Yep, so Bones isn't mine. On we go...
"Come on, Bones. It'll be fun."
Taking a firm grip of Brennan's upper arm, Booth guided her through a set of glass double doors. This wasn't easy as she kept wriggling and whinging the whole time. Not that the whinging made it difficult to move her…it was just so darned annoying to listen to.
"You agreed to come."
"I didn't agree to come quietly."
As soon as they were through the entrance, Brennan planted her feet solidly on the ground and refused to be propelled forwards any further. Booth let out an impatient sigh and shoved his shoulder into her back, desperate to get her moving. He managed to get her to take a step or two forward, but that's as good as it got. Poor Booth was nearly horizontal, so great were his efforts. He could feel himself getting weaker and his shoulder was slipping further and further down her back.
Eventually, it grazed off her behind. Brennan suddenly let out a frightened yelp and shot forward about ten feet. Booth's delight was quickly dissipated when his body realised his support had vanished and he rapidly toppled to the floor.
This seemed to please Brennan. When he righted himself and began brushing off his clothes, she appeared more cheerful than she'd been during the whole car journey over. She offered him a smile, complete with dimples, and even attempted to join him in the dusting of his clothes. She gave his trouser leg a final brush before looking up at him, eyes dancing, and commented, "Can't take you anywhere."
Slightly worried that his partner seemed happiest when he was in pain and had just been mortified, Booth gruffly muttered a thanks and moved towards the desk in the middle of the large room.
He gave the brunette girl sitting behind the desk his best charm smile, complete with his name. The girl literally swooned. Booth realised, with no small amount of astonishment, that Brennan was physically bristling behind him.
She used an unnecessary amount of elbows, even though they were the only two people in the wide entrance waiting to talk to the girl, to push her way beside him, only stopping when her arms imitated his and rested on the desk.
"And I'm Dr. Temperance Brennan. His partner."
Booth gave her a quick sidelong glance. That was the first time he had ever heard Brennan refer to their relationship with a specific and noticeable emphasis on the word 'partner'. If he didn't know any better, he would have thought she was trying to imply that their bond was something other than work related.
"Yes, em, she's my partner and I want her to be my guest today. I've got one of the things here somewhere…"
Booth began a quick root in his bag and eventually pulled out a somewhat crumpled white laminated sheet of paper entitled 'guest pass' with his name in bold along the bottom. As he handed it over to the girl he realised that she and Brennan had been engaging in a furious staring match while he had been searching.
With a sniff the girl inspected the pass and typed the relevant details into the computer. She made something of a production of asking Brennan to spell her first name, the implication being that it was rather strange. When Brennan saw that the girl had neglected to put 'Dr.' before her name, she nearly hit the roof. Booth had to drag her from the room, arms tight around her waist, simultaneously apologising and thanking the bemused girl.
Booth eventually managed to get himself and his partner through the doors at the end of the room. Pleased with his achievements, his pride was short-lived as he had to spend a further three minutes holding Brennan in place as she kept trying to wrestle her way back to the girl to give her a piece of her mind. Booth's strong arms were too powerful, however, and eventually she slumped back against his chest. She tilted her head upwards to look at him.
"Well, you've finally managed to get me here. What do we do now?"
With a smile, he made a sweeping gesture with his hands across the vast room they were currently standing in. Treadmills, running machines, weights, cycling machines, rowing machines and brightly coloured mats stretched as far as the eye could see. There was also a sign pointing to a swimming pool in the next room. He had attempted to persuade her to make use of the pool and was lucky to have escaped with his life after that little suggestion. Her compromise was to join him at the gym, once, no swimming included.
"Anything you want, Bones."
She grumbled and stepped away from him.
"I don't understand why you have to spend a ridiculous amount of money for membership to simulate exercise that can be done for free normally."
Booth sighed. She'd agreed to come. She hadn't agreed not to complain. He mused privately that he really wouldn't have it any other way. Her blunt manner of addressing things was just one of the many things he loved about her. As a friend. Obviously.
"Well, if you want to drop your bag into the dressing room…the women's dressing room and I'll drop mine into the men's, I'll see you back here in a minute."
She nodded once at him and moved away to follow his instructions, ponytail bouncing merrily in time with her steps. Booth took a moment to appreciate her curves in the tracksuit bottoms and tank top she was currently sporting, which were perhaps slightly more figure hugging than her normal clothes. With a quick shake of his head, he went to deposit his own bag. After a few seconds he realised he was following his partner. With another shake of the head, accompanied by a little sigh, he turned in the opposite direction towards the men's dressing rooms.
Damn her figure. Her steps were hypnotic.
Soon after this Booth and Brennan were reunited in the middle of the floor once more. They moved to the side of the room and completed a number of warm-up exercises. After a quick discussion, some might even call it a heated argument, they decided to use the treadmills first. They chose two machines positioned beside one another. Booth attempted to lean over and show his partner how to program the machine and set the appropriate speed but she slapped him away and insisted that she could do it alone. He muttered something unintelligible and started his own.
Apparently Brennan had no clue what she was doing as when she first stepped on the machine she was almost propelled off the back of it. With an amused guffaw, Booth politely inquired how the 'doing it alone' idea was progressing. She gave him a nasty glare for his troubles and grumbled something about it being planned. With a twitching mouth, Booth returned to his own workout, but kept a cautious eye on his partner as she adjusted the machine's settings. When she stepped onto it the next time, it was without any major incident.
She gave him a triumphant smirk before reaching forward and increasing the speed. Booth moved his head sideways and had a quick peek at the lime green number displayed on the screen, indicating the current speed. With a flip of his stomach he realised that she was already on a higher speed than him. He quickly adjusted his machine accordingly and then, after a further moment's thought, pressed the increase speed button a further three times.
He could see a frown appearing on Brennan's face.
"Treadmills aren't very good training for actual long distance running, you know, Booth. The terrain outside is naturally littered with obstacles and undulations in slope. It's far easier to run on a treadmill."
A second or two later, Booth gasped his agreement. He stifled a groan as he saw Brennan push buttons a number of times and watched as her legs began to beat the moving surface faster and harder. Cursing his partner's fitness, he duly followed suit.
A number of minutes passed before Brennan offered, "This is brilliant. Can't you feel it tightening your tibialis anterior and hamstrings? Being, obviously, the biceps femoris, semimembranosus, and semitendinosus."
Under normal circumstances Booth might have been able to humour her anatomical references. Lack of oxygen to the brain tends to make an agent crabby, however, and he snarled, "No, Bones, I can't. I can't actually feel anything in my legs but burning fire. Can't tell one muscle-somethingorotherus from another. Can we stop?"
Glancing at him in surprise, Brennan nodded and began to slow the machine down. Booth forced himself to wait a couple of seconds before he followed suit.
"You ok, Booth?"
"Me? Yeah, I'm grand. It's just, you…you're not really used to these things. Wouldn't want to overexert you on your first go."
With that, he and his purple face stumbled, wobbly-legged, off the machine.
"Mmmhmm." Brennan raised an eyebrow as she joined him on the carpet once more.
Booth placed his hands on his knees and wheezed for about fifteen seconds, all the while repeatedly asking his partner is she was ok, if that had been too much for her.
Brennan began to get antsy and looked around the room in search of the next machine she wanted to use.
"How about doing some weights? That would give your…ah…our legs a rest. What do think?"
Booth could have told her he thought she was some kind of evil demon robot sent to torment him but he knew that, with Brennan anyway, he'd need a little concrete evidence before he could throw accusations like that about. She often had a hard time distinguishing the times when people, particularly him, were being serious and the times things were being said purely in jest.
He felt he was being extremely fair when he simply nodded in agreement before slouching off after her.
Poor legs would probably never be the same.
Brennan had settled herself on a decline bench and was casting wary glances at the rows of dumbbells around her. Booth came to a stop beside her, one hand pressed against his side, trying to ease the discomfort of a cramp that had developed. She caught sight of his hand's position and gestured towards it inquiringly. When he explained, she began to launch into a very long and complicated reason for this, due to tissue respiration and lactic acid. He shut her up by plonking a dumbbell into her outstretched, gesturing right hand.
She gripped the weight firmly in her hand, giving him a very satisfied look that she hadn't managed to drop it. Unfortunately, all she seemed to be able to do was look. She had no real idea of what to do with it.
Chuckling gently to himself, Booth motioned for her to shimmy up the bench and he settled himself down behind her, both with a leg on either side of the bench. Hesitating for a moment, he plucked up the courage to move closer so that his chest was pressed against her back. He felt as well her saw an involuntary tremor ripple through her as he tried to focus on the task at hand and not Brennan's glossy hair or alluring scent.
He managed to fit two dumbbells into overhand grips, one on the left and one on the right. "Now," he breathed into her ear, "give me your hands." He placed her arms down the length of her knees. He could feel goosebumps running down her skin, but her back leaning firmly against him made it quite obvious that she was actually rather warm.
"Right, now this exercise would involve you lying back on the bench while moving the weights so that they're at the side of the torso, at chest level. They're then raised to straight-arm's length, no bending of the elbows at all. This means that the weights should be directly over the chest in contact with each other. The arms are then slowly bent and the dumbbells lowered until they are on either side of the chest. They're lowered until the most maximum comfortable stretch is reached. Then the weights are raised once more and the whole thing is repeated."
Throughout his whole description, Booth had moved Brennan's arms in the appropriate directions. His large hands completely encircled her little wrists. At the start of his instructions, Brennan had attempted to lie back against him, but had quickly realised that he hadn't meant for her to literally follow that particular demand. This little revelation had been accompanied by a sharp intake of breath from the two at the feel of her pushing back hard against him. The partners had quickly ignored this and had completed the remainder of the pseudo demonstration in silence, both unaware that their flustered state of mind was betrayed to the other by the rapid pulse thumping through both of them.
Booth had ensured that the weights were safe and out of harm's way before he settled his hands down onto his knees. Neither partner seemed aware that they were now sitting tightly against one another for no apparent reason. Eventually, Booth moved his hands so that they briefly gripped the area around Brennan's shoulders. He heard her quietly gasp at the touch. Figuring he'd never really have a chance like this again, he slid his hands slowly down the length of her back and circled them around to rest briefly on her lower chest.
A second or two drifted past before he confirmed, "That exercise works those areas of the body."
It seemed to take Brennan a minute before she was able to reply, "I'm assuming you mean the anterior deltoids and the pectoralis major." When she named the second set of muscles, she rested her hands briefly on top of his, where they still pressed against her chest.
"Right."
About ten seconds later, the partners jumped up almost simultaneously. Both had grown uncomfortable with the prolonged contact and were unsure what to do about it. With a lot of throat clearing, Booth suggested that they do some exercises on the mats before calling it a day. Brennan offered no argument. Neither seemed willing to address the fact, either aloud or to themselves, that Brennan hadn't actually lifted any weights by herself nor had the two done very much exercise.
The partners flopped down on adjacent mats. Brennan began doing what looked like some kind of yoga movements. Booth began gently teasing her and then eased himself into a few push-ups. Roughly fifteen later the two were engaging in their final exercise, both doing sit-ups.
Amazed at the woman's sheer persistence, Booth glanced over at his partner.
"So, Bones, how many are you on?"
Brennan let out a quick gasp of air before replying, "About a hundred."
After a beat, she asked, "And you?"
"I...How many did you say you'd done again?"
"About a hundred."
"Yeah. Yeah, me too."
Brennan cast a furtive glance at her partner. He caught her eye and flashed her his biggest and best charm smile. In spite of herself, she giggled. Booth suddenly leapt into a standing position and held out a hand to help her up. Surprisingly, she accepted.
"Well, Bones, that was fun, wouldn't you say?"
"Yes, Booth. Very good indeed. I rather enjoyed working up a sweat with you."
He wiggled his eyebrows at her. She laughed and skipped away from him towards the dressing room. A few seconds later Booth was on his way to collect his bag from the appropriate dressing room, having already tripped over a mat and walked into three people.
Damn those hips