A/N: Ha - I guess the reviewers of chapter 12 kept their promise XD. Kareneb, thank you so much for reviewing and talking Bones, I really enjoy talking with you. Also a big thank you to all the other readers, it is great to know there are still people reading my ramblings :). Well then, on with the story!
Sometime during the morning:
Sitting at a desk at the library turned out to be a very unproductive way to spend her workday. After meeting with Caroline she hadn't been sure where she wanted to spend the rest of her working morning. She had decided on the library, since she loved being surrounded by books. The look of them standing against the wall, the feel of the paper and the beauty of the lettering. Normally it would settle her mind and help her with keeping her focus on the task at hand. But today the silence was near deafening and she had no such luck.
During her meeting with Caroline she had been able to focus herself on the conversation and nod or respond at the right times, but sitting here alone, with her work, left her with too much time to overthink. Her mind wouldn't let her concentrate on the Criminal Practice Manual for any longer than two minutes at a time. Way too quickly for her to get anything done her focus shifted back to thinking about agent Booth, the shower, his failed relationship which he was still recovering from, the all of a sudden and very unexpected end to her three-year-long celibacy. Her mind jumping from one thing to another as if it was creating a to-do list of subjects to worry about.
When she had left the Hoover Lilly had felt unusually relaxed. The sun had seemed a little bit shinier, as if the birds humming in the awakening streets had been welcoming her to one of the last summer days of the year. Life felt good and she had been more than ready to tackle the first workday of the week. Apparently, it took a little under an hour to clear away that sex afterglow. I guess there are things that are really easy to forget. In which time span the morning meeting with Caroline had fallen. Thankfully. Whatever it was that had happened this morning; it wasn't something Lilly wanted to have to explain to her mentor.
"Cher? Are you okay?"
Lilly heard in front of her. Speak of the devil. Looking up she stared right into the face of her supervisor. "Oh hi Caroline, yes, I am fine, I was just lost in thought."
Caroline nodded, not going to pry at this first slip of concentration she had noticed ever in all those weeks, from her intern. "I came to ask if you were about ready for the lunch meeting."
"Lunch meeting?" It couldn't be possible that late already.
"Yes, you know, that monthly hour, hour and a half where we are all expected to sit, eat and listen to the newest and flashiest of court rulings."Caroline's usual sarcasm in full blown. "We even talked about it earlier this morning?" Trying to help Lilly remember. The glazy stare in Lilly's eyes telling Caroline her star pupil still had her head in some type of cloud.
"Right, yes we have, I'll be right there, Lilly said, trying to give a reassuring smile. That means I'll have to blow off lunch with agent Booth. A heavy feeling settling in the pit of her stomach.
"Alright, but you better hurry, these presentation things always start on time." Caroline referencing to court appointments that always seemed to be starting way too late.
Standing up from her desk, gathering her stuff Lilly debated if she could squeeze in a quick call to tell the agent she couldn't join him for lunch. But as she half walked half stood still and fumbling with her phone, trying to decide what would be the least rude she practically got dragged into the conference room by a happily babbling away secretary, leaving her with only the option to send him a quick message before it would be too rude to even have her phone out.
As much as she loved technology and as tech savvy as she was, she still preferred direct conversations over this. Especially in situations like this. There isn't a smiley that is going to make this sound any better. Lilly mused as she looked over the short message she had typed out. She just hoped agent Booth would understand why she couldn't meet him for lunch. After all, he was a busy professional as well so he would be able to understand she had to skip going for lunch outside of the office, wouldn't he?
Sinking into her chair, waiting for the other people to get to their seats, the intern tried to convince herself that believing that agent Booth would understand was her only option, for now. It didn't take long before her mind started wandering again, perfectly picking up where she had left off. When she had walked out of the gym earlier that morning she had still been quite dazed by the whole... let's go with experience. Her body had been so relaxed, it felt like her heel clad feet weren't hitting the pavement, but something with the consistency of the white fluffiness cloud nine was made out of. As she had walked to the Federal Justice Department she had felt the stretch in her leg muscles. It had been at that point that the thought occurred that today was a really bad day to wear high heels. Her pumps kept and were keeping her feet in nearly the same pose that from now on reminded her of standing too close to agent Booth.
Before this morning she never had dated or slept with someone from work. And she knew from their previous conversation that this hadn't been the usual Monday morning for the agent either. Maybe Lilly herself had been too focused on her education and work. Maybe her sex life had started to feel grossly ignored and had decided to act up. Yeah right, I thought you would have been able to come to a more logic reasoning.
She had nearly peed her pants when Caroline almost busted her for daydreaming at work. God, this is why she never got involved with people from her classes or work. It messed with her concentration. Reprimanding herself immediately. That was a fallacy; any type of love interest would cause her to daydream and lose focus.
Can I even call agent Booth a love interest? It wasn't like there were any feelings of love between them. At least not from what Lilly had noticed. Lilly knew enough about sex, love, and lust to know this morning had been a combination of the last and the first option. She didn't love agent Booth in the fairytale happily ever after type of way, however, she did care about him like friends do. But there is a whole world between fairytale happily ever after and friendship. A world Lilly had always tried to avoid as much as possible, except for the occasional one night stand she was guilty of. But this was so different from any of that and therefore weird to her. For Lilly, a one night stand meant getting stupidly drunk and pick(ed) up (by) a handsome stranger. A one night stand meant that she was the one dealing with a broken heart and seeking comfort in the shape of a well build guy. But this time around, it had been a Monday morning that had started out as many others, she had been completely sober, there hadn't been any picking up and she was the one providing the impromptu comfort. It was like the agent and she had been sprinkled with some sort of horny dust coming from a higher power. Why the hell did she even think she had needed to prove something to a coworker?
Normally, she was never too worried about having sex with someone. If it happened, it happened and in her opinion sex happened when people were attracted to each other and needy. Attraction could be part love and part lust, the neediness was more about losing the patience to be civilized and just wanting to get down and dirty.
Sex was fun and it celebrated people's freedom, she knew that, she believed that, but still, she was very reserved in deciding if she wanted to have sex and with whom. And thus far she had been able to keep her panties on for the last 3 years. Well, that was if she would forget about earlier today. If only.
Everything happens for a reason. Somehow the saying just didn't want to get out of her head. She just always had a strong feeling that was how the world worked. And that concept was what had pulled her through the years after she had lost her mom when she had been at the impressionable age of only twelve. It was also around that time she had learned not to fight things that happened, it wasn't like wishing had ever changed the things that had already happened. All she could work is to make things happen or stop them from happening in the future. Is that what she wanted? It had been nice, hot and like a total fantasy.
Damn, this could become so awkward. Lilly thought disheartened, working hard to keep her sighs of frustration from slipping out. What if agent Booth would think she was some office slut? Like that blonde agent that had come on to him a couple of weeks earlier. We needed to talk to each other.
It took all her patience and self restraint not to get up out of the, admittedly comfortable, meeting chair she was in and to run right back to the Hoover to barge into agent Booth's office to ask him what the hell they had been thinking or probably more accurate: why they hadn't been thinking at all. For the next hour or so she would just have to hold on to her calm, keep her mind relaxed enough not to make a scene until they would be able to talk. You're such a typical woman for needing to talk about it. Needy. Oh so very needy. Taking a deep breath in, her inner voice answered the little annoying voice. Don't care, talking is better than one-sided assumption making.
"Moving on to the Court of the State of California, 2006-96-541 Robinson vs. McCollin."
The rustling of the papers around her as everyone turned their pages 'woke' Lilly up from her daydreaming. Lilly shook her head, trying to stop her thoughts from tumbling over and over each other. So far she had gone from cloud nine, to reasons for a one night stand (shouldn't they change that saying into one morning stand in the shower?), to freaking about it to thinking this messy situation had some sort of a more holy purpose she wasn't quite grasping.
Maybe he had needed to vent off some of his frustrations. That would make sense, agent Booth had been struggling for some time now, and if he had in fact been honest with her, he hadn't had sex in over three months. Going from what she could only imagine all day, every day, to quitting cold turkey would make anyone a little high strung.
She had told him to get late before, but she hadn't expected to be the rebound herself. Maybe I should have seen this coming then. After all, I told agent Booth he probably could use some no string attached sex with some random girl. Was she okay with being the agent's rebound? She knew the term hardly ever was uttered in a positive sense, but that didn't mean it covered the meaning of their situation in a veil of negativity as well.
Joined bathrooms, even if only temporary, weren't the best idea. Imagine the costs for the FBI if male agents got the female agents pregnant. She could imagine the newspaper headlines: Minister of Finance cuts back on schooling because maternity leave for female FBI staff tripled this year. Lilly stifled a giggle at the idea.
Still, what had changed for herself? It wasn't like she had never been alone with a handsome man before. Damn, her last thesis advisor had been quite the eye candy, but she had never ended up unclothed with him, let alone in a semi-public place. She had never known that agent Booth and she had a spark in the hot and steamy department. Of course, she knew he was handsome, only a blind girl wouldn't notice, and even then that woman would pick up on the beauty of his character. Lilly probably had just never noticed it because she had been too busy being professionals. Actually, after meeting him and just working together she kind of had forgotten all about his looks and just saw the man behind the handsome face. Unquestionably they immediately had a friendly connection and they could laugh and share things easily.
No, what was she even worried about? There was no need to have this come between Booth and her. They were both adults. It wouldn't be awkward because they would end up agreeing this had to be a one-time thing. Right? There was no chance agent Booth would want to repeat this experience and the man was the finest example of gentleman-ness and discretion alive.
Caroline had decided to pay special attention to her intern during the lunch meeting. Instead of the normal hyperfocus, it seemed Lilly hadn't heard more than two complete sentences of the whole presentation. A few times when everybody was turning their pages of the handout, Lilly had followed suit, but that still resulted in her hand out being behind a couple of pages. Before the intern would be able to get up and return to her next meeting Caroline came to stand beside her, discretely waiting until the other attendees were out of hearing distance. "Cher? Are you sure you are doing alright?" Not giving Lilly the chance to blow Caroline's concerns out of the water, Caroline continued. "You seem awfully preoccupied with something. I am not used to you drifting off in the middle of presentations."
Lilly smiled, hoping she wasn't turning all sorts of red. "Sorry, I am a little unfocused today." There is no use in denying it when you get busted for it twice in one hour.
"I'll say. I hope it doesn't have anything to do with Steve Stein?" Caroline asked, slightly worried about Lilly, however not in relation with Mr. Stein. Undeniably, the man had the reputation to be very persistent when he wanted to be. No one had ever made a formal complaint of stalking or intimidation, but every once in a while there were rumors of the mister Stein uninterruptedly sending flowers or presents to the woman of his desires until the woman in question had caved to his seemingly innocent requests.
Surprised Lilly raised an eyebrow. "What? No, and I don't think he will be contacting me anytime soon after me telling him off last Friday."
"Well, that is good. If he tries anything, just let me know, we have the whole FBI at our disposal. Do you want to talk about what is bothering you?" she hadn't expected the lawyer to be brave enough to bother her intern, but the genius young shrink had taught her a thing or two about making people open up a little.
It seemed her mentor wasn't going to let this slide. Not wanting to involve the prosecutor in this very private matter didn't mean she wanted to lie to the woman either. Booth wouldn't be happy with her if she blabbed, adding to the never-ending gossip machine that was inside the Hoover. However discrete Caroline was, it seemed the nosy FBI agent's always had a way of knowing the real story or just cocking one up that would keep everyone talking for weeks. "Thanks for your concern, but I'll be fine Caroline. It's nothing a quiet evening, a hilarious movie and a nice glass of wine can't fix.
That pre-evening:
"So, how is it to work so closely with the famous and super hot agent Booth?" Ana asked, eyebrows wiggling as she hoped her friend had some good bits of information for her. Ana was also part of the – in the hallways called – promising team. As a medical and legal double major student, she was interning at the federal prosecution office and at the hospital's wing dealing with victims of the most vicious crimes. It wasn't like there wasn't enough action during Ana's work days, but none of her coworkers had the prestige reputation of being kick-ass awesome like Lilly's FBI connection.
Lilly and Ana had immediately hit it off during the introduction days and during the first weeks of working for the attorneys. The two friends were at a table at this cute little restaurant with the rest of team promising. It turned out the seminar's session during this afternoon had done its job wonderfully, because everybody had decided to stay for a while longer to catch up and exchange tips for the greatest hotspots of Washington DC. It was getting harder and harder to stay in touch with everyone because they all had made new friends and were getting more set in their respective roles in the teams they had joined. Nevertheless, it was nice to see everyone again.
You have no idea how close. Lilly thought. "It is amazing. He is incredible at his job and it is a lot of fun to work with him. Actually, the whole team is incredible. They are so in tune with each other, the first days I thought they were speaking some sort of secret language and they kept explaining things to me because I didn't speak it." Lilly sighed as she reflected. "They're all teaching me so much, it is a wonderful experience though."
Ana smiled. "Yeah, same here with all the legal and science, medical lingo."
Lilly snickered. "Exactly, although I hate the Latin terms. I thought they were annoying in the law books, but damn, for a dead language it is pretty much alive and kicking in forensic science.
Ana agreed. "You are not alone in the hate; my lead prosecutor and agent Tyson have yet to crack the code. It's like an eye-rolling contest when the docs bring out anything non-English."
Lilly grinned, "Agent Booth does that too, he always thinks he does it rather discretely and with no one noticing, but they all know. Dr. Hodgins likes to push and see how much of it he'll take it without threatening to shout him."
Ana laughed, able to imagine the situation.
At the end of the night:
Walking through her doorstep Lilly yawned. A little too much alcohol always made her feel a little drowsy. What a day. It had been a great evening. Leave it to Ana to make you forget about your worries and just laugh mindlessly and anything and everything. When Lilly had gotten to the location of the seminar she had just wanted to get the afternoon over with. As the seminars had continued it had started to become more and more clear that there wasn't going to be any time left in the more decent hours of the day to have that much-needed talk with special agent Booth.
At that point all she had just wanted to finish the mandatory parts of this confusing day and go home to have a relaxing evening, so she could regain her focus. On any other occasion she would have gone for a work out to reset her rambling mind to a more productive mindset, but now that just seemed painstakingly ironic. Maybe I should burn those workout clothes. Or maybe frame them. Lilly thought as she dumped the contents of her workout clothes in her laundry basket.
At the restaurant and bar Ana had ordered more and more drinks during the evening and fed Lilly just a little more than the normally self-imposed maximum. Thinking she had deserved a fun night out with her study/federal government friends Lilly had allowed herself to let loose a little and enjoy the night regardless of her worries. Drinking had helped a big deal with getting out of the loop of thinking.
She would just sleep on it all and hope she could handle her liquor in the morning. Tomorrow agent Booth and she could work this out. It would all be okay.
A/N: That is it for this week, folks. I hope it is any good; I haven't had much time to write this week; so I am sorry for the possible extra mistakes. The next chapter definitely needs more attention, so I hope I'll be able to update soon :). Oh and are there any TBBT fans? Find the word XD.