Natural
A/N: I'm not sure this chapter conforms to the Bonesology formula, but it planted itself in my head, was formulated waiting in the doctor's office, and posted here for perusal if you wish. This story borrows Razztaztic's character Zach as Booth and Brennan's little son. If you haven't read her Roots and Wings, you are missing a real literary treat.
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The Booth-Brennan family members are big fans of 'natural,' in all its definitions and nuances.
Brennan likes her food natural, organic, and vegan. She like her fruit uncooked, prefers her oatmeal unseasoned.
Booth prefers his Bones' face without makeup and her hair without hairspray. He admires her beauty when she's all dressed up to go out, but his favorite 'look' for his favorite anthropologist is unadorned and 'natural.'
Christine likes to run around the back yard with her hair unencumbered by pony tail holders or ribbons or hair bands, so she can feel the wind blowing through it.
After a bath, Zach loves to escape from big fluffy terrycloth towels and his parents' loving arms, and charge downstairs and through the house as unclothed as the day he was born. He is a much bigger fan of the au naturel lifestyle than Booth or Brennan, who chase him down with pajamas or play clothes, and reassert the need to dress like the rest of the family. "You don't see me or Dad or Christine prancing around naked, do you, Zach?" "No, Mommy, but you should try it; it feels great!" "Zach, come back here, son and get your clothes on; you're not a jaybird!" "O-k-a-y, Dad, but do I hafta? What's a jaybird?" "It's a silly bird who thinks that wearing its feather is a waste of time."
"Booth, why do you fill his head with nonsense? Zach, a jaybird is a member of the family Corvidae, which are noisy songbirds of the Northern Hemisphere." "Wow, Mom, can I look it up on the computer?" "Yes, Christine, after you've had your bath."
But of all the aspects of 'natural,' Booth and Brennan's favorite connotation is as it applies to their family. The close-knit group of friends linked together through their jobs at the Jeffersonian Lab have become a family; unconventional in one sense, but dedicated to one another by bonds perhaps stronger than blood ties, precisely because these connections have been voluntarily chosen by the people they hold dear. The emotions of love, attachment, and commitment to these friends feel more natural for them than their feelings for blood relatives who have drifted in and out of their lives as they saw fit.
Cam, Angela, and Hodgins are perhaps their closest family, but even Sweets and Daisy have become members of their clan, in spite of their occasionally aggravating tendencies and annoying traits.
And between Booth and Brennan, the links of platonic love and friendship which once felt awkward and uncertain, have turned romantic and permanent as they each followed their hearts. And now their bonds of lifetime commitment and deep abiding love feel as natural to both partners as breathing. Their partnership has become their existence.