AN: Thanks for all the reviews! You guys are terrific. This chapter and the next were supposed to be one, but I felt they were too long. So, I split them up, and just posted them at the same time. This one is basically filler. But enjoy it nonetheless.
Again, mistakes in Parker's dialogue are intentional.
Booth is delighted by the squeals of laughter coming from his son's bedroom. He can only imagine what his precocious son and his extremely intelligent partner are doing. Probably building a time machine or something with their hexavalium chromate or whatever, he thinks.
He's chopping apples for the fruit salad when he hears two sets of footsteps running for the kitchen.
"Daddy!" Parker says, dashing to his father's side.
"Parker!" Booth responds, flicking a little chunk of apple at him.
"Dr. Bones and I would like some egg knock, please." His son gives him his own version of the Booth charm smile and he finds it hard to refuse.
"Didn't I say no more eggnog until dinner?" He asks his son, putting the apple chunks in the fruit bowl, and shoving the salad aside.
"Oh come on, Booth. How can you say no to that face?" Bones says from her perch on the doorframe.
"Yeah, daddy. How can you say no to my face?" His son sticks out his bottom lip and pouts.
Booth shakes his head with a rueful smile. "Did you teach him this?" He gestures to his son's face, accusing his partner.
"Well, we may have talked about various methods of persuasion during an extremely intense game of…" He watches as she bites her lip in concentration, trying to remember what they were playing. Suddenly her eyes light up and he's mesmerized. "Candy Land!"
"Good job, Dr. Bones!" Parker looks at her proudly, and then quickly returns his face to a pout. "Come on, daddy, please? Dr. Bones really wants some. Don't you, Dr. Bones?" The little boy turns his pout on to his partner and he watches the features of her face soften in response.
"Oh, Bones. Don't fall for that! He's using your own tactics against you!"
"Well, I would like some and you didn't make that rule for me, and I don't really like to drink alone. So perhaps both Parker and I could have a small glass before dinner," she tells Booth, putting on a pout of her own. "Please Booth."
"Please Daddy."
Booth sighs and waves his hand in the air. "You're spoiling my son," he says to her, turning to the fridge to retrieve the eggnog. He turns around just in time to see his son smiling with his thumb in the air as his partner returns a somewhat awkward thumbs up sign. He stops.
"Wait, did you two plan this?"
"We have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, Booth."
"Yeah, daddy, absowutewy no idea." Parker says, moving from his position next to his father to Brennan's side.
"No idea, huh?" Booth puts the eggnog down on the counter. "That's funny because someone here thinks you might have planned this little charade so that you could get more eggnog." He pauses. "You know who that someone is?"
Parker shakes his head quickly.
"THE CLAW!" Booth raises his arm, showing his hand mangled into a grisly claw and his son squeals.
"What's the claw?" Brennan quickly asks Parker.
"JUST RUN!" Parker laughs, taking her hand and dragging her out of the kitchen. Booth heads out the doorway just in time to see his son and his partner hide behind the couch.
He begins to creep toward them, but pauses when he hears whispering.
"But, I don't understand. What does the claw do?" Brennan asks Parker.
"It CLAWS you!" Booth holds back a chuckle as he gets closer. He peers over the back of the couch to see both Parker and Bones crouching as low as they can with their heads to the floor. The squints would laugh to see Bones in such a position.
He quickly jumps over the back of the couch and grabs his son. Parker squeals half in terror and half in delight as his father drags him up.
"There's no saving you from the CLAW!" Booth yells thrusting his mangled hand into the boy's belly and poking him wildly.
Suddenly, he feels the sharp pang of cold running down his back. He releases his son and jumps off the couch. "What the –" he says, turning to face his son, and sees his partner with a cup of ice.
Parker jumps off the couch and runs to his partner's side. "Good job, Dr. Bones! The Claw doesn't like the cold!"
"You put ice down my back?" Booth asks her. She smiles at him and pulls another piece out.
"You stay away from us with that Claw of yours," she tells him, in her usual assertive tone, raising the ice up to show him she wasn't afraid to use it.
He's watching her play the game with him and his son, protecting his child from his make-believe character and he flashes back to his own childhood. Every Sunday morning, his dad would play the same game and he and his brother would run and hide behind their mother. Whatever she happened to have in her hands would become the Claw's only weakness and she would defeat him. I could do this with her every Sunday morning, he thinks. I could do this everyday for the rest of my life as long as it's with her.
He snaps back to the present when he realizes he's been staring at his partner for a bit too long. The pair is waiting for either the reappearance of the Claw or the reemergence of Daddy and Booth. He glances around him, noticing a half melted ice cube on the floor from where it fell out of the back of his shirt. He scoops it up and slaps it on his hand. With a few good moans and groans and a couple shakes of the arm, the Claw is subdued.
"I think he's gone," Booth tells them, "for now."
"Whoo. That was a close one. Good thinking, Dr. Bones!" Parker beams up at her and she smiles proudly down at him.
"Well, I guess I better get you two your eggnog." Parker begins to jump up and down, excitedly. "Parker, why don't you and Dr. Bones sit down next to the tree, and I'll bring your eggnog and we'll start to open the gifts that she brought?"
"Okay!" His son responds, taking the doctor's hand and leading her to the tree.
"But what about dinner?" She asks him.
"It'll be done in thirty. Relax, Bones. I've got it under control, go sit down. I'll be back with your hard-fought eggnog," he tells her with a wink.
She rolls her eyes at him and allows Parker to direct her as Booth walks into the kitchen.
He hasn't figured out exactly when he's going to tell her, but he knows he has to. Every little thing she does or says reminds him how much he loves her.
He pours their eggnogs as he contemplates ways to tell her how he feels.
Ways to convince her that taking a risk on them would be okay.
Ways to make absolutely certain they have their Sunday mornings.
Booth just seemed like a 'Claw' kind of dad. Raise your hand if your dad did the 'Claw' when you were a kid? Just me? Really? Wow, this is awkward. Move along to the next chapter then...