Take the Long Way Home

Booth sighed with relief as Bones slowly stood from the excavation site. After nine pain-staking hours that his partner had spent crouching in the grave, carefully uncovering the remains, she had finally decided it was ok for the team to pack up the bones and ship them to the lab.

He watched as she bent her body backwards, arching and stretching her spine before she flopped forward and reached for the toes of her muddy boots, her Squint Suit hugging her body a little too closely with the nimble motions.

"Want me to crack your back, Bones?" He offered with a smirk as she continued contorting her body like a circus performer.

She froze, rising slowly from her position and glaring at him with every ounce of incredulity that her lithe body contained. "No, I do not want you to crack my back." she told him, emphasizing his term with a tone of disdain.

"You crack mine all the time." He pointed out as she hefted her travel case off of the ground and headed toward his car.

"I do not crack your back." She told him pointedly. "I use my extensive knowledge of kinesiology to give you a minor adjustment thereby relieving the intense pain you experience with the understanding that you will be seeing a medical professional for a follow up." She added. "Which you rarely do." She muttered the last part, but gave him a very pointed look.

Rolling his eyes, Booth walked around the driver's side of his car and hopped in, giving Bones a moment to remove her jumpsuit in the semi-privacy of the trunk area. A moment later, she was hopping into the passenger seat and asking him to drop her off at the lab.

"Bones, it's 10 o'clock on a Sunday night, and you just squatted in a hole for nine hours. Go home and take a shower and a nap." He told her, shaking his head in disbelief. "The bones'll be there in the morning just the same."

Shaking her head, he could see the exhaustion. "I would like to begin my preliminary examination before–" she started, as a yawn overpowered her. Shaking his head again, he pulled out of the make-shift parking spot and headed toward the road.

Glancing over at his partner, he was satisfied that she wasn't paying attention, and he drove casually past the highway on ramp. If she was going to make him bring her to the lab, he was going to make sure she had more than thirty seconds to rest before she dove back into her work..

"You're going the wrong way." She muttered, startling him out of his sneaky thoughts. "You passed the highway back there." she pointed out, throwing a glance over her shoulder at the rear window.

"We're takin' the scenic route." He told her, feigning innocence as he drove along the pitch-dark winding road surrounded by even darker clusters of trees on both sides.

"I don't know what that means." She mumbled, yawning again. "Just get me back to the lab, please." She added, clearly not interested in hearing what the scenic route meant. It was probably a good thing she didn't probe for further explanation because this scenic route was going to be a lot of nothing to look at. Booth nodded non-committedly at her demand. She seemed satisfied, tilting her head back and closing her eyes.

Her head lolling to the side and resting on the window a few moments later indicated she'd fallen asleep, for which he was grateful. He drove another forty minutes along the rural route, before hitting an area that had overhead lighting again. Glancing over at his sleeping partner to check on her consciousness as the yellow glow from outside briefly illuminated her face, he wondered what she did before he came along. Who sent her home? Who made sure she stopped to eat? Maybe Zack, he mused with a smirk, imagining she'd cause severe bodily harm to her old intern if he tried to tell her what to do. He felt a pang of guilt as he wondered who did all of that while he was too busy with Hannah to notice she'd been heading straight for a damn breakdown. That was a guilt he'd carry to his grave.

After another three hours of driving aimlessly around the city, he decided it was probably safe to pull over. Even if she woke up from the car stopping, at least she'd gotten a few hours of shut eye. He pulled up to the underground parking entrance of her building and rolled his window down. He greeted the guard sitting in the small security hut with a tired smile. "Tom, any chance you can let me in, so I don't have to dig through her bag for the fob?" Booth asked, whispering to avoid waking Bones up. Tom chuckled quietly, glancing into the SUV at the sleeping tenant. It was the first time Booth had made the same exact request, and it wouldn't be the last. "We're just going to loiter in the car for a bit. It's been a long one." Booth added as Tom swiped a keychain over the locking mechanism, and the large metal doors lifted.

"Take it easy, Agent Booth." He said with a nod as Booth drove into the parking garage.

Booth pulled into the spot that typically held Bones' Prius, glad that it was still at the lab, so he wouldn't have to worry about someone else coming home to find him in their spot. Making sure the doors were locked, he got comfortable, leaning his chair back a bit and crossing his arms across his chest. He had just closed his eyes when he heard Bones mumble in her sleep and worried that she might be waking up. Taking a moment to look at her, he watched the rapid movements of her eyes under her closed lids. Satisfied that they would not be opening any time soon, he closed his own eyes.

The sound of rapid beeping from his cellphone's preset alarm clock roused them both from what was obviously a pretty deep slumber. He sat up and patted his pockets, looking for the offending device as Bones sat up in her seat, looking disoriented.

"Booth? What time is it? Where are we?" She mumbled, rubbing the heels of her hands into her eyes.

Turning off his alarm, Booth cleared his throat awkwardly. "6:30." He answered sheepishly. "We're in your underground." He added, answering her other question as she seemed to be taking in her surroundings through the window.

She looked equal parts confused and irritated as she glared at him. "How long have we been sitting here?" She asked with an accusatory tone.

Shrugging his shoulders, Booth tried to throw a charm smile at her grumpy face, but it didn't seem to work. "Not long. We took the scenic route, remember." he explained, stretching his now achy back.

She looked skeptical at his response, and glared at him. "You took six and a half hours to get somewhere that has a direct route of, at maximum, twenty-five minutes?" She challenged, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes at him. In any other circumstance, he'd have probably caved under her glare, but the way her hair was standing up on one side made it difficult not to grin at her. "Your back is going to be sore from sleeping in the car." She pointed out with a self-satisfied smile.

Booth knew she was right about that. His back was already tight, and he hadn't even tried to stand up yet. "Nothing a hot shower won't fix, Bones. Besides, I have a friend who can crack it for me." He reminded her with a wink. She gave him a withering look, as though she wanted badly to correct him, but simply didn't have it in her at the moment. "C'mon. Let's hit the showers, and I'll pick you back up in an hour." He suggested, playfully nudging her arm with his elbow.

"Fine. One hour, and then I want to be at the lab. No scenic routes this time" She told him, pointing her demanding little finger in his face before she climbed out of the car, stretching her arms high above her head. He stared as her t-shirt lifted and a sliver of her stomach peeked out at him. He felt his ears burn when she cleared her throat and smirked at him. Caught. "And I'm not adjusting your back." she told him firmly, snatching her bag off the floor in front of her seat, slamming his door and marching toward the elevator.

Booth watched as she boarded the elevator and waited until the digital number above the doors showed that she'd arrived on her floor without any further detours before he pulled out of the parking spot.


"Hey you two." Angela greeted him and Bones as they entered the lab together, Bones grumbling about making stops as Booth carried a tray of coffees that he'd insisted they stop for..

"Doctor Brennan, this is a surprise. I expected to find you following the body right back to the lab." Cam said with a chuckle. "I'm glad you went home and got some rest. I heard the excavation took forever."

Bones froze, glaring over her shoulder at Booth who was innocently placing the coffee tray down on the other side of the platform, away from the corpse. "The excavation took precisely as long as I would have expected such a task to take. What was unexpected was the number of hours it took for Booth to drive us home." She snarked, snapping on some gloves.

"Did you guys get lost?" Hodgins jibed, snickering as he picked something up from the remains with a pair of tweezers and placed it into a waiting petri dish beside him.

"No, we just took the long way home." Booth defended, rolling his eyes as they all chuckled, well - all but Bones, who was already engrossed in… whatever the hell that bone in her hand was.

"We slept in his car." Bones accused, never taking her eyes off the remains, and Booth stammered at the way she phrased her accusation.

"Wait… you slept in the car? Together? In the woods?" Angela teased with a knowing smile growing across her face like some kind of Cheshire cat.

"Of course together. We only had one vehicle. Not in the woods though. We were in my parking garage." Bones replied as if she were stating the obvious. Booth could practically hear the wheels turning in their friends' heads as they no doubt had sarcastic and teasing remarks on the tips of their tongues.

"We. Took. The. Scenic. Route." He stated firmly, glaring at Cam as she raised a brow at him from across the platform.

"What scenes? There was nothing to see! It was night time." Bones snarked, ignoring the chuckles of their friends.

Booth rolled his eyes, deciding he'd had enough. "How would you know? You were out cold five minutes after we got in the car." He snarked right back.

"Yes, and you irresponsibly failed to wake me when we arrived at my house, resulting in us sleeping in your car for several hours, unnecessarily injuring your back and delaying my initial examination of the bones. I also asked to be taken to the lab, which you failed to do as well." She accused him, sparing him only a brief glance over her shoulder when he scoffed. "He expects me to believe he drove around for six and a half hours while I slept in the seat beside him simply because he wanted to take in the scenes…" She muttered, shaking her head.

He shrugged as Cam glanced up at him again, a knowing expression on her face. "Yup." He confirmed. "That's exactly what happened."