(The Cheat in the Retreat)

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I don't own Bones.

Ooooooooooooooooo

Nothing seemed to upset Booth lately. No matter how gross the body was at a crime scene, no matter how many meetings he was pulled into, no matter how long he had to wait for tests results from the Lab, he seemed to take it in stride which was starting to bother Hodgins. "It's not normal. He's not acting like Booth." Stabbing at the last piece of roast beef on his plate, he waved the fork around using it to emphasize his agitation. "One of the FBI techs was passing by him with too many bags in his arms this morning and he dropped one right on Booth's shoe and Booth just stepped back. The bag popped open and some bloody rags stained his shoe and one of his pants legs and he just stepped back. That isn't normal."

Amused, Angela speared a piece of cucumber in her Chef salad and laughed. "You should enjoy it while it lasts. The last time he walked into one of your experiments gone wild he threatened you and he came through when he had your car towed."

"We don't know that he did that." Hodgins was pretty sure Booth had been the one to have his car towed, but he couldn't prove it. "It could have been an overzealous cop."

"From our driveway?" Rolling her eyes, she popped the cucumber slice into her mouth. She had learned a long time ago that it wasn't a great idea to get on Booth's bad side. He knew how to get revenge if he wanted it.

Shrugging his shoulders, Hodgins ran the piece of roast through his mashed potatoes. "Well, anyway, that guy I can understand. This new Booth is creepy. He's always smiling and this morning he complimented me . . . he complimented me, Ange."

"I say enjoy the new Booth while you have him." Angela didn't understand her husband at all. "You know once he's married and the excitement is over, he's going to go back to being our Booth then you'll be complaining about his lack of humor."

"Well, like I said, I can understand that Booth. This happy Booth is an unknown quantity. He might be storing up all that anger he carries around with him and that can't be good. He's going to blow up sooner or later and when he does, God help the person he unleashes his anger on. It's not going to be pleasant." Hodgins prayed that it wouldn't be him. He vowed to make sure that there weren't any experiments going on in the Lab when Booth was there.

Oooooooooooooooooo

The idea of going undercover as Tony and Roxie was Booth's idea. A murder had occurred on Indian Tribal lands. A company called New Dawn Retreat leased part of the land for some touchy feely group for married couples. Their victim, Adam Pak had been there with another woman who was not his wife. Booth was concerned that the murderer would leave before he could get a warrant to investigate on the Tribal lands. He thought by going undercover, he and Brennan could check out everyone attending the retreat and try to pinpoint the killer before the retreat was done and everyone left the area.

Brennan was game. She loved going undercover and it had been a while since she had played the role of Roxie. Going undercover allowed her to be someone she wasn't and allowed her to let her guard down emotionally. She found it hard to trust people and to become emotionally involved with strangers, but Roxie and Wanda were good at it.

Of course, they were supposed to be a married couple with problems, but Booth found the role hard to play. As a rule, he was very good in his undercover roles, but he was finding it hard to pretend that he and Brennan were having problems. Every time he looked at her, his face lit up with a smile and it was hard to stop doing it. Brennan noticed it and decided to do something about it before their cover was blown.

"Tony plans vacations without my input." Brennan glanced around the circle of couples and saw some snickers, some sneers and annoyance on Booth's face. "I think a vacation should be well planned out, but Tony just wants to borrow a cabin from someone and spend a week in the woods. No planning, just pack a bag and go to the cabin."

Annoyed, Booth turned to face his fiancé. "What are you doing? I was just trying to be spontaneous." He had thought the whole unplanned cabin thing was behind them, but here it was being raised again amongst strangers. "What's wrong with that?"

"What's wrong with it is I prefer to be consulted when you plan vacations." She could see the anger on Booth's face and that was what she wanted. The couples surrounding them could see that not all was well with Tony and Roxie and that they needed to be at the couples retreat.

"I did consult with you. I told you that my friend would let us use his cabin and I was letting you know a few weeks in advance so you could tell Cam . . . your boss." The day they had this argument, Brennan had been shot and he had almost lost her. That memory cooled his anger. "Yeah, never mind, I shouldn't have pushed you about the cabin. I'm sorry."

Surprised, Brennan reached out and placed her hand on her partner's arm. "It's alright, Tony. I over reacted. You didn't do anything wrong." She gave him an encouraging smile, looked around the circle of onlookers and then back at Booth. "You see, it's good we came to this thing, Tony. Isn't it?"

Immediately, Booth caught on to what Brennan was doing and placed his hand over her hand. "Yeah, Roxie. It is."

Ooooooooooooooooooo

Alone in their room, Booth walked across the floor and sat down on the bed facing Brennan. "This assignment was harder than I thought it would be. I'm so damn happy right now that I can't seem to stop smiling when I'm around you."

"I noticed." Brennan moved closer and stood in front of Booth. "I'm happy too, but we need to compartmentalize. We need to be Tony and Roxie until we've found out who the killer is."

He spread his legs wider, placed his hands on her hips and pulled her closer. "Yeah and I can do it . . . You did a good job at the couples meeting. You got me to stop smiling and that's what we needed . . . I still think about you being shot. If I hadn't made you mad you wouldn't have been at the Lab and . . ."

She interrupted him by placing her hands on his shoulders and kissing him. The kiss pleasant, Brennan separated their lips and smiled. "It's the past Booth. We agreed that from now on, we will talk about vacations and consider Christine when we make our plans . . . I'm alright. I've recovered and Christine will not remember what happened at the Lab."

"But I will." Grateful that Brennan was there, alive and well, Booth pulled Brennan down on him while he lay back on the bed. "I can't lose you, Bones. I can't even think about losing you."

For a moment, Brennan stared into her fiancés eyes and saw the fear and the sadness that he tried to hide when he talked about her almost dying. "You saved my life, Booth. We had an argument, I was at the Lab and you were determined to bring me back home. You cared enough to look for me and you saved my life. I love you, Booth."

"I love you too, Bones." He rolled them over on the bed and with his hands on the mattress on each side of her body, he held his body above her, leaned closer and kissed her. "I love you."

Oooooooooooooooooo

It made Booth sad that the murderer turned out to be a devoted couple of thieves. Bill and Evelyn Shumacher were senior citizens that supplemented their income by stealing from people that attended couples retreats. Adam Pak had awoken in his tent when Evelyn had returned his house keys, a fight had ensued and during that fight Evelyn had hit Adam on the head with a pool ball in a sock. Both Bill and Evelyn thought Evelyn had killed Adam, but the man had been dazed. When he woke up, Bill panicked and while Adam tried to run away, Bill ran over him with his van and killed him.

"Those two actually believe that they'll get to be in prison together." Booth had been a little flabbergasted when he'd heard Bill and Evelyn talking about being in prison together, but he didn't have the heart to tell them that that would never happen. "I'm going to let their lawyer break the news to them."

Bill and Evelyn had been an interesting couple that Brennan felt were truly in love. "Did Bill and Evelyn remind you of us?"

"Burglars and murderers?" Booth smiled and shook his head. "I think we're better than that don't you . . . On the other hand, they're devoted to each other . . . If somebody was choking me, would you hit them over the head with a billiard ball?"

With a glint in her eyes, Brennan leaned forward and smiled. "Yes, I would . . . If someone slapped me, would you karate chop them in the throat?"

Removing his robe, Booth placed his hands on Brennan's waist. "Yeah, I would . . . I'd do anything for you, Bones. Anything."

Her hands now on Booth's chest, Brennan admired her lover's Pectoralis Major. Running her hands up his chest to his shoulders, she appreciated the fact that Booth worked out and kept his body in fine shape. "It was fun being Roxie, but I much prefer being Temperance Brennan. There are a lot of compensations being me." She moved her hands down to his waist and admired his external obliques. "Yes, many interesting compensations."

Amused, Booth leaned over and kissed her. "I assume I'm one of those interesting compensations."

"Of course." Brennan loved sex and she loved that Booth was willing to perform when she needed him to. Their relationship was more than physical, but she did enjoy the fact that they complemented each other in so many ways. Booth made her happy and she was certain that she made him happy.

Oooooooooooooooooo

He'd seen the signs and he was afraid his young friend was going to do something foolish. For some reason Booth didn't quite understand, Sweets had lost his mojo. His lack of confidence in his ability to perform his job was obvious and no matter how much Booth tried to bolster his friend's confidence if didn't seem to help. The younger man seemed to crumbling.

Stirring his coffee, Booth stared out of the window next to his table and sighed. "I told you that Sweets went on vacation, but I think it's more than that. I don't know what's wrong, but lately he seems to be having trouble doing his job. He's been getting things wrong and I think it's affected his ability to do his psychology thing. I don't know, maybe he's burning out. He's just a kid and he's seen a lot of death and sadness since he's been at the FBI. Maybe he was too young to take the job . . . I just hope he doesn't quit."

"Quit?" That surprised Brennan. "Do you think he'll quit working for the FBI?" She liked Sweets. He was nosy and tried to interfere with her and Booth's life too much, but he was their friend and most of the time his nosiness could be overlooked.

"I don't know." Booth sipped some of his coffee and placed the cup back on the table. "Maybe . . . I just wish I knew what's causing him to lose faith in himself. If you don't have faith in your abilities you can lose yourself."

Curious, Brennan rested her fork on her plate. "Have you ever lost faith in your abilities as an FBI Agent?"

"A few times." Booth leaned back against his chair and rested his arm on the top of the empty chair next to him. "I've had cases go sideways and the suspect got a way or we didn't have a suspect at all. We don't always solve every crime. It happens and you have to accept that fact and move on. You can't obsess about the cases you don't solve . . . You hope that some day the cold cases will be solved and the victim will get justice, but I know that can't always be true. I don't know what's set off Sweets, but maybe he needs to grow up and except that the world isn't perfect."

"He was the victim of child abuse, I'm certain he knows that the world isn't perfect." Brennan wasn't trying to be sarcastic, but sometimes the bluntness of her statements seemed like it.

Slowly nodding his head, Booth realized that Brennan didn't really understand what he was talking about. "Yeah, I know . . . Lately Sweets has been pushing himself and I don't know why. It's like he thinks he has to hand us the answers to everything as our profiler, but no one is asking him to do that. We're all part of a team, but lately . . . lately he's been trying to prove that he's essential to the team. Instead of thinking things through, he throws out these wild guesses and he gets upset when they turn out to be wrong. I don't know. Anyway, I hope whatever is eating at Sweets is cleared up pretty soon because it's causing him a lot of problems and he's no good to the team the way he's been acting lately. Not like this."

Ooooooooooooooooo

Walking down the street aimlessly, his hands in his jacket pockets, Sweets didn't have a particular destination in mind. He just needed to move. He needed to think and he needed the solitude he felt when he was walking down a sidewalk, a stranger walking among strangers.

He'd found his world to be upside down ever since Brennan had been shot at the Lab. He'd been outraged that the security at the Jeffersonian had been so lax that a world renowned scientist had almost died because of it. Fearful that Brennan would be affected by the attack on her and her near death experience, he'd tried to help her only to be rejected. She'd talked to Booth about the attack and he had given her advice which she said she had taken.

On the other hand, she hadn't been interested in anything he had to say about the subject. She didn't trust him because she didn't trust psychology. He desperately wanted to help Brennan because he felt that she needed it whether or not she felt she did. He'd even tried to talk to Booth about it, but of course he'd closed ranks with his fiancé and he told him that Brennan was fine.

Yeah, but is she? She hates the institution of marriage everyone knows that, but she asked Booth to marry her. Something's wrong, there has to be, but I'm the only one that sees it. No one wants my help . . . I don't know, maybe Brennan is alright, but marriage? That seems like a red flag to me. I mean, I'm happy that those two are going to get married, I really am, but why did she ask him? I mean, is she okay or isn't she? Maybe she's right and psychology really is a shit science. I can't seem to get anything right lately and when my own friends won't let me help them through a traumatic experience . . . I don't know. Maybe they don't need me. Maybe I'm spinning my wheels and I'm not helping anyone . . . I don't know . . . I don't know.

Ooooooooooooooooooo

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