I'm overwhelmed at the incredible response to the first chapter to this one. Thank you very much. In this one, Max takes his need to protect and help Bones to the next logical person who's muddied the waters a bit. That person, of course, is Sweets. I hope you all enjoy this one. Gregg.
Disclaimer: I don't own, or profit from, these characters or franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Dr. Lance Sweets was in a quandary. He needed to figure out what he was going to do about his two favorite people in the world, Special Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan. Mistakes had been made, and now the whole dynamic of their partnership, indeed the clearly love filled relationship, was in jeopardy. He knew that he was partly to blame for it, and he felt horrible about it, but he needed to come up with something that would bring those two back together and quickly. He could only imagine what Booth would do to him if Dr. Brennan actually slept with Hacker. No. He didn't want to imagine what the Army Ranger trained former sniper would do to him. There wouldn't be enough left of him for Daisy to even do a forensic identification on. He clutched the large jar of jelly beans tighter into his arms as he walked into his office, closing his door. It was later in the afternoon and he'd sent his secretary home for the day. That was when he noticed someone in his chair, back to him.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
"Just looking up at your diplomas and licensing certificates," one Max Keenan, smile in place said as he swiveled around in the chair to face Sweets.
Even though he liked Max, and considered him a good man, there was also a certain queasy sense of dread when he saw the man who was a known murderer, despite his acquittal.
"Max," Sweets squeaked, then coughed and got his voice back in order. "Max," he said again. "Did we have an appointment or something I wasn't aware of?"
Max stood and took a seat on the love seat that his daughter and Booth always sat on for their sessions. "Nah," Max said in his best 'I'm your buddy' voice. "I just wanted to have a little chat about Booth and my daughter."
Alarm bells went off in Sweets head at that very moment. Uh, oh. This couldn't be good. "You know, Max, I can't really discuss anything with you as they are still seeing me in therapy," he managed to get out before his throat squeezed itself shut.
"Did I say I wanted you to do the talking?" Max said with his trademark grin.
"Well, I just assumed," Sweets tried to gesture meaninglessly all the while wishing he could just blend in with the upholstery. As it was he just wrapped his arms around the large jar of jelly beans even tighter.
"I've been doing a little checking," Max continued as if Sweets hadn't said anything at all. "Now correct me if I'm wrong, but Booth and my daughter have been seeing you for going on three years now?"
"Just about," Sweets said, feeling beads of perspiration forming on his forehead.
"And two years ago when Booth was shot you were the one who told the Bureau not to tell her he was alive and undercover, right?" Max asked. He had decided to ask a few questions first. He liked Sweets, after all. He would kill for his daughter, and scare the piss out of anyone who had done what Sweets had over the last couple of years, but he would at least allow the kid to fess up first. Confession was good for the soul, after all.
"Yes," Sweets blanched and managed to get out the answer in a squeaky, whistling tone.
"And how long was my baby girl left in the dark?" Max asked.
"Tw-...Two weeks," Sweets eked out with deep reluctance. The squeaky tone was still very evident.
"And what did you tell Booth about certain brain scans last year when my baby girl got back from Guatemala?" Max asked.
The sweat was really rolling now. "Uhhh... that, uh, the before and after scans showed, uh, that, well, Booth wasn't really in love with, uh, Dr. Brennan, and that he shouldn't tell her that he was in love with her," Sweets said, now very worried about this little 'chat'.
"And just recently what did you recommend that Booth do?" Max asked, his smile still firmly in place, leaning back in the love seat as if he was there for a pleasant session.
"That, uh, he needed to be the one to take a chance and tell Dr. Brennan how he really feels," Sweets admitted as rapidly as he could.
Max got up and paced a bit. "We have a problem, Lance. Can I call you Lance?" Max asked rhetorically, not even bothering to wait for an answer. "We have a problem, Lance. My baby girl isn't happy."
Sweets gulped hard. "Really?" he croaked. He knew it was true, but he was really fearing for his life here, so playing dumb might be his best shot.
"Really," Max confirmed. "You see, Lance. I want my baby girl to be happy. That's all I really want. But a few flies have been found in the ointment."
"Oh?" Sweets whispered, his answers to the questions Max had asked him looming ominously in front of his mind.
"I already took care of one this afternoon," Max casually admitted. He knew that there would be no evidence of his meeting with Hacker, so he could say this out loud. Especially seeing as he'd disabled Sweets' recording equipment.
If it were possible, Sweets got even paler at that statement.
"You know why my daughter thinks so little of psychology, Lance?" Max asked.
"Soft science?" Sweets managed to get out.
"She got that from me," Max smiled wider. "Though not for the same reasons. She thinks that anything that can't be analyzed scientifically and quantified is too open to interpretation and manipulation," he continued, placing significant emphasis on the word manipulation. He saw Sweets' eyes dart to the glass wall at the front of his office, obviously looking for someone to get him out of this nightmare. That only made Max grin more. "For me, though? It's nothing so dramatic. For me, it all boils down to ethics. Hey, don't get me wrong. Psychology is a necessary part of knowledge and understanding, but the problem is, it's just too easy to slip into unethical behavior."
"Unethical?" Sweets gasped. Oh, shit! He could see his career being flushed down the toilet right then.
Max sighed and shook his head. "All the theories and conjectures in psychology may be beneficial and accurate, but they are also too vague, from a scientific standpoint, to keep the potential for unethical manipulation to a minimum," he explained. Then he focused his smile, and his piercing eyes, right on Sweets. "I despise unethical behavior, Lance. And where my daughter and Booth are concerned you've been a very bad boy."
The large jar of jelly beans that Sweets had been holding slipped from his hands and landed on the floor, spilling the candy in all directions. His voice was gone, he was sweating profusely. Maybe he should have worked on achieving a much safer career, like bomb disposal.
"All I want in this world is for my little girl to be happy," Max told the young psychologist. "I let her down really bad when she was fifteen, and I'm paying for that every day, but what hurts me the most is that she pays for it a Hell of a lot more than I do." Max took a seat again right across from Sweets. "I've been watching her very closely the last couple of years, and you know what?"
"What?" Sweets asked, his voice now back to a whisper. He was so scared out of his mind right at that moment it was a miracle he wasn't shaking hard enough to snap his spine in two. The really pathetic part was that Max hadn't threatened him, or done anything other than point out actual facts. No wonder the man was so dangerous.
"In all that time, the only times I've ever seen her smile, really smile in happiness, is when she's with Booth," Max explained. "But then I ask myself why she isn't with him. There are a lot of reasons, and I'm not going to lay blame on any one person, but Lance, like it or not, you're a big part of the reason. Which makes you partly responsible for my baby girl not being truly happy."
Sweets gulped. "I guess if you put it that way," he stammered.
Max stood up. "Thanks for the talk, Lance," Max said, another smile on his face. "I've been needing to get that off my chest for a while now. You could do me one favor, though."
"Anything!" Sweets shot out instantly. Anything to make this nightmare go away.
"Quit making a mess of my daughters' and Booths' happiness," Max asked. "Because if you don't, I'll be back, and next time it won't be for just a chat," he said, clapping his hand on Sweets' shoulder. "See you later, Kid," he said as he walked out of the office, leaving the terrified psychologist sitting there now clutching a pillow to his chest.
After ten minutes of sitting there, scared out of his gourd, Sweets pulled it together enough to pull out his cell phone and make an appointment with his own therapist for the next morning. Not just an hour session, but the whole morning. He had a feeling that it was going to be needed. Then he cleared all his appointments for the next day, rescheduling them throughout the week. After that he called Daisy.
"Lancelot!" Daisy's excited and hyper voice shouted from the cell phone.
"Uh, Daisy?" he asked. "Can we just skip dinner and head home after work instead?"
Daisy's giggle could be heard clearly. "Does my Lancelot want to sharpen his LANCE a little early tonight?" she teased, a sexy undercurrent in her hyper voice.
Despite how scared he was right then, he smiled at Daisy's eagerness for sex. That was one thing he could always count on in this world. Maybe a few rounds of energetic sex would help eliminate the excess fight or flight response that was coursing through his body at that moment. "As early as possible," Lance said after another moment.
"I'll be right over to pick you up, Lancelot!" Daisy said and hung up.
Sweets looked down on the candy all over the floor and decided to leave it. Grabbing his jacket, he left the office and made his way down to the parking garage, all the while wondering what he'd done to deserve his life becoming one giant nightmare. He also began planning on his to convince Booth and Brennan that a relationship was the most logical step of all in their partnership/friendship. Maybe if he pulled that off, and it didn't backfire, Max would come by and offer him a drink, or an apology. Nah. No way would he get an apology from Max, but he would settle for being friends again. Right now, he was just glad he hadn't pissed his pants, though it had been a very close call back in the office. As he got off the elevator he heard the squeal of tires as he saw Daisy driving way too fast come to a screeching halt a few feet away. At least he had Daisy to give him some comfort.
A/N: Kind of a lame ending considering the chapter to that point, but while I wanted Max to throw a scare into Sweets for being part of the problem, I also wanted Sweets to have something to hold onto, so to speak, for the future. I hope you all enjoyed this one. Gregg.