AN/: This is a belated birthday present for the lovely va32h who, when offered crack for her birthday, gave me the following prompt: Season 2, Stargazer in a Puddle, rather than run off, Angela and Hodgins stick around to host their weddingless reception. It is a wild affair and many hijinks ensue.

I hope you enjoy the following hijinks, bb – consider them a small thank you for the many happy hours I've spent reading your stories :-)

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The Nudge in the Nuptials

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Angela stumbled through the wreckage of the once-splendid reception hall on slightly wobbly legs. A few barely conscious guests were still draped over various pieces of furniture, but for the most part, the vast room was empty except for the remaining alcohol fumes. Wedding or no wedding, it had been a great party.

"Ange, baby?" Hodgins' voice came in through the open French doors leading to the huge balcony that Angela had side-eyed all night – it was beautiful and terribly romantic, but also kind of a safety hazard considering how many increasingly drunk people had been partying in close proximity to the low stone railing. Thankfully, Hodgins' tone was far too gleeful to indicate that he'd found out the balcony had indeed claimed a victim, although you could never be quite sure with Jack. If someone had fallen to their death into a well-placed ant heap, Jack would be sifting through bones with itsy bitsy bite marks on them with a smile on his lips and a song in his heart right now.

Shaking her head (and quickly stopping because it made the world spin much faster than it should), Angela made her way towards the morning light flooding in through the doors. It wasn't a pleasant experience considering her developing hangover, but she figured that not being able to marry Jack on account of already being married to a guy whose name and face she couldn't remember (although there were other parts of his anatomy she remembered quite vividly, not that she'd ever admit it to Jack) was no reason not to stand by him when circumstances demanded it.

Circumstances, as it turned out, came in the shape of her not-quite-husband standing next to a small wooden bench that was nestled into a corner of the balcony (and, for some reason, half-hidden behind potted hydrangeas) with a huge grin on his face and pointing towards exhibits A and B, to wit, a snoring FBI agent in a rumpled tux and a forensic anthropologist in a purple bridesmaid dress who was slumped against his shoulder.

"Look what I found." Hodgins spoke in a low voice although from the look of it, Booth and Brennan would have required a medium-sized explosion to wake them. "Aren't you glad we decided to come back for the reception?"

"Still deciding." Angela eyed the unconscious couple with practiced efficiency, taking in the utter lack of hickeys, loose pieces of clothing (Booth's dangling bow tie notwithstanding) or similar indicators that anything truly interesting might have happened here. Brennan's lipstick was smeared all over Booth's shirtfront, but that was likely due to no more than the fact that she'd gone to sleep using his chest as a pillow. "Looks like they passed out before they got to the good part."

Hodgins wrinkled his nose. "Explains why they smell like a distillery." He picked up an empty bottle by Booth's feet and whistled through his teeth. "Has it ever ended well when Dr. B and the G-man hit the tequila?"

"Makes you wonder what sent them on this little drinking binge in the first place, doesn't it?" Angela's brain might not have been working at its usual speed thanks to being pickled in alcohol, but she would have had to be dead not to get the implications. "Cam says they both looked super-spooked when we had to leave them standing at the altar all by themselves."

"Hit a little too close to home, I guess." Hodgins pondered the sleeping couple for a moment and then gave Angela a crooked grin. "You turned out to be married to some other guy, but what's their excuse?"

Angela winced a little, but wisely decided not to go down that particular road right now. There was nothing she could do about her pre-existing marital condition at the moment, but there were other uses she could put her mind to. She might not be a genius like her fiancé, her best friend and pretty much everyone else she worked with (except maybe the piece of FBI eye candy currently drooling into his partner's half-unloosened coiffure, bless him), but when it came to deviousness, these people had nothing on Angela Montenegro.

"Jack, you still got the rings?"

"Yeah, sure, it's not like…" Hodgins wasn't the love of her life for nothing; the huge grin splitting his bearded face in two told her that he'd already understood. "Ange, baby, you're beautiful."

"And don't you forget it." Angela gave him a small shove towards their unsuspecting targets. "You're the guy who can handle butterfly wings without damaging them, you think you can get a ring two sizes too small on an ex-sniper's finger without waking him?"

"O ye of little faith." Hodgins sounded more excited than insulted, and sure enough, the ring intended for the future Mr. Montenegro was on Booth's left ring finger in no time at all. Size wasn't even much of a problem; for all his general brick house build, Booth had really slender hands, and Angela quickly called her alcohol-addled thoughts to order before they strayed down the line of wondering what exactly a guy could to with those long, nimble fingers.

"Here, let me do Bren." She reached for the second ring, but Hodgins pulled his hand away with a leer.

"Only if I get to watch, baby."

"Now I know what to get you for our first anniversary." Angela seized the moment when Hodgins' jaw hit the floor and picked the ring out of his slackening grasp. It slid onto Brennan's finger without much resistance, and Angela had to giggle at the thought that any part of Temperance Brennan would not resist the prospect of getting subjected to the old-fashioned tool of the patriarchy also known as "marriage".

Taking a step back, she surveyed their handiwork. The partners kept sleeping in high-proof peace, and as much as she would have loved to hang around for the eventual awakening, it would have defeated the purpose of their little intervention. All she and Jack could do now was to leave on tiptoes and make sure that the cleaning crew didn't come in until early afternoon.

All in all, Angela mused, it had not been such a bad not-wedding night after all.

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Angela didn't think much of it when Brennan didn't show up at the lab the following Monday morning; Booth had probably whisked her away at some ungodly hour of the morning to stare at a half-decayed heap of rotting bones as if there was nothing better she could let herself be whisked away for. When Brennan still hadn't come back until mid-afternoon, she went to ask Cam and was told that Brennan was taking a few personal days and might not be back for the remainder of the week.

Angela wasn't happy about this at all; their little prank had seemed terribly funny at the time, but now that reality was catching up with her, she was beginning to worry that she might have spooked her skittish best friend into doing something stupid. Brennan-style stupidity usually involved jumping onto the next airplane that would take her to a place with lots of flies, mass graves and blood-thirsty guerillas, no sanitation or cell phone reception, and most importantly no Booth.

Wincing at the thought, Angela whipped out her cell to do some damage control, but her call went straight to Booth's voicemail. Hopefully it meant that he was already on the next plane to coax Brennan into coming back from wherever she had run to, not that he'd switched it off so that nobody could trace his whereabouts while he went to shoot a dexterous entomologist and a meddling forensic artist.

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By Thursday, Angela was freaking out. Nobody had heard a word from either Brennan or Booth all week, and even though Jack tried to reassure her that everything was fine and dandy, it wasn't lost on her that he was constantly looking over his shoulder and had begun to avoid deserted corridors. It wasn't until Friday that Cam wandered into Angela's office with an I-Know-Something-You-Don't grin on her face and a multicolored postcard in her hand.

"This one's for you; must have gotten into my mail by accident."

Angela snatched the card out of Cam's hand and yelped when she saw the tacky palm trees-and-coconut arrangement printed on the back. "FIJI?"

Cam shrugged nonchalantly, although her eyes shone with unholy glee. "I wonder where they got that idea from."

"You knew." If looks could kill, Cam would have been next in line for her own autopsy table, but she remained unfazed.

"I'm the boss, it's my job to know where my employees run off to. We agreed that you deserved to stew a little, though." She turned on her heel and, looking back over her shoulder, added with a smirk, "You may wanna tell Hodgins too before he starts wearing Kevlar to work."

Still fuming, Angela went to find her co-conspirator to put his mind at ease.

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Dear Ange,

took a page out of your book and found a divorce lawyer practicing out of a hut on the beach. Booth still pouting a little, but says that now he might at least get a chance to actually remember it if I ever decide to make an honest man out of him again. Got him to sign the divorce papers by promising to demonstrate all the advantages of living in sin, and you know me – I've always been a woman of my word. Give Hodgins my best.

Love, Bren

PS: Honesty is overrated. Am still keeping the rings just in case.

Booth