No One Stays Dead Forever

By: Lesera128

Rated: M

Disclaimer: Here the normal rigmarole is posited. No, unfortunately I don't own anything from Bones or Angel... or anything else. Yup, I'm back, baby…and I'm wrecking havoc as needed to tell the most awesome and epic Angel-Bones crossover ever conceived. However, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, I think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: Good. Then, moving on―

Summary: See Chapter 1

A/N: For your reading enjoyment, the plot is about to thicken. Enjoy!

Chapter 5: Guinness, Whiskey, & Irish Tunes

It had been a long day. It had been a really long day in a very long week that had only been heightened in its tediousness and frustration by a delayed plane flight with a hormonal Brennan back from their case in Oklahoma. Booth had had to admit that the case had had its pluses. In truth, he'd always loved getting Brennan out of DC. Any chance to go undercover, especially since his memories had returned and he knew the true extent of their past, was usually a treat. While the end destination of being in the middle of nowhere somewhere on the border between Texas and Oklahoma wasn't his ideal destination, the idea of being able to pull on the skins of Buck and Wanda Moosejaw had been…well, fun.

In truth, it had been the first attempt that Booth and Brennan had to go undercover in new identities since he'd gotten his Windows Update the previous Halloween of his prior lives as Liam-Angelus-Angel dumped into his head. At first, when the case of the murdered conjoined twins who were later found to be Jenny and Julie Hicks had landed on his desk, Booth had been reticent. Brennan had finished her first trimester with her second pregnancy much easier than she had when she'd been pregnant with Kathryn. But somewhat surprisingly, with the exception of Max, Stephanie, and Angela, no one had actually dared to ask Brennan if she was pregnant again...not even Sweets. At sixteen weeks, she was safely passed the point where they worried too much about the viability of the pregnancy and so wasn't adverse to telling people. But, perhaps Brennan's volatility during her first pregnancy was still just a bit too fresh in the minds of the squints at the lab - and Booth, too, truth to be told - that if the forensic anthropologist wasn't volunteering such happy news, the squints weren't asking. Still, Booth had worried a bit about taking a pregnant Brennan into the field and undercover. He also worried about leaving Kathryn again. However, Brennan hadn't seemed to worry as much on this their second absence from their daughter's daily routine as much as she had when Booth and Brennan had gone to London the previous fall. In some ways, Booth wondered if it had been the increased anxiety that Brennan had felt at leaving their twelve-week old daughter alone for the first time to accept the last minute invitation to speak at Oxford that had coincided with his own invitation to speak at Scotland Yard had helped increase her ardor. Or, if maybe it had to do with the fact that they had stayed in Brennan's old house in Cheapside for the first time in decades that had peppered the case with passionate memories and reenactments that Booth knew had resulted in the conception of the second child that Brennan now carried.

I guess that's a pretty damn good souvenir to bring home, Booth thought as he reflected on the fact that their second child had been conceived in the land of her mother's birth. And at least I kept my promise to Bren and didn't knock her up again on a table at Halloween. So I've got that going for me...

Still, Booth hadn't been wild about taking Brennan undercover, let alone letting her walk a tight rope or throw knives at his pregnant wife. Only her repeated assurances that she could use a spell of protection in both cases had allowed Booth to feel comfortable enough to let Brennan do her job so he could do his job and catch the murderer of the Hicks' Sisters. Truth to be told, as they embraced the Wanda and Buck Moosejaw carnie personas, they both had gotten more than a little carried away at times in the extremely sexually charged energy that seemed to zing back and forth between them like lightening bolts. The down right animal-like sex that they'd had in their motor home, while keeping up the façade of Canadian carnies Buck and Wanda Moosejaw, hadn't been that much of a stretch for him given the libido both had had (although Booth liked to blame that not on himself but Brennan's nympho pregnancy hormones).

We didn't have to fake it at all when it came to the motorhome needing to get rockin' so no one would come a knockin', Booth thought with a toothy grin. No siree. It was a dirty job, but somebody had to do it. Mmmm…

Booth began to get lost in the delicious memory of how limber Brennan's yoga training had actually made her normally impressive flexibility when they'd made love the first time in the Moosejaw Trailer. However, he only let his brain linger on the delicious memory for a moment before he pushed the thoughts aside as he focused on parking his Toyota Sequoia black SUV in a parking spot in front of a crowded Irish pub where he was supposed to be meeting Cam, Hodgins, and Angela.

Upon their return to the lab, Brennan had finally let the proverbial cat out of the bag about Numero Dos, as he'd taken to calling the new baby, despite Brennan's annoyance at the use of the appellation. Fed up with curious looks and stares when she had entered her office wearing a more revealing outfit of Wanda's than her own usual more conservative attire, and her state was obvious given the increase in the size of her normally already luscious breasts and the swell of her stomach, she had simply gone up to the platform and cleared her throat loudly as she called the attention of all the lab squints in a moment where Booth had been both proud of her and wanted to die of embarrassment at the same time.

"If I can have you attention, please," Brennan had called out in a calm, clear, authoritative voice that Booth instantly recognized as the studious tone that Dr. Brennan only used when she was in Professor Squint Mode.

She crossed her arms over her chest as she waited for everyone to turn their attention to where she stood center platform. Whispers quickly echoed in the cavernous room as the intern on duty that day, Wendall Bray, ran to get Cam, Angela, and Hodgins from their respective offices. Soon the eyes of all the lab squints from techs to support staff and even the security guards soon fell on Brennan. When everyone had appeared, a tense atmosphere of heaviness falling across the room in expectant anticipation, Brennan nodded and began to speak.

"I know for some time there have been rumors about what's been going on with me," Brennan began. "I want to thank those of you who have been worried that I was not shedding my post pregnancy weight as quickly as might be advisable. And I further want to commend those of you who were wise enough to keep any other such comments to yourself in the interim. But, now that enough time has passed, I am ready to make an announcement."

Pointing her right index finger in Booth's direction, Brennan nodded. "As some of you may be aware, Agent Booth and I took a trip to London last fall for a series of joint professional speaking engagements. During that time, as you might expect of two married individuals who are in a successful long-term monogamous relationship, we had sex several times…"

Booth's eyes widened as he met Brennan's steely blue gaze. His heart skipped a beat as his brain processed her words, and his mouth opened into a slight o-shape. After a few more seconds, when he realized what she'd said, and moreover what he knew she now was going to say, he went pale in embarrassment.

What. The. Fuck., Bones, Booth mentally cursed. What the fuck?!

"...and despite our intentions to not necessarily expand our current family so soon after our daughter Kathryn's unexpected conception and birth last year…" Brennan continued.

I'm going to kill her, Booth thought as he suddenly gulped in several mouthfuls of air as he suddenly felt all eyes drilling down on him and making him feel about six inches high. Assuming I don't die of embarrassment first.

"...be that as it may, Agent Booth unintentionally impregnated me a second time. So yes, I am, in fact, pregnant. Again. I appreciate your consideration and patience until I take my maternity leave in the summer after the new baby is born," Brennan said with a sharp nod. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I really need to go sit down so my feet don't start to swell again."

Brennan had flashed Booth a look and a mischievous grin as if to let him know that she'd known exactly what she was doing in the announcement and was revealing in his embarrassment. It was only Booth's extreme mortification that kept him from going after her to chastise her for loudly announcing their personal business so publicly. He made a mental note that he'd get her back somehow in the not too distant future before Cam, Hodgins, Angela, and Wendall all surrounded him with wide, if stunned smiles on their faces as they reached out to shake Booth's hand as they offered their congratulations.

The unexpected announcement was how Booth had found himself going to Nanny McPhee's Irish Pub at Hodgins' insistence. Brennan had initially agreed to come as well before she'd received a call from her father that he'd gotten a flat tire and so would be unable to pick up Kathryn from daycare as planned. So, Brennan had declined Booth's offer to send a raincheck to Hodgins as a partial mea culpa for so blatantly embarrassing him at the lab with their announcement. She had sent him on his way to Happy Hour with a kiss on the head with a final request of 'not to stay out too late' before disappearing towards the Jeffersonian's parking garage substructure where her Silver Mercedes was parked.

After he put the Sequoia into park, he'd gotten out of the SUV and removed his black wool suit jacket and the dark red pinstripe tie he'd worn into his office at the Hoover that morning. He carefully placed the jacket on the back of his driver's seat and then removed his shoulder holster. Tucking his service pistol into the back of his suit trousers, he pulled his white Oxford dress shirt down over the gun. Then, unbuttoning his cuffs, he rolled up the sleeves on first his right arm and then his left arm before he popped open the top two buttons on the dress shirt. Feeling better, he slammed the Sequoia's back passenger door shut and then used his key fob to lock the car.

Entering the pub, he quickly scanned the room and found Jack Hodgins at the bar. Going up to where the entomologist was apparently waiting for him at the bar, Booth greeted him. A couple of minutes later, after Booth had told Hodgins that Brennan wouldn't be coming since she had to pick up Kathryn, and Hodgins had said that Cam and Angela had gotten stuck at the lab. There had been a problem with the Angelatron that was threatening evidence Caroline Julian needed processed on the Hicks case to proceed with formalizing the final charges against the strongman, Magnus, that had been arrested for not killing the girls but not reporting their deaths and the improper if loving burial he'd given them. The pair insisted that Hodgins go without them and that they would catch up later if they could. That was how Hodgins and Booth had found themselves sitting at the bar at the entomologist's insistence to celebrate the news of Booth and Brennan's impending new arrival.

"So," Jack Hodgins said, raising his pint of Guinness to his mouth but hesitating before taking a sip. "I can't believe what Dr. B. did today."

Booth winced a bit as his smooth brown creased at the mention of the earlier embarrassing moment that Booth was thinking about adding to his Top Ten Most Moments when Seeley J. Booth Had Wanted To Curl Up and Die of Embarrassment. "Yeah," he sighed with a gruff puff of air escaping his mouth. "Neither can I."

Hodgins could see the FBI agent's clear mortification and tried to ease it as best he could by getting the man to focus on the good news they had to celebrate. "It's awesome, man. Good for you two." He raised his glass in earnest with a wide grin. "Cheers," he said, clinking his glass against Booth's own draught stout which the brunette had already half-downed.

"Thanks, Hodgins," Booth said, taking a long draught of his brew and licking the foamy head off his upper lip. He turned his head and gave Hodgins a lopsided grin as he realized that one good thing had come of Brennan's embarrassing him with her announcement - they could now openly speak about it. His chest puffed out a bit with pride as he nodded, "Yeah, we're pretty fired up."

The scruffy-bearded scientist raised his hand and flagged down the bartender as he tapped at the dark, smooth wood of the polished bar top. "Two double Jamesons," he said to the heavy-jowled man behind the bar.

"Regular Jameson or 18 Year Limited Reserve?" the bartender asked, quickly glancing over to Booth before bringing his eyes back to Hodgins in question.

Hodgins arched an eyebrow, looked over at Booth out of the corner of his eye, then jerked his chin upward as he made his decision and said, "Reserve—my buddy here's wife's having another baby."

With a smile and a slight nod, the bartender regarded Booth and turned away, then free-poured two double whiskeys from a cool green bottle with a dark green label. He placed the two glasses of amber liquor on the bar, one in front of each man, flashed his eyebrows at Booth in acknowledgement. "Congratulations, pal," he said then, with a wink in Hodgins' direction, added, "This one's on the house."

Booth stared at the glass as he did the mental math, trying to calculate the price of a double from a $100-a-bottle whiskey. "Thanks, man," he said to the bartender. Turning to Hodgins, he asked, "You come here a lot?"

Hodgins winked. "You might say that," he chuckled. "Hey—to you and Dr. B, and your beautiful little girl, and your little one on the way."

"Thanks," Booth said, clinking his faceted lead crystal tumbler against Hodgins' before bringing the whiskey to his mouth, pausing for a moment to let the spicy vapors fill his nose before taking a sip. "Hooboy," he huffed as the whiskey burned his throat a little on the way down.

Three hours, several whiskeys, and another couple of pints of Guinness later, Booth leaned over the bar, his half-empty glass of whiskey dangling precariously from his hand as he arched an eyebrow and wagged his index finger in the air.

"No, no, no," he said to a bleary-eyed Hodgins. "That's not it at all, Hodgie-boy."

Hodgins held his glass tumbler in front of his chin and turned to Booth with an open-mouthed grin, his blue eyes already a bit glassy after two Guinness drafts and two double Jameson whiskeys.

"No, man," he said, waving off Booth's objection with his free hand. "Naw, seriously—it's a totally cool book. Angie got me the other one, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but it wasn't nearly as good." Booth quirked a deeply skeptical eyebrow and snorted, bringing his own whiskey to his lips and taking a long sip, setting his glass down on the burnished mahogany top of the bar.

Holding his hand up, his fingers splayed wide as he shook his head, Booth said, "This sounds like the biggest load of—"

"No, wait," Hodgins insisted. "The gist of the story is that Abe Lincoln learns from his dad that vampires are real, right? A vampire killed his granddad, his namesake, Abraham Lincoln, back around the time of the Revolution. And Lincoln's mom, well, it turns out that she dies, not of tremetol vomiting caused by cow's milk tainted by white snakeroot, but rather…" He paused dramatically, his eyebrows flying up as he narrowed his eyes and said in a conspiratorial tone, "Because she ingested a lethal dose of vampire's blood."

Booth laughed out loud at the scientist's words that he'd said so earnestly. "That is bullshit, Hodgins, I mean—"

Hodgins cut off Booth's objection again. "No, listen, so in the story, all this makes young Abe Lincoln swear he's gonna kill as many vampires as he can, right? So when he's sixteen, he goes out and basically lures the vampire that killed his mom to the family farm, and kills him with a stake he made himself."

"Wait, wait, wait," Booth said, raising his glass again to drain the last of his third double Jameson and holding his hand up to stop Hodgins' ramble. "First off, there's no fuckin' way that a sixteen-year old farm boy is gonna have the ability to kill a vampire, alright, not unless—"

"Oh, come on, Booth," Hodgins groaned. The agent slid his glass across the bar in the direction of the bartender, who sat smirking on a barstool near the cash register, playing a game of some sort on his smartphone. Hodgins slapped Booth in the arm to get his attention. "Work with me here, okay? So, anyway, turns out that Lincoln makes the acquaintance of a benevolent vampire, Henry Sturges, who trains him over the course of a summer all the skills he'll need to be a bona fide vampire hunter, and Lincoln spends the next few years tracking down all these vampire baddies and waxing them, right? He ends up figuring out that the southern states are run by is vampires who want to preserve the institution of slavery, not to use the slaves as labor for their plantations, but as a source of food."

"Stop," Booth grunted. "Just stop. This is the stupidest crock of fucking shit I've heard in a long time." He made eye contact with the bartender and jerked his chin in the direction of his empty tumbler, smiling when the bartender nodded and got up to pour him another whiskey. "Alright, you've got it all wrong, okay? All wrong."

"What?" Hodgins coughed, closing his eyes and shaking his head with a laugh as he raised his half-empty glass (his third) and watched the bartender bring Booth his fourth. "So, what, are you like some kind of expert on vampirology?" he snickered. "What, have you been snuggling up with Anne Rice books in your spare time? Is this some kind of long-standing hobby of yours that you've been hiding from us?"

Booth took a big gulp of whiskey, his nostrils flaring as the strong vapors worked their way up from his throat into his nose as he swallowed. "No," he said, his tone suddenly very serious. "All that Anne Rice stuff is a bunch of crap. God, I've hated that fucking woman and her piece of shit writing since 1976. Not because the writing's all that bad, mind you, it's just that her whole set of rules with vamps? It's fucked up. It's so far off the mark, that's not how it is at all."

"Oh, really?" Hodgins laughed. "Pray tell, G-man. What's so off about it then? What's the real 4-1-1 on those who suffer from haematodipsia?"

"Hemo-what?" Booth asked in confusion.

"Haematodipsia," Hodgins repeated. "As in those who suffer from an intense craving to consume blood, almost to the level that it brings sexual gratification. It's a term—"

"That's bullshit," Booth said as he set his glass on the bar and swiveled in his stool to face Hodgins. He scratched his stubbled jaw and then pointed at the entomologist. "You know for a science guy, you really do fall for a lot of crap."

Folding his arms, and taking on a very pleased look with himself, Hodgins tilted his head as he said, "Right. Then prove me wrong. Tell me what's your expert opinion on the 'truth' of vampires, Agent Booth."

"Well, fine," he said with a grin. "For starters, most of the bullshit books and movies and crap out there says that vampires are a type of undead, but unlike mummies, zombies, and reanimated skeletons, they're sentient. But that's not right, mmm'kay? Because vampires are demons, a type of demon that can exist in this earthly plane only by inhabiting and animating a human corpse."

Hodgins blinked, shaking his head a little and arching his eyebrow as he stared at the FBI agent, his eyes already glassy as his uber dilated pupils couldn't focus on the other man's face quickly enough. Blinking to clear his vision, Hodgins shook his head as he broke his look at Booth before he grumbled like the other man was speaking a foreign language he didn't understand, "What the fuck are you talking about?"

Booth sighed, clearly becoming frustrated with Hodgins' lack of comprehension in his drunken state as he didn't realize the dangerous tangent he was about to go off on with his squinty co-worker. "Listen, alright?" he said, tapping his index finger on the bar demonstratively. "Vampires...they're bad-ass motherfuckers. They-well, they, when…" He struggled for the right words for a moment before he mentally said 'fuck it' and just started to say the first thing that came into his mind as he tried to get his explanation across. "When a person kicks off, the hell demon takes over their body. The human being is no longer a human being. They lose their soul, their conscience, their sense of what's right and wrong. Now, while it's true that the vampire might look and sound and even have the memories and feelings of the person whose body they've taken over, it's not them. It's a demon who's walking around in the human's FUBAR-ed body posing as them."

Hodgins gave Booth a look like those that he used to give Zack when they were having an argument about some type of conspiracy theory where he wasn't sure if Brennan's old intern was correct, but was impressed by the kid's impassioned and knowledgeable response. "Uh huh," he finally said. "That so?"

"Yeah," Booth nodded emphatically, hoping the other man finally understood. "It is."

"Right," Hodgins said, obviously not convinced but willing to play along since he hadn't seen Booth this passionate about anything but Brennan in well, ever, so long as he'd known the man. "So...vampire...demon...human FUBAR-ed." He paused, considered Booth's words, and then said, "Okay. What else ya got?"

"Well," Booth answered as he pursed his lips together. "How about this? If you're a vampire, so-called 'vampire hunters' are a bunch of posers. I mean, yeah, anyone can pick up a stake and get a lucky shot. But if you're a vampire, and you're worried you're gonna get dusted, you really only gotta worry about Slayers..."

"Dusted?" Hodgins responded with his arched eyebrow having almost been in a permanent state of skepticism for the last fifteen minutes of Booth's diatribe.

"When a vamp is killed with a stake in the heart, they turn to dust as they die, you know, just poof," Booth explained, gesturing with his hands as he simulated the suddenness with which a slain demon exploded into a cloud of fine, ashlike dust. "And before ya ask, Slayers are...well, those vampire slayers are where it's at. They'll fuck you up on a good day because they're strong enough, fast enough, skilled enough in hand-to-hand combatives, and versed enough in the literature and the prophecies to know what to do when in the presence of a vampire. A normal, self-professed human vampire hunter, faced with a vampire, is gonna be little more than a short-lived Scooby snack unless they're really fucking lucky, all right?"

He paused for a second to down another shot of Jameson's that Hodgins had unobtrusively signaled the bartender to refill the FBI agent's glass with since seeing that Booth's rant about vampires was turning out to be more than worth the price of admission when he got what he knew was going to be a steep bar tab.

Unable to help himself, Booth muttered, "So that crap about Mommy Lincoln getting poisoned by the blood of a vampire? I don't know what the fuck that's about. Sounds like a bunch of pop culture fictional nonsense that some douchewad made up to sell a bunch of books to a bunch of geeks like you who don't know any better."

Hodgins scratched his scruffy, bearded chin and raised his class again, staring through the amber liquor at the mirror on the back of the bar which was emblazoned with the Guinness logo. "Well, Booth," he snorted with a barely suppressed laugh, "I'm impressed."

"Why?" the FBI agent blinked at him, a lack of comprehension at Hodgins sudden lack of skepticism disappearing from his face. "It's not like this stuff isn't common knowledge."

"Yeah, right," Hodgins chuckled as he smiled widely at Booth. "Still. I just never took you as the type of guy who'd be a closet vampire expert, man. That's all I'm saying."

Booth leaned over the bar, twirling his whiskey glass back and forth in half-circles over the burnished wood surface as he closed one eye and regarded Hodgins with the other. "You know, it's sorta easy to get to be an expert on something when you deal with it every fuckin' day for over two and a half centuries."

"Metaphorically?" Hodgins laughed again, not sure what rabbit hole Booth was about to take him down, but enjoying the ride nonetheless, he decided to stay on the whirlwind ride a bit longer to see what else Booth might say.

"Nope," Booth said, a seriousness creasing his brow as his glassy brown eyes focused on the other man. "In actuality, man. Two hundred and fifty fuckin' years of that bullshit I had to deal with...I mean, okay, I guess if you wanna get technical, it's three hundred and fifty since I did that century in hell, but why quibble? It's a fuckin' long time to get used to that shit. So the answer to your question as to why I know so much shit about vampires, man? It's an easy one to answer." He raised his glass and eyed it skeptically. "I know so much shit because I used to be one," he said quietly, letting his words hang in the air between them as he took another sip of Jameson.

Cocking his head to the side with a curiously shocked glint in his eyes, Hodgins coughed as he choked on some of the whiskey he'd just swallowed, pounded his chest to clear his air pathways, and then squeaked, "What?"

"Yeah," Booth said with a simple nod. Then, he quickly said, "It's not like I'm one anymore. So you don't need to worry that I'm gonna go all forehead on you and rip out your throat before I drain you dry."

Hodgins blinked at him several times before he said, almost as if he was suddenly talking to a crazy person or a suspect that held a gun trained on him and he was trying to talk him down like the best HRT negotiator the Bureau had, "That's...reassuring."

"Yeah," Booth said congenially, not realizing the significance of what he was saying or to whom it was being said, shrugged his broad shoulders as he continued as he looked up at the ceiling attempting to do the math. "It's been...well, five or six years, I guess, since I kicked that habit. And boy lemme tell you, I'm so fucking glad I did. The whole blood sucking/blood drinking thing gets real fuckin' old after a couple centuries." He paused, not wanting to have to talk all about that stuff lest he go into a brooding funk that he suspected that Brennan would be in no mood to let him fuck away by the time he got home. Booth then tried to bring the subject away from the killing part of his past and more on the subject of how vampires really lived and hunted, saying only enough about his past to establish his expert credentials on the subject. "Anyway. Before, a long time before you were even born...well, I was. I was for a long time. And I was one of the most powerful, ruthless, amoral, sadistic motherfuckers of them all. And that's the fuckin' truth." Glancing up at the Guinness pub mirror behind the bar, he pointed at it and said, "I was sired six years before Arthur Guinness shipped his first cask of stout. In Galway, on the west coast of Ireland."

"That so?" Hodgins laughed, now certain that Booth was just attempting to pull one over on the conspiracy theorist's self.

"Yup," Booth nodded solemnly. "I was twenty-six and a drunken sod still living in my father's house—a total loser by both today's standards and back then. I spent every day sleeping off whatever drunken stupor I'd worked myself into the night before from drinking, whoring, and gambling the nights away."

"So what you're saying is that you've had some practice at being a drunken idiot?" Hodgins deadpanned in his buzz, immediately regretting the harsh words as he realized what he'd said to the recovering gambler but then shrugged it off when he saw no offense register on Booth's face. Pressing on, he said, "Kinda like right now? Because, you know, dude, that you're so fucking wasted it's not even funny."

"Aye, indeed, I am," Booth said, letting his Gaeltacht brogue singe the edges of his speech as he winked at his drinking companion. "But doesn't make what I'm sayin' any less true. 'Tis true—I was made a vampire in an alley behind a public house in Galway by this totally hot blonde named Darla. She told me she'd show me a new world...show me things I'd never seen, never even heard of. And she was right, she did. But what the bitch didn't tell me is that the price to be paid for that fucking exocitism was that I'd spend centuries runnin' from Slayers hell-bent to do me in. Or gypsies. Goddamn, I hate 'em. Gypsies are almost as bad as Slayers. Actually, worse even, because they've got these witchy types who work pretty powerful magick that'll turn your fuckin' world upside down in an instant. I hate 'em fuckin' both. But anyway...as far as vampire 'hunters' are concerned, most of them were worthless posers who couldn't catch themselves a highwayman, never mind a two hundred-odd year old plus vampire."

He hesitated, narrowing his eyes as he remembered the night in 1874 that he got tossed out of a public house in Billingsgate after exchanging blows with a Geordie who'd been following him from another pub. The Geordie followed him into the alleyway behind the public house and set upon him with a sharpened wooden stake, but after dodging the slow-moving blow, he'd snapped the man's neck, leaving his broken body in a crumple behind a pile of rubbish, then made his way to Brennan's home in Cheapside. By the time he'd arrived at her door, he was simmering with aggression, which he'd quickly sublimated, taking her against the wall of her entryway, sped to his inevitable release by the sound of her moans which after a dozen or so of his stridently pounding strokes peaked in a scream that still made his balls hitch, a hundred thirty-odd years later.

Blinking away the memory with a sly grin still left on his lips, he said, "There was really only one non-Slayer vampire hunter that ever had the skills to keep me on my toes. The rest? Lame. Completely and utterly lame."

"Lame?" the scientist asked, his forehead creased as he studied Booth's face, wondering how much he himself had actually had to drink that he was imagining himself having this conversation with the FBI agent.

"Yeah," Booth confirmed, raking his fingers through his hair in a way that told him the hair gel he'd used that morning had long ago faded. "Didn't you just hear what I said? Completely and totally utterly fuckin' lame."

"So, wait," Hodgins said, his blue eyes twinkling with laughter. He reached up and threaded his fingers through the curls of his dirty blond hair and, unable to fully contain a snicker, shook his head. "Lemme get this right. You're saying you used to be a blood-drinking creature of the night? So, what, you're telling me that you traveled the world, preying on innocent young women and drinking their blood for your sustenance?"

Booth raised his glass and cocked his head to the side, looking up and away as he considered the question. "Mmmm," he murmured. "Yeah, basically. Not just young women, though, even though they always tasted a bit better than ol' women or, ugghhh, men." He shook off a shiver at the thought. "Old men were the worst. Especially monks and priests. They tasted like shite, the old pricks. Men of the cloth...especially the dried up old wizened kind that always take to preachin' hellfire and brimstone and the like...well, they taste like a half-rotten peach—all the sweetness gone, leaving behind a sharp, sour, bitter taste that makes ya wanna hurl, to be honest."

The curly-haired younger man arched his eyebrow, his forehead having seemingly taken on a permanent deep crease throughout the whole of the conversation, and his nose scrunched up, his expression reflecting how his thoughts swung between disgust, confusion, and bemusement as Booth continued his rant.

"Oh yeah," the agent said, his nostrils flaring as the whiskey seared his throat on its way down. "I only fed on 'em 'cause if I had to, because the crazy ass but completely hot and totally fuckable witch I was spendin' some of my nights with wouldn't let me near her if she could smell another woman on me, so I not only had to stay away from other women's beds, but had to feed exclusively on men. She was...is...well, can be a wee bit of the jealous type. But anyway, men's blood tastes like horseshite compared to women's." Booth smirked, then leaned in closer to Hodgins and said in a voice low enough that only his drinking companion could hear, "Young women taste sweeter than the older ones, but the best of all is the way they taste when you're fuckin' 'em. The closer you get 'em to gettin' off, the sweeter and smoother they taste. If you know what you're doin', you can fuck 'em, get yourself and her all the way to the verge o' sweet oblivion, tip her over the edge, then dial yourself back a half-notch, hesitatin' just long enough that you blow your wad and take the last drink, so you're shovin' in hard an' drainin' 'er dry just before you're pullin' out."

Hodgins shook his head again and rubbed his eyes, convinced he had, in fact, passed out on the couch at home and was drunk-dreaming the entire conversation. "You're kidding me, right?" he asked, peeking through the fingers that covered his eye.

"Naw, definitely not. There's lots more. Plenty o' stuff that I could tell you things about," Booth said vaguely.

The scruffy-bearded scientist arched an eyebrow. "What kind of things, Booth?" he coughed, wincing somewhat even as the words left his mouth, wondering after the agent's last wacky tirade what else he could possibly say that would top that.

"You don't wanna know what I know, bugman," Booth said gravely. "Aye, it'd be enough to make your curly hair go completely fuckin' straight."

Hodgins narrowed his eyes, then his face broke into a wide smile. "You're so full of shit," he laughed again, once more believing that Booth was just pulling his leg for some unusual reason despite the fact that he knew that Booth wasn't really the type to keep a joke like this going for this long even if it was a good joke. "You almost had me going there for a bit, feeb. Good one."

Booth snorted. "C'mon, you're into the whole delvin' into great mysteries and legends," he said with a smirk. "Right? Look it up. 'Angelus, the Scourge of Europe.' The bad ass motherfucker to end all bad ass motherfuckers. Seriously. Laid waste to half the known world before droppin' off the radar in 1898 after a nasty tear through Romania. Google it."

Several beats of silence passed between them before Hodgins reached into his pocket and pulled out his smartphone. A few quick swipes and dozen swiftly-thumbed keystrokes later, his eyes darted back and forth as he skimmed a website, then he looked up at Booth with wide eyes, glanced back down at the phone, cleared his throat with a quick half cough, and narrowed his eyes again.

"Right," he said, a cross between uncertainty and fear crossing his face as he looked at what the screen read back about the name Booth had given him to Google. "You're just jerking my chain. So I'm just supposed to believe—"

"Believe what you wanna believe," Booth said, taking another sip of his Jameson. "But if you wanna know about vampires, that's the road to travel. Not all that Anne Rice, Bram Stoker bullshit. That's a bunch of fuckin' tripe. Angelus was the real deal. The genuine article. The most notorious and sadistic vampire in history."

"You're full of crap," Hodgins huffed, now half believing that somehow, someway, maybe Booth was telling just enough truth to mess with him.

Ignoring the comment, Booth leaned over and peeked at the screen of Hodgins' iPhone. "Seems they got it mostly right," he said, "though they fucked up the beginning bit. After we split from Ireland, we went to Wales, winding our way through all those wee mountain towns with the long, unpronounceable names with all the consonants." He laughed. "It says we tore on to the north of England, which is true—because I was partial to gettin' around to visiting good ol' Holtz after a time, but we didn't stop there. We went all the way up the west coast of England, up through Maryport, Portpatrick, to Stranraer and on to Glasgow. Glasgow was a fuckin' dump, though, and they didn't think much of a Fenian like me, so we said fuck 'em and headed back south, winding our way down to London by 1760."

Jack Hodgins sat there in stunned silence for a minute staring at the half-ounce of whiskey left in his glass before he recovered himself enough to speak. Straight-laced, always squared-away, by-the-book Special Agent Seeley Booth was either (a) so mind-rippingly drunk that he'd veered from inebriated wackiness into a full-on delirium; (b) an accomplished leg-puller and bull-shitter; or (c) the world just took a turn for the surreal, and Hodgins was sure he was lost in the funhouse for good this time.

"So, uhhhh, what does Dr. B think of all this?" he asked, his mouth hanging in a sloppy grin as he watched Booth knock back the last swallow of his fourth whiskey as he didn't know what else to say at that point.

"She fuckin' loved it," Booth muttered, his speech beginning to slur a bit. "Loves it. Loves me. Always has...even if it took us a while to admit it and get it right."

After a couple of seconds, Hodgins snorted, snickered and began to laugh uncontrollably, his breath heaving as his eyes watered. "I mean…you know…" He was laughing so hard, he couldn't form a complete sentence. "She's not really, umm…you know…the kind I'd see being a vampire groupie, you know."

Booth laughed sharply in agreement as he nodded his head. "Yeah, you're right. She's definitely no vampire groupie," he said with a crooked grin. "She's my groupie."

Hodgins had a wide eyed look of surprise on his face that stopped Booth cold in his tracks as it was wider and grander in his disbelief than any that had come before it.

"What?" Booth stopped, mid-thought.

"Dude," Hodgins laughed in nervous disbelief. "You are so far fucking gone it's not even funny if you're really calling Dr. B your groupie. You do know that she'd kick your ass a few times over if she ever heard you say that? Fuck, man...I'm not the one married to her, and even I know that."

"Heh," Booth snickered. "You're probably right. But since she's not here right now, and I know you're not gonna rat me out, I think I'm okay." He stopped, gave Hodgins a wink and then said, "Now where was I?" He blinked a few times, and then another easy grin crossed his face. "Oh, right. Groupies. And Bren. Yeah, she's my groupie. Always has been right from the very first night and always will be. And like any good groupie, she's always there to, well...you know—"

"Okay, okay," Hodgins said, throwing his hands up. "Stop right there, man. You forget, I'm not Angie, so I don't wanna hear any of the gory details, alright? She may be your wife, but I still gotta work with her."

"Yeah," Booth said, raising a cautionary finger. "All you squints think Bones is all cool, calm and collected, icy and reserved. A cold fish, ya know? But you couldn't be more wrong. There's a lot more to her than meets the eye."

"Right," the scientist said with an amused shake of his head. "You're gonna tell me she's got a wild side, right? She's the Pamela Des Barres to your Mick Jagger, huh?"

"Yeah, but with bigger tits," Booth said, throwing his head back with a loud guffaw. "Thank the fuckin' Lord." He laughed so hard he snorted, then leaned forward and put his head on the bar as he tried to contain his laughter. When he'd finally managed a certain degree of self-control, he raised his head again and said to his companion, "That's right, Hodgie-boy, Bones may seem cool to the touch but inside, she's all volcano. Trust me."

Hodgins winced. "Okay, that's enough," he said, apparently taking the metaphor for more than what Booth intended. "Please...take pity. What you and Dr. B do and get off on when you two go home is between you two, okay?" With a shrug, he added, "Although, I think I feel pretty safe in saying that whatever it is you do, you're obviously doing something right, since no sooner than you got her and Dr. B's mini-me home before you're knocking her up again."

Booth waggled his eyebrows and was about to reply when the song on the P.A. faded out and another song popped on. The song was sparingly constructed—just a simple, slow, angular guitar riff and a broad tenor voice singing—but its loping tune rang almost hauntingly between the walls of the steadily emptying pub.

Hold me now, oh hold me now

Till this hour has gone around

And I'm gone on the rising tide

For to face Van Diemen's land

For a few long moments, the mournful tune made Booth think back to the last night that he'd spent in Brennan's bed before making his way down to the East India Docks to catch the steamer to Istanbul and on to Constanta, Romania. They came together, again and again that night, fending off sleep as long as they could, knowing that the last hours of twilight would send him away.

It's a bitter pill I swallow here

To be rent from one so dear

We fought for justice and not for gain

But the magistrate sent me away

"What's wrong?" Hodgins asked, surprised at Booth's sudden silence. "You don't like U2?"

Booth grimaced a little. "Pffft," he snorted.

Hodgins's eyes widened again in surprise. "Seriously, dude? What kind of pinko commie sympathizer are you? I thought everybody liked U2. I mean, Bono...he's the man."

"They're okay," Booth reluctantly conceded. "But they're nowhere near the best thing to come out of ol' Eire in terms of rock 'n' roll. Now this song—" He pointed up at the ceiling demonstratively as if that was where the P.A. were located. "Naw," he said. "This one I like 'cause it's got the soul of a good Irish lament, even if it was penned in the 80s' by The Edge. I knew a man, Seamus McTaggart who I met in Dublin when me an' Darla did a turn there for a couple o' years back in the 1850s, and, anyway, Seamus was part of the Irish Republican Brotherhood—the Fenians, you know—with John Boyle O'Reilly, and when the English did their big sweep to bust up the Fenians, he got sent to Western Australia. He had to leave behind his girl, Caroline, and..." Booth paused and saw the fading gleam in Hodgins' eyes. "Well, anyway, the song pretty well nails the way my boy Seamus felt havin' t'go..."

"I think Dr. B likes U2," Hodgins mused, his words falling somewhat more slowly as the whiskey had begun to weigh down his mind. "I've heard her singing along, you know, kinda quiet and all, when I came upon her late at nights when she's piecing together a shattered skull or studying a fracture under the magnifying lamp in the Bone Room. Especially ever since How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb came out last year."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Booth said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Bones and her U2 fetish. I got it. I definitely fuckin' got it. She dragged me to one o' their concerts on their U2 Vertigo Tour. Overpriced tickets—a hundred bucks for nosebleed seats, and they were even more if you wanna be in the same ZIP code as the band—and the whole show was fuckin' overproduced as all fuck. They hit it big with War and became fuckin' primadonnas after that, and the last few tours they've done have been such a fuckin' departure from the band's original grit and roots that it's not even fuckin' funny."

Booth rolled his eyes, then smirked. Though Bren did make up for it with those wicked good seats she nailed for the show with a little help from her publisher, and, heh, well, the wicked good sex afterwards. She fucked me like a madwoman that night. Lass came home wet as hell and done wore me out the way she rode me. Which is why I tolerate her thing with U2, even if I can't really stand 'em anymore. Booth shook over a delightful shiver at the pleasing memory before he turned back to Hodgins.

"If ya think U2 is the best band to come out o' Erin these last thirty years," Booth said. "You just proved you don't know fuck all about good Irish rock. U2 ruled the charts, but the real good bands are the ones hardly anybody remembers, like Aslan—who went number one on the Irish charts when their debut record Feel No Shame hit in 1988—or The Undertones, or the Pogues, who are fuckin' classic." He glanced over at his empty whiskey glass and sighed, then scowled at the skeptical look he saw on Hodgins' face. He shrugged and smiled, then said, "But I always was partial to The Saw Doctors m'self 'cause they're from the holy of holies, you know—County Galway, where I'm from." Booth paused and sighed, then said, "But the sad fact o' the matter is, none of the rockin' acts to come out o' Erin these last fifty years have anythin' on the wicked awesome folk songs, you know, that Fenian bards have been ginnin' up for hundreds o' years. Like my favorite one, 'bout the—"

Hodgins coughed, then waved both of his hands in the air. "Please, no singing," he said. "I can't take it."

Booth's brow knit hard over his eyes as he pouted. "I'm a good singer," he said petulantly. "I learned to sing at my mother's knee, and—"

"I don't care if you learned to sing from the great Sammy Davis, Jr. himself," Hodgins cracked. "I think that'd put me over the edge, Booth. So, please, cut me a break, huh? Save it for your groupie, Dr. B. I'm sure she loves to hear your soulful crooning."

Booth sat up straight on his stool and picked up his glass, gesturing with it and pointing his index finger in playful warning as he said, "Bones likes my singin' just fine, I'll have you know—"

Suddenly, he fell silent mid-sentence as if a great realization had suddenly dawned on him, comprehension changing his body language and complete bearing in a split second.

Setting his glass down on the bar with a noisy, clumsy clank, Booth's eyes suddenly widened. "Oh, fuck," he said, his heart racing as he remembered what it was he was supposed to pick up on the way home from work. "Oh, shit, Hodgins," he said, glancing at his watch. "I'm in…oh, fuck…shit…I was s'po'sed to be home hours ago. Bones is gonna fuckin' have my hide." He stood up abruptly, reaching into his back pocket and retrieving three crisp twenties from his wallet, setting them on the bar as he kicked the barstool under the bar. "I gotta go, bug-boy," he said grimly, looking again at his watch as he couldn't remember what it had said the last time he looked at it, five seconds earlier. "I doubt there's any chance of finding a falafel joint open this time of night, huh?"

"No way, man," Hodgins said, gesturing to the bartender to put the balance of the tab on his swiped credit card as he followed Booth towards the exit. "I'm sure Dr. B will understand, you know."

"I doubt it," Booth said grimly as he looked for his phone to call for a taxi. "I'll be lucky if she doesn't toss my sorry ass off the balcony again the second I get in the front door."

Hodgins was about to ask something, but his mouth hung open as Booth shook his head and interrupted him as he said, "Gotta go, Bug Boy. Gotta go. God willing, Bones'll be asleep when I get home…but if you don't hear from me in three days, I suggest you go looking for the body because she'll have killed me and dumped the evidence."

"Yup, yup," Hodgins nodded. "Got it. Vaya con Dios, man, vaya con Dios."

Booth gave the entomologist a thumbs up before he stumbled out the bar's front door and disappeared into the night's rain.

Hodgins nodded his own goodbye as he waved Booth off and said quietly to himself. "Assuming we'd find your body. Which, knowing Dr. B., I doubt we would, Booth, I doubt we would."

TBC

A/N2: So there we go. It seems that with some whiskey and stout in him, Booth gets a bit mouthy like the good ole days of Angelus old, huh? So he was supposed to bring a pregnant wife dinner and forgot. And now he's on his way home drunk at 2 o'clock in the morning. Wonder what Brennan is going to do? Will she be asleep or will something more fun happen? ::blinks:: I'll simply say that longtime readers should know me better by now, but if you need a further hint, we are in a Guh Alert warning...maybe not for next chapter, but it's definitely in the not too distant future. Stay tuned! And in the meantime, what will Hodgins do with the bit of information/exposition dump a drunken Booth just gave him? Hmmm? All shall be revealed soon. In the meantime, reviews help act as a carrot. The more reviews I get, the more the muse is motivated to cooperate. So even if it's short, I really do appreciate reading everyone's thoughts. Thanks in advance!