I thought the last part would go down well! I was bowled over by your reviews. Thank you.


Sorting out clothes on vacation can be a dilemma

Friday lunchtime

They stayed for an hour longer, but by the end of that time Parker was starting to get very fidgety and complaining he was hungry, and it was hard for them to keep him occupied. Booth tried to persuade Brennan to stay longer, but she refused. "We'll be back this afternoon, Booth, but Parker needs a break and you need some rest."

"Could you do me a favour?" he asked as they stood up. "Could you bring me some clothes when you come back? I'm hoping they discharge me tomorrow, then I can get ready for you to pick me up."

"Okay," she answered. "Anything in particular?"

"No, I trust you," he said with a grin. "You should find everything you need. There's a bag in the wardrobe, I think."

"Give Daddy a kiss, Parker," Brennan prompted. She was embarrassed but also secretly pleased when he insisted she do the same. She bent over Booth again, and gave him a small kiss on the cheek. He smiled at her.

"See, Bones?" he said cheerfully. "I told you it wouldn't hurt."

"It's a good thing Angela's not here," was all she said in answer.

He chuckled. "She's pressuring you too, huh?"

Brennan was taken by surprise with this. She knew Angela often made comments to her about Booth. Could it be that she also made remarks to Booth about her? She made up her mind to ask her friend at the earliest opportunity.

When she had settled Parker in front of the TV with a peanut butter sandwich and made herself a meat sandwich, she headed for Booth's bedroom to sort out some clothes. She found a black sports bag in the bottom of the wardrobe, alongside a well-used squash racket, and placed it on the bed. Shoes were easy; she found a pair of sneakers she recognised and put them in the bag. Then she turned her attention to the bureau. A pair of jeans was still sticking out of one drawer, so she retrieved those and put them in the bag. So far so good.

She sat eating her sandwich as she contemplated the top drawers of the bureau. It felt very odd, to be going through Booth's clothes like this. She opened one of the drawers and found socks, all bundled together in pairs. Most of them had designs on, and she found herself looking through them and chuckling at one or two. She debated whether she felt daring enough to send in Horny Little Devil socks, or ones which boasted "I'm too sexy for my socks", but she decided she didn't feel brave enough, so she settled for the black pair with a white partial skeleton on them. The bone structure wasn't strictly accurate, but she thought Booth would appreciate the joke, and more importantly she would still be able to look him in the eye.

She turned to the next drawer. As she had guessed, she found boxers. She was amused to recognise the red pair Booth had been wearing at Christmas, when Hodgins and Zack had doomed them all to a couple of days in quarantine together. Her hand brushed something else, and she pulled out a packet of condoms. She stood looking at them for a while. The force of her reaction to them startled her. It made her chest ache to think of Booth being intimate with someone else. She didn't think he was in any steady relationship at the moment; she hadn't heard him mention anyone since he broke up with Tessa; but this find was a stark reminder that he was a healthy, attractive man, and had every right to be involved with women.

She forced herself to put the packet back and not to think about it, but still she felt uneasy, as if something foreign had imposed itself alongside their friendship. She hurriedly discarded a pair of boxers with flames round the legs and Red Hot Lover printed on them, and a pair covered in yellow smiley faces, and picked a pair of boxers with Superdad printed all over them. She threw them into the bag alongside the rest of the clothes, then looked in the next drawer. This contained mainly tee shirts, neatly ironed and folded. She nearly picked one up, but then thought of Booth trying to get it on with a sore shoulder, and put it back.

Moving back to the wardrobe, she found a few casual shirts among the dress shirts and suits hanging there. She chose one with a red and blue check design, and placed that neatly in the bag as well. As a final thought, she placed Booth's jacket across the top of everything else, then remembered she hadn't taken the money out for the shopping. She located his wallet in his inside pocket, and took it out. As invasive as the rest of her actions had felt to her, she was used to going through other people's belongings. Granted, they were usually already dead, but all the same, everything she had done for Booth so far had felt more natural to her than this. Opening Booth's wallet suddenly felt a real invasion of privacy, and she sat looking at it for a few minutes before she found the courage to open it.

There was a photo of Parker inside, taken a few months ago. His hair was shorter in the photo, and he was grinning at the camera with a cheeky expression on his face. Brennan found a couple of credit cards, and half a dozen cards with Booth's work phone number on. She caught half a glimpse of something else in the wallet, hesitated, then hurriedly took out enough money to cover the shopping and put the wallet back in his pocket without looking closely enough to confirm or deny what she thought she might have seen. She really didn't want to look too closely into her partner's life while he wasn't here to explain himself.

She sat on the bed, looking at the bag. Collecting the clothes together had distracted herself from the thought that while she felt relief that her partner was getting better and would soon be home, she also dreaded collecting him from hospital. She had felt closer to him than ever before over the past couple of days, even though she had seen little of him, and the thought of going back to the easy, casual friendship seemed unbearable after the intimacy of living in his house, caring for his son and sleeping in his bed.

She had supposed she would feel only relief at having her responsibilities ended, but now she felt an unbearable longing sweep over her. Shaking herself, she stood up. Booth was a friend, that was all. The feeling she was starting to feel whenever she saw him was a crush maybe, brought on by circumstances, but nothing more than that. It was important that she get it under control, before it threatened their partnership. Perhaps, when she considered what was at stake, it was a good thing that Booth would be back soon. She didn't think she would be able to remain this close to him for too much longer without running the risk of doing something foolish and ruining their friendship.

Heading back to the living room, she found Parker had eaten all of his sandwich but the crust, and was cheering on Blue's Clues. She picked up his plate and took it to the kitchen, putting it in the sink with her plate. As she turned to go out of the kitchen she noticed that a picture on the wall was crooked, and she moved to straighten it. As she did so, she noticed something behind it. Moving the picture, she discovered a large stain on the wall, along with a couple of marks in the plaster. She frowned, and investigated the stain closer. It looked like coffee. She looked back at the table and frowned, imagining Booth furiously throwing a full coffee mug at the wall, then putting a picture up to hide the marks.

"Dr. Bones, Steve and Blue found it," Parker announced suddenly at the doorway. Bones looked up at him, startled, and hurriedly replaced the picture back on the wall.

"Found what?" she asked. She realized he was talking about the TV program he'd been watching. "Oh – never mind, I don't really want to know."

She turned back to the sink and washed up the plates, and Parker helped her put them away in the cupboard. "Can we go see Daddy again now?" he asked.

She nodded. "We've just got to take some things with us." She hurried down the hallway, retrieved the bag she'd packed for Booth, and went into Parker's room to fetch something else for it. Then she came back to find the boy. "Come on, then. Let's get back and see Daddy again, see what he had for lunch."

A/N: I had fun investigating the designs of underwear available for this part!

Please let me know what you thought. We'll see more and more of Booth over the coming parts, now he's feeling better.