Thanks once again for reviewing. This one is just a bit of food frolics. Who doesn't love pancakes?!
Bones is not mine. Believe me, I've checked.
"Come on, Bones! Pancakes!"
Booth turned to his partner, an impossibly wide grin stretched across his face as he desperately tried to balance a rather large mixing bowl containing a number of different ingredients.
Brennan gave him a blank stare.
Booth returned to the task of placing his items on her kitchen counter. Once he was finished, he set about warming her to the idea.
"It'll be fun. They have to be eaten today. Everybody has to eat them today. It's a rule."
She raised an eyebrow in response.
"It is not a rule, Booth. This day means nothing to me. I'm not foolishly denying myself anything for the next forty days, so pancakes hold no real interest for me."
Booth frowned.
"Aw, come on. Just this once, be…normal. Absolutely everyone has pancakes on Pancake Tuesday…or Shrove Tuesday, or whatever."
The lines in her forehead deepened.
"No, not everyone has pancakes today. Besides, it's a ridiculous tradition that is now incredibly outdated. The pancake was originally eaten on this day because fat, butter and eggs were forbidden during Lent. Now, nobody gives up these things, but everyone insists on gorging themselves on pancakes anyway."
Booth muttered something about being a killjoy.
"I'm right, Booth, and you know it. Are you giving up any of those things?"
Booth was suddenly extremely interested in unpacking his ingredients.
"Now, let's see what we've got here…flour, oh, we'll need lots of that and…eggs…"
He attempted to lighten the mood by taking a number of eggs out of their container and juggling them. Brennan's face remained set.
"Wow. Tough crowd. Ok, then…well, we have some butter and ooh, there's some milk and, best part, the maple syrup."
He held the syrup bottle flat in the upturned palm of his right hand while his left hand made a sweeping gesture behind it, as one might expect on a TV commercial.
In spite of her determination to remain indifferent, Brennan felt the side of her mouth being tugged sharply upwards.
Booth pointed at her, his smile back and the skin around his eyes crinkling in delight.
"Got you! Ok, now let's get to work."
Reluctantly, Brennan moved toward him. More truthfully, Brennan appeared to move toward him in a reluctant manner, when really she was rather pleased at the prospect of spending the afternoon baking with her partner. But who really cared about the truth anyway?
Booth lined up all of the ingredients on her counter. With that done, he pulled the final item from the bottom of the mixing bowl. A chef's hat. Giving her a quick wink, he pulled the hat onto his head. Brennan couldn't help but giggle as he spent the next two minutes trying to get the hat to sit perfectly straight.
When he was finally finished, she leaned over and pushed the hat over so that it rested on his head at a slight angle. He was all set to let out an exasperated roar when she gave the front of the hat a little pat (she was too small to reach the top) and said, "It looks good like that."
Who was he to argue? She was the genius after all. And what the genius wanted, the genius got.
He wiggled his eyebrows at her.
"How good?"
She let out a nervous laugh and gave him a gentle push. The kitchen seemed to have drastically shrunk in the last few seconds.
"Let's get started, Booth."
He nodded and began to pull his jacket off.
Brennan's eyes grew to twice their normal size.
He looked at her in astonishment.
"What?"
"You're not doing that Naked Chef thing, are you?"
There was a beat of silence before Booth let out a number of brief guffaws.
"No! Why would you think…that's so…why, do you want me to?"
His eyebrows wiggled again and his smile became dangerous.
"No, no. Clothing is fine. Clothing is good. In this kitchen," she pointed downward, "clothing is mandatory."
Booth's face fell. He placed his jacked on one of the vacant counter, muttering encouragingly to himself that it wasn't personal; she wasn't being specific to him.
Brennan herself was wondering how many other rules she would have to come up with on the spur of the moment during the course of this little exercise.
Twenty minutes later, Booth was sitting sulkily on one of the farther counters, his hat balancing precariously off his ear. They had both learned that there was, apparently, no egg football, no drawing faces on the eggs, no flour fights, no trying to get the mixing spoon to float in the beaten eggs, no flour snowstorms, no milk waterfalls, no egg races and no Booth stirring the mixture (more seemed to go on the walls and, somehow, in his partner's hair than actually stay in the bowl) in Brennan's kitchen. Who knew?
Brennan was happily beating the mixture and humming absently to herself. She turned proudly to Booth, extremely satisfied with what she'd managed to accomplish.
Once he caught sight of her face, all of his annoyance instantly dissipated. Her eyes were shining, her skin was glowing and there was a light brushing of flour across her right cheek. His breath was catching in his throat just looking at her.
"Gorgeous, Bones."
She met his gaze curiously. He clarified his statement by nodding at the mixing bowl. Both turned their attention to the plastic bowl, oblivious to the other's disappointed face.
Booth cleared his throat and noisily went in search of a frying pan. Triumphant, he placed it on the heated and gestured to Brennan to join him with her mixture. She handed it to him somewhat reluctantly. He poured enough of the batter into the pan to thinly cover the bottom.
Once the mixture started to solidify, he started to show Brennan how to flip the pancakes. After observing him a number of times, she had a go at it herself. She was absolutely and completely hopeless.
Careful to hide his giggles (she had a mean right hook), he enclosed one of his hands around her slim wrist. For the next few minutes, in complete silence, he guided her through the flipping process. Occasionally Brennan let out a little gasp and Booth gave an approving grunt, but for the most part the two were quiet, savouring the experience. Both were desperately trying to ignore the way Booth's body was pressed against Brennan's back and the intense heat that was radiating from where Booth's fingers touched her skin.
Neither seemed to want to hurry the process and, so, ten minutes later there was a sufficient number of pancakes to be divided and shared between them, the earlier ones having been kept warm in the oven.
Brennan wiggled out from in front of Booth and collected two plates and two sets of cutlery to carry out to the table. Grinning to himself over something, Booth carried out the plate of steaming, fragrant pancakes in one hand, the bottle of syrup clutched tightly in the other.
The two settled themselves at the table, stealing glances at the other when they felt they weren't paying attention.
Booth looked down appreciatively at the plateful of pancakes Brennan had served him. Without tilting his head upwards he looked at her through his lashes and said softly, "Bonne appetite."
Brennan nodded, placing a hand over her stomach, frantically trying to quieten the butterflies that had taken up residence there and apparently gotten drunk and disorderly.
The partners tucked into the pancakes. Little was spoken between them, save a rapturous exclamation every thirty seconds or so.
Booth made the mistake of staring at his partner as she closed her eyes in enjoyment and licked stray flecks of syrup from around her mouth. His forkful of pancake missed its intended destination entirely and tumbled down onto his shirt.
He jumped and hissed in annoyance, causing Brennan to snap her eyes open and give a little jump herself. Booth gave another little hiss as he removed the offending article of food and discovered a substantial syrup stain left behind.
"It's your own fault, Booth."
"How is it my fault?" Did she know what had distracted him?
"If you hadn't insisted on covering every little bit that went into your mouth with about six pounds of syrup…"
"It was not six pounds…"
"It was close to it."
Desperate to wipe the smug smile off her face, Booth fired a little piece of pancake at her using his fork. The widened eyes and little 'o' of her mouth made it so incredibly worth it. He almost wished he hadn't been a gentleman and aimed for her plate…it would have been more fun to launch it at her head.
Brennan didn't share his thoughts on politeness. Before Booth could realise what she was doing, she'd snatched the syrup bottle off the table and had squirted quite a lot of it onto his shirt.
Booth jumped to his feet.
"Bones!"
She looked at him innocently.
"You started it, Booth."
"I didn't aim for your…"
She shrugged before he had a chance to finish his sentence.
"Hand must have slipped."
"Yeah, right."
Brennan's response died a rather speedy death when her partner began to unbutton his shirt. Grumbling incoherently, Booth nimbly undid all the buttons and shrugged the fabric off his shoulders.
The butterflies started hyperventilating at the sight of his toned stomach, defined chest, broad shoulders and overall fit, tanned physique. Brennan herself wasn't doing much better.
Seemingly unaware that his partner was in danger of a heart attack, Booth began to move towards the bathroom. Of course, Seeley Booth was rarely completely unaware of anything, especially things concerning people's responses to various situations, so he wasn't entirely surprised, but was careful to hide the resulting smile, when he heard Brennan shout after him.
"You know, I think I might be warming to this Naked Chef idea."