The brisk pace of updates continues! The trip from Florida resolved, and a fast forward.

Love to my readers! RT, my faithful friend, you are so right. Vegan cat food is not going to tempt any cat I've ever met. I completely agree that Sweets dresses as he does to appear older and more impermeable. I admit, as a young looking person, I do that as well.

Disclaimer: Yep.

Back from Florida, Lance approached the door to his apartment. Emotions were swirling in his mind, making it race. He was even starting to worry that he was going to have to visit a practicing psychiatrist instead of Wyatt to get back on antidepressants. No matter what it took, he couldn't lose control. Lance promised himself that he'd try to reduce rather than compound his stress from this day forward for at least the foreseeable future. Then again, he had a battered woman and child taking refuge in his apartment just beyond this door, a stressful ongoing case at the Jeffersonian that had almost claimed his life, and he was beginning a new job in just a few weeks. Stress was around and in him.

Lance knocked, since he had given Bea his key. She answered, shushing him as Lulu was napping in his bedroom. Her injuries from a few days ago were improving, he noted.

Knox said, "Mew!" and Lance picked up the cat to pet him.

"That cat! He's positively supercilious," Bea said with disgust. Her hair was tied in a long ponytail, vaguely reminiscent of Daisy.

"Well, he's a cat. They come in one flavor: pompous," Lance said defensively, and then gazing beyond Bea his jaw dropped in horror. "Have you considered that his indignation might be related to the fact that you've covered every inch of livable space in crap?"

This was not an understatement. Lance's couch was drowning in clothes, his coffee table barely visible underneath books and papers. There were unidentifiable wires and electronic equipment everywhere. It seemed Bea's desk had taken Lance's apartment hostage. He glanced toward the kitchen area, which was worse—dirty dishes piled high, open food containers, fruit strewn about. Then he saw it: a coffee mug set right on top of his grand piano. He slung Knox under one arm and sprinted at his piano to save it from an eternal ring of liquid.

Lance tried to calm himself, but messes made his skin crawl. What was that about sparing him stress? He turned slowly around to face Bea after placing Knox on his piano bench, who purred at his master expectantly.

"You sit over there," he pointed Bea toward the couch. "I'm going to clean up this mess, and then this is not going to happen again. Understand?"

Bea attempted to hide her smile behind feigned surprise. "I don't take orders, you know."

"You can stay here as long as you like, but I cannot handle this level of disorder! It makes me…" Lance scratched his arm violently, "itch."

For the next hour and a half Lance organized Bea's things. As he was scrubbing the floor on his hands and knees, Bea, who had been reading one of his psychology reference books out of sheer boredom, came and sat on the floor to talk to him.

"So, you wanna tell me why you went to Florida to chase a ghost from your past?" she asked. Her nose ring glinted at him.

Taking in her appearance, Lance noticed that she was wearing one of his favorite button-down shirts over her jeans—a nice shirt, not a lounge on the floor shirt. He rolled his eyes. God, she was presumptuous (and supremely hot in his clothes). Bea noticed him looking at his shirt and shrugged, "I like the smell of your detergent. Lavender."

Lance, liking this answer, responded to her question. "I don't know what the hell I was thinking." Scrub, scrub. "She sent me a letter, and stupidly, I went to find out what she was like."

"And what was she like?"

"She was…aloof. And a wash up, really. A freaking psychic in a circus. She used to be a librarian—she was once intelligent. I mean, he ruined everyone's lives he touched."

"He?"

"My biological father." Lance looked like he was trying to bore a hole in the floor with his scrub brush. Bea put her hand on his arm to still him. She moved over, her knees drenched in the pooled water on the floor.

"Sweets, don't do that." She gripped his arm now, her face just inches from his. He realized that he wanted to kiss her—her lips were pink and well-shaped, like a tiny heart. He resisted, though he could feel her breath, and it was enticing.

"Don't do that to yourself," she continued. "Those people you were born to, they don't have to influence you anymore. You don't have to let them. You have done so well for yourself; you have so much to be proud of." She sighed. "He hurt you, didn't he?" It was unlike her to pry.

Tears formed in Lances' eyes, and he was disappointed to realize that he was going to cry over his stupid mother and his tortured past once again. As he put his head down on Bea's close shoulder, she embraced him. For the second time in several days, the two broken people found themselves holding on to each other for dear life.

"Why can't I get over it? After all these years, I'm still not over it." Tears soaked into the shirt Bea was wearing.

"I know," Bea said. "All that 'God won't give you more than you can handle' crap they taught me in Catholic school…you and I specialize in proving that sentiment wrong."

December

Over the fall and into early winter, Lance began teaching and found he quite liked it. His students were mostly bright and motivated and seemed to appreciate his energy and youthfulness. When he was in the classroom, he was his old (non-depressed) self—ebullient, goofy, optimistic, and curious. When he left the classroom, he retreated into the quiet darkness that had been consuming him for months.

He found that writing his lectures, grading papers, and trying to rewrite Bones: The Heart of the Matter kept him away from the Jeffersonian more than he had intended. Though he was consulting less there, he found he didn't mind as Bea and Lulu were still staying in his home, keeping him apprised of the various cases.

The Gravedigger accomplice case had gained some momentum as the team sought Taffet's former husband, but he was not located. No other attacks besides Lance's had occurred, so they moved on for the time being to their usual array of cases. Perhaps they would revisit it when Dr. Brennan came back in May. It was hard to believe she had already been gone for over 6 months.

Lance also had lunch with Cam at least once or twice a week. Cam was as solid a rock as ever, though her relationship with Paul, Michelle's former gynecologist, was making painfully slow progress. Mostly she had been pouring her energies into helping her daughter adjust to the beginnings of adult life—managing love, sex, and preparing for college.

Cam, for her part, noticed that a change had taken place in Sweets that appeared to be lasting. He seemed older, but also sadder, more brooding. She mainly blamed Daisy's departure and longed a little for the glimmers of the old Sweets—who imitated robots, proclaimed himself 'Mr. Adventure,' and made reckless use of the words 'wicked' and 'awesome.' With a heavy heart, she supposed all of her children were growing up.

Lance still missed Daisy, but his yearning for her was becoming more about the idea rather than the person. He was also becoming very attached to Bea, which was easy to do considering they had lived together for 4 months. Nothing romantic had occurred between him and his boarder, but he increasingly felt an electricity between them.

They had their routines, like any roommates. Lance slept on the couch and tended to be groggy and grumpy in the morning before transforming into his usual cheerful self. Bea let him awake slowly, as he liked, and left him to meditate and prepare to face the day. She knew he was depressed, but she honestly did not know how to help him. So she made the coffee and set him out a mug each morning, while she went to shower and dress her baby. By the time she reemerged Lance might say a few words of greeting, as he read the paper. She would put Lulu on his knee, and the two made a fetching pair in the morning sun.

Lance rarely came home for dinner, as his work schedule was almost manic. He was a first year professor, after all. When he did come home at 7 or 8, he would often read to Lulu in her pajamas and then allow Bea her secret motherly bedtime routine. Finally, Bea would call him in, and he would kiss the child goodnight. If he wasn't there to bid Lulu goodnight, Bea told Lance that Lulu would cry. When Lulu was slumbering, Lance and Bea might play quiet duets—him on the piano, her on the violin—or read. It was almost as if they were a real family.

Lulu had recently turned one, taken her first steps, and was even saying a few things. Lance finally learned her real name: Eloise, which he thought as lovely as the child. She called Lance, "Ba!" which wasn't very imaginative but reserved especially for him. It secretly thrilled him when Bea explained that Ba actually meant Dad in Vietnamese.

Lately Lance wondered if he should make a move on Bea. He found her incredibly attractive, and it seemed to make sense for them to give romance a try, at least in Lance's mind. He was looking for the opportunity to drop some hint of his evolving feelings for her. Christmas was around the corner, and though he didn't put much stock in the holiday, it seemed like an appropriate time to attempt something.

What Lance didn't know was that Bea was already well aware of his feelings for her—they were palpable and frightening to her. Sometimes in the morning, when she would pad out to the kitchen to make coffee, she would watch him sleep. He looked so young; he was young. She feared he was fragile and could break—there was something persistently childlike and vulnerable about the man. These attributes were what made Lance lovable but also threatening to her own carefully constructed stability, built brick by brick for Lulu. In those moments she wanted to snatch up Lulu and all of her things and flee. She was taking advantage of a kind person's hospitality, and he was falling in love with her.

Part of her wished she could love him back, but her heart was like petrified wood. She was convinced that people were better off alone, because you could only depend on yourself. Otherwise what explanation was there for people like Perry or Sweets' bio dad—people who were supposed to love you but delighted in ripping you apart?

As the December chill swept into DC, snow seemed to come more quickly than usual, and it was awfully cold. Cam had generously invited Lance, Bea, and Lulu to a Christmas gathering at her house, and the makeshift family was glad to have something to do on December 25. Staying home together was just a bit too awkward to contemplate.