A/N: Sorry for the delay in posting. Internet access was non-existent while on vacation. It was really nice to come back to an inbox full of kind reviews for the last chapter of Collide. Thanks! =) As always, thanks also to EternalDestiny304 for the honest insight she provides with her betas, which always helps me grow as a writer.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
A teenager with a nose ring and a wild green Mohawk looked up as Booth and Brennan walked in, still bickering. In addition to a multitude of tattoos and ear gauges, he also wore dollar store glasses that, bizarrely, had had their lenses removed. Somehow, his image was at odds with what Brennan had expected from the shop's exterior.
"Not exactly a Violet, is he," Booth whispered in her ear.
Brennan elbowed him and stepped up to the counter, discarding her erroneously preconceived notions. "We are researching societal connotations and symbolism traditionally ascribed to specific flora."
Before Booth could translate, as he had an irritating—and unnecessary—tendency to do, the kid hopped off his stool and disappeared through a curtain behind the counter.
"Way to go, Bones." Booth dug his hands into his pockets and looked around the store. "He's probably running for his life out the back door."
"Why would he do that?" She wandered over to a series of large pots labeled "rare Himalayan poppies."
"You gotta know how to talk to kids. Sounding like their chemistry teacher isn't a good way to establish a rapport." Booth stuck his nose over her shoulder and peered at the striking blue flower. "Is that thing real?"
Brennan examined the flower's large, paper-like blossoms. "It's real. However, I do not believe 'rare' is an appropriate characterization of the species. I suspect it is quite prevalent in the Himalayas and is simply not native to this country. What's wrong with sounding like a chemistry teacher?"
"C'mon, Bones." He stepped around her to scrutinize a tall, unopened bulb with leaves so shiny they looked waxed. "Chemistry teachers are scary."
"Mine weren't," she objected, turning her attention to a small golden flower with almost translucent petals. "The first man I was ever sexually attracted to was—"
"Whoa!" Booth almost knocked over a potted coleus as he waved his hands suddenly in the air.
Brennan stared at him, bemused. "What's wrong?"
"Some old guy in a lab coat who was fifty years older than you? Seriously, Bones?"
"Dr. Cifuentes was not—"
He clapped his hands to his ears and backed away. "I don't wanna know!"
"In all likelihood, you also entertained romantic fantasies about one of your teachers," she pointed out reasonably. "It's a normal part of adolescence."
"There was nothing normal about your—" Booth trailed off, his comically horrified expression replaced with genuine dismay. "That's not what I meant."
The accidental double meaning of his words triggered a rush of painful memories about her abnormal childhood. Irritated at her emotional reaction when she knew very well what his innocent, teasing intent had been, Brennan focused her attention on a nearby row of seedlings.
"Bones."
The tiny leaves had interesting black and white stripes whose genetic purpose she idly wondered about. Did they attract a specific type of pollinator?
Booth moved in beside her, not close enough so they touched, but crowding her nonetheless. "Hey. I'm sorry."
"I'm aware of what your intended meaning was." Brennan side-stepped away, bending over a pot to get a closer look at the ridges on a scooped leaf's underside. They could be designed for water retention. "There's no need for an apology."
Usually her partner took hints much better than she did, but on this occasion he was proving stubbornly clueless. He closed the distance between then again and gripped her shoulder, refusing to let go when she tried to pull away.
Booth held her gaze as firmly as he held her arm. "It was a stupid thing to say. Just call me a jackass and get it over with."
In spite of herself, a small smile tugged at the corner of Brennan's lips. "Given your knowledge of my history, your remark was somewhat asinine. Get it? You said jackass, which utilizes the root 'ass,' and I parried with asinine, whose prefix is—"
"Now that's just mean, Bones," Booth interrupted, grinning as he looped an arm around her waist and squeezed her lightly. "Using the dictionary against me."
"You're on security camera."
Startled, the partners both jumped slightly as they realized the store employee had returned.
"Just in case you decide to get too friendly," the kid said snidely, pointing at a video camera overhead.
Booth frowned and Brennan nudged him warningly. He disentangled himself from her and moved toward the counter, shoulders squaring and jaw tightening. She knew she should intervene, but found watching the aggressive transformation blatantly arousing.
On the receiving end of Booth's intimidating stare, the teenager shoved a thick book across the counter and backed away. "Symbolism of specific flora," he mumbled defensively, before scooting back behind the curtain.
"You need to revisit the dictionary definition of scary," Brennan commented mildly. "You are much scarier than a chemistry teacher."
"Kid needs to learn some manners," Booth snapped, slapping his palm on the counter.
"Given his physical appearance, I would surmise that his social peer group has a different definition of politeness," she replied, coming over to the counter and picking up the dusty, green, gold-lettered book. "The Meaning of Flowers, from A to Z. A Scientific and Symbolic Analysis."
Booth continued to mutter under his breath as Brennan turned to the first page. "I don't understand the title. Science and symbolism are not congruent topics." She skimmed over the introduction, scoffing at the authors' attempt to rationalize their title with emotive arguments that were completely lacking in scientific credibility. "I do not believe this book will be an authoritative reference on the anthropologically designated significance of a sunflower or hibiscus."
Obviously still annoyed, Booth grabbed the book away and flipped through the pages, stumbling over the long scientific names as he read them aloud. "Haageocereus. Sounds like some kind of dinosaur plant. Haastia, Habenaria, Haberlea, Habranthus, Hacquetia. Who names these things? Haemanthus, Hakea, Hakonechloa, Halesia. Whatever happened to plain old hydrangeas? Geez."
"You're looking in the wrong place." The teenager's defensive voice drifted through the curtain.
Booth scowled as the kid reemerged and approached them cautiously, holding his hands out for the book. "The lady said hibiscus, right?"
"That's correct," Brennan replied, before Booth could launch into one of his high moral ground lectures.
The store employee flipped multiple chapters forward. "You gotta look at the scientific name." A moment later, he held the page out for their inspection, one long fingernail pointing to the italicized genus. "Malvaceae." He directed a smirk at Booth before depositing the book on the counter and folding his arms in front of his scrawny chest.
Impressed, Brennan scanned the page. There was an extended narrative about the suspected origins of the flower's 200+ varieties, followed by a detailed drawing and explanation of physical characteristics that Hodgins would probably have found highly interesting. Several pages in, the authors finally began commentary on the perceived symbolism of the flower in various cultures.
"Delicate beauty. Summer." She raised her eyebrows at the next entry. "Chastity. Virginity. I fail to see how any of these relate to my negative experiences in foster care. When Angela gave me the mug, I was very sexually act—"
"Gimme that." Booth flushed and snatched the book away, but not before directing a death glare at the snickering kid. "Immortality. Weddings. Estranged love. Okaaay, no contradiction at all there … Gentleness. Compassion. Royalty. Seize the opportunity. Ha!" He waved the book under Brennan's nose. "See that, Bones? Opportunity. Knocking on the door, right there."
"Even if I did turn my abuse into what you call an opportunity, Angela had not even started working with me at the time we had the conversation," Brennan argued. "She could not have known that I would eventually use my background to inform my interaction with the families of murder victims."
The teenager backed up several feet, his eyes widening behind their empty frames.
Booth wrapped an arm around her shoulders and towed her far enough that their conversation would be less easily overhead by their interested audience.
"She knew, Bones. Anybody who's known you for even an hour knows." He leaned in close, his eyes as soft and intent as his voice. "Whatever else Angela was thinking when she made that mug, I'd bet good money she was amazed."
"You should not be betting," she answered uncomfortably. "For her to select a symbol of opportunity when I had yet to do anything with those experiences—it doesn't make sense."
"She knew," he repeated. "You amaze people, Bones. You know. Not always for the right reasons, or anything –"
Brennan punched his shoulder and laughed, relieved. "I am amazing in many ways."
He scowled and rubbed his arm pointedly. "You know, you really need to learn a little false modesty."
"Royalty means respect."
Booth and Brennan swiveled toward the teenager. He dropped his carefully coiffed head as they glared at him.
"Well, it does," he muttered, toying with the frayed edges of the book's cover. "I'm just sayin'. That's one of the flower's meanings."
"What do sunflowers mean?" Booth's tone had an edge that Brennan recognized as testing a suspect.
"Don't even have to look that one up," the teenager shrugged, opening the book all the same. "People ask all the time." He turned the pages rapidly, then turned the book in their direction. "Happiness. Longevity. Flexibility. Loyalty. Pride. Strength."
"Some of those make sense in a symbolic context." Brennan followed Booth back to the counter just in case he decided to teach the kid a lesson anyway. She half-hoped he would, so she could watch him go into FBI mode again. To her disappointment, Booth seemed more interested in actually reading the page than in disciplining the eavesdropping adolescent. She ducked under his shoulder and read along with him before looking back up again.
"I don't understand why a sunflower would symbolize pride or strength."
"The way they hold those big heads up." The teenager shoved his glasses back over the first spike of his Mohawk, looking much less sullen. "You know, people think they follow the sun across the sky, but only young plants do. Once they get this big—" he splayed his hands as if to indicate a large sunflower head, "they stay in one place. See?" He interrupted Booth's reading by turning the page and pointing at an italicized series of chemical equations.
"No way," Booth complained, as Brennan scanned the equations interestedly. "You people need to learn to just appreciate things without putting letters and numbers all over the pictures."
The teenager, whose faded nametag Brennan now realized read Lloyd, leaned back and jammed his hands into the flower shop smock that hit just above the torn knees of his jeans.
"...the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close,
As the sunflower turns on her god, when he sets,
The same look which she turned when he rose."
He sneered at the look of surprise on both their faces. "Thomas Moore. Not what you were expecting from someone who looks like me, huh."
"No," Brennan agreed. "It was foolish of me to assume that your physical appearance or age would dictate your intellect." She looked at Booth. "Parker might one day choose to become part of an anthropological sect like Lloyd's. That would not diminish his intelligence or—"
"Over my dead body." Booth slammed the book shut firmly. "Opportunity and strength. There you go, Bones. Mystery solved." He grabbed her elbow and steered her towards the doorway. "I'm still hungry."
"We just ate!" Brennan exclaimed, dodging a shiny blue urn planted with what looked like shaggy fire pokers.
Booth lowered his voice significantly as he held the door open for her. "Not that kind of hungry."
"Oh." Brennan belatedly picked up on the desire in his eyes. "You were utilizing a double-meaning for physical and sex—" He gave her an alarmed glare. "Sexual urges," she whispered. They stepped out into the sunshine and she grinned up at him. "I am also 'hungry.'"
The pressure of his hand on her back increased significantly as he physically propelled her in the direction of the SUV, dark eyes fixated on the target ahead.
"Wait!"
They stopped in surprise and turned to find Lloyd hurrying towards them, brandishing a red hibiscus. He held it out to Brennan, a shy smile lighting his young face. She regarded it uncertainly.
"Flowers are socially connotative of romantic feelings," she said slowly, glancing up at Booth for confirmation. She couldn't read the look on his face and stumbled over her next words, trying to be sensitive to the young man while fully aware that sensitivity was not her area of expertise. "If you are proposing some form of liaison, that would be most inappropriate, however understandable. I am very beautiful and your hormones are—" Booth cleared his throat warningly and looked up at the sky.
Lloyd flushed and clutched the delicate bloom so tightly that it was a surprise the stem didn't snap.
Brennan tried again. "I appreciate your compliment. However, even if our age and socio-economic status weren't factors, I am … unavailable."
"No. Sorry, lady, but you're not exactly—" Lloyd trailed off, skewered by Booth's warning glare. "I have a girlfriend." He proffered the flower insistently. "Put it behind your right ear."
Brennan took the bloom from him and held it up to her nose, enjoying the sweet, cinnamon-like fragrance. "Why?"
Lloyd tilted his head so she could see the yellow flower tattooed just beneath his right ear. "Right tells the world you have a lover and are off the market. Left says single and searching. A flower behind both ears says you've got somebody but you're looking anyway." He eyed the two of them, his heavily-lined eyes narrowing. "But I mean—you two are obviously—right?"
This time, reading Booth's face was singularly easy. Brennan tucked the flower carefully into place.
"Thank you."
He nodded and started back toward the store where a young woman in similar attire now stood in the doorway, obviously waiting impatiently. They watched her pull him inside and close the door, but not before hanging a 'Closed' sign.
"It would appear we are not the only ones hungry," Brennan grinned.
"They're gonna need Tums afterwards," Booth muttered, dragging his hand through his hair and glancing at her. "Unavailable, huh."
"I do not like the term 'off the market,'" she commented, rearranging her flower so it sat more comfortably. "It implies I was for sale."
"It's just slang, Bones." He shifted his stance so he looked oddly defensive, although Brennan didn't understand why. "Doesn't mean anything."
"I would be very expensive." Brennan looked at the various stores surrounding them, ranging from a pizza place and car insurance firm to a nail salon and pet grooming facility.
"Can I afford you?" Booth's question drew her attention from a restaurant trumpeting a disconcerting fusion of Chinese and Greek flavors.
"The pricetag I was referring to was metaphorical only. I have no need for you to purchase anything for me," she pointed out, before reflecting that he might be utilizing a double meaning again.
Booth rubbed the back of his neck in a familiar gesture that he tended to use when nervous. "Am I still competing with other shoppers?"
It was a couched question that referred to a level of commitment which had previously proved a breaking point in their relationship. Brennan stood quietly for a moment, thinking back over the events of the last couple years. When she finally answered him, it was with a nod in the direction of Vinca's Violets just to make sure her tentative metaphor was understood.
"My store is closed."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Booth was fully aware he'd set himself up for another Brennan-style hit and run—him doing the hitting, her doing the running. He hadn't intended to force the issue so quickly, but his desire to know where he stood with her had overridden his common sense. Her unexpectedly firm, quiet answer hit him with the impact of a high caliber bullet, but it had nothing on her next words, delivered as they were with a shy little smile.
"What will it cost to take you off the market? I am very wealthy."
In spite of the full on marching band parading through his head, he played it as cool as he could. "It's buy one get one free, Bones," he said casually, aware that his ear-to-ear grin was completely giving him away. "I bought you. You get me."
"That doesn't make sense," she frowned. "If you are the purchaser, you are the one who should be getting the free—"
"I think we're both done shopping, Bones." He kissed her, stopping the thread of squint logic before she got too obsessed with untangling it. The sun beat down on them viciously, but it had nothing on the heat the partners generated.
"You need a flower," she eventually murmured into his lips.
"Huh?"
She pointed at her hibiscus. "To demarcate your romantic status."
He coughed. "Ha. Yeah, uh, we'll have to come up with a better marker, Bones. FBI guy wearing flowers … not exactly the message I want to be sending bad guys."
"You could get a tattoo," Brennan suggested, pulling him in the direction of a shop he hadn't noticed. "Tattoos are societally acceptable for alpha males."
Booth hung back slightly. Much as the idea of a physical symbol of commitment appealed to him, the shop's literal sign, Carved, put him in mind of Thanksgiving Dinner, with him as the turkey. Trust Brennan to skip a ring and go straight for a needle instead. Not that he wanted to look like a wimp or anything.
"It might even enable you to infiltrate the criminal element more easily," she enthused. "Many of the gang members we have investigated have had elaborate body art."
"Yeahhhh," he stalled, not quite sure whether she was being typically clueless or was making an unusually good joke. "I don't know, Bones—"
"You could get an artistic representation of a skull with my initials in it. Because skulls are bones and your nickname for me is Bones. It could be designed to look as if it is squinting. Get it?"
Booth let out a relieved breath, realizing he'd been had. "Very funny, Bones."
"It was," she replied, grinning mischievously. "You believed I was serious."
"No way." He denied the accusation out of male pride. "You're not that spontaneous, Bones. You'd have to have some design all picked out and designed by Angela before you'd even consider getting inked."
He'd expected some big argument about how spontaneous she could be, but her eyes were suddenly focused beyond him, widening slightly.
"Look!"
Booth turned, half-expecting to see some scientific store that he'd missed, but found only a grubby-looking video game arcade behind them.
"The clawwwwwwwww," Brennan enthused, shoving past him to get to the window. She pointed at the toy-sized crane in the window, surrounded by a pile of stuffed animals ranging from antique Finding Nemo clownfish to a goofy-looking blue macaw.
He stared at his partner, bemused by the delight on her face. "Where did you even see that movie?"
"Angela required me to watch all three films with her when she was pregnant." She pointed at one of the rubbery green toys in the machine. "The clawwwwwww."
He shook his head, as amused by her excitement as he was by her lousy imitation. "The aliens didn't sound anything like that."
"The clawwwwwwww," she repeated, shaping her fingers into mini-cranes and waving them at him.
Booth did his own open-and-close imitation. "The clawwwwwwww," he intoned. "The claw chooses who will go and who will stay."
She beamed at him, completely unabashed by his criticism. "The claw is our master."
A small child and her mother exited the store and gave them curious glances, which embarrassed Booth far more than Brennan.
He dug into his pocket for change. "You want your own personal alien? Bet I can win you one."
"No betting." Brennan loudly warned him as they entered the store, "The machines have pre-calibrated motion, aperture and strength settings designed to make winning a prize extremely difficult. Some cranes have programming that causes the grip parameters to readjust so that a prize is not won until a pre-set payout percentage is reached that will allow the owners to recoup the value of the prizes inside."
"Wish somebody had told me that before I wasted $10," a weary-looking mother groused from several machines away. She hoisted her wailing toddler into her arms and stalked out of the store, leaving them the only people in the store other than a nearby employee. He swept underneath a pinball machine with unnecessary ferocity and muttered obviously not nice things under his breath.
"See what you did, Bones?" Booth deposited a dollar's worth of quarters in the slot. "You just cost the store money. Now I have to play."
"If the machine dispenses too many prizes, it will become inactive, as though malfunctioning," she warned, watching as lights flashed and the claw moved into place. "This enables the owner to recalibrate settings to make the game more difficult."
"Don't get us kicked out of here, huh, Bones," he muttered, focusing on the glowing controls. "I wanna give that air hockey table a shot before we leave."
He pressed play and tapped the up arrow lightly, guiding the crane in the direction of a well-positioned toy. It stopped a few centimeters short of the target and he touched the arrow again, overshooting the alien slightly. The machine hummed a warning, informing him his game time was almost up as Booth pressed the down button. The crane lowered, its jaws closing harmlessly around the backside of a stuffed bear before beginning to rise again.
"You see?" Brennan said beside him. "That toy is probably only worth a few dollars, but the machine is set so that you have to spend at least $15 before winning it."
The closing claw snagged on the blue fabric of a nearby alien's shirt and stopped, vibrating.
"You got it!" she shrieked, pressing her hands against the glass like a little girl. "Booth, you got it!"
"Shhh." Booth gripped the joystick he had so far ignored and very gently began to maneuver the claw towards him. .
"Don't lose it," Brennan urged as the alien bobbed precariously, held only the smallest of margins in the metallic jaws. "Go slow, Booth. It was a fortunate accident."
"No accident. This is all about skills, Bones." He brought the crane up to the edge of the chute and pressed the release button. The toy dropped with a soft plunk and Booth reached in and retrieved it with a smug smile. "I won the bet."
"We didn't wager anything." Brennan took the toy from him and squeezed it. The alien squeaked. "It will be a nice present for Angela's infant. Thank you."
"You're not giving Angela my toy," Booth retorted, affronted. He grabbed it away from her and started toward the back of the room. "If you don't want him, he can sit on my desk at work."
Brennan trailed after him. "I will keep it then." She made a grab for the alien. "I'll give the baby something else." Another futile grab. "Give me the alien, Booth. I want him."
"Maybe if you beat me at air hockey." He squeaked the toy at her, just out of reach.
"I've never played," she objected, eyeing the table uncertainly. "You have a distinct advantage."
"The claw chooses who will go and who will stay," he handed her a mallet. "It's easy, Bones. You just have to get the pucks into the goal or block the other person's shots. First person to score 7 points wins the alien …." he waved the toy teasingly.
She walked to the opposite side of the table as Booth deposited enough coins for one round and the whir of the air compressor started up.
"Hold the mallet with just your fingertips," he advised. "It gives you better wrist action. Ready?"
Brennan gripped her mallet. "Play."
Booth set a puck on the table and sent it skimming in her direction with a leftward spin. She positioned herself to block the shot, but, as he'd calculated, it bounced off the corner of the table, reversed direction, and banked neatly across the electronic goal line.
She scowled and shoved her flower back into place. "I was unprepared for that tactic."
"Try, try again," he grinned, sending another puck into play.
She did better this time, countering his shots multiple times before he scored his second point. He was almost surprised when she tied the score shortly after, but not completely. This was Brennan, after all. Her learning curve for all activities, air hockey included, was plenty steep.
They volleyed back and forth for several minutes, vying for the third point aggressively before she finally bypassed his defenses and cheered loudly.
"Don't count your chickens, Bones," he warned her, "I could call a foul on that for topping."
"I don't know what that means." She put the puck back in play.
"You can't put your mallet on top of the puck." He caught the side of the puck and spiraled it back in her direction. "That was a diamond drift," he said smugly as it careened off several sides and scored him his fourth point. Pretending the mallet was a gun, he blew imaginary smoke off the 'muzzle.' "Seeley Booth special for the lady. Oh, yeah."
While he was busy showing off, Brennan mimicked his move exactly and tied the score again. She smiled. "This game is interesting," she commented, parrying his next move with ease. "It relies on the scientific principles of—"
Booth squeaked his alien, throwing off her sentence. "No science lessons while I'm playing hockey, Bones. The textbooks need to stay firmly locked in their upright positions …" It was almost unfair of him to score a point while the gears in her mind whirred, translating that idiom, but her ferocious retaliation relieved him of any guilt.
The electronic scoreboard flashed 5-5 and he added another dollar to the machine.
"Try this one on for size, Bones."
The size fit her very well indeed, leading to 6th and 7th points in rapid succession from Brennan. She dropped the mallet and held out her hand. "I won the alien."
"Two out of three?" Booth suggested.
"Mine," Brennan said firmly, rounding the table and reaching for the toy.
He contemplated wrestling with her—that had definite possibilities—but they were in public. Stifling a sigh, he handed over her prize. Brennan squeaked her alien victoriously and sauntered over to an old-fashioned Pac-Man stall, with an unusually large screen.
"Zack and I like this game," she commented.
"You and Zack?" Booth repeated in astonishment
Brennan nodded, peering at the virtually antique yellow and green display. "He gets bored in the hospital. After he wrote a dissertation on video games, Hodgins and I purchased the game for him. Sweets pulled some yarn to help get permission for him to have it installed in the communal lounge."
"Pulled some strings." Booth corrected automatically. "Sweets pulled some strings—Zack wrote a dissertation on video games?"
"On the progression of technology as applied to the games, yes, and the engineering principles applied therein."
He shook his head. The idea of the two squints playing arcade games was more than a little strange.
"After studying the game for several weeks and practicing, Zack achieved a perfect score with less than 2.3 hours of play," she said, sounding like a proud parent. "It was a record-breaking achievement." She tapped the console. "I want to play. Do you have more change?"
"3,333,360 points in less than two hours?" Booth made a mental note to tag along on her next visit. "Good thing you squints keep your obsessing to scientific things. Otherwise you'd wipe the rug with the rest of us average human beings." He handed her the last of his coins.
She moved to insert the change, then stopped, surprised. "The game costs $7.50 per play."
"What!" Booth looked at the coin slot, which was actually a dollar slot. "No way." He turned toward the store employee sitting on a stool nearby, watching them gloomily. "This is a typo, right? You mean .75 cents?"
"No." The guy got up and wandered over to them, waving at a group of young customers who had just entered the store. "This is dual Pac-Man. It costs more because of the modifications we made."
"Dual Pac-Man?" Booth echoed, for the first time really noticing the two sets of controls on the machine.
"People can play against each other." He walked away without further explanation of how this could be possible.
"We have to play," Brennan said excitedly. "If the gaming experience is fun, I can see about procuring a similar set-up for Zack. He has currently exhausted the game's possibilities, but if instead of Pac-Man he could become Oikake or Machibuse or Kimagure and Otoboke—"
"Oinky and Macky what?" Booth interrupted, feeling weirdly out of his league and really not liking it.
"The Pac-Man villains," Brennan explained. "In English, we call them Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde. In Japanese, the names are more directly correlated to the movements the characters are programmed to make. Red is Oikake, meaning chaser. Machibuse is pink, and he ambushes. Kimagure is cyan, and is fickle. His movements are less overtly regularized. Orange's name, Otoboke, literally translates as stupid because of the misconception that the character follows no set pattern. Zack's study reveals this to be an erroneous analysis on the part of amateur game players."
"I'm not sure I want to play with you," Booth said slowly. "I haven't spent several hundred hours studying the movements of Porky Pig and Mack the Knife."
"I played air hockey with you." She was already pulling out her wallet and extracting dollar bills. "Are you afraid of losing to me?"
Not so much losing as getting creamed and completely losing any street cred, he thought silently, before letting his usual bravado lead him into dangerous waters.
"Are we betting the alien again?" he asked, settling onto one of the stools in front of the game.
She clutched her toy a little tighter. "No. You are not supposed to gamble at all."
He chuckled and turned his attention to the screen as it lit up, displaying a typical black and blue Pac-Man screen with the Technicolor bad guys all lined up in a row beside the game's hero. Except that there were two heroes in this line-up, one the familiar yellow and another which was watermelon green.
"How does this even work?" he asked. "Are we competing for pac-dots? If one of us loses all our lives, does the other just keep going?"
She shrugged and sat down beside him, stowing the alien between her feet. "So it would seem. It remains to be seen how the interactions with the villains differ when there are two players operating. Ready?"
He didn't bother answering as she hit the white start button and tensely gripped the joystick on her side. The screen flashed once and then the cluster of ghosts began to exit their cage at center-screen, unusually rapidly, according to Booth's vague memories anyway.
Brennan was already off and chowing down on dots. He went in the opposite direction, heading for a power pellet in the far left hand corner. He tried to remember what Brennan had told him about the movements of each monster, but they all seemed to be doing exactly one thing—chasing him.
"Why aren't they going after you?" Booth whined, turning a corner and reversing hastily as Blinky tried to corral him.
"It would appear that the fruit my Pac-Man consumed had the temporary effect of sending all the bad guys in your direction," Brennan answered, hurrying away as the ghosts now fanned out in her direction.
Booth mulled this over as he found himself in a traffic jam directly behind Brennan, with a ghost only a few spaces behind him. "Move it, Bones. I'm about to lose a life here."
"It would appear that your need to serve as a human shield for me carries over into the world of video games," Brennan snickered, making her escape as Clyde killed Booth.
His Pac-Man reappeared at the bottom of the screen again and Booth wasted no time gunning for the last of the pellets, only to find that Brennan was heading the same direction as he was. They vied for openings in the maze, dodging the various ghosts until Brennan finally scooped up the last power pellet and suddenly turned on Booth and swallowed him.
"Hey!" he shouted in surprise as his second life vanished before his eyes. "That isn't supposed to happen!"
Brennan smiled evilly and ate the last pac-pellet. "You are not very good at this game, Booth."
The display rolled over to the next level, answering one of Booth's questions. If he died, apparently Brennan could continue to keep playing. He had no intention of dying, however; there was an extra life hiding in the corner of the screen. He swallowed a power pellet and sent the ghosts in his partner's direction. She yelped and physically turned her body as her character turned a corner.
He chuckled. "Say hello to my little friends, Bones."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o