting. There was something so screwed up in that whole scenario where someone who doesn't even believe in the Man Upstairs knows more about religion and all the little minute details of Catholic theology than he does.
Now, though, he had a very important appointment to keep with Mitch in the confessional. This just wasn't his day. He had about twenty minutes to decide if he should confess to defiling the holy integrity of the Papal Apartments by having sex in there with Bones. He was damn sure not going to be confessing any more impure thoughts! He was going to have to restrain himself from beating Mitch to a pulp for not letting him in on the meaning of covet all these years, too. He'd spent incalculable hours every year letting loose with countless thousands of Hail Mary's and Our Fathers!
Making his way to where he had been informed that the confessional was, he was stunned to see television cameras up the wazoo there waiting to see Mitch head on into the confessional, and also to see yours truly as the first soul to receive absolution from the new Holy Father. Wasn't anything sacred anymore? He made a quick decision to not say a damn word about sex in the Papal Apartments. He had no desire to have his tear streaked face on the nightly news after having been informed of his doom over that little goody! He watched as Mitch, or His Holiness Pope John XXIV as he was now, make his way into the priest's side of the confessional. Taking a deep breath, he strode over to his own side and stepped in, a little flustered with all the cameras flashing as he did so.
One Hour Later
Booth strode into the Papal Apartments and searched for Bones. He had a bone to pick with her. He couldn't remember ever being more embarrassed by the end of a confession, even with all the years that Mitch had been calling him a deviantly perverted sex freak! He looked around disgustedly at all the polished marble and shuddered. Thanks to Bones and her uncanny ability to unleash her Siren's Song of sexual coercion, he now had to spend what would likely be the entire vacation helping scrub all these floors with the maintenance staff. There was a small likelihood that Mitch had been joking, but he couldn't afford to take the chance. He damn sure wasn't going to be approaching His Holiness and demanding to know if the seriously demented penance he trotted out was a joke or not.
"Bones!" he said loudly, though not with a shrill shout, though he would have been thoroughly justified. As he rounded a corner he saw her bending over to pick something up that had obviously been dropped. The image of her spectacular derriere was almost too much for his addled mind. He began to mentally recite the names of the Saints to ward off anything that could land him in even more hot water with His Holiness.
"Booth," Bones said with a smile as she straightened up and turned around to greet him.
"You can kiss whatever outside activities you had in mind with yours truly goodbye," he told her, giving her a serious look. "I'll be spending some quality time with a mop and scrub brush while on vacation working with the maintenance staff doing a deep clean and polish of the marble flooring in the apartment!"
Bones' eyes widened. "Why would you be spending time polishing marble floors?" she asked, though she had an idea.
"He sussed it out of me," Booth spat out, giving the floors a rather disdainful look. "I had him on the ropes, never giving him a chance to say I'm a perverted sex freak, and then it happened."
"What happened?" Bones questioned.
"He asked me if I was sure that I had nothing more to add," Booth spat out disgustedly.
Bones burst out laughing. This was priceless. Booth had spent years confessing to all sorts of sexual thoughts and activities and now when he finally understood he had not had to, he goes and confesses once more and all because Mitch had asked him a simple, innocuous question. And the penance couldn't be more appropriate in her mind. Pops had had him scrub and polish a classic Cadillac once as a punishment, and now Mitch was having him scrubbing and polishing the marble floors in the Papal Apartments.
"It's not funny, Bones!" Booth said rather loudly. "This is worse than when I had to scrub and polish that absolute beast of a vehicle of Pops' that one time. Now Mitch gets a free scrub and polish of his new digs courtesy of me. This whole vacation sucks! And it's all your fault, Bones!"
Bones smirked a quirky smile at that last statement. It had been many years since she had heard that one, and that time it had been when they had been arrested for all sorts of supposedly deviant behavior while undercover at a nudist colony. Booth had blamed her, as he put it, "overwhelmingly HOT body" for that incident. Sam Cullen had teased Booth over it for years.
"I thought you said that when it comes to illicit behavior the rule is 'It takes two to Tango'?" she questioned, a brow raised in curiosity as to how he would reply.
"For some reason that tried and true rule isn't rewarding me at all since I am the only one who ever gets any punishment out of said illicit behavior," Booth grumbled. "All I know is I am going to be spending a lot of time on my hands and knees scrubbing and polishing all this damn marble to a nice shiny finish instead of enjoying the greatest city in the world."
Bones' more lascivious mind imagined Booth on hands and knees, his perfect derriere offering an exquisite image to behold. "I will volunteer to supervise," she told him, imagining all the interesting activities that could come as a result.
"Oh no you're not," Booth decreed. "I know what will happen if you supervise. I'll wind up having to scrub and polish St. Peter's Basilica instead of just the Papal Apartment! You just go on the tours and visit the museums. And for the love of God try not to get me excommunicated!"
Booth just stood there as she left the room laughing uproariously. He shook his head in total ignominious defeat. He finally gets the good news that he'd been going about confession all wrong and could begin to not have all sorts of penance loaded into him, as well as no longer being labeled a pervert, but then Bones goes and creates another sexual issue that he blundered. Maybe he should have taken Father Antonio up on his offer of a round of confession before getting to Rome. At least then he would have been able to have pretty much nothing to confess and could have perhaps avoided slipping in the whole sex in the Papal Apartments stuff. Now he would continue hoping that Dante had been an acid crazed nut when it came to his depiction of Inferno. Getting a clue or not, Booth was sure that he was headed to that overheated blast furnace as his reward in the afterlife.
A/N: This was an attempt to get me back into the more humorous side of the Pope Mitch storyline. I hope that you all enjoyed this one. I plan to work on Pope Mitch stories once I conclude Bones Brings the Heat, and Booth's Sin. Gregg.