Thank you for all the reviews!

This is going to be longer fic than 'Sleeping', there will be fluff, but I want to work on plot as well.

Thank you to Laura and Feyrey for beta-ing, you're stars!


Chapter 2 – You Only Live Once

The rain still fell, making the wet ground difficult to walk on. The fields through which Booth walked seemed more like pools of mud. It was almost unbelievable that only hours ago the grass had been almost yellow with dehydration, people dotted on it armed with picnic baskets and blankets, enjoying the hot weather.

He heard a slurping noise whenever he picked up his feet, shod in boots that were a size too small. Bones had found them in an cupboard where the squints kept waterproof clothing for adventures such as this one, along with an all-in-one that had been Dr Goodman's. They weren't his usual style, but seeing as the rain was still torrential he had given in and put them on, much to Bones' amusement when she had seen him after he had changed. He hadn't appreciated the laughter, but he was glad she wasn't mad at him any more.

They had taken a road that crossed a bridge, leading them to the side of the river that the body was on. Once they had parked up alongside the multitude of vehicles already there - one of which, Booth was interested to see, belonged to Cullen – it was a mile and a half trek to the riverside. Any other woman he knew would have complained about the weather, her hair and the fact that she had to wear an outfit that was as far away from fashion as possible… but not Bones. She kept up with his quick pace stride for stride, her face set in a determined expression, and actually looking cute in that boiler suit thing. The corner of his mouth twitched into a smile.

"You think your date will be calling you later?" He teased, or rather provoked. She ignored him.

"He seemed kinda smitten when I saw you two talking," he continued, knowing that he could quite possibly end up in the river for the second time that evening if he persisted.

She glared at him from beneath her hood. He couldn't see the expression in her eyes but he could certainly feel it. "I very much doubt that Stuart will bother to call to resume our date, or even to arrange to write the paper we were planning on, partner," she said, her tone now back to usual. He smiled inwardly about the use of the word partner. He had done that on purpose in the restaurant, and clearly it had had an effect on both Brennan and her date. Truth be told, as soon as he had seen him he had wanted to stake his claim over Bones immediately, show that she somehow belonged to him. He looked at her for a brief moment, hoping that she wouldn't notice, while he took in her pretty features and the auburn hair that was peeking from under her hood, and felt that familiar feeling that he knew he shouldn't be having. He looked away, burying what was going through his head in some deep recess of his brain, knowing that it would creep out when it was least convenient.

"Hey, I just told him what you were," he defended himself, masking his thoughts with bravado.

"He would have thought that you meant partner of a different kind, Booth," she looked at him. Even in the dark he knew her eyes were flaring.

"It doesn't matter now, he's flying home tomorrow," she said, now focusing on the scene being carried out a short way in front of her. He heard the rush of the river increasing in volume, sounding much more forceful than when he had left it to go and track Bones down.

"You weren't thinking it could be anything serious, were you? I mean, Bones, he's not exactly your type of guy…" he began, knowing he was sounding a little arrogant.

"How would you know what 'my type of guy' is anyhow?" She demanded. "Since I've known you I've only been out with two men and I don't see how that qualifies you to have an opinion on what type of men I find attractive!" Her voice was only just about audible over the roar of the water.

"You just need someone who will – I don't know, Bones – make you bend a little," Booth said loudly.

"I don't know what that means," she shouted back, walking to where two crime scene investigators were hovering over the blanketed body.

"That's why you need someone who'll make you bend a little," Booth murmured, well aware that she couldn't hear him. She wouldn't be interested in him now anyway, not when she had a skeleton there to analyse.

He crouched down beside her as she began pull the blanket away from what was left of the body. He could see her studying everything with utmost concentration, her features heightened in the false lighting provided by the officers at the scene. Someone had erected a canopy over the scene, preventing evidence from being washed away by the constant downpour. This kept the rain off of both of them, partially, but the wet ground made it uncomfortable to hover too close to the floor. Bones seemed oblivious to the conditions and he realised that she must have done digs in worse circumstances than this. He noticed a piece of wet hair sticking to her cheek and fought the urge to move it away. For a few seconds it was all he could think about; moving that lock of hair and touching her pale white skin, then her attention was caught by his gaze and she stared at him, a questioning look on her face.

"What are you looking at, Booth?" She asked, as if she couldn't quite believe he was breaking her concentration.

"You, um, have some hair stuck to your cheek," he said truthfully, and pushed out a finger to move it. Unsurprisingly, she backed away and moved it herself, giving him the glare that he had last received from girls in the playground at school and he'd tried to pull their hair to get their attention. He pushed his lips together and pulled a 'whatever' face.

"This is the body of a child, a male," she confirmed, casting looks from him to the focus of her attention. "Approximately eight years old at the time of death. He appears to have been in good health, and there is no obvious cause of death, but I need to examine him at the lab to get any more detailed information."

"Any idea of time of death?" Booth asked, his head jutting from under the tarpaulin canopy and meeting the still pouring sky.

Bones joined him, her hood still up and protecting her from the cool water. "I'm going to have to take a closer look for that. Given where he's been found, I'd suggest that this wasn't the place of death. This body's only been put here recently," she told him.

"I would agree with that based on the logic that we would have had a call sooner if the body had been here longer," Booth agreed.

"Well, I'm telling you that on fact. If the boy had been killed here and the body left to decompose in this spot then there would have been signs of scavenger activity. bones would have been carried off, and there would have been damage done to the skeleton by insects and animals. None of that has happened. We have a complete skeleton, with a little flesh still on it, which will help in using D.N.A. to identify the body," she snapped of the latex gloves she had worn while examining the remains and beckoned for the crime scene investigators to put the skeleton in a body bag, and take it to the lab.

Booth pulled the hood up on his boiler suit, not caring how he looked as the rain was coming down harder then ever, wetting his face. The hood had collected a little rain inside it, but at least it provided a barrier between the rain and his head. He felt hot and sticky in the clothing. Although it was raining, it was still warm; a little fresher than it had been this afternoon, but not massively so and still humid enough to make him uncomfortable. He watched as Bones began the trek back to the car, the rain blurring his vision a little. She pulled her hood down, obviously a little too hot, and he saw the mane of auburn hair emerge. For a second he could swear his heart took an extra beat at the sight, but he dismissed it as just being something to do with the weather.

"Agent Booth," a voice came from behind, slightly muffled by the hood, but unmistakably belonging to Cullen.

"Sir," Booth answered, turning round.

"Good work on finding the body in these conditions. If it had been left much longer it would probably have ended up in the river," Cullen said. Booth wondered why he was being so complimentary.

"All in a day's work, Sir," he replied, thinking about the new suit.

"I'll have the team comb the area for any evidence," he said, sheltering under a large umbrella, one of those given away free when you bought so much gas.

"It may be a good idea to have someone go over the recording of the call made about the body," Booth said. "Dr Brennan doesn't think that the murder was committed here. She thinks it more likely that the body was brought here recently."

"How recently?" Cullen demanded.

"She's not yet said, Sir," he knew that Cullen was not Bones' biggest fan.

"Then the lady needs to get a move on and let us know. It could well be the perp who made the call," Booth saw Cullen send a glare in the direction of Bones.

"Sir," Booth agreed and exhaled deeply as his boss walked away. He was surprised he had made an appearance, given the weather conditions and the fact that it was Friday night. Friday night – and he still hadn't rung Tessa to let her know why he wasn't back yet. He emitted a sigh, half knowing what was to come once he got back home. He began to run after Bones, knowing that if he didn't hurry her temper would be even more frayed, he had the car keys and she would have to stand in the rain till he got there.

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Brennan stood by the car, waiting for Booth to open the door, her head cocked on one side, staring at his broad figure as he ran to her. She could understand why he made a good agent; he certainly had the stature for it, all muscles and broad shoulders – probably imposing when it came to interrogating suspects. However, she knew that there was a softer side to Seeley Booth; the one that picked his son up and cuddled him, the one that took away the guilt from parents and the one that had held her in his arms after she had been put through one of the worst ordeals in her life.

She exhaled deeply, berating herself for letting her imagination get carried away thinking about Booth's finer points. She managed to change the gaze she had set on him to one of impatience.

"Took you long enough to get here," she criticized as he unlocked the doors.

"Cullen was talking to me," he told her, sounding harassed.

She got into the car, automatically buckling herself in with the seatbelt. "What did he have to say?" she demanded. "He doesn't like me, does he?" For some reason that bothered her.

"Well, I don't think he will be giving you a gun anytime soon," he said. She wondered if she'd annoyed him, he sounded disgruntled.

They rode to the lab in silence, Brennan resting her elbow on the side of the car and propping her head up, looking out of the window and at the driving rain that was still toppling down. There was a constant sound of water as the wheels of the car swam through streets that hadn't yet drained. She saw houses with the lights on; families gathered together in the dry safety of their homes, children watching television, parents cleaning the pots from dinner. For a few seconds she recalled being in the back of her parents' car on the way back from a day out seeing old friends of theirs, when the weather had been just like today and she had sat bored, in the back of the car, listening to the rush of the water underneath them and battering down on the tin of the roof. She could even recall the smell of the new car freshener that her dad had put in that day after her brother had split a carton of milk over the passenger seat.

"You okay, Bones?" Booth's voice crept into her head and fished her out of her thoughts.

"Fine," she replied, not looking at him.

"Weather like this brings back memories," she heard him say and wondered if he could read her mind.

"I remember going camping with my dad, and it rained like this. We ended up sleeping in the car," he smiled and glanced at her. Her eyes remained fixed on the road ahead. "Remind you of anything?"

"Not really," she answered flatly, not wanting to talk. He left it there. She hadn't wanted to share the memory, although some part of her thought that Booth was the right person to share those things with. He had already proven time and time again that he was understanding and compassionate, and sometimes it just seemed too damn easy to share a little bit more than she normally would do.

They pulled up at the lab, the silence only broken by the persistent dropping of rain. Bones pulled her hood over her head once again, looking forward to changing into ordinary clothes and out of the boiler suit that was almost as humid as the afternoon had been. The uncomfortable heat had taken its toll in the lab, the air conditioning had broken down and arguments had broken out between Angela and Hodgins, and then Zack and Hodgins, resulting in Hodgins leaving work early with the threat to never come back.

Thankfully, the engineers had fixed the air-con and it was now maybe even a little too cool. Brennan began to unzip the suit, feeling cool air hit her body and she breathed a small sigh of relief. She saw Booth begin to do the same and found herself a little spellbound as he began to unzip. Then the zip seemed to get caught and he began to struggle to pull it down further.

She approached him, walking quietly over to where he was stood, cursing irately under his breath.

"Let me help," she said, standing at just less than an arms reach away, and fighting with his fingers for the zipper.

"I can do it!" He shouted back.

"Stop it, Booth," she said as he resisted. "You're getting annoyed with it and this is something that you need patience for." He gave up, curses coming unintelligibly from his lips. She pulled the zipper, it didn't give. Standing a little closer and focusing all of her attention on the item in question and not Booth, she held the two edges of the zipper together, noticing how broad his chest was, and gently pulled the it up.

Slowly it moved. She took it right to the top, ignoring Booth's impatient sigh. "You're supposed to be undoing it, not fastening me back up in this thing!" He argued.

She paid no heed to his words and began to move the zip down, feeling it catch halfway. Booth groaned in annoyance. Standing on tip toes she hooked her hand down the inside of the boiler suit and fished about, becoming increasing aware of the close proximity of their bodies. She could feel his heat seeping into her, and felt his breath moving her hair. Every molecule in her body felt electrified, and she fought to keep a grip on her hands, the backs of which were close against his chest, a white t-shirt covering flesh.

It was the t-shirt that was the problem, having been caught in the zipper. Using slight force, she pulled it out of the way, noticing that Booth's impatient remarks had now ceased, and then proceeded to pull the zip down a little more to show it was now fixed.

She stepped back, half reluctantly, eyes on him. He refused to meet her gaze, looking past her or down to the zipper instead.

"I'll get changed in my office," she told him, turning and walking to her room where dry, clean clothes awaited her. She glanced at the clock, nearly midnight. Fastening the buttons on her shirt she looked out to where Booth was re-emerging after stripping off in the restroom. She wondered where he should have been tonight, and if he had to cancel on Tessa. He rarely mentioned his girlfriend and Angela had speculated that they might have split up. Brennan checked herself – why was she thinking about Booth's love life? He was her work partner and nothing more, no matter if Angela thought that they had 'chemical' or whatever word she had inappropriately used. She pulled on a lab coat and walked into the area where the crime scene investigators had laid out the body, wanting to do what she could to ease the burden of what they had to do tomorrow, or rather, later on today.

Booth hovered nearby, watching as she worked and listening to the notes she dictated. No cause of death was evident; no signs of strangulation, no blows to the head, no broken bones. She caught Booth's eye, he looked restless.

"So where's this leading us to?" he asked, hands in pockets. She thought how different he looked wearing casual clothing instead of his trademark suit.

"I'll need to do an examination of any remains of organs that there are. He may have been poisoned. I can also run a few tests on the bones and any hairs that I find. That will give evidence as to whether he had any foreign substances in his body." She looked sadly at the tiny skeleton; he had been so young.

"Is it murder, Bones? I mean, is there anything that suggests that it's not?" he said, beginning to pace up and down, beginning to become annoying.

"I haven't seen anything yet that suggests he was murdered," she answered, trying to concentrate on tweezering a fine, blonde hair from a tiny patch of skin onto a prepared slide.

"His body was dumped – unless someone's been grave robbing, this is a suspicious death," he paused. "I hate it when it's a kid."

"We all do," she responded, still concentrating on what was on the table.

He laughed, a sarcastic tone to it. "You wouldn't think so to see you working."

"What does that mean, Booth?" She stood up, hands on her hips, her attention now fully given to the agent. "Are you suggesting that I'm not bothered that the body I have on my table is a child?"

"Maybe you're getting a little too good at that barrier you shield yourself with, Bones. Sometimes you're a little more robot than human," he sniped at her.

She felt her skin reddening. "Out!" she shouted, gesturing to the door. "Get out of my lab. I don't know what's bothering you, Booth, but I will not be spoken to like that! My night's been ruined by you, and now you're insulting me! Get out!"

"At least I got you to show some emotion," he snapped at her, before walking to the door. "Call me if anything urgent turns up."

She watched as he left, her chest feeling as if it was about to burst and a maelstrom of emotions flickering round her head. She returned to the body, brushing everything aside to be dealt with later.

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Booth walked slowly back to his car, twisting the keys round in his fingers and letting himself get soaked to the bone by the rain, which had not yet ceased. It was past midnight. Tessa would have been waiting for him for nearly five hours and he hadn't so much as rung to let her know he was still alive, not that he thought she'd care by this point. If anything he might have been better off meeting a wet end in the river than facing her now.

The hours he worked had become the Achilles heal of their relationship; it was the bone of contention every time they had an argument. When they first started dating she had loved what he did and it had given her a thrill when he'd had to leave urgently to go on different cases. When he had returned the sex had been mind blowingly brilliant, but even that had come to a sudden halt.

He started his car, switching on the radio and listening to flood warnings for certain areas. The weather was forecast to remain the same, with a small possibility that the rain would become lighter in the afternoon. Just what he needed when they would be spending time looking in a river for any trace evidence.

He drove home, the sinking feeling in his heart becoming heavier the closer he got. He replayed over his last words with Bones before he had left. He hadn't been fair and he would certainly have to apologise to her in the morning. He knew that having the corpse of a child on her table upset her; she had just managed to create a mechanism to switch off so she could get her job done. He could do with one of those himself; it might make cases like this a bit easier.

He pulled up outside his house, leaving the car on the street rather than bothering to park it in the drive. He traipsed into the house, noticing that the alarm wasn't on so Tessa must still be there, although he hadn't seen her car parked out front. He called her name and silence returned. He headed for the lounge at the back of the house and found her sitting on the sofa, coat pulled over her shoulders and shoes already on.

"Hi," he said, feeling pathetic. He didn't know how else to begin this conversation. She looked over at him, unsmiling. He sat down on a chair, not daring to take the seat next to her.

"You know what I'm going to say, don't you?" she said. It was more of a statement than a question. She stood up, heels helping her to tower over him. He looked up at her. If it had been Bones he would have stood up to be level with her, invading her space and creating that chemistry which he thrived on. With Tessa he didn't have that urge to be bothered.

"Don't you need to present your evidence before coming to a closing statement?" he asked with a wave of his hand, feeling for the remote control with the other, flicking the TV onto a sports channel.

"I could tell you what you've not done right, Seeley, but it seems rather pointless when you don't care. You've left me here for over five hours waiting for you without so much as a phone call to tell me you couldn't make it," she said, anger in her voice.

"I was out by the river, looking for a body, which I found, and it was a kid's, okay? See, I know you're not interested in what I do, Tessa, which is why this has stopped working. If I had called you, you wouldn't have wanted to know," he didn't look at her, or raise his voice. He kept his eyes focused on the ball.

"I'm going, Seeley," she announced.

"Yeah, that seems clear, seeing as you're wearing your coat," he muttered.

"You're prepared to let a year and a half of a relationship go like that?" she said. He was pleased that there was actually a note of sadness in her voice this time.

"You know what? I am," he stood up and looked her straight in the eye. "You're seeing someone else, so don't give me all that sentimental crap. Just go, Tessa. I imagine you've packed all your stuff already. I've noticed bits of it disappearing these past few weeks, probably to the model lawyer's house." He saw her turn red and realised he'd hit the nail on the head.

"You can't talk about seeing other people when most of your time is spent with Bones or whatever she's called. When we're together you talk about her and when we're not together you're with her. You may not be sleeping with her now…"

"Leave it, Tessa!" He interrupted. "Just go. We knew this was going to happen; I'm just not sure why it hasn't happened before. Call your boyfriend and have him come get you, seeing as your car's not here." He sat back down, desperate for something to hit.

Tessa glared at him, picking up her bag, and then throwing him a key, before scuttling to the door. He heard it slam, almost shaking the house. He turned the TV onto mute and began to enjoy the silence and relief that he felt now that it was over, or at least tried to enjoy it. His mind slipped back to his argument with Bones, replaying it over in his mind. It wasn't Tessa leaving that had bothered him; it was the row with the forensic anthropologist that had him worried. He sighed and stood up, turning off the TV and heading for a shower, images of Tempe's hurt look imposing on his mind as he tried to scrub away the remains of the day.


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